Chapter XIV

Professor Carr finished his inspection of the first of the five sheets.

"Yes," he said, "these are undoubtedly equations in symbolic logic."

Norman had been pretty sure they were, but he was glad to hear a mathematician say so. The hurried reference he had made to _Principia Mathematica_ had not altogether satisfied him.

"The capitals stand for classes of entities, the lower case letter for relationships," he said helpfully.

"Ah ... yes--" Professor Carr's voice became a trifle diffident, and he rubbed his chin beneath the white Vandyke. "But what do they ... refer to ... if I may ask?"

"You could perform operations on the equations, couldn't you, without knowing the references of the individual symbols?" Norman countered,

"Most certainly. And the results would be valid--always providing that the original references had been made correctly."

"Then here's my problem," Norman went on hastily. "There are seventeen equations on that first sheet. As they stand, they are not consistent with each other. Now I'm wondering if one simple, underlying equation doesn't appear in each of the seventeen, jumbled up with a lot of nonessential terms and meaningless procedures. Each of the other sheets presents a similar problem."

"Hm-m-m--" Professor Carr began to finger a pencil, and his eyes started to go back to the intriguing sheet, but he checked the movement. "I must confess I'm rather curious about those references," he said, and added innocently, "I wasn't aware that there had been attempts to apply symbolic logic to sociology."

Norman was prepared for this. "I'll be frank with you, Linthicum," he said. "I have a pretty wild, off-trail theory, and I've promised myself I won't discuss it until I have a better idea of whether or not there's anything to it."

Carr's face broke into a reminiscent smile. "I think I understand your sentiments," he said. "I can still recall the disastrous consequences of my announcement that I had trisected the angle.

"Of course, I was only in high school at the time," he added hastily.

"Though I'm still convinced that I gave my teacher a bad half-hour," he finished with a touch of pride.

When he next spoke, there was a sly twinkle in his eyes. "Nevertheless, I'm very much piqued by those symbols. As it stands, they might refer ... hm-m-m ... to anything."

"I'm sorry," said Norman. "I know I'm asking a lot of you."

"Not at all. Not at all." Twiddling the pencil Carr glanced again at the sheet. Something seemed to catch his eyes. "Hm-m-m ... this is very interesting," he said. "I hadn't noticed this before." And his pencil began to fly about the sheet, deftly striking out terms, neatly inscribing new equations. The single vertical furrow between his gray eyebrows deepened. In a moment he was wholly absorbed.

With an unbreathed sigh of relief, Norman leaned back. He felt dog-tired, and his eyes hurt. Those five sheets represented twenty hours of uninterrupted work. Tuesday night, Wednesday morning, part of Wednesday afternoon. Even at that he couldn't have done it without Tansy to take notes from his dictation. He trusted the accuracy of her mindless neurons more than those of a conscious person.

The agile old fingers had half filled a fresh sheet of paper with derived equations. Their swift, orderly movements did not disturb but rather intensified the quiet almost monastic, mathematical atmosphere of the small office.

If Mrs. Gunnison had not shown herself to be so resourceful, he was thinking, he might have managed without using symbolic logic and Carr. But she was no Evelyn Sawtelle, to strike out viciously and then collapse. No, her competence and coolness under fire were of quite a different sort. She had become very elusive, and he had even been balked in the simple job of secretly planting a certain object in her home. And even if he had managed, he was doubtful whether he would have succeeded with the rest of the plan. Something of a decidedly stronger sort was necessary. Something new. Something basic.

Carr shoved a paper toward him, and immediately started working on the next sheet.

"You've found the underlying equation?"

Carr seemed almost annoyed at the interruption. "Surely ... of course." His pencil was once more darting about.

"Sorry to be making all this work for you," said Norman, wondering just what was the meaning of the brief ultimate equation. He could not tell without his code.

Carr spared him a glance. "Not at all. I'm enjoying it. I always did have a knack for these things, though it's not exactly my field." And then he was busy again.

* * * * *

The afternoon shadows deepened. Norman switched on the overhead light, and Carr thanked him with a quick, preoccupied nod. The pencil flew. Three more sheets had been shoved across to Norman, and Carr was finishing the last one, when the door opened.

"Linthicum!" came the sweet voice, with hardly a trace of reproachfulness. "Whatever's keeping you? I've waited downstairs fifteen minutes."

"I'm sorry, dear," said the old man, looking at his watch and his wife. "But I had become so absorbed--"

She saw Norman. "Oh, I didn't know you had a visitor," she said. "_Whatever_ will Professor Saylor _think_! I'm afraid that I've given him the impression that I tyrannize over you."

And she accompanied the words with such a quaint smile that Norman found himself echoing Carr's "Not at all."

"Professor Saylor looks _dead_ tired," she said, peering at Norman anxiously. "I hope you haven't been wearing him out, Linthicum."

"Oh, no, my dear, I've been doing all the work," her husband told her.

She walked around the desk and looked over his shoulder. "What is it?" she asked, pleasantly.

"I don't know," he said. He straightened up and, winking at Norman, went on, "I believe that, behind these symbols, Professor Saylor is revolutionizing the science of sociology. But it's a great secret. And in any case I haven't the slightest idea of what the symbols refer to. I'm just being a comptometer."

With a polite, by-your-leave nod toward Norman, Mrs. Carr picked up one of the sheets and studied it through her thick glasses. But when she saw the massed rows of symbols, she put it down.

"Mathematics is not my forte," she explained. "I was _such_ a poor scholar."

"Nonsense, Flora," said Carr. "Whenever we go to the market, you're much quicker at totaling the bill than I am. And I try to beat you, too."

"But that's such a _little_ thing," cooed Mrs. Carr delightedly.

"I'll only be a moment more," said her husband, returning to his calculations.

Mrs. Carr spoke across to Norman in a half-whisper. "Oh, Professor Saylor, _would_ you be so kind as to convey a message to Tansy? I want to invite her for bridge tomorrow night--that's Thursday--with Hulda Gunnison and Evelyn Sawtelle. Linthicum has a _meeting_."

"I'll be glad to," said Norman quickly. "But I'm afraid she might not be up to it." And he explained about the food poisoning.

"How too, too _terrible_!" observed Mrs. Carr. "Couldn't I come over and help her?"

"Thank you," Norman lied, "but we have someone staying with her."

"How _wise_," said Mrs. Carr, and it sounded as if she really meant it.

Carr put down his pencil. "There," he said, "I'm done."

With further expressions of thanks, Norman gathered up the sheets.

"Really no trouble at all," Carr assured him. "You gave me a very exciting afternoon." He added wistfully. "I must confess that you've aroused my curiosity."

"Linthicum dotes on anything mathematical, especially when it's like a puzzle," Mrs. Carr told him. "Why, once," she continued, with a kind of roguish indulgence, "he made all sorts of tabulations on _horse races_."

"Er ... yes ... but only as a concrete example of the calculus of probabilities," Mr. Carr interposed quickly. But his smile was equally indulgent.

Her hand was on his shoulder, and he had reached up his own to cover hers. Frail, yet somehow hearty, withered, yet somehow fresh, they seemed like the perfect aged couple.

"I promise you," Norman told Carr, "that if I revolutionize the science of sociology, you'll be the first to hear of it."

* * * * *

As soon as he was home, Norman got out the code. "_W_" was the identifying letter at the top of the first sheet. He thought he remembered what that meant, but he looked it up just to be sure.

"_W_--To conjure out the soul."

Yes, that was it. He turned to the supplementary sheet covered with Carr's calculations, and carefully decoded the final equation. "_C_--Notched strip of copper." He nodded. "_T_--Twirl sunwise." He frowned. He would have expected them to cancel out. Good thing he'd gotten a mathematician's help in simplifying the seventeen equations, each representing a different people's formula for conjuring out the soul--Arabian, Zulu, Polynesian, American Negro, American Indian, and so on; the most recent formulas available, and ones that had known actual use.

"_A_--Deadly amanita." Bother! He'd been certain that one would cancel out. It would be a bit of time and trouble getting a deathcup mushroom. And there was another even more difficult item. Well, he could manage without that formula, if he had to. He took up two other sheets--"_V_--To control the soul of another," "_Z_--To cause the dwellers in a house to sleep"--and set to work on one of them. In a few minutes he had assured himself that the ingredients presented no special difficulties, save that _Z_ required a Hand of Glory to be used as well as the graveyard dirt to be thrown onto the roof of the house in which sleep was to be enforced. But he ought to have little difficulty in filching a suitable severed hand from the anatomy lab. Now he was getting somewhere. With _Z_ he could place the charm in the Gunnison house tomorrow night, and with _V_ activate it.

Conscious of a sudden reaction of weariness, he pushed back his chair. For the first time since he had come into the house, he looked at her. She sat in the rocking chair, face turned toward the drawn curtains. When she had started rocking, he did not know. But the muscles of her body automatically continued the rhythmical movement, once it had begun.

With the suddenness of a blow, longing for Tansy struck him. Her intonations, her gestures, her mannerisms, her funny fancies--all the little things that go to make a person real, and human, and loved--he wanted them all instantly; and the presence of this dead-alive imitation, this poor husk of Tansy, only made the longing less bearable. And what sort of a man was he, to be puttering around with occult formulas, while all the while he--"There are things that can be done to a soul," she had said. "Servant girls of the Gunnisons have told stories--" He ought to go up there and take by force what was his!

The reaction was immediate. How could you take by force what was without form or material being? How could you use open force against someone who had your dearest possession as a hostage?

No, these repugnant occult formulas were his only hope, and he had gotten his usual punishment for making the mistake of looking at her. Deliberately he moved to the other side of the table, so his back was to the rocking chair.

But he was restless, his muscles itching with fatigue poisons, and for the moment, he could not get back to the work. All sorts of questions were plaguing his mind.

* * * * *

Suddenly Norman spoke. "Why do you suppose everything has become violent and deadly so abruptly?"

"What I believe they call the Balance was upset," was the answer. There was no interruption in the steady rocking.

"How was that?" He started to look over the back of his chair, but checked himself in time.

"It happened when I ceased to practice magic." The rocking was a grating monotony.

"But why should that lead to violence?"

"It upset the Balance."

"Yes, but how can that explain the abruptness of the shift from relatively trivial attacks to a deadly maliciousness?"

The rocking had stopped. There was no answer. But, as he told himself, he knew the answer already. This women's warfare was very much like trench warfare or a battle between fortified lines--a state of siege. Just as thick, reinforced concrete or armor plating nullified the shells, so countercharms and protective procedures rendered relatively futile the most violent onslaughts. But once the armor and concrete were gone, and you were out in a kind of no man's land--

Then, too, fear of the savage counterattacks that could be launched from such highly fortified positions, was a potent factor in discouraging direct assaults. The natural thing would be to sit pat, snipe away, and only attack if the enemy exposed himself recklessly. Besides, there were probably all sorts of unsuspected hostages and secret agreements, all putting a damper on violence.

This idea also seemed to explain why Tansy's apparently pacific action had upset the Balance. What would any country think if in the midst of a war, its enemy scuttled all his battleships and dismantled all his aircraft, apparently laying himself wide open to attack? For the realistic mind, there could only be one likely answer. Namely, that the enemy had discovered a weapon far more potent than battleships or aircraft, and was planning to ask for a peace that would turn out to be a trap. The only thing would be to strike instantly and hard, before the secret weapon could be brought into play.

"I think--" he started to say.

Then something--perhaps a faint _whishing_ in the air or a slight creaking of the floor under the heavy carpet, or some less tangible sensation--caused him to glance around.

With a writhing jerk sideways, he managed--just managed--to get his head out of the path of that descending metal flail, which was all he saw at first. With a shocking _swish_ it crashed downward against the heavy back of the chair, and there its force was broken. But his shoulder, which took only the end of the blow, went numb.

Clawing at the chair arm with his good hand, he threw himself forward against the table and whirled around.

He recoiled from the sight as from another blow, throwing back his good hand to save himself from overbalancing.

She was poised in the center of the room, having sprung back catlike after the first blow failed. Almost stiff-legged, but with the weight forward. In stocking feet--the slippers that might have made a noise were laid by the rocking chair. In her hand was the steel poker, stealthily lifted from the stand by the fireplace, so as not to make the slightest warning rattle.

There was life in her face now. But it was life that champed the teeth and drooled, life that pinched and flared the nostrils with every breath, life that switched hair from the eyes with quick, angry flirts, life that glared redly and steadily. And there was more than that.

With a low snarl she lifted the poker and struck, not at him, but at the chandelier overhead. Yet, even as pitch darkness flooded the tightly curtained room, he realized what that more-than-animal life was.

There was no one conclusive reason, but from a multitude of almost indefinable impressions--too many to be realized separately--he knew with chilling certainty that the bestial spirit animating Tansy's body, the crude and unfinished soul conjured into her body--possessing her body as it used to be said demons possessed the bodies of the insane--was the same soul that had animated the stone creature that had crept from the roof.

And then the darkness was complete.

There was a rush of soft footsteps. He ducked to one side. Nevertheless, the _swish_ came perilously close. There was a sound as if she had dived or rolled across the table after he eluded the headlong rush--he could hear the slur of papers skidding and the faint crackle as some drifted to the floor. Then silence, except for the rapid _snuff-snuff_ of animal breathing.

He crouched on the carpet, trying not to move a muscle, straining his ears to catch the direction of that breathing. Abominable, he thought, how inefficient the human auditory system is at localizing a sound. First it came from one direction, then another--although he could not hear the slightest rustle of intervening movement--until he began to lose his sense of orientation in the room. He tried to remember his exact movements in springing away from the table. As he had hit the carpet, he had spun around. But how far? Was he facing toward or away from the wall? In his zeal to avoid the possibility of anyone spying on Tansy, he had blacked out this room and the bedroom, and the blackout was effective. No discernible atom of light filtered through from the night outside. He was somewhere on what was beginning to seem an endless expanse of carpet.

And somewhere else on that expanse, it was. Could it see and hear more than he? Could it discern form in retinal patterns that were only blackness to Tansy's human soul? What was it waiting for? Now even the rapid breathing was no longer audible--it possessed cunning.

* * * * *

This might be the darkness of some jungle floor, roofed by yards of matted creepers. Civilization is a thing of light. When light goes, civilization is snuffed out. He was rapidly being reduced to _its_ level. Perhaps it had counted on that when it smashed the lights. This might be the inner chamber of some primeval cave, and he some cloudy-minded primitive huddled in abject terror of his mate, into whose beloved form a demon had been conjured up by the witch woman--the brawny, fat witch woman with the sullen lip and brutish eyes, and copper ornaments twisted in matted red hair. Should he grope for his ax and seek to smash the demon from her skull where it was hiding? Or should he seek out the witch woman and throttle her until she called off her demon? But how could he constrain his wife meanwhile? If the tribe found her, they would slay her instantly--it was the law. And even now the demon in her was seeking to slay him.

With thoughts almost as murky and confused as those of that ghostly primitive forerunner, he sought to grapple with the problem, until he suddenly realized what it was waiting for.

Already his muscles were aching. He was getting twinges of pain from his shoulder, as the numbness went out of it. Soon he would make an involuntary movement. And in that instant it would be upon him.

Cautiously he stretched out his hand. Slowly--very slowly--he swung it around until it touched a small table and located the large book he had remembered was there. Clamping thumb and fingers around the book where it projected from the table edge, he lifted it and drew it to him. His muscles began to shake a little from the effort to maintain absolute quiet.

With a slow movement he launched the book toward the center of the room, so that it hit the carpet a few feet from him. The sound drew the instant response he had hoped for. Waiting a second, he dove forward, seeking to pin it to the floor. But its cunning was greater than he had guessed. His arms closed on a heavy cushion that it had hurled toward the book, and only luck saved him as the poker thudded against the carpet close by his head.

Clutching out blindly, his hands closed on the cold metal. There was a moment of straining as it sought to break his grip. Then he was sprawling backward, and the footsteps were retreating toward the rear of the house.

He followed it to the kitchen. A drawer, jerked out too far, fell to the floor, and he heard the chilling clatter and scrape of cutlery.

But there was enough light in the kitchen to show him its silhouette. He lunged at the upraised hand holding the long knife, caught the wrist. Then it threw itself against him, and they dropped to the floor.

He felt her warm body against his, the touch of it an instant check to violence. He dared not harm it, and yet viciousness animated it to the last limits of its strength. For a moment he felt the coldness of the flat of the knife against his cheek, then he had forced the weapon away. He doubled up his legs to protect himself from its knees. It surged convulsively down upon him and he felt jaws clamp the arm with which he held away the knife. Teeth sawed sideways, trying to penetrate the fabric of his coat. Cloth ripped as he sought with his free hand to drag her body away from him. Then he found her hair and forced back the head so the teeth lost their grip. It dropped the knife and clawed with both hands at his face. He seized the fingers seeking his eyes and nostrils; it snarled and spat at him. Steadily he forced down the arms, twisting them behind it, and with a sudden effort got to his knees. Strangled sounds of impotent fury came from its throat.

Only too keenly aware of how close his muscles were to the trembling weakness of fatigue, he shifted his grip so that with one hand he held the straining wrists. With the other he groped sideways, jerked open the lower door of the cabinet, and found a length of cord.