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hydrophobic complex-which is fear of water, Rover, not rabies -- " y
"You can call me Rover," I growled, "but if you call me Fido, gives a paddling."
She didn't ask why I assumed I'd be sufficiently close in future for such laying on of hands. That
encouraged me. Indeed, she bushed, but went on: "Having gotten the key to his personality, I found it
simple to play on his phobia. I pointed out how com-mon a substance water is and how difficult total
dehy-dration is. He got more and more scared. When I showed him that all animal tissue, including his
own, is about eighty percent water, that was that. He crept back into his bottle and went catatonic."
After a moment, she added thoughtfully: "I'd like to have him for my mantelpiece, but I suppose he'll
wind up in the Smithsonian. So I'll simply write a little treatise on the military uses of psychiatry."
"Aren't bombs and dragons and elfshot gruesome enough?" I demanded with a shudder.
Poor simple elementals! They think they're fiend-ish, but ought to take lessons from the human race.
As for me, I could imagine certain drawbacks to getting hitched with a witch, but "C'mere, youse."
She did.
I don't have many souvenirs of the war. It was an ugly time and best forgotten. But one keepsake will
always be with me, in spite of the plastic surgeons' best efforts. As a wolf, I've got a stumpy tail, and as a
man I don't like to sit down in wet weather.
That's a hell of a thing to receive a Purple Heart for.
VIII
HERE WE REACH one of the interludes. I'll skip oveR them fast. They were often more interesting
and important to us -- to Ginny and me -- than the episodes which directly involved our Adversary. The
real business of people is not strife or danger or melodrama: it's work, especially if they're so fortunate as
to enjoy what they do; it's recreation and falling in love and raising families and telling jokes and stumbling
into small pleasant adventures. r
But you wouldn't care especially about what happened to us in those departments. You have your
personal lives. Furthermore, a lot of it is nobody's business but ours. Furthermore yet, I have only one
night to 'cast. Any longer, and the stress might have effects on me. I don't take needless chances the
unknown; I've been there.
Finally, the big events do matter to you. He's also your Adversary.
Let me therefore just use the interludes to put episodes in context. Okay?
This first period covers roughly two years. For several months of them Ginny and I remained in
service, though we didn't see combat again. Nor did we see each other, which was worse on two counts.
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Reassign-ment kept shuffling us around.
Not that the war lasted that long. The kaftans had been beaten off the Caliphate. It disintegrated like
a dropped windowpane, in revolutions, riots, secessions, vendettas, banditry and piecemeal surrenders.
Amer-ica and her allies didn't need armed forces to invade enemy-held territory. They did need them,
and ur-gently, for its occupation, to restore order before fam-ine and plague broke loose. Our special
talents had Ginny and me hopping over half the world-but not in company.
We spent a barrel of pay on postage. Nevertheless I took a while to decide I really had better
propose; and while her answer was tender, it wasn't yes. Orphaned at a rather early age, she'd grown to
womanhood with a need for warmth -- and a capacity for it which re-quired that tough career-girl shell to
guard her from hurt. She would not contract a marriage that she wasn't certain could be for life.
I was discharged somewhat before her and went home to reweave threads torn loose by the war.
Sur-prisingly few showed in the United States. Though the invaders had overrun nearly half, throughout
most of float conquest they were present only a short while before we rolled them back, and in that while
we kept them too busy to wreak the degree of harm that luckless longer-held corners like Trollburg
suffered. Civil government followed on the heels of the Army, more rapid and efficient in its work than I'd
have expected. Or maybe civilization itself was responsible. Technology can produce widespread
devastation, but likewise quick recoveries.
Thus I returned to a country which, apart from various shortages that soon disappeared, looked
familiar. On the surface, I mean. The psyche was some thing else again. Shocked to their souls by what
had happened, I suppose, shocked more deeply than they knew, a significant part of the population had
come unbalanced. What saved us from immediate social disaster was doubtless the variety of their
eccentricities. So many demagogues, self-appointed prophets, would-be necromancers, nut cultists in
religion and politics and science and dieting and life style and, Lord knows what else, tended to cancel
each other out. A few of them did grow ominously, like the Johannine Church, of which much more anon.
However, that didn't happen in a revolutionary leap. Those of us who weren't afflicted with some
fanaticism -- and we were the majority, remember -- seldom worried more than peripherally. We figured
the body politic would stop twitching in the natural course of events. Meanwhile we had our careers and
dreams to rebuild; we had the everydays to get through.
Myself, I went back to Hollywood and resume werewolfing for Metro-Goldwyn-Merlin. That
proved a disappointment. It was a nuisance wearing a fake brush over my bobbed tail, for me and the
studio alike. They weren't satisfied with my performance either; nor was I. For instance, in spite of honest
trying, I couldn't get real conviction into my role Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolf Man, the Mummy and
the Thing Meet Paracelsus. Not that I look down on pure entertainment, but I was discovering a
newborn wish to do something more significant.
So there began to be mutual hints about my rep nation. Probably only my medals delayed a crisis. 1
war heroes were a dime a coven. Besides, everybody knows that military courage is a large part training
and discipline, another large part the antipanic geas; the latter is routinely lifted upon discharge, because
civilians need a touch of timidity. I don't claim more than the normal share of natural guts.
About that time Ginny was demobbed. She came straight to visit me. That was quite a reunion. She
wouldn't accept my repeated proposals -- "Not yet, Steve, dear; not till we see what we're both like
under ordinary conditions; don't you understand?" -- but I seemed to be running well out in front.
In the course of several days, besides the expected things, we did considerable serious talking. She
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drew to the forefront of my mind what my true ambition was: taming Fire and Air to create an antigravity
spell powerful enough that men could reach the planets. In fact, I'd set out to be an engineer. But funds
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