like always.”
“In a way that’s something to be proud of—like always.”
They sat a moment and then he poured himself another coffee. “Why do you suppose it’s tonight?”
“Because.”
“Why not some other night in the last century, or five centuries ago, or ten?”
“Maybe it’s because it was never October 19, 1969, ever before in history, and now it is and that’s it; because this date means more than any other date ever meant; because it’s the year when things are as they are all over the world and that’s why it’s the end.”
“There are bombers on their schedules both ways across the ocean tonight that’ll never see land.”
“That’s part of the reason why.”
“Well,” he said, getting up, “what shall it be? Wash the dishes?”
They washed the dishes and stacked them away with special neatness. At eight-thirty the girls were put to bed and kissed good night and the little lights by their beds turned on and the door left open just a trifle.
“I wonder,” said the husband, coming from the bedroom and glancing back, standing there with his pipe for a moment.
“What?”
“If the door will be shut all the way, or if it’ll be left just a little ajar so some light comes in.”
“I wonder if the children know.”
“No, of course not.”
They sat and read the papers and talked and listened to some radio music and then sat together by the fireplace watching the charcoal embers as the clock struck ten-thirty and eleven and eleven-thirty. They thought of all the other people in the world who had spent their evening, each in his own special way.
“Well,” he said at last.
He kissed his wife for a long time.
“We’ve been good for each other, anyway.”
“Do you want to cry?” he asked.
“I don’t think so.”
They moved through the house and turned out the lights and went into the bedroom and stood in the night cool darkness undressing and pushing back the covers. “The sheets are so clean and nice.”
“I’m tired.”
“We’re
They got into bed and lay back.
“Just a moment,” she said.
He heard her get out of bed and go into the kitchen. A moment later, she returned. “I left the water running in the sink,” she said.
Something about this was so very funny that he had to laugh. She laughed with him, knowing what it was that she had done that was funny. They stopped laughing at last and lay in their cool night bed, their hands clasped, their heads together.
“Good night,” he said, after a moment.
“Good night,” she said.
THEIR EYES were fire and the breath flamed out the witches’ mouths as they bent to probe the caldron with greasy stick and bony finger.
“When shall we three meet again In thunder, lightning, or in rain?”
They danced drunkenly on the shore of an empty sea, fouling the air with their three tongues, and burning it with their cats’ eyes malevolently aglitter:
“Round about the cauldron go; In the poison’d entrails throw. Double, double, toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble!”
They paused and cast a glance about. “Where’s the crystal? Where the needles?”
“Here!”
“Good!”
“Is the yellow wax thickened?”
“Yes!”
“Pour it in the iron mold!”
“Is the wax figure done?” They shaped it like molasses adrip on their green hands.
“Shove the needle through the heart!”
“The crystal, the crystal; fetch it from the tarot bag. Dust it off; have a look!”
They bent to the crystal, their faces white.
“See, see, see …”
A rocket ship moved through space from the planet Earth to the planet Mars. On the rocket ship men were dying.
The captain raised his head, tiredly. “We’ll have to use the morphine.”
“But, Captain—”
“You see yourself this man’s condition.” The captain lifted the wool blanket and the man restrained beneath the wet sheet moved and groaned. The air was full of sulphurous thunder.
“I saw it—I saw it.” The man opened his eyes and stared at the port where there were only black spaces, reeling stars, Earth far removed, and the planet Mars rising large and red. “I saw it—a bat, a huge thing, a bat with a man’s face, spread over the front port. Fluttering and fluttering, fluttering and fluttering.”
“Pulse?” asked the captain.
The orderly measured it. “One hundred and thirty.”
“He can’t go on with that. Use the morphine. Come along, Smith.”
They moved away. Suddenly the floor plates were laced with bone and white skulls that screamed. The captain did not dare look down, and over the screaming he said, “Is this where Perse is?” turning in at a hatch.
A white-smocked surgeon stepped away from a body. “I just don’t understand it.”
“How did Perse die?”
“We don’t know, Captain. It wasn’t his heart, his brain, or shock. He just—died.”
The captain felt the doctor’s wrist, which changed to a hissing snake and bit him. The captain did not flinch. “Take care of yourself. You’ve a pulse too.”
The doctor nodded. “Perse complained of pains—needles, he said—in his wrists and legs. Said he felt like wax, melting. He fell. I helped him up. He cried like a child. Said he had a silver needle in his heart. He died. Here he is. We can repeat the autopsy for you. Everything’s physically normal.”
“That’s impossible! He died of
The captain walked to a port. He smelled of menthol and iodine and green soap on his polished and manicured hands. His white teeth were dentifriced, and his ears scoured to a pinkness, as were his cheeks. His uniform was the color of new salt, and his boots were black mirrors shining below him. His crisp crew-cut hair smelled of sharp alcohol. Even his breath was sharp and new and clean. There was no spot to him. He was a fresh instrument, honed and ready, still hot from the surgeon’s oven.
The men with him were from the same mold. One expected huge brass keys spiraling slowly from their backs. They were expensive, talented, well-oiled toys, obedient and quick.
The captain watched the planet Mars grow very large in space. “We’ll be landing in an hour on that damned place. Smith, did you see any bats, or have other nightmares?”
“Yes, sir. The month before our rocket took off from New York, sir. White rats biting my neck, drinking my blood. I didn’t tell. I was afraid you wouldn’t let me come on this trip.”
“Never mind,” sighed the captain. “I had dreams too. In all of my fifty years I never had a dream until that week before we took off from Earth. And then every night I dreamed I was a white wolf. Caught on a snowy hill.
