The Best of Margaret St. Clair

all on its common stock, and if the same thing happens this year, they’ll have to skip payments on the preferred. That’s why I was sent to stop you at all costs.”

“How were you supposed to stop me?” the Reverend inquired. He put the tips of his outstretched fingers together thoughtfully.

“I was supposed to seduce you, and then call the broadcasters in. You know, moral turpitude. But I convinced them that it wouldn’t work. Congregations aren’t so touchy about things like that nowadays. It wouldn’t have worked.”

“Mazda, how could you?”

“I don’t know how I could,” Mazda replied with spirit. “I could have had a nice clean-cut electronics engineer… or one of those cute linemen up on a pole… and then I had to fall for a Reverend with his collar on backwards. Somebody ought to examine my head.”

The Reverend Adelburg let this pass without comment. “What was the alternate plan?” he asked.

“I promised them I’d keep you from delivering any more old-fashioned Christmas sermons. That’s what the peyote was for.”

“Peyote? When?” She told him.

“Oh. Then it wasn’t the mistletoe,” he said when she had finished. He sounded rather annoyed.

“No, it wasn’t the mistletoe. But I guess I didn’t give you enough peyote. You delivered the sermon anyway.

“Clem, you think that because the ravens made that silly attack on you in the Temple that that’s the sort of thing the Company has up its sleeve. It’s not. The ravens were acting on their own responsibility, and they’re not awfully bright birds. The Company can do lots better than that.”

“What do you think they’ll try next?” the Reverend inquired. His jaw had begun to jut out.

“Well, they might try to get you for moral turpitude after all, or stick an income tax evasion charge on you or accuse you of dope smuggling. I don’t think they will. They don’t want to give you any more publicity. I think they’ll just quietly try to wipe you out.”

For a moment Mazda’s self command deserted her. She wrung her hands. “What’m I to do?” she whimpered. “I’ve got to save you, and you’re as stubborn as a mule. I don’t know any magic—or at least not nearly enough magic. The whole Company will be against me as soon as the ravens are sure I ratted on them. And there’s just no place in the world today for anybody who’s in conflict with the PE&G.

“I wish I hadn’t been such a dope as to fall in love with you.”

The Reverend Clem Adelburg got up from the chair where he had been sitting and put his arm around her. “Cheer up, my dear,” he told her solemnly. “We will defeat the company. Right is on our side.”

Mazda gave a heroic smile. She smiled at him mistily. “It’s not just the PE&G, of course,” she said. “Sometimes I think they have agents everywhere.”

“The PE&G?” the Reverend cried. He let his arm fall from around her. He had a sudden nightmare vision of a whole world united against him—a world in which the clouds semaphored secrets about him to the dolphins in the Pacific waves. “What is it, then?”

“Why, it’s Nous.”

“I never heard of it.”

“Very few people have. But Nous, Infinite is the company from which the PE&G gets its power.

“Nous is a very strange outfit. It operates on the far side of 3,000 A.D., AND SELLING POWER IS ONLY ONE OF THE THINGS IT DOES. WHEN YOU’RE A TOP AGENT FOR THE COMPANY LIKE I WAS, YOU HEAR ALL SORTS OF STORIES ABOUT IT—FOR INSTANCE, THAT IT’S RESPONSIBLE FOR MAINTAINING THE DIFFERENCE IN POTENTIAL BETWEEN THE EARTH AND THE IONOSPHERE, OR THAT THE WEATHER ON VENUS IS A MINOR NOUS PROJECT—STUFF LIKE THAT. I’VE EVEN HEARD AGENTS SAY THAT NOUS IS G—but I don’t believe that. I know about Mithras, myself.”

“I thought the PE&G made its own power,” said the Reverend. He was still struggling with the first part of Mazda’s remarks.

Mazda laughed. “I don’t mean any disrespect to the Company, but what makes you think that? The Company’s a bad opponent, but outside of that, witchcraft, or sorcery, or ravens, is all they’re capable of.

“All the really hot developments in power, the electronic stuff, comes from after 3,000 A.D. NOBODY IN THE PRESENT HAS BRAINS ENOUGH TO WORK OUT A GERMANIUM TRANSISTER, FOR EXAMPLE. Nous helps them. People nowadays are dopes. They can’t work buttons on pants, or open a package of chewing gum unless there’s a paper ribbon to help them.

“That’s beside the point, really. The thing I’m trying to make clear, Clem, is that Nous is a bad outfit to come up against.

“I was supposed to go outside at one-thirty this morning and have the ravens pick me up under the Joshua tree. They were going to take me back to headquarters by air raft. If it—”

“Is that how you got here in the first place?” the Reverend inquired. “By air raft?”

“Yes, As I was saying, if I’d done that, the Company would have accepted that my failure with the peyote was just a mistake. But I didn’t do it. I couldn’t bear to leave a chump like you all alone to face the Company, and by now they must be beginning to realize that I’ve ratted on them. It won’t be very long before the real trouble begins.

“Now, listen. There are two things you can do. The best one would be for you to go outside and talk to the ravens. If you promise them on your word of honor as a Christian gentleman that you won’t deliver any more anti— light sermons—I can’t see why you don’t like light, anyhow; light’s wonderful—if you promise them that, they’ll let you go.” She paused hopefully.

The Reverend gave her a look.

“Then we’ll have to make a break for it.

“While you were in the washroom, I called the Temple copter.” She indicated the short wave radio on the other side of the little stone fireplace. “It’ll be here any minute. I think—well, we’ll try to get through.”

The Reverend looked at her in silence for a moment. Fatigue had made shadows under her eyes, but they only made her look glamorous and desirable. She had never been more beautiful. She had betrayed her company for him; he loved her more than ever. He gave her a hug.

“Nix, my dear,” he said. “Nix.”

“N-n-n-n—”

“Nix. Never.” His voice rang out, booming and resonant. “Run away from those devils and their ravens? Flee from those pagan night-lighters? Never! I will not.” He advanced toward the radio.

“What are you going to do?” Mazda squeaked.

“I’m going to contact the TVA,” he said without turning. “You have to fight fire with fire.”

“Public power?” Mazda breathed. Her face was white.

“Public power! Their line will be open all night.”

He turned his face toward the rafters. “O Lord,” he boomed reverently, “bless this radio message. Please, Lord, grant that in contacting a radical outfit like the TVA I’m doing right.”

The noise of prayer died away in the ceiling. He pressed a key and turned a switch. For a moment the room was utterly quiet. Then there was a soft flurry and plop at the window. The ravens, after all, were not deaf. They too had heard the Reverend’s prayers.

Mazda spun round toward the sound. Before she could decide what to do, there was a series of tinkles from the chimney. It ended in a glassy crash. Something had broken on the stone hearth.

Mazda screamed

“Keep back!” she yelled at the Reverend, who had turned from the radio and was leaning forward interestedly. “Keep back! Don’t breathe! Damn those birds!” She was fumbling wildly with the wooden bracelet on her left wrist.

“What is it?” he asked. He advanced a step toward the shards of glass on the hearth.

“Get back. It’s a germ culture bomb. Parrot fever. I’m going to purify it. Stand back!”

The Reverend Adelburg discounted most of this warning as due to feminine hysteria. He drew back a fraction of an inch, but still remained leaning forward, his eyes fixed on the glass.