“Certainly.”
“Good, though in the light of so much physical evidence—However suppressed, and in my opinion, as I have said so very many times in the pages of
“You were speaking of physical evidence.”
“Of course I was. Nails, knives, jewelry, all sorts of things we are prone to assume can be created only by human beings—folly, all of it. The world is so much older than we suppose, and since the Elder Days certain Powers have striven with the most admirable patience to enlighten our race, our little band—I will not say band of brothers save as Cain and Abel were brothers, but of cunning apes.”
The witch nodded. She felt almost certain the old man’s sudden loquacity was intended to give those within the dark buildings time to prepare, and she listened with less than half her attention.
“They have appeared to us in many forms; if there has been one constant among them, it is that we have most often thought them cruel. If Moloch demanded the immolation of children, yet Jehovah was a God of Wrath. The rites of Isis were called unspeakable, and perhaps not only because they were not to be spoken of. Yet they offer us everything—wealth, power, life prolonged. Most of all healing and serenity of mind. It may be that they are terrible only because they are good.”
“I know all this, Mr. Illingworth,” the witch said. “In fact, I could deliver your lecture myself; but the powers you speak of are not here. I would sense them if they were. These can be no more than the acolytes of the acolytes. If they hold Free, they are nevertheless a great deal further from the truth, from the center of Authority, than he is.”
“My dear—”
“As for all those things you say they offer us, you have not so much as touched upon the crux. Wealth and power we have already too much of—we suffocate. Longer life? We outstay the lion and the elephant. Hardly a day passes that we do not meet some man or woman who should be dead, who has outlasted his own time by decades; you are such a one yourself, Mr. Illingworth. As for healing, it is not we who require it but the world, which requires to be cured of us. Serenity would indeed be a benefit, but we do not seek it; if we did, we might find it required us to abandon wealth and power, and we love them too much. No, what we require from whatever Powers may be entitled to give it is some indication of how far we may go. Like tigers, we must kill to live, and like rats destroy; but we do not know what is permitted to us, and that ignorance paralyzes those who might otherwise refrain, while the worst of us kill every living thing and ruin all they reach.” I have been inspired, she thought. I myself sought power and never knew a word of that.
“Mademoiselle,” Illingworth said softly, “look about you.”
Tall figures stood at the right side of the Packard, some almost at her elbow. They wore ankle-length capes, and their heads were the heads of jackals.
“Goodbye,” Illingworth said. “Need I tell you, Mademoiselle, that I wish you well?”
The witch nearly surrendered to a wild urge to lock herself in. “You are not going with me? Did I not hear you say you would not miss this for gold?”
“Perhaps I shall see you later tonight.”
One of the jackal-headed figures opened the Packard’s door.
“I know you,” the witch said. “Are you not the servants of Upuaut, the Pathfinder? Or should I call him here Khenti Amenti, the Ruler of the West?”
The jackal-headed figures said nothing, staring boldly into her face with bright eyes, then looking away. Their jaws moved, and it seemed for a moment that, even in the faint light reflected by the snow, she could see scarlet tongues caressing white teeth and hairy lips. She was no longer certain the jackal heads were masks and wondered if she had been drugged. She had eaten nothing, drunk nothing; yet perhaps some odorless gas had been released in the Packard, perhaps the cigarettes Illingworth had given her had contained some hallucinogen.
“You are of good omen, I know,” she said. “You lead the procession of Osiris.”
At that, the jackal-headed figures turned from her, falling into single file as they walked between the dark buildings. They were very tall, and their footprints in the snow seemed the tracks of beasts. The witch hesitated for a moment, then stepped from the running board to follow the last.
Standing motionless beside his car, Illingworth watched her go. I could never give it up, he thought vaguely. The old Packard; but soon nobody will be able to fix it for me. I could get a Ford. (He still thought of Fords as small, cheap cars, the coupes and hunchbacked sedans of his youth.) Ford be damned! I’ll get a Buick.
He took out his old-fashioned silver cigarette case again and lit a Player with the lighter built into the end. Someone had given him the case, and he tried to recall whom. Dion Fortune? When its flame was snuffed, the night was too dark for him to admire the art-deco design. Very modern though, he thought. More modern than anything they make these days. But smoking in the cold was bad for your heart; he had read that someplace.
He dropped the unconsumed cigarette into the snow and entered one of the dark buildings. A young man at a desk nodded to him. He nodded in return and went past him into another office where a duffle coat hung on a hook and an older man (though Illingworth thought of him as young) sat behind a larger desk.
Illingworth tossed the key onto the desk. “Well, sir,” he said, “I’ve done it.”
The Carpet Night Of Ozzie
The gray sedan swung off the Interstate, then off the side road and into a plowed parking lot, now walled with snow. As Robin had predicted, Little Ozzie was still asleep on the back seat; and as she had suggested, Barnes covered him with his fur-collared coat.
“You think he’ll be all right?” Barnes pushed the lock button down; he tried to close the door quietly, and Little Ozzie hardly stirred.
