Darker Than You Think

by Jack Williamson

  "Probability—" Barbee couldn't help echoing that word in a brooding whisper, or wondering what un-guessed possibilities might lie in the mental control of probability.

  "Genes, you recall, can be either dominant or recessive," Quain went on. "We receive our genes in pairs, one from each parent, and the dominant gene can hide the presence of a recessive partner—one dominant gene for dark eyes can conceal the recessive gene that causes blue eyes. That one happens to be harmless, but some are sinister."

  Barbee sat licking at his dry lips.

  "One such ugly recessive," Quain said, "is the gene that makes deaf-mutes. Normal hybrid deaf-mutes— that is, people with one recessive gene for deafness and one dominant gene for hearing—can't be distinguished from normal people by any ordinary test. They are carriers of deaf-mutism, however. If two such carriers happen to marry, the chance reshuffling of the genes will make one child in four completely normal— inheriting a dominant gene for normal hearing from each parent. Two more children, on the average, will be normal hybrids—carriers, with one recessive gene for deafness and one matching gene for hearing which is dominant and so conceals the taint. The unfortunate fourth child, on the average, will be born a deaf-mute—condemned to live and die in silence because of the chance inheritance of two recessive genes for deafness."

  Barbee shifted uncomfortably to whisper: "What has that to do with witches?"

  "Quite a lot," Sam Quain said. "Human blood—or germplasm, to use a more accurate word—still carries the taint of Homo lycanthropus. The witch folk aren't really dead—because their genes live on, handed down with those of Homo sapiens."

  Barbee gulped, nodding unwillingly.

  "The case is a little more complicated than that of deaf-mutism—and somewhat more sinister. Several hundred recessive genes are involved, according to Dr. Mondrick's results, instead of one. He found that it requires the combination of several pairs of lycanthropus genes to reproduce completely such a gift as extrasensory perception—and most of the lycanthropus genes happen to be recessives."

  Barbee shook his head violently and abruptly stiffened again—afraid that mute denial had betrayed him.

  "Throwbacks are born," Quain was saying. "Not often—so long as nature is left alone. It's all a matter of probability, and you can see the odds. But every man alive is a carrier, and most throwbacks are only partial. Literally millions of variations are possible between pure Homo sapiens and pure lycanthropus."

  "Huh?" Barbee gasped. "How's that?"

  "The chance matching of the genes can reproduce one gift of the witches and not another," Quain told him. "The partial reversions, those inheriting perhaps one sixteenth of the witch genes, possess such powers as ESP. They are psychic. Moody, tense, unhappy people, generally—because of the unconscious conflict of their hostile heritages. They are your religious fanatics, your spiritualistic mediums, your split personalities, your pathological criminals. The lucky exception may be a genius—you know the vigor of hybrids."

  Barbee shivered in the damp wind, listening dazedly.

  "Those born with a stronger inheritance are usually better aware of their unusual gifts—and more careful to conceal them. In the Middle Ages—so long as the Inquisition kept alive the ancient arts of witch-hunting —they were usually found and burned. Nowadays they fare better. They're able to realize their gifts, and organize, and plot to regain their lost supremacy. They must spend a lot of their time cultivating the modern scientific skepticism of everything supernatural—even that's a propaganda word, Dr. Mondrick used to say, that really means superhuman."

  Barbee sat thinking numbly of April Bell and her strange confession. She must be a throwback, actually a witch—and he had come under her spells.

  "A few outstanding individuals in each generation must inherit approximately a quarter of the lycanthropus genes," Quain was saying. "They are quarter-breed witches—still not usually aware of what they are. They have increased perceptions, some bungling and half-unconscious use of their strange ancestral powers, some of the surprising vigor of hybrids. The key to their lives is the conflict of two species. Evil is mingled with good, fighting good, cloaked with good—their twisted lives take strange directions."

  The truth was dawning on Barbee, and it seized him with the chilly grasp of something colder than the spray-laden wind that whipped into that storm-darkened cavern.

  "Dr. Mondrick spent a lot of time looking for a definite test for the lycanthropus genes," Quain went on. "He wasn't very successful. It's easy enough to identify such physical traits as skull shape and blood grouping, but unfortunately they aren't linked very closely with the more dangerous mental traits. Some of his tests were indicative, none was conclusive."

  Barbee caught a long, grasping breath.

  "Was that—?" he whispered, and couldn't finish.

  Quain nodded in the gloom, his harsh face almost sympathetic.

  "Don't let it worry you, Will," he said quietly. "The tests did indicate that you carry a strong lycanthropus taint, and Dr. Mondrick let you go—he couldn't afford to take chances. But the results aren't conclusive. Even if they were, many part witches make very good and useful citizens. Dr. Mondrick told me once that his tests showed a considerable taint of lycanthropus in his own wife."

  "In Rowena?"

  Barbee breathed that, and slowly nodded. It must have been the witch blood in the blind woman, and her witch's gifts, that made her so dangerous to other witches. That dark heritage, it must have been, that sent her to Glennhaven and then to her death. But Barbee didn't want to talk about Rowena Mondrick.

  "The full-blood witches?" he whispered uncomfortably. "Who are they?"

  "There shouldn't be any," Sam Quain said. "You can see the impossible odds against the complete regrouping of all those hundreds of pairs of recessive genes. Even the three-quarter-breeds oughtn't to occur more than one to the generation, and they would be much too clever to allow themselves to be suspected— especially in such a country as America, where the people are the nominal rulers and the actual instruments of power are newspaper chains and banks and holding companies and legislative lobbies."

  Lightning etched Quain's face again, stark and harsh against the darkness of the cave behind him.

  "There should be no full-blood witches alive today— but I believe there is one." His red-rimmed eyes stared hard at Barbee. "Dr. Mondrick uncovered evidence of a secret leader of the witch people, born with a vast heritage of that evil power. A veiled satan, moving unsuspected among humanity, plotting to restore the dead dominion of his dark kind!"

  Barbee shifted uncomfortably before Quain's savage eyes.

  "The Child of Night?" he muttered uneasily. "I remember that phrase of Mondrick's." He tried to swallow. "But how can the witches recover their power," he protested faintly, "when the throwbacks occur only by chance?"

  "They don't," Sam Quain told him grimly. "That was Dr. Mondrick's last, most alarming discovery— the one he was trying to announce to the world when the witches murdered him. The throwbacks have begun to gather into secret clans. By mating among themselves, they have upset the random odds, and increased the probability of reversion."

  Barbee nodded slowly. The mental control of probability might play a sinister role in that, it came to him, manipulating the reshuffle of the genes to insure the birth of a full-blood witch—but he dared not speak of that.

  "The plot must have begun generations ago," Sam Quain went on. "A few secret clans of the off-breed witches, Dr. Mondrick believed, have always handed down the memory of their lost dominion—and the determination to get it back. They work underground, cautious and desperate. Having their own black powers, it is easy for them to do what Dr. Mondrick's tests failed to accomplish—to detect that hidden strain in 'humans' who may not know they possess it. They are finding the carriers and using the modern science of selective breeding—with doubtless some improvements of their own—to filter out the dominant genes of Homo sapiens and so give birth to this powerful leade
r they're waiting for—the monstrous Messiah they call the Child of Night."

  The Child of Night—that odd phrase echoed painfully in Barbee's numbed brain. Sam Quain's fevered eyes seemed to peer at him too searchingly. He squirmed and shuddered on the wet rock where he squatted, and his own fearful eyes went back to the iron-bound box beyond the other man. He tried to swallow, and croaked rustily: "May I see—what's inside?"

  Quain's big hand leveled the revolver.

  "No, Barbee." His narrowed eyes were cold and his weary voice rapped hard. "Maybe you're okay. But I can't afford to trust you now—any more than Dr. Mondrick could when he saw that test. What I've told you can't do any harm—I've been pretty careful not to spill anything that the leaders of the witch clans don't already know. But you can't look in the box."

  Quain seemed to see his shrinking hurt.

  "I'm sorry, Will." Briefly, his voice turned almost kind. "I can tell you a part of what's in it There are silver weapons, that men used in that long war against the witches. There are charred, cracked bones—of men who lost their battles. There is a complete skeleton of Homo lycanthropus from one of those burial mounds— and the weapon left to keep it there."

  His voice went savagely grim again.

  "That weapon defeated the witches once," he rasped bleakly. "It will again—when men learn how to use it. That's all I can tell you, Barbee."

  "Who—" Barbee shivered, and his faint whisper grated, "Who is this Child of Night?"

  "He might be you," Sam Quain said. "By that, I mean he might be anybody. We do know the physical appearance of Homo lycanthropus—the delicate bones and pointed ears and long, rounded skulls and low-growing hair and pointed, peculiar teeth. But the physical and mental characters are not strongly linked in inheritance, Dr. Mondrick found—and even the Child of Night might be not quite a thoroughbred."

  A brooding horror shadowed Quain's stark face.

  "That's why I came out here, Barbee, instead of making a fight in the courts. I can't trust anybody. I can't stand—people. Most of them are mostly human, but I've no sure way of finding out the monsters. I could never be quite certain that Nick or Rex wasn't a spy of the witches. It seems hideous to say, but I've wondered even about Nora—"

  Sam Quain's sick voice trailed away.

  Huddled away from the wet, gusty wind, Barbee tried to stop his own shivering. He wanted to ask how a red-haired witch could snare a normal man, and what he should do to escape her spells. Could silver save him now, or a dog? Or even that weapon in the wooden box? He licked his lips and shook his head—Sam Quain would surely kill him, if he asked all the questions in his mind.

  "You'll let me help you, Sam?" he asked huskily. "I want to. I need to—to save my own sanity—since you've told me this." Desperately he watched Quain's cragged face. "Can't we somehow identify the Child of Night and expose the witch folk?"

  "That was Mondrick's idea." Sam Quain shook his head. "It might have worked—four hundred years ago, before the clans discredited their last enemies in the Inquisition. Nowadays the witches in university laboratories can prove there are no witches. The witches who publish newspapers can make a fool of anyone who says there are. The witches in the government can put him out of the way."

  Barbee shivered again, peering out into the rainy dusk. The damaging radiations of the daylight would soon be gone so that mind webs could rove free. He knew that April Bell would call, and he would change again—and knew Sam Quain should be the next to die.

  "Sam!" A frantic urgency quivered in his voice. "What can we do?"

  Sam Quain lifted the gun a little as if unconsciously, his gaunt, square face somberly reflective. His sunken eyes studied Barbee, and at last he nodded slightly.

  "I can't forget that test," his dull voice grated. "I don't like your looks, Barbee—or your coming here. Sorry if that sounds hard, but I must protect myself. I do need help, however—you can see how desperately." His haunted eyes went briefly to the wooden box behind him. "So I'm going to give you one chance."

  "Thank you, Sam!" Barbee whispered fervidly. "Just tell me what to do."

  "First," Quain told him, "there's one condition you must understand." Barbee waited, watching the steady gun. "I must kill you at the first hint of treachery."

  "I—I understand." Barbee nodded and gulped convulsively. "But you don't believe that I could be a— hybrid?"

  His breathing stopped as Quain nodded.

  "Probably you are, Barbee. While the human genes predominate, a thousand to one, nearly every man alive carries some slight taint of lycanthropus—enough to cause some unconscious conflict between the normal human instincts and that alien heritage. That's something the psychiatrists have overlooked, in all their theories of psychopathology."

  Barbee tried to relax, and managed to breathe.

  "Mondrick's test indicated that you carry more lycanthropus genes than most men," Quain said. "I can see signs enough of the conflict within you—but I don't believe the human part has yet surrendered."

  "Thanks, Sam!" A warm tightness hurt Barbee's throat. "I'll do anything."

  Sam Quain frowned thoughtfully. The drum and rumble of the storm had paused, and the slow drip of water seemed loud in the dark cave. Barbee sat shivering from the damp chill, waiting breathlessly. A pitiless illumination had dispelled the shadowy uncertainties of his waking life and explained the haunting horror of his dreams. He thought he understood the savage conflict in him, the war of humanity and diabolic monstrosity. The human side had to win! He clenched his fists and caught his breath and listened hopefully.

  "Dr. Mondrick had a plan," Sam Quain said quietly. "He tried to take the witch clan by surprise—to broadcast a public warning and gather the human masses behind him. He hoped to arouse the people and their governments, and establish a scientific equivalent of the Inquisition to stop the Child of Night. But the witches murdered him and Nick and Rex—and now I think we must try a different plan."

  He rubbed his red-stubbled jaw, and peered hard at Barbee again.

  "The public war has failed, and now I think we must launch a private campaign. I'm going to gather a small, secret group—one man at a time. That doesn't require that I identify the hybrids, but merely that I find a few who don't belong to that black clan. Any witch man who learns about us must be eliminated."

  Barbee nodded mutely and closed his sagging mouth.

  "Now I want you to go back to Clarendon," Sam Quain said. "I want you to make the first contacts for me with those we pick for our own secret legion—I must stay here."

  He glanced at his precious box, and Barbee whispered, "Who?"

  "We must pick them as carefully as the Child of Night selects his witch pack. They must have money or political influence or scientific skill. They can't be weaklings—this job is tough enough to kill the best man alive." His glittering eyes flashed back at Barbee. "And—they had better not be witches!"

  Barbee tried to breathe.

  "Have you anybody—in mind?" He tried to think.

  "How about Dr. Archer Glenn? He's a scientist—a dogmatic materialist. He has reputation and money."

  Stubbornly, Sam Quain shook his head.

  "Precisely the type we can't trust. The type who laughs at witches—perhaps because he's a witch himself. No, Glenn would just lock us in his disturbed ward, along with poor Mrs. Mondrick."

  Barbee stiffened and tried to relax, glad Quain hadn't heard of the blind widow's death.

  "We must pick a different type," Quain was saying. "The first man on my list is your employer."

  "Preston Troy?" Barbee blinked with astonishment, relieved to forget Rowena Mondrick. "Troy does have millions," he admitted, "and a lot of political drag. But he's no saint. He's boss of the city-hall ring. He planned all the crooked work Walraven ever did, and collected most of the loot. His wife has locked him out of her room for the last ten years. He's keeping half the pretty women in Clarendon."

  "Including some certain one?"

  Quain's face sh
owed a passing glint of amusement.

  "That doesn't matter," he went on gravely. "Dr. Mondrick used to say that most saints were about one-eighth lycanthropus—their saintliness just an overcompensation for the taint of evil. Suppose you tackle Preston Troy tonight?"

  Barbee started to shake his head. The police net he had just escaped would be spread wide by now. Preston Troy himself would doubtless be eager to detain him— and get an exclusive story for the Star. His sick mind could already see the black headline: star nabs car killer.

  "Anything wrong?" Quain was asking.

  "Not a thing!" Barbee stood up hastily. It was far too late for any confession that he was wanted for running down Mondrick's widow. He had to go back to Clarendon. But Nora Quain wouldn't have told the police about the Foundation car, he thought hopefully.

  He might reach Preston Troy. He might even—just possibly—win that brutally realistic prince of industry for Quain's strange case. He tried to veneer his dread with a smile. Stiff with the cold in him, stooping beneath the black roof of the cave, he put out his hand.

  "Two of us," he whispered, "against the Child of Night!"

  "We'll find others—we most." Quain straightened wearily. "Because hell itself—every legend of men degraded and tormented by demons—is only one more radical memory of the witch people's reign." Quain saw his offered hand, and gestured him back with the ugly gun. "Sorry, Barbee, but you'll have to show me first. Better get moving!"

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  On Sardis Hill

  Numbly reluctant to face the flooded roads and the incredulous scorn of Preston Troy and the things that would whisper to him after dark, Barbee left Sam Quain crouching with his gun beside the wooden box from Asia—how weary and feeble a champion of mankind against those inhuman hunters!