Wolfbane

by C. M. Kornbluth

  The whole Wolf pack was on the verge of panic.

  There was a confused shouting behind Haendl. Groggily he turned and looked; half a dozen Wolves were yelling and pointing at something in the wet, muggy air.

  It was an Eye, hanging silent and featureless over the center of the street.

  Haendl took a deep breath and mustered command of himself. “Frampton!” he ordered one of his lieutenants. “Get the helicopter with the instruments here. We’ll get some more readings.”

  Frampton opened his mouth, then looked more closely at Haendl and, instead, began to talk on his pocket radio. Haendl knew what was in the man’s mind—it was in his own, too. What was the use of more readings? From the time of Tropile’s Translation on, they had had a perfect superfluity of instrument readings on the forces and auras that surrounded the Eyes—yes, and on Translations themselves, too. Before Tropile there had never been an Eye seen in Princeton, much less an actual Translation; but things were different now, everything was different; Eyes roamed restlessly around day and night.

  Some of the men nearest the Eye were picking up rocks and clods of dirt and throwing them at the bobbing vortex in the air. Haendl started to yell at them to stop, then changed his mind. The Eye didn’t seem to be affected—as he watched, one of the men scored a direct hit with a cobblestone. The stone went right through the Eye, without sound or effect; why not let them work off some of their fears in direct action?

  There was a fluttering of helicopter vanes, and the copter with the instruments mounted on it came down in the middle of the street, between Haendl and the Eye.

  It was all very rapid from then on in.

  The Eye swooped toward Haendl. He couldn’t help it; he ducked. That was useless, beyond doubt; but it was also unnecessary, for he saw in a second that it was only partly the motion of the Eye toward him that made it loom larger; it was also that the Eye itself was growing. An Eye was perhaps the size of a football, as near as anyone could judge; this one got bigger, bigger; it was the size of a roc’s egg, the size of a whale’s blunt head. It stopped and hovered over the helicopter, while the man inside frantically pointed lenses and meters—

  Thundercrash.

  Not a man this time; Translation had gone beyond men; the whole helicopter vanished, man, instruments, spinning vanes and all.

  Haendl picked himself up, sweating, shocked beyond sleepiness.

  The young man named Frampton said fearfully, “Haendl, what do we do now?”

  “Do?” Haendl stared at him absently. “Why, kill ourselves, I guess.” He nodded soberly, as though he had at last attained the solution of a difficult problem. Then he sighed. “Well, one thing before that,” he said. “I’m going to Wheeling. We Wolves are licked; maybe the Citizens can help us now.”

  Roget Germyn, of Wheeling a Citizen, received the message in the chambers that served him as a place of business. He had a visitor waiting for him at home.

  Germyn was still Citizen, and he could not break off the pleasant and interminable discussion he was having with a prospective client over a potential business arrangement—not rapidly. He apologized for the interruption caused by the message the conventional three times, listened while his guest explained the plan he had come to propose in full once more, then turned his cupped hands toward himself in the gesture of denial of adequacy. It was the closest he could come to saying no.

  On the other side of the desk, the Citizen who had come to propose an investment scheme immediately changed the subject by inviting Germyn and his Citizeness to a Sirius-Viewing, the invitation in the form of rhymed couplets. He had wanted to transact his business very much, but he couldn’t insist.

  Germyn got out of the invitation by a Conditional Acceptance in proper form, and the man left, delayed only slightly by the Four Urgings to stay. Almost immediately Germyn dismissed his clerk and closed his office for the day by tying a complex triple knot in a length of red cord across the open door.

  When he got to his home he found, as he had suspected, that the visitor was Haendl.

  There was much doubt in Citizen Germyn’s mind about Haendl. The man had nearly admitted to being Wolf, and how could a Citizen overlook that? But in the excitement of Gala Tropile’s Translation the matter had been less urgent than normally; there had been no hue and cry: Germyn had permitted the man to leave. And now?

  He reserved judgment. He found Haendl uncomfortably sipping tea in his living room and attempting to keep up a formal conversation with Citizeness Germyn. Germyn rescued him, took him aside, closed a door—and waited.

  He was astonished at the change in the man. Before Haendl had been bouncy, aggressive, quick-moving—the very qualities least desired in a Citizen, the mark of the Son of the Wolf. Now he was none of these things, but he looked no more like a Citizen for all that; he was haggard, fretful. He looked like a man who had been through a very hard time.

  He said, with an absolute minimum of protocol: “Germyn, the last time I saw you there was a Translation. Gala Tropile, remember?”

  “I remember,” Citizen Germyn said economically. Remember! It had hardly left his thoughts.

  “And you said there had been others since. Have they still been going on?”

  Germyn said: “There have.” He was trying to speak directly, to match this man Haendl’s speed and forcefulness. It was hardly good manners, but it had occurred to Citizen Germyn that there were times when manners, after all, were not the most important things in the world. “There were two in the past few days. One was a woman—Citizeness Baird; her husband’s a teacher. She was Viewing Through Glass with four or five other women at the time. She just—disappeared. I think she was looking through a green prism at the time, if that helps.”

  “I don’t know if it helps or not. Who was the other one?”

  Germyn shrugged. “A man named Harmane. He was our Keeper. No one saw it. But they heard the thunderclap, or something like a thunderclap, and he was missing.” He thought for a moment. “It is a little unusual, I suppose. Two in one week, in one little town—”

  Haendl said roughly: “Listen, Germyn. It isn’t just two. In the past thirty days, within the area around here and in one other place, there have been at least fifty. In two places, do you understand? Here and in Princeton. The rest of the world—no; nothing much; a few Translations here and there, but no more than usual. But just in these two communities, fifty. Does that make sense?”

  Citizen Germyn thought. “—No.”

  “No. And I’ll tell you something else. Three of the—well, victims have been children under the age of five. One was too young to walk. And the most recent Translation wasn’t a person at all. It was a helicopter. Know what a helicopter is? It’s a flying machine, about the size of this house. The whole damned thing went, bang. Now figure that out, Germyn. What’s the explanation for Translations?”

  Germyn was gaping. “Why—you meditate on connectivity. Once you’ve grasped the essential connectivity of all things, you become One with the Cosmic Whole. But I don’t see how a baby—or a machine—”

  “Tropile’s the link,” Haendl said grimly. “When he got Translated we thought it was a big help, because he had the decency to do it right under our eyes. We got enough readings to give us a clue as to what, physically speaking, Translation is all about. That was the first real clue, and we thought he’d done us a favor....Now I’m not so sure.” He leaned forward. “Every person I know of who was Translated was someone Tropile knew. The three kids were in his class at the nursery school—we put him onto that for a while to keep him busy, when he first came to us. Two of the men he bunked with are gone; the mess boy who served him is gone; his wife is gone. Meditation? No, Germyn. I know most of those people. Not a damned one of them would have spent a moment meditating on connectivity to save his life. And what do you make of that?”

  Germyn said, swallowing hard, “I just remembered. That man, Harmane—”

  “What about him?”

  “The one who was T
ranslated last week. He knew Tropile too. He was the Keeper of the House of the Five Regulations when Tropile was there.”

  “You see? And I’ll bet the woman knew him too.” Haendl got up fretfully, pacing around. “Here’s the thing, Germyn,” he said. “I’m licked. You know what I am, don’t you?”

  Germyn said levelly: “I believe you to be Wolf.”

  “You believe right.” Germyn winced in spite of himself, but managed to sit quiet and listen. “I’m telling you that doesn’t matter anymore. You don’t like Wolves. Well, I don’t like you. But this thing is too big for me to care about that any more. Tropile has started something happening, and what the end of it is going to be I can’t tell. But I know this: We’re not safe, either of us. Maybe you still think Translation is a fulfillment. I don’t; it scares me. But it’s going to happen to me—and to you, too. It’s going to happen to everyone who ever had anything to do with Glenn Tropile. Unless we can somehow stop it—I don’t know how. Will you help me?”

  Germyn, trying not to tremble—when all his buried fears screamed Wolf!—said honestly: “I don’t know if I can. I’ll—I’ll have to sleep on it.”

  Haendl looked at him for a moment. Then he shrugged. Almost to himself he said: “Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe we can’t do anything about it anyhow. All right. I’ll come back in the morning, and if you’ve made up your mind to help, we’ll start trying to make plans. And if you’ve made up your mind the other way—well, I’ll have to fight off a few Citizens. Not that I mind that.”

  Germyn stood up and bowed. He began the ritual Four Urgings, but Haendl was having none of it. “Spare me that,” he growled. “Meanwhile, Germyn, if I were you I wouldn’t make any long-range plans. You may not be here to carry them out.”

  Germyn said thoughtfully: “And if you were you?”

  “I’m not making any, either,” Haendl said grimly.

  Citizen Germyn, feeling utterly tainted with the scent of the Wolf in his home, tossed in his bed, sleepless. His eyes were wide open, staring at the dark ceiling. He could hear his wife’s decorous breathing from the foot of the bed—soft, regular, it should have been lulling him to sleep.

  It was not. Sleep was very far away.

  Germyn was a brave enough man, as courage is measured among Citizens. That is to say, he had never been afraid; though it was true that there had been very little occasion. But he was afraid now. He didn’t want to be Translated.

  The Wolf, Haendl, had put his finger on it: Perhaps you still think Translation is a fulfillment. But he didn’t, of course; that was ridiculous now. Translation—the reward of meditation, the gift bestowed on only a handful of gloriously transfigured persons. That was one thing. But the sort of Translation that was now involved was nothing like that; not if it happened to children; not if it happened to Gala Tropile; not if it happened to a machine.

  And Glenn Tropile was involved in it.

  Germyn tossed and turned.

  There is an ancient and infallible recipe for curing warts. Take a blade of grass, boil it in a pot of water, cool the water, soak the wart in it for nine seconds. The wart will go away—provided that during those nine seconds you do not think of the word “rhinoceros.”

  What was keeping Citizen Germyn awake was the attempt to not think of the word “rhinoceros”—or, in this case, “connectivity.” It had come to him that if (a) people who knew Glenn Tropile were likely to be Translated, and (b) people who meditated on connectivity were likely to be Translated, then, a plus b, people who knew Glenn Tropile and didn’t want to be Translated had better not meditate on connectivity.

  It was very difficult to not think of connectivity.

  Endlessly he calculated sums in arithmetic in his mind, recited the Five Regulations, composed Greeting Poems and Verses on Viewing. And endlessly he kept coming back to Tropile, to Translation, to connectivity. He didn’t want to be Translated. But still the thought had a certain lure. What was it like? he wondered. Did it hurt?

  Well, probably not, he speculated. It was very fast, according to Haendl’s report—if you could believe what an admitted Son of the Wolf reported. But he had to, this time. Well, if it was fast—at that land of speed, he thought, perhaps you would die instantly. Maybe Tropile was dead. Was that possible? But no, it didn’t seem so; after all, there was the fact of the connection between Tropile and so many of the recently Translated. What was the connection there? Or, generalizing, what connections were involved in—

  He rescued himself and summoned up the first image that came to mind. It happened to be Tropile’s wife. Gala Tropile; who had disappeared herself, in this very room.

  Gala Tropile. He stuck close to the thought of her, a little pleased with himself. That was the trick of not thinking of connectivity—to think so hard and fully of something else as to leave no room in the mind for the unwanted thought. He dwelt on the thought of Gala Tropile at enormous length and detail. He thought of the curve of her waist and her long, stringy hair, as well as her long, but not at all stringy, legs.

  A lifetime’s habits could not easily be overcome, and so from time to time an unbidden thought said, Warning. Not your woman. Glenn Tropile’s woman. Beware. But, he reflected, where was Tropile, really? What possible harm could there be in thinking of his woman? Or, for that matter, of him?

  It was really quite easy to think of that pretty and emotional woman, Gala Tropile, the Citizeness of Citizen Glenn Tropile, rather than connectivity. Citizen Germyn was pleased that he did it so well.

  12

  On Mount Everest, the sullen stream of off-and-on responses that was “mind” to the Pyramid had taken note of a new input signal from its ancillary systems on the home planet.

  It was not a critical mind. Its only curiosity was a restless urge to shove-and-haul, and there was no shove-and-haul about what to it was perhaps the analogue of a man’s hunger pang. The input signal said: Do thus.

  It obeyed.

  Call it craving for a new flavor. Where once it had patiently waited for the state that Citizens knew as meditation on connectivity, and the Pyramid itself perhaps knew as a stage of ripeness in the fruits of its wrist-watch mine, now it wanted a different taste. Unripe? Overripe? At any rate, different.

  Accordingly, the h-f wheep, wheep changed in tempo and in key, and the bouncing echoes changed, and...and there was a ripe one to be plucked! (Its name was Innison.) And there another. (Gala Tropile.) And another, another—oh, a hundred others; a babe from Tropile’s nursery school and the Wheeling jailer and a woman Tropile once had coveted on the street.

  Once the ruddy starch-to-sugar mark of ripeness had been what human beings called Meditation on Connectivity and the Pyramids knew as a convenient blankness; now the sign was a sort of empathy with the Component named Tropile. Not just Tropile. The modulations of the input signal changed, and other signs of ripeness from other parts of the world were noted and acted upon, and so the Eyes swarmed over Cairo and Kiev and Khartoum. It didn’t matter to the Pyramid. When a Component signaled readiness, it swung its electrostatic scythe; it harvested.

  It did not occur to the Pyramid on Mount Everest that a Component might be directing its actions. How could it?

  Perhaps the Pyramid on Mount Everest wondered, if it knew how to wonder, when it noticed that different criteria were involved in selecting Components these days. (If it knew how to “notice.”) Surely even a Pyramid might wonder when, without warning or explanation, its orders were changed—not merely to harvest a different sort of Component, but to drag along with the flesh-and-blood needful parts a clanking assortment of machinery and metal, as began to happen. Machines? Why would the Pyramids need to Translate machines?

  But why, on the other hand, would a Pyramid bother to question a directive, even if it were able to?

  At any rate, it didn’t. It swung its scythe, and gathered in what it was caused to gather in.

  Men sometimes eat green fruit and come to regret it; it is the same with Pyramids.

 
And Citizen Germyn fell into the unsuspected trap. Avoiding connectivity, he thought of Glenn Tropile; and the unfelt h-f pulses found him out.

  He didn’t see the Eye that formed above him. He didn’t feel the gathering of forces that formed his trap. He didn’t know that he was: Seized, charged, catapulted through space, caught, halted and drained. It happened too fast.

  One moment he was in his bed; the next moment he was—elsewhere. There wasn’t anything between.

  It had happened to hundreds of thousands of Components before him, but for Citizen Germyn what happened was in some ways different. He was not embalmed in nutrient fluid, formed and programmed to take his part in the Pyramid-structure; for he had not been selected by the Pyramid-structure but by the wild Component. He arrived conscious, awake, and able to move.

  He stood up in a red-lit chamber. Vast crashes of metal buffeted his ears. Heat sprang little founts of perspiration on his skin.

  It was too much, too much to take in at once. Oily-skinned madmen, naked, were capering and shouting at him. It took him a moment to realize that they were not devils; this was not Hell; he was not dead. “This way!” they were bawling at him. “Come on, hurry up!” He reeled, following their directions, across an unpleasantly warm floor, staggering and falling (the binary planet was a quarter lighter than Earth), until he got his balance.

  The capering madmen led him through a door—or sphincter or trap; it was not like anything he had ever seen. But it was a portal of a sort, and on the other side of it was something closer to sanity. It was another room, and though the light was still red it was a paler, calmer red; and the thundering ironmongery was a wall away. The madmen were naked, yes; but they were not mad. The oil on their skins was only the sheen of sweat.