My body shielded Griswold, and the spell didn’t do more to me than turn me lupine. I saw Ginny nearly on her hands and knees, behind a bench, half-unconscious…but unhurt, unhurt, praise all Powers forever. Svartalf—a Pekingese dog yapped on the shelf. Abercrombie was gone, but a chimpanzee in baggy tweeds scuttered wailing toward the door.

  A fire-blast rushed before the ape. He whirled, screamed, and shinnied up a steam pipe. The salamander arched its back and howled with laughter.

  “You would use your tricks on Me? Almighty Me, terrible Me, beautiful Me? Ha, they bounce off like water from a hot skillet! And I, I, I am the skillet which is going to fry you!”

  Somehow, the low-grade melodrama of its speech was not at all ridiculous. For this was the childish, vainglorious, senselessly consuming thing which was loose on earth to turn our broad fair home into one white blaze among the planets.

  Under the polaroids, I switched back to human and stood up behind the bench. Griswold turned on a water faucet and squirted a jet with his finger. The salamander hissed in annoyance—yes, water still hurt, but there wasn’t enough liquid here to quench it, you’d need a whole lake by this time…It swung its head, gape-mouthed, aimed at Griswold, and drew a long breath.

  All is vanity…

  I reeled over to the Bunsen burner that was heating a futile beaker of water. Ginny sat up and looked at me through scorched locks. The room shimmered in heat, my lungs were one great anguish. I didn’t have any flash of genius, I acted on raw instinct and tumbled memories.

  “Kill us,” I croaked. “Kill us if you dare. Our servant is more powerful than you. He’ll hound you to the ends of creation.”

  “Your servant?” Flame wreathed the words.

  “Yeh…I mean yes…our servant, that Fire which fears not water!”

  The salamander stepped back a pace, snarling. It was not yet so strong that the very name of water didn’t make it flinch. “Show Me!” it chattered. “Show Me! I dare you!”

  “Our servant…small, but powerful,” I rasped. “Brighter and more beautiful than you, and above taking harm from the Wet Elements.” I staggered to the jars of metal samples and grabbed a pair of tongs. “Have you the courage to look on him?”

  The salamander bristled. “Have I the courage? Ask rather, does it dare confront Me?”

  I flicked a glance from the corner of my eye. Ginny had risen and was gripping her wand. She scarcely breathed, but her eyes were narrowed.

  There was a silence. It hung like a world’s weight in that room, smothering what noises remained: the crackle of fire, Abercrombie’s simian gibber, Svartalf’s indignant yapping. I took a strip of magnesium in the tongs and held it to the burner flame.

  It burst into a blue-white actinic radiance from which I turned dazzled eyes. The salamander was not so viciously brilliant. I saw the brute accomplish the feat of simultaneously puffing itself up and shrinking back.

  “Behold!” I lifted the burning strip. Behind me, Ginny’s rapid mutter came: “O Indra, Abaddon, Lucifer…”

  The child mind, incapable of considering more than one thing at a time…but for how long a time? I had to hold its full attention for the hundred and twenty seconds required.

  “Fire,” said the salamander feverishly. “Only another fire, one tiny piece of that Force from which I came.”

  “Can you do this, buster?”

  I plunged the strip into the beaker. Steam puffed from the water, it boiled and bubbled—and the metal went on burning!

  “…abire ex orbis terrestris…”

  “Mg plus H2O yields MgO plus H2,” whispered Griswold reverently.

  “Keek-eek!” said Abercrombie.

  “Yip-yip-yip!” said Svartalf.

  “It’s a trick!” screamed the salamander. “It’s impossible! If even I cannot—No!”

  “Stay where you are!” I barked in my best Army manner. “Do you doubt that my servant can follow you where you may flee?”

  “I’ll kill that little monster!”

  “Go right ahead, chum,” I agreed. “Want to fight the duel under the ocean?”

  Whistles skirled above our racket. The police had seen through these windows.

  “I’ll show you, I will!” There was almost a sob. I ducked behind the bench, pulling Griswold with me as a geyser of flame rushed where I had been.

  “Nyaah, nyaah, nyaah,” I called. “You can’t catch me! Scaredy cat!”

  Svartalf gave me a hard look.

  The floor trembled as the elemental came toward me, not going around the benches but burning its way through them. Heat clawed at my throat. I spun down toward darkness.

  And it was gone. Ginny cried her triumphant “Amen!” and displaced air cracked like thunder.

  I lurched to my feet. Ginny fell into my arms. The police entered the lab and Griswold hollered something about calling the fire department before his whole building whiffed off in smoke. Abercrombie scampered out a window and Svartalf jumped down from the shelf. He forgot that a Pekingese isn’t as agile as a cat, and his pop eyes bubbled with righteous wrath.

  Outside, the Mall was cool and still. We sat on dewed grass and looked at the moon and thought what a great and simple wonder it is to be alive.

  The geas held us apart, but tenderness lay on Ginny’s lips. We scarcely noticed when somebody ran past us shouting that the salamander was gone, nor when church bells began pealing the news to all men.

  Svartalf finally roused us with his barking. Ginny chuckled. “Poor fellow. I’ll change you back as soon as I can, but there’s more urgent business now. Come on, Steve.”

  Griswold, assured that his priceless hall was safe, followed us at a tactful distance. Svartalf merely sat where he was…too shocked to move, I guess, at the idea that there could be more important affairs than turning him back into a cat.

  Dr. Malzius met us halfway, under one of the campus elms. Moonlight spattered his face and gleamed on the pince-nez. “My dear Miss Graylock,” he began, “is it indeed true that you have overcome that menace to society? Most noteworthy. Accept my congratulations. The glorious annals of this great institution of which I have the honor to be president—”

  Ginny faced him, arms akimbo, and nailed him with the chilliest gaze I have ever seen. “The credit belongs to Mr. Matuchek and Dr. Griswold,” she said. “I shall so inform the press. Doubtless you’ll then see fit to recommend a larger appropriation for Dr. Griswold’s outstanding work.”

  “Oh, now, really,” stammered the scientist. “I didn’t—”

  “Be quiet, you ninnyhammer,” hissed Ginny. Aloud: “Only through his courageous and farsighted adherence to the basic teachings of natural law—Well, you can fill in the rest for yourself, Malzius. I don’t think you’d be very popular if you went on starving his department.”

  “Oh…indeed…after all…” The president blew himself up. “I have given careful consideration to the matter. Was going to recommend it at the next meeting of the board, in fact.”

  “I’ll hold you to that,” said Ginny. “Now there is this stupid rule against student-faculty relationships. Mr. Matuchek is shortly going to be my husband—”

  Whoosh! I tried to regain my breath.

  “My dear Miss Graylock,” sputtered Malzius, “decorum…propriety…why, he isn’t even decent!”

  I realized with horror that somehow in all the excitement, I’d lost Ginny’s expensive mink coat.

  A pair of cops approached, dragging a small hairy form that struggled in their arms. One of them carried the garments the chimp had shed. “Begging your pardon, Miss Graylock.” The tone was pure worship. “We found this monkey loose and—”

  “Oh, yes.” She laughed. “We’ll have to restore him. But not right away. Steve needs those pants worse.”

  I got into them in a hurry. Ginny turned back to smile with angelic sweetness at Malzius.

  “Poor Dr. Abercrombie,” she sighed. “These things will happen when you deal with paranatural forces. Now I believe, sir, that there is no rule against faculty members conducting research.”

  “Oh, no,” said the president shakily. “Of course not. On the contrary! We expect our people to publish—”

  “To be sure. Now I have in mind a most interesting research project involving transformations. I’ll admit it’s just the least bit dangerous. It could backfire as Dr. Abercrombie’s spell did.” Ginny leaned on her wand and regarded the turf thoughtfully. “It could even…yes, there’s even a small possibility that it could turn you into an ape, dear Dr. Malzius. Or, perhaps, a worm. A long slimy one. But we mustn’t let that stand in the way of Science, must we?”

  “What? But—”

  “Naturally,” purred the witch, “if I were allowed to conduct myself as I wish with my fiancé, I shouldn’t have time for research.”

  It took Malzius a bare fifty words to admit surrender. He stumped off in tottery grandeur while the last fire-glow died above the campus roofs.

  Ginny gave me a long slow glance. “The rule can’t officially be stricken till tomorrow,” she murmured. “Think you can cut a few classes then?”

  “Keek-eek-eek,” said Dr. Alan Abercrombie. Then Svartalf showed up full of resentment and chased him up the tree.

  UNTITLED LIMERICK

  (Dedicated to Fritz Leiber)

  A mathematician named Jones

  was fonder of cubes than of cones.

  Said he on his rambles:

  “When I travels, I gambles.

  Gonna roll them Napierian bones!”

  SAM HALL

  Click. Bzzz. Whrrr.

  Citizen Blank Blank, Any town, Somewhere, U.S.A., approaches the hotel desk. “Single with bath.”

  “Sorry, sir, our fuel ration doesn’t permit individual baths. We can draw one for you; that will be twenty-five dollars extra.”

  “Oh, is that all? Okay.”

  Citizen Blank takes out his wallet, extracts his card, gives it to the registry machine, an automatic set of gestures. Aluminum jaws close on it, copper teeth feel for the magnetic encodings, electronic tongue tastes the life of Citizen Blank.

  Place and date of birth. Parents. Race. Religion. Educational, military, and civilian service records. Marital status. Children. Occupations, from the beginning to the present. Affiliations. Physical measurements, fingerprints, retinals, blood type. Basic psychotype. Loyalty rating. Loyalty index as a function of time to moment of last test given. Click, click. Bzzz.

  “Why are you here, sir?”

  “Salesman. I expect to be in Cincinnati tomorrow night.”

  The clerk (32 yrs., married, two children; NB confidential: Jewish. To be kept out of key occupations) punches buttons.

  Click, click. The machine returns the card. Citizen Blank puts it back in his wallet.

  “Front!”

  The bellboy (19 yrs., unmarried; NB confidential: Catholic. To be kept out of key occupations) takes the guest’s suitcase. The elevator creaks upstairs. The clerk resumes his reading. The article is entitled “Has Britain Betrayed Us?” Companion articles in the magazine include “New Indoctrination Program for the Armed Forces,” “Labor Hunting on Mars,” “I Was a Union Man for the Security Police,” “More Plans for YOUR Future.”

  The machine talks to itself. Click, click. A bulb winks at its neighbor as if they shared a private joke. The total signal goes out over the wires.

  Accompanied by a thousand others, it shoots down the last cable and into the sorter unit of Central Records. Click, click. Bzzz. Whrrr. Wink and glow. The distorted molecules in a particular spool show the pattern of Citizen Blank, and this is sent back. It enters the comparison unit, to which the incoming signal corresponding to him has also been shunted. The two are perfectly in phase; nothing wrong. Citizen Blank is staying in the town where, last night, he said he would, so he has not had to file a correction.

  The new information is added to the record of Citizen Blank. The whole of his life returns to the memory bank. It is wiped from the scanner and comparison units, that these may be free for the next arrival.

  The machine has swallowed and digested another day. It is content.

  Thornberg entered his office at the usual time. His secretary glanced up to say “Good morning,” and looked closer. She had been with him for enough years to read the nuances in his carefully controlled face. “Anything wrong, chief?”

  “No.” He spoke harshly, which was also peculiar. “No, nothing wrong. I feel a bit under the weather, maybe.”

  “Oh.” The secretary nodded. You learned discretion in the government. “Well, I hope you get better soon.”

  “Thanks. It’s nothing.” Thornberg limped over to his desk, sat down, and took out a pack of cigarettes. He held one for a moment in nicotine-yellowed fingers before lighting it, and there was an emptiness in his eyes. Then he puffed ferociously and turned to his mail. As chief technician of Central Records, he received a generous tobacco ration and used it all.

  The office was a windowless cubicle, furnished in gaunt orderliness, its only decorations pictures of his son and his late wife. Thornberg seemed too big for the space. He was tall and lean, with thin straight features and neatly brushed graying hair. He wore a plain version of the Security uniform, insignia of Technical Division and major’s rank but none of the ribbons to which he was entitled. The priesthood of Matilda the Machine were a pretty informal lot.

  He chain-smoked his way through the mail. Most was related to the changeover. “Come on, June,” he said. Recording and later transcription sufficed for routine stuff, but best that his secretary take notes as well while he dictated anything unusual. “Let’s get this out of the way fast. I’ve got work to do.”

  He held a letter before him. “To Senator E. W. Harmison, S.O.B., New Washington. Dear Sir: In re your communication of the 14th inst., requesting my personal opinion of the new ID system, may I say that it is not a technician’s business to express opinions. The directive that every citizen shall have a single number for his records—birth certificate, education, rations, taxes, wages, transactions, public service, family, travel, etc.—has obvious long-range advantages, but naturally entails a good deal of work both in reconversion and interim data control. The president having decided that the gain justifies our present difficulties, the duty of citizens is to conform, not complain. Yours, and so forth.” He let a cold smile flicker. “There, that’ll fix him! I don’t know what use Congress is anyway, except to plague honest bureaucrats.”

  Privately, June decided to modify the letter. Maybe a senator was only a rubber stamp, but you couldn’t brush him off that curtly. Part of a secretary’s job is to keep the boss out of trouble.

  “Okay, let’s get to the next,” said Thornberg. “To Colonel M. R. Hubert, Director of Liaison Division, Central Records Agency, Security Police, etc. Dear Sir: In re your memorandum of the 14th inst. requiring a definite date for completion of the ID conversion, may I respectfully state that it is impossible for me honestly to set one. You realize we must develop a memory modification unit which will make the changeover in our records without our having to take out and alter each of three hundred million spools. You realize too that we cannot predict the exact time needed to complete such a project. However, research is progressing satisfactorily (refer him to my last report, will you?), and I can confidently say that conversion will be finished and all citizens notified of their numbers within three months at the latest. Respectfully, and so on. Put that in a nice form, June.”

  She nodded. Thornberg continued through his mail, throwing most into a basket for her to answer alone. When he was done he yawned and lit a fresh cigarette. “Praise Allah that’s over. Now I can get down to the lab.”

  “You have afternoon appointments,” she reminded him.

  “I’ll be back after lunch. See you.” He got up and went out of the office.

  Down the escalator to a still lower sublevel, walking along a corridor, he returned the salutes of passing subordinates automatically. His expression did not bespeak anything; perhaps the stiff swinging of his arms did.

  Jimmy, he thought. Jimmy, boy.

  At the guard chamber, he presented hand and eye to the scanners. Finger and retinal patterns were his pass. No alarm sounded. The door opened for him and he walked into the temple of Matilda.

  She squatted huge, tier upon tier of control panels, meters, indicator lights to the lofty ceiling. The spectacle always suggested to Thornberg an Aztec pyramid, whose gods winked red eyes at the acolytes and suppliants creeping about base and flanks. But they got their sacrifices elsewhere.

  For a moment Thornberg stood and watched. He smiled again, a tired smile that creased his face on the left side only. A recollection touched him, booklegged stuff from the forties and fifties of the last century which he had read: French, German, British, Italian. The intellectuals had been fretful about the Americanization of Europe, the crumbling of old culture before the mechanized barbarism of soft drinks, hard sells, enormous chrome-plated automobiles (dollar grins, the Danes had called them), chewing gum, plastics…None of them had protested the simultaneous Europeanization of America: bloated government, unlimited armament, official nosiness, censors, secret police, chauvinism…Well, for a while there had been objectors, but first their own excesses and sillinesses discredited them, then later…

  Oh, well.

  But Jimmy, lad, where are you now, what are they doing to you?

  Thornberg sought a bench where his top engineer, Rodney, was testing a unit. “How’re you coming along?” he asked.

  “Pretty good, chief.” Rodney didn’t bother to salute. Thornberg had, in fact, forbidden it in the labs as a waste of time. “A few bugs yet, but we’re chasing them out.”

  The project was, essentially, to develop a gimmick that would change numbers without altering anything else—not too easy a task, since the memory banks depended on individual magnetic domains. “Okay,” said Thornberg. “Look, I want to run a few checks myself, out of the main coordinator. The program they’ve written for Section Thirteen during the conversion doesn’t quite satisfy me.”