Read Online Alternating Currents by Frederik Pohl - Free Book Online

with magic and diablerie, after all. It would have been a lot more difficult to believe that magicians and diabolists would not subscribe to Beyond. All I did was eliminate the casual readers. You and your friends were left.’
     
    ‘Don’t call me a diabolist,’ he said sharply. ‘You’re lucky I’m not. You come across one of them boy, and he’ll eat you up. Sprinkled with the rosemary and garlic out of your suitcase and washed down with the jug of holy water. Simple magic, that’s all I do.’
     
    ‘Oh?’ Perhaps he was telling the truth; I couldn’t be sure. It was to some extent a disquieting thought - perhaps I had been treading on the thin edge of danger - but, after all, he was nothing to fear. He had said so himself. I shrugged. ‘ It makes no difference,’ I said. ‘I’ve got you. I won’t make any threats, but by the laws and the powers, I have a claim on you.’
     
    Astonishingly, he laughed a little, and the muscles of his scalp twitched his woolly black hair into alarming shapes. ‘ Sure you have a claim. You’re entitled to one of my spells. Well, why not? What’s your pleasure? Card-reading, love potions, the gift of tongues ? The power to turn into an animal ? You only get one thing; name it. What do you want ?’
     
    I said levelly, ‘ Revenge.’
     
    He glanced at me in momentary alarm. ‘Bad revenge - killing, you mean. No. Can’t do it. I’d get in trouble.’ I made a gesture towards the bag, but, though he gulped and sweat showed brightly on his brow, he shook his head. ‘Nothing doing,’ he said. ‘ I don’t care what you’ve got in that bag, there isn’t anything you can do bad enough to make me use the arts to do someone harm. No.’
     
    ‘ But I’ve been humiliated!’ I cried. ‘ I’m a scientist - one of the greatest anthropologists alive, a fellow of the Museum, the author of three fundamental texts. And, because I had the wit to see what was clear before my eyes, because I said in public that magic is not superstition and not nonsense, I’ve been deprived of everything I’ve earned in thirty years. I must have revenge!’
     
    He snapped his fingers. ‘Sure,’ he said in recognition. ‘I know who you are. Ehrlich, something like that, is that your name? I saw in the papers. Well, I can’t say I’m sorry you got in trouble. I’ve got enough headaches now, without any more people suspecting that people like me really do exist.’
     
    I stared at him, aghast. The callousness of the lay public towards the gathering of data and its dissemination has always horrified me . . . though I suppose that, on this particular subject, he was scarcely a layman. But it was irrelevant. I said, ‘What you want makes no difference. I want revenge. I can compel you to give me the means to it.’
     
    He shook his head.
     
    I said angrily. ‘Are you trying to tell me that you don’t know any harmful spells ?’
     
    ‘Of course I do, real harmful. But I can’t use them. That’s black magic. I can’t show you how, either. Law of Equivalences: if I show you how, it’s the same thing as doing it myself.’
     
    I thought quickly, wondering if he was lying. It was hard to believe that I had come so far, and this was the end of my plans. I said, ‘Perhaps I’ll keep going until I find a diabolist.’
     
    He chuckled.
     
    ‘Well,’ I said in annoyance, ‘what else can I do? I am not a man to take this sort of thing lying down. I’ve suffered; Brandon must suffer too. I’ve been laughed at; I’ve been made to resign from the Museum; I’ve seen my life’s work thrown down the drain. Brandon did it. I can’t let him go on enjoying life.’
     
    ‘Oh,’ he said easily, ‘you don’t have to let him enjoy life. Nothing lethal, of course. But how about hives, for instance ? Three sentences and one pass of the hands, that’s all you need for hives. Or raise a plague of insects wherever he goes. Or you can scare him out of a year’s growth, if you like -