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Authors: James Blish
Tags: Science-Fiction
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functioning radomes there. In quieter times, he though,
he might perhaps have touched off another flying saucer scare. Or was he visible at all? He discovered that he did not know,
but he began to doubt it; the seaboard was hidden in an immense pall of smoke.
But once over land, he slowed himself down and lost altitude in order to get his bearings, and within what seemed to him,
to be only a very few minutes, he was grounded head over heels by the sound of a church bell forlornly calling what faithful
might remain to midnight Mass. He remembered belatedly, when he got his wind back, that in some parts of Germany during the
seventeenth-century flowering of the popular Goetic cults, it had been the custom to toll church bells all night long as a
protection against witches who might be passing overhead on the way to the Brocken; but the memory did him no good now – the
besom had gone lifeless.
He had fallen in a rather mountainous, heavily timbered area, quite like the Harz Mountain section of Germany, but which he
guessed to be somewhere in western Pennsylvania. Though it was now late April, which was doubtless warm in Positano, the night
here was decidedly cold, especially for athin man clad in nothing more than a light smear of unguent. He was instantly and violently all ashiver, for the sound of
the bell had destroyed the protective as well as the transvective power of the flying ointment. He hastily undid the bundle
of clothes, which was tied to the broomstick, but there were not going to be enough of them; after all, he had assembled them
with Death Valley in mind. Also, he was beginning to feel drowzy and dizzy, and his pulse was blurred and banging with tachycardia.
Among other things, the flying ointment contained both mandragora and belladonna, and now that the magic was gone out of it,
these were exerting their inevitable side effects. He would have to wash the stuff off the minute he could find a stream,
cold or no cold.
And not only because it was drugging him. Still other ingredients of the ointment were rather specifically organic in nature,
and these gave it a characteristic smell which the heat of his body would gradually ripen. The chances were all too good that
there would be some people in this country of the Amish – and not all of them old ones – who would know what that odour meant.
Until he had had some kind of a bath, it would be dangerous even to ask for help.
Before dressing, he wiped off as much of it as he could with the towel in which the clothing had been tied. This he buried,
together with the taper and the brush from the besom; and after making sure that the ruby talisman was still safely in his
pocket, he set out, using the denuded broomstick as a staff.
The night-black, hilly, forested countryside would have made difficult going even for an experienced walker. Ware’s life,
on the other hand, had been nearly inactive except intellectually, and he was on the very near side of his fiftieth birthday.
To his advantage, on the other hand, stood the fact that he had always been small and wiry, and the combination of a slightly
hyperthyroid metabolism and an ascetic calling – he did not even smoke – had kept him that way, so that he made fair progress;
and an equally lifelong love of descriptive astronomy, plus the necessity of astrology to his art, helped to keep him going
in the right direction, whenever he could see a few stars through the smoke.
Just before dawn, he stumbled upon a small, rocky-beddedstream, and through the gloom heard the sound of a nearby waterfall. He moved against the current and shortly found this to
be a spillway of a small log dam. Promptly he stripped and bathed under it, pronouncing in a whisper as he did so all three
of the accompanying prayers from the rite of lustration as prescribed for the preparatory triduum in the
Grimorium Verum
– though the water was neither warm nor exorcized, it was
he might perhaps have touched off another flying saucer scare. Or was he visible at all? He discovered that he did not know,
but he began to doubt it; the seaboard was hidden in an immense pall of smoke.
But once over land, he slowed himself down and lost altitude in order to get his bearings, and within what seemed to him,
to be only a very few minutes, he was grounded head over heels by the sound of a church bell forlornly calling what faithful
might remain to midnight Mass. He remembered belatedly, when he got his wind back, that in some parts of Germany during the
seventeenth-century flowering of the popular Goetic cults, it had been the custom to toll church bells all night long as a
protection against witches who might be passing overhead on the way to the Brocken; but the memory did him no good now – the
besom had gone lifeless.
He had fallen in a rather mountainous, heavily timbered area, quite like the Harz Mountain section of Germany, but which he
guessed to be somewhere in western Pennsylvania. Though it was now late April, which was doubtless warm in Positano, the night
here was decidedly cold, especially for athin man clad in nothing more than a light smear of unguent. He was instantly and violently all ashiver, for the sound of
the bell had destroyed the protective as well as the transvective power of the flying ointment. He hastily undid the bundle
of clothes, which was tied to the broomstick, but there were not going to be enough of them; after all, he had assembled them
with Death Valley in mind. Also, he was beginning to feel drowzy and dizzy, and his pulse was blurred and banging with tachycardia.
Among other things, the flying ointment contained both mandragora and belladonna, and now that the magic was gone out of it,
these were exerting their inevitable side effects. He would have to wash the stuff off the minute he could find a stream,
cold or no cold.
And not only because it was drugging him. Still other ingredients of the ointment were rather specifically organic in nature,
and these gave it a characteristic smell which the heat of his body would gradually ripen. The chances were all too good that
there would be some people in this country of the Amish – and not all of them old ones – who would know what that odour meant.
Until he had had some kind of a bath, it would be dangerous even to ask for help.
Before dressing, he wiped off as much of it as he could with the towel in which the clothing had been tied. This he buried,
together with the taper and the brush from the besom; and after making sure that the ruby talisman was still safely in his
pocket, he set out, using the denuded broomstick as a staff.
The night-black, hilly, forested countryside would have made difficult going even for an experienced walker. Ware’s life,
on the other hand, had been nearly inactive except intellectually, and he was on the very near side of his fiftieth birthday.
To his advantage, on the other hand, stood the fact that he had always been small and wiry, and the combination of a slightly
hyperthyroid metabolism and an ascetic calling – he did not even smoke – had kept him that way, so that he made fair progress;
and an equally lifelong love of descriptive astronomy, plus the necessity of astrology to his art, helped to keep him going
in the right direction, whenever he could see a few stars through the smoke.
Just before dawn, he stumbled upon a small, rocky-beddedstream, and through the gloom heard the sound of a nearby waterfall. He moved against the current and shortly found this to
be a spillway of a small log dam. Promptly he stripped and bathed under it, pronouncing in a whisper as he did so all three
of the accompanying prayers from the rite of lustration as prescribed for the preparatory triduum in the
Grimorium Verum
– though the water was neither warm nor exorcized, it was
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