Darker Than You Think (44 page)

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 leader 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?"