The rushing water had neared its axle when the lama Klarath reached for it to move it to safety. Just too late. His foot slid in the slippery mud and the back of his hand touched the wheel as he fell. Knocked loose from its moorings, it swirled down with the flood, rolling along the bottom of the stream, into deeper and deeper waters.
While it rolled, all was well.
The lama rose, shivering from his momentary immersion, and went after other of the spinning wheels. What, he thought, could one small wheel matter? He didn’t know that-now that other links had broken-only that tiny thing stood between Earth and Armageddon.
The prayer wheel of Wangur Ul rolled on, and on, until-a mile farther down-it struck a ledge, and stopped. That was the moment.
“And now, my fine young man-“
Herbie Westerman-we’re back in Cincinnati now-looked up, wondering why the prestidigitator had stopped in mid-sentence. He saw the face of Gerber the Great contorted as though by a great shock. Without moving, without changing, his face began to change. Without appearing different, it became different.
Quietly, then, the magician began to chuckle. In the overtones of that soft laughter was all of evil. No one who heard it could have doubted who he was. No one did doubt. The audience, every member of it, knew in that awful moment who stood before them, knew it-even the most skeptical among them-beyond shadow of doubt.
No one moved, no one spoke, none drew a shuddering breath. There are things beyond fear. Only uncertainty causes fear, and the Bijou Theater was filled, then, with a dreadful certainty.
The laughter grew. Crescendo, it reverberated into the far dusty corners of the gallery. Nothing-not a fly on the ceiling-moved.
Satan spoke.
“I thank you for your kind attention to a poor magician.” He bowed, ironically low. “The performance is ended.” He smiled. “All performances are ended.”
Somehow the theater seemed to darken, although the electric lights still burned. In dead silence, there seemed to be the sound of wings, leathery wings, as though invisible Things were gathering.
On the stage was a dim red radiance. From the head and from each shoulder of the tall figure of the magician there sprang a tiny flame. A naked flame.
There were other flames. They flickered along the proscenium of the stage, along the footlights. One sprang from the lid of the folded box little Herbie Westerman still held in his hands.
Herbie dropped the box.
Did I mention that Herbie Westerman was a Safety Cadet? It was purely a reflex action. A boy of nine doesn’t know much about things like Armageddon, but Herbie Westerman should have known that water would never have put out that fire.
But, as I said, it was purely a reflex action. He yanked out his new water pistol and squirted it at the box of the pigeon trick. And the fire did vanish, even as a spray from the stream of water ricocheted and dampened the trouser leg of Gerber the Great, who had been facing the other way.
There was a sudden, brief hissing sound. The lights were growing bright again, and all the other flames were dying, and the sound of wings faded, blended into another sound-rustling of the audience.
The eyes of the prestidigitator were closed. His voice sounded strangely strained as he said: “This much power I retain. None of you will remember this.”
Then, slowly, he turned and picked up the fallen box. He held it out to Herbie Westerman. “You must be more careful, boy,” he said. “Now hold it so.”
He tapped the top lightly with his wand. The door fell open. Three white pigeons flew out of the box. The rustle of their wings was not leathery.
Herbie Westerman’s father came down the stairs and, with a purposeful air, took his razor strop off the hook on the kitchen wall.
Mrs. Westerman looked up from stirring the soup on the stove. “Why, Henry,” she asked, “are you really going to punish him with that-just for squirting a little water out of the window of the car on the way borne?”
Her husband shook his head grimly. “Not for that, Marge. But don’t you remember we bought him that water gun on the way downtown, and that he wasn’t near a water faucet after that? Where do you think he filled it?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. “When we stopped in at the cathedral to talk to Father Ryan about his confirmation, that’s when the little brat filled it. Out of the baptismal font! Holy water he uses in his water pistol!”
He clumped heavily up the stairs, strop in hand.
Rhythmic thwacks and wails of pain floated down the staircase. Herbie-who had saved the world-was having his reward.
The Short Happy Lives of...
…Eustace Weaver I
WHEN EUSTACE Weaver invented his time machine he was a very happy man. He knew that he had the world by the tail on a downhill pull, as long as he kept his invention a secret. He could become the richest man in the world, wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice. All he had to do was to take short trips into the future to learn what stocks had gone up and which horses had won races, then come back to the present and buy those stocks or bet on those horses.
The races would come first of course because he would need a lot of capital to play the market, whereas, at a track, he could start with a two-dollar bet and quickly parlay it into the thousands. But it would have to be at a track; he’d too quickly break any bookie he played with, and besides he didn’t know any bookies. Unfortunately the only tracks operating at the present were in Southern California and in Florida, about equidistant and about a hundred dollars’ worth of plane fare away. He didn’t have a fraction of that sum, and it would take him weeks to save that much out of his salary as stock clerk at a supermarket. It would be horrible to have to wait that long, even to start getting rich.
Suddenly he remembered the safe at the supermarket where he worked—an afternoon-evening shift from one o’clock until the market closed at nine. There’d be at least a thousand dollars in that safe, and it had a time lock. What could be better than a time machine to beat a time lock?
When he went to work that day he took his machine with him; it was quite compact and he’d designed it to fit into a camera case he already had so there was no difficulty involved in bringing it into the store, and when he put his coat and hat into his locker he put the time machine there too.
He worked his shift as usual until a few minutes before closing time. Then he hid behind a pile of cartons in the stock room. He felt sure that in the general exodus he wouldn’t be missed, and he wasn’t. Just the same he waited in his hiding place almost a full hour to make sure everyone else had left. Then he emerged, got his time machine from the locker, and went to the safe. The safe was set to unlock itself automatically in another eleven hours; he set his time machine for just that length of time.
He took a good grip on the safe’s handle—he’d learned by an experiment or two that anything he wore, carried, or hung onto traveled with him in time-and pressed the stud.
He felt no transition, but suddenly he heard the safe’s mechanism click open—but at the same moment heard gasps and excited voices behind him. And he whirled, suddenly realizing the mistake he’d made; it was nine o’clock the next morning and the store’s employees—those on the early shift—were already there, had missed the safe and had been standing in a wondering semi-circle about the spot where it had stood—when the safe and Eustace Weaver had suddenly appeared.
Luckily he still had the time machine in his hand. Quickly he turned the dial to zero—which he had calibrated to be the exact moment when he had completed it—and pressed the stud.