Damon Knight
takes time off from illustrating fantasy and science fiction to relate the strange case of the
DEVIL’S PAWN
Future Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 1942
THERE WAS an elemental in the room. It was small, not more than two feet long, but it was none the less horrible. The shifting, cloudy ectoplasm around it blew aside now and then in the slight breeze, and revealed the hideous foulness of its shape. Tiny yellow eyes glared fiercely out of the amorphous face, it said: “My warning is for your benefit, Mallon. When your phone rings tonight, do not answer it.”
Phillip Mallon stuck out his jaw stubbornly. “I am required by law to give my services as a maji to anyone urgently in need of them,” he said.
“You are not required by law to give up your life to a demon too strong for you,” said the elemental. “This—demon—is too strong.”
“That remains to be seen,” said Mallon. “If your master is so strong, why didn’t he come himself?”
“Because he has better things to do with his time, you fool.” The elemental’s gash of a mouth sneered behind its veil of mist. “He is not afraid of you. He sends me, the least of his servants, to warn away a possible source of annoyance. Those who annoy my master, he kills.”
“Who is your master?” demanded Mallon abruptly.
“That you will never know.”
The elemental waited. At last it snapped: “Well? What is your answer?”
Mallon looked up coolly, twirling a pencil between his fingers. “You know it,” he said.
The elemental’s eyes narrowed. “You refuse? Very well; then—” It turned suddenly and darted through the air toward the shelves lining one wall, where neatly labeled bottles of chemicals and herbs were stacked.
Mallon leaped to his feet and threw the pencil he had been holding in one swift motion. The pencil was of myrtle, impregnated with garlic synthet. It struck the elemental squarely, hung suspended in its middle. The elemental stopped, writhing frantically. It clawed at the slim embedded shaft of wood. Then, with an agonized snarl, it faded out, disappeared. The pencil dropped to the floor.
The maji picked it up, fingered it reflectively. An ancient but effective weapon, he thought. Even before the end of the twentieth century, when science had cleared away the last barrier, of superstition hiding knowledge of the “occult” world, men had known about myrtlewood and garlic, and some other things—some good, some not so good. Silver bullets and crucifixes; mummy dust; holy water. Devices and stratagems to ward off evil spirits, centuries before their true nature was known. Now, in man’s traffic with other-plane beings, more good—friendly and cooperative—and indifferent spirits were found than bad ones. But there were still malevolent beings, and occasionally—once in a blue moon—evil spirits, beings entirely antagonistic to man, of more than usual power, came from whatever unnameable dimension spawned them. When that happened—he paled at the thought—it took the combined forces of the world’s best majis to hurl them back, expel them from the Earth. Sometimes it was a close thing, a very close thing. There was one great danger: if ever two of them should overcome their mutual antipathy long enough to undertake the conquest of Earth together… .
Or if a single demon should arise, more powerful than any of the others….
Mallon smiled grimly. That might happen, in time, but the elemental’s master was not such a one.
“The little pile of vomit lied,” Mallon mused aloud. “It tried to scare me off, and when it failed, it made a dash for something on these shelves. Its master is afraid of me—or rather, he is afraid of something I have here, something on one of these shelves!”
HE LOOKED them over carefully. The shelf the elemental had been heading for contained nothing but commonplace chemicals, obtainable at any pharmacist’s. But that might have been a blind. He scrutinized the shelf to the left: more chemicals. The one above: herbs, and a few books, standard works on occult science. The one below: more herbs, some useful in repelling lesser other-world beings, some not. Nothing dangerous to a demon. The shelf to the right; last chance: chemicals, test-tubes in a rack—and a tiny wooden box gathering dust in the corner. Mallon drew in his breath sharply, reached for it. That was it; it must be!
He blew the dust off the box, looking at the queer hieroglyphs stamped into the seals that clasped its lid. It was a box of capsules sent him years ago by a friend, a research worker in Tibet. The friend would tell him no more than that the capsules contained something he had dug out of a meteorite, that they were sure destruction to other-world beings, and that they were not to be used under any circumstances except in a case of direst necessity.
Mallon recalled his concluding words: “These things are madness incarnate. They have made two strong-willed men into raving lunatics; and I am not at all sure that their powers stop at that. If you ever have to use one, warm it in your hand, break the capsule on the floor, and don’t look at it.”
He paused, undecided. Then he took out a penknife and carefully peeled back the wax seals from the lid of the little box. If, when he received this call tonight—if he received it—it turned out that he didn’t need the capsules, he could always replace the seals and put the box back in its place.
He opened the lid. There were ten capsules in the first layer, well cushioned in strips of fibrous plastic. Each was about the thickness of his little finger, and each contained a lumpy blob of some unfamiliar greenish-yellow substance. Seeds? He could not tell. He put the lid back on and placed the box in his coat pocket. Now there was nothing to do but wait….
The telephone rang.
On the tiny viewing screen of the instrument was mirrored the thin, worried face of a man in his late forties. He looked at Mallon through old-fashioned rimless spectacles. “You’re Phillip Mallon?” he asked nervously. Mallon admitted it.
“I need your services tonight, Mr. Mallon,” the man said. “It’s urgent, perhaps more urgent than I suspect. Can you get over here right away? My name is Kane; I live on Rockford Drive, about ten miles from City Center.”
“What’s the trouble, Mr. Kane?” Mallon asked.
“Oh, terrible trouble!” he cried. “There’s some kind of demon in my house, in my laboratory. He—”
“You’re a scientist?”
“Yes, physics; atomic physics. The thing appeared yesterday morning, and calmly took over my laboratory. He’s been there ever since, making something. I don’t know what it is; he won’t let me in!” His voice rose to an aggrieved wail. “Get over here as soon as you can, won’t you? I’ve had the local majis in, three of them. They’ve tried everything, and they can’t make him budge. They say he is the most powerful spirit they ever heard of. They’re sending for Williamson and Okamura from New York, but they won’t be here until tomorrow evening at the earliest; the stratoline service has been interrupted because of the meteor showers.”
“I’ll be right over,” Mallon said, biting the words. “What’s the address?”
Kane,told him, and cut the connection. Mallon caught up his bag, hurried out, and hailed a passing aircab.
HE HAD plenty of time to think about it on the way. If things were as Kane described them, there was hell to pay. On the other hand, the “demon” might be merely an unusually developed elemental, or even a low-plane poltergeist. Kane, being a layman, would naturally be frightened, and the local majis might be either inexperienced or fakers. There were still plenty of quacks in the profession.
There was probably something to it if Williamson and Okamura were actually being sent for, but that might be pure bluff on the part of the local boys. He shrugged and tabled the problem.