“No!” his wife said.
“What, then?”
“I just don’t know any more,” Mrs. Dee said, on the verge of tears. “You know what Boarbas does to children. They’re never the same afterwards.”
Mr. Dee’s face was hard as granite. “I know. It can’t be helped.”
“He’s so young!” Mrs. Dee wailed. “It—it will be traumatic!”
“If so, we will use all the resources of modem psychology to heal him,” Mr. Dee said soothingly. “He will have the best psychoanalysts money can buy. But the boy must be a wizard!”
“Go ahead then,” Mrs. Dee said, crying openly. “But please don’t ask me to assist you.”
How like a woman, Dee thought. Always turning into jelly at the moment when firmness was indicated. With a heavy heart, he made the preparations for calling up Boarbas, Demon of Children.
First came the intricate sketching of the pentagon, the twelve-pointed star within it, and the endless spiral within that. Then came the herbs and essences; expensive items, but absolutely necessary for the conjuring. Then came the inscribing of the Protective Spell, so that Boarbas might not break loose and destroy them all. Then came the three drops of hippogriff blood—
“Where is my hippogriff blood?” Mr. Dee asked, rummaging through the living room cabinet.
“In the kitchen, in the aspirin bottle,” Mrs. Dee said, wiping her eyes.
Dee found it, and then all was in readiness. He lighted the black candles and chanted the Unlocking Spell.
The room was suddenly very warm, and there remained only the Naming of the Name.
“Morton,” Mr. Dee called. “Come here.”
Morton opened the door and stepped out, holding one of his accounting books tightly, looking very young and defenseless.
“Morton, I am about to call up the Demon of Children. Don’t make me do it, Morton.”
The boy turned pale and shrank back against the door. But stubbornly he shook his head.
“Very well,” Mr. Dee said. “BOARBAS!”
There was an earsplitting clap of thunder and a wave of heat, and Boarbas appeared, as tall as the ceiling, chuckling evilly.
“Ah!” cried Boarbas, in a voice that shook the room. “A little boy.”
Morton gaped, his jaw open and eyes bulging.
“A naughty little boy,” Boarbas said, and laughed. The demon marched forward, shaking the house with every stride.
“Send him away!” Mrs. Dee cried.
“I can’t,” Dee said, voice breaking. “I can’t do anything until he’s finished.”
The demon’s great horned hands reached for Morton; but quickly the boy opened the accounting book. “Save me!” he cried.
In that instant, a tall, terribly thin old man appeared, covered with worn pen points and ledger sheets, his eyes two empty zeroes.
“Zico Pico Reel!” chanted Boarbas, turning to grapple with the newcomer. But the thin old man laughed, and said, “A contract of a corporation which is ultra vires is not voidable only, but utterly void.”
At these words, Boarbas was flung back, breaking a chair as he fell. He scrambled to his feet, his skin glowing red-hot with rage, and intoned the Demoniac Master-Spelclass="underline" “VRAT, HAT, HO!”
But the thin old man shielded Morton with his body, and cried the words of Dissolution. “Expiration, Repeal, Occurrence, Surrender, Abandonment and Death!”
Boarbas squeaked in agony. Hastily he backed away, fumbling in the air until he found The Opening. He jumped through it and was gone.
The tall, thin old man turned to Mr. and Mrs. Dee, cowering in a corner of the living room, and said, “Know that I am The Accountant. And Know, Moreover, that this Child has signed a Compact with Me, to enter My Apprenticeship and be My Servant. And in return for Services Rendered, I, THE ACCOUNTANT, am teaching him the Damnation of Souls, by means of ensnaring them in a cursed web of Figures, Forms, Torts and Reprisals. And behold, this is My Mark upon him!”
The Accountant held up Morton’s right hand, and showed the ink smudge on the third finger.
He turned to Morton, and in a softer voice said, “Tomorrow, lad, we will consider some aspects of Income Tax Evasion as a Path to Damnation.”
“Yes, sir,” Morton said eagerly.
And with another sharp look at the Dees, The Accountant vanished.
For long seconds there was silence. Then Dee turned to his wife.
“Well,” Dee said, “if the boy wants to be an accountant that badly, I’m sure I’m not going to stand in his way.”
A WIND IS RISING
Outside, a wind was rising. But within the station, the two men had other things on their minds. Clayton turned the handle of the water faucet again and waited. Nothing happened.
“Try hitting it,” said Nerishev.
Clayton pounded the faucet with his fist. Two drops of water came out. A third drop trembled on the spigot’s lip, swayed, and fell. That was all.
“That does it,” Clayton said bitterly. “That damned water pipe is blocked again. How much water we got in storage?”
“Four gallons—assuming the tank hasn’t sprung another leak,” said Nerishev. He stared at the faucet, tapping it with long, nervous fingers. He was a big, pale man with a sparse beard, fragile-looking in spite of his size. He didn’t look like the type to operate an observation station on a remote and alien planet. But the Advance Exploration Corps had discovered, to its regret, that there was no type to operate a station.
Nerishev was a competent biologist and botanist. Although chronically nervous, he had surprising reserves of calm. He was the sort of man who needs an occasion to rise to. This, if anything, made him suitable to pioneer a planet like Carella I.
“I suppose somebody should go out and unblock the water pipe,” said Nerishev, not looking at Clayton.
“I suppose so,” Clayton said, pounding the faucet again. “But it’s going to be murder out there. Listen to it!”
Clayton was a short man, bull-necked, red-faced, powerfully constructed. This was his third tour of duty as a planetary observer.
He had tried other jobs in the Advance Exploration Corps, but none had suited him. PEP—Primary Extraterrestrial Penetration—faced him with too many unpleasant surprises. It was work for daredevils and madmen. But Base Operations was much too tame and restricting.
He liked the work of a planetary observer, though. His job was to sit tight on a planet newly opened by the PEP boys and checked out by a drone camera crew. All he had to do on this planet was stoically endure discomfort and skillfully keep himself alive. After a year of this, the relief ship would remove him and note his report. On the basis of the report, further action would or would not be taken.
Before each tour of duty, Clayton dutifully promised his wife that this would be the last. After this tour, he was going to stay on Earth and work on the little farm he owned. He promised....
But at the end of each rest leave, Clayton journeyed out again, to do the thing for which he was best suited: staying alive through skill and endurance.
But this time, he had had it. He and Nerishev had been eight months on Carella. The relief ship was due in another four months. If he came through alive, he was going to quit for good.
“Just listen to that wind,” Nerishev said.
Muffled, distant, it sighed and murmured around the steel hull of the station like a zephyr, a summer breeze.
That was how it sounded to them inside the station, separated from the wind by three inches of steel plus a soundproofing layer.
“It’s rising,” Clayton said. He walked over to the wind-speed indicator. According to the dial, the gentle-sounding wind was blowing at a steady 82 miles an hour—
A light breeze on Carella.
“Man, oh, man!” Clayton said. “I don’t want to go out there. Nothing’s worth going out there.”