“That’s . . . ah . . . no place for a woman . . . a lady as charming as you,” murmured Abercrombie. “Let me take you home, my dear.”
“I’ve work to do,” she said impatiently. “What the devil is wrong with those cops? We’ve got to get a lift out of here.”
“Then I shall come too,” said Abercrombie. “I am not unacquainted with blessings and curses, though—ha!—I fear that ever-filled purses are a trifle beyond my scope. In any event, the Treasury Department frowns on them.”
Even in that moment, with riot thundering and hell let loose on earth, I was pleased to note that Ginny paid no attention to his famous wit. She scowled abstractedly and looked around. The Campus Queen was huddled near the benches, wearing somebody’s overcoat. Ginny turned and waved her wand. The Campus Queen shucked the coat and ran toward us. Thirty seconds later, three police broomsticks had landed. The fireman commandeered them and our party was whirled-over the stadium and into the street.
During that short hop, I saw three houses ablaze. The salamander was getting around!
X
We gathered at the district police station, a haggard and sooty crew with desperate eyes. The fire chief and police chief were there, and a junior officer going crazy at the switchboard. Ginny, who had collected her own broom at her lodgings, arrived with Svartalf on one shoulder and the Handbook of Alchemy and Metaphysics under her arm. Abercrombie was browbeating the terrified MacIlwraith till I told him to lay off.
“My duty—” he began. “I’m a proctor, you know.”
I suppose it’s necessary to have witch-smellers on campus, to make sure the fellows don’t ’chant up liquor in the frat houses or smuggle in nymphs. And every year somebody tries to get by an exam with a familiar under his coat whispering the answers from a cribsheet. Nevertheless, I don’t like professional nosy parkers.
“You can deal with him later,” I said, and gave the boy a push out the door. “The salamander can fight back.”
President Malzius huffed into the room. “What is the meaning of this?” he demanded. His pince-nez bobbed above full jowls. “I’ll have you know, sir, I was preparing a most important address. The Lions Totem is holding a luncheon tomorrow, and—”
“Might not be any lunch,” grunted the cop who had fetched him. “We got a salamander loose.”
“Sala—No! It’s against the rules! It is positively forbidden to—”
The man at the switchboard looked toward us. It just kindled the Methodist church at Fourteenth and Elm,” he said. “And my God, all our equipment is already in service.”
“Iimpossible!” cried Malzius. “A demon can’t go near a church.”
“How stupid does a man have to be to get your job?” Ginny fairly spat. “This isn’t a demon. It’s an elemental.’ When her temper was again sheathed in ice, she continued slowly: “We haven’t much hope of using a Hydro to put out the salamander, but we can raise one to help fight the fires. It’ll always be three jumps behind, but at least the whole city won’t be ruined.
“Unless the salamander gets too strong, cut Abercrombie. His face was colorless and he spoke through stiff lips. “Then it can evaporate the Hydro.”
“Summon two water beings,” stammered Malzius “Summon a hundred. I’ll waive the requirement formal application for permission to—”
“That possibility is limited, sir,” Abercrombie told him. “The restraining force required is an exponential function of the total embodied mass. There probably aren’t sufficient adepts in this town to control more than three at a time. If we raised four . . . we’d floo4 the city, and the salamander need merely skip elsewhere
“Alan—Ginny laid her handbook on the desk and riffled its pages. Abercrombie leaned over her shoulder, remembering to rest one hand carelessly on hip. I choked back my prize cusswords. “Alan, for starter, can you summon one Hydro and put it to work at plain fire fighting?”
“Of course, gorgeous one,” he smiled. “That is a, ha, elemental problem.”
She gave him a worried glance. “They can be as tricky as Fire or Air,” she warned. “It’s not enough just to know the theory.”
“I have some small experience,” he preened. “During the war—After this is over, come around to my place for a drink and I’ll tell you about it.” His lips brushed her cheek.
“Mr. Matuchek!” yelled Malzius. “Will you please stop growing fangs?”
I shook myself and suppressed the rage which had been almost as potent as moonlight.
“Look here,” said the police chief. “I gotta know what’s going on. You longhairs started this trouble and I don’t want you making it worse.”
Seeing that Ginny and Pretty Boy were, after all, legitimately busy, I sighed and whistled for a cigaret. “Let me explain,” I offered. “I learned a few things about the subject, during the war. An elemental is not the same as a demon. Any kind of demon is a separate being, as individual as you and I. An elemental is part of the basic force involved: in this case, fire, or more accurately energy. It’s raised out of the basic energy matrix, given temporary individuality, and restored to the matrix when the adept is through with it.”
“Huh?”
“Like a flame. A flame only exists potentially till someone lights a fire, and goes back to potential existence when you put the fire out. And the second fire you light, even on the same log, is not identical with the first. So you can understand why an elemental isn’t exactly anxious to be dismissed. When one breaks loose, as this one did, it does its damnedest to stay in this world and to increase its power.”
“But how come can it burn a church?”
“Because it’s soulless, a mere physical force. Any true individual, human or otherwise, is under certain constraints of a . . . a moral nature. A demon is allergic to holy symbols. A man who does wrong has to live with his conscience in this world and face judgment in the next. But what does a fire care? And that’s what the salamander is—a glorified fire. It’s only bound by the physical laws of nature and paranature.
“So how do you, uh, put one out?”
“A Hydro of corresponding mass could do it, bye mutual annihilation. Earth could bury it or Air withdraw from its neighborhood. Trouble is, Fire is the swiftest of the lot; it can flick out of an area before any other sort of elemental can injure it. So we’re left with the dismissal spell. But that has to be said in the salamander’s presence, and takes about two minutes.”
“Yeah . . . and when the thing hears you start the words, it’ll burn you down or scram. Very nice. What’re we gonna do?”
“I don’t know, chief,” I said, “except it’s like kissing a sheep dog.” I blew hard and immediately smacked my lips. “You got to be quick. Every fire the critter starts feeds it more energy and makes it that much stronger. There’s a limit somewhere—the square-cube law—but by then, it could be too powerful for humans to affect it.”
“And what’d happen next?”
“Ragnarok . . . . No, I suppose not quite. Men wool naturally raise correspondingly strong counter-elementals, like Hydros. But think of the control difficulty and the incidental damage. Compared to that, Caliphists were pikers.”
Ginny turned from the desk. Abercrombie was chalking a pentagram on the floor while a sputtering Malzius had been deputized to sterilize a pocket knife with match. (The idea was to draw a little blood from somebody. It can substitute for the usual powders, since it contains the same proteins.) The girl laid a hand on mine. “Steve, we’d take too long getting hold of every local adept and organizing them,” she said. “I’m afraid the same’s true of the state police or the National Guard. God knows what the salamander will do while this office is calling for help. We, though, you and I, we could at least keep track of it, with less danger to ourselves than most. Are you game?”