“Stay where you are!” I barked in my best Army manner. “Do you doubt that my servant can follow you wherever you may flee?”
“I’ll kill that little monster!”
“Go right ahead, chum,” I agreed. “Want to fight the duel under the ocean?”
Whistles skirled above our racket. The police had seen through these windows.
“I’ll show you, I will!” The roar was almost a sob. I ducked behind the bench, pulling Griswold with me. A geyser of flame rushed were I had been.
“Nyaah, nyaah, nyaah,” I called. “You can’t catch me! Scaredy-cat!”
Svartalf gave me a hard look.
The floor trembled as the elemental came toward me, not going around the benches but burning its way through them. Heat clawed at my throat. I spun down toward darkness.
And it was gone. Ginny cried her triumphant “Amen!” and displaced air cracked like thunder.
I lurched to my feet. Ginny fell into my arms. The police entered the lab and Griswold hollered something about calling the fire department before his whole building whiffed off in smoke. Abercrombie scampered out a window and Svartalf jumped down from the shelf. He forgot that a Pekingese isn’t as agile as a cat, and his popeyes bubbled with righteous wrath.
“Keek-eek-eek!” said Abercrombie. “Yip-yip-yip!” said Svartalf.
XIII
Outside, the mall was cool and still. We sat on dewed grass and looked at the moon and thought what a great and simple wonder it is to be alive.
The geas held us apart, but tenderness lay on Ginny’s lips. We scarcely noticed when somebody ran past, us shouting that the salamander was gone, nor when church bells began pealing the news to men an Heaven.
Svartalf finally roused us with his barking. Gin chuckled. “Poor fellow. I’ll change you back as soon I can, but now I’ve more urgent business. Come on Steve.”
Griswold, assured that his priceless hall was safe followed us at a tactful distance. Svartalf merely where he was . . . too shocked to move, I guess, at idea that there could be more important affairs than turning him back into a cat.
Dr. Malzius met us halfway, under one of the campus elms. Moonlight spattered his face and gleamed in the pince-nez. “My dear Miss Graylock,” he began, “is it indeed true that you have overcome that menace to society? Most noteworthy. Accept my congratulations. The glorious annals of this great institution of which I have the honor to be president—”
Ginny faced him, arms akimbo, and nailed him with surely the chilliest gaze he had ever seen. “The credit belongs to Mr. Matuchek and Dr. Griswold,” she said. “I shall so inform the press. Doubtless you’ll see fit to recommend a larger appropriation for Dr. Griswold’s outstanding work.”
“Oh, really,” stammered the scientist. “I didn’t—”
“Be quiet, you ninnyhammer,” whispered Ginny. Aloud: “Only through his courageous and farsighted adherence to the basic teachings of natural law- Well, you can fill in the rest for yourself, Malzius. I don’t think you’d be awfully popular if you went on starving his department.”
“Oh . . . indeed . . . after all—” The president expanded himself. “I have already given careful consideration to the idea. Was going to recommend it at the next meeting of the board, in fact.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” Ginny said. “Next: this stupid rule against student-faculty relationships. Mr. Matuchek will shortly be my husband—”
Whoosh! I tried to regain my breath.
“My dear Miss Graylock,” sputtered Malzius, “decorum . . . propriety . . . why, he isn’t even decent!”
I realized with horror that somehow, in the hullabaloo, I’d lost Ginny’s coat.
A pair of cops approached, dragging a hairy form that struggled in their arms. A third man carried the garments the chimp had shed. “Begging your pardon, Miss Graylock.” The tone was pure worship. “We found this monkey loose and—”
“Oh, yes.” She laughed. “We’ll have to restore him. But not right away. Steve needs those pants worse.”
I got into them like a snake headed down a hole.
Ginny turned back to smile with angelic sweetness at Malzius.
“Poor Dr. Abercrombie,” she sighed. “These things will happen when you deal with paranatural forces. Now I believe, sir, that you have no rule against faculty members conducting research.”
“Oh, no,” said the president shakily. “Of course not. On the contrary! We expect our people to publish—”
“To be sure. Well, I have in mind a most interesting research project involving transformations. I’ll admit it’s a teeny bit dangerous. It could backfire as Dr. Abercrombie’s spell did.” Ginny leaned on her wand and regarded the turf thoughtfully. “It could even . . . yes, there’s even a small possibility that it could turn you into an ape, dear Dr. Malzius. Or, perhaps, a worm. A long slimy one. But we mustn’t let that stand in the way of science, must we?”
“What? But ”
“Naturally,” purred the witch, “if I were allowed to conduct myself as I wish with my fiancé, I wouldn’t have time for research.”
Malzius took a bare fifty words to admit defeat. He stumped off in tottery grandeur while the last, fireglow died above the campus roofs.
Ginny gave me a slow glance. “The rule can’t officially be stricken till tomorrow,” she murmured. “Think you can cut a few classes then?”
“Keek-eek-eek,” said Dr. Alan Abercrombie. Then Svartalf arrived full of resentment and chased him up the tree.
XIV
A short interlude this time. We finished our first academic year okay. Ginny was proud of my straight A’s in shamanistics and calculus, and assisted me over some humps in arcane languages. (Griswold did me a similar service for electronics.) She had to modify her own plan of further study somewhat, if we were to get married in June.
You might think a former high-salaried New York witch would be anything but innocent. Certainly Ginny had a temper and her special kind of sophistication. However, quite apart from a stubbornly loyal and clean personality, she’d concentrated on those branches of the Art which require maidenhood. That kind of specialist commands fees in proportion to rarity.
Now my fire—and-ice girl was to become only another bride. And what’s so only about that? Next year she could acquire the techniques necessary to compensate for being wedded.
We couldn’t entirely hide our roles in snuffing the salamander from the news media; but with the eager cooperation of Malzius, who kept blaring about how the University Team had saved this fair city, we managed to obfuscate it so that we soon dropped out of the public eye. Griswold was conscience-stricken at receiving more credit than he thought he deserved, and indignant at our receiving less than we deserved, till we pointed out that the first was essential to getting his department modernized and the second to protecting our privacy. Besides, if we wanted to be sure the rule on dating was rescinded, and that conditions at Trismegistus would remain tolerable for us in other respects, we had to give Malzius tacit cooperation in rescuing his pride and not getting stuck with a craven image.
So, in brief, that winter and spring were wonderful and full of wonder. I could skip well ahead, but can’t help dwelling on-oh, at least the moment when:
“No,” I said to my bride’s business associate. “You are not coming along on the honeymoon.”
He laid back his ears. “Meeowrr!” he said resentfully.
“You’ll do fine by yourself in this apartment for a month,” I told him. `The superintendent has promiced to feed you every evening, the same time as he sets out the milk for the Brownie. And don’t forget, a when the Brownie comes in here, you are not to chase after him. After the last time you did that, three times in a row when Ginny and I went out to dinner, the, Good People sweetened our martinis.”
Svartalf glowered, yellow-eyed, and switched his tail. I imagine that was cat for, Well, dammit, anything the size of a mouse, which scuttles like a mouse, has got to expect to be treated like a mouse.