A Feast of Demons Page 3

San Francisco _Examiner_. The New York _News_ foundthousands of cases in Brooklyn. A whole hospital in Dallas wasevacuated to make room for victims of the new plague.

  And more.

  We looked at each other.

  "They're out in force," said Theobald Greco soberly. "And we don'thave the cure."

  IV

  The world was topsy-turvy, and in the middle of it Minnie disappeared,talking hysterically about reporting us to the authorities. I don'tmind admitting that I was worried.

  And the experiments were not progressing. The trouble seemed to bethat the two varieties of demons--the aging and the youthing--were notcompatible; if one took up residence in a given section of anorganism, the other moved out. The more numerous destroyed the weaker;there was no balance. We tested it again and again in the mice andthere was no doubt of it.

  So far, only the youthing demons were free. But when Minnie left us,it was only a matter of time. Our carriers--from Grand Rapids and fromthe hotel--had spread to California and the East Coast, to the Northand to the South, throughout the country, perhaps by now through theworld. It would be slower with the aging demons--there was only oneof Minnie--but it would be equally sure.

  Greco began drinking heavily.

  "It's the end," he brooded. "We're licked."

  "No, Greek! We can't give up!"

  "We _have_ to give up. The demons are loose in the Earth, Virgie!Those people in the headlines--they'll die of young age. So willothers--even plants and animals, and bacteria, as the demons adapt tothem. And then--why not? The air. The rocks, the ocean, even the Earthitself. Remember, the entropy of the Universe is supposed to tend to amaximum not only as a whole, but in each of its parts taken inisolation. The Earth's evolution--reversed. Spottily, and maybe that'sworse, because some parts will evolve forward and others reverse, asis happening in my own body. Heaven help the world, Old Virgie! Andnot just the Earth, because what can stop them from spreading? To theMoon, the other planets--out of the Solar System, for that matter; tothe other galaxies, even. Why not? And then--"

  "_GRECO._"

  An enormous tinny voice, more than human, filled the air. It came fromoutside.

  I jumped a foot. It sounded like the voice of a demon; then I got agrip on myself and understood. It was a loudspeaker, and it came fromoutside.

  "_GRECO. WE KNOW YOU'RE IN THERE. COME ON OUT!_"

  I had a stabbing sensation of familiarity. "The police!" I cried."Greco, it's the police!"

  He looked at me wearily and shook his head.

  "No. More likely the F.B.I."

  * * * * *

  Well, that was it. I got out--I didn't wait for permission from theGreek.

  I stopped at the door, and three searchlight beams hit me right in theeye. There were cars all around the laboratory, but I couldn't seethem, not after those lights went on.

  I froze, stiff; wanting to make sure they understood (a) that I wasn'tGreco and (b) that I didn't have a gun.

  They understood, all right.

  But they let me out.

  They put me in one of the cars, with a slim gray-eyed young man in asnap-brimmed hat sitting politely and alertly beside me, and they letme watch; and what happened after that wasn't funny at all.

  Greco didn't come out They shouted at him over the loudspeaker andeventually he answered--his voice little and calm, coming out ofnowhere, and all he said was, "Go away. I won't come out. I warn you,don't try to force your way in."

  But he knew they wouldn't listen, of course.

  They didn't.

  They tried force.

  And he met it in novel ways with force of his own. The door had lockeditself behind me; they got a fence post for a battering ram, and thepost burst into flame. They found an L-beam from an old bed frame andtried that, and they were sorry they had done it; the thing melted inthe middle, splattering them with hot drops of steel.

  The polite, alert young man beside me said, not so polite any more,"What's he doing, you? What sort of fancy tricks has he got in there?"

  "Demons," I said crazily, and _that_ was a mistake, but what else wasI to do? Try to explain Maxwell's equations to a Fed?

  They were trying again--there were fifteen or twenty of them, atleast. They went for the windows, and the windows dissolved and rainedcherry-red wet glass on them. They tried again through the open frameswhen the glass was gone, and the frames burst into fire around them,the blue smoke bleached white in the yellow of the flame and the whiteof the searchlights. They tried singly, by stealth; and they tried inclusters of a dozen, yelling.

  * * * * *

  It was hopeless--hopeless for everybody, because they couldn't get inand the Greek could never, never get out; for go away they wouldn't.Not even when, with _poof_ and a yellow flare, the gas tank of one ofthe cars exploded. All that happened was that the man in thesnap-brimmed hat and I leaped out, real quick; and then all the carswent up. But the men didn't leave. And then the guns began to go offwithout waiting for anyone to pull the trigger; and the barrelssoftened and slumped and spattered to the ground. But the men stillhad bare hands, and they stayed.

  The Greek got wild--or lost control, it was hard to tell which. Therewas a sudden catastrophic _whooshing_ roar and, _wham_, a tree tookflame for roots. A giant old oak, fifty feet tall, I guess it had beenthere a couple of centuries, but Greco's demons changed all that; ittook flame and shot whistling into the air, spouting flame and sparklike a Roman candle. Maybe he thought it would scare them. Maybe itdid. But it also made them mad. And they ran, all at once, every oneof them but my personal friend, for the biggest, openest of thewindows--

  And leaped back, cursing and yelling, beating out flames on theirclothes.

  Jets of flame leaped out of every window and door. The old buildingseemed to bulge outward and go _voom_. In half a second, it was asingle leaping tulip of fire.

  The firemen got there then, but it was a little late. Oh, they gotGreco out--alive, even. But they didn't save a bit of the laboratory.It was the third fire in Greco's career, and the most dangerous--forwhere previously only a few of the youthing demons had escaped, nowthere were vast quantities of both sorts.

  It was the end of the world.

  I knew it.

  * * * * *

  You know, I wish I had been right. I spent yesterday with Greco. He'smarried now and has a fine young son. They made an attractive familypicture, the two healthy-looking adults, strong-featured, in the primeof life, and the wee toddler between them.

  The only thing is--Greco's the toddler.

  He doesn't call himself Greco any more. Would you, the way the worldis now? He has plenty of money stashed away--I do too, of course--notthat money means very much these days. His brain hasn't been affected,just his body. He was lucky, I guess. Some of the demons hit the brainin some of their victims and--

  Well, it's pretty bad.

  Greco got the answer after a while. Both types of demons were loose inthe world, and both, by and by, were in every individual.

  But they didn't kill each other off.

  One simply grew more rapidly, took over control, until it ran out ofthe kind of molecules it needed. Then the other took over.

  Then the first.

  Then the other again....

  Mice are short-lived. It's like balancing a needle on the end of yournose; there isn't enough space in a mouse's short span for balance,any more than there is in a needle's.

  But in a human life--

  Things are going to have to be worked out, though.

  It's bad enough that a family gets all mixed up the way Greco'sis--he's on a descending curve, his kid is on an aging curve, andMinnie--did I tell you that it was Minnie he married?--has completedher second rejuvenation and is on the way back up again.

  But there are worse problems that that.

  For one thing, it isn't going to be too long before we run out ofspace. I don't mean time, I mean space. _Livi
ng_ space.

  Because it's all very well that the human animal should now mature togrow alternately younger and older, over and over--

  But, damn it, how I wish that somebody once in a while would _die_!

  --WILLIAM MORRISON

  * * * * *