Robert Sheckley: Magic, Maples, and Maryanne

inside and left you undisturbed?”

“It doesn’t bother me if you want to stay,” she said. “I’m Maryanne Johnson, by the way.”

Maryanne set up her brushes and set to work. She sketched in the tree in hard pencil, mixed her washes, and began. She worked very quickly. Her painting was like a dance. I enjoyed watching her work. And I liked looking at her. She was not pretty, but her features were delicate, and I already knew she saw more than I did. She was a small, comfortable woman, about the same age as I, maybe a year or so younger. We talked about painting and trees and magic. At the end of two hours, the painting was done.

“I just need to give it a few minutes to dry,” she said. “Then I’ll spray it with an acrylic fixative and I’m out of your hair.”

“Do you really have to go?”

“It’s time for me to go,” she said, not answering me directly.

“All right,” I said. “I told you that I do magic.”

“Yes. It sounds wonderful.”

“Let’s go in and see if the temenos has anything for you.”“I really don’t think I should go in,” Maryanne said.

“Then I’ll run in and see if it’s left you anything.”

She hesitated, then said, “Never mind, I’ll go in with you. I’d like to see where you live.”

Inside we walked quickly through the cold, polished laboratory space, to the closet. I opened the door. In the shrine, under the red light, there was something oval-shaped and made of metal. I picked it up. It appeared to be of silver.

I led her outside into the fading afternoon light and said, “I think it’s a pendant of some sort. Magic meant it for you. Please accept the gift.”

Gravely Maryanne took it and turned it over and over in her fingers.

“Well,” she said, “I didn’t expect the day to turn out like this.”

“Nor did I. May I see you again?”

“You know the Albatross Restaurant in town? I’m a hostess there.”

And then she was gone and the gloom of my laboratory closed in on me. I walked up and down the silent room, between the work stations, with the last light of the late afternoon sun slanting in. It was quiet in here, always quiet, a sort of concrete tomb. And I had put myself into it.

I thought about magic and its practitioners. What kind of lives had they had? Lonely, boring, and dangerous. The only happily married magic-worker from the past I could think of was Nicholas Flamel and his precious Perrenelle. And he was very much the exception. In my rush to join the ranks of magicians, to be counted among them, I hadn’t really considered what I was getting into.

Suddenly magic seemed to me a poor enterprise indeed, one that excluded the human dimension.

At that moment, I made up my mind.

That evening, in response to my telephone calls, they all assembled at the facility. There was Phil and Jon, and Haynes, and two others I hadn’t met before. They had cassette recorders with them, and even a video camera. I felt strangely calm. I knew this was going to be the last act, good or bad, fair or foul.

I took them with me into the closet with its temenos. It was small and narrow, but it held all of us, with the partners strung out in the narrow space behind me, and Phil at my shoulder with the video camera.

“You’re actually going to let us watch?” Phil said. “Will wonders never cease!”

“You’ll get the whole show,” I said. “For better or worse.”

“What should we ask for?” Haynes asked.

I shrugged. “Whatever you want.”

“A million dollars in gold sounds pretty good to me,” Phil said.

“You think the spirit or whatever it is can do that?” Jon asked.

“Magic can do anything,” I said. “The question is whether it wants to or not. If this works, the wished-for matter will appear before your very eyes, here in the space of the temenos.”

“You always gave it overnight before,” Phil said.“I’m in a hurry now.”

I turned to the temenos. I began my incantations and my gestures.

There’s no need to talk here about what I did. Phil’s friends have a complete record—if they dare look at it after what happened.

At the end of my ceremony, there was a growing darkness in the middle of the shrine. It started as a stillness, but there was a fury within that stillness. You could feel the presence of something malevolent and strange. A cold wind came up inside the closed dark room, and the partners began to edge away.

“What have you done?” Haynes asked.

“Merely asked for what you want.”

Now the darkness in the middle of the temenos was a spinning top of dark and luminous lines. It gave off a disturbed emanation, as though some creature had been called into being and didn’t like it at all.

The darkness formed up into a crouched, dark creature in the middle of the shrine, its luminous eyes slanted and strange.

“Who is calling me?” the dark creature said.

“It’s me,” I said. “My friends here would like a million dollars in gold.”

“You bother me for a trivial matter like that? Very well, they can have it. But it must be paid

back.”

“Paid back?” Phil said. “I didn’t know it worked like that.”

“We have to get our investment back,” the dark creature told him. “Our resources are not without limit. But our terms are easy: five years to repay, no interest or carrying charges.”

Phil held a hasty consultation with his partners. It was obvious to them that they’d earn considerable interest on a million dollars over five years. It made this a paying proposition.“Yes, sir,” Phil said to the creature. “We’d like to take you up on that. That would be very acceptable, sir.”

“Who will be personally responsible for repaying this debt?” the dark creature asked.

“My backers and I, sir.”

“Your backers?” the dark creature said scornfully. “To hell with that! I need one person! Who will hold himself personally responsible for this debt?”

“I will, sir,” Phil said.

“And who are you?”

“I’m Phil.”

“Fine. Then I’ll take you as collateral.”

“Hey, just a minute,” Phil said. “I didn’t intend—”

Then he was pulled into the darkness so fast he was cut off in mid-scream. One moment he was there, the next moment he was gone.“I’ll expect repayment in five years,” the darkness said. “Then you get Phil back. Or what’s left of him.”

Like a wisp of smoke, the dark creature was gone. But now there was a pile of gold in the shrine. A pile that looked like a million dollars’ worth.

The partners stared at it uneasily.

Finally Haynes said, “It’s a lot of money.”

“Sure,” Jon said, “but how about Phil?”

“Well, it was his idea.”

“But we can’t leave him wherever that thing has taken him. And certainly not for five years!”

“No, that wouldn’t be fair,” Haynes said thoughtfully. “But what do you think about thirty days?”

They looked at each other. Then Jon said, “Phil himself wanted to make a profit on this. And besides, what the hell, he’s there already.”

Haynes nodded. “Thirty days wherever he is can’t be so bad. I’m sure he’ll have quite a story to tell when he gets back.” He turned to me. “What do you think?”

“I’m finished with magic,” I said. “But I’ll be available when you need me to bring Phil back.”

“You get a share of this,” Haynes said, pointing to the gold.

“No thanks, I don’t want any.”

“Phil said you had some funny ideas. He’ll be amused by this when he gets back.”

“True. If you get him back alive.”

“Damn, that’s right,” Jon said.

“Sure hope he’s okay,” Haynes said. “Hey, where are you going!”