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THE AUTUMN AFTER NEXT

By MARGARET ST. CLAIR

_Being a wizard missionary to
the Free'l needed more than
magic--it called for a miracle!_

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, January 1960.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


The spell the Free'l were casting ought to have drawn the moon down
from the heavens, made water run uphill, and inverted the order of the
seasons. But, since they had got broor's blood instead of newt's, were
using alganon instead of vervet juice, and were three days later than
the solstice anyhow, nothing happened.

Neeshan watched their antics with a bitter smile.

He'd tried hard with them. The Free'l were really a challenge to
evangelical wizardry. They had some natural talent for magic, as was
evinced by the frequent attempts they made to perform it, and they were
interested in what he told them about its capacities. But they simply
wouldn't take the trouble to do it right.

How long had they been stamping around in their circle, anyhow? Since
early moonset, and it was now almost dawn. No doubt they would go on
stamping all next day, if not interrupted. It was time to call a halt.

Neeshan strode into the middle of the circle. Rhn, the village chief,
looked up from his drumming.

"Go away," he said. "You'll spoil the charm."

"What charm? Can't you see by now, Rhn, that it isn't going to work?"

"Of course it will. It just takes time."

"Hell it will. Hell it does. Watch."

Neeshan pushed Rhn to one side and squatted down in the center of the
circle. From the pockets of his black robe he produced stylus, dragon's
blood, oil of anointing, and salt.

He drew a design on the ground with the stylus, dropped dragon's blood
at the corners of the parallelogram, and touched the inner cusps with
the oil. Then, sighting carefully at the double red and white sun,
which was just coming up, he touched the _outer_ cusps with salt. An
intense smoke sprang up.

       *       *       *       *       *

When the smoke died away, a small lizardlike creature was visible in
the parallelogram.

"Tell the demon what you want," Neeshan ordered the Free'l.

The Free'l hesitated. They had few wants, after all, which was one of
the things that made teaching them magic difficult.

"Two big dyla melons," one of the younger ones said at last.

"A new andana necklace," said another.

"A tooter like the one you have," said Rhn, who was ambitious.

"Straw for a new roof on my hut," said one of the older females.

"That's enough for now," Neeshan interrupted. "The demon can't bring
you a tooter, Rhn--you have to ask another sort of demon for that. The
other things he can get. Sammel, to work!"

The lizard in the parallelogram twitched its tail. It disappeared, and
returned almost immediately with melons, a handsome necklace, and an
enormous heap of straw.

"Can I go now?" it asked.

"Yes." Neeshan turned to the Free'l, who were sharing the dyla melons
out around their circle. "You see? _That's_ how it ought to be. You
cast a spell. You're careful with it. And it works. Right away."

"When you do it, it works," Rhn answered.

"Magic works when _anybody_ does it. But you have to do it right."

Rhn raised his mud-plastered shoulders in a shrug. "It's such a lot
of dreeze, doing it that way. Magic ought to be fun." He walked away,
munching on a slice of the melon the demon had brought.

Neeshan stared after him, his eyes hot. "Dreeze" was a Free'l word that
referred originally to the nasal drip that accompanied that race's
virulent head colds. It had been extended to mean almost anything
annoying. The Free'l, who spent much of their time sitting in the rain,
had a lot of colds in the head.

Wasn't there anything to be done with these people? Even the simplest
spell was too dreezish for them to bother with.

He was getting a headache. He'd better perform a headache-removing
spell.

He retired to the hut the Free'l had assigned to him. The spell worked,
of course, but it left him feeling soggy and dispirited. He was still
standing in the hut, wondering what he should do next, when his big
black-and-gold tooter in the corner gave a faint "woof." That meant
headquarters wanted to communicate with him.

Neeshan carefully aligned the tooter, which is basically a sort of lens
for focusing neural force, with the rising double suns. He moved his
couch out into a parallel position and lay down on it. In a minute or
two he was deep in a cataleptic trance.

The message from headquarters was long, circuitous, and couched in the
elaborate, ego-caressing ceremonial of high magic, but its gist was
clear enough.

"Your report received," it boiled down to. "We are glad to hear that
you are keeping on with the Free'l. We do not expect you to succeed
with them--none of the other magical missionaries we have sent out ever
has. But if you _should_ succeed, by any chance, you would get your
senior warlock's rating immediately. It would be no exaggeration, in
fact, to say that the highest offices in the Brotherhood would be open
to you."

       *       *       *       *       *

Neeshan came out of his trance. His eyes were round with wonder and
cupidity. His senior warlock's rating--why, he wasn't due to get that
for nearly four more six hundred-and-five-day years. And the highest
offices in the Brotherhood--that could mean anything. Anything! He
hadn't realized the Brotherhood set such store on converting the
Free'l. Well, now, a reward like that was worth going to some trouble
for.

Neeshan sat down on his couch, his elbows on his knees, his fists
pressed against his forehead, and tried to think.

The Free'l liked magic, but they were lazy. Anything that involved
accuracy impressed them as dreezish. And they didn't want anything.
That was the biggest difficulty. Magic had nothing to offer them. He
had never, Neeshan thought, heard one of the Free'l express a want.

Wait, though. There was Rhn.

He had shown a definite interest in Neeshan's tooter. Something in its
intricate, florid black-and-gold curves seemed to fascinate him. True,
he hadn't been interested in it for its legitimate uses, which were to
extend and develop a magician's spiritual power. He probably thought
that having it would give him more prestige and influence among his
people. But for one of the Free'l to say "I wish I had that" about
anything whatever meant that he could be worked on. Could the tooter be
used as a bribe?

Neeshan sighed heavily. Getting a tooter was painful and laborious. A
tooter was carefully fitted to an individual magician's personality; in
a sense, it was a part of his personality, and if Neeshan let Rhn have
his tooter, he would be letting him have a part of himself. But the
stakes were enormous.

Neeshan got up from his couch. It had begun to rain, but he didn't want
to spend time performing a rain-repelling spell. He wanted to find Rhn.

Rhn was standing at the edge of the swamp, luxuriating in the downpour.
The mud had washed from his shoulders, and he was already sniffling.
Neeshan came to the point directly.

"I'll give you my tooter," he said, almost choking over the words, "if
you'll do a spell--a simple spell, mind you--exactly right."

Rhn hesitated. Neeshan felt an impulse to kick him. Then he said,
"Well...."

Neeshan began his instructions. It wouldn't do for him to help Rhn too
directly, but he was willing to do everything reasonable. Rhn listened,
scratching himself in the armpits and sneezing from time to time.

After Neeshan had been through the directions twice, Rhn stopped him.
"No, don't bother telling me again--it's just more dreeze. Give me the
materials and I'll show you. Don't forget, you're giving me the tooter
for this."

       *       *       *       *       *

He started off, Neeshan after him, to the latter's hut. While Neeshan
looked on tensely, Rhn began going through the actions Neeshan had
told him. Half-way through the first decad, he forgot. He inverted
the order of the hand-passes, sprinkled salt on the wrong point, and
mispronounced the names in the invocation. When he pulled his hands
apart at the end, only a tiny yellow flame sprang up.

Neeshan cursed bitterly. Rhn, however, was delighted. "Look at that,
will you!" he exclaimed, clapping his chapped, scabby little hands
together. "It worked! I'll take the tooter home with me now."

"The tooter? For _that_? You didn't do the spell right."

Rhn stared at him indignantly. "You mean, you're not going to give me
the tooter after all the trouble I went to? I only did it as a favor,
really. Neeshan, I think it's very mean of you."

"Try the spell again."

"Oh, dreeze. You're too impatient. You never give anything time to
work."

He got up and walked off.

For the next few days, everybody in the village avoided Neeshan. They
all felt sorry for Rhn, who'd worked so hard, done everything he was
told to, and been cheated out of his tooter by Neeshan. In the end
the magician, cursing his own weakness, surrendered the tooter to
Rhn. The accusatory atmosphere in the normally indifferent Free'l was
intolerable.

But now what was he to do? He'd given up his tooter--he had to ask
Rhn to lend it to him when he wanted to contact headquarters--and the
senior rating was no nearer than before. His head ached constantly,
and all the spells he performed to cure the pain left him feeling
wretchedly tired out.

Magic, however, is an art of many resources, not all of them savory.
Neeshan, in his desperation, began to invoke demons more disreputable
than those he would ordinarily have consulted. In effect, he turned for
help to the magical underworld.

His thuggish informants were none too consistent. One demon told him
one thing, another something else. The consensus, though, was that
while there was nothing the Free'l actually wanted enough to go to any
trouble for it (they didn't even want to get rid of their nasal drip,
for example--in a perverse way they were proud of it), there _was_ one
thing they disliked intensely--Neeshan himself.

The Free'l thought, the demons reported, that he was inconsiderate,
tactless, officious, and a crashing bore. They regarded him as the
psychological equivalent of the worst case of dreeze ever known,
carried to the nth power. They wished he'd drop dead or hang himself.

Neeshan dismissed the last of the demons. His eyes had begun to shine.
The Free'l thought he was a nuisance, did they? They thought he was the
most annoying thing they'd encountered in the course of their racial
history? Good. Fine. Splendid. Then he'd _really_ annoy them.

He'd have to watch out for poison, of course. But in the end, they'd
turn to magic to get rid of him. They'd have to. And then he'd have
them. They'd be caught.

One act of communal magic that really worked and they'd be sold on
magic. He'd be sure of his senior rating.

       *       *       *       *       *

Neeshan began his campaign immediately. Where the Free'l were, there
was he. He was always on hand with unwanted explanations, hypercritical
objections, and maddening "wouldn't-it-be-betters."

Whereas earlier in his evangelical mission he had confined himself to
pointing out how much easier magic would make life for the Free'l, he
now counciled and advised them on every phase of their daily routine,
from mud-smearing to rain-sitting, and from the time they got up until
they went to bed. He even pursued them with advice _after_ they got
into bed, and told them how to run their sex lives--advice which the
Free'l, who set quite as much store by their sex lives as anybody does,
resented passionately.

But most of all he harped on their folly in putting up with nasal drip,
and instructed them over and over again in the details of a charm--a
quite simple charm--for getting rid of it. The charm would, he informed
them, work equally well against anything--_or person_--that they found
annoying.

The food the Free'l brought him began to have a highly peculiar taste.
Neeshan grinned and hung a theriacal charm, a first-class antidote
to poison, around his neck. The Free'l's distaste for him bothered
him, naturally, but he could stand it. When he had repeated the
anti-annoyance charm to a group of Free'l last night, he had noticed
that Rhn was listening eagerly. It wouldn't be much longer now.

On the morning of the day before the equinox, Neeshan was awakened from
sleep by an odd prickling sensation in his ears. It was a sensation
he'd experienced only once before in his life, during his novitiate,
and it took him a moment to identify it. Then he realized what it was.
Somebody was casting a spell against him.

At last! At last! It had worked!

Neeshan put on his robe and hurried to the door of the hut. The day
seemed remarkably overcast, almost like night, but that was caused by
the spell. This one happened to involve the optic nerves.

He began to grope his way cautiously toward the village center. He
didn't want the Free'l to see him and get suspicious, but he did want
to have the pleasure of seeing them cast their first accurate spell.
(He was well protected against wind-damage from it, of course.) When
he was almost at the center, he took cover behind a hut. He peered out.

They were doing it _right_. Oh, what a satisfaction! Neeshan felt his
chest expand with pride. And when the spell worked, when the big wind
swooped down and blew him away, the Free'l would certainly receive a
second magical missionary more kindly. Neeshan might even come back,
well disguised, himself.

The ritual went on. The dancers made three circles to the left,
three circles to the right. Cross over, and all sprinkle salt on the
interstices of the star Rhn had traced on the ground with the point of
a knife. Back to the circle. One to the left, one to right, while Rhn,
in the center of the circle, dusted over the salt with--with _what_?

"Hey!" Neeshan yelled in sudden alarm. "Not brimstone! Watch out!
You're not doing it ri--"

His chest contracted suddenly, as if a large, stony hand had seized
his thorax above the waist. He couldn't breathe, he couldn't think,
he couldn't even say "Ouch!" It felt as if his chest--no, his whole
body--was being compressed in on itself and turning into something as
hard as stone.

He tried to wave his tiny, heavy arms in a counter-charm; he couldn't
even inhale. The last emotion he experienced was one of bitterness. He
might have _known_ the Free'l couldn't get anything right.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Free'l take a dim view of the small stone image that now stands in
the center of their village. It is much too heavy for them to move, and
while it is not nearly so much of a nuisance as Neeshan was when he was
alive, it inconveniences them. They have to make a detour around it
when they do their magic dances.

They still hope, though, that the spells they are casting to get rid of
him will work eventually. If he doesn't go away this autumn, he will
the autumn after next. They have a good deal of faith in magic, when
you come right down to it. And patience is their long suit.





End of Project Gutenberg's The Autumn After Next, by Margaret St. Clair