The Seed of Evil

Wizard Wazo’s Revenge

Wizard Wazo was angry and exasperated as he quit the planet Nekferus. A Mighty One of the Galactic Observance was accustomed to being obeyed; yet the benighted inhabitants of that infernal place seemed not even to understand what it meant to face a galactic wizard!

No member of his order could have been active in the region recently, for there would have been no question about it a few millennia ago. As it was he had intended only a short stay, to carry out an experiment that on the prompting of the moment had suddenly occurred to him, and he had made no excessive demands. All he required was a hundred or so female concubines, premises and provisions consistent with his comfort, and the instruments necessary for the experiment itself, which would not have engaged more than a third of the planet’s industrial capacity. Yet his modest requests had met with incredulity and laughter! It had not at first penetrated to him that these wretches were actually refusing his demands. When it did his temper had broken, and he had laid a curse on them for their recalcitrance.

“I cast a mental screen around this world,” he had mouthed. “Henceforth nothing that is original in thought shall reach this planet. Your children, and their children, and so ad infinitum, shall live in the greyness of thought already much used, shall never discover a new idea, for this screen is impassable to ideas and all new perceptions, which come, though you know it not, from outermost space. Thus I punish you for the absence of your imagination!”

And in a sputter of sparks he had disappeared from their view.

So it was that Wizard Wazo was already bad-tempered when, upon dismissing the experiment from his mind (it was not important), he instead decided to visit various places so as to collect the property he had left in safekeeping before embarking on his pilgrimage.

In space now, a glance at the surrounding stars located his first destination: the planet Earth. With the immediacy of directed thought, faster than light, faster than causality, he set forth. Transient bodies formed and dissipated about his presence as he entered first the nimbus of Earth’s sun and then the nimbus of the planet itself: bodies of light, of magnetism, of radioactivity, of air and vapour. Speeding down through the atmosphere, he saw below him some pyramidal structures erected during his last stay here, and while pleased to see that they still stood, he remarked grumpily to himself that it would have been a simple matter to keep their original limestone dressings in good order. But Egypt, as it happened, was not his destination, for it was not where his property was currently to be found. He materialised instead on the sidewalk of a busy city street, somewhere to the north-west.

All around him was an irregular roaring, confused and continuous. This noise was accompanied by copious exhalations of carbonised fumes and was created, he saw, by a steady stream of automotive conveyances that passed through the central concourse.

At least it was no worse, he told himself, than the stink expelled from the rear of that execrable Earth animal the horse, that had made the streets of Memphis almost unendurable.

Terraces of tall buildings, many of them glass-fronted, lined the avenue. Behind the transparent panes goods and services were on offer. One could, for instance, repose for a while and consume food and drink. He would take up this offer, Wizard Wazo told himself, but first he must find the custodian of his property.

He inspected the body that had finally formed around his presence. He found it to be a handsome specimen of the species inhabiting Earth, sturdily built, a little over average height, clad in a grey check suit. His skin was swarthy; bushy mustachios grew on his upper lip. An unusual feature, for this city, was the headgear he wore—a fez, which he believed was currently more characteristic of the Egypt he had previously visited.

Wizard Wazo walked along the crowded pavement, requiring all others to make way for him. He did not falter when he came to a road junction but sauntered across it with the same confidence, sensing the oil-driven vehicles as they surged around him and knowing that none would strike him.

Here, now, was something of interest. A small, crouched man in a scruffy white gown dispensed dollops of frozen confectionery scooped into wafer cones from a trolley. Wizard Wazo was reminded of the iced drinks that had been available in ancient Egypt, and it brightened him to see that the art of making ice had not been lost since then.

At any rate he decided to sample this delicacy. Halting by the trolley, he pointed to a customer just leaving and nodded his head. Slowly the vendor filled another wafer cone, avoiding Wizard Wazo’s eye and pursing his lips calculatingly.

“Forty pence,” he said peremptorily as he held out the cone.

After a pause Wizard Wazo reached into an inside jacket pocket and pulled out a leather folder. He found therein some pieces of richly engraved paper which he divined were notes of currency. Drawing out one bearing the legend “Ten Pounds”, he handed it over, receiving in exchange the ice cream cone.

Ostentatiously the vendor rummaged in a tray of metal discs. “Ten, twenny, firty, sixty, there y’are then, that’s all yer get,” he said, throwing coins into Wizard Wazo’s hand. Dismissively he turned away. Wizard Wazo did not move. He looked into the pinched, hostile face of the ice-cream vendor.

Then, knowing already what he would find there, he looked into the man’s mind.

Yes, this wretch had attempted to cheat him! Had taken a note of large denomination and had given trifling tokens in exchange, leaving an enormous discrepancy between them and the proper price of the delicacy! And why? Because he hoped, from Wizard Wazo’s foreign appearance, that he would not know the value of the local currency!

“Thief!” Wizard Wazo thundered. “Give me my money this instant!”

The vendor’s response was aggressive. “Yer’ve ‘ad yer lot, mate, don’t come ‘ere wiv yer bleedin’—”

Wizard Wazo bridled. One word from him and the contents of the ice-cream tub would turn to a vilely stinking mass. But he did no more than throw down the cone he had purchased and, with a gesture of disgust, continue on his way.

Further down the street he stopped again and peered through the plate-glass window of a somewhat shabby restaurant. Within, men and women sat at bare board tables, drinking tea and coffee, reading books and newspapers, talking to one another, wasting time. The man he sought sat alone in a corner, sometimes watching those around him, sometimes reading a book he held in one hand. From outside, Wizard Wazo read the title: Flying Saucers: The Conspiracy of Silence. The man was lantern-jawed, with straight black hair, and had an air of unsettled energy. He puffed nervously on a cigarette, which he put down from time to time to sip coffee from a cup in front of him.

In keeping with the etiquette between magicians, Wizard Wazo refrained from scanning the other’s mind. He moved into the restaurant and made his way to the corner table.

The man barely glanced up at the stranger who sat down opposite him. Wizard Wazo leaned forward. “I am in the presence of the Master of the Order of the Secret Star,” he stated. “That much I know. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Wizard Wazo, Mighty One of the Galactic Observance. I am here to recover my words of power, left in safekeeping with you.”

Arnold Madders drew on his cigarette with a sucking sound and looked blankly at the swarthy-faced individual, vaguely oriental-looking with his hypnotic eyes and eccentric hat, who accosted him. He coughed, shook his head, and waved Wizard Wazo away. Though slightly disconcerted, Wizard Wazo tucked in his chin, and in a quiet, confidential tone, uttered a series of thrilling syllables.

“Abaradazazazaz.”

He chuckled when the vibrations had died away. “You see, I know the secret word of your order. Was it not I who gave you this word? Now we must repair to a private place. You will gather your adepts, those who have the words of power, and they will give them up to me.”

Madders did not look up from his book. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said tonelessly. “I haven’t got anything of yours.”

Who is this lunatic? Madders wondered. It annoyed him to have strangers come up and start talking about the Secret Star, which he had tried hard to keep on the straight and narrow of an esoteric society. Still, it was hard to keep anything secret these days, with so much occult stuff about. Davies must have been blabbing again, he thought.

The initiation word, though…. Where had this guy got that? From the British Museum, probably, just as Madders himself had.

Wizard Wazo spoke more insistently, though still keeping his tone on the level of polite conversation. “I have just returned from my mission to find the end of space. Now I need my words of power, to carry out the many projects that all the time, even while I am speaking to you, are occurring to my intellect.”

Madders looked up from his book. He smiled sarcastically, expelling smoke from the corner of his mouth. “The end of space, yet! Find it all right?”

Wizard Wazo blinked. “Of course I did not find it. Space has no end. Therein lies the meaning of the pilgrimage.”

Madders snorted. Wizard Wazo felt puzzled, even bewildered. A certain amount of fencing between wizards was not uncommon, but this man behaved as though they were of equal rank! As though he himself had been trained by the Galactic Observance!

Even so, Wizard Wazo remained patient. “Come, let us understand one another,” he said jovially. “I do not doubt that you have attained much. It is not to be supposed that your order has been idle for the last five thousand years. And did I not find even then adepts in Egypt, men who understood the use of words? Even lacking your—” he indicated the street outside, searching for a phrase—“your oil-driven machinery, they were able to erect the square-based quintahedra.”

“Quintahedra?”

“Models of planetary existence. Pyramids, you call them. Ah, but they were a splendid sight—faced with white limestone, the upper surfaces sheathed in brilliant gold. At summer solstice they reflected the light of the sun out over the desert—vast four-armed stars, shining on the floor of the desert! Wonderful! It is regrettable that your order has not seen fit to attend to their repair.”

Madders said nothing, and Wizard Wazo grew worried. He cast his mind back to the time when he had unloaded his property onto this man’s ancestors.

Words of power were heavy in the consciousness, even when only lodged in the memory. They could act as impedimenta to that mode of travel known as the immediacy of thought. Therefore Wizard Wazo had been obliged to lighten himself for his heroic pilgrimage to the nonexistent limit of space, to strip down his memory in order to attain the greatest possible thought-velocity. He could on no account divest himself of his standard repertoire, but there were other, specialised words, with ponderous vibrational sequences, that were very weighty. These he had cached with various people, on various planets.

In Egypt he had founded the Order of the Secret Star, entrusting a number of his words to the order for it to guard and preserve—on condition, of course, that no attempt was to be made to activate them (which the order did not have the conscious force to do in any case). As a reward for this service he had taught the order some magical techniques and a few lesser words which could bring practical results. Undoubtedly the Order of the Secret Star was by now one of the groups clandestinely controlling Earth civilisation.

A chilling thought occurred to Wizard Wazo. He had already discovered that this planet abounded in thieves and villains. Could it be that the Order of the Secret Star had decided to renege on its agreement? That it intended to keep the words of power for itself, in the hope of being able to make use of them some day? It was tempting to enter the other’s mind to ascertain the truth of this suspicion… but Wizard Wazo restrained himself from so improper a step. In any case there could be no question of extracting his property by force. Words of power had to be imparted with the consent of both parties, otherwise they lost their efficacy.

He stroked his mustachios. He glowered. “Evidently I must be blunt. Unless you cease to prevaricate and arrange for the early transfer of my property, I shall visit upon you a punishment designed to secure your co-operation.”

Smiling tolerantly, Madders stuffed his paperback in his pocket. The threat mildly amused him, but he was tired of the exchange. He prepared to rise.

As if in close confidence, Wizard Wazo leaned closer, “I shall send Hathor, the goddess of love, to you.”

“Love?” laughed Madders. “Go ahead, mate. We could all use some more of that.”

“Once she was Kesmet, the great lion sent to devour mankind. In her new form she is even more terrible.”

Madders stood up. “If you’d studied magic properly, old chap, you’d know better than to come out with all that chat about ‘words of power’. You’ve been reading the wrong books.”

“You can meet me here tomorrow,” Wizard Wazo replied shortly. Angrily, as Madders walked away, he signalled the waitress and ordered a cup of tea.

When, in the early afternoon of the following day, Arnold Madders next entered the coffee house, he found Wizard Wazo sitting at the same table as if he had not moved since Madders had left him. In front of him stood a cup of Turkish coffee, which he picked up and sipped at from time to time. He glanced up, stroking his mustachios with a forefinger, as the Earthman approached.

Madders sank into the chair opposite and bowed his head. “Relieve me of this,” he mumbled. “I cannot bear it.”

“At once, when you discharge your obligation to me.”

Madders kept his eyes downcast and was studiously avoiding looking at anyone in the restaurant. Not until that morning, when he had left his cramped flat to buy groceries, had he learned what had been done to him.

Now he knew that up until the present he had been blind, seeing nothing and no one, living an existence made up of himself only. Others had existed, but only as projections of his own needs, shadowy objects on the surface of his consciousness.

And why was he blind? Because he had not loved!

No one had, except in flashes that afterwards tormented the heart. And indeed it was needful that they should not. There was nothing worse than to love!

On coming down from his third-floor flat to the street, a plastic shopping-bag tucked under his arm, he had chanced to spy a young boy, perhaps ten years of age. A sharp-nosed, pinch-faced boy in shabby grey clothes, with narrow eyes and a mean, stupid look, a boy who (Madders had studied physiognomy) was destined for many misdeeds and much unhappiness. An unlikely object to win Madders’s love!

And yet there it was. Madders loved that boy. Love had been born in him, at first glance, like the striking of a match, bringing searing insights, a burning perception of a unique, if flawed, human being. He had stopped in his tracks, momentarily paralysed. He had thought to go after the boy, to get to know him somehow, to try to help him steer through the tragedies of life that, all too clearly, awaited him.

But the boy had turned a corner, and before Madders could act a new surprise was upon him.

How happy mankind was to be bereft of love! For was not love the most powerful of human emotions, and therefore the most destructive? Was it not an agony to be consumed with love, to ache and grieve for another person, to feel, as though they were one’s own, his sufferings, his disappointments, to become aware of the helplessness that secretly surrounds each human life?

Madders’s punishment now was to love everyone he met or saw, to love unrestrainedly and unreservedly. Seconds after seeing the boy, love had flared in him again, this time for a girl, not very attractive, in an ill-fitting skirt. Then for a hag, stooped and withered, lost in dreams as she carried home scant provisions in a tattered cloth shopping-bag. Next he saw a young man in baggy trousers, vague of manner, who stumbled as he mounted the kerb.

Madders loved them all, and he could not stop loving them even now! To love one person could be burden enough. But to feel the same intensity for every single person one encountered! For the heartbreak to be continuous, to flame anew a hundred times a day, anew and anew and anew, for love to pile on love!

No! The human frame could not endure it!

Within an hour Madders was devastated, and was conscious that before the day was out he would feel obliged to destroy himself. For this was nothing like the generalised love for all mankind he had once believed in, had even imagined he possessed. Now he knew that emotion for the sentimental and self-congratulating lie that it was. No, there was nothing generalised about this. Love could not count past the number one, and was never abstract. It was intimate, a gaze that rested only on living individuals, it was specific to the individual, it was never the same twice, and it blotted out the lover by forcing him never to forget that another was more precious to him than he himself was.

“Who are you?” Madders demanded in a low, unsteady voice. “Who taught you to do this?”

“I was trained by the Galactic Observance,” replied Wizard Wazo, as though repeating a self-evident fact. “And I it was who trained the Order of the Secret Star.”

“Tell me what you want of me.”

“My words of power. That is all.”

Madders shook his head. “I have no words of power, as you call them. I didn’t even know there were such things.”

Wizard Wazo bridled. “I am speaking to the Master of the Order of the Secret Star, am I not?”

“Yes… I mean, no. I took the name of the order, and some of the ceremonies, that’s all… as much as I could find. It was in a manuscript in the British Museum.” Madders groaned. “You’ve made a mistake, don’t you see?”

On hearing this, Wizard Wazo committed the indiscretion that, to judge by what Madders had just said, was probably no indiscretion at all. Determined to get at the truth, he entered Madders’ mind.

And the truth was roughly as stated. Madders had no connection with the group founded by Wizard Wazo at all. He had done no more than commandeer the empty shell of the order, preserved by writings stored in some dusty archive. Of the order itself, nothing remained. It had failed to maintain itself, had perished, Wizard Wazo’s precious words scattered before the winds as its last adepts turned to dust!

As for Madders himself, he was no magician at all! For all he knew about magic, he might barely have made the grade as a pot-boy in the restaurant here! His knowledge was all cant, useless tittle-tattle picked up here and there, from blathering books, from self-deluding nonentities, from playing-cards, from idle doodles masquerading as cosmic sigils, from the drivellings of, to use a phrase in the current repertoire, senile Jews!!!

And as for his possessing words of power, he could put no more conscious force into any word whatsoever than was enough to induce the waitress yonder to fetch him a cup of tea, and barely that!!!

The words lost! Even for this miserable and unadmired planet, such incompetence was beyond belief. Wizard Wazo surged to his feet. His whole body was shaking, and his face had turned purple.

“WHAT??? Can I trust NO ONE??!! I make the most straightforward of arrangements to preserve my property, and what happens? I return here and am cheated, spurned and insulted, my requirements are completely ignored, and in the end I find that my valuable property has been discarded and lost like dirty old rags!!! WHAT AM I TO MAKE OF IT ALL??!!!”

He kicked over the table, and Arnold Madders fell back in terror as Wizard Wazo’s displeasure exploded across the restaurant. For an instant Madders received a memory flash: the picture of a dynamic Christ throwing the money-changers out of the temple. Wizard Wazo raged, upturning table after table, scattering customers and chairs like chaff, and mouthing a ceaseless stream of vituperation.

Before he could reach the door a tall figure clad in dark blue had entered the restaurant to bar his path. Though Wizard Wazo tried to brush this obstacle aside the policeman skilfully detained him, twisting his arm up behind his back.

“You’ll have to leave, sir.”

“Leave?” Wizard Wazo brayed in the policeman’s grip. “With pleasure! Indeed I will leave!”

Such abominable treatment as he had received here deserved retribution several times more severe than that he had visited upon Nekferus. He quit Earth; but while pausing to direct himself to distant regions, he also created upon that despicable planet, which he wished never to see again, a world ocean, covering all but the tips of the highest mountains. All across the surface of the Earth the human population abruptly found itself placed under water. On streets, on farms, in rooms, in buildings, in ships, in aircraft and even in submarines, four thousand million people stumbled and threshed, gurgled in bewilderment, were unable to draw another breath of air. In buildings people floundered or swam to doors and windows, only to discover that in the street, too, there was nothing but water. Because of the suddenness of the change, which meant at first that the new ocean’s pressure was uniform from top to bottom, no crushing weight was anywhere felt, and some were thus deluded into supposing that only a few feet separated them from fresh air; they struck vainly upwards, for a surface that was too, too far overhead.

Most, however, lacked the presence of mind to do anything. Children died first, squirming and kicking, watched by agonised parents who were themselves to live for only tens of seconds longer. In minutes it was all over. Henceforth only marine creatures would swarm in the shells of civilisation, oblivious of harm, picking mammalian bones on the floor of the galaxy’s newest panthalassa.