“Or to remove the disabilities,” said Hodge. “The difficulty with any power we don’t really know about is not to define the power itself, but to discover its limitations. If witchcraft were really practical, there would be some fairly severe penalties going with it, not legally I mean, but personally, as a result of the practice. Or to put the thing in your terms, McCall, if there weren’t any drawbacks, being a witch would have such high selection value that before long every female alive would be a practicing witch.” McCall carefully poured more port. “Hodge,” he said, “you’re wonderful, and I love you. But that’s typical of the way you put things. You cover up a weak point by following it with one that attracts everyone’s attention away from the feebleness of your real case. Penalties for everything? What’s the penalty for having an electric icebox?” “A pampered digestive system,” said Hodge, readily. “I doubt whether you could survive the food Queen Elizabeth ate for very long, but she lived to be well over sixty. If there were witchcraft, or ESP or telepathy running around in the world, there couldn’t but be defenses against it and troubles for the practitioners. Had it occurred to you that even a witch couldn’t spend all her time stirring cauldrons, and might want to lead a normal life, with a husband and children?” Penfield got up and stepped to the window, where he stood looking out and down at the midnight Atlantic, throwing its surges against the breast of the rocks. “I wonder if it really does exist,” he said. Hodge laughed; but that night all three men dreamed: and it was as though a filament ran through the ancient rooms; for each knew that he dreamed, and dreamed the same dream as the others; and from time to time tried to cry out to them, but could only see and hear. 1 NETZNEGON CITY: MARCH RAIN It was raining steadily outside. The older woman’s tears and words fell in time, drip, drip. Cold, for the tall window at the room’s end would never quite shut close, bottom and top not nest into the frame simultaneously. Lalette in her soutane felt goose-pimples and tried to shut out the sound by thinking of a man with a green hat who would give her a handful of gold scudi and nothing asked, merely because it was spring and she put a small spell on him with a smile, but it was not quite spring, and the voice persisted: “. . . all my life—I have hoped—hoped and planned for you—even before you were born—even before you were born—daughter of my own—” (Yes, thought Lalette, I have heard that before, and it would move me more, but the night you drank the wine with Dame Carabobo, you told her how I was the product of a chance union in a carriage between Rushaca and Zenss) “—daughter—and after I saved and worked so hard—you miss the only chance—the only chance—don’t know what I’m going to do—and Count Cleudi’s not like most—”