by Greg Bear
“Curse you, foul creatures! Why do you torment me?” But though the words were angry, the tone seemed strangely weary, even resigned, like a woman with a size nine foot trying yet again to fit into a size seven pump.
“It’s coming from over there, Quitpoke,” Pogo told the dwarf.
“I don’t ask much,” said the little bearded man, just as resigned and despairing as the mystery voice. “Just that you use my correct name. Once, anyway. Once would be nice . . . ”
The climb was not an easy one, even on giant-back. “Oh, grand,” called Orrilo’s head from inside the sack. “Bump, bump, bump. Are you sure you can’t jounce me around a little more? Maybe you could drop me and kick me like a football.”
“Don’t you ever stop talking?” asked Pogo.
“I might if I had something else to do. In fact, I’ve been told I’m actually a very good listener. But for some reason, I don’t seem able to, I don’t know, play a game or dance or whittle or do pretty much anything else to entertain myself. Now why is that? Oh, right—because you let your pet ogre eat my body!”
“Pet ogre?” rumbled Caligorant. “Me not pet. Me prisoner of war.”
They rounded a bend in the hilltop path and now Pogo could make out a spot in the ruins where an entire section of wall had fallen away, revealing the shell of some mighty hall. It was around this crumbling structure that the harpies whirled. A pale figure cringed in a tiny alcove, partially sheltered from their attack but not from the abuse the flying creatures hurled at him—and not just abuse: the harpies also sprayed their own filth everywhere as they flew. The rocks all around were streaked with the stuff, and the buzzing of flies seemed almost as loud as the shrieks of the old man and his tormentors. They might look very much like angry old ladies, but Pogo now knew for a fact that harpies did not wear adult diapers.
“Man, that guy is screwed,” he said.
“That’s Prester John!” Quidprobe looked worried. “You have to save him!”
“Why? I didn’t put him there.”
“It’s just how it works—quests, heroes. Don’t you ever read?”
“Sometimes. Magazines and shit.”
“Me want rest,” said Caligorant. “Me tired and hungry.”
An idea came to Pogo. “Could you eat those harpies?”
The giant made a face. “Me not eat. Taste like poopoo. Meat dry like twigs.”
“Well,” said Orillo’s head from inside the sack, “I suppose I should be relieved that my poor body was consumed by such an epicure. I mean, I wouldn’t want to be eaten by someone who’d devour just anything . . . ”
Caligorant swiveled his head like a tank turret to look back at Pogo. “Me eat talking head now? Stop head talking?”
“We must save Prester John,” said the dwarf.
Pogo frowned, trying to imagine a scenario in which he might go running through a downburst of little-old-batwing-lady crap and not being able to manage it, but even as he stared the harpies suddenly rose up into the air in a single coherent swarm, wheeled once more above the ruins, and then flew off, shrieking and cackling.
“Now!” The dwarf smacked him on the arm. “Go now!”
Pogo sighed and gave the giant a thump of his heels, setting him lumbering across the open area toward the ruined walls and the weeping, white-bearded figure that the dwarf had named Presto John.
“Dude, I totally don’t get this,” Pogo said as he helped the quivering, sightless man into the shelter of one of the crumbling chambers. “Why are those crazy bat-ladies out to get you?”
Presto John had been tall—you could tell he’d been a big guy once, like a football player or something—but his troubles had bent him until he looked almost like a question mark. His beard was long and fouled by stuff Pogo didn’t want to think about too much. Just being next to him would have been an issue, except the whole place already stank of harpy-shit.
“I was vainglorious,” the old man said. “I imagined myself as king of not only fair Ethiop, but of the earthly Paradise as well, where once Adam and his consort Eve did dwell.”
“What’s this old blind guy supposed to do for us?” Pogo whispered to the dwarf. “Is he a magician or something?” He figured with a name like Presto the guy must do some tricks. “I don’t mean to be a dick or anything, but he can’t even wash his beard.”
“If you save him, he’ll do a favor for Roland’s allies,” the dwarf whispered back. “That’s all you need to know, really.”
“I can hear you, bold paladin. My ears have not failed, only my orbs of vision,” John said sadly. “And yes, I would gladly give you all that was in my power to give, were I free. But here I remain until someone can rescue me from these ghastly creatures, who delight only in my punishment.” He shook his head. “Not only do they steal and foul my food so that I am always near starvation, they talk to me incessantly—as if a pious Christian man like me would ever bandy words with such demons of darkness!”
“Talk to you? About what?”
“Did you hear me not, Sir Knight? I said I do not bandy words with Satan’s underlings. They would doubtless wish me to listen to their complaints—a rare irony!—for they claim they are bored by the very task of tormenting me. Would that I had my sight and my sword—then would I give them a challenge they would never forget . . . !” For a moment, the ancient man tried to draw himself up to his once-impressive height, but it was too painful and he curled in on himself again in despair. “But perhaps you, good Sir Knight—for I hear by your voice that you are a bold and doughty man—perhaps you could punish them and quiet their endless taunting and shrieking.”
Pogo did not answer, and not just because there was no way in hell he was going to get in a fight with a bunch of magical flying crap-flingers. He was thinking, and although it was not something he did very much, he was busy at it now. The bony faces of the harpies had reminded him of a certain kind of senior citizen customer that always drove him crazy—the kind that just couldn’t be satisfied, that always had one more question, one more stupid little complaint. But more important, now he was also remembering Dooley, the roving assistant manager from the Pasadena branch of Kirby Shoes who had been sent in by the main office to help when Fernando and Little Ed had both been out sick for a few days. Dooley had been a genius at dealing with old biddies, listening to them as if their confused questions and complaints actually made sense, letting them take all day to make a decision on a lousy pair of $7.99 slippers. Instead of trying to hurry them into buying or leaving, which is what Pogo and his coworkers had always done, Dooley would just gather several of the oldest customers together in one part of the store where he could chat with and flatter them all at the same time, saving time and steps. Turned out most of them were lonely and just wanted something to do, which is why they were in the mall in the first place, but if a young man in a suit and tie listened to them attentively they’d actually buy things. Dooley booked a surprising amount of sales just from such crabby, unlikely customers, and Pogo had never forgotten it.
His thoughts were interrupted by a squeak from the dwarf. “They’re coming back! I can hear them!”
“They never give me rest,” Prester John said sadly. “Truly, I am cursed for my damnable pride . . . ”
Pogo reached into the saddlebag and pulled Orillo’s head out by the hair. It blinked in the sunlight. “’Zounds! You could give a fellow some warning,” the head complained.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” Pogo told him. “I’m going to toss you up there where the harpies are. I don’t know whether they’ll eat you, crap on you, or just drop you twenty or thirty times from really high up. Maybe they’ll do all of that.” He considered for a moment. “Although not necessarily in that exact order . . . ”
“What?” The bandit’s handsome face contorted in dismay. “You would murder me in cold blood?”
Pogo did feel a little bad about it, but Orrilo had been planning to carve him up too, just like he did everyone else who passed by. “Look, le
t’s face it,” Pogo told the head, “I’m not going to carry you around with me for the rest of my life. But I’ll bet those harpies would love someone to talk to. So if you just make some chitchat with them, act real sweet and listen real good, they probably won’t kill you. Hell, they might even be nice to you.” He remembered some of the senior customers and suppressed a shudder. “Y’know, like give you hard candy with bits of Kleenex stuck to it. Show you pictures of their fat grandkids. Stuff like that.”
“They’re right above us!” the dwarf shouted. “We have to get to some shelter . . . !”
But Pogo had other plans. He waited until the first few harpies had swished past over their heads, shrieking and cursing and spattering the nearby stones with things too disgusting to think about, let alone describe, then he took Orrilo’s head and spun it around by the hair like an Olympic hammer (which made the head yell some interesting French swear words), then threw it straight up in the air. One of the harpies turned in mid-air and snatched it in her claws like an eagle taking . . . whatever eagles took. Some other kind of bird. Except instead of a bird, this was a head that was still screaming as she carried it higher up in the air.
“Don’t hurt me!” Orrilo’s head shouted as it disappeared. “Some of my best friends are harpish . . . !”
Even as the giant left the ruins and clumped down the hillside, Quidprobe couldn’t quite figure out what had just happened. “But . . . why did the harpies just . . . leave?”
“They just wanted someone to talk to,” said the Pogocashman with an air of satisfaction. “Like those old guys you meet waiting for a bus. They probably won’t even remember ol’ Presto here,” he indicated the blind man clutching the giant’s shoulder nervously, “until they’ve told the head the same stories about their operations and stuff about ninety times.”
“You have saved me, brave Astolfo,” quavered the old man. “Bring me down the mountain and I will take my armies to war against wicked Agramant.” John let out a dry chuckle—he was definitely perking up. “That foul Saracen dog will not enjoy besieging Paris when he learns I am burning his castles here at home!”
Quidprobe could only shake his head. The Pogocashman was proving to be more resourceful than he’d expected, but the odds were still running very high that the organic creature’s dumb luck could not last, and that in the end they would be just as completely and hideously doomed as Quidprobe had always feared. Still, it was a pleasant surprise to be out in the sunshine and away from the harpies, even if he was still forced to ride a stinking giant beside an old man who was not particularly clean, either.
“So what’s next, little dude?” the Pogocashman asked. “We’ll drop Mr. John at the nearest town, then fly to the moon, right? With some guy named Griff the Hippo?”
Quidprobe shook his head. “I doubt the hippogriff will be available to us, since we no longer have a horse to trade for it. The fair Bradamant will not wish to ride into battle on a steed as stenchful and unpleasant as this ogre.”
“Me can hear you,” rumbled Caligorant from immediately beneath Quidprobe’s dwarfish bottom. “Me find that hurtful.”
It took them several days to find their way across the wilds of Ethiopia—or at least this imaginary version of Ethiopia—to the mountain atop which Quidprobe believed they would find the Earthly Paradise. He could only hope he was right, since this particular location had never been written into Anderson’s original work, and only faintly implied by its connection to the rest of the Matter of France, but hoping and guessing was all the sub-sub-manager had been doing since he’d been thrust into this ruptured story, anyway.
The Pogocashman, buoyed by his victories, spent much of the journey explaining to Quidprobe how he had been inspired by tracts like The Sales Pyramid or Think Accessories to “Add” Value. Somehow the whole of his philosophy seemed to come down to telling people, “I have a handbag for you that would go great with those”—an eldritch phrase of indubitable power, at least according to the Pogocashman. Quidprobe could only shrug—that was one thing that having shoulders was good for, anyway—and hope their luck would continue to hold, although he thought it unlikely. For one thing, the saints that inhabited the Earthly Paradise were likely to be a fearfully rules-oriented bunch, and he suspected they weren’t going to like the Pogocashman’s rather freewheeling approach to the Matter of France.
His retail philosophies finally exhausted, the Pogocashman was now engaged in his newest pastime, spitting for distance and accuracy from the summit of the giant’s shoulders, each expectoration accompanied by the odd, ritualistic chant, “Got you again, Vader!” It was hard to believe the Pogocashman was a genuine bull organic, his sperm coveted by all the females of his species, but there had to be evolutionary subtleties that Quidprobe could not grasp. He was beginning to think that for all his years studying them in preparation for his job, he would never really understand non-symbolic life forms.
Another trudge up another long hill, the giant moaning and grumbling all the way—“Caligorant want to lie down.” “Caligorant foot hurt.” “Me hungry again.” It was worse than working a lonely Sunday shift with Little Ed, who had the conversational skills of a snappish dog.
“So, what’s up this mountain, anyway?” Pogo asked Quidprobe.
“I told you,” the dwarf said. “It’s the Earthly Paradise. It used to be the Garden of Eden.”
“So,” Pogo said hopefully, “like a restaurant or something?”
The little man sighed. He did that a lot. Pogo was beginning to suspect the dwarf had asthma, like Little Ed. Or at least like Little Ed claimed he had: Pogo thought it was funny how Little Ed only had asthma attacks when it was time to clean the lavatory. “Not anything like a restaurant,” the dwarf explained. “It’s where the saints live. Is knowing that not part of your human religious rituals?”
“Don’t know.” The closest Pogo had ever come to church as a kid was when his electrician father had installed a forty-watt light bulb in a manger for the local church’s Nativity Play. The bulb had been Baby Jesus. When the play was over, Pogo’s dad had brought it home. “Here,” he had told Pogo. “Go bury this in the backyard and see if it comes back to life in three days.” His dad had moved out a few weeks later and Pogo had never asked him exactly what he had meant.
As they climbed, Pogo couldn’t help noticing that the foliage was growing more lush, the sights more lovely, and even the smells more pleasant. Grass as green as AstroTurf grew everywhere, and bright flowers pushed their way up between the stems, colorful as an Easter sales display. The bees were big as sparrows but mellow as old hippies, and the sun shone warmly everywhere but the cool, inviting shade beneath the majestic trees growing beside the track.
“Wow,” Pogo said, paying his highest compliment to natural beauty. “Somebody ought to build vacation condos here and start a time-share business. They would totally clean up.”
When they reached the summit of the hill, they discovered a grassy plain of a grandeur that matched the approach, and at the center of it a vast palace that looked to be carved from a single ruby.
“Behold,” the dwarf said. “The Earthly Paradise.”
“Wow,” said Pogo. “That’s bitchin’!”
“Me hungry again,” said the giant.
As they grew closer the palace became no less amazing, sunlight glinting from every angle and facet so that the castle sat in a sparkling red glow. As they reached the palace’s tall gate, it slowly rose to reveal a white-bearded man who looked to Pogo like nothing so much as a skinny Santa Claus. The man greeted them warmly, although he did seem a bit taken aback by Caligorant.
“Come,” he said. “Enter and make yourselves welcome, travelers. Refresh yourselves. Your . . . steed . . . will be seen to as well. What would you eat and drink? The Lord’s bounty is such we can give you whatever your heart desires.”
“Little fat women,” said the giant promptly. “But young. Me like them crunchy, not chewy.”
The bearded man suppressed a s
hudder. “Perhaps we can find a suckling pig or two for your mount,” he told Pogo. “So few of our guests eat pork, anyway. It’s a desert-tribe thing.”
“You are the holy Evangelist, aren’t you?” asked Quidprobe, who was trying to brush his tangled whiskers into a more respectable shape. “John the Baptist, as some call you?”
Pogo had thought John the Baptist was some kind of southern university, but the man nodded. “It is true: I am he that trumpeted the coming of our Savior. And now that you have come to us, pious Astolfo,” he said, this time talking to Pogo, “the saints and I will try to help you accomplish your quest, for your liege Charlemagne is dear to us, and his kingdom the bulwark of Christendom against both the Saracen and the treacherous fairies.”
Pogo had walked past a club in Hollywood once and a very tall woman had tried to get him to come inside. He’d almost gone in, too, until he’d got close enough to see the woman’s five-o’clock shadow. Pogo Cashman might not know what Saracens were, but he knew all about treacherous fairies.
The saints came out to meet them—not marching in, as Pogo had hoped, but walking like normal people. Still, they seemed nice, if a trifle on the quiet side, and the food they laid out on the long table in their splendid dining room, although a plain meal of butter, bread, honey, and some kind of vegetable soup that didn’t even have alphabet noodles in it, was as tasty as anything Pogo had encountered for a long time. Thus, when they showed him and Quidprobe to a clean, warm room with two beds, Pogo was ready to drop immediately, but the dwarf seemed determined to talk. “They’ll want to make certain you’re a shriven and holy knight before they help you get to the moon,” the dwarf said, clearly worried. “Saints are supposed to be big on things like that.”