Spaceling

by Piserchia, Doris

  As quietly and as carefully as I had ever done anything in my life I backed through the yellow circle behind me, found my old familiar Earth pretty much as I had left it. What an incredible thing it was to realize that a few arm lengths away, Tedwar hung between two halves of an expiring world which was millions of light years away in the sky.

  My impulse was to immediately bolt but I knew better, raised my hand in a wave and grinned at Pat and Mike who were still staring in amazement at the blank space where I had gone in and come out again. Nonchalantly I walked away with them following, went inside Mutat, took an el to the thirtieth floor, entered my apartment and gently shut the door in their faces. They knew I was going out a window. I could hear them racing down the hall to try to head me off but I slipped back out the door and ran the other way. Easing open a window at the far side of the building, I called a blue ring to me and dropped into Gothland.

  12

  Bandit wouldn’t go through the ring. I knew by the way he shied that he could see it. Whether he became a winged creature or a slithering horror in D, I had to try and get him to Tedwar, but he had always been a balky beast and now he dumped me every time I galloped him toward the big brown circle.

  “That’s a diseased looking object and I’d never go near it,” Olger said of the ring. She had never traveled in her life and didn’t plan to because dimensional doorways refused to allow her to penetrate them. “Like a brick wall,” she had told me. “At first they feel as if they’re ready to let me in but then all of a sudden that wall is there. I think it’s because I have something wrong with my head. They don’t know how to handle me.”

  “As if they know so much,” I said.

  “One thing they’re bound to know is a human being since they have to contend with them all the time. I have a feeling about them and me and I can’t be convinced otherwise. I was dropped as a child and a part of my brain died. That part is necessary for the rings to do their job, so they won’t let me in.”

  “I have to get this horse through.”

  “You aren’t perfect. When will you learn your limitations?”

  “You didn’t see Tedwar stuck up in the air like I did.”

  “It wouldn’t have mattered if I had since I couldn’t do anything for him. You’re like a doctor trying to breathe life into a corpse. How long has he been there? Four days? He’s probably starved or dead of thirst.”

  “Help me,” I said.

  “Put some stained glasses on that animal so he can’t tell one color from another and flip them off his eyes just as you jump for the ring. What do you want me to do with your property when you don’t come back?”

  “My will is in my bureau. I left everything to you.”

  It took me all day to buy the material, fashion dark glasses and get Bandit accustomed enough to them to run with them looped across his eyes. He hated every second that he wore them and so did I. We ate up the fields racing back and forth, with him dumping me every so often and me getting up more slowly each time, but finally I had him where I wanted him and away we went after a crumpled brown ring a quarter of a kilometer away. Partially sideways to us, the thing limped along like a deflated tire, made practically no headway as a nearly blind horse and a girl scared half to death bore down on it.

  It was just as well that I couldn’t see the ring too clearly. In fact I don’t think the mission could have been accomplished any more successfully had all the circumstances been perfect.

  At the last moment I reined Bandit onto a parallel course with the ring, kept edging him into a slight angle more directly toward it and just about the time he began to get mad and dropped his head in order to dump me, I gave him a heel order to leap sideways. At the same time I yanked on the cord that hauled the glasses off him. His head went up as the brown color flashed before his eyes. He immediately made ready to flop flat on his belly and to Hades with the rider on his back. His reaction came too late and we quickly went into D.

  Why I had bothered to put a strong bit on him I didn’t know but I must have figured it couldn’t hurt to consider every possibility. There was always the chance it wouldn’t mutate. I wasn’t in the habit of guessing right most of the time and that instance was no exception, a situation I readily acknowledged as the bit and bridle fell away into the wide-open abyss between the two shards of rock that made up the brown dimension.

  My anxiety wasn’t for Tedwar as I crossed over from home to the alien land. If he was still alive he was alive and that would be fine, but what about my horse? During those few moments I realized how reckless I had been to accept Gorwyn’s mutterings as fact Who besides that eccentric had ever told me D turned horses into flying steeds?

  I was fortunate and the incredible occurred. Bandit didn’t change his size much which made me wonder how much extra effort the doorway had been forced to expend in order to help him survive. It didn’t alter me at all just as Tedwar remained unchanged both in form, position and physical condition. However I wasn’t considering his mental state then and in fact wouldn’t have thought it significant if I had. My horse was what commanded my attention.

  He had always been a handsome dark bay, round of rump, long of body and straight of legs and all those parts remained the same, but my knees were shunted farther back on him as two fat, feathery wings appeared low on his withers. They were great silken appendages that allowed him to zoom through space like a trapeze artist His head was slightly different, looked longer and narrower while his eyes grew smaller. Other than this he was the same Bandit with an obvious delight in his new self and his new surroundings. I wondered what would happen to me if he dumped me now.

  Up and up we flew with me hanging onto his mane and feeling the power of his wings against my legs, wondering if he realized all that had happened and also hoping he would eventually obey my commands.

  For a while he did exactly as he pleased and simply soared through space of which there was plenty in the dying world while at the same time I vainly tried to guide him back to Tedwar.

  The atmosphere thinned, the light became fainter, space about us seemed to wobble yet we cavorted and spun and eternity waited for my brute companion to begin thinking intelligently. I believe he did toward the end when the planet about us gave notice that it was about to expire. Whatever energy source enabled us to exist had to have a relationship with the yellow ring whose counterpart on Earth already sagged in exhaustion.

  Reality grew darker around us and I began yelling and kicking harder. My eyes never left the yellow ring and I sensed before I actually saw its shape drastically alter. It withered like a vine in the sun, started to shrink inward upon itself, warned me that the same thing was happening to the dimension. An explosion or an implosion was about to take place and there was no more time left.

  Tedwar suddenly fell as the energy holding him in place faltered. He plummeted between the escarpments, dropped like a stone just as Bandit heeded my urgings and went after him. A slight flutter of wings was sufficient to drive us below the hurtling body and we gauged it just right so that he landed solidly in my lap. Intense heat was generated as the foundations of the mountains split and began their endless journey through the infinity of outer space. Bandit’s great wings flapped, faltered, flapped again as he gave a panicked whinny. Up, up against heavy pressure he flew while broken rock pitched, heaved and exploded around and below us. Through a narrow passageway of clear space he clawed his way with wing and hoof battling the invisible adversary of inertia.

  There suddenly wasn’t enough air to breathe. Leaning across Tedwar’s limp body, I hugged my horse’s neck and asked him to do the impossible. With a shuddering gasp he let loose with a rapid flapping of his wings that lifted us past tumbling debris and carried us to the raw yellow wound that was rapidly closing.

  I don’t know how we got through that miserable hole. It seemed too low and not nearly wide enough while the four comers tried to fall in on each other until there was nothing but an irregular gash leading to safety. We saved our
selves with hope and the stamina of desperation. Like a diver going into a wave, Bandit gave a final thrust with his wings and then stiffened out with his front legs pointed forward, his head down and his body and back legs as straight and sleek as he could possibly make them. Meanwhile I had my own head ducked and my right leg clasped over Tedwar’s legs to make him fit tightly against Bandit’s side.

  The cold of outer space touched us as we skinned through that shrinking hole. It reached for us and sought to claim us while our impetus shoved us across the last and final meter. We pitched onto the field of my farm, two damaged human beings and a horse who was enraged because he had lost something of beauty and power. Bandit dumped his double burden and galloped away.

  I sat up and rolled Tedwar over, expecting him to be his normal, repulsive self, perhaps a little the worse for wear and possibly in a grim mood, but no sooner did I touch him than he leaped into a crouching stance to face me. He was totally gone in insanity. His mouth was slack, his skin was a dirty gray and his normally sparkling eyes were like gunmetal, opaque and unyielding. Perching on his heels and glaring at me for a couple of seconds, he let out a screech and fell on me. He outweighed me by too much so I couldn’t get away from him, particularly after he got me around the throat with his crazy hands.

  I couldn’t believe it because I didn’t want to believe it. There was no one around to help me. Olger was the only person for miles around but she couldn’t be alerted to come out of the house and help me unless I was able to make some sounds, which I wasn’t. The evening sky was beginning to open up over me as a more intense blackness descended upon my head. It was like going under a needle, like being beaned with a loaded sock. One moment I was alive and well and rather pleased with myself and in the next my soul prepared to follow my lost memory into the limbo of extinction.

  A redskin named Lamana saved me by lassoing Tedwar about the neck with a length of garden hose and hauling him off. Later she told me he was practically foaming at the mouth, especially after she anchored him to the water tub in the paddock. She wrote her name on a pad and when I squeaked it out she shook her head and said the accent was on the first syllable and the first “a” was long.

  While I languished in bed and refused Olger s cooking, Lamana performed a few services for me such as standing by while the law slipped a white jacket onto Tedwar and took him away, such as trying to get in touch with Gorwyn and such as taking over my care as if she had received a personal request. “He’s gone,” she said, meaning Gorwyn. “Some say he was kidnaped, others that he fled willingly, but the woman now in charge of the school informs everyone he went on extended leave.”

  She went to Stillwell, Maine, to see if the cousin of Orfia’s childhood acquaintance, Carston, had come back from vacationing in California. Not yet.

  Why did Solvo insert her into my life? I suspected it was because he either didn’t trust me or didn’t know exactly where I fit into the picture, not that he was familiar with all the picture. I couldn’t slight him for ignorance since it was one of my own flaws. Whether I liked it or not, Lamana was going to do her job which seemed to be to hang around me and see what I did. She had a thick skin so that when I suggested she get lost she merely smiled in mocking fashion and pretended to be absorbed in some task or project. Who was Solvo? Only a policeman?

  “He knew about the pipe before I ever walked into his office,” I said when I was able. “And don’t cloud the issue by asking me how I know he knew. That’s why he sent you after me. I’m probably the only good lead he has. He just sits in that cop station as a decoration. He’s a government man too, isn’t he?”

  “Too?” she said.

  “I know a couple of others. Or I used to.”

  13

  The Indian led me through D. She didn’t even bother to look back at me so the outlandish shapes I assumed remained my secret. We moved so fast toward the end of our journey that I couldn’t say what color rings we penetrated or what dimension we finally landed in.

  Eventually I came to the conclusion that the place was Earth but what was the difference when it looked more alien than any place I had ever been? We were on a red butte that looked down on flat prairie so far away nothing moved or stirred on its surface. The boiling sun peered over the morning horizon like a sore eye while the wind snored like a drunk as it worked its way through trees and scorched brush. In every direction the world was burned and awesome, scarlet and fierce, drugged with loneliness and neglect “Who needs D with this around?” said Lamana as she stood on the edge of a cliff and grinned at the sun. “When I was little I wouldn’t ring travel and screamed at the top of my lungs every time somebody tried to get me near one. My mother brought me up here on my eighth birthday. In her opinion the first and best ring travelers were Indians. She left me here and told me not to come home unless I did it by stepping out of D directly in front of our house. I was up here six months.”

  Lamana showed me where to find water, what roots, herbs and fruits were edible and then she startled me by waving goodbye and walking away. All that night I waited for her to return but she didn’t and by morning I realized I had become the subject of some Indian experimenting or something.

  The sun almost became a person to me during those days, a domineering parent who never let me out of sight except at night when his companion, the gurgling wind, took over. There was a therapeutic feature on the butte which I never positively identified other than to suspect that it might be the total isolation of the place. I had food, water, sun, wind, my thoughts and a disinclination to do anything but loiter on unbelievably high ledges and stare at the scenery.

  It took me a week to climb down to the second line of bluffs where I found more of the same emptiness. It was a spot where only the past existed, the present not really being used yet. Nothing so hollow could be real.

  I woke up one night when the wind was unusually feeble, disturbed by rustling sounds and a smell that was bad enough to gag me, but sleep quickly captured me again and subdued the memory until the next afternoon. Going back to the place where I had made my bed, I inspected rocks and ledges for marks or prints and found a few spots where outflung brush seemed to have been broken by the passage of something.

  Not until I saw the lummox did I actually believe she existed. The time I had spent on the mountain seemed to have wiped away nearly all of reality but myself. I alone had inherited the earth. The only thing that threatened to burst my dream bubble was the plane diving out of the blue one day, a small, fancy machine that buzzed the mountain once and then tore away over the prairie to disappear. It didn’t return.

  I was walking one evening down a rocky path hitherto untested by my bare feet except that I knew that one of the few patches of woods happened to be situated somewhere ahead and slightly below me. I was downwind at the time so the smell of the intruder reached me well before my first glimpse of her.

  Rounding a bend in the path I came to a shocked halt and stood riveted for a moment before shying to the left and concealing myself behind a boulder. After my breathing slowed I cautiously climbed upward to a point from which I could look down on a ledge almost directly ahead while the woods loomed to my right.

  She must have been three and a half meters in height, weighing about two hundred kilos with a dark, furry hide and a shape somewhat like a bear though she walked erect and was obviously intelligent. When she finally stood and turned to give me a view of her face I saw it was covered with hair. Her two mammaries were large and round. She had hands and feet that were like my own except for their size.

  She sat watching the setting sun, an alien out of place and out of time for I instantly realized she didn’t belong in my world. Once my initial shock passed, my attention was drawn to the woods and the sickly greenish-yellow light emanating from it. There was a large, ill-colored ring just inside the entrance of trees and I guessed the creature on the ledge had traveled from the forbidden world within its perimeter.

  The stench coming from the alien was power
ful and almost strong enough to drive me away but my curiosity held me fast in the rocks where I waited until the sun plunged out of sight like a falling star. I heard what sounded like a sigh coming from the creature whereupon she slowly climbed erect, turned and walked toward me. My heart froze as the thought came to me that she had smelled me and was coming to dispose of me. In that I was wrong because nobody who smelled as badly as she could sniff anything but the most overwhelming of odors. Lumbering past my place of concealment, she picked her way along the path to the right, entered the woods and walked through the ill-shaded, ill-shaped ring.

  Gradually I became engrossed in the lummox, as I called her, and just as gradually she became engrossed in me. I would awaken at night with the full moon splashing light on her hairy face as she stood over me and watched me sleep. I could have sworn she knew how much her smell offended me for she always hurried away when she saw me looking at her. In the evenings she sat on that same ledge below and watched the sun go down.

  There was no way off the mountain except by climbing down to the sterile wasteland or by traveling through the world of the lummox. Many times I stood before the round opening and considered at least taking a glance into it but turned away at the thought of a planet that had spawned the huge, shy, ugly, stinking lummox. Sometimes the ring moved off or went completely away but six days out of seven it could be found somewhere near the same spot.

  Every day the sky was a blazing furnace with not a single ring to be seen anywhere which seemed to me an odd situation since Earth had plenty of dimensional doorways floating on the wind like pollen. Still, there weren’t any near enough to my mountain for me to see let alone to call to me so I languished in indecision while time passed. My neuroses and my anxieties faded into obscurity as my interest in the lummox came into being, and of course that was why Lamana had brought me there in the first place. She herself had been stranded on the mountain and she certainly had also become acquainted with the creature from the other world. Just as certainly she had traveled home via that alien dimension which meant she possessed more courage at the age of eight than I at fifteen, sixteen or whatever I was.