Spaceling

by Piserchia, Doris

  It was curiosity that finally led me through the ring in the woods. I had to know why the lummox came onto the mountain to watch my sunset, for it was mine just as was everything else there. The intruder was just that, and she surely realized it for why else did she remain remote and unobtrusive? She took nothing from my dimension, ate no food as far as I could tell, left no debris but merely came to see the sun go down.

  It should have been easy for me to guess why. Once I went through the ring it was all clear. Her world was as objectionable as she, a place where ghosts would have been delirious, where vampires could have flitted with joy, a dank and dark swamp so bereft of light and cheer that not even an alligator would have been proud to call it home. There was nothing in lummoxland but a few creatures, swamps, rotting vegetation and a stench strong enough to knock the nose off an elephant. The first time I went in I took one look around before stumbling backward, gagging and retching.

  Over a dinner of berries I considered that getting home was going to be a tougher proposition than I had anticipated. The lummox found her world so dismal that she came over into mine to experience its sky, sun, wind, flora and occasional human castaway. If she couldn’t tolerate the place, how could I? It was true there had been a number of rings in the swamp area. I would have to give the matter much thought.

  The fact was, my dilemma was no dilemma at all. There were a few things I had to do with my life, some people I needed to reckon with, and there were one or two situations that had to be handled by persons who were better equipped for it than I. Compared to the lummox I had no problems. She came to my world, an offensive and beastlike thing, and remained so without transmutating into something else. Though intelligent, she hadn’t wanted to experiment with all those other rings I had seen, otherwise she wouldn’t need to come onto this mountain to find a little beauty.

  Putting off responsibility was as easy for me to do as anyone, meaning I procrastinated the day of my return to civilization by loafing in my out-of-the-way Eden until my flaccid conscience finally singled me out. I had to go back. The problem of what to do about the lummox was one I had already solved in my mind, so I bestirred myself toward making a slingshot out of a large twig and the elastic in my underwear.

  Lummox didn’t like it when I began blitzing her with hard nuts and stones and she particularly wasn’t fond of it when she got beaned while watching old Sol doing his fancy disappearing act. Knots on her head or no, she endured my sadism well beyond expected limits until at last one evening she gave a scream of pure rancor and came after me.

  Through the ring in the woods I traveled into beastland, after which I slogged through a few dozen meters of smelly swamp toward a quantity of varied colored rings that turned skittish and started to scatter as I approached. My slingshot vanished upon my entry into the dimension so I fished for stones in the muck to hurl at lummox who had already gotten the message and understood she must follow until she caught me.

  Allowing her to get close to me, I called a pinkish ring into my vicinity and dived through, not caring what it turned out to be like but only needing to get away from the stink filling my nostrils. As far as I can recall, that was the first and only time a plan of mine turned out completely right. The pink dimension was more green than anything else, a fine and fertile planet with a blue sky and a big sun that startled the lummox so much she forgot about her determination to tear me to pieces. The last I saw of her that day she was sitting on a hill munching flowers.

  A few years later, after my problems of that period had been taken care of by time and circumstance, I went back through the pink ring to see how things had developed. The place was full of lummoxes who every so often went back to the swamp to remind themselves of how bad it really was. There were no people in the green world to bother the new inhabitants or to be bothered by the ferocious odor they carried with them, nor was there anything to mar their idyllic existence. Feeling as if I had nailed down a corner of the lid on Pandora’s box, I waved goodbye to all the hairy folk and left them forever.

  14

  Tedwar’s doctor assured me that since the boy’s family couldn’t be located he was better off remaining in the hospital. Drugs would keep his mania in check. Without them he was capable of much savagery. It was too bad, but the doctor saw no real hope for recovery. It was that type of malady.

  The spy, mayhem and murder business seemed to have shut down, but not permanently in my opinion. Ectri wasn’t at his farm in Jersey nor was he teaching in Boston or pushing papers or needles in Washington. I didn’t know where he was. Lamana mentioned seeing two blonde twins loitering on the fringes of my property so I went on the hunt for Padarenka and Mikala, without success.

  “Nobody’s home,” said Lamana. We sat on a fence on my farm and watched Bandit graze.

  “Except you,” I said. “What does Solvo expect to learn by your keeping watch on me?”

  “He never tells me anything but only orders me around and hands me a paycheck twice a month.”

  “You work for…”

  “The state of New Mexico, what else?”

  “You work for Solvo and he works for Washington. The state of New Mexico just happens to be growing around him. Why don’t you want to go see the pipes and oil?”

  “It wouldn’t be intelligent,” she said.

  “I knew a man who said he had heard of others besides myself who could call rings. I don’t suppose he could have been talking about you? His name was Croff and he used to be a big man in research.”

  “I personally know of three people like us. They’re members of my family. Tell me again about the lummox. Did she really try to catch you?”

  “I’d rather talk about the plane. I don’t know exactly what day it was, the ninth after you left me I think, but I watched it closely and in my opinion the pilot didn’t mean to buzz the mountain. I believe he was looking for something or someone in particular in the area and was surprised to find it on that rock. He left in a big hurry.”

  “How could anybody know you were out there?”

  “They couldn’t unless you told them.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “By the way,” I said, “if you ever get the time, look up a man named Bud Jupiter. He used to work with rings.”

  “What about him? Has he got anything to do with the pipe?”

  “I don’t know. At this point I’m just idly curious about him.” She soon made the excuse of going into the house for a drink but I guessed she was on her way to tell Solvo about the plane, which suited me fine because I was ready for D myself except that I didn’t head in her direction as I dived into Gothland.

  Across a big rock flush with the ground I laboriously carved one of my supposedly interesting and therapeutic messages: CONCENTRATE ON BEING SMALL. WON’T IT BE NICE TO GO HOME?

  On the wall of the broadest labyrinth I could find I carved: DON’T SPREAD OUT. THINK TINY. THINK HOME.

  My impression was that during Kisko’s more lucid moments he was a normal sized goth, but whenever he slipped into dementia his mass expanded until he was like a great cloud. I had often heard him scream when that happened, an eerie, shattering cry that was broadcast wherever I went. He kept drifting in and out of rings, not all of him or he might have been back home by now, but just parts of him penetrated into other dimensions so that he trailed through reality like gas, a bit here and a bit there.

  It was as if he tried to go home through everywhere.

  I didn’t know if he saw my messages or whether he perceived anything in a rational light, except that he ate the drees I deposited on the ground or left dangling from ledges or secreted in labyrinthine crevices or even dropped beside a rare ring channel.

  I went on the hunt for Gorwyn. Heading for Mutat, I picked up Pat and Mike somewhere along the way, which disturbed me. They shouldn’t be trailing me. They weren’t that good.

  Hopping into Peoria, I hid in the com, watched and crouched for several minutes until they appeared on a flat piece of ground a
good distance away. They turned directly toward my hiding place and fell down behind a slight rise where they tried to wait me out. I moved and so did they, across the cornfield and road into waist-high hay, and I was certain they still hadn’t seen me though they seemed to know exactly where I was. Something new had been added to their repertoire of tricks. Overnight they had become infallible runners.

  Once in a while I was capable of having a good idea and I had one then, called a blue ring to me and disappeared into D long enough to find a yellow entrance onto the street in Kentucky where Croff used to have his apartment. I went into a diner, ordered a soft drink and sat down to wait. The twins were clumsy and not very bright and I wondered how I ever could have thought they were good at the business. Like a pimple and its mirror image they popped onto the street in full view of the diner while at the same time I went out the back door into Waterworld.

  They didn’t follow me there nor did they show up in Gothland when I visited that dimension, but every time I poked my head into normal space on Earth they were Johnnies on the spot with their yellow curls, big blue eyes and the radio somewhere in their pockets. That had to be it and of course I had an instrument in my body that gave off the signal they were following.

  On the bureau in my room at the farm I left messages for Olger and Lamana after which I faded into Gothland with the intention of not coming out until I solved at least some of my problems. Down labyrinths I prowled with a big weight on my mind and a conscience that wouldn’t quit. Kisko should have been taken to a hospital where they might have done something for him but instead I had shoved him into D where he didn’t belong, and now he was worse off than the Flying Dutchman who at least had known what was happening to him.

  Grieving didn’t help but I did it anyway, meanwhile visiting all my old haunts to see if they harbored any cheer. Occasionally I saw Kisko drifting like a cloud that wanted to go partly here and partly there until it was strung out over the landscape in a web shape. I saw him, black and tenuous, trying to gather his forces to stay out of a yawning green ring above an escarpment, but a trailing skirt of fog seemed to be sucked in, or he swooped in, and then the dimensions vied for him by rocking and swaying. It was getting so that he created maelstroms of water and wind almost as powerful as those caused by the pipe propped up by dimensional openings.

  It seemed to me that somehow I picked up a little bit of his shadow, a cloying portion that dogged my footsteps. If I popped into my normal world of Earth, there the shadow lay behind me, or if I swam in Waterworld a dark tag drifted along with me. It was larger in Gothland and more persistent, resting upon me when I paused, swooping beside me as I fled. I recalled that day in Waterworld when the enemy swimming crew nearly caught me by the pipe and surprised me by not seeing me. Maybe Kisko was laying more on me than a shadow.

  DON’T BOTHER TRYING TO PROTECT ME, SAVE YOURSELF, I wrote on the wall of a big labyrinth. Not that I believed he was doing anything other than wildly stabbing in the dark, reaching out to clutch something of substance, but at least it meant he wasn’t dead yet. Of course, he might rupture something within the dimensions if he kept wandering so I would have to do something drastic if the situation didn’t change. What, I didn’t know.

  Nothing was happening in the big pit in Gothland. It appeared the enemy had been security conscious no longer than it took them to build the junction on the pipes and now they didn’t care who looked at it. I could see there were two junctions, the first constructed against the second, and I assumed the instruments and weapons had been moved into the latter. The day I tried to get into the old one and became adrift in the flow of liquid, I had simply undershot the mark. Now I couldn’t get into the section holding the instruments because the doors were welded shut.

  Reasoning that the machines regulated flow and possibly even consistency at this point in the pipe, I gauged my distance and ring color, called one of the spheres drifting along empty passages and gingerly tried stepping into the second junction.

  They were way ahead of me and had set up some kind of reflecting material so that as I traveled through the blue ring I didn’t focus on it long enough but rather glimpsed the yellow side of its inner rim which placed me right back where I started. At first I didn’t realize what happened and tried getting into the housing through several different rings of similar shade. It was like running up against a brick wall. The housing itself, or the metal elbow or junction, possibly was painted with something special though it looked ordinary enough as I crouched in the pit and looked it over. I considered that the inner wall of the cylinder might have received the treatment, whatever it was. No matter, I couldn’t get in. Thinking I might get stuck inside the wall if I persisted in trying to penetrate the mirror-like structure, I gave off and went elsewhere to see if the enemy had made anything else off limits.

  There were kilometers of pipe which meant my investigation would require considerable time so I went home to see how Lamana was doing. Arriving in my room about midnight, I made no noise but went straight to bed.

  “We picked the twins up with no trouble,” she said to me at the breakfast table.

  I marveled at how easily she had inserted herself into the family, as if she’d been asked or as if she’d given a logical explanation or account of her eternal presence. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that if I stepped out of line she would hogtie me and carry me off to Solvo. The problem with that was that I didn’t know where the line was or anything else about it. For all I knew she just liked my company.

  “They aren’t too proficient at dodging tails,” she added.

  “And?” I said.

  “As you anticipated, one of them was in possession of a receiver that picked up a signal coming from you. Very sophisticated.”

  “Where is it now?”

  “In the hands of the law.”

  “Or its pockets. I intended for you to hand it over to me, seeing as how it’s pretty personal.”

  “Unfortunately Solvo didn’t view the situation that way.”

  “So he’s a fascist at heart. What’s his G-man rank?”

  “I could have told you I didn’t even find the twins,” she said. “Where are they?”

  “We let them go.”

  “Track me if that’s how you get your entertainment,” I said. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re as crooked as the rest.”

  Blinking her big black eyes, she said, “Is this the end of a fine friendship?”

  “I wasn’t aware that one had begun, and do you mind leaving one of those pancakes?”

  Not caring who knew where I was going, I made it as tedious as possible for any tails by taking a train to Mutat, getting off in town and walking. It occurred to me that anyone following me wouldn’t necessarily suffer as much as I because as soon as they realized where I was headed they could simply ring travel on to the school. But they couldn’t be sure that wasn’t exactly what I wanted them to do.

  It wasn’t important. Upon my arrival at Mutat I went about the business of locating Gorwyn. Sorry, no forwarding address. Maybe Tedwar’s hospital could tell me something. I knew they couldn’t because I had already inquired there. As for Gorwyn’s equipment in the lab, the new director said she stored it for a while and later gave it to those attractive twins to dispose of at auction. Then they ran off with the money and she was left with practically nobody to go after truants, which reminded her that I belonged on the thirtieth floor and not loose on the economy.

  I didn’t think much of the security in the school, especially after I was snatched out of one of the hallways in broad daylight. I was busy making plans in my head about how I could track down Gorwyn and see if he was in any trouble, visit Tedwar, even see if I could locate Wheaty, find out where Ectri was holed up, take a stab at trying to determine whether or not Solvo and Lamana were honest law or corrupt—there were a dozen things I intended to do after I picked up the few odds and ends left in my room.

  They weren’t waiting for me in my quarters which was j
ust as well for I wouldn’t have entered on a bet once I saw how the doorknob had been plucked from its hole like a bottle top twisted off. One look and I was promptly pessimistic because I could recollect but one acquaintance who handled objects so carelessly.

  Her favorite frock was red-flowered, sleeveless, knee-length and thin, blossoming around her tree trunk legs as she came down the hall after me. She had little brown eyes, a small nose and mouth, short brown hair and enough muscles to handle anyone thoughtless enough to disagree with her, and though she sounded like a tank as she ran, she covered space quickly so that she had me backed into a dead-end comer before I could think to try one of the nearby doors.

  Obviously not just Padarenka and Mikala had owned a radio set that tuned in on my whereabouts, or else my question about Solvo’s honesty was now being answered. Of all the people who might want me for no good purpose, I would have preferred any but the cow who bounded toward me and picked me up by the neck.

  “Stinking flea,” she said. Her physical exertion had caused her to work up a lather and she stank like a goat. One of her problems was that she didn’t know her own strength so that I nearly strangled as she slammed me against the wall and held me there while she told me what a pain I was and how if she had her rathers she wouldn’t lay an eye on me let alone a hand.

  From the comer of my eye I saw two men coming down the hall and wasted time hoping they were friends of mine, but they were with Erma and it looked as if I was going to be kidnaped. She didn’t bother gagging me, just jammed my face against her bosom and held me that way while we took an el to the ground floor. If there were guards on duty, it remained a mystery to me. My guess was that they had been bribed or bruised, but either way didn’t help me.