Slow Dancing Through Time

by Gardner R. Dozois

“Feh,” sneered the cat. “Potato chips I didn’t want. What I wanted was a piece of your sandwich, Mister Inconsiderate.”

  “Listen, aggravation I don’t need from you. Don’t make such a big deal—it’s only a tuna fish sandwich. So who cares!”

  “So who cares?” the cat spat. “So I care, that’s who. Listen, it’s not just the sandwich. It’s everything! It’s your attitude.”

  “Don’t talk to me about my attitude—”

  “Somebody should. You think you’re so hot. Mister Big Deal! The big-time Wizard!” The cat sneered at him. “Hah! You need me more than I need you, believe me, Mister Oh-I’m-So-Wonderful!”

  “Don’t make me laugh,” the wizard said.

  “You couldn’t get along without me, and you know it!”

  “I’m laughing,” the wizard said. “It’s such a funny joke you’re making, look at me, I’m laughing. Hah. Hah. Hah.”

  The cat fluffed itself up, enraged. “Without me, you couldn’t even get through the day. What an ingrate! You refuse to admit just how much you really need me. Why, without me, you couldn’t even—” The cat paused, casting about for an example, and his gaze fell on the check. “Without me, you couldn’t even pay the check.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. Even something as simple as that, you couldn’t do it by yourself. You couldn’t handle it.”

  “Sure I could. Don’t get too big for your britches. Stuff like this I was handling before you were even weaned, bubbie, let alone housebroken. So don’t puff yourself up.”

  The cat sneered at him again. “Okay, so go ahead! Show me! Do it!”

  “Do what?” said the wizard, after a pause, a trace of uneasiness coming into his voice.

  “Pay the check. Take care of it yourself.”

  “All right,” the wizard said. “All right, then, I will!”

  “So go ahead, already. I’m watching. This ought to be good.” The cat smiled nastily and faded away, slowly disappearing line by line—the Cheshire cat was one of his heroes, and this was a favorite trick, although for originality’s sake he left his nose behind instead of his grin. The nose hung inscrutably in mid-air, like a small black-rubber UFO. Occasionally it would give a sardonic twitch.

  The wizard sighed, and sat staring morosely down at the check. Then, knowing in advance that it would be useless, he pulled out his battered old change purse and peered inside: nothing, except for some lint, the tiny polished skull of a bat, and a ticket stub from the 1876 Centennial Exposition. The wizard never carried money—ordinarily, he’d have just told the cat to conjure up whatever funds were necessary, an exercise so simple and trivial that it was beneath his dignity as a Mage even to consider bothering with it himself. That was what familiars were for, to have tasks like that delegated to them. Now, though . . .

  “Well?” the cat’s voice drawled. “So, I’m waiting.”

  “All right, all right, big shot,” the wizard said. “I can handle this, don’t worry yourself.”

  “I’m not worried—I’m waiting.”

  “All right already.” Mumbling to himself, the wizard began to work out the elements of the spell. It was a very small magic, after all.

  Still . . . He hesitated, drumming his fingers on the table . . . Still, he hadn’t had to do anything like this for himself for years, and his memory wasn’t what it used to be. Better ease his hand in slowly, try a still smaller magic first. Practice. Let’s see now . . . He muttered a few words in a hissing sibilant tongue, sketched a close pattern in the air, and then rested his forefinger on the rim of his empty coffee cup. The cup filled with coffee, as though his finger was a spigot. He grunted in satisfaction, and then took a sip of his coffee. It was weak and yellow, and tasted faintly of turpentine. So far, so good, he thought . . .

  Across the table, the nose sniffed disdainfully.

  The wizard ignored it. Now for the real thing. He loosened his tie and white starched collar and drew the pentagram of harmony, the Sephiroth, using salt from the shaker, which was also the secret symbol for the fifth element of the pentagram, the akasha, or ether. He made do with a glass of water, catsup, mustard, and toothpicks to represent the four elements and the worlds of Emanation, Creation, Formation, and Action. He felt cheap and vulgar using such substitutes, but what else could he do?

  Now . . . he thought, that is the pentagram of harmony . . . isn’t it? For an instant he was uncertain. Well, it’s close enough . . .

  He tugged back his cuffs, leaving his wrists free to make the proper passes over the pentagram. Now . . . what was the spell to make money? It was either the first or the second Enochian Key . . . that much he did remember. It must be the second Key, and that went . . . “Piamoel od Vaoan!” No, no, that wasn’t it. Was it “Giras ta nazodapesad Roray I?” That must be it.

  The wizard said the words and softly clapped his hands together . . . and nothing seemed to happen.

  For an instant there was no noise, not even a breath. It was as if he was hovering, disembodied, between the worlds of Emanation.

  There was a slow shift in his equilibrium, like a wheel revolving ponderously in darkness.

  But magic doesn’t just disappear, he told himself querulously—it has to go somewhere.

  As if from the other side of the world, the wizard heard the soft voice of his familiar, so faint and far away that he could barely make it out. What was it saying?

  “Putz,” the cat whispered, “you used the Pentagram of Chaos, the Qliphoth.”

  And suddenly, as if he really had been turned upside-down for a while, the wizard felt everything right itself. He was sitting at a table in Schrafft’s, and there was the usual din of people talking and shouting and pushing and complaining.

  But something was odd, something was wrong. Even as he watched, the table splintered and flew to flinders before him, and his chair creaked and groaned and swayed like a high-masted ship in a strong wind, and then broke, dumping him heavily to the floor. The room shook, and the floor cracked and starred beneath him.

  What was wrong? What aethers and spheres had he roiled and foiled with his misspoken magicks? Why did he feel so strange? Then he saw himself in the gold-flecked smoked-glass mirrors that lined the room between rococo plaster pillars, and the reflection told him the terrible truth. He had turned himself into some kind of giant lizard. A dinosaur. Actually, as dinosaurs go, he was rather small. He weighed about eight hundred pounds and was eleven feet long—a Pachycephalosaurus, a horn-headed, pig-snouted herbivore that was in its prime in the Upper Cretaceous. But for Schrafft’s, at lunch-time—big enough. He clicked his stubby tusks and tried to say “Gevalt!” as he shook his head ruefully. Before he could stop the motion, his head smashed into the wooden booth partition, causing it to shudder and crack.

  Across from him, two eyes appeared, floating to either side of the hovering black nose. Slowly, solemnly, one eye winked. Then—slowly and very sinisterly—eyes and nose faded away and were gone.

  That was a bad sign, the wizard thought. He huddled glumly against the wall. Maybe nobody will notice, he thought. His tail twitched nervously, splintering the booth behind him. The occupants of the booth leaped up, screaming, and fled the restaurant in terror. Out-of-towners, the wizard thought. Everyone else was eating and talking as usual, paying no attention, although the waiter was eyeing him somewhat sourly.

  As he maneuvered clumsily away from the wall, pieces of wood crunching underfoot, the waiter came up to him and stood there making little tsking noises of disapproval. “Look, mister,” the waiter said. “You’re going to have to pay up and go. You’re creating a disturbance—” The wizard opened his mouth to utter a mild remonstrance, but what came out instead was a thunderous roaring belch, grindingly deep and loud enough to rattle your bones, the sort of noise that might be produced by having someone stand on the bass keys of a giant Wurlitzer. Even the wizard could smell the fermenting, rotting-egg, bubbling-prehistoric-swamp stink of sulphur that his belch had released, and he winced in em
barrassment. “I’m sorry,” the wizard said, enunciating with difficulty through the huge, sloppy mouth. “It’s the tuna fish. I know I shouldn’t eat it, it always gives me gas, but—” But the waiter no longer seemed to be listening—he had gone pale, and now he turned abruptly around without a word and walked away, ignoring as he passed the querulous demands for coffee refills from the people two tables away, marching in a straight line through the restaurant and right out into the street.

  The wizard sighed, a gusty, twanging noise like a cello being squeezed flat in a wine-press. Time—and past time—to work an obviation spell. So, then. Forgetting that he was a dinosaur, the wizard hurriedly tried to redraw the pentagram, but he couldn’t pick up the salt, which was in a small pile around the broken glass shaker. And everything else he would need for the spell was buried under the debris of the table.

  “Not doing so hot now, Mister Big Shot, are you?” a voice said, rather smugly.

  “Alright, alright, give me a minute, will you?” said the wizard, a difficult thing to say when your voice croaked like a gigantic frog’s—it was hard to be a dinosaur and talk. But the wizard sill had his pride. “You don’t make soup in a second,” he said. Then he began thinking feverishly. He didn’t really need the elements and representations of the four worlds and the pentagram of Kabbalistic squares, not for an obviation spell, although, of course, things would be much more elegant with them. But. He could work the obviation spell by words alone—if he could remember the words. He needed something from the Eighteenth Path, that which connects Binah and Geburah, the House of Influence. Let’s see, he thought. “E pluribus unum.” No, no . . . Could it be “Micaoli beranusaji UK?” No, that was a pharmacological spell . . . But, yes, of course, this was it, and he began to chant, “Tstske, tstskeleh, tchotchike, tchotchkeleh, trayf, Qu-a-a-on!”

  That should do it.

  But nothing happened. Again! The wizard tried to frown, but hadn’t the face for it. “Nothing happened,” he complained.

  The cat’s head materialized in midair. “That’s what you think. As a matter of fact, all the quiches at Maxim’s just turned into frogs. Great big ones,” he added maliciously. “Great big, green, slimy ones.”

  The wizard dipped his great head humbly. “All right,” he grumbled. “Enough is enough. I give up. I admit defeat. I was wrong. From now on, I promise, I’ll save you a bite of every sandwich I ever order.”

  The cat appeared fully for a moment, swishing its tail thoughtfully back and forth. “You do know, don’t you, that I prefer the part in the middle, without the crust . . . ?”

  “I’ll never give you the crust, always from the middle—”

  The waiter had come back into the restaurant, towing a policeman behind him and was now pointing an indignant finger toward the wizard. The policeman began to slouch slowly toward them, looking bored and sullen and mean.

  “I mean, it’s not really the sandwich, you know,” the cat said.

  “I know, I know,” the wizard mumbled.

  “I get insecure, too, like everyone else. I need to know that I’m wanted. It’s the thought that counts, knowing that you’re thinking about me, that you want me around—”

  “All right, all right!” the wizard snapped irritably. Then he sighed again, and (with what would have been a gesture of final surrender if he’d had hands to spread) said, “So, okay, I want you around.” He softened, and said almost shyly, “I do, you know.”

  “I know,” the cat said. They stared at each other with affection for a moment, and then the cat said, “For making money, it’s the new moon blessing, ‘Steyohn, v’s-keyah-lahnough—’ ”

  “Money I don’t need anymore,” the wizard said grumpily. “Money it’s gone beyond. Straighten out all of this—” gesturing with his piglike snout at his—feh!—scaly green body.

  “Not to worry. The proper obviation spell is that one you worked out during the Council of Trent, remember?”

  The cat hissed out the words. Once again the wheel rotated slowly in darkness.

  And then, the wizard was sitting on the floor, in possession of his own spindly limbs again. Arthritically, he levered himself to his feet.

  The cat watched him get up, saying smugly, “And as a bonus, I even put money in your purse, not bad, huh? I told—” And then the cat fell silent, staring off beyond the wizard’s shoulder. The wizard looked around.

  Everyone else in Schrafft’s had turned into dinosaurs.

  All around them were dinosaurs, dinosaurs in every possible variety, dinosaurs great and small, four-footed and two-footed, horned and scaled and armor-plated, striped and speckled and piebald, all busily eating lunch, hissing and grunting and belching and slurping, huge jaws chewing noisily, great fangs flashing and clashing, razor-sharp talons clicking on tile. The din was horrendous. The policeman had turned into some sort of giant spiky armadillo, and was contentedly munching up the baseboard. In one corner, two nattily pinstriped allosaurs were fighting over the check, tearing huge bloody pieces out of each other. It was impossible to recognize the waiter.

  The cat stared at the wizard.

  The wizard stared at the cat.

  The cat shrugged.

  After a moment, the wizard shrugged, too.

  They both sighed.

  “Lunch tomorrow?” the wizard asked, and the cat said, “Suits me.”

  Behind them, one of the triceratops finished off its second egg cream, and made a rattling noise with the straw.

  The wizard left the money for the check near the cash register, and added a substantial tip.

  They went out of the restaurant together, out into the watery city sunshine, and strolled away down the busy street through the fine mild airs of spring.

  AFTERWORD TO AFTERNOON AT SCHRAFFT’S

  Somewhere in this book, Michael refers to “Afternoon at Schrafft’s” as a “pleasant little soufflé of a story,” and tells the story of its eccentric origin. There really is little left for me to add.

  Michael was undoubtedly the godparent of this particular story, practically forcing it into existence by sheer effort of will, tirelessly bullying and cajoling us into starting to plot it at his famous party, when our resistance was at low ebb, due to a superabundance of alcohol in the blood. All this took place on February 28, 1982. Michael also took first draft on this, I believe, then Jack, then me. In spite of all the back-and-forth, we worked quickly, and the story was finished, according to a note on my calendar, on March 30,1982. I had worked on it just after finishing work on my story “Morning Child,” just before starting work on “Dinner Party,” and while I was working on our story “Slow Dancing With Jesus.” As I said, this was a high-production period for me.

  All of the spells and the Kabbalist magical lore here were provided solely by Jack—so argue with him if you think they’re wrong. When I write a story with Jack that contains comic Yiddish-shtick dialogue, people usually assume that Jack writes all of those parts, but, in fact, both here and in “Time Bride”, I wrote much of it myself—which just goes to show that it’s dangerous to make assumptions about who contributed what to collaborations. The image of the nose hanging in the air like a black rubber UFO was Michael’s, I think. And Bob Walters, our Friendly Neighborhood Dinosaur Expert, supplied the Pachycephalosaurus.

  As anyone who has worked with me will testify, I attach a great deal of importance to the last lines of stories, and I have been known to agonize for weeks to come up with just the right last line. (It’s my own opinion that even a story that is otherwise in every way good except for the last line can lose 30 to 40% of the impact it would have had, if it had a good last line.) For this particular story, I came up with three possible last lines, and, unable to decide between them, used them all, in sequence. I’d done the same thing once before, in my solo story “The Storm.”

  The story was published in Amazing, March 1984.

  We’ve tried to sell this story as a children’s book, but no one seems interested, just as no one is interes
ted in Michael’s own brilliant series of children’s stories about The Two Buildings (starting with that classic, The Two Buildings Do Lunch), or in Tess Kissinger’s work, or in several other pieces I can think of. Of course, since I once heard a major children’s book editor say, during a speech, that “children, of course, must under no circumstances be exposed to fantasy,” I suppose that I really shouldn’t be surprised.

  A CHANGE IN THE WEATHER

  GARDNER DOZOIS & JACK DANN

  It looked like rain again, but Michael went for his walk anyway.

  The park was shiny and empty, nothing more than a cement square defined by four metal benches. Piles of rain-soaked garbage were slowly dissolving into the cement.

  Pterodactyls picked their way through the gutter, their legs lifting storklike as they daintily nipped at random pieces of refuse.

  Muttering, the old man shooed a pterodactyl from his favorite bench, which was still damp from the afternoon rain, sat down, and tried to read his newspaper. But at once his bench was surrounded by the scavengers: they half-flapped their metallic-looking wings, tilted the heads at the ends of their snakelike necks to look at him with oily green eyes, uttered plaintive, begging little cries, and finally plucked at his clothes with their beaks, hoping to find crusts of bread or popcorn. At last, exasperatedly, he got suddenly to his feet—the pterodactyls skittering back away from him, croaking in alarm—and tried to scare them off by throwing his newspaper at them. They ate it, and looked to him hopefully for more. It began to rain, drizzling down out of the gray sky.

  Disgustedly, he made his way across the park, being jostled and almost knocked over by a hustling herd of small two-legged dromaeisaurs who were headed for the hot-dog concession on Sixteenth Street. The rain was soaking in through his clothes now, and in spite of the warmth of the evening he was beginning to get chilly. He hoped the weather wasn’t going to turn nippy; heating oil was getting really expensive, and his social security check was late again. An ankylosaur stopped in front of him, grunting and slurping as it chewed up old Coke bottles and beer cans from a cement trash-barrel. He whacked it with his cane, impatiently, and it slowly moved out of his way, belching with a sound like a length of anchor chain being dropped through a hole.