A BARNSTORMER IN OZ by Philip José Farmer

by A Barnstormer In Oz V1. 1(Lit)

  “Perhaps that is why Glinda established her capital at that point,” Sharts said. “There is a weak or weakening spot there, and she wanted to be there to guard it.”

  Sharts looked gloomy and said, “What if Glinda dies or the weak spot becomes larger?”

  “I hate to think about that,” Hank said.

  Maybe he would be better off if he went back to Earth.

  “Anyway,” he said, waving his arm to indicate the whole oasis, “I can’t believe that this is the only alive area and that the rest of the world is a desert.”

  “Why not? Isn’t that made clear on the obelisk?”

  “It was true when the obelisk was made. Or maybe it wasn’t true even then. My point is the air.”

  “The air?”

  Sharts looked puzzled, and he did not like to be puzzled.

  “Yes, the air. The planetary atmosphere. Its oxygen is continually being renewed by plants on the earth and in the sea. But, if the energy-things have destroyed all the plants, where is the new air coming from? This land isn’t big enough to keep its inhabitants from asphyxiating. There’s air blowing in all the time from the desert, and it would sweep away the oxygen generated here.”

  “Perhaps the plants in the ocean have not been killed,” Sharts said.

  “Perhaps. Even so, I doubt that they would be enough. Of course, I really don’t know enough about the subject. But I’ll bet... anyway, I think... that all the energy beings are in the desert around the green land. Elsewhere, they’d have no prey, and they would, I suppose, die of electrical starvation.

  “So, plants have grown again in many other places, and they’ve flourished and spread because the energy-things haven’t found out about them.”

  One of the surprises while reading the Long-Gones’ cartoons—that was what they were, cartoons—was that the mind-spirits or firefoxes had not come from the universe of the big energy-beings.

  These had been created by the ancients after the invasion. They were, if Hank had interpreted rightly, the result of another experiment by the Long-Gones. Using the destroyers’ configurations as models, the scientists had made a different type of energy-being. These were designed to transfer the neural-mental contents of a person to a synthetic body. By doing this, the scientists had hoped to become immortal, to pass their minds from one body to another.

  Hank did not know why the experiment had gone wrong. But it had. The firefoxes were sentient and, therefore, self-conscious and self-motivated. They had refused to obey the scientists and conduct themselves as laboratory subjects. Also, the hope that the firefoxes would be able to transfer the contents of a mind to another body turned out to be false.

  The things could occupy the bodies of animals and human beings. But they could not possess the minds of the latter, though they could those of animals. Something in the structure of the human neural system and, perhaps, the degree of intelligence, prevented the firefoxes from influencing the brains of Homo sapiens.

  The firefoxes had escaped and, in a manner similar to that of the destroyers, propagated themselves. They occupied the cerebral-neural systems of animals and birds and reptiles, though they were either unable to or did not care to invest those of fish and insects.

  (Hank, learning this, wondered why humans did not eat fish and frogs. Sharts told him that the Quadlings, Munchkins, and Ozlanders did not do so because of religious prohibitions. The fish was the symbol of Christ-Thor and hence sacred. As for the frog, that was forbidden because of the ancient myth that a frog was a fish that had learned how to walk or, at least, hop. The Winkies and Gillikins, however, did not have this tabu.)

  What the pictures could not tell was just how the mind-spirits or firefoxes interacted with the neural systems of the occupied animals. Hank had to extrapolate that from what he had observed. Take, as an example, a firefox which had possessed a hawk just after it had escaped from the Long-Gones’ laboratory like a voltaic Frankenstein’s monster. The firefox was perhaps as intelligent as a human being. But when it became one, as it were, with the bird, its physical and mental capabilities were limited by the body it invested. It had to operate through a diminutive brain and a body specialized for flight and without speech organs.

  The hawk-firefox could learn language from humans, but it could not utter speech with the bird’s oral apparatus. It solved that problem by learning to modulate sound waves with energy output. In some ways, its voice was a telephone transmitter.

  There was also what might be called a negative flow. The hawk’s nonhuman nervous system affected the firefox’s, and the result was an intelligence level that could never match that of the more intelligent humans.

  Also, the firefox was, when it first occupied the hawk’s body, like a human infant. It had to learn language and to gain experience just like a baby. The difference was that the hawk-firefox learned much faster than an infant.

  One of the factors preventing the symbiote’s full intellectual and emotional development was the short life of the hawk. It learned much faster than the infant, true, but it did not have a long time to learn.

  However, when the hawk died, the mind-spirit lived on. It traveled around in whatever manner circumscribed it, and, when it came to an unoccupied body, it attached itself like iron filings to a magnet.

  This process, Hank was sure, caused some kind of traumatic shock. The firefox lost its identity as a hawk, or, rather, it lost its memory of its former life as a hawk. But, like an amnesiac, it retained its memory of language and its unconscious knowledge of its environment.

  In some ways, the firefox experienced what the Hindus called transmigration or reincarnation.

  Though the firefox assumed a new identity every time it occupied a body, its retention of certain abilities enabled it to grow mentally and emotionally. The knowledge accreted to a certain extent.

  Thus, it could be assumed that the firefox did not die. That occupying Bargma, for instance, might be anywhere from fifteen hundred to forty thousand years old. But its intelligence was limited in operation by the avian nervous system. Also, much that it had learned was lost or beyond recall.

  Hank did not believe that a firefox could, unaided, invest and make alive an inanimate object. But a witch could do that for a firefox though it probably was not easily done. If it were easy, there would be many more Scarecrows than there were.

  Glinda, he was certain, had animated the Scarecrow. And she had managed to transfer a human being’s mind-contents, the Tin Woodman’s, from a dying body to a metal simulacrum.

  Another probably rare phenomenon was the dispossession of one firefox by another. A firefox had been made visible by the electrical potential in a storm, and Hank had seen—well, almost seen—the free firefox oust the entity which occupied the hawk. However, the dispossessor had failed to possess the dispossessed. Instead, it had occupied an inanimate object, the airplane.

  Or was it possible that the original entity in Ot, hurled from the hawk-body, had taken up new residence in Jenny?

  Whichever event had happened, Glinda had influenced its course.

  Why had she effected this? Because, Hank thought, she had a use for a living aircraft just as she had had a use for the Scarecrow and the Woodman and had arranged to put them in Dorothy’s path.

  Hank explained his theory to Sharts. The giant nodded and said, “That makes more sense than the religious explanations. Though that does not mean that your theory is right and the priests are wrong. It might mean that both of you are wrong. Or half-right.

  “I will admit this, though. Despite your deficiencies of character, you are not without some intelligence.”

  Hank did not know whether he should thank Sharts or hit him. Having witnessed the man overpower a bear, he thought that it would be best to control his fists.

  They spent the rest of the day exploring and looking for food. When they found a wide deep creek that tumbled over the cliff, they followed it up until they came to a pool. Here they improvised fishing poles and caught three trout
like fish. They also waded around in a small swamp and seized three large frogs. When they returned to camp, their bellies were full of protein. They also arrived just in time to see Blogo’s short legs carrying him at his top speed towards them.

  Blogo stopped a few feet from them. Panting, looking exultant and proud, he cried, “I’ve found a village!”

  The next day, they followed him to a distant point on the edge of the plateau. There he gestured at a place far down and on the opposite side of the river.

  It took a day for the three to climb down and get across the swift rapids-riddled stream. The villagers were not the type of Gillikins expected. They obviously were a nearly pure strain of Neanderthals. They did, however, speak an archaic dialect of Gillikin. The three strangers managed to make themselves intelligible and to make it clear that they wanted thirty gallons of grain alcohol. The villagers had the alcohol, but they refused to give it away. They wanted something in return. They did not know what that something was, but it had to be of equal or superior value.

  “Why don’t we just take it from them?” Blogo said. “One burst from your gun, Hank, and the survivors will run like mad.”

  “I won’t do that,” Hank said. “Besides, we’re going to need their help to get the fuel up the cliff.”

  “It would be a lot of fun seeing the tiny apemen run,” Blogo said.

  “Tiny!” Hank said. “Blogo, you’re the shortest person here! And you look more like an ape than they do!”

  Blogo said, sulkily, “In spirit, I meant. In spirit.”

  They spent the night there, the first half of which was entertainment by their hosts of what must have seemed to them to be rather weird guests. They got up early, however. After a breakfast of acorn bread, fish, frog, nuts, berries, corncakes with wild honey, and a thick, whitish and vanillaish fluid tapped from a milktree, they set out. The headman, the priestess, and six young men accompanied them. They got to the camp just after dusk. Here, by the light of a bonfire, the villagers were shown the toy-making machine.

  “You can have this in return for the alcohol,” Sharts said.

  The Kumkwoots’ eyes shone, though with fear as much as with desire. This was a holy, a dreaded place. They had stayed away from here because they feared the ghosts of the Long-Gones. But, since they thought that the strangers were spirits of the ancients who had come down to tell them that the ghosts were now friendly, they had agreed to trespass.

  This made Hank grin. If they believed that the strangers were ghosts, why had they bargained with them? He would have thought that they would have given the ghosts anything they wanted. But avarice had ridden down their fear.

  “The toymaker is mine, and so I can give it to you,” Sharts said. “The other ghosts have agreed to this. In fact, they would like you to visit them whenever you feel like it.”

  “Where are they?” the priestess said. “I’d like to meet them.”

  Sharts handled the shrewd woman shrewdly.

  “They’re off on a visit to the otherworld just now. But they’ll be back.”

  Three days later, they came back to camp with the fuel. The next morning, the Kumkwoot porters bade them farewell. Despite Sharts’s reassurances, they seemed glad to get away from the place. Perhaps this was because they were made even more uneasy by Jenny.

  Blogo was still sulking because Hank and Sharts had made him stay away from the Kumkwoot women.

  “Let’s get away from this miserable place,” he said. “How long will it take to refuel this thing?”

  “Person!” Jenny yelled at him. “Person! Not thing!”

  “How would you like apples jammed up your exhaust pipes?” Blogo said.

  “I’ll be glad when we get rid of that chickenspit,” Jenny said to Hank.

  He patted her cowling. “Me, too.”

  However, the black sky threatened rain, and the wind was too strong and gusty for flight. Also, Sharts wanted to explore the ruins some more. Since they could not take off anyway, Hank agreed to this.

  “You’re coming with us,” Sharts said.

  Blogo, bristling, his eyes wild, said, “No, I’m not!”

  “Yes, you are,” the giant said. “You’ve had this ridiculous and demeaning terror of this nonexistent Very Rare Beast long enough. We’re going to go into every place we can get into, and I’m going to show you that there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  “What good it’ll do if there isn’t any Beast there?” Blogo said. He swallowed and said, “It could be haunting some other ruins.”

  “You told me that there’s supposed to be one in every ruin,” Sharts said.

  “I did? I don’t remember that.”

  “Are you calling me a liar?” Sharts said coldly. He stepped forward until Blogo’s nose almost touched the giant’s navel.

  Blogo, hands fisted, trembling, said, “No, but I am saying that maybe your memory isn’t perfect.”

  “What?” Sharts roared. “You know that it’s perfect! I never forget a thing! And you can bet your silly-looking nose that I won’t forget this insubordination! Maybe you and I should part when we get to Quadlingland! I plan to spend a beautiful life in beautiful surroundings, and you’d spoil the esthetically perfect environment! There’s no way anybody as dumb and as ugly as you could fit into anything beautiful!”

  “Please, boss!” Blogo whimpered. “Don’t make me do this!”

  “You have no choice,” Sharts said, picking the little creature up by his loincloth. “Really, Blogo, I’m doing this for you because I like you—though how I can stumps me—and it’s all for your own good. I don’t mind the bother of it, but I’d appreciate it if you’d be more cooperative.”

  Sharts carried the kicking and yelling Rare Beast into the ruins. Hank, disgusted with both of them, followed. When they were in front of the first building that had an entrance not choked with dirt and bushes, Sharts put Blogo down. But he held him with two fingers around his neck.

  He pushed him into the building. Hank waited. Presently, they came out. Blogo had quit struggling and screaming, but his cock’s comb and face were red, and if the bulb at the end of his nose had had a little more blood in it, it would have burst.

  “See?” the giant said. “There was no one there except for a few bats. It wasn’t so bad, was it?”

  “Not bad!” Blogo said. “I left something of me in there on the ground.”

  “You’d have had to get rid of it, anyway,” Sharts said. “Though it was, I’ll have to admit, the best part of you.”

  They went into another building. When they came out, Blogo said nothing, but he was shaking as if he was about to have a seizure. And the blood had drained from his comb, face, and nose.

  The third structure could be entered only by a half-buried doorway. Dirt piled around it showed that some large animal had dug into it to make a home there. The stench indicated that animals might still live there. Sharts, however, said that he had run out the wolverine pack that had made their abode there. Hank did not know if he was telling the truth. For one thing, wolverines did not run in a pack; they were solitaries. However, this was not Earth, and the sentient animals might have overcome their powerful instincts.

  Blogo, looking as numb as if he had been shot with morphine, walked in ahead of Sharts. No more than ten seconds had passed before Hank heard a despairing scream. A few seconds later, Blogo raced from the entrance and headed towards the edge of the plateau. His eyes were popping, and his head was thrown back. His legs and arms pumped.

  Sharts, stooping, came out of the entrance. He was laughing uproariously, but, when he saw where Blogo was running, he shouted.

  “Stop him! The damn fool’ll run right off the cliff!”

  Hank and Sharts sprinted like Charlie Paddock after Blogo. Sharts, though much more heavily muscled than Hank, passed him. He leaped out and, on the way down, caught Blogo’s ankle. If he had missed, Blogo would have gone into the canyon.

  Blogo fell forward and, for a moment, looked cross-eyed from the impa
ct of his face on the hard rock when he had been so suddenly halted. A cut on the end of his nose spurted blood.

  Hank used his dirty handkerchief to stanch the flow.

  After a while, Blogo said, his voice quavering, “I saw it! I saw it! Don’t tell me I didn’t see it!”

  Sharts squatted down by him and put a hand on his shoulder.

  He spoke quietly. “Sure, you saw it. Now, as soon as you recover, let’s go back in there. I’ll show you what you almost committed suicide over.”

  Blogo pulled away from the hand.

  “Are you crazy?”

  “No. You’ve been crazy, but there’s no reason now why you should stay demented.”