by Rick Shelley
"Joy, I don't know what will happen," I said after we had both finished showering, "but why don't you try phoning your folks' number in St. Louis?" She flashed me a puzzled frown but went to the telephone and dialed.
Somebody answered. I could tell that from the look of total bewilderment on her face even before she said her first word.
"Dad?"
She half collapsed into the chair next to the phone.
"It's Joy." Over the next ten minutes she did a lot of crying and even more confused explaining. Her father had trouble grasping that his wife and Danny's family were safe… and in Varay. There had been no World War Three. Papa Bennett wasn't too clear on when or how everyone had left, just that they were gone. He finally agreed to fly to Chicago that afternoon and go back to Varay with us-though he wouldn't promise to stay.
"Aaron, do you know your telephone number?" I asked softly when Joy seemed to be about finished with her call.
"I know it, but it won't do any good," Aaron said. "It was hearing that my parents were dead that sent me to Varay the first time, and hearing about my grandmother sent me back the second time." He gestured toward Joy. "She never accepted that her daddy was gone."
I nodded. I knew pretty much what Aaron meant. I had seen my father and great-grandfather dead and buried. Even in the throes of my "connection" with the Great Earth Mother I had only seen them dead. They hadn't returned. They wouldn't.
Aaron did go to the telephone after Joy hung up, though. He dialed and listened. "That number is not in service," he reported. Then he tried his grandmother's number and got the same recording.
"Wouldn't have done much good anyway," Aaron said. "They'd never believe that I'm me."
We used the magic doorway to take us to the office I kept in the Loop to save time. Then we took an elevator down to street level and went outside. There were crowds on the streets, shoppers, workers, the normal bustle as we walked over to the State Street mall.
"It's like nothing at all happened here," Joy said.
"Something happened, all right," Aaron said, giving me a look-your patent "significant look," I guess.
"Well, I'm going to get the papers and see what I can find," I decided. We were approaching a corner kiosk. I picked up a Tribune and a Sun Times and handed the old guy tending the stand a ten-dollar bill. He returned my change and I pocketed it without even looking at it, let alone counting it.
I turned away from the kiosk before I even glanced at the headlines on the papers. They started strange things going on in my throat. The words were in English, but they didn't all register at once.
"What the hell's happened here?" I whispered when I could get anything out.
"You happened," Aaron said, just as softly.
GASA REPORTS ANOTHER ALIEN CONTACT
A spokesman for the Global AeroSpace Administration has announced that a GASA survey team has found another intelligent race of ETs. This makes 34 known sentient…
ASIMOV QUITS SPACE
Isaac Asimov, emeritus Barrie Professor at Boston College and pioneer in the development of metaphysical Stardrives, has resigned as director of SPACE, the Special President's Advisory Committee on Exploration…
JACKSON: NO SECOND TERM
President Jesse Jackson has announced that he will not run for a second term. Instead, he will embark on a goodwill tour to the home worlds of the members of the Federation of Sentient Races…
"Hey, you do that?" Aaron asked. He was reading over my shoulder.
"I guess I did," I said. "I seem to have done a lot."
"You're even better than I thought."
"Let's find someplace where we can sit and read," I said, looking around. We were jamming up pedestrian traffic.
"Someplace with food," Lesh suggested.
We found a small diner not too far off. There was plenty of room, since we had come after the coffee-break rush and before the lunch rush. We all ordered coffee and rolls and read, passing sections of newspaper around. I skimmed mostly, checking out headlines and sometimes a paragraph or two of a story, just trying to get some feel for the extent of the changes.
The Cubs and White Sox were both-according to these hometown newspapers-even money to repeat as pennant winners, with the exciting possibility of back-to-back subway series.
A new John Wayne movie, One Small Step, was premiering in town. The Duke was playing Neil Armstrong.
The AMA-the American Magicians Association-was holding its annual convention at Over-Galapagos, the American geostationary city.
Applications were being taken for emigrants to fill four colony ships-54,000 people were needed.
Laurel and Hardy were costarring in a stage revival of The Odd Couple at the Arie Crown Theater in McCormick Place on the lakefront.
The sections of the papers went around the table. We followed our coffee and rolls with a generous lunch. We were all still hungry, but the diner didn't serve alcohol, so we decided to move on someplace else. When I dropped a five-dollar bill on the table for a tip, Aaron picked it up, looked at both sides, then passed it back to me.
"Look at the back, near the top," he said.
I did. Aaron pointed out the line he wanted me to read and I almost choked.
It said, "IN GIL WE TRUST."
My immediate response was to look at the rest of the money I had picked up that morning. It all had the same motto, the money I had carried along from Basil and the change that the vendor at the kiosk had given me. My next reaction was an instinct to head directly for the nearest bar and proceed to get totally soused.
– But I had Joy with me and we had to find formula for the baby.
So we did that. I hailed a taxi and Aaron threw in a magic chant to get it to stop for us, and we all piled in. We cleaned one supermarket out of the brand of formula Joy wanted, and we had trouble getting it all in the cab with us for the ride back to my condo. And then we had to wait for Joy's father to arrive, though Joy took a can of the formula mix through to Castle Basil right away. She came back to wait with us, though.
There was no booze in the condo. That had been one of the "indispensable" items I had carted through to Varay back when I was worrying that I might never get another chance to visit Chicago.
But I waited. I could have gone through to Basil for a beer, or asked Lesh to haul back a keg, but I decided to wait.
Joy's father arrived, and we all stepped through to Castle Basil. By that time, I was ready to chug-a-lug the nearest keg of beer, but Baron Kardeen intercepted me before I got to it.
"You have someone waiting to see you, sire," Kardeen said, his face trying without much success to hide some sort of emotion. That was totally unlike my able chamberlain.
"Who is it?"
"The shop steward for the local Guild of Cobblers' Assistants and Domestic Workers." Kardeen's voice sounded more than half strangled getting that out.
"A union steward? I didn't know that Varay had any unions."
"We didn't, before. The steward is in the throne room."
I knew that there was something more that Kardeen wasn't telling me, but if he didn't want to spell it out, I wasn't going to order him to. I trusted him too much.
"You'd better don your regalia," Kardeen said when I turned and started to head to the throne room. I stopped and looked at him.
"You mean the swords?"
"Yes, sire. Protocol, not danger."
"I'll get them," Lesh said, and he hurried off toward the stairs before I could say anything.
I nodded to Kardeen. "Okay, this last time. I'm going to start some changes, though. This is a new world, so the old traditions don't have to stay unless we want them too. Those elf swords have got to go." When Kardeen started to protest, I cut him off.
"I know all about that 'they'll come back to kill anyone who abandons them' line. New world, new rules. And anyway, I'm not going to abandon them. I'm going to put them where they'll be safe. I want a pit dug below the crypt. Say a twenty-foot cube. Then I want enough concre
te to fill the hole. We'll put my two elf swords right in the middle, finish filling the hole, then pave it over with stone-with bits of Basil Rock itself. Anytime I need to wear a sword, I'll wear my own, or Vara's."
"As you wish, sire."
We started moving toward the throne room again, stopping only long enough for me to strap on the rigs with the two elf swords when Lesh got back.
The throne room has two entrances, one for me and one for people seeking an audience. Kardeen went in ahead of me to make the announcement of my arrival. There were no blaring horns, just the announcement. I knew just how long to wait before I followed him in and headed for my throne.
Before I got there, I knew what Kardeen had been keeping back. My chamberlain was developing a sense of humor.
The Elflord of Xayber was standing in the middle of the throne room waiting for me. He had plenty of open space around him. No one wanted to get close. I don't know why. Xayber didn't look nearly as fierce as he had before. Now, he was only about three feet tall, and he was dressed in a cute little children's-elf/Robin Hood sort of outfit.
But he did look mad as hell.
I knew that I had to keep a straight face, that I didn't dare laugh, but holding it back was the hardest chore I have ever had. It made all my prior Hero-work look like a breeze.
"You are the shop steward for the Guild of Cobblers' Assistants and Domestic Workers?" I asked when I was almost confident that I would be able to control my voice.
Xayber took a quick step forward. "As if you didn't know that, sire. I won't forget this, I assure you. I'm not totally devoid of power yet. It's just a matter of time. I will remember this insult."
"It wasn't intentional, I assure you, my Lord Xayber," I said. "I do regret the inconvenience. Did you have a particular complaint to bring on behalf of your members?"
The next fifteen minutes were the longest of my life. I knew that I absolutely had to hold back the laughter until I got far enough away that Xayber couldn't possibly hear me. And holding that all in threatened to rupture something important. The fairy tale about the shoemaker and the elves had found its way into my new world.
It was just too hilarious.
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