Stairway to Forever

by Robert Adams

  Fitz always insisted that night camps be made in open places—vales or clearings, with as little overhanging foliage as possible, so as to allow him to see a great swath of sky, preferably southerly sky.

  'Tm watching for a sign," he had told both Sir Gautier and Cool Blue, in explanation. "If either of you, by night or by day, see a burst of color, red or

  green, in the southern sky, followed immediately by three stars of that same color falling from the place of the burst, tell me of it at once, it is very important to me."

  As they were making camp one late afternoon, a doe, spooked apparently by something in the surrounding forest, bounded into their clearing and stood stock-still, obviously not expecting the clearing to be tenanted. Sir Gautier was deadly poetry in motion. In but a single, silken-smooth movement, he had leaned to pick up a spear, cocked his right arm and cast it with such power and accuracy that it transfixed the heart of the doe and she was dead even as she made one final, useless bound.

  The meat was most welcome. Fitz had been getting a little tired of game birds, rabbit and squirrel meat, so venison steaks broiled on a grill (that Sir Gautier quickly and expertly fashioned of green sticks) over a bed of fragrant hardwood coals, basted with margarine and sprinkled with coarse-grind pepper, were a decided treat. Cool Blue, of course, got the lion's share of the carcass, but Fitz made certain that a joint was hung high beyond any animal thievery that they might have a bit more of the meat for their breakfast.

  Fitz had wondered at the size of the grill and the spread of the bed of coals, then at the number of steaks Sir Gautier had insisted be set to cook. But once they were cooked, he ceased to wonder. Despite his hunger and the added spice of variety, three of the steaks were the most he could manage to cram down his gullet, but not so Sir Gautier. The Norman knight proceeded to wolf what his companion estimated to be at least seven and possibly nine pounds of cooked meat, followed with a double handful of berries and two cups of orange pekoe tea (of which the medieval warrior had become quite fond).

  Following this—to Fitz, monumental—gorge, the young knight had lain flat on his back for a few minutes, belching and sighing with clear contentment, arisen to go off into the woods for a while, then returned to the fireside to use Fitz's axe stone on the edges of his sword and the machete, then the knife stone on the knives and the dirk. Before he finally rolled himself into his thick cloak, the Norman had grilled and consumed three more steaks, then polished off the last of the berries and the tea, grumbling about the lack of good red wine which should properly accompany venison.

  But before his "bedtime snack," while he squatted with Arkansas stone and the Ka-bar knife (he always saw to his overlord's blades first, never failing to remark on the rare and fine quality of their steel— how tough and resilient they were, how well they held their edges in use and how little touching up those edges ever needed), he said, blundy, "You are no evil wizard, Lord Alfred, but rather a decent and Christian man like your servant, Gautier de Montjoie. So please, I beg of you, Lord Alfred, tell me just how you called down thunder and fiery lightning and so slew my sergeant, Alain?"

  Knowing the young, 11th-century Norman to be far from unintelligent, indeed, possessed of a quick and relatively open mind, Fitz nodded, drew his revolver and ejected all five of the cartridges.

  Holding one up between thumb and forefinger, he tapped the nail of his other forefinger on the case. "Inside this brass cylinder, Gautier, is a powdery compound called gunpowder. When a spark strikes into it, it burns faster than the eye could follow and thus creates smoke and fire that must have room to expand and, in search of that needed room, they push this leaden plug out of the end of the brass cylinder.

  "Now," he laid down the cartridge and picked up the silvery, stainless-steel revolver, "the brass cylinders are contained in the openings bored into this larger steel cylinder, here. This flat strap of steel inside this steel circle is called a 'trigger/ Observe, when the finger draws it to the rear, gears and springs you cannot see bring this forked thing back—it is called the 'hammer—then let it fall with some force against this little steel button here in this groove. On the other side of the button is a very short steel rod called a 'firing pin/ When the button is struck by the hammer, the firing pin strikes the base of one of the cylinders and that creates the spark that ignites the gunpowder, the smoke and fire of which, expanding, cast out the leaden plug. The plug then continues up the length of this longer, slenderer steel cylinder, which is called the 'barrel/ The smoke and fire still are behind the leaden plug, pushing it with extreme force, so that when it emerges into open air, it will penetrate almost anything that happens to be in its way.

  "The entire device is called a 'revolver/ Gautier, because this largest steel cylinder turns on a rod, see, to bring a fresh brazen cylinder beneath the firing pin each time the trigger is pulled. It is in no way magical, merely a man-made instrument for killing easily at distances greater than a spear can be thrown.

  "As for your sergeant, he already had struck me with the ferrule of his spear and I believed he was making ready to thrust the point into me, so I shot him. A man must protect himself."

  "My lord should not concern himself with the killing of an oaf of Alain's water," said Sir Gautier, shrugging. "He ever was impetuous, and I was often compelled to beat him for putting on airs not at all commensurate to his baseborn station in life. So he is no great loss."

  Laying aside knife and stone, the knight rolled a cartridge in his fingers, examining it closely by the firelight. Then he handed it back and asked, 'This powder, Lord Alfred, of what constituents is it compounded?"

  Fitz had no idea of the formula for smokeless powder, of course, but he had to answer something. "Nitre, brimstone and charcoal, Gautier. Differing proportions for different purposes, but mostly nitre in all of them."

  "Very interesting, Lord Alfred. Could you make one or more of these devices a good deal bigger, of a bigness sufficient to hurling good-sized boulders, there would be no motte in all the land could stand against my lord's war band, he could quickly become king of any land he desired to rule . . . ?"

  "So much," thought Fitz to himself, "for the myth of the hidebound, stubbornly conservative, superstitious and hag-ridden, unimaginative and unprogres-sive medieval man taught by historians of my time!"

  my horn. So it took me damn near a whole year after they finally let me go just to like get my lip back and get aholt of a decent axe again, you know. Hadn't of been for the fucking draft, like I'd of been way up there, one of the really big names, pulling down top gigs and good bread and I wouldn't of had to let none them loan sharks get their like claws into me, neither. Like, you know, man, it's all the fault of the fucking draft board and the Yew Ess Army that I would up here in this like lion get-up. You dig, man?"

  "Frankly," said Fitz truthfully, "no, I don't understand the connection, Cool Blue. You must have been separated long before you came to this place."

  "Well, like it was them fuckers interrupted my damn career and all so I had to like start all over again when I got out," "said" the now-navy-blue lion. "That took bread, like big bread, and like I wasn't hitting no really rich gigs yet, see. It won't no sense in going to no banks, 'cause I didn't own no co-lat'ral, banks only loans money to people as can prove they don't really need it. So I went the only place I could, to Fat Tony, the loan shark. He lent me the three grand and, like bang, I started in getting good gigs and all. But still I couldn't never get enough together to pay him no big chunks and with the vigorish and all keeping on piling up, it looked like Fat Tony was gonna be into me for the rest of my natcherl life, man.

  "But then, man, like after a couple really groovy years, things went sour for me all of a sudden, like. You know, like two, three gigs welshed on me right together and I like had to miss some payments to Fat Tony, 'cause like, man, I just didn't have the bread. After the first time his goons come around and beat up on me, like I sold off ever thing 'cept my horn

  and give all the bread�
��I mean like all of it, man—to Fat Tony, but with more bread coming in so slow, like, I just kept on getting further and further behind.

  "When one the deadbeat clubs finally come through with the bread they owed me, I hustled it right down to Fat Tony and he took it . . . but then he said I was setting a bad example to his other what he called clients and said I was just gonna have to be a example and he told his goons to take me out and kill me and dump me in the lake, but to make damn sure I floated so's they'd find me.

  "Them fuckers, they beat the pure, living shit out of me in the back seat of their Caddy, too. And they told me that, before they did kill me, they was gonna jam a service station air hose up my ass and fill me fulla air so's I'd be sure to float. When they pulled into a all-night gas station, man, I like figured I didn't have nothing to lose if they had to kill me before they like filled up my ass with air, so when that bastard of a Nick the Knucks opened his door, I went across him like sixty and put my knee in his crotch on the way, too. Then I took off running like the hounds of hell was after me, and they was, too, you know.

  "I wound up in this little-bitty park I'd never been in before, down by the lakeside, and after the beating and all that running and scared shitless, too, like I was, I was about to drop, like I mean it, man. I could hear the fuckers running and yelling to each other and then I seen this kind of tunnel-like up ahead with the sidewalk running right into it, but no lights in it, and like, man, that's where Cool Blue went. But when I heard them big feet slap-slapping off the sidewalk and coming my way, I started back to running, too, you know.

  "But when I come out the other end of that damn

  tunnel, I run face-first into a big old tree, and when I woke up, it was no park to be seen, no lake, neither. I was here, man, I was like herel"

  "As a man," asked Fitz, "or as a lion?"

  "No, man," Cool Blue "replied", "the lion bit came later. I was one beat-up nigger, but I was a man when I first come here. It's account of that fucking, black-hearted Count of Saint Germain and his bunch of wizards and warlocks that I'm running around this place on four legs, 'stead of two, him and his bunch and, 'specially, that oreo-cookie cooze he keeps around."

  "Can you imagine that kind of shit, man? Here's this sister—dark-complected, good-looking, name of Sursy—puts the, like I mean the real make on me. And hell, man, like I'm, you know, I mean like as horny as any other cat. But when I like went after what she was damn near to like rubbing in my face, she ups and changes me into a pig, man, like I mean a real-ass pig, a boar-hog, right down to the little curly tail, you dig.

  "So, like there I was, man, three, four hundred pounds of pork. She done said she wouldn't make it with me 'less I let her change me into what turned her on, see, so like I did. She did make it with me, like with the boar-hog I was then, I mean. But then the cow-cunted calico queen just left me, wouldn't change me back to a man, said I was gonna stay what I'd always really been.

  "And, man, like it ain't no fun being a hog, I tell you. You starving hungry all the fucking time, you know, so you'll eat anything you comes acrost. And, man, like you don't know what heartburns and bellyaches is 'til you been a pig for awhile. Well, man, like I took it all for a while, living out in the woods, but then I went back into old Saint Germain's place

  and I started like tearing the living shit out of any-fucking-thing I could get my big old tusks into. I wasted two of his warlocks and like ate part of one of the creeps, man.

  "Won't 'till then the Count, he come to find out what that Sursy, she done done to me, he thought Td just wandered off somewheres. When he did find out, he turned her into a pink lioness and sent her away somewheres, then he turned me from a hog into this blue lion and told me did I ever come to find her, the minute we two got it on, we'd both be real human beings again. Like, I mean, you know, can you beat that, man?"

  Fitz could not resist a chuckle then. "Well, Cool Blue, you were screwed and blued. Did you get tattooed?"

  "Man, like it ain't none of it noways funny." Cool Blue sounded hurt. "I couldn't blow no horn if I could find one, I can't sing or even fucking whistle, all I can do is to like roar, man, the whole thing is like a real bummer, you know. Like, I mean, what'd I ever do to that fucking brownie-king, Saint Germain, anyhow?"

  Fitz thought it rather pointless to answer the lion. He did wonder, very much, who this "Saint Germain" was, and what powers he might have besides transforming beatnik jazz musicians into baby-blue lions—if he could believe Cool Blue's story at all. At this point there were more immediate problems at hand.

  At midday, they ascended to the top of a ridge to see below them not a valley but a vast, swampy flatland stretching into misty distance.

  "Way you was headed, like, man, I was scared we was going to come up against the Dragon Swamp, man, and like we did. You don't want to go in there,

  you know, man, no way. And if you do, like count Cool Blue out, see. You dig?"

  Fitz frowned, sweeping the visible portions of the lower ground with his binoculars. "It looks like a cross between an overgrown lake and a rain forest. How wide is it, Cool Blue?"

  "Like hell, I don't know, man. I like never went into the place but once, and after I seen some of the monsters lives in there, I shagged ass out and I won't never go back. Man, it's dragons in there—real dragons, that breathes fire and smoke and all—and snakes so big you'd have to see the fuckers your own self to b'lieve it, and things you wouldn't think of to see in a nightmare or even on a bad trip on acid, man."

  "Okay, then," said Fitz, "if you don't know how wide it is, Cool Blue, then how long is it? Can we get around it? Bypass it?"

  "Yeah, man, you can, but like you're going to have to backtrack for a few days from here, 'cause like it spreads out south on both sides of where we are now, you know. Best thing is to go back south to the place I met you at or a little more, then cut west; it's like easier to travel that way, like along the valleys, than to keep going up and down hills and ridges, the way you been doing, see."

  "Well, damn it, then," demanded Fitz in exasperation, "why the hell didn't you tell me this days ago, Cool Blue?"

  The baby-blue lion yawned widely. "Like, man, you didn't ask me. I ain't no tour guide, you know, man. Like I'm just supposed to pad along with you for awhile and make sure you don't get your ass creamed, if I can."

  Fitz turned to Sir Gautier. "Do you think we could get across that morass, Gautier?"

  The Norman cast a jaundiced eye at the brooding

  expanses of dark water and overabundant vegetation, but answered loyally, "Wherever my lord goes, there too goes his servant, Gautier de Montjoie."

  Fitz squatted atop the ridge and considered the matter in all its many aspects. At length, he arose and said, "All right, Gautier, Cool Blue, we backtrack. Let's go, we have a half day left to travel in."

  That half day, plus seven more days and nights, saw them at the clearing wherein Fitz had slain the Norman sergeant, put his mates to rout and gained his sworn servant, Sir Gautier. They camped that night there and, the next morning, Fitz asked the lion, "You say farther south than this, Cool Blue?''

  "Yeah, man, like the hills is lower, south of here, but still not so low the Teeth and Legs would come up in them, see. They is baad news, man."

  "Yes, I know, Cool Blue, I killed one crossing the Pony Plain," said Fitz. "I've got a plan, I think, but let's break camp now and get going. Ill explain things as we walk. Okay?"

  Sir Gautier just nodded. The lion said, "Reet, Jackson."

  Fitz had given everything careful consideration, had gone over and over it all during their week of backtracking. Puss had sworn that one direction was as good as any other, except for due south, for finding the Dagda, so if the western route, following the vales and valleys, was faster and less arduous than climbing and descending hill after hill after rocky hill, then he would do so.

  However, as he had packed supplies for one and was now having to provide for two, mostly, he was running perilously low on everything.
Yes, there were still a few things left in the cave with the bike . . . unless, God forbid, beasts or men had found and

  despoiled his cache. But even if they had not, there still was not enough left therein to last him and Gautier for more than a few days or possibly one week on the march.

  Therefore, he had come to the decision to let Gautier help him get the bike down to reasonably level ground, then send the knight back up to camp in or around the cave with Cool Blue while he re-crossed the Pony Plain to the dunes and the wrecked ship to restock. After that first crossing, he realized that the loaded weight and the extra wheel of the sidecar imparted vastly improved stability to the bike, so he would be able to bring back far more than he had on the previous trip north.

  But he meant to first see if the cave's contents were as he had left them before he went into great detail with his two companions. Two days later, he found that they were. After he and Gautier had cleared the cave of the brittle, dried brush and rock rubble, Fitz unsnapped the canvas cover and lifted it from off the gleaming bike, sending a pair of big woods rats that had established residence there squealing and squeaking between the men's feet and out into the open. One got away, but Cool Blue pounced like some giant housecat. A quick descent of his muzzle, one crunch of his toothy jaws and a swallow, and he had effectively widowed the escapee.

  "You told me that, as a self-respecting lion, you never hunted any beast smaller than a full-grown deer," chided Fitz, half-jokingly.

  The lion sat and began to lick a huge paw preparatory to washing his face. "Like meat's meat, man. Huntings hard work, you dig, and like you don't never turn down no freebies, see. Hey, where the hell the chopper come from, man? Like it's cool, the utter coolest!"