A Barnstormer in Oz

by Philip José Farmer

  Mr. and Mrs. Robert Stover, Hank's grandparents, were both affronted and aghast. Lincoln just could not—could not—marry the penniless and pedigreeless daughter and niece of poor dirt farmers. Though threatened with disinheritance, Lincoln ran off with Dorothy to the wild state of Nevada, where the parson who married them failed to ask the age of the bride.

  Perhaps it was the fait accompli that caused the Robert Stovers to tell Lincoln Stover and Dorothy to come home, all was forgiven. A second and lawful marriage was made. And, after Lincoln's father and mother had gotten to know Dorothy well, they not only accepted her, but came to love her.

  "Which was pretty good for such snobs," Hank said.

  "Your mother was a remarkable person," Glinda said. "Also, very lovable."

  "If I weren't so modest, I'd tell you how much like her I am," Hank said.

  Both laughed.

  Ah, he thought, if only you would love me, Glinda. You'd find me a giant not only in size but in love.

  He resumed his biography. When the United States declared war on Germany, August 6, 1917, he was in prep school. He'd quit during his last semester to enlist in the Army Air Service in February, 1918. The previous summer, he'd taken flying lessons. In September he was transported to France, and he flew a Spad pursuit from September 20th until November 11th, the day of the Armistice. He'd been in five dogfights but had shot down only one plane, and he'd had to share that victory with his commander.

  When he was discharged, he'd bummed around in Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Italy, and Spain. On returning, he'd finished his prep school education and had started at Yale. But he was passionately in love with flying, and he was too old and experienced to enjoy being a freshman. The summer of 1921 he'd told his parents that he wasn't going back to college. Not for a while, anyway. He wanted to be a barnstormer. Lincoln and Dorothy objected very much, but he was as bullheaded as they. Off he'd gone with the Jenny his father had purchased for him, promising to pay him back from the money he made on his tours.

  "Dad refused to have anything to do with me until I gave up all that romantic idiocy, as he called it. Mother had begged me to finish school first and then go, as she put it, skylarking. She was mad at me, too, but she did write me long letters. Oh, yes, I forgot. The housekey. She gave it to me just before I embarked for France. She said it had always brought her luck, and maybe it would for me. I certainly would need it, she said."

  Glinda handed the key back to him. "It has been in many far-off places."

  He then told her again how he had happened to pass through the green cloud into this world.

  "Very rarely," she said, "there is a brief opening in the walls that separate our two worlds. Usually, they occur far above ground, though at one time there must have been some at surface level. They are a natural unpredictable phenomenon, and, for some reason, it is much more difficult to get from your world into mine than the other way around."

  "I can't go back?" Hank said. "But my mother..."

  "It's not impossible. Just hard. As I was about to say before you interrupted, stories handed down by our ancestors indicate that they passed through some openings into this world about 1500 or so years ago. More than one tribe and parts of tribes and some individuals came through. Animals, birds, and reptiles, too. And, of course, insects.

  "At that time, the openings must have lasted longer than they do now. Perhaps they moved more swiftly and swept some areas, scooped up, as it were, areas containing living beings. We really don't know what happened.

  "In any event, it seems that the openings, from what little we know about them, drifted westward. But, regardless of their location on Earth, their other side, that which gave access to this world, has always been fixed in this area, Amariiki."

  "May I interrupt again, Your Witchness?"

  "Zha, thu mag." ("Yes, you may.")

  "What if the openings were partly below the surface of the Earth? Would they, when they ceased to be open, quit operating, remove the Earth from the other world, too? And the vegetation?"

  "I don't know. I think that something, perhaps the Earth's radiations..."

  Hank thought, Earth currents?

  "... prevented the openings from existing below the ground and water levels of your world and mine. However, when my ancestors got here, they found some humans who spoke a different language. They were tiny, and very hairy, white-skinned, had huge supraorbital ridges, weak chins, breadloaf-shaped skulls, and thick bones."

  Neanderthals? Hank thought.

  Glinda said that these were either exterminated or absorbed by her ancestors. During this long process, her ancestors borrowed words from the languages of the vanquished. Thus, names such as Quadling, Winkie, Munchkin, and Gillikin were derived from the firstcomers.

  In about ten generations after entering this world, her ancestors had shrunk to their present size. About this time, other tribes came in, and there was war. But these newcomers also shrank in ten generations, and eventually Glinda's ancestors absorbed them. According to the tales, they called themselves the People of Morrigan.

  Morrigan? Hank thought. A goddess of the ancient Irish?

  Glinda said that there were still some villages in mountainous northeast Gillikinland which spoke dialects descended from the invaders' speech.

  Glinda continued. The third people to come were also giants, very dark, and had straight black hair, broad faces, high cheekbones, and big bold noses. They, too, shrank while they were warring with their predecessors. Eventually, they established residence behind the mountain range that cut off the northwestern area of this giant oasis.

  "What really bothers me, Your Witchness, is, uh, well, how can an inanimate object, the Scarecrow, for instance, become alive? Not only that, but how can it be intelligent, able to speak? How can something made of cloth and straw, something that lacks a skeleton, muscles, nerves, blood, how can that walk? How can it talk when its mouth is only painted on, how see when its eyes are also painted on? How... ?"

  He jumped, startled, when a bird shot in and then floated to a landing on the back of a chair.

  Glinda gave a start, too, and spoke angrily to the bird.

  It was a goshawk, and it answered in the voice that still made him uneasy when he heard it. He just could not get used to animals and birds talking, especially when the voices sounded as if they were issuing from a gramophone. They all sounded much alike to him. It made no difference if a small-throated hawk or a large-throated cow spoke. The pitch remained the same, though the loudness differed. The one should have been piping, the other bass. But they were not.

  "Pardon, Little Mother," the goshawk said. "I would have announced myself to your guards, but I bring very important news!"

  "The pardon depends upon the importance of what you bring me," Glinda said. "What is it?"

  "A small green cloud suddenly appeared out in the desert, and a flying machine, something like the giant's, shot through. But it did not continue to fly. Something had cut it in half, and it fell to the ground. It is burning on the ground now."

  Hank Stover shot out of his chair.

  "Exactly where is it?" he cried.

  The goshawk looked at Glinda. She nodded.

  "Exactly south of the castle. About three miles straight from here."

  Glenda rose and said, "Eight miles by the road. Stop!"

  Hank turned. "Yes, Little Mother?"

  "I can understand your impatience to get there. But you do not walk out in my presence unless I grant permission."

  "Sorry, Your Witchness."

  Glinda rapidly gave some orders, and she walked out with her bodyguard and Stover trailing. He wanted to run, but he had to walk, and he could not even do that quickly. Glinda's legs, though long in proportion to her trunk, were short compared to his. Fuming, jittering, he matched his pace to hers as they went down the hall and then the stairway to the ground floor. The goshawk had flown ahead to transmit her commands. By the time the party got to the front entrance, it found chariots awaiting i
t. Hank got into the vehicle driven by the blonde, Lamblo, and bent down so that he could grip the railing. The two moose pulling it would have a heavier load than the others. His weight was over three times Lamblo's.

  Presently, the queen, sitting on an attached bench in the lead chariot, gave the word to proceed. Her driver, standing up, shouted at the moose to go at top pace. She did not use reins and was not so much the driver as the director. Sentient animals did not need these and would have resented them.

  They raced across the drawbridge and out through the enormous gateway of the outer walls. The people caught unawares scattered before them. Then they were going east on the red brick road and were quickly past the walls. Hank, looking south, saw the black plume of smoke from the burning aircraft.

  A mile from the castle, the chariots turned south onto a dirt road. It soon left the plateau and began winding down the face of the cliff. It was just wide enough for two small wagons to pass each other, but the moose took the inner curves as if they were sure that they'd not meet anyone coming from the other direction. Hank hoped they were right.

  Lamblo had to shout several times at her animals to slow down, and once she pulled on the brake handle by her side. Somehow, the whole cavalcade—cervuscade?—got down to the bottom without accident. Here, Hank thought, the animals would slow down, take a breather. But no. Now they were going even faster. The trees on the sides of the road flashed by. Eventually, his weight began to tell on Lamblo's beasts, and the chariot dropped behind the others. Glinda, looking back, shouted something, and the others checked their pace.

  They came from the semidarkness of the heavy woods into bright sunlight. The desert lay before them. Tawny sand and red and black rocks of from house-size to egg-size. Glinda stopped the chariots. When Hank's pulled near hers, she said, "We'll walk from here."

  He did not have to ask her why. Pulling the vehicles through that rugged, ragged waste would have worn out the moose more in a mile than the six miles of racing.

  He wondered if that was the only reason when he saw boxes unloaded from the only four-wheeled chariot. They were opened, and the contents passed out. Hank took three of the thin iron javelins Lamblo handed him.

  "What're these for?"

  The snub-nosed blonde pointed at a white arc springing from one high rock to another.

  "They're not dangerous if you don't get in their path. But if any roll at you, throw one of these through it."

  She spread her palms up and outwards.

  "Gaguum!"

  Which was Quadling for "Boom!"

  "They explode. Usually, anyway. Sometimes, you have to throw a second one through them."

  Javelins were not their only protection. As they walked out slowly, they were joined by a group that had arrived a few minutes behind them. These were archers, male and female, their arrows tipped with round iron balls. The weight of these would prevent long-range shooting, but, apparently, they were thought adequate for their purpose. The archers formed a circle around the queen's party.

  They went up a tortured slope of projecting sheets of rocks and pockets of sand. When they got to its top, they could see the wreck burning on the downward side of the slope. Dark marks on the rock showed where the craft had struck near the end of a slanting sheet, had bounced, and then had slid down the bottom half of the grayish apron. Hank wanted to urge more speed; he was vibrating with curiosity. But Glinda walked slowly, and nobody was going to break the discipline of matching the pace with her.

  She stopped for a moment and looked around.

  "Good!" she said. "No fizhanam in sight. They do, however, come up swiftly, Hank."

  The searing heat from the flaming wreck kept them from getting closer than a hundred feet. There was nothing to do but to wait for the flames to die and the metal to cool. Or so Hank thought. Twenty minutes later, more soldiers and moose came, hauling with much labor six four-wheeled wagons. These held tanks and pumping machinery. A greenish foam was sprayed from three of them, and this quickly smothered the burning gasoline. Then water was pumped from the other three to dissipate the foam and cool the hot metal.

  Hank had thought that the Quadling technology was at about what it had been on Earth in A.D. 1300. But even A.D. 1923 did not have this fire-quenching foam. He had better wait until he was familiar with this culture before he made any conclusions about the comparative advancement of science and technology here and on Earth.

  He could now get near enough for a closer look at the wreck. Breathing through his mouth because of the stomach-churning stench of roasted flesh, he walked around the wreck and also looked at the pieces that had been scattered by the two impacts. The hawk had reported correctly. The fuselage had been severed about three feet behind the rear cockpit as if by a giant's sword. The missing part might be out on the desert to the south, but he doubted it. It was probably lying on Kansas soil.

  The burned and twisted skeleton of the plane looked like that of a D.H.4B, a two-seater scout and light bomber biplane. The Army Air Service had over a thousand of them. It usually carried two .30-caliber machine guns in front of the pilot in the front cockpit and one mounted by the rear cockpit. The two fore guns, bent, lay about thirty yards ahead of the wreck. There was no third machine gun visible. Hank thought that it may have been removed from its mounting before the plane took off for the fatal mission.

  Normally, the D.H.4B carried two men, but there was only one, the charred mass in the pilot's seat.

  However, the crash had hurled from the rear cockpit some cartons of ammunition, a BAR (Browning Automatic .30-caliber assault rifle) 1918 model, a smashed camera, and cases containing film. The BAR was undamaged except for some scratches.

  He stood by while soldiers got the body out of the cockpit. When it was laid out on the rock, he forced himself to approach it. Though he had seen some badly burned corpses in France and two at a Missouri landing strip, he felt like vomiting. The gloves and clothes had been burned away, and the boots fell off in strips while the body was being carried. The fingers were missing. The face was smashed in, but it would have been gone anyway. The goggles had been knocked off the head. The ears and nose were gone, and the eyesockets were empty.

  He looked into the black mass of the face and wondered what the pilot had looked like when alive. Grimacing, he searched for dog tags but could find none. If the man had identifying papers on him, they had been destroyed by fire. However, the two gold bars embedded in the fried flesh showed that he had been a first lieutenant.

  A soldier brought a charred belt and holster containing a Colt .45 automatic pistol. The ammunition in its clip had exploded and destroyed the weapon.

  However, some of the boxes thrown out of the rear cockpit held loaded magazine boxes for the BAR, and others contained ammunition which would fit his New Service revolver. And he had plans for making more.

  Glinda seemed to be undisturbed by the ghastly stinking thing on the rock. Some of the soldiers, however, were retching, and many were as pale as he probably looked.

  Glinda asked him some questions about the airplane. Hank replied that the flying machine was a military one. He was assuming that it had been sent through the green haze on orders.

  "Are you thinking as I am?" she said. "That the hazes through which you and this man came through are not natural openings? That they were made by your people?"

  "I may be wrong," he said, "but they could be the results of experiments by the Signal Corps. Its headquarters are at Fort Leavenworth. Still..."

  He did not believe that forcing the openings could have been the goal of the Signal Corps. These had come about as accidental byproducts—what was the word?—serendipitous, from serendipity, coined by Horace Walpole in the eighteenth century? At least, the first time had been unforeseen, but the second time must have been on purpose.

  "If they were formed by your people," she said, "they don't know how to keep them stable. And you must have accidentally come across one and flown through. I wonder if that was their first attempt
or if others had been made before then?"

  "I don't know. They must have been surprised when I disappeared into the haze. If they saw me, that is. But I think they did. That would explain why they sent an Army plane through."

  The big brass must be wondering what the hell is going on, he thought. They had probably clamped a security lid on the project. Though they had probably done that from the beginning, before the haze appeared.

  Glinda gave some orders. A leather bag was brought from a wagon, and the body was stuffed into it. Six of the huskier troops carried it off and placed it on top of a firefighting wagon and tied it down with ropes. Hank marvelled at Glinda's foresight in bringing the bag. She must have been shaken by the plane's sudden appearance and destruction. Yet she had calmly made arrangements for the disposal of the body. In fact, since she could not know how many men there were in the craft, she'd ordered six leather bags.

  At Hank's request, Glinda had the machine guns put on the wagon.

  "Is there anything else you'd like brought to the castle? We should be leaving as soon as possible."

  She looked up at the bright blue sky where at least a hundred birds, lookouts, were wheeling. If they spotted a nearby fizhanam, they'd notify her.

  "Nothing," he said.

  They walked back through the desert and rode the chariots to the castle. The body was taken on a cart down a ramp into the underground. Hank had expected to be questioned by the queen, but she told Captain Lamblo to take care of Hank. If he wished to go to town or retire to his apartment, whatever he wished, she should see that it was done.

  "Within reason, my dear," Glinda said, and she smiled.

  Glinda went off accompanied by her high-ranking officers and government officials. Hank looked down at the exquisite little blonde, who was smiling up at him.