A Barnstormer in Oz

by Philip José Farmer

  These people were morally rigid in some of their ways, ways that Americans would have thought peculiar. In others, they were liberal to an extent that would have outraged and repulsed many Americans, especially those in the Bible belt.

  However, he told himself, a Quadling in America would have had the same reaction towards different mores. But then so would a West African or Malay.

  He and the hawks got up in the morning with hangovers. He ate a light breakfast, which caused his host and family to shake their heads and tsk-tsk. How could he keep his giant body going on such a small amount of food? He did not reply. He wanted coffee badly. In fact, he awoke every morning lusting for steaming-hot black Java.

  The next day, near noon, he came to the edge of a thick forest, unbroken by tilled land, unmarked by humans. It stretched ahead of him for two hundred miles, if Ot was right. Hank had been told that, long ago, the wise if often draconian ruler-witches had decided that the forests made natural obstacles to war. But what strengthened this decision was the will of the creatures of the forest. They were willing to give the humans a certain space, if they made no attempt to enlarge it at the wild beast's expense. Here, the animals were sentient and could fight back with an intelligence that Earth's animals lacked.

  So, by ancient agreement, humans lived within their allotted space with their domestic animals. The wild animals kept to their woods unless starvation forced them to raid the farms. The humans sometimes transgressed on the forest, but they knew the price they might have to pay.

  Actually, a certain amount of trade goods and visitors passed through the trees. But most of the traffic was by river. His mother and her companions had used the Gogz River for much of their journey southward to Glinda's capital. Baum had omitted this for story purposes or for reasons known only to himself.

  The second touchdown for refueling in the forest was on a slanting meadow at the bottom of a mountain. The party sent in to prepare the way had cut down trees and uprooted the stumps and filled in the holes.

  Between Quadlingland and Ozland was a range of mountains many of which were over 14,000 feet high. Hank did not like to take the Jenny over eight thousand feet because the controls became "mushy" then and also because he might not find a path between mountains lower than the service ceiling of the plane. He flew above the Gogz River, staying at five hundred feet above its sometimes broad and placid, sometimes narrow and boiling, course. Doing this added two hundred miles to his flight path and forced him to make extra stops for refueling.

  Ozland itself was as flat as Kansas, mainly farmland interspersed with large woodlands. The dirt roads were lined with fruit and nut trees planted hundreds of years ago. A person could walk from one town to another and not have to worry about going hungry, though that person might get tired of the limited diet.

  Ot kept up her irritating stream of chatter all the way until she sighted the tips of the towers of the Emerald City. Ot became silent after that. Not because of awe or excitement from the sighting. Hank told her that he would wring her neck if she did not shut up for a while.

  The capital, the "city" built by the Wizard Oz, was on a river. Baum had neglected to mention this, though that might not have been his fault. Dorothy may have failed to tell him of it. However, there had once been a flourishing village here because it was by the river and its location on the crossing of four roads made it a natural trade center. Oz had torn down the houses and placed on the site his monument to himself.

  As the Emerald City neared, its details became more evident. It was beautiful and exotic, a circular wall enclosing many small houses, and, in the center, the huge palace. The fifty-foot-high wall around the city was of great greenish stone blocks. On its wide top were many slender watchtowers of red stone, each topped by a pole from which whipped the flag of Ozland. The flag had been designed by The Wizard himself; the present ruler, the Scarecrow, had left it unchanged. The country originally had been named Mizhland (Midland) but had been renamed after the famous Wizard.

  Hank, having plenty of fuel left, circled the city twice and then buzzed it twice. There were enormous emeralds set in the outer exterior of the wall, jewels which Glinda said were undoubtedly the relic artifacts of the Long-Gones.

  There were four enormous gates in the wall, not, as Baum had said, only one small one. A single gate could never have handled the traffic of a city of 30,000 and the thousands of traders and tourists.

  The houses of the residents were of varicolored stone and, like the Quadlings', rectangular. (Only the Munchkins had round houses.) The streets were of green brick, and there were many trees, parks, and fountains. The palace, which covered at least six acres, was of greenish stone in which were set more emeralds than were in the entire city-protecting wall. Hank grinned when he saw it. Oz had built it to reproduce, though on a larger scale, the Capitol Building of Washington, D.C. The Ozians must have raised their eyebrows when they saw the plans for it. There had been no architecture like that in the whole country.

  In front of the palace was a bronze statue of a man sitting on a chair; it was twice as big as that of Lincoln at the entrance to the Lincoln Memorial Building in Washington. It was of the Wizard, dressed in a tall plug hat, a cigar sticking straight out of his lips, and in the evening clothes of a gentleman of the late 19th century. The face was, by coincidence, much, like the illustration of the Wizard by Neill. But it also reminded Hank of Disraeli.

  Having gotten a bird's view of the fabulous city of Oz, Hank directed Jenny towards the landing field. This was a wide flat meadow by the river about a half-mile from the walls. It was used as a market for the local farmers and the merchants from foreign lands. But, today, it had been cleared of its tents and wagons and the refuse carted off.

  It looked as if the entire city and its visitors had assembled to greet him. Stakes had been driven into the earth to mark a long wide landing strip, and ropes had been tied to connect the stakes. Even so, the police, wearing green uniforms and scarlet coolie-type helmets with black roaches, were having a hard time keeping the crowd from pressing against the barrier.

  Hank brought the plane around to head against the wind and began his landing approach.

  He turned off the ignition and climbed out of the plane. Ot flew into the front cockpit, said something to the hawks there, and Windwaldriiz winged off with her message for Glinda. The babel was deafening with the cries and chatter of people, animals, and birds. Hank waited for the greeting committee. At its front was the ruler, the Scarecrow.

  He—it, rather—was a walking question mark for Hank.

  According to Hank's mother, Baum had narrated truthfully, in essence, anyway, her meeting with the thing. She had come across the Scarecrow stuck up on a pole by a cornfield. The crows, however, paid it no attention; they were eating the corn not a foot away from it. The Scarecrow had spoken to Dorothy and had gotten her to free him from the pole. And his story of being conscious while the farmer painted eyes, nose, lips, and ears on his face was true. Dorothy, eight years old, tough, yet with the naivete and acceptance of marvels of a child, had not questioned him much. Nor had she wondered how a scarecrow could be alive and speak through painted lips and see with painted eyes. Even his statement that he could see better with the left eye, because the fanner had painted it larger than the right, had gone unchallenged. Nor had she wondered how a skeletonless and muscleless creature could walk. Nor where he, who did not eat or drink, got his supply of energy. Nor how a thing with no infancy or childhood, a thing which had seemed to bloom from no seed, could suddenly talk and quite fluently at that.

  There were perhaps a million scarecrows in this land. Every farmer had one. Why was only one in a million able to talk and walk? Why were all the rest just inanimate objects?

  Moreover, what Baum, Dorothy, and most of Baum's readers had overlooked was that scarecrows might frighten away crows on Earth, but here the crows were sentient. They would know instantly that the mock-man was a dummy. So, why did the Munchkin farmers make them?
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  The truth was that every farmer had one, and he had placed it to attract corn-eating birds, not to drive them away.

  It was against the law to kill animals and birds, except in special circumstances, but these needed food, and so every farmer allotted a certain amount of his crops to the predators to keep them from the rest. To mark the privilege section, the farmer erected a scarecrow. It was an ancient custom that had become law. The animals and birds, being sentient, usually ate only in the fenced-off area known as the "sacrifice garden" or the "grace field."

  The Gillikins, Hank had been told, did not use scarecrows. They set up wooden images called fuglskarya (bird-scare).

  Somebody was responsible for the singularity of the Scarecrow. What these people called "witchcraft" had to be involved. If it wasn't, Hank would eat his helmet unboiled and without salt and pepper.

  He might be overly suspicious, but he wondered if Glinda's invisible hand had been and was pushing events in the directions she wished.

  For instance, it was not true that Helwedo, the Witch of the North, the Gillikin ruler, had been waiting for Dorothy when she came out of the farmhouse. If she had been, she would not have been able to talk with the little girl. Dorothy did not know the language. But three weeks later, when Dorothy could carry on a simple conversation, she was visited by the witch. After telling her something about the land and the silver shoes of the dead and dried-away Witch of the East, she had taken off her white conical hat. While balancing it on her nose—quite a feat—she had said, "One, two, three." A shimmering enclosed the hat, and when that was gone within a second, it seemed to have changed into a slateboard. In big white chalkmarks was written on it: LET DOROTHY GO TO THE CITY OF EMERALDS.

  That was what Dorothy was told that the message was. She could not read it.

  Who had written those words? Glinda?

  If so, why?

  And how had she done it? She was many hundreds of miles away. Did she have not only telepathic powers enabling her to communicate with the North Witch but also telergic powers?

  Had Glinda somehow animated and made sentient the Scarecrow so that the little Earth girl might have a protector and advisor?

  "Am I being paranoiac?" Hank muttered. "I don't think so. I'm just being logical or trying to be, anyway. However, I don't really have enough information to construct any probable and logical hypotheses. And that is what's driving me crazy. Making me anxious and frustrated, anyway."

  He had seen many things to make him feel somewhat disorientated since he'd come here. The Scarecrow perhaps affected him thus more than any thing so far. Even though he had been conditioned to accept it as part of the normal world because he'd read Baum's books, he still felt that the Scarecrow was weird. Weird in the sense of "freakish," startlingly odd, and "suggestive of ghosts, evil spirits, or other supernatural things; mysterious; eerie." He also thought of golems and Frankenstein's monster.

  Yet, this thing, its painted smile and big blue eyes, this lurching awkward being, was more comical than sinister. His mother had loved it much, perhaps loved it more than any of the strange beings she'd met.

  He also had another adjustment to make. He had unconsciously expected the Scarecrow to be as tall as he. That was because of Denslow's and Neill's illustrations, which had shown both the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman as tall as Earth adults. They should not have been drawn as such, since it was evident that a pygmy Munchkin farmer would not make a scarecrow any taller than he.

  The thing, smiling, approached, its blue-clad sleeves and white cloth gloves—its hands—spread out welcomingly.

  "Dorothy's son!" the phonographic voice boomed. "Welcome! Thrice welcome!"

  It folded its arms around Hank's waist and pressed its flat face against him.

  Hank was moved, and, for some reason, tears crawled out and slid over his cheeks.

  "I thank the Little Father," he said. "I wish my mother could be here with me."

  The Scarecrow released him and stepped not very gracefully back.

  "And how is the dear little girl?"

  "In good health and happy spirits, The Highest. But she is, of course, not a little girl anymore."

  "Ah, yes. I forgot. They grow... Well, come along with me to the palace, my boy, and I'll show you your room and give you the schedule for today and tonight."

  Hank first made sure, however, that the Jenny was wheeled carefully into a barn and that a guard would keep the curious away from it.

  "It, too, has a painted face," the ruler said.

  Hank did not reply. What could he say except to ask the king what caused his strange remark.

  The daylight hours were spent in making a tour of the city and environs. The evening was a long feast with much guzzling of beer and booze by most of the guests. There was no smoking in the room, however. The Scarecrow still feared fire more than anything. With good reason.

  Hank sat at the ruler's right and ate and drank. The Scarecrow, at the head of a table seating fifty, had neither plate nor cup. It asked Hank many questions about his mother and Earth. Then it said, "Glinda has sent me information about the attempt of your people to open a way between them and us. She is much concerned about it."

  "I don't think there's any reason to be concerned," Hank said, lying. "My people don't seem able to control the opening, and I doubt very much that they ever will."

  "Perhaps not. In any event, Glinda should be able to handle it."

  Hank was going to ask what it meant by that, but it said, "Of much more immediate concern is Erakna the Uneatable."

  Hank wanted to ask it how the witch got her name, but he was afraid to.

  "She's even worse than the late Witch of the West," it said. "She's so cruel and oppressive, and she's taxing the Gillikins' pants off. Her excuse for the high taxes is that she must raise a big army for defense. Yet she's the one who's instigated the border incidents, and she's getting ready to invade us."

  The Scarecrow tapped its head. "The trouble with this world is lack of brains. If only reason could rule..."

  "Emotions have almost always governed human behavior, and they always will," Hank said.

  "I wonder what the reason for that is?"

  Erakna had been comparatively unknown before the old North Witch died. It was unlawful for anyone but the ruler to practice witchcraft, but there were some who did so anyway in the distant rural areas. Erakna had appeared in Helwedo's palace a few minutes after the old woman had died. She had seized power by terrorizing the Gillikins with a display of witchly pyrotechnics and violence that had cowed them. That she had been planning the takeover for a long time was shown by the suddenness with which a band of her followers had moved into the central government. There had been revolts, but she had put them down bloodily.

  The main conflict, the deciding one, would probably be between the witches. If Glinda could overcome Erakna, the Gillikins would fold up. If Erakna killed Glinda, she would take all four countries. There might be resistance to her, but her opponents would be psychologically crippled.

  After the feast was over, Hank said goodnight to the guests and went to bed. The Wizard had built a monstrously large bed for himself, a sprawling canopied piece of furniture with gold solid legs and alloyed silver frame. This was the only bed large enough for Hank, and the Scarecrow did not mind Hank using it. The Scarecrow did not sleep. He read all night or studied and signed papers or sometimes just prowled the palace.

  "A ruler has many decisions to make, much information about his subjects to ponder. I'm fortunate in that I, unlike flesh and blood monarchs, don't have to waste eight hours every night. My people, you might say, get two rulers for the price of one."

  Hank laughed and said, "While you're visiting Glinda, Your Wiseness, who rules in your place?"

  The Scarecrow's face could not change expression. Yet Hank got the impression of raised eyebrows.

  "My prime minister, Azer the Eager. A very wise young man, though he smokes too much."

  "Have you checked him
out?" Hank said. "I mean, you know his background thoroughly?"

  "What?"

  Hank gestured impatiently.

  "I mean, he couldn't be a spy? Erakna's agent?"

  "Why in the world would you think of that?"

  "Erakna, from what I've heard, is very subtle, a real snake. Oh, well, perhaps I'm too presumptuous. Too suspicious. But..."

  The Scarecrow turned its head so that Hank could see only I the larger eye.

  "Did Glinda suggest that you ask me about Azer?"

  Hank nodded.

  "She said that she had no reason to suspect him. I hope Your Oneness will forgive me for saying this, but she wasn't satisfied with his story. I mean, he says he comes from a small village on the Winkie border. But you did not verify that."

  "Well, I declare!" the Scarecrow said, and it said something Hank couldn't understand. It was probably reverting to its Munchkin dialect.

  "I'll be leaving in the morning," it said. "How can I do that if I don't know whether or not Azer is trustworthy? If he's Erakna's agent, then..."

  "There's no need to be alarmed," Hank said. "Glinda has already sent a hawk to Azer's village. He investigated and reported to her that Azer seemed to be what he said he was."

  The Scarecrow waved its white-cloth hands. "Then, what... ? Ah, I see! Glinda is teaching me a lesson. She thinks I'm too naive—she's right, I must admit—and she's showing me what I should have done. And what I must do in the future. That Glinda! She's the wise one, not me. I'd say my brains were rotten if I hadn't put in some new ones only yesterday."

  It's hard to believe, Hank thought, but it's true. This thing replaced the cloths which made up its body, the trousers and shirt and jacket and gloves, the sack on which its face was painted, the straw which stuffed its body and hands, and the boots, the heaviest part of its body.