A Barnstormer in Oz

by Philip José Farmer

  Firing at it did nothing but make him feel as if he were doing something to protect himself. He was not, however.

  He saw the tin head of the Woodman rise above the edge of the cockpit, then duck back quickly.

  He pressed his back against the cockpit. So swiftly that he had not seen it even as a blur, the sphere had leaped from the wing to the edge of his windshield.

  Hank shot it again. Shot through it, rather. The ball was unaffected, but there was a tiny hole in the fabric of the upper wing.

  "It won't get into me!" Hank said aloud. "They say it doesn't harm humans. Well, hardly ever!"

  But what if it were just the ordinary Earth-type lightning-ball? It could land on him and blow up, burn him or short-circuit his nervous system and make him insane. He had read about such balls doing just that to humans.

  The sphere was gone. There it was! Perched now on the rim of the front cockpit windshield.

  The Tin Woodman rose, the upper part of his body visible. He would have to be standing on the seat. His ax rose, lifted by two hands.

  Hank waited for the explosion.

  It did not come. As if whisked by an unseen hand, the glowing sphere shot back from the cockpit and seemed to disappear into the engine.

  A moment later all electrical manifestations were gone.

  Far off on the horizon, the black storm raced towards them.

  The Jenny outran the clouds, though not the wind, in the mountains. Hank had to land her in the hilly country. He found an upland farm and brought her in over a meadow against a strong wind. As he was taxiing towards a barn, the right wings were lifted by a gust. The left wings dipped, and the tip of the lower one would have scraped against the ground so quickly that he would not have had time to use the controls to right the craft. But the tip did not drag against the earth and tear up fabric and bend the framework. The left wing lifted, putting the plane on both wheels.

  "That was lucky!" Hank muttered. A gust under the left wing must have straightened her out.

  It almost seemed as if Jenny had done it herself.

  The farmers ran out of the house, their eyes wide, their arms waving. They had never even heard of the Earthman and his flying machine, and they were frightened, not sure whether the thing was a dragon of legend or a vehicle for a wizard. They knew about the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman, however. These reassured the farmers, who then pushed the Jenny into a huge community storage barn. Hank tied her down, and all went into the house.

  The storm hit a few minutes later with lightning, thunder, and rain. Hank sat on several cushions on the floor in a corner while their hosts served him food and drink. They were awed and pleased by the presence of the two rulers and the giant who was under the protection of Glinda the Good.

  With a big if meatless meal and a pint of vodka in him, Hank said goodnight to the farmers and went to the barn to sleep. His two passengers accompanied him. Hank lay down on the hay in a stall.

  "Your Shininess," he said to the Woodman, "I've not had a chance to ask you just how you got your, uh, present form. I know what you told my mother. The story is that you were in love with a young woman, but her mother did not want her daughter to marry a woodchopper. She wanted her to marry a rich farmer and town counsellor, even though he was fifteen years older than the daughter. But the daughter preferred you. So the mother got a minor witch, an old woman named Mombi, to put a spell on you. Is that right so far?"

  The Winkie king sighed, and he said, "That's what I told your mother."

  "Is this Mombi the one who's allied with Erakna?"

  "Yes. Though ‘allied' isn't the correct word. Mombi is a subordinate. She's not Erakna's equal."

  "O.K. Got you. Anyway, my mother said that you said that the spell worked this way. First, it made your ax slip while you were cutting wood, and it cut your right foot off."

  "That's what I told your mother."

  "But you had an artificial foot made and went right on cutting wood. And your girlfriend still insisted on marrying you."

  "Those were my words."

  "The next time that the ax slipped, it cut off your right leg."

  "Halfway down the thigh. I knew then that the ‘accidents' were no accidents. How could an ax do that? It would have to be directed by someone, a witch or wizard. I knew that someone did not wish me well, and it didn't take long to figure out who that one was. I accused her mother, but she denied it. So I went to old Mombi and accused her, but she denied it. I would have gone to the police then, but her mother would have been involved, and she would have been hanged with Mombi. My lover could not endure that. She begged me not to tell the police, and she promised that she'd get her mother to call Mombi off. She'd marry me right away, too, and then there'd be no reason to keep the spell on me. So I said I'd keep quiet about it.

  "Why would Mombi be executed?" Hank said. "The Munchkins were ruled by the East Witch then. She wouldn't care if there were other red witches."

  "Wrong. She didn't want any competition at all, red or white."

  "Baum wrote that the woman's mother had gone to the East Witch and promised her two sheep and a cow if she kept you from marrying her daughter. That isn't what Dorothy told him, but he either forgot the details or else decided to streamline and modify the story. Anyway, the East Witch would not be bribed by two sheep and a cow. That'd be too paltry a sum. And animals just can't be given away to others, as we do on Earth. They have rights. Baum overlooked that. Also, if the East Witch had wanted to get rid of you, she'd just have you killed. None of this slow amputation stuff."

  "It was Mombi, not the East Witch who put the spell on me," the Tin Woodman said. "But the East Witch would have enjoyed the, as you put it, slow amputation stuff."

  "Baum wrote that, the first time the spell worked, it made the ax slip and cut off your leg. So, he said, you went to a tinsmith and had him make you a new leg of tin. Just how would the tinsmith attach the leg to your body? With a pin through the hipbone? Even if he could do that, you couldn't use the leg except as a crutch. And it would have been useless since it would have bent at the knee. You couldn't have walked with it, let alone chop wood and carry the wood."

  The Scarecrow said, "I admire, the way you use your brains, Hank. You're very logical."

  "Thank you, Little Father. So, Baum wrote that the loss of your leg didn't stop you from working or from courting the old woman's daughter. But the East Witch continued the spell. The ax chopped off your right leg. Very neat. But painful, I would think. And how did you survive these amputations? You were alone in the forest when these ‘accidents' happened. You must have lost a great deal of blood. It was a wonder you didn't die. Who found you, applied a tourniquet to your stump, took you to a doctor? How long were you in a hospital?"

  The Winkie king did not reply.

  "And then, according to Baum, the ax cut off your arms, one after the other. By that, ‘one after the other,' he must have meant that there was a considerable time between the severing of one arm and the next. But, surely, you would have known long before that the ax was enchanted by a malevolent witch or wizard. You would have refused to use that ax. In fact, you would have given up using the ax or any dangerous tool.

  "So, Baum wrote, you replaced your arms with tin ones. But you would have been able to use these even less than you could use the legs.

  "And then, here comes the most unbelievable part, the ax slipped and cut off your head. But, so Baum said, the tinsmith happened to come along, and he made you a new head out of tin!"

  "Thinking logically, I would say," the Scarecrow said, "that you would have been dead, Niklaz. The tinsmith could have done nothing for you."

  Hank looked surprised. He said, "Is this the first time you've thought about his story?"

  "Oh, no! I'm just making some comments. Bolstering the structure of your logical questioning."

  "Well," Hank said, "then comes the next event. The ax is supposed to have slipped once more and cut your body into two equal parts. Again, the tinsmith came
to your rescue. He made you a torso of tin and attached your other tin parts to it. But you did not love the girl any more because you did not have a heart. You were a hollow man in more ways than one."

  "Not really a man," the Winkie king said.

  "Yes! Baum was writing a children's book, so he could not have said anything about your lack of genitals. I doubt that he even thought of that. My mother hadn't, not when you told her your story. She was only eight years old.

  "Baum said that, once you were in your tin body, you were in only one danger. Your joints might rust. So you kept a full oilcan in your cottage, and you oiled the joints when you thought it was needed. But one day you were caught in a rainstorm, the joints rusted, and you couldn't move. You stood there in the woods for a year until Dorothy and the Scarecrow came along and oiled the joints. Nonsense! Tin wouldn't rust that fast, if at all."

  "Very good," the Scarecrow said.

  "Baum also said that you had a lot of time to think while you were frozen with rust. You had time to decide that the greatest loss you had known was not losing your sweetheart. It was losing your heart. When you were in love, you were very happy. Love was the greatest thing in the world, and I won't argue about that. To love, you had to have a heart, and you vowed to go to the Wizard Oz and ask him to give you one.

  "After that, you'd ask your sweetheart to marry you. Now, I ask you, what kind of marriage would that be? A tin man, no flesh-and-blood organs whatsoever, married to a flesh-and-blood woman? Did you really for a moment think that she'd marry you? Or, if she did, that the marriage would last?"

  "Of course not," Niklaz said.

  "Well, then, did you really go to Oz to ask him for a heart? Did you need a heart? That is, did you lack kindness and tenderness and compassion and empathy?"

  "No."

  Hank turned to the Scarecrow.

  "Did you really go to Oz to ask him for brains because you thought you needed them?"

  "Oh, yes!" the stuffed thing said. "I was stupid; I knew it; I wanted intelligence more than anything."

  "But you had it from the beginning!"

  "Oh, no! I didn't know anything! Well, very little, anyway."

  "You confused lack of knowledge and experience with a lack of intelligence," Hank said. "Well, O.K., so you weren't lying when you told my mother why you wanted to see Oz. But King Niklaz..."

  "You believe I'm lying?"

  The tin mask was expressionless, but the voice was indignant.

  "Yes. Your story just won't hold water. It's leaking like a sieve. Just to take one thing, your new tin head. You'd be dead. Your brain would be rotting. But even if it weren't and the tinsmith managed by some surgical miracle to transfer your brains and nervous system to the tin head, how would it be kept alive? It needs blood and food. But you say that even this impossible thing wasn't done. You were given a new head, an empty tin one, and suddenly you, your brain, your spirit, call it what you will, is in the tin head. Baum didn't say that, but it's implied."

  "What is your reasoning about this?" the Tin Woodman said. His voice was emotionless.

  "I think that you did lose a foot, and that it was caused by a spell—whatever that means—put on you by Mombi. You thought that it was an accident, and you had an artificial foot made of tin. The connection must have been made by a leather ring or sheath, though. Otherwise, the metal would've rubbed your flesh raw. How am I doing so far?"

  "You make sense," Niklaz said. "But what seems to be sense is not always so in reality."

  "Then, when you lost the other foot, you knew that someone had enchanted—I hate to use that unscientific word—enchanted the ax. You figured out quickly who was behind the ‘accidents.' Your reluctant future mother-in-law and the only known local witch, Mombi. Isn't that right?"

  "You'd make a fine detective," Niklaz said. "A fine theoretical one, anyway."

  "But not a good practical one, is that what you mean?" Hank said, cocking his head to one side. He grinned. "Let me continue to theorize.

  "So, though you might be a simple man who chopped and sold wood for a living, you were smart enough to seek out someone who might protect you. Or, maybe, this someone had had her eye on you, and she came to you. It'd be a hell of a long walk for a man with two good feet, but one who had artificial feet, well!"

  "Her?" the Scarecrow said. "You said, ‘Her.'"

  "A long walk," Niklaz said. "To where?"

  "To Glinda in her Quadling capital," Hank said. "I don't think you went to her. She came to you. Or maybe she transported you to her by magical means. In any case, you two met face to face. And she made a bargain. She'd put you in a new body, one that could not be killed, though it could be destroyed. Not easily, however. She promised you immortality or a very long long life, anyway. She probably had to argue with you for some time. You might be immortal and near-invulnerable, but you'd be giving up a lot for that. You'd never taste good food and drink again. On the other hand, you'd not have the daily inconvenience and mess of digestion and excretion. You wouldn't have to worry about bad breath or toothaches or losing your teeth or having cancer or heart failure.

  "You wouldn't have a stroke or go blind or have an earache or have to suffer the aches, pains, loss of strength, and sadness of growing old. Need I go on? The profits would be greater than the losses.

  "The greatest losses, though, would be that you'd have no sexual pleasure and no children."

  "Those are great," the Tin Woodman said. "But possibly the worst is something you forgot. I'd be a freak. I'd no longer be regarded by humans as being human. I'd always be an outsider. I could be their king, but I'd not be able to share fully the acceptance and warmth that one human can give to another. On the other hand, as you say, how many humans ever do give the acceptance, understanding, and warmth that they should if they're fully human?

  "Really, they're all freaks. Well, no, I shouldn't say that. Almost all are. There are some genuine, fully human humans among them. But they're so rare that they're freaks, too."

  "Well, I don't think they're as bad as that," Hank said. "But I'll have to admit that there are few of us who get to be what we should be."

  "Or even try," Niklaz said.

  "You may not have stood for a year with nothing to do but think," Hank said. "But you must have done a lot of thinking."

  "I lived alone in the woods."

  "Now," Hank said. "Continuing my surmises—or is it deductions?—Glinda did come to you with an offer. And you took it. So she transferred your persona, I don't know how, your soul or your cerebral-neural system to the tin body. Which was made all at once and not piecemeal as in the story you told everybody. I don't mean that she literally transferred your brains. Obviously, she couldn't do that. But she did transfer whatever it is that makes you you to the tin head."

  "Why would she want to do that?" Niklaz said. "What would she get out of it? Witches, white or red, seldom do anything just out of the goodness of their hearts. Not when magic is involved. That requires too much magical energy and is very dangerous."

  "Just what I was going to ask, rhetorically, that is. She did have a use for you. She wanted you to accompany Dorothy to the land of Oz. You'd be Dorothy's adviser and protector. And, if Glinda's plans worked out, Dorothy and you and the other companions would eliminate the West Witch. And perhaps incidentally, perhaps not, get rid of that humbug, the Great Wizard Oz."

  "Humbug?" the Scarecrow cried. "How dare you? He gave me the only thing I lacked! Brains!"

  "I won't argue with you," Hank said. "Wizard or not, he was clever and shrewd."

  "And good! A good man! Great and good!"

  "O.K. But I think that Glinda..."

  "Glinda was behind this," Niklaz said, "events went the way you say they did."

  "Yeah. I think that Glinda wanted to get rid of Oz. Maybe everybody else, including the East and West witches, thought that Oz was a true and powerful wizard. But she knew he wasn't. She knew that his strength was just a front, and it could easily crumble. Which it did
. Look at how you two and my mother and the Cowardly Lion exposed him. There was a danger that he'd be overthrown or run—he did run, escaped in a balloon, anyway—and some evil person would take over. So she connived to make him leave, and now there's a good ruler in his place. You, Your Wiseness," he said to the Scarecrow.

  "Oh, no. Well..."

  "You're Glinda's good ally," Hank said. "The Wizard never had anything directly to do with her, though he wasn't dumb enough to oppose her. He knew that if he and Glinda met, she would know quickly he wasn't a real wizard. He kept his distance from her. Just as he stayed aloof from the common people, even the servants and guards of his palace. He ruled, but he hid from everybody. What a lonely life he must've had!"

  "If I could weep, I would," the Scarecrow said.

  "I, too," the Tin Woodman said.

  "You two aren't really freaks," Hank said. "You're more human than most of the people I know."

  "Freaks? Me? Us?" the Scarecrow said.

  "Your pardon," Hank said. "I mean different."

  "You've constructed an impressive theory," Niklaz said.

  "Is that all it is?"

  "Ask Glinda."

  "She won't answer most of my questions."

  "Then she must have good reasons for not doing so."

  The Scarecrow said, "You should get some sleep, Hank. The weather-scouts say that the skies may be clear by tomorrow afternoon."

  "Yes, cut the chatter," a cow in a nearby stall said. "Go to sleep. You keep waking me up. Do you want to sour my milk?"

  ***

  As the Jenny flew over Suthwarzha, Hank saw that Glinda's workers had really hustled while he was gone. They had built a larger hangar at the edge of a meadow on the east side of the castle. The meadow was, however, nearer the edge of the plateau than Hank liked.

  The wind was coming from the southwest across the desert, bringing hot, dry, and gusty air. Just as he came in for the landing approach, he saw the windsocket turn to point into the northwest. He started to crab the Jenny, intending to turn her nose just enough so that, though the plane would be pointed one way, she would still move on a straight line. But the joystick moved without him, and the Jenny was at exactly the right attitude for the landing.