This made Hank grin. If they believed that the strangers were ghosts, why had they bargained with them? He would have thought that they would have given the ghosts anything they wanted. But avarice had ridden down their fear.
"The toymaker is mine, and so I can give it to you," Sharts said. "The other ghosts have agreed to this. In fact, they would like you to visit them whenever you feel like it."
"Where are they?" the priestess said. "I'd like to meet them."
Sharts handled the shrewd woman shrewdly.
"They're off on a visit to the otherworld just now. But they'll be back."
Three days later, they came back to camp with the fuel. The next morning, the Kumkwoot porters bade them farewell. Despite Sharts's reassurances, they seemed glad to get away from the place. Perhaps this was because they were made even more uneasy by Jenny.
Blogo was still sulking because Hank and Sharts had made him stay away from the Kumkwoot women.
"Let's get away from this miserable place," he said. "How long will it take to refuel this thing?"
"Person!" Jenny yelled at him. "Person! Not thing!"
"How would you like apples jammed up your exhaust pipes?" Blogo said.
"I'll be glad when we get rid of that chickenspit," Jenny said to Hank.
He patted her cowling. "Me, too."
However, the black sky threatened rain, and the wind was too strong and gusty for flight. Also, Sharts wanted to explore the ruins some more. Since they could not take off anyway, Hank agreed to this.
"You're coming with us," Sharts said.
Blogo, bristling, his eyes wild, said, "No, I'm not!"
"Yes, you are," the giant said. "You've had this ridiculous and demeaning terror of this nonexistent Very Rare Beast long enough. We're going to go into every place we can get into, and I'm going to show you that there's nothing to be afraid of."
"What good it'll do if there isn't any Beast there?" Blogo said. He swallowed and said, "It could be haunting some other ruins."
"You told me that there's supposed to be one in every ruin," Sharts said.
"I did? I don't remember that."
"Are you calling me a liar?" Sharts said coldly. He stepped forward until Blogo's nose almost touched the giant's navel.
Blogo, hands fisted, trembling, said, "No, but I am saying that maybe your memory isn't perfect."
"What?" Sharts roared. "You know that it's perfect! I never forget a thing! And you can bet your silly-looking nose that I won't forget this insubordination! Maybe you and I should part when we get to Quadlingland! I plan to spend a beautiful life in beautiful surroundings, and you'd spoil the esthetically perfect environment! There's no way anybody as dumb and as ugly as you could fit into anything beautiful!"
"Please, boss!" Blogo whimpered. "Don't make me do this!"
"You have no choice," Sharts said, picking the little creature up by his loincloth. "Really, Blogo, I'm doing this for you because I like you—though how I can stumps me—and it's all for your own good. I don't mind the bother of it, but I'd appreciate it if you'd be more cooperative."
Sharts carried the kicking and yelling Rare Beast into the ruins. Hank, disgusted with both of them, followed. When they were in front of the first building that had an entrance not choked with dirt and bushes, Sharts put Blogo down. But he held him with two fingers around his neck.
He pushed him into the building. Hank waited. Presently, they came out. Blogo had quit struggling and screaming, but his cock's comb and face were red, and if the bulb at the end of his nose had had a little more blood in it, it would have burst.
"See?" the giant said. "There was no one there except for a few bats. It wasn't so bad, was it?"
"Not bad!" Blogo said. "I left something of me in there on the ground."
"You'd have had to get rid of it, anyway," Sharts said. "Though it was, I'll have to admit, the best part of you."
They went into another building. When they came out, Blogo said nothing, but he was shaking as if he was about to have a seizure. And the blood had drained from his comb, face, and nose.
The third structure could be entered only by a half-buried doorway. Dirt piled around it showed that some large animal had dug into it to make a home there. The stench indicated that animals might still live there. Sharts, however, said that he had run out the wolverine pack that had made their abode there. Hank did not know if he was telling the truth. For one thing, wolverines did not run in a pack; they were solitaries. However, this was not Earth, and the sentient animals might have overcome their powerful instincts.
Blogo, looking as numb as if he had been shot with morphine, walked in ahead of Sharts. No more than ten seconds had passed before Hank heard a despairing scream. A few seconds later, Blogo raced from the entrance and headed towards the edge of the plateau. His eyes were popping, and his head was thrown back. His legs and arms pumped.
Sharts, stooping, came out of the entrance. He was laughing uproariously, but, when he saw where Blogo was running, he shouted.
"Stop him! The damn fool'll run right off the cliff!"
Hank and Sharts sprinted like Charlie Paddock after Blogo. Sharts, though much more heavily muscled than Hank, passed him. He leaped out and, on the way down, caught Blogo's ankle. If he had missed, Blogo would have gone into the canyon.
Blogo fell forward and, for a moment, looked cross-eyed from the impact of his face on the hard rock when he had been so suddenly halted. A cut on the end of his nose spurted blood.
Hank used his dirty handkerchief to stanch the flow.
After a while, Blogo said, his voice quavering, "I saw it! I saw it! Don't tell me I didn't see it!"
Sharts squatted down by him and put a hand on his shoulder.
He spoke quietly. "Sure, you saw it. Now, as soon as you recover, let's go back in there. I'll show you what you almost committed suicide over."
Blogo pulled away from the hand.
"Are you crazy?"
"No. You've been crazy, but there's no reason now why you should stay demented."
"I won't go!" Blogo said, and he burst into tears.
"Sure you will," Sharts said gently.
He picked up Blogo as if he were a child and carried him to the entrance. Setting Blogo down on his feet, he shoved him through. Very curious, Hank followed them into a large chamber dimly lit by sunshafts coming through cracks far above. Rotting meat on gnawed and splintered bones and fragments of fish were the source of the sickening stench. They went past these into a leaning-walled hallway. This, too, was illuminated as if dusk had just come.
Sharts manhandled Blogo into the first entrance on the right. Blogo began whimpering then, but Sharts said, "Now, now, be a man."
The two disappeared around the corner. Hank heard Blogo scream despairingly again, but this time it was cut off. There was a silence. Hank went around the corner and stopped. Though some light leaked through openings high up, this room was somewhat darker than the others. It was not so dim, however, that he could not see that Blogo and Sharts were standing in front of a huge mirror.
"I found it in another room," Sharts said softly. "I cleaned it off and set it here so it would be the first thing you'd see when you came into here. Actually, you didn't see it at all. What you saw was your own reflection."
Blogo sobbed, and he said, "It looked just like the Very Rare Beast to me."
"And so it was. You. Need I say anything more?"
There was a long silence. Then Blogo took Sharts's hand and kissed it again and again. Sobbing, he said, "I owe it all to you, boss. You've cured me!"
Hank was disgusted. The Rare Beast should have kicked Sharts in the crotch.
After leaving the two off at a guerrilla base on the Winkie-Gillikin border, Hank flew on to Suthwarzha. They had taken off from the plateau and landed twice, scaring off the locals and stealing their alcohol, before Jenny reached a fuel station. Now Hank, on this August 2, Earth time, was finishing his report in Glinda's castle.
"It sounds as i
f you had fun," Glinda said, smiling. "I wish you hadn't dropped the Golden Cap in a river. But, after all, you had given your word."
"It was both interesting and educational. There were times when it was downright exciting. I wouldn't want to set it up as a charter tour, though. And I didn't care for the company I had to keep."
"You often have to put up with your partners in business, war, and marriage. I am very pleased with the mission even if you did not kill Erakna. According to my spies, you really shook her up, and the news of what you did to her has caused many desertions from her army. The people know now that she is not as invulnerable as they had thought."
"There's something I don't understand. I thought all red witches feared water. My mother said, and Baum reported her correctly, that the West Witch was so dry that she had no blood. And she carried an umbrella to keep rain, any water, away. I'll have to admit I found that hard to believe. At least, I did until I found out about the firefoxes. Then I supposed that, somehow the red witches used a firefox to keep their bodies and minds alive even though they should have been as dead as mummies."
"You're mixed up. Erakna is a young witch and bleeds even as you and I. You saw her bleed. The old, very old, red witches do start drying up when they pass on. That ‘pass on' isn't entirely a euphemism, because, when they are close to dying of old age, they do use a firefox to keep them animated. Its energy is also used as food for the witch. They don't eat after they've started to dry up, you know."
"I didn't know," Hank said. "What about the kitchen my mother had to work in when she was the West Witch's prisoner? And the food she stole from the cupboard to feed the Cowardly Lion?"
"They were for the West Witch's servants and soldiers, of course."
"O.K. But why would the West Witch dissolve into a puddle when my mother threw water on her?"
"I suppose that the water broke the electrical bonds holding her atoms together. I wouldn't have any explanation if you hadn't told me about atomic theory. My scientists, by the way, are grateful for your information."
"Which is pretty elementary," Hank said. "Anyway, I'm glad that you weren't too disappointed in what I did."
"I can give you a medal," she said, smiling. "I'll have one made up especially for you and the occasion."
Hank blushed, and he said, "Your thanks will be enough reward."
"Now, I'll give you something that came through the green cloud while you were gone."
She picked up a large white envelope with no writing on it and handed it to him.
He looked at it and said, "You didn't open it."
"Don't be stupid. I can't read English. As yet."
"You fluster me."
She smiled but did not reply:
He slit the envelope with a steel opener. It held two sheets on which were handwriting. He recognized the beautiful Spencerian letters, and he verified it by looking at the name on the second sheet.
"How can this be? How is old Stinky Wright involved in this? How...?"
"We'll find out when you read it. First, though, tell me about this Stinkii Rait."
"We grew up together. His parents' house was near mine. We went to school together; we were best friends. And we were in the same squadron in France. The last time I heard from him, he was a cadet at West Point. That's the American military college. The best. But... O.K. I'll read it."
Dear Hank the Rank:
I'll bet you never dreamed, even with your fertile imagination, that I'd be here and you'd be there and I'd be writing this to you. I'm writing this secretly, no one around, and I'm putting my ass on the line to do it. But friendship, true friendship, triumphs over everything. Besides I don't like at all what they're doing or what's happened. Maybe I'm a traitor for saying that, but I don't think so. I'm not your typical West Point wind-up toy soldier.
I'm a shavetail in the Signal Corps, I got an engineer's degree even if I was at the bottom of the class. Why they assigned a dummy like me to this project, I don't know. No explanation comes to me except that that's the Army for you. Why did I go to West Point when I'd had all that experience with the military mind? I'll tell you why. Because the pater wanted me to and I didn't have guts enough to tell him that I didn't care if I was the eldest son and the eldest son always went to West Point. I couldn't tell the old so-and-so that I loathed Army life and break his heart. But I may resign soon anyway.
I'm in this project but I wouldn't know what was really going on if I hadn't gotten into the secret files. I may be stupid but I do have guts. Or is that just another sign of imbecility?
I'm mad as hell, Old Rank, but I can't go around shooting my mouth off to the newspapers or anybody else for that matter. I'd disappear, end up in Army prison, probably in solitary. Maybe I'd even get shot. It'd be an "accident," but it could happen, believe me, Hank, old buddy.
I wish there was some safe way, any way, that you could answer this. There isn't. As it is I don't know if you'll get this. But I'm taking the chance you will. What I'm going to do tomorrow is take a private plane I've rented and drop this letter through that green cloud called the Sampson phenomenon. After Mark Sampson, the brilliant young guy who made the machine that made the green cloud that opened the way to Oz, though it was an accident. Oz! I can't believe it!
Anyway, I'll be up there when the green cloud appears if it appears. It doesn't always and even then they can't be sure how big it'll be and how long it'll last.
Anyway they're trying some kind of experiment with it, but they won't be trying to fly anybody through. So I should have the sky to myself. I'll zoom up there and strike like old Balloon-Buster Frank Luke himself, drop this through the cloud in a box with a Very flare attached, and run like I saw Richthofen coming after me. I rented the plane under a fake name, paid cash, and I'll be wearing a fake beard and civilian clothes and using a German accent.
If they find out who I am, I'll take off for Brazil. I always did prefer dark-eyed beauties, remember?
When they heard about what happened to their invasion force, they just about crapped in their whipcords. And they sent off a cipher message to Washington. Whoever's handling this deal there sent a cipher message to the President. He was in Alaska on a tour. The message rocked him, he got sick and had to go to bed. He's in San Francisco now, but he's said to be still sick. He hasn't been much help to the people here. They've been told to make the decision about what to do, but you can bet that if it's wrong they'll be blamed. That's the Army way, God bless it!
The reason I know all this is that I've been sworn to secrecy and though they don't tell me much I overhear more than I should. I make it a point to do it. And as I said I got into the secret files and learned what the hell was really going on.
From what I can gather the big boys are seriously contemplating another invasion. But they're going to have to cover up the deaths of the soldiers and the loss of those aircraft, and they don't want to have to do that all over again. Too many people asking questions.
Sampson, he's not a bad guy at all, is all for telling the public the truth, but they won't stand for that. They're afraid of the public uproar, and the bigshot politicians in this are afraid of the political repercussions. As it is, I've been hearing rumors that some of the members of Harding's cabinet have been caught with their hand in the public till and there's going to be a hell of a scandal and maybe jail sentences.
Hank stopped reading and said, "My father wrote me that he'd heard that the Secretary of the Interior, Albert Fall, and the Secretary of the Navy, Edwin Denby, leased some navy oil reserves to Edward Doheny of Pan American Petroleum and to Harry Sinclair of Mammoth Oil. He said he'd heard that that big crook Doheny had bribed them to give him the deal and ‘Clear Sin' Sinclair had taken Fall into some of his financial dealings.
"Dad says that Harding is personally honest though not very bright. Some of the people he gave high positions in the government because he owed them for political support have betrayed him. And the people of the United States."
"Most p
eople are corrupt in one form or another," Glinda said, "and they don't even know it. Get back to the letter."
"O.K."
Well, Hank, my roommate is about due to return so I'll have to finish this quick. I'm so het up that I've even considered telegramming or phoning the President. He's at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco right now, but he's sick in bed and couldn't handle it even if I could tell him I'd like to blow this sky high. I couldn't get through to him anyway. So I'll just have to keep mum for now. I don't want any "accidents" happening to me. I hope you can understand my position.
I wish you the best of luck, however. Jesus! Oz? Would anybody believe me if I told them about this? I'd probably end up in an insane asylum, that'd be worse than getting shot. So I hope you understand.
Good luck, ave atque vale, vaya con Dios, Un homme averti en vaut deux, and all that. Is Glinda as beautiful as Baum said? If she is give her a big smackeroo for me but watch the hands, Hank the Rank.
Your pal, William Wordsworth "Stinky" Wright
"Afe atkeifale, faya kon Diioz, and the rest?" Glinda said. "What do they mean?"
"Hail and farewell, go with God, a man warned is equal to two unwarned men."
"You must miss him."
"Yes. I miss my parents, too."
"If you gain something you lose something and vice versa. Hank, I have to take care of the Earth situation as soon as possible and that means tonight. Erakna will be attacking me here. I know that, and she knows that I know that. I need every bit of energy that I can summon for the attack, but I'll have to expend much before I can get prepared for Erakna. I'll have some time; I know when she'll come."
Glinda paused.
Hank said, "Yes?"
"I'll give some details later. First, do you have a picture, a photograph, of President Harding?"
Hank thought that there might be one in the copies of the Current Opinion periodicals he had brought with him. Glinda sent a servant to get them from Hank's apartment after he had printed the title of the magazines on a piece of paper. When the servant returned with them. Hank leafed through the pages for the photograph. Glinda busied herself with paperwork while he did so.
A Barnstormer in Oz Page 26