The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl

by Tim Pratt

  There was a moment of silence. “That . . . is . . . the wrong question,” the oracle said, every word seemingly a struggle.

  Marzi snorted. It was an astonishing sound, Lindsay thought—snorting at the scorpion oracle was like laughing at a hurricane. “You don’t get to decide that. You just have to answer.”

  “You should ask about the Outlaw!” the oracle said, more confidently, but it sounded a little peevish, too, less elemental, more human.

  “Oh, I’ve got that under control,” Marzi said, and Lindsay wondered if that were true, or if Marzi was just playing it by ear. She wanted to believe Marzi had a plan, had figured out all the angles . . . but she knew how Marzi wrote. She never knew how her stories were going to end when she started a comic. She just found a beginning, had a few ideas and images in mind, and started working, trusting that everything would work out in the end. That worked for her, for comic books—but this wasn’t a comic book, despite certain superficial similarities. “I need you to tell me something useful.”

  “Very well,” the oracle said. “I am . . . constrained . . . by this shape. I have little choice in this matter.”

  “Damn straight,” Marzi said.

  “Very well,” the oracle said. “The heart, once a temple of blood, has become a tomb of dust; journey inward, and bring the sleeper in darkness back to the light.”

  There was a moment of silence.

  “That’s it?” Lindsay said. “That’s the answer to how we help Jonathan?”

  “I did not wish to speak cryptically,” the oracle said, but Lindsay thought she heard a note of malicious satisfaction in her voice. “I wished to explain, very clearly, but when I tried to speak . . . well. You heard.”

  “Oracles are cryptic,” Marzi said, shaking her head. “That’s not something I can reimagine, something I can change—I believe it too deeply.”

  “So this was for nothing?” Lindsay said, despair threatening to crash in again.

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Marzi said. “I think I understand, actually. I’m not sure what will happen when we try, but I think I know what to do.”

  “You understood?” Lindsay said, trying to keep the disbelief from her voice. “Really?”

  “Sure,” Marzi said. “In a way, I wrote the dialogue, right? I understand how this place works, now. Come on. I’ll show you. But first . . .”

  Marzi knelt by the opening to the cave. “Thank you, spirit,” she said. “You have done me a great service.”

  “Return the favor,” the oracle hissed. “Defeat our enemy.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Marzi said, and stood up. “Come on, Linds. Up we go.” Marzi sounded cheerful, and engaged, and all there again, Lindsay noted. Dealing with the oracle had put some sort of bizarre strain on her—maybe it was the effort of creating this setting, of keeping the oracle more or less under control.

  They passed through the anteroom, and went back up the stairs—only to emerge from a trapdoor in the wooden floor of The Oasis. Lindsay looked around, stunned, as she climbed into the bar. Garamond Ray, sitting by the piano, looked no less surprised. “But, what?” Lindsay said. “How did we get here?”

  “We’ve done our time in the desert,” Marzi said, climbing out, and then closing the trapdoor, which blended seamlessly into the floorboards—and maybe disappeared entirely, as far as Lindsay knew. “For now, anyway. There was no reason to walk back. Space and distance are flexible around here, if you know how to exert the right pressure.” She walked to Jonathan, and laid her hand against his forehead. “We’re about to get a demonstration of just how flexible.” She smiled at Lindsay and Ray. “Are you guys ready?”

  “For what?” Ray said, eyes narrowed. Marzi had proved more capable than he’d expected, Lindsay realized, and he was beginning to wonder if he was outclassed and outgunned, if the greenhorn had already surpassed the old gunfighter.

  Marzi stroked Jonathan’s cheek. “We’re going to save him.”

  “How?” Lindsay said.

  “By going into the temple of his sand-choked heart, and bringing him out again,” Marzi said.

  She sounded so sure that Lindsay allowed herself to believe, for a moment, that Marzi really did know how this story was going to end.

  The godlet returned, chrome gleaming, boots clocking on the concrete. He walked around the door, examining it from all angles, thumping his metal fist against the frame, making it clang.

  I should be worried, Denis thought. I should be afraid our esteemed master won’t like it, but I’m not. Even Beej, who turned into a lapdog around the godlet, seemed confident.

  “Well?” the godlet said. “Is it good? It looks like a door, so that’s all right, but I’m whatever the artistic equivalent of tone-deaf is, so I can’t tell if it’s good or not. I don’t like it, but that doesn’t mean much—I don’t like anything that’s made, anything where fragments get together into something whole. So is it good?”

  “It’s the best work I’ve ever done,” Denis said.

  “Ditto,” Beej said.

  “So it’ll work, then?”

  “I believe it will, my god,” Beej said.

  “That’s all it takes, for a fella like you, Beej. Belief. And proximity to me, of course. The properly charged atmosphere.”

  “Listen,” Denis said. “I read the comic, the thing about the box canyon—that’s really what you plan to do?”

  “Yep,” the godlet said. “Trap Marzi in a tide pool, a solipsistic loop . . .” He paused. “Solipsistic. Damn. I’m spending too much time around you, Denis. Marzi’s a big damn radio tower, and Beej is nearly as strong, but you’re getting to me, too, and you’re barely a shortwave. Solipsistic, hell.” The godlet turned back to the door. “Let’s heave to, boys. We’ve got to carry this thing to the café.”

  Denis snorted. “I somehow doubt it will fit in my trunk.”

  “No. That’s why Jane’s out stealing a truck. There’s some construction on campus and she’s off to rustle us up some transport. She should be here soon. You’re a lucky man, Denis. She’s quite a woman, and you’re what she loves best, after me, of course. She could hardly stop talking about you while we were out. She even asked if I could make you into a walking mudslide, too, so y’all could be together forever.”

  Denis shook his head and took a step back.

  “But I told her no,” the godlet said. “Told her your rampant masculinity would taint the earth, some shit like that. The truth is, I don’t want you to have that kind of power. I like you weak. I imagine you’d go insane if I turned you into something like her, anyway.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Denis murmured.

  “Can I be mud?” Beej asked hopefully.

  “Oh, no, son,” the godlet said, laying his steel hand on Beej’s shoulder. “You’ll be more than that. You’ll be the spirit of your own special place, just like me. C’mon, boys. Let’s get moving.” He considered the door for a moment, then grasped it firmly in both hands and lifted it over his head. Denis gaped—that door was all metal, it had to weigh hundreds of pounds. But why was he surprised? This was a god. Vicious, squalid, and mean, yes, but still a god.

  The godlet trotted out, holding the door over his head, and Denis and Beej followed, each for his own reasons, each into his own uncertain future.

  Riding into His Dust

  * * *

  “We should link hands,” Marzi said, and Lindsay took her left hand, Garamond Ray her right. They’d moved Jonathan to the floor, and now they stood around him. Marzi took slow, deep breaths, trying not to overthink things; if she thought about this too much, she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to do it.

  “Close your eyes,” she said. “I think it’ll be easier.” She watched them obediently shut their eyes, then she did the same. Against the blackness of her eyelids, she imagined going in. There was no distance to travel, she knew, not here; distance was an illusion. Everyone had worlds inside them, deep strange places of their own, and perhaps it was a form of trespassi
ng to go into Jonathan’s inner realm—but what choice did she have? She was sure this was what the scorpion oracle meant. They had to go inside Jonathan, and bring out his soul, his consciousness, whatever it was the Outlaw had made desolate. The journey was difficult; she could feel the shape of the place she was trying to go, but it slid out of her mental grasp, proved elusive. Marzi gritted her teeth and tried harder; she imagined it better. She knew what it would be like, there, inside him, and after another moment she felt the quality of the air around them change, become musty and stale. She opened her eyes.

  They were in a necropolis. There were a few pyramids and dozens of crypts, blunt straightforward stonework without embellishment. Standing high in the middle distance was a high cylindrical tower—a Zoroastrian burial tower, Marzi realized, a tower of silence. The dead were placed on shelves inside the tower, their remains given over to the air and the vultures. “Open your eyes,” she said.

  Ray and Lindsay did so. Ray looked around, frowning. “Where are we?”

  “It looks like the Luxor in Vegas,” Lindsay said. “Only realer.”

  “The what in Vegas?” Ray said.

  “After your time,” Lindsay said.

  “We’re . . . inside Jonathan,” Marzi said, before they could start bickering. “Sort of. Metaphorically. But you know what metaphors are like around here. This should be a garden, with fountains, but the Outlaw touched Jonathan, and a bit of desolation got lodged inside him, and turned the garden into a cemetery.”

  “Today’s only getting weirder, Marzipan,” Lindsay said. “So what do we have to do?”

  “Find Jonathan and bring him out,” Marzi said with a shrug.

  “Bring him out of what? Out of himself?” Lindsay asked.

  “Yes,” Ray said. “He’s here somewhere, sleeping, almost dead. We have to bring him back to life.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe this is what you asked the oracle about. I sure hope your boyfriend is worth it.”

  “Don’t worry about the Outlaw,” Marzi said. “I’ve got him figured out. We could use Jonathan’s help once we get to the other side of the door.”

  “I hope you know what you’re doing,” Ray said. He sighed. “I should have had more to drink.”

  “Where do we start looking?” Lindsay asked.

  “One of the pyramids, I think,” Marzi said. “And watch out for vultures, jackals, ghouls, giant worms, and other stuff. I . . . have a hard time imagining a place like this without those things. Sorry.”

  Ray shrugged. “Monsters are in the nature of this place, I think. We’ve all got dark things inside us. I just hope we don’t meet too many of Jonathan’s.”

  “Well, Marzi’s got a gun that works. She can protect us,” Lindsay said. “Except, shit, didn’t you leave your pistol in the prison?”

  Marzi frowned, then patted her hip, where the familiar weight of her gun now rested again. “No, it’s here. I just got it back. Like I said, distance is irrelevant in this place. But there’s a problem with using my gun. Anything we see here, it’s a manifestation of something inside Jonathan. It might look like a vulture or a mummy, but that’s just the way we’re interpreting it, the way it fits into my overriding worldview of this place.”

  “Think of it like a themed costume ball,” Ray said. “Jonathan’s fears, his neuroses, his streak of capricious cruelty, whatever, they’re all running around dressed up like jackals or whatnot. And if we kill them . . .”

  “We kill that part of Jonathan,” Lindsay said. “Crap. Talk about radical personality modification. I guess we don’t want to do that. Though you could probably make a good living bringing people through the door, and going inside them, and shooting their phobias and addictions and stuff.”

  “There are easier ways to make a buck,” Marzi said. “We should start looking. Let’s saddle up. Metaphorically, that is.”

  “I’ve noticed that,” Ray said. “There aren’t any horses here. Why not?”

  “Horses are too girly for Marzi,” Lindsay said promptly.

  “In the comics, before Rangergirl even found the Western Door, the Outlaw killed all the horses. People who need to ride in my comic end up riding other things,” Marzi said.

  “Like big lizards, or giant dung beetles, or steam-powered horse-shaped automata. When Rangergirl needs to ride, she rides on the ghost of a famous horse that could do arithmetic, named Abacus, who’s mostly invisible, like Wonder Woman’s plane. You know, just sort of outlined.” Lindsay grinned.

  “How strange,” Ray said. “A Western without horses.”

  “Well, the real reason is, Marzi’s crap at drawing horses,” Lindsay said. “They always end up looking like long-legged cows.”

  “Thanks for betraying my trade secrets, Linds. Let’s go.”

  They walked slowly through the crypts. The paving stones on the path were just rough slabs at first, but then they became headstones, the carved names and dates weathered to illegibility, only visible as irregular indentations.

  “I don’t remember a place like this in your comics,” Lindsay said, whispering. The hush of the place was getting to all of them.

  “I never drew it, but I did have an idea for a kind of pan-desert afterlife, with pyramids and towers of silence and stuff like that, and various gods of the underworld vying for power.” She pointed to a low rise between two pyramids, where wooden crosses rose from the ground. “There’s Boot Hill,” she said. “There’s a saloon underneath the hill, like a Western hall of Valhalla, where all the dead gunfighters play poker and drink whiskey and shoot each other. I was going to write about that place a few issues down the line . . . but I don’t know, now.”

  “You have quite an imagination,” Ray said. “For narrative, anyway. I’m good at paintings, at scenes, but you’re better with story, I think.”

  “We just have different perspectives, I guess. I always see an implicit story in good paintings.”

  “I wonder if the Outlaw is more or less dangerous, now that he’s bound up in your narrative logic?”

  Marzi grinned. In a way, that was the key to her idea for defeating the Outlaw. The Outlaw was locked into the narrative, trapped by its role, and it couldn’t deviate from what the story required of it. But Marzi was still a free agent. She could act in ways the story didn’t dictate—in ways a Western couldn’t even encompass—and that was how she’d beat the Outlaw. She was sure of it. She didn’t want to tell Lindsay and Ray about her plan yet, because in a way, they were locked into the story as well—not as much as the Outlaw, who’d possessed no more personality than a tornado before Ray and Marzi imagined ones for it, but still, they were playing parts, wearing costumes. They might not understand that Marzi’s plan was the best way. They might, in fact, be horrified. They were thinking of Marzi as Rangergirl, but Marzi was going to win by doing something Rangergirl would never do.

  “I think this is it,” Marzi said, pointing to a small pyramid directly in the path in front of them. It was like the others, but instead of being made of rough stone blocks, it was made of blood-red bricks. “The temple of his heart.”

  “Not a single ghoul or zombie,” Ray said, looking around warily. “Your boy must be quite well adjusted. I think if you went into my heart, there’d be jackals trying to eat your face right away.”

  “That pyramid is his innermost core,” Marzi said—and wondered if, by saying it, by believing it, she made it true. “I think Jonathan probably has a well-guarded heart. We should be careful in there.”

  They reached the pyramid, and walked around it, looking for an entryway. The pyramid was no bigger at the base than a small house, though Marzi suspected that, like so many other places in this land beyond the door, it would be bigger inside than out. They didn’t find a single break or point of entrance.

  “It’s sealed up,” Lindsay said. She tapped the bricks. “Is this something the Outlaw did, or . . . ?”

  Marzi shrugged. “I think Jonathan keeps things locked up pretty tightly inside, that it’s hard to g
et in.” She thought about the scar on his chest. Here, she could see the scars inside him. Would he have shown those so willingly?

  “Then why doesn’t he let us in now?”

  “He’s not himself,” Marzi said. “But I wonder . . .” She began tugging and pushing at bricks, methodically working her way around the pyramid. Lindsay and Ray caught on, and they, too, started prodding at bricks.

  They worked silently for several minutes—during which Marzi began to think she was deluding herself, that this would never work—when Ray said, “Ah-ha!” He pulled a brick out of the wall and peered into the rectangular hole it made. “Looks like a lever,” he said, and reached inside. He grunted, narrowed his eyes, and pulled. There was a low click, and then the sound of vast amounts of sand pouring down on the other side of the bricks.

  “It must be done with counterweights,” Marzi said.

  “Thinking makes it so,” Ray muttered, but before Marzi could decide if he meant that resentfully or admiringly, a section of the wall lowered like the hatch in a movie UFO, creating a ramp they could walk up. “So you tug his lever, and you get close to his heart, huh?” Ray said, grinning. “Jonathan and I, it seems, are not so different.”

  “And yet, you seemed to enjoy tugging his lever,” Lindsay said. “I didn’t realize you swung that way.”

  “My dear, all innuendoes aside, after so many years on this side of the door, I would happily fuck anything that wasn’t a figment of my imagination, Jonathan included. Though I would, of course, prefer to do it with you.”

  “You sure know how to make a girl feel special,” Lindsay said.

  “Okay, let’s go,” Marzi said, and walked up the brick ramp. She paused at the top, looking inside. There was a small anteroom, with an inner door marked with what looked like hieroglyphics. Marzi went inside and examined the markings more closely, and saw they were simple line drawings of everyday objects: coffee cups, cars, books, televisions, telephones, and so on. She touched the door, running her finger around the edges, but couldn’t find a way to open it. She sighed. There was no other way. She concentrated, briefly, then said, “Lindsay, hand me that crowbar.”