Maureen Birnbaum, Barbarian Swordperson

by George Alec Effinger

  This time, as usual, I did make a scene. Old Betsy sang as I whanged her from her scabbard. Immediately, all the security guards stopped in their tracks and pulled out their LFRs. LFRs are Little Radios; I don't need to tell you what the F word is, because it's the F word, and I just don't use language like that. People tell me that they're impressed that I can whoosh around the universe and have strange encounters all the time, and still remain like the sweet and innocent young lady I was years ago at the Greenberg School.

  Discretion, as I've come to know, is somewhere between 56% and 64% of valor. I responded in my new and highly-regarded mature manner, and reassured the armed guards that I Meant Them No Harm. "There, there," I go, smiling and patting the air soothingly and behaving almost completely in a non-threatening way. Then I simply turned my back on the uniformed security personnel and made my way outdoors and into the late winter sunlight.

  All right, I'd escaped from the world-renowned library, but my costume didn't work very well on the Old Campus, either. Especially in New Haven during this ancient era when even Carnaby Street was just too far-out for all of America northeast of Times Square. Remember that reaction you got from Miss Schildkraut, Silas Marner and Ninth Grade English, when you bought that too-grotty-for-words transparent plastic handbag? She was sure you were listening to drug-crazed moptop music and smoking banana peels yourself too.

  I had one immediate priority: a nice outfit from Ann Taylor Sportswear on Chapel Street, hard by the notorious Hotel Taft where many of our consoeurs have been overcome by passion and gin. I was thinking of a pale green, button-down collar shirtdress that I could wear through the spring, a pair of matching Jacques Cohen espadrilles, a Provencal print handbag from Pierre Deux, and like whatever accessories happened to catch my eye.

  If the saleshuman who served me thought the ready-to-rumble costume I wore into the shop was even the least bit bizarre, she hid it well—particularly when I took out the largish stash of cash I kept hidden in its sanctum in the left cup of my gold bra. I'd sold some gold and jewels after the last time I saw you, and I was going to need the folding money. My stepmother Pammy's gold card, which was in my right cup, wouldn't do me any good in 1966. I don't know if they even had BankAmericards back then.

  Good old Pammy, I thought, how long it had been since I'd seen her. Oh my Gawd, Bitsy, I just thought that she probably still hasn't finished paying off my shopping duel with that hard-bitten bitch, Maid Marian.

  I could only hope that my family was proud of me.

  Well, I was now clothed appropriately for New Haven—or I thought I was, until I stepped out into the in-like-a-lion March wind. It was pretty damn cold, Bitsy. Whatever my exploit was going to be, I was just about certain that I could use a good Republican cloth coat. Not that I'm necessarily a Republican—I am chiefly non-partisan in my politics, preferring to remain available to come to the aid of anyone in need regardless of race, ethnic origin, religion, or creed. It's just that here I was, back in 1966, and like Nixon wasn't even President yet, but he reminded me of that cloth coat comment and how he wouldn't give the goddamn dog back. History was really redundant the second time around.

  I decided to book it over to the Yale Co-op, like totally forgetting that I was stuck temporarily in the dim, dark ages before Yale admitted female undergraduates, and the selection of women's merchandise was going to be minimal at best. Nevertheless, I got myself a mildly wildly colored ski jacket that I'd just have to be satisfied with and a sterling silver circle pin, which I'd forgotten to buy for my shirtdress at Ann Taylor's.

  Then, it happened.

  What was it, I hear you go in your shocked and like breathless voice. Yes, it was eerie and dreadful in the most total extreme, a nightmarish confrontation that made my blood run as cold as that time when I thought I'd gotten, you know, PG from French-kissing that crispo dude from Waite Hoyt Junior High. Sure, Bitsy, now you can look back on that and laugh, but what I witnessed in the Yale Co-op near the vinyl record section was too demented and ichorous and fiendish to ever pry a giggle from me.

  It was that guy, that Rod Marquand.

  Now don't go all ignorant on me. You remember him very well. He was the one who appeared suddenly while I was being held captive by that talking ape-monster, Yag-Nash. Rod had that submarine sort of thing that traveled through solid rock. His problem was that he was more interested in like fighting crime than in wrestling with me, and I guess I stormed out of his company in a well-rehearsed huff.

  So, the question immediately presents itself for asking, what was Rod Marquand, boy-inventor extraordinaire, doing at the Yale Co-op twenty full years before our encounter at the center of the Earth, and looking exactly the same as he had then?

  You see, now, there were only two possible answers. The first was that he drank the blood of innocent virgins to maintain his hideous and dreadful youth—but that was like scarcely possible, because he'd never made move one toward any of my arteries, and you know I'd given him plenty of opportunities.

  The second answer was that he was immortal and ageless, as I myself seem to be. That was another reason that like screamed that Rod Marquand and I were perfect for each other, made for each other as few other couples have been through the whole sad parade of history.

  Yet this Rod was like twenty years younger than the one I'd known during the Yag-Nash episode. He would be meeting me as if for the first time. That didn't tell me why he didn't recognize me at the Earth's core, twenty years later. I went to Dr. Bertram A. Waters of the Yale University Plasmonics Department for help in understanding what had happened. He gave me like this completely murky explanation. Here it is, as best as I can recall it:

  "My dear Miss Birnbaum-" he goes.

  I go—believe me—"I'm not your dear anything, pal."

  He got this look on his face like someone had slipped the head of a banana slug into his bag of malted milk balls. See, Bitsy, I know you got them there under the covers. He goes, "I doubt if I'm your 'pal,' either, but I suppose it's just a figure of speech. In any event, Maureen—may I call you Maureen?"

  "If you must," I go, wishing that he'd like just get on with it.

  "How does one understand time? There are various ways of imagining it. And yes, time is mostly imaginary. Of course, events happen and they must have some matrix to happen in, if you follow me. One instant the electron is all excited, and the next instant it's emitted its photon and gone home." I swear, Bitsy, the guy leered at me. Take it from me, sweetie, Mo knows leering for sure.

  And don't ever call me "Mo."

  Dr. Waters told me that he thought of time—everyone's personal timeline—as a string that stretches from Point A to Point Z. Now, if sometime somebody figures out how to travel back in time, the string goes from Point A to, say, Point L, loops back to Point G, maybe, then turns back through Point L-in a different place—and on again to Point Z. So if you meet a guy at Point G who is or will be a time-traveler, there's no telling if this is like his first or second pass through that moment. And there can be any number of trips into the past by the same chrononaut, looping again and again at Point G or any other point. Trust me on this, Bitsy, 'cause I took the trouble to consult experts.

  No? Well, never mind, because I mean Dr. Waters wasn't completely sold on his own theory, and neither was I.

  BTW—that's "by the way," by the way—I described what I'd seen in the Yale Co-op a bunch of ways, including ichorous. I may have exaggerated un petit peu, but Rod Marquand is on the far side of ichorous, and I should know.

  Suddenly, when I saw him standing there, I wondered how I was going to meet him. I understood without even really thinking about it that it wasn't just a coincidence—Rod was here and we were going to have an exploit together, like before at the center of the Earth, only this time would technically be the first.

  So I grabbed the nearest object—it happened to be the Beatles' newly-released album Rubber Soul—and I walked right up to him. My God, Bitsy, you know I've never been shy around boys.
I think it's one of the things they admire most about me. That and my broadsword.

  Well, I go, "Have you heard this album yet?"

  Rod blinked at me—oh, he was T.C.T.L.! Too cute to live, honey, just try to stay with me—and he goes, "It's their best so far, I think. It's fab and groovy."

  I smiled a little at his antique slang; on him it was like real, real sweet. I go, "I've heard some of it on the radio. What do you think 'Norwegian wood' really means?"

  "It could be a code, you know," Rod goes. "An encryption of some enigmatic message known only to the Beatles themselves and their innermost circle."

  I sighed. "I wish I could be in that circle. I wish I could be Jane Asher." I remembered that in 1966 I had a crush on Paul, the cute one.

  "Well," goes Rod, "their music is really neat, but at the moment there are more important things competing for my time and attention." As buf and tuf as Rod Marquand is, he's more of a party vegetable, if you get my drift. Sometimes I think he'd have to ask a girl to give him lessons before he could even be a wallflower.

  "I'd like to know what those things are," I go, smiling my never-miss dreamy smile, Number Five at 75% power.

  "If I'm not being too forward," Rod goes, completely conquered, "I'd like to invite you to have dinner with me at my residential college."

  "What college are you in?"

  "Branford," he goes, with an unspoken "of course" appended at the end.

  It wasn't like a very long walk from the Co-op to the High Street entrance to Branford College, but I mean! The wind had picked up and now rain mixed with sleet had begun falling. I was damn glad I'd had the foresightfulness to buy the ski jacket. Rod put his hand under my elbow, evidently believing he was doing the yo-ho manly thing and helping me walk on the slippery pavement.

  I simply shrugged away and smiled prettily and I go, "I'm so sure I can walk just fine by myself, thanks. Like I've only been doing this since I was a baby and everything."

  He got a wounded puppy look on his face and maybe it was good for him. I told myself that I couldn't really expect a 90s kind of guy in 1966, but then I decided that it was never too soon to put somebody in touch with his real self.

  We passed through the ironwork gate of Branford College, beneath the vasty, shadowed heights of Harkness Tower and The World's Most Illegible Clock. It was dinner time and I was ravenous. I hadn't eaten since twenty-seven years in the future.

  "It looks like salisbury steak and two veg," Rod goes.

  "Oh, we have that all the time at the Greenberg School," I go.

  He smiled down at me and goes, "Not the way they make it here. We've got Jonathan Edwards' own recipe."

  "Jonathan Edwards?" I thought he might have been a disk jockey on WABC-AM in the mid-60s.

  'Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.' That Jonathan Edwards. There's another residential college named after him across the way."

  Like nothing makes salisbury steak, two veg, and chocolate milk go down better than contemplating "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." I remembered something about spiders dangling on thin strands of web above the hellfire.

  The evening proceeded to get ever more weird and romantic from that point on.

  We'd finished eating and Rod put one hand on mine. He gazed into my eyes and goes, "Want some dessert?"

  "I've told you that I'm a warrior-woman," I go. We'd gone through all that during the walk from the Co-op. I'd unwrapped Old Betsy and given him a hot look at my auric underwear. "I have to guard constantly against putting on weight, but I suppose a serving of bread pudding and some more chocolate milk wouldn't hurt me too much."

  "Bread pudding?" Rod goes. "Why, that's my favorite dessert!" We just had so much in common.

  That led to a discussion of the codification of all types of bread pudding, according to the official Ivy League definition. The chart looked something like this:

  YES NO

  Hot

  Cold

  Whiskey Sauce

  Rum Sauce

  Firm

  Fluffy

  With Raisins

  Without Raisins

  In 1966, the sixteen possible combinations like totally described bread pudding as science understood it at that point in time. Today, of course, with high-speed computers and the other miracles given to us by the space program, there are bread pudding types that were unimaginable during the Lyndon Johnson administration. For example, the best bread pudding I've ever had is served in the Palace Cafe on Canal Street in New Orleans, and it comes with a fantastic white chocolate sauce. In the 60s, such a thing would've been as illegal as beans in chili.

  We found ourselves holding hands as we went back through the Branford cafeteria line. We each got a serving of bread pudding (hot, rum, fluffy, with raisins, and extremely good). When we returned to our table, Rod goes, "Hello! What's this?"

  It was a page of photocopy paper, the strange, stark copies they turned out in the early days of the industry.

  I tried to read the writing on the page, but it was in some strange, occult language. There were nightmarish drawings of nameless, hideous, tentacled creatures. I shuddered and gave the paper back to Rod.

  He stared at the writing for a few moments, and then began to murmur, "Dead is not that which can through ages lie, to see in fell times how even death may die."

  Gave me the shivering creeps, know what I mean, Bitsy? Not so my Hot Rod. He just shook his head. "Somebody's been playing some twisted joke on me lately, Maureen," he goes. "This isn't the first time I've gotten a copy of what the prankster wants me to think is some demented, malevolent manuscript.

  "You can read it, though?" I go. I pretended to show interest in Rod's hobbies, because Miss Kanon, the gym teacher, always told us that would make us popular with boys. It always worked for me.

  "Yes," Rod goes, "it's an old dialect of Arabic. I studied it one summer when my uncle, Dr. Zach Marquand, took me to Egypt to help solve the Mystery of the Dismembered Murderers."

  "And you think someone is sending you joke messages in an obscure, ancient dialect? Why?"

  Rod's adorable face suddenly went like all serious, you know? "I can't say for sure. The first was just a scrap, with the words Cthulhu fhtagn written on it. This 'Cthulhu' has been mentioned again and again. I don't know what it means."

  I shuddered, even in the bright warmth of the Branford dining hall. "Cthulhu fhtagn," I go, all thoughtful. "It sounds Gaelic to me, not Arabic."

  "It's neither," Rod goes.

  "Maybe," I go, shivering again, "maybe it's the long-dead language of those scaly, unclean squid-headed creatures."

  Rod didn't even respond to that notion. "Then there were all the references to the Sunken City of R'lyeh, and some blasphemous, horrible fertility goddess called Shub-Niggurath. And pages and pages of drawings and scraps of incomprehensible poetry and . . . warnings."

  I'll confess, Bitsy, my stomach started to hurt. "Listen, Rod," I go, "why don't we forget about Cthulhu tonight and just go see Michael Caine in Alfie. It's showing at the College for a buck and a half."

  "Yes," he goes, folding the photocopy paper and tucking it into an inside pocket of his sport coat. "I'm not going to let some minor-league mentality get the better of me. I'm just going to ignore the entire business."

  "Fine," I go. "Let's boogie."

  "Let's . . . what?"

  I stood up and he got up, too. "I'll let you carry my broadsword. I never let just anybody do that, you know."

  We had a nice time at the movie, although Michael Caine's character was like this pig. Afterward, we went someplace for a light supper, and Rod installed me in the Hotel Taft. I shuddered alone in my bed, imagining that I could hear the helpless shrieks of my overpowered sisters as they were assaulted by tentacled fiends from R'lyeh wearing blue J. Press blazers and gray slacks.

  I had fallen fast asleep, and believe me, Bitsy, my dreams were populated by obscene monsters that spoke in a Cockney accent. When my phone rang, I sat upright, terrified. I didn
't know where I was or what time it was or anything. I answered the phone, sure that I was going to hear nothing but whistling, blubbery monster noises.

  Instead, Rod goes, "Maureen? I hope I didn't wake you up."

  It was one-thirty in the morning. "No, don't worry about it. I was just like sleeping."

  "Good. Now, listen closely. When I returned to my rooms, I discovered several strange and ominous signs. First, my roommate, Sandy, was nowhere to be found. You have to understand that Sandy is terribly incompetent socially, and he usually retires to his bedroom shortly after dinner. It's entirely unlike him to be out so late."

  I wasn't as upset about it as Rod was, but after all, I didn't know Sandy. "Maybe he's fallen in love with a forgiving townie woman," I go. "Or maybe he just really needed a burger or something."

  Rod ignored my simple explanations. "Further," he goes, "the casement windows were forced open from the inside. Upon closer inspection, I found traces of a horrible, foul-smelling slime on the window sill, and it was dripping and oozing down the outside wall to the ground."

  "Slime," I go in a flat voice. I just knew we were going to run into slime somewhere along the way. Greenberg School girls are, as you know, Bitsy, antipathetic toward slime in general.

  "The last dreadful clue was that the trail of slime led right to Harkness Tower. The door had been burst open, and as I entered and looked up the stairwell that led to the clock tower and carillon, I noted a diffuse and flickering greenish light descending from the highest level."

  "Calm down, Rod," I go. "Now tell me why you called me about all this."

  "Well, Maureen," he goes—and I could tell that he was like way embarrassed—"I am inclined to take those notes, drawings, and warnings more seriously. My theory is that one of those eldritch evils abducted Sandy with foul intent, and has dragged him to the top of Harkness Tower. I called you because—"