The Lion Returns f-3

by John Dalmas

  After the pastor left, Wiiri helped Macurdy to the guest room. "Sleep," he said from the door. "You won't feel good in the morning, but at least you'll feel alive."

  ***

  Macurdy lay for some while in a sort of stupor. After a time, it seemed to him that Mary was there in the room. Mary and someone else, whom he could sense but not see. "Hello, darling," Mary said. "Do you know who's with me?"

  He stared, unable to respond.

  "It's Hilmi, dear. Our daughter. We're fine. We're both fine. And you will be. You'll be fine too. We love you very much."

  Through brimming eyes he watched her fade, then sobbed himself quietly to sleep.

  ***

  The funeral was on February 21, in the Finnish church. A double funeral. Little Hilmi's body had been found floating in the Nehtaka River, a remarkable distance downstream from where she'd died. Her casket was kept closed.

  By that time Macurdy was functional, but seemed an automaton. A number of Severtson's loggers attended. Most were as uncomfortable in church as they were in suits. They'd have loved to carry him off to a tavern with them, get him drunk and hear him laugh. But it was, of course, out of the question.

  He was more alert than he seemed. When Margaret Preuss came in with her new boyfriend, he wondered how long this one would last.

  Wiiri gave the eulogy, breaking once despite his Finnish stoicism.

  After the service, the attendees filed past, most murmuring condolences, the loggers shaking Macurdy's strong hand with their own. But afterward, the only one he remembered clearly was Margaret. She said nothing, but her eyes, her smile, bespoke satisfaction. Victory.

  She had no idea how close she was to having her throat crushed in his hands. But he had places to go, and though he didn't consciously know it, things to do.

  PART TWO

  The Lion Returns

  Kurqosz stared down from his seven-foot-eight-inch height. His eyes seemed greener, his bristly hair more red, his skin more ivory than Macurdy remembered. His easy laugh was amiable and chilling.

  "What then, you ask? Why, we will conquer, as our distant ancestors did in Hithmearc. And do what we please. First of all it will please us to punish the ylver for escaping us. Then we will domesticate the other peoples who dwell there, culling the intransigent. Cattle are invariably more profitable than their wild progenitors."

  Crown Prince Kurqosz in a dream by Curtis Macurdy while at Wolf Springs

  8 Good-byes and Farewells

  In a black mood, Macurdy sold the house in town to Wiiri, from whom he'd bought it. He was leaving Nehtaka County, he said, leaving at once. Wiiri bought the pickup, too, and the saw. As a small-town entrepreneur, he bought and sold a lot of different things.

  Mary's Aunt Hilmi offered to broker the sale of the quarter section and its buildings for him. She had wealthy connections in Portland. He said he didn't want to wait, and didn't want anything further to do with the place. So she bought it herself, for what seemed to him a lot of money. She warned him she expected to make money on it. He told her good enough, and welcome to it.

  Having converted almost everything he owned into cash, he deposited it in the Nehtaka Bank, in a savings account. The banker suggested more lucrative investments, but he refused them. He then willed it all to his parents, their heirs and assigns, with Frank as executor.

  Wiiri had suggested he keep the pickup for transportation, but Macurdy said the railroads and Greyhound would provide all the transportation he needed. When Wiiri asked where he was going, he said to visit his parents. From there, he added, he expected to leave the States, and go to the country his first wife had come from.

  He did not, of course, specify the country.

  ***

  On the 2,400-mile train ride to Indiana, he had abundant uninterrupted time. To think, if he cared to. Some of it he spent watching the mountains slide by, and the Great Plains. Saw pronghorn and coyotes, cattle gathered around toadstool-shaped haystacks, and great expanses of snow. Some of it was spent brooding on the past, and on what might have been. And much he spent reading-a Max Brand novel and Blue Book -escapist adventures.

  But he spent none of it planning his future. He already knew what he'd do for his parents. As for himself, he had only intentions of a general sort. He didn't know what conditions he'd find.

  One thing though he'd surely do: learn whether Varia was still married. She probably was, and her ylvin lord was a hell of a good man, any way he looked at it.

  ***

  He spent several days on the farm with his parents. They lived now in the house where Will had lived, and Varia. Frank Jr., his wife and children, lived in the larger house. Curtis told them of losing his wife and daughter, and that he was going to the country where Varia was. "Who knows?" he said. "Maybe she lost her husband. Maybe we can get back together." It was an explanation, something to ease them, and who could say it wouldn't happen.

  Frank Sr. and Edith weren't surprised at his youth. After they'd seen Curtis in '42, Charley had told them the family secret, about its occasional men who didn't age. Now Frank and Edith, in turn, told Frank Jr. and his wife. Curtis transferred his account in the Nehtaka Bank to one in Salem, Indiana. He made Frank Sr. a signator, and told him to manage it however he saw fit, for their parents' benefit. The money spooked Frank-he wanted nothing to do with it. But when Curtis countered that his only alternatives were lawyers and bankers, Frank reluctantly agreed.

  He also had a new will drawn up-the old one retailored to Indiana law. He then told Frank he didn't expect ever to be back.

  It was easy to leave Indiana again. The only things he took with him were the knife given him by the Ozian shaman, Arbel, along with several silver teklota and a couple of gold imperials. He'd left them in a dresser drawer when he'd gone to Oregon in '33, and it seemed to him he should have them when he returned to Yuulith.

  ***

  It was a Saturday when Macurdy got off the train in Columbia, Missouri. Charles Hauser was there to meet him. They gripped hands, then to Macurdy's surprise, Hauser threw his arms around him and hugged him.

  "God but it's good to see you, Macurdy!" he said. He stood back with his hands on the larger man's arms, grinning at him. "You don't know how good! And you're hard! Hugging you is like hugging an oak!" He stepped back half a step. "And young-looking! It's those ylvin genes, sure as heck. It was never real to me before that you wouldn't age, but you look as if you'd skipped those seventeen years."

  Curtis shook his head. "They weren't skipped."

  Hauser waited for him to elaborate, and when he didn't, spoke to fill the vacuum. "I didn't realize, till you phoned, how much I needed someone to talk with about the years in Yuulith. It was like an itch with no one to help scratch. An itch I'd gotten used to, but I still feel it from time to time."

  Hauser had long since given up on ever hearing from Macurdy. They'd said good-bye on a showery spring day in 1933, at the Greyhound depot in St. Louis. Macurdy had Hauser's family's address, and had promised to write when he got settled, but never had. Then, three days past, Hauser had gotten a phone call. Macurdy had found him through Hauser's brother, on the farm in Adair County.

  "Have you eaten lunch?" Hauser asked.

  "No, I haven't."

  "Good. I know a place." He laughed. "Chinese. The food's not great, but the help doesn't understand much English, so we can talk freely. There are things you need to know before you meet my wife. Our stories need to gibe."

  They sat over lunch for an hour and a half, getting refills on the tea. Macurdy said little, mostly monosyllables. It was Hauser who talked, his story beginning with their return from Yuulith. Before he could go back to the university and complete his graduate work, he'd realized, he'd have to account for the years he'd been gone. He and Professor Talbott. And if he'd told the real truth, the university would have dismissed him promptly as insane.

  So before returning home to Adair County, he'd lived for several weeks in a flophouse in St. Louis. His days and e
venings he'd spent in the downtown library, doing research for a fictional explanation that might be believed. The result was a story almost as bizarre as the truth, but far more acceptable.

  The '30s were a period when stories by Melville, Stevenson, London, Conrad, Maugham-and films based on them-had made the little known reaches of Oceania seem both real and romantic to millions. Hauser laughed. "Before the war put it in a different light, and changed all that.

  "I had more than ten years to account for, in a way that explained Talbott's absence, and why I hadn't notified anyone. What I came up with explained other disappearances around Injun Knob, as well.

  "A number of banks had been robbed in the mid-South, in the years after the First World War. My story was that several bank robbers had holed up on an old farm near Neeley's Corners, and Talbott and I ran into them by accident. They didn't know how much we knew, so they tied us up. What they were doing, actually, was financing a gun-running operation for would-be rebels in Peru, the APRA."

  Hauser had shifted into a delivery sounding like personal history instead of fiction. "From there they took us with them as captives and flunkies, on an auxiliary schooner headed for Peru. We went through the Panama Canal bound hand and foot in a storage locker. Once in the Pacific, the schooner's crew murdered the bank robbers and headed west for the Orient. Apparently the captain knew about the money, and decided he had better uses for it than to finance rebellion.

  "And they took Talbott and me along, still as flunkies. We knew only that we were headed west. Neither of us spoke Spanish, but both of us heard the name Manila repeatedly. After a few weeks, we ran into a bad storm. The schooner lost her masts, the diesel broke down, and she was half-filled with water. Our captors abandoned her in the lifeboat, leaving us behind.

  "That night the storm died down, and we were still afloat. The next day we got lucky-another small sailing ship picked us up. We had no idea what language they spoke to each other. To us they spoke pidgin, but no more than they needed for giving orders. We were still flunkies."

  Hauser grunted musingly, as if remembering those times. "Eventually we got to some godforsaken islands, their home. And Talbott's grave. I don't know what he died of. He seemed to just wear out. I was still pretty much a slave, not treated badly, but worked hard.

  "Most of the people were fishermen and subsistence farmers, but some of their men were in interisland trade, hauling goods on their homemade sailing ships. And some I suspect were pirates. I still don't know where I was. The Malay Archipelago probably, or the Moluccas. Like the crew, the people spoke pidgin to me. Later I was taken as crew on another sailing vessel, and ended up on still another island, where I was put to work husking coconuts."

  He made it sound as if it had really happened. "From there," Hauser continued, "I worked my way on different boats, figuring that sooner or later I'd get somewhere civilized. Eventually I wound up at Batangas, in the Philippines. It felt literally like a dream, seeing stores, carremetos, even motor vehicles-and actually being answered in English! You can't imagine what it was like. Except, of course, you can."

  He grinned at Macurdy. "We can account for you as an orphaned kid I took under my wing, on a tramp steamer from Manila. You were eight years old."

  Concocting the story had been the easy part, he went on. Learning enough to make it real and convincing had taken most of his time. Finally he'd left St. Louis, and hitchhiked to his family's farm, where he'd spent the summer working for his older brother. In September he went back to the university. After rehabbing and updating his science, he'd been hired as a teaching assistant, and completed his master's studies. Then he'd been hired as an instructor, and later promoted to assistant professor.

  "It's been a good life, Macurdy," he finished. Serious now. "The bad times-the years of slavery in Oz-don't seem as bad in retrospect. 'Time heals' can be more than a cliche' He paused, then added: "If you let it."

  He looked at his watch. "It's time to take you home with me. Grace will wonder if something's happened to us. Later we'll go somewhere and talk some more. And I'll nag you till you open up to me."

  ***

  Hauser's home was a pleasant bungalow near the campus. His amiable, middle-aged wife made Macurdy welcome, and did not ask intrusive questions. They sat around and talked idly about current affairs-political, international, the approaching baseball season…

  After supper, Hauser excused himself and Macurdy, and they "went for a long walk." The evening was mild for early March, but coats were welcome. Briefly they walked around the campus, talking idly again, Hauser nudging Curtis verbally, trying still unsuccessfully to draw him out. Then they went to Hauser's office in the Physics Building, hung up their coats and sat down.

  "So," Hauser said bluntly. "What brought you here? Obviously it wasn't any compulsion to tell me what you've been doing. You haven't said 'peep' about your life."

  Curtis sat silently for another long moment. "I'm heading for Injun Knob," he said at last. "I'm going back to Yuulith."

  "Huh! What brought that on?"

  Speaking slowly at first, and in a monotone, Macurdy gave a synopsis of the past seventeen years. He didn't cover everything-among other things, he left out passing through the Bavarian Gate, and his weeks in Hithmearc. But he provided a basic picture. By the time he'd finished, he seemed to Hauser a little more like the old Macurdy, as if looking back had put things in perspective.

  Hauser nodded. "I understand," he said. "C'mon. Let's go home."

  ***

  On Sunday morning, Macurdy went to church with them, an Episcopal church. The sermon had nothing to do with witchcraft or shunning. After dinner, the two men walked to the campus, sat in Hauser's office again and talked, Macurdy participating somewhat.

  Even as a slave, Hauser had pondered on how two parallel worlds, with their differences and their gates, could exist in an orderly cosmos. He was, after all, a professor of physics. But he'd come up with nothing very satisfying.

  "Did you ever talk with Arbel about it?" Macurdy asked.

  Hauser shook his head. "Arbel never showed a sign of thinking outside the traditional Yuulith cosmogony he'd grown up with. His was a wisdom of doing. He knew a lot of things intuitively, but not beyond those that were useful to what he did as an Ozian shaman.

  "I'm sure he never wondered about the gate. To him it just was, a fact of life."

  Macurdy nodded. "I guess I'm like Arbel in that. I'm not much for wondering."

  Hauser chuckled. "You and most of the world."

  "I remember you saying something about parallel universes."

  Hauser nodded. "Even then I knew quite a bit of quantum theory. According to one notion, every time a decision is made, the universe splits. So theoretically there's an infinite number of universes. And theoretically, Yuulith could be one of them."

  Macurdy frowned. "Sounds like an awful lot of universes. Where would they all fit?"

  "They wouldn't have to fit anywhere. They'd be mutually exclusive. In any one universe, the others wouldn't exist."

  Macurdy looked at the idea. "But Yuulith exists. You and I know that. And there's a gate between them, so in a way, they exist together."

  Hauser shrugged. "Whatever is, is, whether we can explain it or not. And if something is, there's a true explanation for it, whether we've worked it out or not."

  He paused. "D'you know what bothers me most? Our guns. They didn't work on the other side."

  "Maybe they would have, if our cartridges had still had powder in them."

  Hauser ignored the reply. "The rules of chemistry can't be different there. If they were, too many things would be changed: biochemistry, the metabolism of humans, other animals, plants… They'd be different, very different, all across the board." He shook his head. "Presumably our cartridges had powder in them on this side, and it was gone on the other. As if-as if God had emptied them in transit. My problem with that is, if there is a god, I can't believe he'd work that way. He'd set up the basic rules, and things would
operate accordingly."

  Macurdy shrugged. "It happened. That's enough for me. I pried the slugs out of three cartridges-two. 44s and one. 45-. 70. None of them had any powder at all." He paused, remembering the TNT the Nazi SS had stockpiled for the voitar. Why hadn't the voitar accepted it? Probably because they'd taken some through, or tried to, and it hadn't worked. But it sure as hell did on this side. "Whatever happened," he finished, "it was probably in the gate. It has rules of its own."

  Hauser shook his head. "There still has to be some physico-chemical reason," he said, and grinned without humor. "Every now and then I wallow around with that for an hour at a time. Then I pour myself a short glass of scotch, and read a mystery novel. Where everything's explained in the last chapter."

  ***

  The next day, Hauser took his guest to the railroad depot, where he saw him off on a train to Poplar Bluff. He'd suggested that Macurdy wait till Thursday, a partly open day for him. Then he'd drive him to Injun Knob in his car. Macurdy had declined the offer. "I need to get on with it," he'd said.

  On the platform beside the train, Hauser took a gold coin from his watch pocket, and held it out to him. "I still have one of those imperials you gave me-my lucky gold piece. Take it. You might need it."

  Macurdy smiled, something he hadn't often done on this visit. "You keep it. I've got a couple of them too, and some silver teklota. And my luck is getting better on its own. I can feel it."