Horrors of the Dancing Gods

by Jack L. Chalker

  "Soon, I hope, or we'll have to go hunting for them. Since our luggage is very light, we might as well remain in reception here until they appear. Would that pose a problem?"

  "Indeed not. You may sit in the café lounge over there and you will have a full view of the main entrance."

  Poquah nodded. "Then that is what we will do. Um, you don't get too many visitors from the northern continent, I assume."

  "Very few, I will admit, although it's not unusual to have some occasionally," the clerk responded.

  "A few weeks ago a green wood nymph probably accompanied by a six-armed halfling girl came through here. Did they stay here?"

  "Not that I am aware of, sir. But then, I am on duty only part of the time and not always at this desk in any event."

  The Imir nodded. "Let's go sit down and get something to drink," he suggested to Irving, who liked the idea a good deal.

  It was a very pleasant lounge, replete with a piano and plush padded seats and polished marble tables, and it had a fair number of people, mostly dressed quite well, sitting around in it talking or reading or simply relaxing. There didn't seem to be any faerie there other than Poquah, and while some of the faces were distinctively Oriental in cast and others were white or olive, there were no Nubians to be seen, either. They still stood out, but nobody really seemed to notice.

  At least nobody was playing the damned piano, Irving thought thankfully.

  Irving looked around at the faces and then turned to the Imir. "Where do these folks come from?"

  "Some are probably locals, hanging out here because it is a better place than the joints and trouble of the rest of the city. Some are commercial folk both from other areas of this continent and from others with which there is trade, and the rest are here on a variety of missions. I suspect that Baron Boquillas was quite well acquainted with this hotel in his active days, going to and from assignations here. Many classical villains of Husaquahr probably would find this very familiar. I wouldn't even be surprised if some from Earth came through here now and again, but only the very important ones Hell would actually deal with openly and comfortably."

  "Earth? You mean they can go from there to here?"

  "Hell touches all points of all universes at once," Poquah told him. "So, of course, does Heaven, but there's little of that here. The chief Prince of Hell is incredibly powerful, a demigod of great proportions, remember. It wouldn't be all that difficult. Many who vanish without a trace wind up here. I once heard that Ambrose Bierce was revising The Devil's Dictionary here and that Martin Bormann was acting as the secretary to some important writer of political tracts."

  "Who? Never heard of 'em."

  Poquah sighed. "Never mind. You don't need that kind of an education in this life."

  Irving coughed a little. "Seems like everybody smokes here, too. Wow! Worse than Ruddygore's cigars!"

  "Yes, well, it's still sophisticated here, or at least 'cool' or whatever the term is these days. Not just tobacco, either. The one thing about Hell is that it isn't nearly as hypocritical on its own ground as the saintly sorts. Don't worry, you'll be spending more time outside than in on this trip."

  A waitress came over and took their order. Irving couldn't help but notice her rather dull eyes and seemingly one-track mind and movements, almost as if she were some kind of automaton.

  "Get used to it," Poquah told him. "Slavery, binding spells, all sorts of things are taken for granted here, particularly among the lower classes. This is an upper-class hotel. You will have to accept a lot of unpleasant things you may see here, but it's not as different as you may think. Many people find our system of having the masses of people poor and starving and willing to do almost anything for a pittance no different in the basics from having slaves and spells of servitude here. It just makes it easier for the Husaquahrian upper classes and freedmen to delude themselves into a sense of moral superiority. As I said, there is often less hypocrisy when Hell is in charge than when it is less obviously so. Your impulse to save every stray dog you see is admirable in the abstract but impossible in practice. You must learn that here if you learn nothing else."

  Irving didn't like that whole train of thought, but he didn't have to reach very far to change the subject. He couldn't help noticing that they were no longer being ignored.

  "Fellow over there at the bar," Irving whispered, gesturing slightly with his head. "He's real interested in us."

  "The one in white? Yes, I've noticed him. Rather odd-looking, frankly. Round face, oval body, yet actually thin and slight of build. He carries himself more like a dandy than a fighter or magician, but such men can be deceiving."

  The small man seemed suddenly to become aware that he was being conspicuous and, instead of turning away or backing off, headed slowly over toward them, stopping at their table but not sitting down. "Gentlemen," he said in a thin, reedy, nasal voice with a pronounced foreign accent, "I apologize if I am making a mistake, but I am to meet two of your description along with a young lady faerie with bright wings. Do I have the wrong two men, or is something amiss?"

  He's got pointy teeth, Irving noted, fascinated. Not like a vampire but more like some kind of animal carnivore. It made him look both comical and menacing when he spoke.

  Poquah stared at him. "You are the one who we were to expect to contact us?"

  "Yes. I am Joel Thebes. Um—may I sit down?"

  "By all means, yes. We are waiting upon the young lady at the moment."

  Thebes looked uncertain. "She is out there alone? At night?"

  "She is a nocturnal and quite capable of taking care of herself," Poquah assured him. "We befriended a young woman on the trip over, and she's helping the girl make it here."

  "Not the Ngamuku girl!"

  "You know about her?" Irving asked, startled.

  "Of course. That's the trouble! Almost everybody knows that story. You might as well draw giant arrows to yourself at all times and say, 'Here we are!' "

  Poquah looked over at Irving. "I told you!"

  Thebes sighed. "Well, it is not a total loss, anyway. Once we leave the capital and His Majesty, we will be headed toward Mount Doom, where even the forces of Hell have diminished abilities or holds. If the King doesn't decide to give her over and lets her go on with you, she might turn from a liability to at least neutral. You are thinking of freeing her from the curse using the black bird, eh?"

  "You know a lot about why we are here and what we are after," Irving noted. "I begin to think we're the headlines in the local paper."

  "Not really, but you are not much of a secret, either. Most do not know about the black bird, though. They think you are going because your destinies are still being worked out and cannot be resolved until you reach Mount Doom."

  "I have heard a lot about this destiny business but cannot see the relationship," Poquah told him. "How is my destiny, and the Kauri's, and the boy's here all wrapped up in this business? We were sent by our friend, our employer, or our guardian, as it were, but in a sense we all volunteered."

  "Don't be ridiculous! You mean you do not know who is behind the opening of the way to the Ancient Ones? Ruddygore did not explain to you just what all this is about?"

  "Enough, I thought. Do you know something we do not but should?"

  "I think I might. You see—"

  At that moment, however, Larae and Marge entered the lobby of the Hotel Usher.

  Irving jumped up in a moment. "The girl's bleeding!" He leapt over the railing and ran to the two women, and Poquah instantly shifted gears and followed.

  "What happened?"

  "It's not serious," Marge assured them. "Got faked out almost at the last moment by a bastard who had one hell of a nasty dog. It's not a werewolf or anything—don't worry. There's no curse in the wound. I just slipped up, that's all."

  "How'd you get away?" Irving asked, examining the ugly wound on Larae's left arm, which was still bleeding.

  "I'll show you the trick sometime. Let's just say that even big ugly dog
s have things they're scared of."

  By that time some of the hotel staff had arrived, and Poquah asked a porter, "Is there a hotel physician? The wound should be tended before there is infection. In the meantime, you might also find somebody with first aid or there are going to be very ugly bloodstains on your very plush carpet here."

  That seemed to get to them more than the sight of the wounded girl had.

  "Dr. Trowbridge may be available tonight," the porter responded. "I'll send someone." Others went into action, bringing a chair for Larae and a quick and temporary bandage and a bottle of whiskey.

  Lane coughed, then muttered, "You should have just let it kill me." Then she passed out from shock.

  ****

  Dr. Trowbridge proved to be a tall, distinguished-looking man with gray hair and muttonchop sideburns and a thick, bushy mustache that appeared to hide a rather kindly face.

  He looked like somebody who'd stepped out of a nineteenth-century romance novel, but he seemed to know his stuff and was surprisingly modern for a world where sorcery ruled.

  "She's not badly hurt, just totally disconsolate. Little wonder she passed out; she has no will to live in her at all, I don't think. Bizarre, although, considering the circumstances, somewhat understandable."

  "You know who she is, too?' Irving asked.

  "Eh? No, nothing but what you told me. I refer to the curse and all that other stuff piled on her. Worst spaghetti I've seen in decades. That's why I treated her primarily with conventional medicine, as it were. Cleaned and treated the wound—it was luckily not that deep, and I think we can get by without stitches—and bandaged it, gave her an antibiotic and a sedative. She's most in need of rest. Two days and she'll be fine for most things, although she'll have soreness in that arm for a week or more, I'd say."

  Marge was fascinated by Trowbridge, who seemed out of another time and place and certainly not the sort of person anyone would expect there. "Are you a native to these parts, Doctor?" she asked, curious.

  "Oh, my, no! I just find myself here more of the time than I'd like, and since I have pretty well retired now back home, I have set up an arrangement for things like this with local hotels and such, since I have some medicines and skills little known here."

  "You're from Earth, aren't you?"

  He looked surprised. "Why, yes. There's not even a lot of folks here who know of Earth's existence. I am impressed, madam."

  "I'm from Texas myself. The boy here's from Philadelphia. Only the Imir and the girl are locals."

  "Well! Amazing! I must say you have to be a bit different than you were in Texas. A changeling, I take it." She nodded. 'Where are you from?"

  "A small town in New Jersey. I shouldn't even have been here or known of this sort of thing—the whole of this universe does terrible things to the logical mind of a man of science, after all—had it not been for my encountering and befriending a remarkable man who battles the forces of this place and has for many years. It is only with his knowledge that I can make this transition, and then only to this region. I have never understood why they let him come and go, but they do."

  "If he battles evil in New Jersey, he's no threat to Hell," Irving muttered, but nobody paid him any mind.

  "We are more permanent residents," Marge told him. "In fact, I hadn't known anyone could go both ways between except demons, angels, and a sorcerer named Ruddygore."

  "Oh, it's quite common to have this sort of thing, although most who do are rather of a nasty sort. Ran into a Babylonian chap here a while back. Got his whole country into a war with the West, got trounced, got bombed back to the Stone Age, and he's still in power. Amazing. No, what you cannot do is do it without the permission and aid of some powerful supernatural entity, and you can take only knowledge back with you. Lots of problems here at the moment, though. The whole Sea of Dreams is in ferment. No sure thing, you see. That's why we've been stuck here a while."

  "What's causing the problem, Doctor?" Poquah put in. "Why is it impossible to cross?"

  "Damned city popped up in the middle of the thing! Rotated in from yet another universe. With that on the one side and the djinn on the other, we're pretty well stuck in this one. So far, though, while summoned, they've been unable to make a landing. Hell can't do a lot—after all, when disloyalty and dishonesty are virtues, how can you not expect everybody to go over to what they perceive is the strongest side? Satan and some of the other big ones could probably take these blighters on one on one, but there's a lot of them and they work on their own level."

  "Then why don't they just come and overrun this place?' Marge asked.

  He shrugged. "Something about how supernatural denizens can prepare the way but only mortals can summon the opener. If I were you, though, I wouldn't go anywhere near that southern region where they're strongest. Hell may use insanity, but it's not only not Sane, it is always quite logical. That may be the case with these others as well, but their logic is alien to us. Think of it as an invasion from another planet. The creatures are so different and come from such a different environment and history that they bear no relationship to us at all. They are delighted to find minions who will rush to their side, attracted by their obvious power, but they do not feel an obligation to these minions or even understand the concept."

  "How do you stop them, then?" Irving wondered.

  "Destroy the beachhead, boy! Don't let 'em make a successful first landing! They must need elaborate preparation or they'd have been here by now. That's what keeps folks like me sane, you know—mathematics. It is all mathematics in the end. Magic, science, you name it: it is all mathematics. The silly Rules here—they are a form of mathematical order. Trouble is, they're often bad math, as insane as the American income tax code. I was talking about this with another Earthman passing through just the other day. Fellow named Shea, I believe. Professor of mathematics somewhere. These invaders are bound by mathematics and its logic in the same way we are all bound to ours, but it is a different, an alien mathematics. Doesn't matter. Doesn't even matter if we understand it. Doesn't matter if we are able to understand it."

  "I admit I don't understand you now," Marge conceded.

  "Oh, my dear, it's quite simple. Think of a string of numbers, say, one plus one plus one plus one plus one equals five. Simple equation, is it not?"

  "That I can follow."

  "All right. Remove one of the ones. Five is still the desired result, even the required result to accomplish something, but you've come up one short. The same is true of the action signs. Change a plus to a minus anywhere in the equation. Same thing. Now, imagine how impossibly complex their math must be. How many things have to be in place, no matter how insane it may seem to us, for their result—invasion of this world—to work. Rather bizarre equation, most likely. One hundred virgin sacrifices on rocky ground at midnight plus forty thousand chanting prayers plus who knows what? I'm just making those up as an example, but you can see that no matter how bizarre the components, it is still building a single equation. Change one item—and the more complex the equation, the better for this—and you thwart them. Change it sufficiently and you'll slam the door in their faces."

  "You make it sound so easy," Irving noted, knowing it almost certainly wasn't.

  "Well, they certainly know it as well," the doctor admitted. "One would expect that their agents on this side assembling what's required have a certain level of built-in redundancy. The trick, then, is in finding out how many sacrifices they actually require rather than the number they have got, you see." He yawned. "Pardon, but I've had a long day, I'm afraid."

  "Perfectly all right. You have been a lifesaver, Doctor," Marge assured him. "Please go back to your hotel room or wherever and have a nice rest."

  "It's that blasted Frenchman. Had me up all last night examining the catacombs of Boreas." He sighed. "Well, it certainly has kept life interesting. Charmed. Don't worry about your friend—she'll be fine, at least as far as the wounds go. Superficial. I wish I could say the same about the c
urse, but that's out of my league. Farewell for, now!"

  And with that he was gone.

  "Fascinating," Poquah commented. "One begins to suspect that Yuggoth has other surprises than the ones we anticipated. This suggests a primary weakness in the dimensional walls separating the two universes right along this continent. Perhaps more than two, since there is also a physical entryway to Hell here and in no other place. One suspects that the two great bubbles of our respective universes almost touch here. If so, it would be the ideal invasion point from the Sea of Dreams and the easiest to control access into and out of."

  Irving frowned. "Well, if Hell's close over one way and Earth's close by on the other, then where's Heaven?' "On the other side of Earth, of course. I thought that was obvious," the Imir responded. "We are a bit closer to Hell here. Always have been. Not that Earth folk are any more or less likely to go there than our people are, but here you can walk."

  Marge tiptoed to the door of the bedroom and looked in. Larae was professionally bandaged on her left arm and shoulder and seemed to be asleep from the release of tension, Trowbridge's drugs and shock, or both. She quietly pulled the door shut again, turned, and for the first time saw the strange little man in the white suit "Who's Peter Lorre?' she asked.

  He smiled. "Joel Thebes, madame. At your service. We were speaking—the three of us—when you and your companion made your dramatic entrance. I am sorry we did not have a calm and proper introduction."

  She nodded. "Then you're the native guide we were to meet?"

  "At your service. Not, however, a native. Not of this place, oh, no! I, too, was born and raised on Earth, in a small town none would have heard of in the Carpathian Mountains near the Romanian-Hungarian border."

  She immediately understood. "You're really from Transylvania'?"

  He brightened. "Oh, my, yes! A descendant of the Wallachians who ultimately subdued and dealt with Vlad Dracut. And no, I am not a vampire or a werewolf or anything like that, although over time some changes have taken place within me. They have nothing to do with my birth or ancestry, though, and do not imperil you. They are the price I have paid to still be chasing the bird after so many, many long years."