The World Around the Corner

by Rick Ellrod

  1. How dare you challenge us? We know what is best for the Princess.

  2. We will follow the King’s orders and bring her back, or die trying.

  3. We seek only to serve the Princess and do what is best for her.

  Pendragen paused for discussion. “High-handed or humble—but what’s the difference in the last two?”

  “Two and three both sound heroic,” mused Jeff. “But one of ’em focuses on the King and the other on the Princess.”

  “We’ve been getting hints about how wonderful the Princess is all along.” Rosmara’s voice was assured. “Even these random villagers seem to want to defend her.”

  “Good point. Okay. Let’s go that way.” Pendragen selected the third option, and the word balloon vanished.

  Villager: We were told to say nothing to you.

  Another villager: Yet they seem well-intentioned.

  First villager: We can only say this much…

  While the locals provided enigmatic clues to the group leader, Jeff typed to Rosmara, Think it was the right choice?

  Maybe the best we could have gotten. They didn’t turn us down flat.

  They probably wouldn’t have refused completely. Jeff leaned back and sipped his beer. HC can’t program too many alternate plot lines. Some answers might be more helpful, some less. They end up in the same place, but some make us work harder to get there.

  True. Sure you’re not a programmer yourself?

  Jeff grinned. I keep telling you, I’m just a poor benighted layman. But I do study history.

  What’s that got to do with it? Rosmara sketched a smile and wink.

  Some people think the course of history has a lot of—he paused a moment to think of the right word—inertia. Isn’t easy to change. Small differences just make for a temporary change, then things drift back to the way they were.

  “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will.”

  “Whoa.” It sounded familiar, but Jeff couldn’t quite place it. Milton?

  Shakespeare, natch!

  lol, he typed. Yes. What will be, will be.

  Sounds like destiny.

  Is it fate that brings us good comrades and—Jeff hesitated, flexing his fingers over the keyboard as his heartbeat accelerated—friends? If not, he felt, it was a fortunate sort of accident that had brought him into contact with someone he could talk with so readily.

  If so, I’m grateful to fate.

  Jeff grinned. More than anything, his companions in the guild, though he had never met them in person, made the game fun for him—especially Rosmara.

  Pendragen’s voice came from the speakers. “Okay, everybody ready to go?” As they moved off, he added, “Wonder why the locals were so hostile?”

  “We wouldn’t have had anything to fight,” said Rosmara.

  Pendragen chuckled. “Aside from that. You’d think they’d be glad to see rescuers following Aurelie. Why attack us?”

  “Maybe they thought we were just another faction, after the Princess,” Meretreia said.

  “We said we were from the king, right? They should have known we were the good guys.” As he said it Jeff realized he wasn’t entirely sure, but the point would forward the strategy discussion anyway.

  “Unless they don’t like the king.” Rosmara’s audio-filtered voice retained a certain cynical tone. “We’ve seen quests where the good guys weren’t who we thought they were.”

  “Deceits, and dark intrigues,” Archonis intoned. “Maybe we’re just doomed to be misunderstood on this trip.”

  Fate again, Rosmara observed to Jeff. ’Course, if not for fate, what would become of HC’s plotline?

  Doomed! he typed. Foredoomed, even.

  The group had cantered out into open country with green-gold grass, scattered evergreen trees, low hillocks and swales. White clouds drifted gaily across the blue sky above them, and the forest receded behind. Ahead, mountains reared up in the distance. The plain in front of them, though, was dotted with huge creatures, shaggy brown hulking beasts vaguely reminiscent of woolly mammoths, except each one swung a spiked tail that reminded Jeff of a stegosaurus’s.

  “Banthas,” suggested Pendragen.

  “Oliphaunts,” put in Rosmara.

  “Experience points,” said Arc.

  It was going to be a long night.

  Chapter 2

  Jeff opened his eyes as his alarm clock broke into the piano intro to Chicago’s “Saturday in the Park.” He groaned and slapped the thing off. It felt as if he had just laid his head on the pillow. An image of the redoubtable Rosmara in the heat of battle floated behind his closed eyelids and brought a smile to his face. He wondered again whether she looked as good in real life. He would have liked to lie there and dwell a little longer on that agreeable fantasy, but today he had to get his misbehaving car to the shop early; he had a full slate of errands to run.

  When he arrived at Roland’s Garage, the door was locked. Jeff peered through the window. The proprietor was slumped in a chair behind the desk in the office, cap pulled low over her face, apparently asleep. Jeff banged on the door. Slowly the recumbent figure struggled up out of the chair and resolved into a young woman in slate-blue overalls belted at the middle, dark hair tucked up under the cap. She made her way to the door, peered at him through the glass, rubbed her hand across her forehead, and unlocked the latch.

  “You again.” She stood aside to let him in. The name tag on the breast of the overalls read Dana. “What time is it?”

  “Just short of seven.” Jeff trudged into the small office. “Top of the morning to you.”

  “Don’t think I can see the top of it from down here,” she muttered. “Morning. Let me guess…you couldn’t just be here for an oil change, could you?”

  “No, that would be too simple. It seems to be the starter again.”

  She rubbed her hands over her face. “I should have known. Bring ’er in, will you?” She raised the garage door.

  Jeff’s car started flawlessly, as was traditional at a mechanic’s shop. He pulled forward into the crowded bay and let the engine die.

  The mechanic was a trim young woman, probably in her mid-twenties, maybe a little younger than he. Before Jeff could come around to the front, she had the hood open and leaned over the interior, inspecting it cautiously. “Hey, pal,” she addressed the engine without enthusiasm.

  Jeff winced at the rumble of heavy metal music from the wall speakers.

  Dana straightened. “Okay, what are the symptoms this time?”

  Jeff explained. By the end of his recital Dana was nodding and beginning to fidget. “Fine. Let’s see.” She fetched a large monkey wrench from the neat rack of tools crowded against the wall and advanced on the suspect engine.

  Jeff parked himself against the edge of the workbench and fell into a drowsy trance, just short of a doze. Sunlight spilling in through the open door and a pair of high windows cast a mild glow. The car’s green hood gleamed faintly.

  The mechanic’s overalls were faded and frayed, though clean. They outlined a shapely rear end as she peered into the engine compartment. She tapped lightly here and there with the monkey wrench, which glinted when it caught the light.

  “ ’Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,’ ” he muttered to himself, thinking of the old Beatles song. His eyes lighted on a wall calendar featuring Orlando Bloom in “The Lord of the Rings.” “Heh—Orlando—that’s good,” he said aloud.

  Dana straightened and turned around. “What.”

  He pointed to the calendar. She colored faintly.

  “Orlando,” he said. “Roland. It’s the same name.”

  “Come again?” The edge of a red shirt was showing at the neck of the overalls. She tugged it absently back into place.

  “Orlando’s the Italian form of your last name. Roland. The Song of Roland. Orlando…” He trailed off, fearing he was babbling, or boring, or both.

  She blinked large brown eyes. “Sorry. It’s too early for college-town humor.”


  Dana brought out a small instrument and opened his car door to plug it into the diagnostic port. “Can’t get much out of this poor old heap.” She peered at the readout. “Aren’t you ever going to trade this in on a newer model?”

  “Why?” The question came out sounding more belligerent than Jeff had intended. “It’s still running.”

  “Some of the time. For the moment. I’ve been keeping it running by using every trick in the book. And a couple not written down yet.” She moved back to the engine compartment and pulled at a component here and there, tapped something gently with her wrench, cocked her head to one side to listen to the result. “Can’t do it forever.”

  The raucous music from the speakers chose that moment to crescendo. Jeff rubbed his forehead. “Can you turn down the sound, do you think?”

  Dana snickered. “What, you don’t like Screaming Mink?”

  “Not at this hour.”

  “Think of it as an opportunity to expand your tastes. In fact, this car might be the same way. Who knows? One of the newer models might take to you…”

  “I like this car,” Jeff said with dignity. “I grew up with this car.”

  “And it’s growing old with you.”

  “It has sentimental value. It has historical value.”

  “It certainly does. I keep looking for a plaque, or a historical marker–” She peered expectantly around a corner of the car, surprising him into a laugh.

  Dana went back to the output port under the dashboard and this time plugged in a longer cable. She led it back to a computer perched on a nearby shelf and punched a few keys. The LED screen lit, illuminating her sharp, intent face under the bill of her cap.

  “Getting anything?” he said at length.

  She scowled at the screen. “There’s a problem with the ignition, yes. But there’s also something wrong with the mix.”

  “Okay. Which tells us what?”

  The answer, about two minutes’ worth, told him nothing. He objected and received a second stream of jargon. “Talk English! You’re saying it needs more work?”

  “Right. And right away. You had trouble getting ’er started this morning, didn’t you?”

  He nodded ruefully. “Wasn’t sure I was going to get here at all.”

  “Um-hmm. Okay. I’ve got bad news, and worse news.”

  “I’m not going to like the price,” he predicted.

  “This is all before I get to the price. First thing is, you need a part I haven’t got. I just checked. Gonna take at least five days for it to get here.”

  “Come on! In this day and age? You can get everything by overnight mail.”

  “First of all,” she said, “tomorrow is Sunday. Second, the parts are not on the shelf. They don’t make ’em like this anymore.” She motioned at the beached vehicle. “They don’t make the parts either. Which means somebody’s got to special-order them and dig them out of some storehouse somewhere.”

  Jeff groaned. “This is a small town, but not so small I can hoof it everywhere. I can limp along with it until this part comes in, can’t I?”

  “Not exactly.” She walked back over to the car and gazed down at it. “That’s the other bad news. The fuel mix is going further and further off-center, and faster as it goes. Just to get your car out of here, I’m going to have to retune the engine by hand. And you won’t be able to keep it running more than twenty-four hours unless I do it again. Unless,” she suggested brightly, “you don’t drive it in the meantime.”

  “Which sort of defeats the purpose.”

  “True.” She spread her hands. “Sorry, pal; I didn’t build this thing. In fact, I’m way too young to have built this thing. I think the electrical system was hand-wired by Thomas Edison.”

  “All right. Go ahead.”

  Dana brought another small electronic device and a couple of hand tools from the workbench and began tinkering with the engine.

  Jeff closed his eyes and tried to think what errands he needed to run. It was a good thing there were no classes next week…

  “So you still think this is worth saving?” She spoke without taking her eyes off what she was doing. Subdued metallic noises came from the subterranean parts of the car.

  “I keep saying this car is a classic. It’s taken me through a lot.”

  “Of course. It’s an honor to work on a car like this.”

  His sense of the ridiculous was coming to the fore. “Yes, it is. It’s an opportunity. A rare chance.”

  “I see what you mean. I ought to be happy to be fixing this car.” Now she seemed to be twisting something, with short, hard jerks. “Everyone should have such an opportunity. A person’s life wouldn’t be complete without a chance to work on this car. It’s like, uh–”

  “A trip to Paris.”

  “Yeah, right. Or, oh, swimming with dolphins.”

  “Or reading Dickens.”

  “Oh, the classics again. Can’t say that one ever occurred to me as an essential in life.”

  Jeff felt a little defensive. Perhaps he was sounding too much the stuffy professor, but having brought up something he genuinely liked, he didn’t want to take it back. “Well, Dickens is something everyone ought to be exposed to.”

  “Like chicken pox?”

  “Very funny. I mean, lots of things we still talk about come from him. Scrooge. Little Nell. Tiny Tim. ‘A far, far better thing.’ Jarndyce v. Jarndyce.”

  “Who?”

  “Okay, scratch the last one. But you see what I mean. And it tells us what living in a time long past was like.”

  Dana’s head popped up. Jeff wasn’t sure whether the glint in her eyes was enjoyment or annoyance. “Yeah. It could tell us how to fix this car, maybe. I think they were contemporaries.”

  “Who?”

  “Dickens and your car.”

  He laughed. “All right. You don’t have to love the old sled. Long as you can make her work.”

  She closed the hood, slid halfway into the driver’s seat, placed her foot on the gas pedal, and turned the key. The engine started smoothly—or was there a hint of raggedness in the sound? “And there you have it.”

  “Great. Thanks.” He came around to gaze at the motor operating. “How long did you say it’ll hold up, if I’m running some errands?”

  “Not past tomorrow.”

  “Then, if you’ll excuse the expression, how the Dickens am I going to get in to my office on Monday? It’s spring break, but I’ve got a meeting.”

  She rolled her eyes and slid back out of the car. “You really need to use it all this weekend, huh? All right, all right. I suppose I can come in tomorrow and have another heart-to-heart talk with it.”

  “Thank you. It’d be very helpful.”

  “But not until ten.” She tapped the wrench against the palm of her hand. “It’s the one day I don’t have to get up early. And I’m not rolling out of bed at sunrise just to play with your classic car.”

  “That will be just fine,” he said hastily.

  ****

  As he drove home, one ear cocked for any suspicious sounds from the engine, Jeff had a nagging feeling his enthusiasm about the greats of the past had exposed him as hopelessly uncool. Not that he had ever cultivated coolness as a cardinal virtue. But no man ever really wants to appear to disadvantage before the female of the species. And his very self-consciousness made him babble, dammit, or, worse, lecture. He pondered whether he would have come off better if he had also referred to, say, Tolkien as a modern classic. But despite the wall calendar, somehow he didn’t feel The Lord of the Rings would be her type of story—at least, not unless it featured an attractive elf on screen.

  ****

  The heavy metal music was giving Dana a headache—or was it just having to deal with Stanton and his traveling antique at this hour? Yet it was hard to resist ragging him about it. He was so earnest. Funny to see a young man get so stuffy, even in a college town. He couldn’t be more than a couple of years older than she was, but a professor is
a professor…

  Dana massaged her temples for a moment and then went into the office. She had turned on the music without thinking when she came in this morning, but her assistant Steve must have switched the playlist last night. Dana bent over the player and dialed for something more congenial. From the garage bay wafted the sound of Lennon and McCartney. Dana smiled and dropped back down in her chair, tilting the cap forward over her face. Today was her twenty-sixth birthday, and she was hoping for a relatively easy day and a chance to catch a nap in the afternoon. Her plans for the evening might run well into the night.

  Chapter 3

  Dana’s own car was under the care of another shop for some body work she wasn’t equipped to handle herself. But it was a short walk back from the garage in the mild mid-April weather—just enough exercise to let her enjoy that well-deserved nap. Evening light streaming almost horizontally through the window woke her, and she rolled to her feet, rubbing her eyes. In the tiny kitchen she began gathering materials for an omelet.

  Dana’s home was just about large enough to be cozy for one. Through a front window she could see a spray of yellow forsythia by the mailbox. In the back yard, visible through a window framed with light wooden fretwork, a scattering of azaleas showed no blooms as yet, but stirred amiably in the breeze. She cranked the window open to let the air roam through the house while she assembled dinner and sat down at the computer reposing, with its widescreen monitor, on a large oval hardwood table.

  The Heroes’ Calling logo dissolved into mists and the mists into a view from the foothills of a mountain range, plains stretched out below. Dana had logged Rosmara out facing back the way they had come. Now she turned to the camp.

  At first she thought there was only one other player present. But at once she heard voices chime in, forming a chord, do-mi-sol! Suddenly the single form sprang apart. The others had all been standing in exactly the same spot so their ’toons overlapped. Now they faced her and did the dance emote, chorusing “Happy Birthday.”

  Badon then launched into a very rough rendition of the Beatles’ “Birthday.” The group shouted this down raucously, followed by a chorus of congratulations.