The Compleat Enchanter: The Magical Misadventures of Harold Shea

by L Sprague De Camp; Fletcher Pratt

  “Belphebe of Faerie? Certainly.”

  “Know where she is?”

  Bayard considered gravely. “Of my own knowledge, no. I assure you, however—”

  Votsy’s eye brightened, and he grabbed the arm of the one who breathed through his mouth. “Say! I know who could tell you—Doc Chalmers!”

  The policemen exchanged glances again. “Who’s he?”

  Bayard cast a vexed glance at the junior. “As a matter of fact, Dr. Chalmers left only day before yesterday on a rather extended sabbatical, so I’m afraid he cannot be of much help. May I ask the nature of the difficulty?”

  The red-faced one, quick on the trigger, said: “Day before yesterday, eh? That makes two of ’em. Know where he’s gone?”

  “Uh-uh—”

  “Couldn’t have gone off with this Mrs. Shea, could he?”

  In spite of the situation there rose a unanimous laugh from Shea, Bayard, and Polacek. “All right,” said the red-faced one, “she didn’t. Now I’ll ask you another one. Do you know anything about a picnic day before yesterday to Seneca Grove?”

  “If you’re asking whether I was there, no. I know there was a picnic.”

  The one who breathed through his mouth said: “I think he’s covering up too, Jake. He talks like Snide Andy.”

  The red-faced one said: “Leave me handle this. Dr. Bayard, you’re a physicologist just like Dr. Shea, here. Now how would you explain it in your own language that at this picnic Dr. Shea and his wife goes off in the woods, but only one of ’em comes back, and that one ain’t this wife of his, and besides he goes around saying ‘She’s gone!’ ”

  “I can explain it perfectly well,” said Bayard, “though I don’t know whether you will understand my explanation.”

  “Okay, suppose you come along too and tell it to the lieutenant. I’m getting a bellyfull of this runaround. Bring him along, Pete.”

  Pete, the mouth-breather, reached for Bayard’s elbow. The effect, however, was like touching the button that set off a nuclear reaction. As far as Pete, Bayard, Polacek, and Shea were concerned, the lights in the room went into a whirl of motion that became a gray-gleaming circle. They heard Jake’s voice cry thinly: “No you don’t!” with the accent at the end rising to a squeal, and felt rather than saw the orange, dahlia-shaped flame of the unpleasant automatic, but the bullet never touched any of them, for—

  Pmf!

  The floor was cold beneath their feet.

  Shea braced himself and looked around. Marble all right: there seemed to be miles of it in every direction stretching out in a tesselated pattern of black and white to where pillars leaped from it on every side, slender and graceful, supporting a series of horseshoe-shaped Moorish arches, and thence reaching back invisibly into the distance. The pillars were of some translucent substance that might be alabaster or even ice. Oriental, Shea thought.

  “Listen,” said Pete, “if you try to get away with this you’ll go up for it all. This ain’t like New York; they got a Lindbergh law in this state.”

  He had dropped Bayard’s arm and was dragging out the twin of the red-faced cop’s pistol. Shea said: “Don’t bother shooting; it won’t go off.”

  Bayard looked vexed. “Look here, Harold, have you been working some of your damned symbolic logic formulas on us?”

  “Holy Saint Wenceslaus!” said Votsy, pointing. “Look there!”

  From among the pillars that receded into the gloom a procession advanced. It was headed by four eunuchs—they must be that, loathsomely fat, grinning, wearing turbans on their heads and blue silk bloomers on their legs, each bearing a long curved sword. Behind came a file of Negroes, naked to the waist, with earrings, carrying a pile of cushions on their heads.

  “You’re under arrest!” said Pete, pointing the gun at Shea. He turned toward Polacek. “You want to preserve the law, don’t you? Help me get him out of here.”

  The eunuchs went down on their knees and bumped their heads upon the pavement as the Negroes, in perfect step, broke left and right to dump piles of cushions behind the four. Pete turned his head uncertainly, then turned back quickly as Shea sat. The reflex tightened Pete’s finger on the gun, which gave a loud click.

  “I told you it wouldn’t go off,” said Shea. “Make yourself at home.” He was the only one who had done so thus far; Polacek was turning his head round and round until it looked as though it might come off; Bayard was staring at Shea with an expression of furious bewilderment, and the policeman was clicking his pistol and working the slide in a futile manner between clicks. Behind the file of Negroes another procession of butter-feced men emerged from the shadows of the colonnades, bearing an assortment of zithers, brass gongs, and eccentric-looking stringed instruments, to group themselves at one side.

  “Nothing you can do about it. Honest,” said Shea; then, addressing himself to Bayard particularly: “You know about the theory of this, Walter. Sit down.”

  Bayard sank slowly into the pile of cushions. Polacek, bug-eyed, and Pete the cop, distrustfully, imitated him. One of the eunuchs pranced before the musicians, clapping his hands. Instantly they struck up an ear-wracking combination of shrieks, growls, groans, and howls, with a bearded vocalist, who seemed to have wildcats tearing at his entrails, raising his voice above all. Simultaneously, a door seemed to have opened somewhere among the darknesses behind the colonnades. A breeze fluttered the musicians’ garments; underneath their squallings came the sound of distant, rushing waters.

  “Cheer up,” said Shea. “Here comes Room Service.”

  A dark-skinned dwarf, with a big aigrette held to his turban by an emerald clip, scuttled toward them, his arms filled with cushions. He flung them on the floor at the feet of the four, salaamed, and was gone. The caterwaulings of the music changed sharply, all the instruments together emitting seven high-pitched notes. Among the pillars, in the direction where the dwarf had disappeared, a flicker of motion appeared, grew, and developed into seven girls.

  At least they appeared to be girls. They wore Oriental costumes, whose only resemblance to those pictured on calendars, however, lay in cut and color. Their long, loose pajamas were of the heaviest wool; so were the veils that covered all but seven pairs of black eyes and mops of black hair, while the bodices concealed everything above the waist. The howling of the musicians waxed as the girls cut a series of capers that could only by the remotest courtesy be called a dance.

  “The vaudeville’s corny,” said Polacek, “but I’ll take the one on the end.”

  “I’d hate to see him loose in a harem,’’ said Bayard.

  “I wouldn’t,” replied Polacek. “I wonder if she speaks English.”

  “You probably aren’t speaking English yourself,” said Shea. “Relax.” Under those costumes it was hard to tell, but he was fairly certain that none of these was Belphebe.

  The policeman, sitting bolt upright on a cushion, had stripped his gun in the space between his knees. Moreover he had gathered up the bullets that it had already disgorged, and with an expression of honest bewilderment was examining the firing-pin dents in their primers. Now he looked up.

  “I don’t know how you guys worked this,” he said, “but I’m telling you to get us out of here or you’re gonna do more time than Roosevelt was president.”

  “Wish I could,” said Shea, “but Dr. Bayard will tell you it wasn’t our doing that got you here.”

  “Then what did do it? Did you conk me on the head so now I’m dreaming? Or are we all dead? This sure don’t look like the heaven they told me about at the First Methodist Church Sunday school.”

  “Not exactly,” said Shea, “but you’re getting warm. You know how sometimes when you’re dreaming you wonder whether you’re dreaming or not?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And how sometimes when something unusual happens to you when you’re awake, you again wonder if you’re awake? Well, we’ve discovered that the universe is something like that. There are a whole lot of diflferent worlds, occupying the same
space, and by mental operations you can change yourself from one to the other.”

  Pete shook his head as if to clear flies from it. “You mean you can go to Mars or somepin by just thinking about it?”

  “Not quite. This isn’t Mars; it’s a world in a whole other universe, with assumptions different from ours. What we do is fix our minds on those assumptions.”

  “Assump—Oh hell, if you say so I’ll take your word. I’d think you was giving me a line, except …”

  The seven had pranced off among the pillars. From the opposite direction another set of dancers emerged. They wore ankle-length trousers and loose embroidered coats with what might have been pairs of coffee cups beneath. “Hi, Toots!” said Polacek tentatively. Scrambling to his feet he took two steps and grabbed for the nearest, who avoided him lightly without missing a step of her dance.

  “Sit down, you damn fool!” barked Shea; the dancers swung past and began to retreat.

  “How long d’you think this will keep up?” inquired Bayard.

  Shea shrugged. “No idea. Honest.”

  As though in answer, the orchestra changed beat and tune, with a violent banging from the strings and drums. From behind the disappearing dancers another pair of eunuchs stepped forward, bowed to the four, then faced each other and bowed again. Between them emerged four girls, each with a small brass tray holding a fancy jar. Bayard gasped; Polacek whistled; the policeman ejaculated: “Mother of God!” The costumes of all were ample in cut but so thin they might better have not been there at all. The wearers were definitely mammals.

  The girls sidled delicately toward their customers, bowed together with the precision of Rockettes, and flopped among the cushions at the feet of the four.

  “You can’t bribe me,” growled Pete the cop. “This only gets you smart guys another charge. Indecent theatrical performance.”

  Keeping time to the music, each of the girls whipped the lid from her jar, stuck her finger into it, withdrew it covered with something yellow and gooey, and thrust it into her customer’s face. Shea opened his mouth and got a fingerful of honey. He heard Bayard gag and cry “No!” and turned in time to see him try to avoid the finger. Pete the cop was dabbing at a honey-smeared face with his handkerchief, while his houri seemed determined to apply the stuff internally or externally.

  “Better take it,” advised Shea. “They’re here to give it to us.”

  “You can’t bribe me!” repeated Pete; and Walter said: “But I don’t likes sweets! I’d rather beer and pretzels.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Shea could see Polacek with one arm around his houri’s neck, while with the other hand he conveyed finger-doses of honey to her mouth in exchange for those he received. He caught on fast.

  Shea accepted another installment himself. “O moon of my delight,” implored the policeman’s girl, “is thy breast narrowed? Know that thou hast so infused my heart with love that I will rather drown in the ocean of my own tears than see my lord dismayed. What shall his unworthy handmaiden do?”

  “Ask her for something to drink,” said Bayard, tentatively touching his tongue to the finger that was being offered him, and shuddering over the taste.

  “Is this truly my lord’s desire? To hear is to obey.” She sat up and clapped her hands three times, then snuggled down against the shrinking policeman’s legs. He seemed past speech. The leader of the orchestra dropped his instrument and also clapped, and from among the pillars the dwarf who had brought the cushions came skipping forward again, this time with a big tray on which shone four elaborate silver flagons. Bayard raised himself to peer into the one set before him, then groaned.

  “Milk! It needed just that to top off this mess. Who the Hell wants to go to Heaven? Good Lord!”

  Shea, glancing across the head of his own houri, saw that if the liquid in the flagon was indeed milk, it was milk of a most peculiar kind, with small congealed lumps floating in it. Before he could experiment, Polacek shouted: “Holy smoke, you guys try this stuff! Best cocktail I ever tasted!”

  The resemblance to a cocktail might be incidental, but the flavor was delicious and the potency unlimited. As Shea took a long draft he could feel a wave of warmth running down his gullet. He handed the flagon to his girl. “What do you call this drink, little one?”

  She kissed the edge of the flagon where his lips had touched it and glanced at him archly. “O beloved youth, this is none other than the veritable Milk of Paradise.”

  Bayard had heard. “Paradise?” he cried. “Harold! Votsy! I’ll bet you anything I know where we’ve landed. Don’t you remember—

  “‘—For he on honey-dew hath fed

  And drunk the milk of Paradise.’?”

  “What you giving us?” demanded Pete the cop.

  “This is Xandadu, Coleridge’s Xanadu,” explained Bayard.

  “‘In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

  A stately pleasure-dome decree,

  Where Alph, the sacred river, ran—’“

  “Alph! Alph!” The girls scrambled to their feet and bowed in the direction of the sound of running water.

  “There you are,” said Bayard. “Alph, supposedly based upon the legends about the river Alphaios in Greece—”

  “That’s it, all right,” said Shea. “Listen, officer, I’m not responsible for this, and I don’t know how we got here, but he’s right. Wait a minute, though, Walter. This is a jam. Remember, the poem was unfinished; as far as I know we’ve landed in an incomplete space-time continuum, one that’s fixed in a certain set of actions, like a phonograph needle stuck in one groove. This show is apt to keep right on going.”

  Bayard put both hands to his head, the policeman gibbered thickly, but Polacek waved an empty flagon. “Suits me,” he cried happily, reaching for his girl again. “We’ll do all right, won’t we, babe?”

  Just then the orchestra struck a strident note. The girl at whom Polacek had snatched dodged his arm, whipped up her tray with a smooth motion, and ran. Another group of seven dancing girls emerged from the pillars. One of them, apparently a soloist, carried a pair of short curved swords, which she began to brandish.

  “But look here, Harold,” said Bayard, “can’t you do something about this? You’ve been telling us how good you were at magic in cosmoi where it works. Can’t you get us off this goddam vaudeville circuit?”

  “Yeh,” said Pete the cop. “I’ll tell you, Shea, I’ll make a deal with you. Know a feller in the D.A. ’s office, and I’ll get him to go eesh—easy with you on these here charges. Maybe, maybe, forget the indeshent performance one.” The Milk of Paradise seemed to have warmed him a little.

  “I can try,” said Shea. “I don’t know how it’ll work with all this racket.”

  The cop heaved himself up unsteadily. “I can fix tha’,” he said. In two bounds he was upon one of the astonished eunuchs, wrestling with him for his scimitar. The musicians stopped with a squeal and a murmur of voices; then one struck a gong, three times, ringingly. From among the pillars a whole parade of grim-looking janizaries advanced with long nasty spears in their hands, just as Shea wrested the scimitar from Pete. Bowing before the eunuch, Shea presented him his weapon, saying: “The humblest of your servants abases himself.” Then he turned on Pete, whom Bayard was, with a little difficulty, restraining.

  “You—utter—damned—jackass!” he said. “I don’t care if you’re the number one cop in Ohio; you can’t get away with that here. How’d you like to see your head paraded around on the point of one of those pikes?”

  Pete shook his head as if to clear it. “How—how could I see it if—”

  “Or spend the rest of your life in a specially refrigerated cell?” Shea addressed Bayard: “Remember the ‘Beware, beware!’ and ‘caves of ice’ part? This paradise has got thorns in it; you take it the way they dish it out to you, or you’ll be sorry.”

  He led the way slowly back to the cushions. The janizaries had disappeared, and another file of dancers was coming out from among the pillars, this
group specializing in bellybuttons. Pete the cop flung himself heavily into the cushions, and Walter Bayard sat down morosely.

  “All right, you guys,” said Shea, “try not to interrupt me while I give a whirl at a sorites. If there is something, c, such that the proposition phi concerning x is true when x is c but not otherwise, and c has the property ph, the term satisfying the proposition phi concerning—” His voice trailed off, and he sat with lips moving. Polacek watched him closely. Pete, head buried in his arms, murmured: “And me a married man!”

  However, Shea’s sorites were never completed. Through the domed building, far among the arches, rang the thunder of a cosmic voice—the kind of voice God might have used in telling the worshippers of the Golden Calf where to head in. It said: “Oh, goodness gracious, I do believe I’ve made a mistake!”

  The voice was that of Dr. Reed Chalmers.

  Shea and Polacek leaped to their feet. The musicians stopped; the dancers paused.

  Then musicians, dancing girls, pillared hall began to go round, faster and fester, until they dissolved into a rioting whirl of color. The color faded to foggy gray. The gray threw up whorls that condensed into other colors, and faded into the outlines of another room, a smaller room, bare and utilitarian.

  Shea and Polacek were facing a table. Behind it sat a short man and a pale, lovely, dark-haired girl. The man was Dr. Reed Chalmers. There were touches of black in the unruly gray hair that flowed from beneath the edges of a gaudy turban, and some of the lines were missing from his face.

  He said: “I am glad to see you, Harold. I hoped—Oh, for goodness’ sake, did I get Vaclav too?”

  Two

  “Yeah, you got me,” said Polacek. “Right away from a swell party. Walter, too.”

  Shea looked around. “But where is Walter? He was on those cushions—holy dewberries, Doc! He must still be back there in Xanadu with that cop, watching cootch dancers and eating honeydew. And he hates both of them!”

  “Xanadu? Dear me, most unfortunate, most distressing.” Chalmers fingered the papers before him. “I desired merely to establish contact with you, Harold, and I assure you the association of the others was quite accidental. I really don’t know—”