“Right,” I agreed. “They’re called leaves because they leave the trees in the fall. Which is why it’s called fall.”
“Don’t worry,” Chester said, rolling up his sleeves and starting to ablute in a basin on top of one of the white dressers. “You manage and I’ll worry. That’s known as division of labor.”
“Let me give you a list of things to worry about,” I suggested.
“I’ll make up my own.”
“If you won’t discuss it, how can I be sure you’re worrying about the right things? Part of my function as your manager is to make sure you worry about the right things. Otherwise I worry.”
“Boy,” Chester said, rubbing himself vigorously with a towel, “when you want to talk about something.... All right, Theodore Bear, enumerate.”
“Well,” I held up one finger. “Where are we, why and how? Start there.” I decided to take at least the outer layer of clothes off so I could get at the dirt better.
Chester beamed at me as he rebuttoned his shirt. “We’re in the charming town of West-by God-Mutton. Want to wash?”
I took over the pitcher and bowl. The soap, although pleasantly scented, seemed to have a fine grit as its principal constituent. “I meant in a more universal sense. Like, in what universe are we?” My shirt had plastered itself to my shoulders, using a layer of dried blood as binder. I gently peeled it off, trying not to scream too loudly when little bits of abraded skin came off with it.
“What makes you think we’ve changed universes? And what are you screaming about?”
“I’m screaming because it hurts; and I think we’ve changed universes because we’re in a different universe. Credo, as a friend of mine would say.”
“What hurts?”
“Pulling this shirt off my back,” I displayed the shirt, “hurts.”
“Hmmm.” Chester examined the shirt. “Do you always bleed on your clothes?”
“Only when I’m cut,” I assured him. I held up a second finger. “Two: just as an interesting side worry, something to occupy your time between big worries, how the hell do you explain whatever was going on in that field we passed?”
“Yes,” the door said, opening. “How do you do that?”
“Don’t you ever knock?” I asked, rebuckling my pants.
“What for?” asked Sylvia.
“Remember your tempos and mores,” Dorothy suggested. They came into the room like they had a long-term lease on it, and settled into the hardback chairs.
“Judging by the separation of the bedrooms by sex,” I said, “I’m surprised they let you in here.”
“We snuck,” Sylvia said, with a touch of giggle in her voice.
Dorothy informed us, “I am not in the habit of letting someone else decide what I can and cannot do. I wished to consult with you to decide what our next actions should be, and so I did.”
“You didn’t march across the living room,” Sylvia said. “You snuck, like me.”
“Well,” Dorothy said. “That Aunt person seemed to be making such a point of segregating us by sex, I preferred not to antagonize her unnecessarily.”
“Do either of you two gentlemen have any idea of what’s going on around here?” Sylvia asked.
“Here?” Chester sounded.
“You know. I mean all over—all around us. The ship and the woods and the blap and Ronnie disappearing and the circus disappearing and these people—Robin and his aunt—and this town and those people in the field and...and....” Sylvia bit her lip and held her breath to try to stop from crying, but it wasn’t working. A small sob escaped from between her clenched teeth.
“Now,” I said, wrapping my arms around her and gathering her to me. “It isn’t that bad, honest. It just seems that bad.”
Dorothy looked at us scornfully. She couldn’t figure out what all the fuss was about.
“It is a problem,” Chester confessed. He pulled a small notebook out of his back pocket. “I’ve taken a few notes,” he said, flipping through the book. “Let’s see; the first chapter of my new novel, And Then I Told God; charts on my correlation of the Talmud and the I Ching; the addresses of forty-five cemeteries in the Los Angeles area; the phone number of the archives room at the Boston Public Library....”
“When did you take these notes?” I asked. “I don’t remember you taking notes.”
Chester looked indignant. “I always take notes. You know what a bad memory I have. Now then: twenty-seven common substances that will give you a high; notes for a review of Lennon’s Prelude in B Flat Until the Neighbors Complain; six exotic ways to use canned peaches....”
“A recipe?” I asked in surprise.
Chester merely looked up. “No. Where was I? Why can’t I ever find anything in this book?”
“You should write things in order instead of skipping around the pages,” I suggested.
“Then I could only find things by remembering the order I wrote them. I find random access more useful. That way I have to go over everything I wrote every time I use the book. It’s a form of cross-fertilization. Hmm: a phone number with no name attached, which is annoying; a name with no memory attached—exasperating; a map of the battle of Jeppet.... Hrmph! One of your love poems; what’s that doing in my notebook? Well: a list of the strategic places to plant firebombs in Austin, Texas. The names of four ducks. Ah! Here we are.”
“Four ducks?” Dorothy asked, fascinated by the list.
“Mallard is the only duck name I can think of offhand,” I volunteered.
“Not that sort of names,” Chester snorted, flipping back to the page and showing it to me. I read aloud: “HUEY, DEWEY, DONALD, DAISY.
“The names of four ducks,” I admitted, “What are they doing in your notebook?”
“I don’t remember, but if you’d like me to make up a story....”
“No thanks,” I said. “Let’s hear your notes.”
“Fine. My notes. There are six things I have written down here.”
We all leaned forward and adjusted ourselves, ready to hear the word. Somehow, when you write something down, it becomes more important. The value squares when it’s typed, and cubes when it’s put into print. Chester explained this carefully to me when he talked me into buying an old web press with him. Now that most people don’t read, the value of the printed word has increased even more, because it has become mysterious.
“Thing one,” Chester read. “It’s probable that the UFO we saw has something to do with the blip we felt.”
“UFO?” Sylvia asked.
“Unidentified,” I explained, “flying object.”
“Oh,” Sylvia said. “So that’s what it was.”
Chester said, “Name magic. Now she knows. Ha!”
“What does he mean?” Sylvia asked.
“Nothing at all,” I told her. “Chester isn’t happy unless he’s obscurely insulting or insultingly obscure at least three times a day.”
“Oh,” Sylvia said. She smiled sweetly at Chester. “I’m glad to be able to keep you happy.”
“Let us eschew dissension,” Dorothy said, eying Chester, who was hefting the notebook like a baseball. “Go on.”
“Thing two,” Chester said, returning to his notes. “We have been on—we are on—a journey together; not through time or space, but between time and space.”
“How’s that again?” I asked.
“Parallel time tracks,” Chester explained.
“That’s what I said before,” I told him.
He ignored me. “Thing three: there’s something wrong with the system.”
“What system?” Dorothy asked.
“Look,” Chester said, “you and I—you,” he waved a collective hand, “and us; we’re from different time tracks, you agree?”
“If that’s what it is,” Dorothy nodded. “We’re from different something. The unicorn a mythical beast indeed!”
“And you’ve been through two blips—transfers—one of which we shared with you.”
“Horrible, n
asty things,” Sylvia said with a shudder.
“Well, that’s it. Proof.”
“How is that proof?” I asked.
Dorothy demanded, “Proof of what?”
Chester looked pained at our ignorance. “Proof that there’s something seriously wrong with the system, that the orchestra’s got a sour bassoon. Look, have you ever heard of anything like this before? Ever?”
“No,” Dorothy admitted.
“Well, what that means is that it doesn’t happen very often. Now it’s happened to one small group of people—us—twice in a short time. That would seem to indicate that,” he ticked a finger, “something’s seriously out of whack in general, or,” he ticked the next finger, “someone’s out to get us, in particular; which I feel is quite unlikely. At times in my paranoid past I would have assumed that the Universe is teaming up to get me, but now I’m more objective and I don’t believe that. I think it, but I don’t believe it.”
“You keep cheerful notes,” Sylvia said. “What’s next?”
“Thing four,” Chester continued, peering closely at his notes. “Hmmm. I must have written this from the moving carriage, it’s hard to read.”
“Your ant-tracks are always hard to read,” I told him. “What do you think it says?”
“It looks like ‘the durgs are black and have legs,’ but I have no idea what that means.”
“Let’s do our best not to run into any durgs,” I suggested. “Just in case your notebook has developed a propensity for prognostication.”
“I shall say no sooth,” Chester assured me. “I read on. Thing five seems sort of obvious, but sometimes it’s the obvious that needs saying. So: this time-space we’re in is occupied mostly by Victorians. Real, stuffy, up-tight Victorians. And those people we passed in the field, who were obviously something else.”
“And us,” Dorothy added. “Right.”
“Those, er, people in the field,” I said, using Chester’s circumlocution, “what about them? They’re not exactly Victorian. Besides, Robin and his aunt didn’t even seem to notice them.”
“There are none so blind,” Chester said sagely, “as those with no eyes.”
“I’ll grant you that,” I agreed.
“What does he mean?” Sylvia asked.
“Who knows?” I explained. “But don’t argue with him, he gets nasty.”
Chester ignored me. “That brings me to my last point. Thing six: we must seek more information, because we really have no idea what’s going on.”
“Oh, that’s what he means.”
“Now it’s all clear to me,” Dorothy said.
“When you figure out what’s going on,” I suggested, “let me know.”
“Don’t be sarcastic,” Chester said. “I didn’t say I had all the answers. I was just trying to state some of the questions. Questions first, then answers; it’s one of the oldest rules.”
Dinner was quite an occasion. We were supplied by the hotel staff, at the instigation of Robin’s aunt no doubt, with fresh costumes. I say costumes advisedly. Mine gave me the general appearance of Nigel Bruce playing Dr. Watson. Chester’s turned him into an unjovial Pickwick. All through dinner he had an unhappy, constrained look. His cravat had been fastened too tight, and he didn’t know how to loosen it without taking it off.
The dinner was held in a private dining room downstairs. There were nine guests, who I suspect were invited to take a look at us. We were introduced to them as they came in: Mr. Falkenburg, Colonel Montmorency, Dame Wycouth, Colonel and Mrs. Blake, Lady Caren Shashlic, Professor M. Nant, Lord Goldberg, and Mr. Hamish Seulhomme, Esquire.
Aunt introduced us as distressed travelers, who had a fascinating tale of adventure to tell.
Colonel Blake stood up. A slender man, immaculately dressed in a dark, pin-stripe, double-breasted suit, with a darker vest and a black, flowing tie; he carried himself with an ineffable air of complete authority that was enhanced by his neatly-trimmed, spade, salt and pepper beard and his miter-top brush cut. The only anomaly in his appearance was the fleeting glimpse we had when he stood up of bright red socks. The group turned to him as a congregation turns to its rabbi, and waited for the word. It came.
“We welcome you to our community, fellow travelers on the Road of Life, in the name of the town leaders,” he nodded to those around him and flicked an imaginary dust mote off his sleeve, “in the name of common intelligentsia, for I can see that you are of us; in the name of biblical commerce, as that merchant of old was aided in his hour of need; in the name of human decency, in the name of progress, in the name of trust and kindness, in the name of unity, in the interest of your safety and our own well-being, in the dining room at this time, in the interlude between meeting and eating,” here he paused for a laugh, which he didn’t get, “in the, ah, hope that you will favor us with an account of your adventures, both to sympathize with you for having suffered the ordeal while empathizing with the heroic adventure and to learn thereby what we must prepare for in this rapidly changing world, which seems to be doing so much by itself these days, without waiting for our guidance, in recognition of the mutual good we can do each other (and fully aware of the redundancy implicit in the phrase ‘mutual good’), allow me to take this time to speak for all of us here and welcome you, ladies and gentlemen, to our town, to our hospitality and to this dinner.”
All this, you understand, was done with one breath. The assemblage broke into polite applause, and Colonel Blake nodded stiffly several times, like a satisfied puppet.
“On behalf of our unfortunate little group,” Chester puffed, “I thank you, singly and collectively, for your hospitality and assistance.” Everyone beamed at the politeness, although they would probably have been more pleased if the sentence were a couple of yards longer. But the servants were starting to put the food on the table, and the odor wafted to our hunger-sensitized noses and precluded long sentences. The only interest we had was in cutting the preliminaries short and getting to the food. After that, a good night’s sleep would be in order; but first the food.
Two by two the guests made their way to the table. Colonel and Mrs. Blake led the way, the Colonel beaming and pompous, his lady gleaming and dainty. The gleaming came from two square yards of assorted gems that had been strung together and laid out to dry across her ample breastworks. The next pair were Robin and his aunt. Auntie had also bedecked herself with a considerable amount of mineral finery. Dame Wycouth, supported by Mister Falkenburg, swept by next in line to the festive board.
“All this couldn’t be just for us,” I whispered to Chester.
“Of course not,” Chester agreed. “A gathering like this couldn’t have been arranged on such short notice, so it must have been pre-arranged. I have experimentally verified this hypothesis.”
“How?”
“By asking. Robin’s aunt confirms that this affair was planned over two weeks ago, and the only change was the hasty approval of us as special guests.”
“I really should have listened to the story you told her,” I commented: “It must have been good.”
“It was,” Chester assured me. We made our way to the table.
The food was excellent, the service was superb and the conversation was scintillating. I got the impression that we were being held, conversationally, for the last course. The guests spoke freely, and even eagerly, to us, but they reserved questions about us or our experiences until the end of the meal. The talk at the table was unique in one respect: only one person spoke at a time. Robin’s aunt served as a sort of moderator, while people around the table threw questions and comments at each other. The object of the game seemed to be to answer in only one sentence, of whatever length was required. Accuracy, and even sense, gave way to form. The principal trouble was that, as the sentence got longer and more unwieldy the speaker would forget exactly what modifier, verb, or even noun he had used at the start of the ponderous construction and proceed off in lateral branches of thought that would have little bearing on the concept
that he, despite the appeal of glittering phrase or the easy lengthening effect of the added unimportant, but fine-sounding clause, would have little....
It takes practice.
Chester held his own quite well during the verbal riposte. I managed to usually have my mouth full just when I was asked something, so one of my three companions would come to my rescue after I had spluttered “Arb grubble hooh asgud me sulch,” and finish for me. Which was probably just as well. The girls smiled a lot and, following Chester’s instructions, answered all questions with earnest vagueness. Pretty girls have a corner on the earnest vagueness market.
The heavy table creaked under the weight of the salvers of succulent roast beasts and the platters piled with engravied legumes trucked in by the hoards of servile servitors who serviced each of the assemblage. I won’t tell you whose notebook I copied that line from. Anyway, the image is right. There we were, stuffing ourselves while this bunch of skinny servants leaped around waiting on us. It was impossible to empty a plate without having another thrust in front of you. No sooner could you finish one glass of chilled, white wine, savoring its hearty, if naive tartness, than a delicate, grapey rosé, presumptuous and a bit early, but worthy of the palate, would be plopped in its place. The dialogue I got from Colonel Blake, who connoisseured himself greatly, loudly and often.
Every once and a while, usually at a truly inopportune moment, the imp that lurks deep in my soul manages to break loose and romp about. About halfway through the burnt moose liver course I picked up my crystal water goblet and, holding it in the Colonel’s characteristic. three-fingered grip, waved it in exaggerated horizontal circles in front of me. “Hem!” I said. “Ahem. Hem. Humph.”
Chester saw what I was doing and gave me warning glance 36(a), subtitled “This is neither the time nor the place and I’ll get you later,” but I was too far gone to stop. The scent of the kill was in my nostrils. Sylvia, next to me, was watching, unsure of what was happening; and by that empathy which unites people with a common bond, Dorothy at the far end of the table was staring at me, sure something was going on. It took a while before I had attracted the attention of our hosts, but I waited.
The Unicorn Girl Page 5