“Oh, yes. Two things. First: I’ve seen one of the flying saucers.”
“When?”
“A couple of days ago. No, as a matter of fact, it was three days ago. It was early evening and the thing came and hovered over the grounds for a few minutes and then took off like a bat out of Mammoth Cave.”
“What did it do?” Sylvia asked.
“Nothing. It didn’t pull a people-eating act like the one you describe. It didn’t even alarm the rubes. Most of them thought it was one of them new-fangled flying machines. Which, I guess, it was. The second thing is a little different.” He pulled a dog-eared deck of cards out of his pocket and gave it a few quick shuffles and cuts, then fanned it open under my nose. “Here, pick a card.”
“Information first,” I told him. “Card tricks later.”
“Pick a card,” he insisted.
I picked a card. It was the eight of hearts. “Now what?”
Tom closed his eyes. “Eight of hearts,” he said “Another.”
I pulled another card. The two of spades.
“Deuce of spades. Here, you take the deck.”
I took the deck and shuffled it. Then I pulled a card from the middle and took a look. The king of clubs. Tom frowned. Then he smiled. “King of clubs.”
“Very clever,” I said. “What’s the gimmick, a marked deck?”
“I don’t know,” Tom said. “Try again.”
“Let me,” Sylvia suggested, pulling a card from the deck.
“Four of clubs,” Tom said after a moment.
“I haven’t looked at it,” Sylvia said. “And I’ve been cupping it in my hand so you couldn’t read the markings.”
“Look,” Tom said.
Sylvia looked at the card. “It’s the four of clubs,” she said. “How do you do it? Or is this another of your magician’s secrets?”
“I tell you I don’t know. I’ve been able to predict cards perfectly ever since I got here. The skill doesn’t seem to extend to other areas, unfortunately. Maybe if I had a better idea of just what the skill was, I could use it better.”
“Let me try,” I said. The deck was shuffled, and Sylvia picked a card, which I didn’t guess. We tried it three more times, with the same results. Then Tom picked. I still couldn’t guess. “It’s either a freak ability activated by your arrival on this world, or it’s something in the nature of this world itself which you’re able to utilize this way because of your long interest in cards and card tricks,” I analyzed.
“Perhaps it’s a poltergeist,” Tom suggested.
“Rah-di-do,” I agreed.
Sylvia said, “That’s all very nice, but what do we do next?”
“I have a theory,” Tom said. “I’ve been thinking over your story while I was giving readings, and some thing’s occurred to me.”
“Spill it,” I said.
“We all seem to have blipped, if I may borrow the term....”
“It’s all yours,” I assured him.
“...at moments of crisis. Or shortly after moments of crisis. This would seem to indicate that the phenomenon is brought about by human beings in some way, and at particular moments. Also, either that only certain human beings—like us—are likely to cause this thing, or that people have very few moments of crisis.”
“Not all of them happened during a crisis,” I protested.
“No? Think back. Once you were being chased by a flying saucer, once by an angry mob, once by a bunch of tanks. I was trapped inside of a misbegotten trunk.”
“The mob was already well behind us,” I protested.
“Maybe the blip had to catch up to the train. Maybe there were some waiting ahead of you that you didn’t know about. How do I know? I still say the blips are caused by people, or at least activated by people, in times of crisis.”
“What about Sylvia’s circus train?”
“Maybe it was about to crack up.”
“Boy, what you won’t do to support a shaky theory.”
“Have you got a better one?”
“No,” I admitted.
“I’ll take it one step further,” Tom continued.
“I was afraid you would.”
“Each blip,” Tom said, ignoring me, “takes us closer to the heart of the trouble, whatever it is.”
“How do you figure that?” I asked.
“It seems reasonable. At least, we all seem to be going in the same direction. You and I, for example, quite separately arrived here. Also, as you tell it, in each world you’ve passed through there’ve been more and more, um, travelers.”
“That’s been true up to now,” I admitted. “But we haven’t seen any here except you.”
“Yes,” Tom said. “But this is Ogallala, Nebraska. How do we know what’s happening in New York, or even Omaha?”
“A touch,” I admitted. “A distinct touch.”
“So, what we have to do is get as quickly as possible through as many blips as we can cause.”
I said, “Now that’s.... Wait a minute; did you say ‘find’ or ‘cause’?”
“Cause. Cause. Don’t wait for them to come to you, go to them. Besides, crises we cause ourselves are likely to be safer than ones that hunt you up.”
“I’m not sure I like this,” I said. “Couldn’t we just go out and get swallowed up by some nice flying saucer?”
“It might come to that,” Tom assured me cheerfully.
Sylvia stared intently at us. “I’m not sure I understand.”
“You’re lucky,” I told her. “Don’t bother trying. This nut wants to get us killed.”
“Why?” she asked Tom.
“Michael always exaggerates these things,” Tom told her. “He also beats his women and eats crackers in bed.”
“He does not!” Sylvia defended me.
“If you want to beat her,” I told Tom, “I’d suggest using a damn long whip. You’ve never seen her in action.”
“After what you’ve told me,” Tom assured me, “I intend to stay very friendly with your little girl. And I intend to do this from a reasonable distance.”
“You make fun of me,” Sylvia said sharply.
“No, no, not at all,” we assured her in syncopated unison.
“Bah!” she said. “Keep your clown act for that vaudeville you killed. Let’s get busy and do something.”
“Just what I was about to propose,” Tom said.
“Yes? What did you have in mind?”
“We’re going to do a little high wire act in the big top. The show just went on.”
“You’re crazy!” I said firmly. “I freely admit that for me to get on one of those high wires would cause a crisis, but I don’t think I’d live through it.”
“That’s not exactly what I meant,” Tom said. “Just stay here for a minute; I’ll be right back.” He headed toward the back of the cook tent with the purposeful stride of a man with a mission.
“What’s all this?” Sylvia asked me.
“I’m not sure,” I told her. “How are you on the high wire?”
“Wire walking? It’s simple. Any child of ten can do it with about fourteen years practice.”
“You’re very reassuring,” I said. “Oh, well. You only live however many times you manage to live.”
Tom came back with two large wicker baskets under his arm. “Here, take one of these,” he said. “Come on along.”
I took one of the baskets and we went to the rear of the big top and entered through a canvas tunnel. We emerged on the sawdust, surrounded by the tiers of paying customers. The house seemed to be almost full. An animal act and a brace of acrobats were performing on the floor, while a couple of aerialists warmed up overhead. My nostrils filled with the familiar smell of circus, mingled with the unfamiliar odor of incipient panic. I didn’t think I was going to like whatever Tom was leading us into.
“There; the platform halfway up that tent pole,” Tom said, pointing to the nearer of the two. “Just head for the rope like you know what you’re doing an
d nobody will stop you. Then climb it to the tower. We’ll go one at a time.”
“First of all,” I informed Tom, “I can’t climb a rope, at least not that high. Second of all, I sure as hell can’t climb a rope with this mother of all baskets in my hand.”
“Right,” Tom said. “I forgot about that. The basket, I mean. You can climb the rope because it’s not just a rope, it’s a rope ladder. As for the baskets, there’s a pulley rope attached to the platform for lifting equipment. I’ll go first and tie my basket to the bottom of the rope. Then, when I get to the top, I can pull it up while Sylvia’s climbing. Then I’ll lower it, and you can tie your basket on the end, and I’ll pull that up while you’re climbing. Got it?”
Sylvia nodded. I think she was so thrilled at being back in a circus that she didn’t care what we were going to do. I also nodded, but not quite as happily.
Tom stalked across the sawdust like he owned the place and went up the rope. Sylvia danced over and floated effortlessly up the rope, the ascending basket bobbing a few feet over her head. I walked over to the pole, sure that every eye in the place was riveted to me and that any second somebody that knew I had no business there was going to bar my way and order me out. The only thing that barred my way was an elephant who seemed to have decided that he liked one of the girl acrobats, and was following her around the ring. The audience broke into a fit of giggles and applauded, so I decided that not quite all of them were looking at me.
I reached the pole, tied the basket onto the dangling end of rope which dropped to me, and started up the ladder. It swayed with every step and kept me at an angle which forced me to look at the very top of the tent. As I got higher I felt more and more visible and more and more alone. There was a hushed silence, and I was sure the crowd was waiting for me to fall; then loud cheering broke out, and I thought I had started to fall. Then I was at the top and Sylvia was helping me to clamber onto the platform. “Well,” I said, “is that all there is to it?”
“Sit down,” Tom said, “and help me open the baskets.”
“Sure,” I said. I squatted over one of the baskets and undid the wicker catches, swinging the top open. The thing was full of food: apples, tomatoes, oranges, eggs, grapefruit and assorted other goodies.
Tom was busy in the other corner. “What are you doing?” I asked him. “And what’s this stuff for?”
“I’m pulling up the ladder,” Tom said.
“Just as I thought,” I said. “You’re preparing for a siege. How long do you think we can hold out here before we run out of food?”
“We’ll be out of food very shortly,” Tom said. “Don’t think of it as food; think of it as a supply of missiles.”
“Missiles?”
“Right. Objects to be thrown.”
Sylvia picked up a tomato. “Thrown? At whom?”
“Them,” Tom said, waving his hand around. “The crowd. The rubes. The audience. All of them.”
“You’re crazy,” I reiterated. “They’ll lynch us.”
“Yes, but they’ll have to get at us first, and that’s not going to be too easy. That’s why I picked up here.”
“And our getaway? You’ve planned that too, of course.”
“I know of no way to get out of here,” Tom said. “I figure that if I did, it wouldn’t be a real crisis.” He picked an egg up and hefted it in his hand. “We’ve got to pick the spots where they’ll do the most good. Places where they’re all jammed together, so you’ve got to hit someone. If you’re lucky, more than one.”
“You,” I told him. “Not me. I’m not going to have any part of this.”
“Try convincing them,” Tom said. He lobbed the egg out in an easy overhand toss.
“Say,” Sylvia said. “This is fun.” I noticed that the tomato was gone from her hand, and now she held an orange.
“Oh, well,” I said. “If I’m going to be hung for a sheep, I might as well get a few lamb chops.” I picked up an apple and heaved it into the mass of people in front of me. There was no reaction, so I decided to try to aim, picking a bald head in the crowd as my target. I missed, but several people to his left looked up, so I had an idea where it went. I tried to correct.
Sylvia was pitching them out with a powerful sidearm toward a tight group of middle-aged ladies in print dresses. Tom was lobbing them out over a wide area. “What we need,” he remarked, “is a Norden bombsight.”
The first puzzled murmur ran through the crowd. Several people stood up and began screaming unhearable epithets while mopping themselves off. People behind them stood up to shush them.
The activity in the rings drew to a halt as one performer after another spotted what was happening and stopped to stare at us. This triggered the audience, and they found us. We kept lobbing the overripe fruit and eggs while the sporadic shouting turned into a steady growl, and then a roar.
A couple of performers raced over to the pole and looked around, puzzled, for the rope ladder. Then they ran over to the other pole and began climbing that. Tom busied himself with removing the wire stretched between the two, so he wouldn’t have to do it with someone on it. We kept throwing.
The crowd began to surge back and forth like water in a bathtub. The performers tried to keep them back, but there were far too few, and they disappeared in the wave of people. Some of the audience were heading for the walls of the tent, interested only in getting out as quickly as possible; but most were headed for us.
We didn’t have to throw now, we could just drop. The crowd gathered around the pole, and the screaming quickly reached a frenzied pitch.
The pole began to sway slightly. The sides of the tent started to collapse, uprooted by the people pushing their way under them. Then the lights went out.
By now it was like being in a crow’s-nest in a hurricane; the platform swayed from side to side in ever-wider arcs, and gave a sharp little clicking sound at the far point of each sway.
There was a snapping sound as one of the guyed wires gave way, and the platform headed for the ground. Canvas folded around us.
B
L
I
P !
CHAPTER NINE
The canvas had disappeared. The pole had disappeared. The people had disappeared. The circus had disappeared. We were falling.
I hit ice-cold water and sank deeper and longer than I believed possible. Then I stopped sinking and realized that I had no air in my lungs. I clawed my way to the surface and popped up, gasping. Sylvia was a few yards away, looking like a wet puppy but apparently unhurt. She reached me with a few strokes and we clung to each other until we had to come up for air.
“Where’s Tom?” she asked, treading water like a seal.
“I don’t care,” I said, looking around. “I hope the idiot drowns. Tom! Tom! Are you all right? I don’t see him, he might be in trouble.” I dove under and fished around, without even finding bottom, and came up for air. Tom was up by then, and making a lusty dogpaddle for shore. Sylvia and I set after him, and soon the three of us were lying, exhausted, in the grass.
After I had gathered sufficient breath, I sat up. “You nincompoop!” I said. “What a plan. You almost get us killed by a collapsing tent, and when we do blip it leaves us forty feet in the air. Thank God it was over a lake.”
“I had, er, overlooked that possibility,” Tom said. “You had more experience with this sort of thing, why didn’t you tell me? I sort of assumed we’d arrive on the ground.”
“If you’d told me what you had in mind,” I said. I lay back down. “Forget it. We’re alive. Wet, but alive.”
A deep bass voice said, “Pardon me, gentlemen,” and we all looked around. We were surrounded by a semicircle of breastplate-clad soldiery. Sylvia sprang to her feet while Tom and I pushed ourselves into more-or-less sitting positions.
“Pardon me,” the bass-voiced sergeant-at-arms went on. “Lady and gentlemen. My mistake, but it was only a fleeting glimpse we had of you as you fell. We, hem, saw your arrival, you see.”
“Don’t ask me to explain it,” Tom said. “I don’t understand it either.”
“I assure you, sir, that no explanations are necessary, at least, not to me. However, I have orders to request that all, hem, visitors like yourselves allow themselves to be interviewed by higher authority.”
“Request?” I asked, standing up and putting my arm around Sylvia.
“Oh, of course,” the sergeant said, sounding shocked.
“Suppose we don’t want to go?” Tom asked.
“But where else would you go?” the sergeant replied. “You have no money, no jobs, no living quarters; and here someone wants to provide them all in return for a little information. I assure you you won’t be mistreated in any way. The lord just wants to gather together as much information as he can on the visitors we’ve been getting recently, to see if he can find the cause of the, hem, problem. Now, wouldn’t you like to know the cause of all this?”
“What lord?” Tom asked.
“Why, Lord Gart himself, of course. But then, you wouldn’t know about himself, or any of us, being visitors as you are. Come along with us, and by this time tomorrow you’ll be meeting him yourself more than likely. We’ll pick up dry clothes for you at the first post station.”
We glanced at one another, and I shrugged and nodded. We might as well go; we might learn something. Besides, with the force of men they had, if they planned any nastiness they wouldn’t have to trick us into it. At least they’d think so, not knowing of my wonder girl and her flying feet.
We rode double horseback, each of us behind a trooper, to the first post station, about five miles away. There we were given clean, dry clothes, fed, and bundled into a closed coach for the rest of the journey.
The trip was very efficiently arranged. At each post station we stopped to change teams and were given enough time to stretch our legs and relieve ourselves. The driver and his assistant were changed at every third post. We rode right through the night. In the morning we picked up a hamper of breakfast and continued.
“What do you think?” Tom asked, picking at a chicken leg.
“About what?” I inquired.
“About poltergeists,” he responded. “Do you really think they constitute the principal types of psychical manifestations?”
The Unicorn Girl Page 14