“That’s not what I meant. I could sort of hear inside its head. I know what it was thinking.”
Chester stood up. “What? Really?”
“Unless I was imagining it.”
“We’ll assume you weren’t. What was it thinking?”
“Something like, ‘Well, I’ve done that batch, Now all I have to do is feed the greks and I can relax for a while.”
“Greks?”
“Yes. The impression was that he meant us.”
“Maybe,” I suggested, “this is a sort of gigantic pet shop, and greks are their favorite pets.”
“Could be,” Tom agreed “And then again, maybe greks are to them what skeet are to us.”
“Skeet?” Sylvia asked.
There was a gurgling sound from somewhere above us, and it rained blue grapefruit. Some of them bounced when they hit, the rest just flattened out and lay there.
“That must be grek food,” Chester said, picking up a flattened grapefruit and examining it.
“We’re being assaulted by dinner,” I said
Sylvia grabbed one of the bouncing ones as it went by. “I wonder what it does?” she said.
“Let’s see.” I took it and looked it over. “It seems to be some sort of soft plastic. It’s perfectly round. No, it’s not; there’s a bump on it.” I pressed the bump in, and was rewarded by a stream of water in my face.
“Ah!” Tom said. “It’s a portable drinking fountain. Think it’s safe?”
“Sure.” I wiped my face. “Why should they bother trying to poison us?”
“This one’s food,” Chester said. He displayed the one he was holding, which had split open like an overripe sausage. Inside was a brown, glutinous mess resembling sticky bread pudding.
“You know,” I said, “if they’re feeding us, they must be planning to keep us here for some time. We can’t do anything from here.”
“Right,” Chester agreed. “First job is to get out. Fine. How?”
Tom rested his chin on his fist. “Aye,” he agreed, “there’s the rub.”
“Do you think the magic we learned will work here?” Dorothy asked.
“It should,” Tom told her. “If this is the center of the disturbance, as Sir Thomas assumed, then the probitron flux here should be even higher than on his world.”
“Let’s try it then,” Dorothy said. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, drew a symbol in the air, and disappeared.
“Dorothy?” I called.
“Like that,” she yelled from behind me. I turned around. She was walking back toward us, threading her way among a group of surprised-looking Confederate soldiers.
“Great,” Chester said, when she had returned. “What do we do, keep flipping from side to side in the hall until one of the monsters comes to find out what’s happening?”
“No,” Dorothy said. “Just one flip.” She pointed to the catwalk. “Up there.”
“Say,” Tom said. “It’s an idea.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “We’ve only jumped on one plane. Sir Thomas said something about not using it to go up or down because of the law of conservation of energy.”
Sylvia put her hand on my shoulder. “Michael,” she said patiently, as if explaining to a small boy, “it’s only about fifteen feet. And it’s only this once. We can break a law once, in a good cause, can’t we?”
“It’s not that sort of law,” I said, “but never mind. I guess we have to do something, and this looks like the best bet.”
“Okay,” Chester said. “I think we’d all better stick together, so let’s go.”
“Now?” I said. “I mean, shouldn’t we drink some water first, or something? Do some deep breathing? Maybe sleep for a while?”
“No,” Chester said. “Now.”
“Right. I was just asking.”
“We’d better go separately,” Chester said. “You first.”
“Me?” I asked. “First? Right. Just what I was going to suggest myself.”
I examined a small area of the catwalk carefully, fixing it in my mind, then closed my eyes, made the protective sign that was mine alone, and muttered the invocation.
My knees buckled. I felt like I had just landed after falling too far. With a great effort of will, and by putting both hands out in front of me, I managed not to go flat on my face.
I was on the catwalk; bruised but undaunted.
One by one my comrades in arms appeared around me—falling. Everyone fell forward except Chester, who sat heavily and turned red.
“Woof!” Sylvia said. “What was that?”
“That,” I told her, “was the universe exacting instant retribution for the law we just broke.”
“Oh,” she said. “You meant that kind of law.”
“What now, boss?” I asked.
“I think we should now consult a higher oracle,” Chester said.
“You mean— “
“Yes. The Ching!” He took out his three coins and made the first cast.
“Now?” I asked. “What if somebody—or something—comes along?”
Chester said, “Don’t let them disturb me until I’m finished.”
We sat there on this catwalk, fifteen feet above the ground, until Chester finished casting the coins.
“Well?” I asked. “What does your ancient Chinese friend have to say?”
“It says Grace, changing to Coming to Meet.” He took out his portable reader. “The changes are interesting. Hmmm. Grace tells us that it is favorable to undertake something.”
“That’s good,” Tom said. “What?”
“It doesn’t say. However, the changes tell us to lend grace to our toes and to the beard on our chin. Also to come as if on wings. Humiliation, but in the end, good fortune.”
“What does all that mean?” I asked.
“Any ideas?” Chester asked. “After all, this is supposed to be a community project.”
“Lending grace to our toes,” Dorothy suggested, “is probably telling us to get out of here fast. But I don’t know about the beard on my chin.”
Tom snapped his fingers. “I’ve got it! Of course. Beards are the classical symbols of a disguise.”
“What sort of disguise do you suggest?” I asked. “Postmen?”
“Why not look like the dragons themselves?” Sylvia asked.
“They’re not dragons,” I told her. “They’re dinosaurs.”
“How do we manage to look like them?” Chester asked
“I can do a shape-change spell. Can’t you?”
“Right!” Tom said. “I guess I’m not used to this magic yet.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “I think I could manage a dog, but I don’t know about a dinosaur.”
“All right,” Chester said. “We’ll put you on a leash and bring you along.”
We practiced, up there suspended fifteen feet above our fellow greks, until we could approximate dinosaurs fairly well. I have no idea what the people below thought was happening, if any of them noticed. When we had the dinosaur bit down pat, we flipped a coin and went in the heads direction along the catwalk.
“Stick together,” Chestersaur directed. “If we run into any of these beasts, just keep walking.”
“With an air of such ineffable dignity,” Tomasaur added, “that no one who sees us could doubt that we were on official business.”
“Very good,” I said. “Tell me, what does a dinosaur do to look dignified?” It felt funny, talking with a dinosaur’s mouth. Of course this was just a form of projection, not true shape-changing, but still, even to me I looked like a dinosaur.
We reached the end of the catwalk and entered a maze of corridors and rooms. There were no doors or partitions of any kind, and all the rooms seemed to be empty. Completely empty—no dinosaurs, no furniture, no rugs, drapes, pictures or anything: just floors and walls. Off ahead of us, a dinosaur flitted out of a room to the left and disappeared into a room on the right.
We went further into the maze, picking our di
rections at random. An occasional dinosaur hurried by, intent on some mission of its own and hardly giving us a glance. We all froze when the first one passed, but gained confidence when we were ignored.
“They don’t believe in furniture,” Tom commented.
“What would you do with furniture if you were a dinosaur?” Chester asked.
A tall dinosaur turned the corner and jabbed a claw at us. “Crackle, groar, rang ring grek grak gibble fapfop!” it said. Then, with a high, keening whistle, it raced off down the hall.
“What was all that about?” I wondered.
Dorothy said, “We’re all to assemble on the main chamber. In seven gibbles the warp will be permanent, and we will have achieved the final solution to the grek problem. It is to roar.”
“That’s what he said?” Chester asked.
“That’s what he was thinking while he spoke,” she assured us.
“How long is a gibble?” I asked
Dorothy shrugged her large, green shoulders. “How should I know?”
“Let’s hope it’s hours and not seconds,” Chester said. “I wonder where the main chamber is.”
“Down around that way, to the left,” Dorothy told him.
“Well! What else did you pick up?”
Dorothy blushed. “Nothing,” she said. We didn’t push.
Around to the left, no more than five or six blocks away, we came to the main chamber. Furniture or no furniture, these creatures built big rooms. This one was about three times the size of the largest train station I’ve ever been in: just one bare room, no decoration, no pillars. It was crawling with green dinosaurs.
In the center of this vast hall was a three-story cast iron nightmare. A combination of boiler pipes and angle irons, it twisted around and took turns that the eye couldn’t follow.
I nudged Chester. “Think that’s it?” I asked.
“It had better be,” he said.
“How,” Tom asked, “do we take it?”
“Let’s look it over,” Dorothy suggested.
We approached the machine, just five more dinosaurs in the crowd. One side of it had a series of meters, clicking off geometric shapes at varying rates. The far side had a nozzle about three feet off the floor, behind a waist-high (if I had a waist) stone barrier. From the nozzle, a beam of blue haze projected out to hit a large, carefully machined dull-colored block about forty feet away. The beam then split into waves, which flowed over the block and faded out.
“That’s it!” Chester declared.
“What now?” I asked.
“Now we deflect that beam.”
“With what?” I asked.
“With ourselves,” Chester told me.
“How’s that again?”
“Sure. That’s a probitron beam. Actually, what you’re seeing probably isn’t the beam, but ionized air surrounding the beam. We are carrying a high probitron charge. Like charges repel; therefore we would repel the beam. Simple.”
“The thought repels me,” I told him. “But what the hell, you only live however many times you live.”
We advanced toward the beam. As we got closer I felt something tugging at me, like being in a wind that permeated my whole body.
Chester, in front of me, looked annoyed. He raised a hand. A hand?
“Grek.” something yelled. “Brekabrek grek!” The nearest dinosaur jumped away from us like a horse from a rattlesnake.
We had lost our disguise. The probitron wind had ripped our magical covering right off.
While other dinosaurs got out of the way, several large ones with red belts were converging around us.
“Move it!” I yelled. We raced toward the stone wall. A large claw grabbed at me, and I twisted around and pulled away, leaving part of my shirt behind.
A large dinosaur clutched Dorothy, lifting her in the air like a lobster, while she kicked and yelled.
A squad of beasts formed between us and the beam. Sylvia leaped up on my shoulders and launched herself through the air, over their line.
She was intercepted, and brought down. The line headed toward me.
Chester, while the attention was focused on the aerial display, dived between a pair of dinosaur legs and reached the wall. He swung himself over.
“Maggagak grek!” a dinosaur yelled, and the line turned and dove for Chester.
He fell backward, into the beam.
Time stopped. Everything froze but Chester and the beam. It bounced off him, scattering around the room. Then he had disappeared, and the beam was back. He reappeared, and the beam deflected.
Disappeared.
Back.
Gone.
Back.
Chester flickered in and out of existence about every quarter second, and time, where we were, came back to normal. The dinosaurs stared at Chester, but made no move to grab him.
The room started to rumble, softly, in a quarter-second rhythm.
The machine started to visibly shake.
There was a cracking sound, and the beam disappeared. Pieces of machine clattered to the floor.
The first piece of ceiling fell. Then the next.
The dinosaurs honked wildly and headed for the exits. Within a minute, we were alone in the hall. The ceiling kept falling.
I raced over to the wall and pulled Chester, who was barely conscious, over to my side, to get him out of the way of falling parts.
“Michael! Chester!” Sylvia yelled. “Come here fast. Hold hands. Michael, I love you.”
B
L
I
P
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
We were back in our own time line, Chester, Tom, and I. Sylvia, Dorothy and Adolphus are, I presume, back with the circus. That was all several years ago now, and there have been no further twists in time as far as I know. I miss my unicorn girl.
Sir Thomas, if you make it to this time line, if you read this, my email address is [email protected]. My web site is michaelkurland.com. Get in touch.
And that is the story—so far.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The author of over thirty novels and a melange of short stories, articles, and other stuff, Michael Kurland has been writing professionally for over three decades. His stories are set in epochs and locations from Ancient Rome to the far future—anyplace where the reader won’t spot the anachronisms too easily. His works have appeared in Chinese, French, Italian, Spanish, German, Swedish, Polish, Portuguese, Japanese, Czech, and some alphabet with a lot of hooks and curlicues. They are believed to be the fragments of one great opus, a student of the Untermensch. He has been nominated for a Hugo, two Edgars, and the American Book Award, and various book clubs have picked up various of his books. More can be learned at his website:
www.michaelkurland.com
Borgo Press Books by Michael Kurland
The Princes of Earth: A Science Fiction Novel
A Study in Sorcery: A Lord Darcy Novel
Ten Little Wizards: A Lord Darcy Novel
The Trials of Quintilian: Three Stories of Rome’s Greatest Detective
The Unicorn Girl: An Entertainment
Victorian Villainy: A Collection of Moriarty Stories
The Unicorn Girl Page 18