by J. S. Morin
“Hey, Lord Morticus,” Carl shouted. Mort looked over his shoulder to see one aspect of Carl approach, climbing up the stairs to join him on the battlements. “Your pet gecko said I could find you up here.”
Mort narrowed his eyes. It could have been a trick. If Lloyd were truly clever, he could have left his domain and army simplistic to lull Mort into doubting his creativity. Springing a plausible Carl upon him in the midst of all that blandness would be a masterful gambit. “How can I be sure it’s you?”
“Wow,” Carl said, stuffing his hands into his jacket pockets. “I would have thought the gecko line would have convinced you. That stiff shit of a wannabe brother-in-law of mine talks like a kiosk at an art museum.”
“Still not convinced.”
Carl pursed his lips and glanced around at the stoic soldiers lining the walls. His gaze lingered longer on General Tanny, who showed no sign of recognizing him as the Bradley she knew. “These robots of yours…”
“It’s fine,” Mort said. “Anything you can say here is between the two of us.”
Carl took a deep breath. “You lie to everyone but me about that goddamn book of yours. You gave me the nickel-tour of the horrible shit you learned from it. That was the price of passage on the Mobius. I haven’t told any of them, and I’ll stick to that.”
Mort forced himself to smile. It wasn’t the sort of reminder he wanted to hear, but it meant that either this was the real Carl, or Lloyd had gotten the truth out of him. And anyone getting a truth out of Carl unwillingly was a long shot. “Glad you’re here. Kythrast seems to think you came to betray me?”
“Yeah,” Carl said, leaning an elbow on the top of the wall. “I think that it’s time you and Lloyd had a little face-to-face over this whole business. I told him I’d trade you for Rhiannon—he was planning on keeping her, covering all this shit up. I figure I’ll give him more than he bargained for.”
“Any confrontation between me and Lloyd will be dangerous to the crew,” Mort said.
“Boulder,” Carl said, pointing up. One of the mammoth projectiles was crashing down upon them, gone unchecked while Mort and Carl spoke. Carl didn’t so much as flinch out of the way as it approached.
Mort snapped his fingers and shattered it to dust, which washed over them like a sandstorm.
“Sloppy,” Carl said. “Hope this is all for show, or maybe I should take Lloyd’s deal—make sure I’m on the winning side.”
With a glare, Mort warned Carl to focus on the task at hand.
“Fine,” Carl said with a dramatic sigh. “I’ve got everyone rounded up but Rhiannon. As soon as I spring her… well, it’s going to be like that police chase all over again. You just better be ready to distract the hell out of Lloyd while I get them across into your brain.” Carl cleared his throat. “You can get us back into our own heads from there, right?”
“Yes,” Mort said, nodding to reassure him. “The mental connection is strong, and neither of us can break it off without first giving the other an opening for a fatal assault. Lloyd can’t just run off with you unless he kills me first.”
Out on the grassy plains of Mortania, the army of stone men drew ever closer. At a distance, they looked like ants swarming over a rotten piece of fruit. Castle Mortania was directly in their path, a bastion of stability and safety in a doomed realm.
Carl gave them an appraising glance. “Whaddaya say we go carve a path through those things and have a chat with Lloyd?”
# # #
Ladies Man Carl buckled his belt and tucked his shirt into his jeans. He knew he could have just distracted himself a moment and remembered his clothes being on. That would have been the quickest, easiest way to dress. But there were certain moments when there was a right way and a wrong way to do things—and this time, Ladies Man Carl cared.
“What’s the rush?” Tanny asked. Her hair was slick with sweat and matted to her forehead. As she leaned casually against the stainless steel cooking surface in the pub’s kitchen, the look in her eye told Carl that going anywhere wasn’t foremost on her mind.
“Change of plans,” Carl said, bending over to slip on his shoes. “Mort’s making ready to get us out of this hellhole. We’ve got to get somewhere he can find us.”
“This isn’t so bad, right here,” Tanny said, gazing from under hooded lids.
Carl snapped his fingers near her face, forcing her to blink. “Marine High Command to Lieutenant Rucker: this is no joke. Gonna need your help with the evac.” When Tanny’s reply was a smirk, he shouted at her. “This isn’t a dream! Snap out of it or you’re going to be stuck in Lloyd’s head for the rest of his life. Mort being Mort, that might not be long.”
Tanny licked her lips and swallowed. “You’re not full of it, are you? No… this is just a weird, nostalgic old dream.”
That let the steam out of Carl’s boiler. Laying a hand on her cheek, he looked deep into her eyes. “That’s sweet, kid. You’d still dream about me and call it a good dream? I wish it were, for your sake. But the only thing real in here is us—our minds. Lemme put it this way: even if this is a dream, would you be willing to pull it together and help me save the day?”
Tanny offered a weak smile, and Carl couldn’t tell which version she was going with, urgent reality or playing along with the dream. “Yeah. OK. Lead the way.”
Carl was betting on dream, since there wasn’t much precedent for Tanny letting him lead anything without putting up a fight. Still, it was better that she was willing to come along for the wrong reasons than to have to drag her out of Lloyd’s head unwillingly.
A few eyebrows raised when Carl and Tanny emerged from the kitchen together. Mriy and Esper looked up from their game of checkers. Kubu lifted his head and opened one sleepy eye to watch them before settling back into his nap. Roddy turned and grinned at them from the table where he played poker with the other Carls.
“What’d I tell you?” Roddy asked the room at large. “Breeding time at the zoo. We’re locked up in a fucking mental cage, and the two of them are just… fucking. Gotta hand it to your species; you’ve got the cure-all answer to any dilemma.”
“Can it, Ace-High,” Sarcastic Asshole Carl said, laying down his cards. “We’ve got the plan now. Time to blow this red-brick mausoleum. Think you can keep the fuck-ups to a manageable level until we get back to the real world?”
“Where’s the Carl who drinks beer and sits on his ass watching holovids?” Roddy grumbled.
“It’s all right that you don’t understand me,” Vaguely Pious Carl said. He’d folded every hand of their game. “But Mort helps those who help themselves. We ought to get moving.”
Esper stood and pushed in her chair. “Think you could try a little less blasphemy? Mort is not God.”
Outdoorsman Carl pushed up the brim of a cowboy hat with his thumb—a hat he hadn’t been wearing a moment ago. “Well, little lady, with any luck, where we’re heading, he kinda is. Now let’s saddle up!”
“You speak figuratively?” Mriy asked. Bereft of translator magic, she was at the mercy of her colloquial English. “There are no horses outside, correct? I ask because you wear the hat of a horse man.”
“Nope,” Sarcastic Asshole Carl replied. “We got horses outside—loads of horses. There’s enough horseflesh out there to walk from here to Mort’s asshole across their backs. Now move it! We’re on a schedule here, and time is sketchy.”
“Women and puppies first,” Ladies Man Carl said, taking up a flanking position at the front entrance.
As the crew filed out, grumbling and bickering, Kubu paused to look up at Carl. “Kubu is not a dog.”
# # #
It was, perhaps, a garish show of force. Mort’s magic flung Lloyd’s stony minions aside by the dozens, by the hundreds, as if they were children’s toys. He strode the countryside through the path he cleared, with only Carl in tow. General Tanny had objected, as had Lord Ramsey, Bradley, and a half dozen other courtiers and counselors of Mortania. But he was Lord Mordecai, ruler of all h
e surveyed—except for the barren lands whose border he approached, and that was shortly to change.
“Is it weird that I’m getting tired, trying to keep up with you?” Carl asked, huffing for breath. “I mean, it’s not air. I don’t have real, working lungs here, and—”
“Yes, you do,” Mort corrected. “I keep this place as real as I can. It’s a piece of craftsmanship, not some haphazard dream world. I can only imagine the bland, disingenuous hell that Lloyd’s been inflicting on you all.”
“S’okay,” Carl said. He stopped momentarily, bending over and bracing his hands on his knees to catch his breath. “At least he isn’t putting me though PT drills.”
Mort stopped and looked into the cloudy sky for sympathy. “Oh, for Merlin’s sake,” he muttered. With a wave of his fingers, a Persian rug appeared in the space between the two men. Mort stepped onto it, and the rug lifted inches from the ground.
“That’s more like it. Style and no more walking.” Carl climbed aboard and sat down, letting his feet dangle over the edge as the magic carpet rose above the throng of stone soldiers. “Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask this, but couldn’t we just poof there? I mean, your head, your rules, right?”
“Yes, and we’d lose all this wonderful distracting we’re doing at the moment,” Mort replied. If there was one constant among all the various shards of Carl’s personality, it was his ability to get under the nerves of anyone in a conversation. “Don’t you have a sister to be saving?”
“Nick of time, right?” Carl replied with a grin. “Nothing says heroic like jumping just before the explosion.”
“There won’t be any explosion. The risk is that everything over yonder side of that border ceases existing.”
“Kinda anticlimactic, if you ask me,” Carl replied sullenly.
“Not if you’re there when it happens.”
Carl looked up with as sober a look as Mort could recall seeing in those eyes. “What’ll happen to me if Lloyd pulls the plug while those other Carls are in there?”
Mort patted Carl on the shoulder. “We’ll manage somehow. Let’s go fuck over the nice wizard now and keep from having to find out.”
It wasn’t far now. Mort brought the carpet low, and with a blast, sent stone soldiers scattering in all directions. The blast stopped at the border to Lloydsville, where a more gently opened path allowed their adversary easy access to the site of the parlay.
“I’m surprised you came, Mordecai,” Lloyd shouted as they stepped off the carpet. “And what’s this? A squire? Your second? This isn’t a formal duel, you know.”
Mort approached in silence until he was close enough that shouting was no longer necessary. Who cared who else heard them? This wasn’t a duel, but it certainly wasn’t an oratory competition, either. “You are some piece of work,” Mort told him.
“Is this the prelude to a surrender?” Lloyd asked. “Surely by now you’ve realized that you don’t stand a chance of breaching my mental defenses. My hostages’ safety rests entirely on your good behavior. You lose, Mordecai. If you’ve a shred of decency, shame, or courage in you, you’ll turn yourself in so that they can go on living. That’s more than any of your victims have received.”
Lloyd took a step forward, closing the distance between them. Instantly, Mort threw up a hand in a grand flourish. A shimmering blue barrier sprang into being, running the length of the border between the two wizards’ minds, extending into the infinite heavens.
“I take that to mean you are not giving yourself up?”
Mort approached the barrier and rapped his knuckles against the invisible wall. Ripples of blue energy spread from the point of contact with a sonorous buzz. “Let’s just say that for now, we’re talking. Until that changes, you’re not setting a single foot in Mortania.”
Lloyd broke into a genuine grin. “Mortania? You’ve named the real estate in your own head? This explains a lot, I think. You’ve gone mad somewhere along the way, Mordecai. I’m betting something in that book has been eating away at your sorry mind. There are reasons that The Tome of Bleeding Thoughts was forbidden.”
“So what’s this deal you’re offering?” Mort snapped. He paced his side of the barrier, watching Lloyd all the while.
“There’s nothing to it,” Lloyd replied, sauntering closer. “You come over to my side. I take you into custody. I let your friends go once I get to civilized space.”
“How’re you planning on managing that?” Mort said. “You haven’t got a pilot, and the Mobius is deep in the astral.”
“Oh, it won’t be pretty, I assure you,” Lloyd replied. “But I’ve brushed up. I haven’t the barest notion of a starship’s scientific workings, but a well-trained dolphin can fly one. He can fly one.” Lloyd jabbed a finger in Carl’s direction. “I took a few beginner’s classes and managed to pass—well, I should have passed, if the instructor weren’t biased. As for the astral drop, I’ll muddle through.”
“I am less assured of my friends’ safety by the moment,” Mort said. “You’re going to have to come up with a better plan to get them out of this alive.” Mort wagged a finger in Lloyd’s direction. When his fingertip contacted the barrier, it slipped through. With a jerk, he pulled it back, baring a sheepish grin. “Won’t get me that easy.”
“Please, Mordecai,” Lloyd said, crossing his arms and stepping within an arm’s reach of the shimmering blue wall. “Spare the theatrics. You’re stalling for time while the Carls attempt to sneak everyone out of my mind.”
Mort stiffened and cleared his throat. “So… how’s it going with that? We good? You ready to surrender yourself?”
“Not good. No. And definitely not.”
# # #
Sometimes getting a backstage pass required knowing someone in the band, the club owner, or some bigwig producer in the music industry. Sometimes it meant laying out a little extra cash with the purchase of tickets. And there were the rare times when getting backstage during a show meant imagining your own doorway and barging in. Carl took the road less traveled and bypassed all of Lloyd’s bouncers by entering through a supply closet that hadn’t existed until he thought it into being.
“Hey, are you supposed to be back here?” a heavyset man in overalls asked. He was toting a box that probably didn’t contain anything—just there for show, to make him look busy. Carl didn’t have time for busywork or busyworkers right then.
Reaching into his jacket pocket, he pulled out a VIP badge on a lanyard. “Yeah, sorry. Clashed with my shirt.”
“You wanna be back here, you gotta wear it, buddy.”
Rolling his eyes for the sake of the workman, he slipped the lanyard over his head. None of the other backstage staff hassled him after that. Carl wove his way through a hallway of dressing rooms with stars on the door, an area with wood floors, lots of ropes, pulleys, and sand bags, and a set of red velvet drapes. On the other side of those drapes, he could hear Rhiannon butchering Sweet Home Alabama, a song she’d always loved but that fit her voice like a bear in a leotard. As best he knew, she’d never been to Alabama or at least had never sang that song there—they’d have strung her up as a public service.
Scanning the area, Carl found a tangle of wires coming from on-stage. Given Lloyd’s understanding of technology, Carl was surprised he’d given a thought to powering the mic or the amps. But it was just the sort of detail he needed right then. Tracing the cables to their source, he was amused to find the mic plugged directly into an outlet, with no connection to the PA system at all. With a shrug, he pulled the plug.
The wailing, bluesy rendition of a country rock classic was cut off, drowned out by a sudden chorus of groans and boos from the audience. The band played on, but it became an instrumental piece—it wasn’t half bad without Rhiannon’s tinkering.
“We’re sorry everyone,” Rhiannon shouted. “Technical difficulties. You know how it is with these replica antiques.”
A man with a clipboard and a headset came rushing toward the side of the stage from Carl’s side.
He was flabby faced, bald, and sweating. Since he was the one responding to the technical emergency, he had to either be the backstage manager, the sound engineer, or some other sort of club official. Whichever he was, he was about to interrupt an important heart-to-heart talk between siblings.
Carl laid him out with a single, crushing fist to the jaw. Though his time in Lloyd’s head was drawing to a close, for better or worse, he was going to miss being able to throw a punch like a High-Grav League heavyweight.
Rhiannon poked her head through the curtains. “Marty, what the hell—”
But before she could finish, Carl grabbed her by the arms and dragged her backstage. “No time. We gotta jet.”
“Carl, you’ve got some nerve,” Rhiannon snapped, jerking her arm free and taking a step back. She glanced down and carefully avoided tripping Marty’s limp form. “What the hell is wrong with you? Did you kill Marty?”
Carl followed and grabbed Rhiannon by the shoulders. “Wake up, Squirt. This shit isn’t real. I don’t know what Lloyd made you think happened to get you here, but it didn’t really happen. This is all in Lloyd’s imagination. He tricked us all, sucked us into his head. Right this second, Mort’s squaring off with him in a showdown to get us all back. But Lloyd—”
Squeezing her eyes shut, Rhiannon shoved Carl back. “Stop it. I’ve heard enough. Get the fuck out of here before I call ship’s security.”
Shit. Lloyd had done too good a job on her. While Tanny was having trouble wrapping her head around the metaphysical implications, trying to convince herself this was all just a dream, Rhiannon was buying real estate and settling in. Carl framed his face with his hands. “This. Isn’t. REAL!” To illustrate his point he bent down and grabbed the limp stage manager, lifting the portly gentleman overhead with casual ease and heaving him across the backstage area.