Land of Unreason (7 page)

            "I ... don't
know." He had always assumed he had two grandmothers, like everyone else.
They came in pairs. But looking up family trees had always struck him as a
sport that led either to the D.A.R. or the booby hatch, places he was equally
anxious to avoid. Oberon pressed against his confusion.

            "There are brooks also
since the last shaping-plagued ungainly obstacles to us of the pure blood, who
must seek round by their sources or fly high above, but not for you, mortal.
Go, then, we say; be our embassy, our spy."

            "And if I do, can I get
back to where I came from? After all, I have work—"

            "Why, you unhatched
egg, you chick-cuckoo, will you bargain against the King's Radiance of
Fairyland? Go to! I'll—"

            The brownie philosopher was
wriggling in a perfect passion of desire for speech, but Titania signed him to
silence and Oberon, catching sight of the motion, pulled himself up short.
"Ha!" he said. "I misremember; 'tis long since we had a new
changeling. Why, good Barber, the rule of our realm touching mortals is this:
none is brought here but for some weighty enterprise. Which accomplished, he's
free to return."

            "And mine is to keep
your kobolds from making swords?"

            "Perhaps."  (That
isn't true, Barber's developing sixth sense flashed to him.) "Ask Imponens
there; he's sib to such secrets of nature."

            "But not to this, my
lord." The brownie philosopher exhaled a long breath at being allowed to
speak and fingered his beard. "No more than you or the changeling himself
can I tell such reasons; and that is, I hold, the nature of life in all worlds,
as I shall reveal by a most philosophical question. Tell me, Sir Babe, an you
know—why were you born into the world you came from?"

            "I—" began Barber,
confused by this sudden change in the plane of the discussion.

            "You would say, pure
chance. To which I reply: No, not no more than the step by which you were
brought here. For Chance is but the cipher of a power that does not wish to
sign its name ... You see, I follow your thought like a slothound; 'tis my art,
of which each of us here, mortal or fairy, has one, even as in the world you
came from each has some little talent ... Ha! Your Radiance, Your
Resplendency!" He bowed rapidly toward one end of the table and then the
other. " 'Ware this changeling lad, I say. I have hunted his aptitude to
its lair as he thought on't but now. He'll set your court by the ears, for he
can tell lies from truth whenever spoken."

            Oberon leaned back in his
chair and unexpectedly burst into laughter. All the footmen, butlers and goblin
trumpeters obediently imitated him, and as one of the latter laughed a series
of bubbling toots into his instrument got Barber himself to laughing. Only
Titania and Gosh kept their composure. He noticed that the latter was making a
rapid series of passes with his hands and moving his lips. The mound of blue on
Oberon's plate vanished; the boy chewed and swallowed.

            "Ho-ho, 'tis rare, rank
rare," gasped Oberon, coming out of his laughing fit by degrees.
"Well, my pretty cosset, how think you now on your bargain? You have your
little felon, ha-ha, but I've gained me a counselor that shall make you both
jig a step or two. Tell me, good Barber, what is your profession?"

            "I was in the
diplomatic service."

            "There 'tis; those who
gain a faculty by commerce with us get generally one that would be most useful
whence they came. Though meseems 'twould have been nearer the eye to have the
power of making your own lies believed."

            Titania smiled, only half
ruefully. "Then all's well, my lord, if Imponens has but justly judged.
It's a sharp archer indeed that never misses the heart."

            Oberon had picked up his
fork as she spoke and now his eye fell on the empty plate before him.
"We'll put it to the proof," he said, and pointed at Gosh. "You
whoreson imp! Did you beguile my breakfast but now? Mark his answer, good
Barber."

            The dark little face took on
an expression of bland impudence. "Oh, Gem of Glory," he began, but
Titania came to his rescue:

            "My noble lord, do we
not but bandy while our sovran purpose waits? Here's this Barber, an approved
ambassador, whom we are anxious to speed, yet we sit jousting in wind like a
pair of sguittards ... Gosh! My magic wand; I left it in the apartment. Our
messenger shall bear it."

            The boy strolled toward one
of the doors with his nose in the air and an expression of nonchalance. As he
passed the King, Oberon growled: "Beat it hence, you bepuked little mandrake!"
but it was covered from Titania's attention by Barber's own remark:

            "How am I supposed to
use this wand?"

            "That," said the
Queen, "is something you must learn by experience; no other teacher."

            "Aye," added
Oberon, "and mark well, Barber; whatever happens, use no physical force
against the kobolds."

            "Why not?"

            "You're outnumbered,
one to a thousand. Yet there's a better reason, however high your heart run;
these wights are of such nature that they be held under certain bonds against
passing to open violence. But if it be first used on them, they are released
and can reply in overweening measure. No striking, then; sheer skill."

            "But," cried
Barber, "you want me to stop them from making swords, but I can't use
force. You won't tell me what to do or how to use even the wand."

            "You named yourself
diplomat, not we. Sure, you're a poor stick in the profession an you have not
met such tasks before ... Ha, here's the wand."

            He took it from Gosh and
handed it to Barber. It did not look in the least as it had when Titania used
it on Sneckett the evening before, but like an ivory walking stick. The handle
end came round in a crook with a carved snake's-head terminal.

            "Watch it well,"
warned Titania. "This wand has an enchantment in it; if it be lost, all
concerned including your sweet self will come on some misadventured piteous
overthrow. Go, then, and good luck with you."

-

            Nothing was easy. The park,
with its fantastic potted trees and eight-foot blossoms, stretched farther from
the tower than Barber had imagined; and his mind ran round and round the idea
Imponens had thrown out, as though at once seeking some escape and happy at not
finding it. In midnight arguments that flowered over the third Scotch-and-soda
he was used to describing himself as a rational materialist. Like many
intelligent people for whom the gospel of St. Einstein had replaced that
according to St. John, he read the newspaper science columns and suspected even
Jeans and Millikan of transcendentalism. Evidence that could be perceived by
the physical senses—everything depended on that. Extrapolation from such
evidence was dangerous. It resulted in theory which demanded experimental
proof.

            It was like reassembling a
clock and having it run perfectly with six cogwheels left out to find the
evidence on which he had always relied supporting the theory he had always
despised. Every physical sense assured him that he was not insane. So did
experimental proof, so far as he had been able to make it. And—final piece of conviction!—insane
people never considered the possibility that their senses were playing them
false.

            Yet Fred Barber's senses
were assuring him in the most decided fashion that he had been born—that was
the only word for it—into another world. Imponens had made the only and obvious
deduction ... as he strode along, the picture of that brownie philosopher
turning cartwheels came to him and he smiled. It was the last sight he had seen
as he left the palace, Imponens cartwheeling through the trees.

            His logic cartwheeled too,
but always about that only possible deduction. Other worlds stretched beyond
this one into the personal future of Fred Barber, which he would enter when he
had accomplished his unknown task. But if the future, then the past—he must have
come into his own world, the "real" world, from some other still,
with a wiping out of memory during the process. Or would memory be wiped out?
Barber tried to recall something from the past that might lie behind his
conscious past. Was there not something vaguely familiar about the court and
its ceremonial?

            Hold hard. This was
reincarnation. Buddhism. Bahai. Theosophy, and goofy cults presided over by fat
ladies with faint mustaches. Barber looked round and found that the tower of
the royal palace, which he had been using as a point of departure, was no
longer visible. Nobody there had been able to give him any sensible directions
to the Kobold Hills. "Take the path and ask as you go," they had
said. "The wand will help you."

            What path? There were a
dozen or a million winding away through the trees to a region of hedges, where
the tracks were marked only by a brighter green in the short lawn grass. All
curved, rapidly or imperceptibly, and the only comfort was that none of them
led to blind alleys. Whenever the hedges seemed about to close him in, there
was always a sudden turn, another rank of giant flowers and a new vista. But
none of these vistas led to any sign of habitation; down none of them was there
visible any life other than botanical. Ask whom as you go?

            Yet at this point it looked
as though he would have to ask somebody soon. The path, narrowed to an alley by
parallel hedges, flowed into an opening filled with a round bed of the huge
flowers. Beyond hedges closed in again, smoothly green, joining the flower bed
at its back, so that he must definitely choose between turning right or left.
The grass gave no clue; both directions showed the high color that had hitherto
been his guide. Everything was still as the moon itself, flooding the scene
with cold light, not a sound, not a motion, not a sign of breeze.
"Hey!" said Fred Barber.

            No answer. Not an echo
either; the foliage seemed to muffle his shout.

            The indifference of this
landscape had become nerve-racking. He addressed a zinnia the size of a cabbage
on a stalk towering over his head: "I wish you could tell me which way to
the Kobold Hills," he said aloud.

            The blossoms showed no
intention of doing so. Damn this whole business! Unfair. His mind abruptly
vaulted back to the incident at college when somebody had blown sneeze powder
through the old-fashioned hot-air inlet into the room where the faculty dinner
was being held. Very funny, but not for Fred Barber, who was student president,
and knew that the priceless young fool who did it would get the whole college
confined to campus in Junior Week if he didn't own up. He swung the ivory wand
up and pointed accusingly at the zinnia:

            "Confound it, can't you
see you're just making it tough for all of us without helping yourself? Which
of these paths goes to the Kobold Hills?"

            The zinnia courteously bowed
its head toward the path on the right. Barber gazed at the other flowers in the
bed; there was still no wind, not a leaf had rustled, not another flower-head
changed. He pointed the stick at a bachelor-button the size of a ten-gallon
hat: "Do you agree?" he demanded.