Multiverse: Exploring the Worlds of Poul Anderson (49 page)

“Harpies?”

“Horrible female demons. They persecute Prester John. He’s blind. They steal his food.”

“Whoa, I saw this movie!” Pogo said. “There were skeletons in it too. And Hercules. I think it was called Jason and the Astronauts.”

The dwarf made a noise of irritation. “This is not a movie. This can kill you. But to be fair, Ariosto did steal that bit from the original Jason and the Argonauts, so in that sense you’re right.” A hopeful look momentarily lit the dwarf’s brown, wrinkled face. “How did they deal with the harpies in this moving picture?”

“I dunno. I was kind of stoned, to be honest. I think they threw a net on them and whacked the shit out of them with swords or something. Too bad we didn’t save the giant’s net, huh?”

Quidprobe sighed. “Yes. And I’m guessing a proper Poul Anderson hero would have remembered that before we swam across the ocean.”

“We?” inquired the giant. “Me think not.”

“Yeah, it’s a bummer.” Pogo was getting a bit tired of the adventure now. It had gone on way too long to be just an acid flashback, at least as far as he knew, although to be fair, pretty much all he knew about flashbacks were health class warnings and what he’d seen on
Hawaii Five-O
and
Streets of San Francisco
. Also, the thing Quidprobe had said about “this can kill you” hadn’t exactly made him feel warm and tingly.

Speaking of not feeling warm and tingly, the closer to the hilltop they got, the easier it was for Pogo to see that the flying shapes weren’t anything like birds: they were human-sized, and their wings looked more like the kind you saw on bats. Stuff that was cool on movies and television seemed a lot less fun when it was flying back and forth not far away, letting out nasty screechy noises that echoed down the dusty hillside.

“May I just mention that it’s really getting unpleasant inside this sack,” announced Orrilo’s head. “If I’d known I was going to spend hours smelling my own breath I would have taken up that newfangled teeth-cleaning fad.”

“Why you complain?” said Caligorant. “You ride in nice bag. Me have to carry you all. Uphill, too.”

“You tried to eat us,” Pogo reminded him.

“He
did
eat
me
,” said the head in the bag.

“Me didn’t ride you,” the giant said, sulky as a sixth-grader whose parents would only buy him cheap knock-off running shoes instead of Pumas. “Me play fair.”

“I don’t recall you being particularly fair to me when you ate my body,” Orrilo said. “One moment it was just standing there, the next moment—hey-presto, it’s lunchtime!”

“Me couldn’t help it. Was right there, begging me eat it.”

“It wasn’t doing anything of the sort,” said the muffled voice from the sack. “Because it didn’t have a head on. So spare us the untruthful excuses.”

“Me meant metaphorically.”

“Well, then I wish you would have only eaten my body metaphorically too, you large oaf. Then I wouldn’t be bouncing along here all day having to smell the onion I broke my fast on two days ago—and it wasn’t even a particularly nice onion. If I’d known I was going to spend the rest of my life in a sack I would doubtless have been a bit more selective . . . ”

Pogo smacked the bag so hard that Orrilo’s teeth clicked together. “Jeez, just shut up!”

“You should be quiet too, Pogocashman,” the dwarf said in hushed tones. “We’re almost there and harpies have sharp ears.”

As they neared the top of the hill, Pogo could see the ruins of what had once been a castle. The harpies were swooping in and out past the broken walls, busy as mosquitoes during swim trials at fat camp. Someone seemed to be shouting at them.

“Curse you, foul creatures! Why do you torment me?”
But though the words were angry, the tone seemed strangely weary, even resigned, like a woman with a size nine foot trying yet again to fit into a size seven pump.

“It’s coming from over there, Quitpoke,” Pogo told the dwarf.

“I don’t ask much,” said the little bearded man, just as resigned and despairing as the mystery voice. “Just that you use my correct name. Once, anyway. Once would be nice . . . ”

The climb was not an easy one, even on giant-back. “Oh, grand,” called Orrilo’s head from inside the sack. “Bump, bump, bump. Are you sure you can’t jounce me around a little more? Maybe you could drop me and kick me like a football.”

“Don’t you ever stop talking?” asked Pogo.

“I might if I had something else to do. In fact, I’ve been told I’m actually a very good listener. But for some reason, I don’t seem able to, I don’t know, play a game or dance or whittle or do pretty much anything else to entertain myself. Now why is that? Oh, right—because you let your pet ogre eat my body!”

“Pet ogre?” rumbled Caligorant. “Me not pet. Me prisoner of war.”

They rounded a bend in the hilltop path and now Pogo could make out a spot in the ruins where an entire section of wall had fallen away, revealing the shell of some mighty hall. It was around this crumbling structure that the harpies whirled. A pale figure cringed in a tiny alcove, partially sheltered from their attack but not from the abuse the flying creatures hurled at him—and not just abuse: the harpies also sprayed their own filth everywhere as they flew. The rocks all around were streaked with the stuff, and the buzzing of flies seemed almost as loud as the shrieks of the old man and his tormentors. They might look very much like angry old ladies, but Pogo now knew for a fact that harpies did not wear adult diapers.

“Man, that guy is screwed,” he said.

“That’s Prester John!” Quidprobe looked worried. “You have to save him!”

“Why? I didn’t put him there.”

“It’s just how it works—quests, heroes. Don’t you ever
read
?”

“Sometimes. Magazines and shit.”

“Me want rest,” said Caligorant. “Me tired and hungry.”

An idea came to Pogo. “Could you eat those harpies?”

The giant made a face. “Me not eat. Taste like poopoo. Meat dry like twigs.”

“Well,” said Orillo’s head from inside the sack, “I suppose I should be relieved that my poor body was consumed by such an epicure. I mean, I wouldn’t want to be eaten by someone who’d devour just
anything
. . . ”

Caligorant swiveled his head like a tank turret to look back at Pogo. “Me eat talking head now? Stop head talking?”

“We must save Prester John,” said the dwarf.

Pogo frowned, trying to imagine a scenario in which he might go running through a downburst of little-old-batwing-lady crap and not being able to manage it, but even as he stared the harpies suddenly rose up into the air in a single coherent swarm, wheeled once more above the ruins, and then flew off, shrieking and cackling.

“Now!” The dwarf smacked him on the arm. “Go now!”

Pogo sighed and gave the giant a thump of his heels, setting him lumbering across the open area toward the ruined walls and the weeping, white-bearded figure that the dwarf had named Presto John.

“Dude, I totally don’t get this,” Pogo said as he helped the quivering, sightless man into the shelter of one of the crumbling chambers. “Why are those crazy bat-ladies out to get you?”

Presto John had been tall—you could tell he’d been a big guy once, like a football player or something—but his troubles had bent him until he looked almost like a question mark. His beard was long and fouled by stuff Pogo didn’t want to think about too much. Just being next to him would have been an issue, except the whole place already stank of harpy-shit.

“I was vainglorious,” the old man said. “I imagined myself as king of not only fair Ethiop, but of the earthly Paradise as well, where once Adam and his consort Eve did dwell.”

“What’s this old blind guy supposed to do for us?” Pogo whispered to the dwarf. “Is he a magician or something?” He figured with a name like Presto the guy must do some tricks. “I don’t mean to be a dick or anything, but he can’t even wash his beard.”

“If you save him, he’ll do a favor for Roland’s allies,” the dwarf whispered back. “That’s all you need to know, really.”

“I can hear you, bold paladin. My ears have not failed, only my orbs of vision,” John said sadly. “And yes, I would gladly give you all that was in my power to give, were I free. But here I remain until someone can rescue me from these ghastly creatures, who delight only in my punishment.” He shook his head. “Not only do they steal and foul my food so that I am always near starvation, they talk to me incessantly—as if a pious Christian man like me would ever bandy words with such demons of darkness!”

“Talk to you? About what?”

“Did you hear me not, Sir Knight? I said I do not bandy words with Satan’s underlings. They would doubtless wish me to listen to their complaints—a rare irony!—for they claim they are bored by the very task of tormenting me. Would that I had my sight and my sword—then would I give them a challenge they would never forget . . . !” For a moment, the ancient man tried to draw himself up to his once-impressive height, but it was too painful and he curled in on himself again in despair. “But perhaps you, good Sir Knight—for I hear by your voice that you are a bold and doughty man—perhaps you could punish them and quiet their endless taunting and shrieking.”

Pogo did not answer, and not just because there was no way in hell he was going to get in a fight with a bunch of magical flying crap-flingers. He was thinking, and although it was not something he did very much, he was busy at it now. The bony faces of the harpies had reminded him of a certain kind of senior citizen customer that always drove him crazy—the kind that just couldn’t be satisfied, that always had one more question, one more stupid little complaint. But more important, now he was also remembering Dooley, the roving assistant manager from the Pasadena branch of Kirby Shoes who had been sent in by the main office to help when Fernando and Little Ed had both been out sick for a few days. Dooley had been a genius at dealing with old biddies, listening to them as if their confused questions and complaints actually made sense, letting them take all day to make a decision on a lousy pair of $7.99 slippers. Instead of trying to hurry them into buying or leaving, which is what Pogo and his coworkers had always done, Dooley would just gather several of the oldest customers together in one part of the store where he could chat with and flatter them all at the same time, saving time and steps. Turned out most of them were lonely and just wanted something to do, which is why they were in the mall in the first place, but if a young man in a suit and tie listened to them attentively they’d actually buy things. Dooley booked a surprising amount of sales just from such crabby, unlikely customers, and Pogo had never forgotten it.

His thoughts were interrupted by a squeak from the dwarf. “They’re coming back! I can hear them!”

“They never give me rest,” Prester John said sadly. “Truly, I am cursed for my damnable pride . . . ”

Pogo reached into the saddlebag and pulled Orillo’s head out by the hair. It blinked in the sunlight. “’Zounds! You could give a fellow some warning,” the head complained.

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” Pogo told him. “I’m going to toss you up there where the harpies are. I don’t know whether they’ll eat you, crap on you, or just drop you twenty or thirty times from really high up. Maybe they’ll do all of that.” He considered for a moment. “Although not necessarily in that exact order . . . ”

“What?” The bandit’s handsome face contorted in dismay. “You would murder me in cold blood?”

Pogo did feel a little bad about it, but Orrilo had been planning to carve him up too, just like he did everyone else who passed by. “Look, let’s face it,” Pogo told the head, “I’m not going to carry you around with me for the rest of my life. But I’ll bet those harpies would love someone to talk to. So if you just make some chitchat with them, act real sweet and listen real good, they probably won’t kill you. Hell, they might even be nice to you.” He remembered some of the senior customers and suppressed a shudder. “Y’know, like give you hard candy with bits of Kleenex stuck to it. Show you pictures of their fat grandkids. Stuff like that.”

“They’re right above us!” the dwarf shouted. “We have to get to some shelter . . . !”

But Pogo had other plans. He waited until the first few harpies had swished past over their heads, shrieking and cursing and spattering the nearby stones with things too disgusting to think about, let alone describe, then he took Orrilo’s head and spun it around by the hair like an Olympic hammer (which made the head yell some interesting French swear words), then threw it straight up in the air. One of the harpies turned in mid-air and snatched it in her claws like an eagle taking . . . whatever eagles took. Some other kind of bird. Except instead of a bird, this was a head that was still screaming as she carried it higher up in the air.

“Don’t hurt me!
” Orrilo’s head shouted as it disappeared. “
Some of my best friends are harpish . . . !”

Even as the giant left the ruins and clumped down the hillside, Quidprobe couldn’t quite figure out what had just happened. “But . . . why did the harpies just . . . leave?”

“They just wanted someone to talk to,” said the Pogocashman with an air of satisfaction. “Like those old guys you meet waiting for a bus. They probably won’t even remember ol’ Presto here,” he indicated the blind man clutching the giant’s shoulder nervously, “until they’ve told the head the same stories about their operations and stuff about ninety times.”

“You have saved me, brave Astolfo,” quavered the old man. “Bring me down the mountain and I will take my armies to war against wicked Agramant.” John let out a dry chuckle—he was definitely perking up. “That foul Saracen dog will not enjoy besieging Paris when he learns I am burning his castles here at home!”

Quidprobe could only shake his head. The Pogocashman was proving to be more resourceful than he’d expected, but the odds were still running very high that the organic creature’s dumb luck could not last, and that in the end they would be just as completely and hideously doomed as Quidprobe had always feared. Still, it was a pleasant surprise to be out in the sunshine and away from the harpies, even if he was still forced to ride a stinking giant beside an old man who was not particularly clean, either.