Multiverse: Exploring the Worlds of Poul Anderson (52 page)

Pogo could hear the horns quite clearly, dozens of them all blatting and tooting excitedly, like a monster rush-hour backup on the San Diego Freeway. Charlemagne and his court got up and hurried outside in time to discover one of the strangest things Pogo had ever seen—several dozen knights in armor getting their butts severely kicked by one naked, frothing, bearded man.

It was pretty impressive, actually, like an episode of the Hulk where they’d run out of budget for green make-up. The knights were armed with shields and spears and swords and axes, and the naked guy with nothing but a massive spar that might have been the roof beam of a large house, but which he was swinging as though it were a Little League-size Louisville Slugger, bashing armored men out of their saddles and sending them flying through the air to crash in crumpled heaps that Pogo suspected would be impossible to do anything about until someone invented the can-opener.

“Ropes,” shouted Charlemagne in his booming Ben Cartright voice, “throw ropes about him!” Now Pogo really did expect to see Hoss and Little Joe run out with their lariats, but instead a variety of soldiers came forward and flung loops of rope over Roland, who seemed more bemused than angry—at least until he tried to move on and found that the ropes prevented it. As he was flinging the soldiers around at the end of their cords like armored yo-yos, more soldiers ran in with more restraints until at last Roland was temporarily brought to a helpless standstill, and could do nothing but growl and snap at the air.

“Now!” said Quidprobe, shoving Pogo forward. “The crystal jar! Hurry up and make him inhale it!”

“Go to him, Duke Astolfo!” cried Charlemagne. “The fate of all the Christian world is upon thy brave shoulders!”

Pogo couldn’t help noticing that even with more than two dozen men holding him, bearded crazy Roland was looking like he might break free any moment. Pogo swallowed hard, then dashed forward past the soldiers and between the straining ropes, trying to get close enough to make the mad knight breathe the fumes.

Roland fixed him with a rolling eye. “
Argle argle argh!”
he shouted, spittle flying.
“Kill!”

“Uh, yeah. I totally would too, if I were you.” Pogo reached under his chestplate and pulled out the crystal jar, then cracked it open beneath Roland’s nose. Something glowing and silvery rushed out and into the knight’s distended nostrils.

“Argle! Bargle argle!”
Roland roared, then suddenly a very different look crept onto his face—an expression of surprise.

“Sweet Jove!” the great knight shouted, looking down at himself in dismay. “I am naked and hairy! What have I done . . . ?” The look of surprise quickly turned into something more severe—an expression of horrific shame. “By the Vestals—I made my
horse
a senator!
What was I thinking?
And I married one of my own sisters as well—not even the good-looking one!”

With this, Roland threw himself in the dirt and began to crawl on his hands and knees, weeping and pulling his hair. Pogo stood watching, trying to figure out what had happened. Was this what the knight was normally like when he was sane? If so, Pogo couldn’t understand how he was going to be much use against the fairies and Samaritans.

While everyone else was also staring, Quidprobe sidled up next to Pogo. “Uh . . . are you certain that you gave him the right wits back? I mean, if I didn’t know better, I’d swear he sounded less like Roland than like one of the crazier Roman emperors—you know, like . . . ”

“Caligula!”
Pogo said. “Damn! I must have pocketed his jar when you called me.” He reached under the breastplate and found a second jar waiting there. He took it out and saw to his relief that this one was indeed labeled “Orlando.” “So what do we do now?” Pogo asked.

King Charlemagne and his court watched in slightly uneasy wonderment as Duke Astolfo and a dwarf chased a scuttling, weeping Roland around the town square. When they caught him at last, Quidprobe managed to get a foreshortened leg-lock around one of the knight’s arms so Pogo could get the vial under his nose and pull the stopper. As Roland inhaled between wails of lamentation, the silvery stuff flew up his nose. The naked man paused, as if tasting something beloved and familiar, then relaxed, smiling with relief.

“Yes!” he cried. “Praise God I am released from my madness! I am Roland again!” This time the naked man leaped to his feet with a loud cry of joy and relief, incidentally throwing Astolfo and the dwarf quite a distance, so that as the noise of celebration rose at the bold knight’s return, Pogo and Quidprobe just lay on their backs and waited for the sky to stop spinning.

“Dude,” Pogo said at last. “That was pretty weird. Does this mean we can go home now?”

“I think it’s time to find out,” said the dwarf. “Let’s get out of here before these armies start killing each other all over again. Once he’s done celebrating, Roland’s going to be tossing Saracen heads all over the place.”

Pogo nodded and helped the dwarf get to his feet. As they walked quickly away from the crowd that surrounded the noble (if still nude) Roland, Pogo examined the damage the long siege had done, at the burned and ruined houses, the countless fresh graves and the bloated corpses of animals still lying unburied in the street. “Wow. Everyone says Paris is so great, but it’s kind of a dump, really. I mean, seriously, how do they ever get tourists to come here?”

Quidprobe was astonished to be both alive and in one piece, and was in a hurry to get back to the symbolic plane before the Metaverse realized how unlikely that was and decided to rejigger the odds. “Intervention over,” he told the Pogocashman. “The story has been fulfilled. As soon as I get back to the Department, I’ll send you home again.”

“Promise, man? I mean, this is pretty interesting to visit but I wouldn’t want to live here, if you know what I mean.”

Quidprobe only nodded. For once he knew
exactly
what the Pogocashman meant. “I promise. I can’t send you home until I get back to the Department where all the machinery is, but as soon as I get there, I’ll do it.” He took a breath, noting for perhaps the last time how strange it felt when the lungs inside his chest inflated. How awkward organic life was! But interesting, too. As Quidprobe began to consider the precise symbolic sequence of thoughts that would take him back, an idle curiosity floated up to him—what other sensations did organic beings have that he had never experienced on the symbolic plane?

Ah-ah
, he told himself.
No use wondering because I’m never going to do something like this again. Ever.

The Pogocashman was looking at him strangely as he finished his preparations. “What is it?” Quidprobe asked. “Have we forgotten something?”

“Naw. I’m just . . . ” The organic creature was avoiding eye contact, which seemed strange. “I’m kinda gonna miss you, little dude.”

Which was odd, because Quidprobe himself had been feeling something similar, although he had not realized it until just now. “Where I come from,” he told the Pogocashman, extending a bony, organic hand, “we say, ‘May all your stories have a proper ending’.”

“And as my people say,” said the Pogocashman, slapping the palm of Quidprobe’s hand even as they both began to turn intangible to each other, “gimme five! And keep on truckin’, baby!”

A moment later Quidprobe was tumbling down a long, whistling tunnel of different shades, temperatures, and textures of blackness. After a while, it began to resolve itself into shapes—a whole crowd of shapes, all his coworkers and managers and even Fnutt the supervisor . . . and they were all clearly waiting for him! Welcome banners! Treats and streamers! It was a party—for him! Quidprobe was thrilled. Someone had seen what he was doing and alerted his superiors! He had been noticed and now his bravery would be celebrated and he might well be rewarded for saving the Matter of France and all of Western Literature.

But although his coworkers waved and cheered as he coalesced back into the collection of symbolic solids he had worn all his life until this adventure, he saw that many of them were also laughing, although they were doing their best not to make it obvious. Then, as his familiar world came into sharper focus, he could finally read the signs.

“WELCOME BACK QUICKPOOP!”

“QUITPUNK—OUR HERO!”

“CONGRATULATIONS, QUARTPUMP!”

He stood for a moment, glowering at them. “Very funny,” he said. “Did anyone notice I saved the world?”

Fnutt the supervisor stepped forward and handed him a piece of treatsweet on a disposable plate. “In all seriousness, you did very well, Quick . . . Quidprobe. Saved the Department a lot of trouble. Good to have you back.”

Quidprobe thanked him. The departmental supervisor wandered off to refill his container of natured spirits, and for a moment Quidprobe just stood and soaked in the glory of his successful return, the proximity of his own office and peers and home. He stretched out one of his pseudopods and reveled in its boneless suppleness, its entirely obvious
rightness
. Yes, it was very good indeed to be home at last.

Which suddenly reminded him of his former companion, still stuck in an imaginary past for which, recent victories aside, he was probably not entirely suited. Quidprobe hurried to the office machinery center, his fingers slippery with frosting and his rubbery young soul in a hurry to get back to the party—a party in honor of him! He punched the button.

“Safe journey, my friend,” he said to the image.

Somebody had put on some music—something slithery and non-traditional. The younger workers were dancing. Quidprobe didn’t stay to watch the monitor.

Pogo was just beginning to worry that the dwarf might have forgotten him when the walls of Paris began to grow faint and translucent before his eyes, as though the entire damaged city was turning into glass. A moment later he found himself hurtling down what seemed like the world’s longest, driest, and coldest Slip-n-Slide.

Finally going home!
was his thought as the winds between realities spun him.
Finally!
But he’d had a pretty amazing adventure and he’d done pretty damn well, if he said so himself. He really deserved some kind of reward. And to think it all happened because he got sent into the story instead of some English guy.

Yeah, that English guy.
Wonder whatever happened to him . . . ?

A moment later Pogo tumbled out of the void and into the reality of his familiar world, to warmth and carpets and beautifully painted oriental screens and heavy wood furniture. And also to a slender naked woman sitting on a bed, brushing her hair with her back to Pogo.

“Hurry, darling!” she said, in one of those posh Upstairs-Downstairs PBS accents. “It’s cold. I want to get under the covers with you so you can warm me up. In fact, I want you to do more than just warm me up, you amazing man . . . ”

Reward . . . !
Pogo thought.
Jackpot! Hallelujah!

But then she turned and saw him standing in the doorway. For a moment a look of confusion seized her lovely face. “You . . . you’re not my husband! Who are you?” Then she began to scream, and scream, and scream.

Pogo was going to find it very difficult to explain to the village constable what he was doing in Mr. Castlemane’s house.

Meanwhile, six thousand miles away, the appearance of a naked Englishman in the middle of Kirby Shoes Summer Madness Event was barely noticed. There was a
sale
going on, after all.

AFTERWORD:

I must have
discovered Poul Anderson when I first began haunting used-book stores and buying my own books. All I remember is that his fantasy hit me like a sledge hammer, particularly the grit and realism. I also was knocked out—and the best example is
Three Hearts and Three Lions
—by his idea of taking one of these magical, fairy-tale worlds and trying to figure out how it actually WORKED. This has carried over into my own work, and is one of the reasons that I often think of myself as being a “hard fantasy” writer. Because of Anderson’s influence, I try to make even the craziest stuff feel as though it could really happen in a universe with rules. Later on I was hit equally hard by
Tau Zero
, which convinced me that science (or at least fictional science) could be as exciting as magic any old time. I’m sure that at some subconscious level Anderson’s versatility also convinced me never to get pinned down as a writer, not to keep retreating to familiar territory but to follow an idea wherever it led without concern for genre boundaries.

(I’m sure a few of my long-suffering editors are now cursing Mr. Anderson’s illustrious name for this important contribution to my waywardness.)

In later years, I read a great deal more of his work and loved it, and doubtless internalized a great deal of it to the influence of my own work, but I will forever remember my breathless first response to things like the “boiler explosion” in
Three Hearts
and the way time itself turns widdershins in
Tau Zero
. More than any other writer, I think he opened me up to how facts make fantasy more believable, and since belief is at the core of what we writers do, that was a gift beyond price. Thank you, Poul.

—Tad Williams