The Complete Compleat Enchanter (31 page)

THE CASTLE OF IRON

One

“Listen, chum,” said the one who breathed through his mouth, “you don’t hafta kid us. We’re the law, see? We’ll pertect you both all right, but we can’t do nothing unless we got facts to go on. You sure they haven’t sent you no ransom note?”

Harold Shea ran a hand desperately through his hair. “I assure you, officer, there isn’t the least possibility of a ransom note. Since it’s a matter of paraphysics, she isn’t even in this world.”

The red-faced one said: “Now we’re getting somewhere. Where’d you put her?”

“I didn’t put her anywhere. Didn’t have anything to do with it.”

“You say she’s dead but you don’t know who done it, is that right?”

“No, I didn’t say anything about her being dead. Matter of fact, she’s probably much alive and having a fine time. She just isn’t in this space-time continuum.”

“That’s just dandy,” said the mouth-breather. “I think you better come down to the station house with us. The lieutenant wants to see you.”

“Do you mean I’m under arrest?” asked Shea.

The one with the red face looked at his partner, who nodded. “Just holding you for investigation, that’s all.”

“You’re about as logical as the Da Derga! After all, it’s my wife that’s missing, and I feel worse about it than you could. Will you talk to a colleague of mine before you take me down there?”

The one who breathed through his mouth looked back at his companion. “I guess that’s right, at that. We might get something.”

Shea stood up and at once was patted from breast to hip with a flowing motion. “Nothing,” said the red-faced one disappointedly. “Who’s this friend of yours, and where do we find him?”

“I’ll get him,” said Shea.

“You’ll get a poke in the puss. You just sit quiet and Pete will get him for you.” The one with the red face motioned Shea back to his chair, and unlimbering an unpleasant-looking automatic pistol from his hip, sat down himself.

“Oh, all right. Ask for Dr. Walter Bayard in the next office.”

“Go ahead, Pete,” said the red-faced one.

The door closed. Shea viewed his visitor with wary distaste. A mild schizoid of the suspicious variety; an analysis might turn up something interesting. However, Shea had too many worries of his own to be much interested in uncovering a policeman’s suppressed desire to do ballet-dancing.

The policeman regarded Shea stolidly for a while, then broke the silence. “Nice trophies you got there.” He nodded towards a pair of Belphebe’s arrows that hung on the wall. “Where’d you get ’em?”

“They’re my wife’s; she brought them from the land of Faerie. Matter of fact that’s where she probably is.”

“Okay; skip it.” The cop shrugged. “I’d think you brain experts would start on yourselves . . .” His mouth gave a quirk at the strange disinclination of the prisoner to discuss things on a rational basis.

There were steps in the hall; the door opened to admit the one who breathed through his mouth, followed by big, blond, slow Walter Bayard and (of all the people Shea did not want to see) the junior psychologist of the Garaden Institute, Vaclav Polacek, otherwise known as “Votsy” or “the Rubber Czech.”

“Walter!” cried Shea. “For God’s sake will you—”

“Shut up, Shea,” said the red-faced one. “We’ll do the talking.” He swung ponderously toward Bayard. “Do you know this man’s wife?”

“Belphebe of Faerie? Certainly.”

“Know where she is?”

Bayard considered gravely. “Of my own knowledge, no. I assure you, however—”

Votsy’s eye brightened, and he grabbed the arm of the one who breathed through his mouth. “Say! I know who could tell you—Doc Chalmers!”

The policemen exchanged glances again. “Who’s he?”

Bayard cast a vexed glance at the junior. “As a matter of fact, Dr. Chalmers left only day before yesterday on a rather extended sabbatical, so I’m afraid he cannot be of much help. May I ask the nature of the difficulty?”

The red-faced one, quick on the trigger, said: “Day before yesterday, eh? That makes two of ’em. Know where he’s gone?”

“Uh-uh—”

“Couldn’t have gone off with this Mrs. Shea, could he?”

In spite of the situation there rose a unanimous laugh from Shea, Bayard, and Polacek. “All right,” said the red-faced one, “she didn’t. Now I’ll ask you another one. Do you know anything about a picnic day before yesterday to Seneca Grove?”

“If you’re asking whether I was there, no. I know there was a picnic.”

The one who breathed through his mouth said: “I think he’s covering up too, Jake. He talks like Snide Andy.”

The red-faced one said: “Leave me handle this. Dr. Bayard, you’re a physicologist just like Dr. Shea, here. Now how would you explain it in your own language that at this picnic Dr. Shea and his wife go off in the woods, but only one of ’em comes back, and that one ain’t this wife of his, and besides he goes around saying ‘She’s gone!’ ”

“I can explain it perfectly well,” said Bayard, “though I don’t know whether you will understand my explanation.”

“Okay, suppose you come along too and tell it to the lieutenant. I’m getting a bellyfull of this runaround. Bring him along, Pete.”

Pete, the mouth-breather, reached for Bayard’s elbow. The effect, however, was like touching the button that set off a nuclear reaction. As far as Pete, Bayard, Polacek, and Shea were concerned, the lights in the room went into a whirl of motion that became a gray-gleaming circle. They heard Jake’s voice cry thinly: “No you don’t!” with the accent at the end rising to a squeal, and felt rather than saw the orange, dahlia-shaped flame of the unpleasant automatic, but the bullet never touched any of them, for—

Pmf!

The floor was cold beneath their feet.

Shea braced himself and looked around. Marble all right: there seemed to be miles of it in every direction stretching out in a tessellated pattern of black and white to where pillars leaped from it on every side, slender and graceful, supporting a series of horseshoe-shaped Moorish arches, and thence reaching back invisibly into the distance. The pillars were of some translucent substance that might be alabaster or even ice. Oriental, Shea thought.

“Listen,” said Pete, “if you try to get away with this you’ll go up for it all. This ain’t like New York; they got a Lindbergh law in this state.”

He had dropped Bayard’s arm and was dragging out the twin of the red-faced cop’s pistol. Shea said: “Don’t bother shooting; it won’t go off.”

Bayard looked vexed. “Look here, Harold, have you been working some of your damned symbolic logic formulas on us?”

“Holy Saint Wenceslaus!” said Votsy, pointing. “Look there!”

From among the pillars that receded into the gloom a procession advanced. It was headed by four eunuchs—they must be that, loathsomely fat, grinning, wearing turbans on their heads and blue silk bloomers on their legs, each bearing a long curved sword. Behind came a file of Negroes, naked to the waist, with earrings, carrying a pile of cushions on their heads.

“You’re under arrest!” said Pete, pointing the gun at Shea. He turned toward Polacek. “You want to preserve the law, don’t you? Help me get him out of here.”

The eunuchs went down on their knees and bumped their heads upon the pavement as the Negroes, in perfect step, broke left and right to dump piles of cushions behind the four. Pete turned his head uncertainly, then turned back quickly as Shea sat. The reflex tightened Pete’s finger on the gun, which gave a loud click.

“I told you it wouldn’t go off,” said Shea. “Make yourself at home.” He was the only one who had done so thus far; Polacek was turning his head round and round until it looked as though it might come off, Bayard was staring at Shea with an expression of furious bewilderment, and the policeman was clicking his pistol and working the slide in a futile manner between clicks. Behind the file of Negroes another procession of butter-faced men emerged from the shadows of the colonnades, bearing an assortment of zithers, brass gongs, and eccentric-looking stringed instruments, to group themselves at one side.

“Nothing you can do about it. Honest,” said Shea; then, addressing himself to Bayard particularly: “You know about the theory of this, Walter. Sit down.”

Bayard sank slowly into the pile of cushions. Polacek, bug-eyed, and Pete the cop, distrustfully, imitated him. One of the eunuchs pranced before the musicians, clapping his hands. Instantly they struck up an ear-wracking combination of shrieks, growls, groans, and howls, with a bearded vocalist, who seemed to have wildcats tearing at his entrails, raising his voice above all. Simultaneously, a door seemed to have opened somewhere among the darknesses behind the colonnades. A breeze fluttered the musicians’ garments; underneath their squallings came the sound of distant, rushing waters.

“Cheer up,” said Shea. “Here comes Room Service.”

A dark-skinned dwarf, with a big aigrette held to his turban by an emerald clip, scuttled toward them, his arms filled with cushions. He flung them on the floor at the feet of the four, salaamed, and was gone. The caterwaulings of the music changed sharply, all the instruments together emitting seven high-pitched notes. Among the pillars, in the direction where the dwarf had disappeared, a flicker of motion appeared, grew, and developed into seven girls.

At least they appeared to be girls. They wore Oriental costumes, whose only resemblance to those pictured on calendars, however, lay in cut and color. Their long, loose pajamas were of the heaviest wool; so were the veils that covered all but seven pairs of black eyes and mops of black hair, while the bodices concealed everything above the waist. The howling of the musicians waxed as the girls cut a series of capers that could only by the remotest courtesy be called a dance.

“The vaudeville’s corny,” said Polacek, “but I’ll take the one on the end.”

“I’d hate to see him loose in a harem,” said Bayard.

“I wouldn’t,” replied Polacek. “I wonder if she speaks English.”

“You probably aren’t speaking English yourself,” said Shea. “Relax.” Under those costumes it was hard to tell, but he was fairly certain that none of these was Belphebe.

The policeman, sitting bolt upright on a cushion, had stripped his gun in the space between his knees. Moreover he had gathered up the bullets that it had already disgorged, and with an expression of honest bewilderment was examining the firing-pin dents in their primers. Now he looked up.

“I don’t know how you guys worked this,” he said, “but I’m telling you to get us out of here or you’re gonna do more time than Roosevelt was president.”

“Wish I could,” said Shea, “but Dr. Bayard will tell you it wasn’t our doing that got you here.”

“Then what
did
do it? Did you conk me on the head so now I’m dreaming? Or are we all dead? This sure don’t look like the heaven they told me about at the First Methodist Church Sunday School.”

“Not exactly,” said Shea, “but you’re getting warm. You know how sometimes when you’re dreaming you wonder whether you’re dreaming or not?”

“Yeah.”

“And how sometimes when something unusual happens to you when you’re awake, you again wonder if you’re awake? Well, we’ve discovered that the universe is something like that. There are a whole lot of different worlds, occupying the same space, and by mental operations you can change yourself from one to the other.”

Pete shook his head as if to clear flies from it. “You mean you can go to Mars or somepin by just thinking about it?”

“Not quite. This isn’t Mars; it’s a world in a whole other universe, with assumptions different from ours. What we do is fix our minds on those assumptions.”

“Assump—Oh hell, if you say so I’ll take your word. I’d think you was giving me a line, except . . .”

The seven had pranced off among the pillars. From the opposite direction another set of dancers emerged. They wore ankle-length trousers and loose embroidered coats with what might have been pairs of coffee cups beneath. “Hi, Toots!” said Polacek tentatively. Scrambling to his feet he took two steps and grabbed for the nearest, who avoided him lightly without missing a step of her dance.

“Sit down, you damn fool!” barked Shea; the dancers swung past and began to retreat.

“How long d’you think this will keep up?” inquired Bayard.

Shea shrugged. “No idea. Honest.”

As though in answer, the orchestra changed beat and tune, with a violent banging from the strings and drums. From behind the disappearing dancers another pair of eunuchs stepped forward, bowed to the four, then faced each other and bowed again. Between them emerged four girls, each with a small brass tray holding a fancy jar. Bayard gasped; Polacek whistled; the policeman ejaculated: “Mother of God!” The costumes of all were ample in cut but so thin they might better have not been there at all. The wearers were definitely mammals.

The girls sidled delicately toward their customers, bowed together with the precision of Rockettes, and flopped among the cushions at the feet of the four.

“You can’t bribe me,” growled Pete the cop. “This only gets you smart guys another charge. Indecent theatrical performance.”

Keeping time to the music, each of the girls whipped the lid from her jar, stuck her finger into it, withdrew it covered with something yellow and gooey, and thrust it into her customer’s face. Shea opened his mouth and got a fingerful of honey. He heard Bayard gag and cry, “No!” and turned in time to see him try to avoid the finger. Pete the cop was dabbing at a honey-smeared face with his handkerchief, while his houri seemed determined to apply the stuff internally or externally.

“Better take it,” advised Shea. “They’re here to give it to us.”

“You can’t bribe me!” repeated Pete; and Walter said: “But I don’t likes sweets! I’d rather beer and pretzels.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Shea could see Polacek with one arm around his houri’s neck, while with the other hand he conveyed finger-doses of honey to her mouth in exchange for those he received. He caught on fast.

Shea accepted another installment himself. “O moon of my delight,” implored the policeman’s girl, “is thy breast narrowed? Know that thou hast so infused my heart with love that I will rather drown in the ocean of my own tears than see my lord dismayed. What shall his unworthy handmaiden do?”