Fool on the Hill (31 page)

DEUS EX MACHINA

I.

Once again Mr. Sunshine sat at a Typewriter. There was still chaos in Chicago, but it was getting a little dull; time, maybe, to hand that Manuscript over to the Monkeys and move “Fool on The Hill” to his Desk. Right now, though, he was going to have to think quickly if he wanted the Fool’s Story to continue at all.

“George, George, George . . .” Mr. Sunshine shook his head. “What
is
your problem? I give you an extra shot of optimism to make sure you don’t get suicidal and instead you have an accident. Are you trying to ruin my Story?”

A sudden thought . . . Mr. Sunshine glanced suspiciously at the Monkey standing beside him. It did not glance back.

“I’ll deal with
you
later,” Mr. Sunshine promised. “But for the moment . . . we need a fast save here. Hades, Hades, Hades, what am I going to do?”

He started with what he knew best, reviewed the other major Plots in the Story, checked where the Characters were. And smiled.

“Of course,” he said. “Of course. Man—and Fool’s—best friend. Simple. I like that.”

Luther . . .

he began to Type.

II.

“I’m telling you, Blackjack, he made the wind blow, and I guess you could say the storm is his, too.”

“Luther, I am
drowning
in a
snowbank.
Stop talking nonsense and help me out.”

“It isn’t nonsense, Blackjack. It really happened. Oh, I wish you could have been there to help me understand what he was saying, afterwards. He seemed very disappointed in me.”

“I don’t care, Luther,” said the Manx, struggling against the white drift that lay piled up around him. “Help me.”

“Sure, Blackjack, I’ll help you. I just wish—”

A sudden gust of wind.

“Luther?”

“Oh no,” the mongrel cried. “No, that mustn’t happen.”

“What mustn’t happen?”

“He’s in trouble, Blackjack. I’ve got to go help him before it’s too late.”

“Help
who?
Luther, I’m in trouble too, remember?”

“You’ll get out all right, Blackjack. If you don’t I’ll be back to help you. But I’ve got to go, he’s
freezing.
"

“Luther!
Luther!
"

III.

George knew that he must be dead, or dying, for he floated in a formless void, and there before him rose the image of the woman he loved, the woman he had thought forever lost. If death meant being reunited with her, he decided, he would not resist its embrace.

“No,” Calliope said, reading his mind as she had always read his mind. “You can’t give up, George. Dying won’t get you what you want, or what you think you want.”

“I want you,” George told her, speaking through lips of ice. “I want to be with you.”

“But I’m not even real. I’m only a dream you had.”

“You
are
real. I touched you with my own hands. I made love to you.”

“You made love to a dream. Have I ever lied to you, George? Then remember what I told you:
Whoever you love will be just like me.
Any woman seen through love’s eyes is as perfect as you thought me to be.”

“No,” George said. “There’s no one like you.”

“They’re all like me, George, if you see with your heart. But some of them stay.”

“Why . . . why are you leaving me?”

“I told you, I’m a dream. Dreams have to end eventually.”

“Why did you come in the first place?”

“More reasons than you can know. In the end it’s all for the Story. That’s what you should be worrying about. Not about me, not about love. Love is just part of the Plot.”

Many more questions he had for her, and a good-bye to say, but now she began to drift toward him, arms outstretched.

One last kiss,
he thought, blissfully. but it was a harsh kiss, alien and sloppy; the void turned over twice, depositing him in a cold graveyard with a dog licking his face.

“Whuh—” He tried to sit up, snow sliding off his coat, and pain shot him through. A good sign, perhaps, for pain signifies that flesh and bone are still hanging in there, fighting. His feet, though, he could not feel his feet, and the same was true of his fingers, though when he tried to flex them they moved, the knuckles giving a slight twinge.

“Warm,” George mumbled, his tongue not cooperating. “Need warm.” Luther actually understood this—or maybe it was only a lucky coincidence—and offered to share his own body warmth by leaping on George’s chest. The dog felt warm, all right, but even his slight weight was enough to push the storyteller back down, nearly smacking his head against the tombstone a second time.

My head .
. . his skull throbbed; he felt the back of his scalp with the heel of his hand and discovered a crusty mess that must have been dried or frozen blood. Not good. Could he have suffered a concussion? The mere thought made him dangerously weary, and he realized he had to get out of this place quickly or remain until the spring thaw. He shoved the dog off him as gently as possible and somehow managed to stand, the muscles in his ankles giving a satisfactory scream.

Walking uphill out of The Boneyard was one of the hardest things George ever did. He seemed to stumble as often as take a step, and the tombstones arranged themselves in an obstacle course, conspiring to trip him up. On the positive side, however, the snow had stopped falling, while the wind came up behind him, helping him along. Luther helped him as well; twice George slipped and fell, and twice the dog nipped, butted, and barked at him until he struggled back to his feet and got going again.

A small eternity later he emerged onto the sidewalk on Stewart Avenue, head reeling. He heard a voice calling his name from the other side of the street and looked up, expecting to see yet another vision of Calliope. Instead he saw a blond Christian Princess, tiny cross clasped to her throat, her right hand resting briefly on the hood of a snow-covered Volkswagen. Concern creased her brow and she was very beautiful.

“Borealis,” George greeted her, finding her simpler first name too much of a chore to pronounce.

“George, are you all right?” she asked him. He looked like death. Noticing that he was swaying like a giddy flagpole, she stepped off the curb and began crossing over to help him; Luther, barking excitedly, rushed out to meet her in the middle of the street.

The silver Rolls came barreling at them from the left. The Greek behind
the wheel—a frat boy but not a Rat boy—was more than a little wasted, driving on bald tires, and lacked the basic skill necessary to make an emergency stop even under better conditions. It should have ended in a manslaughter, but George saw the car bearing down out of the corner of his eye. In the brief second when he realized what was about to happen, he felt a surge of indignation and the same sense of control that he had had in front of the Straight.

“Uh-uh,” George said, and a whirlwind exploded up around the woman and the dog, obscuring them and the offending Rolls in a funnel of snow and ice. When this cleared, Aurora and Luther remained untouched where they had stood, but the Rolls lay on its roof some ten yards farther on, its driver scrunched upside-down and looking more than a bit startled.

A good trick, but it robbed George of the last of his strength. With a smile he collapsed once more, felt soft hands touch the back of his neck, and slept in darkness until the doctors over at Gannett Health Clinic thawed him out.

IV.

“Good,” said Mr. Sunshine, relaxing a bit. “Better, at any rate. If he can handle himself as well as he handles the air around him, there might be a decent Climax in this after all.”

He stood up, letting the Story carry itself for a while. Mr. Sunshine was decided—he
would
move this Manuscript to his Writing Desk in place of “Absolute Chaos.” But first he had to get something.

SETTING THINGS UP

I.

The nearest available vehicle, an Ithaca Sunshine Cab, took George up to Gannett. Though he came in as an unconscious human Popsicle, they soon revived him, and in no time at all he had regained sufficient strength to argue with his doctor. For in New York City, where George had grown up, a patient is discharged from the hospital as soon as he can walk, often within an hour or two of admittance; at Gannett, even though a head X-ray showed no skull fracture, they wanted to keep him overnight for observation. This was kind, thoughtful, and probably proper procedure as well, but in George’s present frame of mind it only seemed stupid.

“So you think it’s stupid, do you?” The doctor held up the tattered coat George had gotten from the poor man. “Is this all you were wearing in twenty-degree weather?”

Under a strong light the coat looked pitifully thin, and George got the point: he was not in a position to judge stupidity. Unfortunately, he was also not in a mood to spend a night in Gannett. He had as a roommate a pneumonia-struck graduate student who did nothing but stare catatonically at the latest
Soldier of Fortune
magazine, which made George decidedly nervous and got him wondering if he might just slip out through some window and escape.

About an hour after nightfall, however, his spirits took a sudden lift. Aurora Smith had entered the room, and though George did not recognize it as the source of his relief, for half an instant the sight of her made him forget Calliope. Oh, there was more to it than that, to be sure: she had ridden up with him in the patrol cab, cradling his wounded head in her lap, and though he did not remember this some part of him did; knowledge of the gentleness in her, that too helped him smile.

“Hello,” he greeted her, sitting up in bed. George was careful of his head, though in fact all pain had departed now, leaving not so much as a twinge. Likewise his frostbitten joints seemed miraculously renewed.

“Hello,” she said back, then hovered for a moment as she looked for a place to sit down. George gestured to the foot of the bed and Aurora settled there. “I’ve been waiting to see you for a while,” she told him. “They only just let me in.”

“Mmm,” George nodded. “I think they know about my money. If I die of unexpected complications I won’t be able to endow the University in my old age.”

“Oh George.”

“Say, you wouldn’t happen to have a hacksaw, would you? Or a getaway car?”

Aurora smiled and shook her head. “Neither one. Sorry. But are you sure you’re all right? You look—”

“Peachy.” He studied her. “You look like there’s something heavy on your mind.”

“There is,” she admitted, becoming more serious. “I’m afraid if I tell you, though, you might laugh at me . . . or you might not. I’m not sure which would be worse.”

“Guess we’ll have to see. Go ahead, I’m listening.”

Aurora struggled to get the words out: “I think . . . I think that we’ve been set up, George.”

“Set up? Set up how?” Despite his remarkable physical recovery, he felt emotionally drained and would not have thought it possible for anything else to shock him after the day’s events. He would have been wrong. What Aurora said next surprised him beyond all conception.

“I’m in love with you,” she told him. “And I think, very soon, it’s going to be mutual.”

II.

Mr. Sunshine walked down a long and cavernous hallway. He did not like this part of the Library; the Others were here, seated along the windowless walls, ancient figures that might have been carved of stone, but were not. A well-muscled blacksmith with lightning bolts rusting at his feet; a goat man bearing two horns on his head and a third in his hands for winding; a beardless patriarch and his wife; eight younger women with an empty ninth chair in their midst; many more. They were not Dead but they were not Alive, either, and Mr. Sunshine would have far preferred to watch an eclipse than to spend any unnecessary time in their company.

Unfortunately, the Refrigerator was here too, and Mr. Sunshine had never got around to moving it to a more congenial location. It stood at the far end of the hall, and upon reaching it and opening it Mr. Sunshine wondered, as always, whether the little light inside shined on in his absence or doused
itself when the door was closed. He barely glanced at the contents of the cooler racks—Milk, Ambrosia, the Primordial Feta—going straight for the Ice Box. It was there that he found what he needed, a Toy he had kept frozen here for quite a long time.

The thing was a bird, a fierce white bird formed of ice and snow. Cold crystal rimed its wings, curved icicles served as talons; Mr. Sunshine brought it out, put life into it with a breath.

“Hello there,” he greeted it, as it perched on his hand, studying him with blank eyes. “Now listen carefully, I’m going to have you be a Messenger for me . . . .”

Mr. Sunshine shut the Refrigerator door and got walking, bearing the Messenger away to another part of the Library where there was a window that opened on the World. On the way he taught it what he needed it to tell; he gave it a Message, and a job.

III.

“Brian Garroway asked me to marry him last night,” Aurora explained, sitting closer now; the grad student on the other bed remained catatonic. “I’ve always known he would ask me eventually; I was never sure what my answer would be.”

“You told him no,” George guessed.

“I thought to tell him no. And I will. Last night I chickened out, told him I needed time to think it over. It didn’t help any; he got upset that I even hesitated.”

“He was expecting a prompt yes.”

“He’s always expected it,” Aurora agreed. “I can’t say I ever gave him reason not to expect it. I think it may break his heart when I turn him down.”

“Too many broken hearts around,” George said. “I broke mine today, along with nearly breaking my head.”

“I know.”

“You know? How do you know?”

Aurora bit her lip. “Calliope told me.”

He sprang like a trap, gripped her arm. “You saw her?”

“In a
dream!
”
she protested. “Only in a dream!”

“A dream?”

“I had two dreams,” Aurora told him. “One last night and one this afternoon, although I guess the second one was more like a vision. I don’t remember lying down to take a nap.

“Last night’s dream, that was just about you. You and I. I dreamed about the Halloween party, about Thanksgiving night, other times we’ve been together. And times we haven’t been: I kept seeing us eating breakfast back in my house in Wisconsin. My father was there too, laughing.”

“But what about Calliope?” George said, insistent.

“The vision . . . I don’t quite know how to describe it. I talked with her. She told me some things.”

“
NO!
”
He practically exploded.

“George, I swear to you—”

“I mean
no,
there is absolutely no way I am ever going to go through that again. Calliope nearly drove me crazy with her secrets, with all the things she knew that I didn’t understand. And if she passed that on to you . . .”

“No, George, it’s not like that. I don’t understand most of what she said either, all this stuff about Stories, and Plots . . . only one thing I got clear. You have what I want, what Brian could never give me.”

“And what might that be?”

“Magic. I heard what happened in front of the Straight today. And just a while ago, in the street . . . your magic, George, your daydreams. I want a stake in that. And love.”

“But it doesn’t work that way,” George protested. “I’m flattered, but how can I just agree to fall in love with you?”

“Calliope said you’d ask that. But maybe it’s not a matter of agreement. Tell me, honestly, what are your feelings for me?”

“Well, I
—
”
It seemed a simple enough question, but as George seriously examined his own heart, he got another big surprise.

“You see?” said Aurora, watching his eyes widen. “We’ve been set up.
She
did it, tangled us up somehow without letting us catch on.”

“All the more reason to reject it. Do you have any idea what she’s already done to me? I nearly let myself die today.”

“I don’t want to push you into love, George.” Aurora pleaded. “She she told me . . .”

“Go ahead, say it.”

“She told me to ask you if you could even remember what she looked like.”

“What she looked like? Don’t be ridiculous, of course I
—
"

Another shock, the third and last, making the circuit complete.
Four months.
Calliope’s face had hovered within inches of his own, above, below, all around, until it seemed etched forever into memory. But now . . . now that he tried to recall it, the memory blurred like a running watercolor. Of course he had a general impression of her, could have described her easily enough. But as far as summoning up a distinct image of her in his mind—this he could not do, and it shook him.

“Her picture!” he cried suddenly. “I have her picture in my wallet. Over there!” He pointed to the closet where his clothes had been stored after his transfer into a white hospital robe. “Quick, check my left front pants pocket!”

Aurora did as he requested, retrieving the wallet and handing it to him. He searched through it frantically and came up with a photograph . . . of a sunlit tree.

“No!” George nearly screamed; the grad student stirred at last from his catatonia to glance over at the raving madman. “No, no, that’s not right at all! She was standing right there, right in front . . . ah, shit!” He tore the photo in half and hurled the pieces to the floor, disgusted. “Great! Just great! First I lose her, then my memory goes. What’s next?”

“Come home with me,” Aurora suggested, softly.

“To Balch?”

“To Wisconsin.”

“
Wisconsin?
"

“Brian was supposed to drive me home,” she explained, “but now I don’t suppose he’ll want to. I know you don’t own a car, but you could rent one pretty easily. Come home with me; we’ll have breakfast together, just like in my dream.”

“That’s crazy.”

Aurora nodded. “Scary, too. Especially since I don’t know what happens after. But she said it would be the right thing to do, and for some reason I trust her . . . even if she’s only a dream.”

George shook his head and moaned. “Oh man, oh man, when did I start living inside one of my own stories? Crazy, crazy, crazy . . .”

“It’s crazy, George. But will you do it?”

His answer was a long time coming, but this time neither of them were at all surprised.

“I’ll come. Do you really think I have a choice?”

IV.

The clouds had departed, and the air lay still once more. The Messenger came to a rough but not ungraceful landing in The Boneyard. It had flown a terribly long way in a terribly short time, but it had not tired; tired was not something it could be.

It came to earth in the center of the ring of leaning tombstones. And, having come to rest, bent immediately to tap its glacial beak against the ground, once, twice.

The earth tremor traveled outward from The Boneyard to a radius of about one mile, causing buildings to shudder, panicking animals, and making small objects dance with false life. Sneaking out of Gannett through a side exit, George and Aurora clutched each other in fear feeling personally threatened; nor were they just being paranoid.

It did not last long. Indeed, the earthquake ceased almost as quickly as it had begun. Collecting themselves, the man and woman stepped outside arm in arm and walked beneath the stars, filled with a new foreboding.