Stairway to Forever (24 page)

Fitz could not resist a chuckle then. "Well, Cool Blue, you were screwed and blued. Did you get tattooed?"

"Man, like it ain't none of it noways funny." Cool Blue sounded hurt. "I couldn't blow no horn if I could find one, I can't sing or even fucking whistle, all I can do is to like roar, man, the whole thing is like a real bummer, you know. Like, I mean, what'd I ever do to that fucking brownie-king, Saint Germain, anyhow?"

Fitz thought it rather pointless to answer the lion. He did wonder, very much, who this "Saint Germain" was, and what powers he might have besides transforming beatnik jazz musicians into baby-blue lions—if he could believe Cool Blue's story at all. At this point there were more immediate problems at hand.

At midday, they ascended to the top of a ridge to see below them not a valley but a vast, swampy flatland stretching into misty distance.

"Way you was headed, like, man, I was scared we was going to come up against the Dragon Swamp, man, and like we did. You don't want to go in there,

you know, man, no way. And if you do, like count Cool Blue out, see. You dig?"

Fitz frowned, sweeping the visible portions of the lower ground with his binoculars. "It looks like a cross between an overgrown lake and a rain forest. How wide is it, Cool Blue?"

"Like hell, I don't know, man. I like never went into the place but once, and after I seen some of the monsters lives in there, I shagged ass out and I won't never go back. Man, it's dragons in there—real dragons, that breathes fire and smoke and all—and snakes so big you'd have to see the fuckers your own self to b'lieve it, and things you wouldn't think of to see in a nightmare or even on a bad trip on acid, man."

"Okay, then," said Fitz, "if you don't know how wide it is, Cool Blue, then how long is it? Can we get around it? Bypass it?"

"Yeah, man, you can, but like you're going to have to backtrack for a few days from here, 'cause like it spreads out south on both sides of where we are now, you know. Best thing is to go back south to the place I met you at or a little more, then cut west; it's like easier to travel that way, like along the valleys, than to keep going up and down hills and ridges, the way you been doing, see."

"Well, damn it, then," demanded Fitz in exasperation, "why the hell didn't you tell me this days ago, Cool Blue?"

The baby-blue lion yawned widely. "Like, man, you didn't ask me. I ain't no tour guide, you know, man. Like I'm just supposed to pad along with you for awhile and make sure you don't get your ass creamed, if I can."

Fitz turned to Sir Gautier. "Do you think we could get across that morass, Gautier?"

The Norman cast a jaundiced eye at the brooding

expanses of dark water and overabundant vegetation, but answered loyally, "Wherever my lord goes, there too goes his servant, Gautier de Montjoie."

Fitz squatted atop the ridge and considered the matter in all its many aspects. At length, he arose and said, "All right, Gautier, Cool Blue, we backtrack. Let's go, we have a half day left to travel in."

That half day, plus seven more days and nights, saw them at the clearing wherein Fitz had slain the Norman sergeant, put his mates to rout and gained his sworn servant, Sir Gautier. They camped that night there and, the next morning, Fitz asked the lion, "You say farther south than this, Cool Blue?''

"Yeah, man, like the hills is lower, south of here, but still not so low the Teeth and Legs would come up in them, see. They is baad news, man."

"Yes, I know, Cool Blue, I killed one crossing the Pony Plain," said Fitz. "I've got a plan, I think, but let's break camp now and get going. Ill explain things as we walk. Okay?"

Sir Gautier just nodded. The lion said, "Reet, Jackson."

Fitz had given everything careful consideration, had gone over and over it all during their week of backtracking. Puss had sworn that one direction was as good as any other, except for due south, for finding the Dagda, so if the western route, following the vales and valleys, was faster and less arduous than climbing and descending hill after hill after rocky hill, then he would do so.

However, as he had packed supplies for one and was now having to provide for two, mostly, he was running perilously low on everything. Yes, there were still a few things left in the cave with the bike . . . unless, God forbid, beasts or men had found and

despoiled his cache. But even if they had not, there still was not enough left therein to last him and Gautier for more than a few days or possibly one week on the march.

Therefore, he had come to the decision to let Gautier help him get the bike down to reasonably level ground, then send the knight back up to camp in or around the cave with Cool Blue while he re-crossed the Pony Plain to the dunes and the wrecked ship to restock. After that first crossing, he realized that the loaded weight and the extra wheel of the sidecar imparted vastly improved stability to the bike, so he would be able to bring back far more than he had on the previous trip north.

But he meant to first see if the cave's contents were as he had left them before he went into great detail with his two companions. Two days later, he found that they were. After he and Gautier had cleared the cave of the brittle, dried brush and rock rubble, Fitz unsnapped the canvas cover and lifted it from off the gleaming bike, sending a pair of big woods rats that had established residence there squealing and squeaking between the men's feet and out into the open. One got away, but Cool Blue pounced like some giant housecat. A quick descent of his muzzle, one crunch of his toothy jaws and a swallow, and he had effectively widowed the escapee.

"You told me that, as a self-respecting lion, you never hunted any beast smaller than a full-grown deer," chided Fitz, half-jokingly.

The lion sat and began to lick a huge paw preparatory to washing his face. "Like meat's meat, man. Huntings hard work, you dig, and like you don't never turn down no freebies, see. Hey, where the hell the chopper come from, man? Like it's cool, the utter coolest!"

They camped the night atop the last low hill overlooking the Pony Plain. Fitz had emptied everything from the bike and sidecar except basic tools, some water, his carbine and ammo, knowing he would be at the ship, barring disaster or misfortune, well before the fall of the next night. Then, just as dawn was streaking the eastern sky, there was a bright, rosy flash high in the sky above the distant lines of sand dunes and from that flash fell three red stars.

Fumbling in his haste, Fitz dug frantically under the greasy tools until he found the canvas case that held the Very pistol. He started to fire, then thought to check the loaded shell. Replacing the green one with a red, he held the projector at a steep angle and fired the signal.

"Danna, I'm coming!" he breathed.

The plain seemed normal, with small herds of ponies, a flock of the rat-tailed ostriches and some smaller beasts in evidence. At the spot where he had slain the Teeth and Claws, there were only a few of the bigger bones and part of the skull and a few teeth remaining, all now marked by toothmarks and scouring sand, thoroughly desiccated by sun and wind. Well, it was only fitting that the monster that had fed for so long on the fauna of that plain should finally go to feed said fauna itself; that was simply Nature's way.

With the knowledge that Danna was waiting for him, the journey across the plain seemed to last forever. Why was she calling him back so soon, he wondered. Had the situation with the I.R.S. and Blutegel improved, was that it? No, more likely, considering the man involved, it had gotten far worse, he thought glumly. If only there was a safe place for Danna to be that was closer to the hills than the ship was.

"So, what do you want, Fitz, egg in your beer?"

Right now, he'd take the beer, gallons of it, iced and icy cold. Then the eggs, a gross of them—fried eggs, boiled eggs, poached eggs, coddled eggs, a five-egg omelet with cheese, cheddar cheese, lots of it, and minced onions and green peppers and garlic and shallots. He could almost taste a whole big head of steamed cauliflower with a sauce of Swiss cheese and saffron and pepper. Creamed spinach and rolls. Bread of any kind! Salt sticks, swirl rye, hot buttermilk biscuits melting in butter, with dark honey. Anything but bloody meatl

Funny, he had always eaten a good quantity of meat, when he could get it or had been able to afford it—steaks, chops, cutlets, roasts, patties, thick stews and ragouts, kebabs—but these past weeks of living on little save meat, with occasionally a few berries or wild greens and the rare fish, had awakened within him a distaste for even the thought of meat or blood. No, his hunger now was for vegetables, grain products, eggs, milk and cheese, spices and herbs. And he meant to have his fill of them, too, even if he had to go back into that other, overcrowded, stinking, paved-over and mostly hostile world to get them.

"But," he chuckled to himself, "I'd better not let Kassandra know that I'm in the least egg-hungry."

All journeys must come to an end and, just after midday, Fitz came to the first low dune. Another half hour, and he was wheeling the bike up the gangplanks into the waist of the sometime warship. And Danna was standing on the quarterdeck, above him, wearing only a dark, healthy tan and a metallic something that held her reddish-brown, now-longer hair back upon her neck. She looked far younger than he had recalled her and he knew that he never

before had seen any woman so beautiful and appealing to him.

She came down the ladder and walked to where he stood and kissed him, thoroughly, but then she stepped back and said, "Fitz, come into the cabin with me, please. There's something . . . youve got to tell me if I'm going nuts or what/'

In the cabin, the shutters still were bolted and the gas lanterns still were blazing out their stark white light. The ancient ship's table was laid with a plastic plate, some utensils and a wineglass. Beside the table hung a slender green wine bottle . . . that was what he thought at first glance, at least.

"I was in here last night, eating some cheese and bread and a glass of wine before I went to bed, Fitz. Then I somehow shoved the bottle too near the edge of that table and, when I moved to turn a page in the brief I was reading, it wobbled off and fell. I thought in the split second that if it broke, I'd have to go back into that other world tomorrow and get more because it was the last bottle here and I didn't want to go, because I'd have to dress and I just wished it would stop falling and not break or spill . . . and it did, Fitz. It . . . it's still there, I laid awake half the night just looking at it. Is it really just sitting there, six or eight inches above the floor, with nothing to support it, like my eyes tell me it is? Please, Fitz, tell me!"

Fitz squatted and ran his flattened hand around all sides of the bottle, beneath it and over it. Taking it by the neck, he lifted it easily, sniffed at the opening, then put it to his lips, threw back his head and drained the last few ounces of tepid Moselle down his dry throat.

Standing up, he held the empty bottle at waist height and let it go. It fell and clunked upon the

boards. He picked it up and tried once again, and the same result occurred.

Intent on the experiment, he absent-mindedly meshed his mind with hers and thought to her, "Danna, when I next drop this bottle, try to remember just what you did or thought last night and stop it from hitting the deck. Okay?"

But she had paled under her tan, her green eyes were wide and she was backing the length of the cabin, both her hands held before her, as if to ward him off.

"My God, Fitz, what. . . you were talking to me— weren't you? Weren't you?—-but your lips didn't move once. And . . . and still I heard ... no, I didn't hear you, either! But I . . . understood you."

"It's called telepathy, I believe, Danna. That's how I've been communicating these last weeks, over there in those hills. I guess I just forgot and did it to you. But look, it's simple, love, I can show you how to do it, too. See?" He "showed" her.

An hour or so of experiments demonstrated that, not only could Danna stop the bottle in midair, but she could also move it vertically or horizontally in empty air, in any direction and for the length, width and height of the cabin, at least. But she could not seem, for some reason, to show him how to arrange his mind and his thoughts to emulate her feats. They tried her out on other larger, heavier items and found that size or weight made no difference, she could move them around and about at will.

After a long, refreshing swim in the cool sea, Fitz came back to the ship and ate such canned vegetables as remained in the larder and water—foul, chemical-flavored water from the other world. Then and there, he made a note to resupply the ship with

bottled spring water rather than the jugs of chemical soup from the tap.

Sitting at the table with pencil and pad, making up a list of the things he needed from the other world, still nude from his swim, he dropped the pencil and it rolled off the table. With a muttered curse, he started to bend to retrieve it, then stopped himself and gave the mental method one more try. It worked this time. The yellow pencil rose, jerkily at first, then more smoothly, up and up and up.

"Danna! Look."

Forgetting the list for the nonce, Fitz and Danna played with the pencil and scores of other objects around and about the cabin like a pair of children with a new toy—he would raise something, she would then move that same object laterally or lower it and vice versa, or one of them would raise an object and then cause it to dodge others sent whizzing at it by the other one. After a while, they took their esoteric game outside, onto the beach, and soon had the air about them cluttered with colorful seashells, bits of driftwood and some empty plastic water jugs, as well as the original green wine bottle. They continued to play until the setting sun told them that it was near-ing the time that they should leave for the other world.

Back in the cabin, Fitz rapidly completed the list, then hurriedly dressed. They had strung the water jugs together, intending to tow them, like so many balloons, across the beach and into the crypt, then up the stairs and across the backyard. Fitz had already raised the small fleet of jugs off the floor, but when he placed about his neck the stainless steel chain that held the back door key, all of the jugs tumbled back onto the floor, and when he tried to