The Lighter Side (15 page)

"I told ye getting killed don't mean shucks," Luke said. "Job here done a clean job, never smarted a bit."

Roger flopped back with a groan. "I guess that means we're still stuck in the trap."

"Yes. But it could have been worse. At least Job here drug us inside out of the weather. I figger in your case, that saved yer skin."

There was a thumping at the door. A slim woman Roger hadn't noticed before opened it to admit a plump young fellow with a bundlesome overcoat and a resentful expression.

"The least thee could do, Brother Arkwright, would be to lay me out in Christian style after thee shoots me," he said as the woman took his coat and shook the snow from it.

"Don't like to see the remains cluttering up the place," Job said carelessly. "You ought to be thankful I let you in next morning."

"You mean—you actually shot that man?" Roger whispered hoarsely. "Intentionally?"

"Dern right. Caught him making up to Charity," he added in a lower tone. "That's my woman. Good cook, but flighty. And Fly's got a eye for the skinny ones. He goes along for a few days holding hisself under control, and then one day he busts loose and starts praising her corn meal mush, and I know it's time to teach him another lesson."

"How long has this been going on?"

"All winter. And it's been a blamed long winter, I'll tell you, stranger."

"Poor fellow! It must be ghastly for him!"

"Oh, I dunno. Sometimes he puts one over on me and gets me first. But he's a mighty poor shot. Plugged Charity once, by mistake, jist like I plugged your sidekick."

"Bloodcurdling!"

"Oh, Charity gets in her licks, too. She nailed the both of us once. Didn't care for it, though, she said afterward. Too lonesome. Now she alternates."

"You mean—she's likely to shoot you without notice—just like that?"

"Yep. But I calculate a man's got to put up with a few little quirks in a female."

"Good Lord!"

"Course, I don't much cotton to the idea of what goes on over my dead body—but I guess, long as she's a widder, it don't rightly count."

Charity Arkwright approached with a steaming bowl on a tray.

"Job, you go see to the kindling whilst I feed this nice young man some gruel," she said, giving Roger a bright smile.

"Thanks, anyway," Roger said quickly, recoiling. "I'm allergic to all forms of gruel."

"Look here, stranger," Job growled. "Charity's a good cook. You ought to try a little."

"I'm sure she's wonderful," Roger gulped. "I just don't want any."

"That sounds mighty like a slur to me, stranger!"

"No slur intended! It's just that I had a bad experience with my oatmeal as a child, and ever since I've been afraid to try again!"

"I bet I could help you with your problem," Charity offered, looking concerned. "The way I do it, it just melts in your mouth."

"Tell you what, Miz Charity," Luke Harwood put in. "I'll take a double helping—just to show ye ye're appreciated."

"Don't rush me, mister!" Charity said severely. "I'll get around to you when it's your turn!"

"Hey, stranger," Job said. "Your missus is awake; reckon she'd like some?"

"No! She hates the stuff!" Roger said, scrambling out of bed to find himself clad only in ill-fitting long johns. "Give me my clothes! Luke, Mrs. Withers, let's get out of here!"

"Now, hold on, partner! You're the first variety we've had around this place in shucks knows how long! Don't go getting huffy jist over a little breakfast food!"

"It's not the food—it's the prospect of getting to know Betsy better. Besides which, we started out to find a way out of this maze, not just to settle down being snowbound!"

"I swan," Charity said. "And me the finest gruelmaker west of the Missouri! Never thought I'd see the day when I couldn't give it away!"

"Mister, I reckon you got a few things to learn about frontier hospitality," Job said grimly, lifting a wide-mouth muzzle-loader down from above the door and aiming it at Roger's chin. "I don't reckon nobody ain't leaving here until they've at least tried it."

"I'm convinced," Luke said.

"How do you like it?" Charity inquired. "Plain, or with sugar and cream?"

"Goodness, what's all this talk about gruel?" Mrs. Withers inquired from her bunk, sitting up. "I've got a good mind to show you my crêpes suzettes."

"I never went in for none of them French specialties," Job said doubtfully. "But I could learn."

"Well, I like that!" Charity snapped. "I guess plain old country style's not good enough any more!"

"Well," Mrs. Withers said. "If it's all you can get . . . "

"Why, you scrawny little city sparrer!" Charity screeched, and leaped for the rival female. Roger yelled and lunged to intercept her. Job Arkwright's gun boomed like a cannon; the slug caught Charity under the ribs and hurled her across the room.

"Hey! I never meant—" That was as far as Arkwright got. The boom of a two-barreled derringer in the hands of Fly Beebody roared out. The blast knocked the bearded man backward against the door, which flew open under the impact, allowing him to pitch backward into the snow. As Roger staggered to his feet, a baroque shape loomed in the opening. Metallic tentacles rippled, bearing a rufous tuber shape, one-eyed, many-armed, into the cabin.

"Help!" Roger shouted.

"Saints preserve us!" Luke yelled.

"Beelzebub!" squealed Fly Beebody, and fired his second round into the alien body at pointblank range. The bullet struck with a fruity
smack!
, spattering carroty material; but the creature turned, apparently unaffected, fixed his immense ocular on the parson. It rippled toward him, grasping members outstretched.

Roger grabbed a massive hand-hewn chair, swung it up, and brought it down with tremendous force atop the blunt upper end of the monstrosity. It toppled under the blow, rolled in a short arc like an overturned milk bottle, threshed its tentacles briefly, and was still.

"Now will you leave?" Roger inquired in the silence.

"I'll go with thee!" Beebody yelped. "Satan has taken over this house in spite of my prayers!"

"We can't leave this thing here," Roger said. "We'll have to take it along; otherwise it will be the first thing to greet them in the morning!" He took a blanket from the bed and rolled the creature in it.

"Best ye stay here, girl," Luke said to Mrs. Withers. "Lord knows what we'll run into next."

"Stay here—with
them?"
 

"They'll be themselves again tomorrow."

"That's what I'm afraid of!"

"Well, then; ye better don Charity's cloak."

"We'll leave the coats at the Aperture," Roger said. "In the morning, they'll be back here."

"I'll leave the can of soup," Mrs. Withers said as they prepared to step out into the sub-zero night. "I think Mr. Arkwright was getting a little tired of the same old gruel."

Outside, the wind struck at Roger's frost-nipped face like a spiked board. He pulled his borrowed muffler up around his ears, hefted his end of the shrouded alien, led the way up into the dark forest, following tracks made earlier that morning by Luke.

It was a fifteen-minute hike through blowing snow to the spot among the trees where they had arrived. All of them except Beebody stripped off their heavy outer garments; Roger took the blanket-sack over his shoulder, held Mrs. Withers' hand, while Luke and Beebody joined to form a shivering line, like children playing a macabre game.

"Too bad we couldn't even leave them a note," Roger said. He approached the faint-glowing line, which widened, closed in about him, and opened out into brilliant sunlight on a beach of red sand.

Fly Beebody hunkered on his knees, his fingers interlaced, babbling prayers in a high, shrill voice. Luke stood staring around curiously. Mrs. Withers stood near him, still shivering, hugging herself. Roger dumped his burden at his feet, savoring the grateful heat. The sun, halfway to zenith, glared blindingly on choppy blue water, sand, and rock.

"No signs of life," Luke said. "Where would ye say we are, Roger?"

"That's hard to say. In the tropics, apparently. But what part of the tropics is as barren as this?"

He knelt, studied the sandy ground. "No weeds, no insects." He walked down across the loose sand to the water's edge, bent, and scooped up water in his hand and tasted it. It was curiously flat and insipid. No fish swam in the shallows, no moss grew on the rocks, no seaweed drifted on the tide.

"No seashells," he called. "Just a little green scum on the water." As he turned to start back, he became suddenly aware of the sunlight beating down at him, the drag of gravity. He sucked air into his lungs, fighting a sense of suffocation that swept over him. Ahead, Fly Beebody's chanting had broken off; he half rose, bundlesome in the blanket coat, his mouth opening and closing like a fish. Luke was struggling to support the widow, who sagged against him. Roger broke into a stumbling run.

"Back!" he called. "Get back through! Bad air!" He reached the group, caught the woman's limp hand.

"Grab Beebody's hand!" he gasped to Harwood. He caught up the bundle. As his vision began to fade into a whirling fog of flickering lights, he groped forward, found the Aperture, half-fell through it.

He lay in warm, foul-smelling water, his arms buried to the elbows in soft muck, breathing in great lungfuls of humid, steaming air. A dragonfly with gauzy, foot-long wings hovered a yard away among the finger-thick stems of giant cattails, buzzing like an electric fan. As he sat up, it darted away, eerie, pre-storm sunlight glinting on its polished green body. Beside him, Luke struggled to his feet, black with reeking mud, dragged Mrs. Withers upright. Beebody floundered, spitting sulphurous water.

Standing among reeds higher than his head, Roger could see nothing but more of the same, stretching away endlessly in all directions.

"This must be an era between periods of mountain building," he said. "There was very little dry land on the planet then. I suppose we're lucky we didn't end up treading deep water."

There was a sudden splash near at hand, a sound of violent threshing in the water. The source was invisible through the screen of reeds, but spray flew up from a point twenty feet away and ripples moved toward the sodden travelers. A deep hoot sounded, like a breathy foghorn. The sounds of struggle grew louder, closer. As Roger floundered toward the portal, a finned snake as big around as his thigh burst into view, wrapped around and around a short-snouted crocodile whose jaws were clamped hard in the sinuous body. The struggling pair threshed through the reeds in a churn of crimsoned water. Roger jumped for the ribbon of light, pulling Mrs. Withers after him. There was the flash of prismatic color—

—then a cold rain was driving at him, swirled into his face by a gusty wind. Through the whirling sheets of water, a cluster of sagging, irregularly shaped tents was visible, their sodden leather coverings, marked with crude symbols, whipping in the wind.

"This doesn't look promising," Luke shouted above the sounds of the storm. "I say let's move on without waiting to get acquainted."

"Why be hasty?" Roger countered. "For all we know, we're outside—" He broke off as a bearded, dark-faced man thrust his head from the nearest tent flap. For a moment their eyes met; then the man plunged, grabbing for a short, curved sword slung at his side, and advanced, yelling.

By common assent, the party joined hands and plunged back through the shimmering barrier.

They were on a great veldt, where endless herds of game grazed and vultures circled overhead. Luke and Mrs. Withers stood by the Aperture to mark it while Roger and Beebody, the latter still bundled, sweating in his coat, walked away through the sea of chest-high grass.

Fifteen minutes later, they approached the same spot from behind.

"Still trapped," Roger said. "Let's go on."

They passed . . . through—

—and were . . . on a mountainside above a wide valley with a lake far below. They went on, found themselves on a wide tundra, where far away a pair of huge, shaggy animals lumbered, head-down, into the biting wind. Next, they splashed knee-deep in cold water, near a guano-whitened headland where seabirds circled, crying. After that, there was a dry, brush-choked gorge that led back onto itself when Roger explored its twisting length. Then a bamboo thicket beside a wide, muddy river, under a gray, humid sky.

"It's a marvel how much dreary landscape the world has to offer," Luke panted after a quarter of an hour of splashing through the shallows had led them back to their starting point.

"We'll have to try again," Roger said. "We can't stay here." He swatted one of the huge, inquisitive mosquitoes that swarmed about their heads. They stepped once more through the Aperture—

—and were . . . in a wide field of flowers, under a balmy sky. All around, wooded hills rose to an encircling ring of snow-capped peaks. A small falls tumbled down over a rocky outcropping nearby, feeding a clear river that wound off across the plain.

"How beautiful!" Mrs. Withers exclaimed. "Roger—Luke—can't we stay here awhile?"

"I'm wearied with this scrambling from one climate to the next," Luke agreed. "And we're no closer to escape than ever."

"It suits me," Roger said. "And I'm hungry. Let's get a fire going and rustle a meal."

After they ate, Mrs. Withers wandered off, picking the crimson poppies and yellow buttercups that abounded there, accompanied, grumbling, by Luke. Roger stretched out on the grass by the Aperture, Beebody squatting uncomfortably beside him.

"Master Roger," the parson said awkwardly after the others had passed out of earshot. "I . . . I propose that we come to terms, thee and me."

"About what?"

Beebody hunkered closer. "As thee see, thy strength avails naught against mine. Try as thee will to draw my soul into Hell, still I resist, sustained by prayer and righteousness."