The Lighter Side (20 page)

"Skip my personality," Roger snapped. "Just get busy and retwiddle those parameters!"

"How'm I supposed to concentrate on all that technical business with this funny feeling creeping over me every time I look at that slinky little torso of yours, and that slender little waist, and those nice—"

"Look here, Q'nell!" Roger snapped, fending off his hands. "Get control of myself, girl! Put your intelligence in charge! Remember what S'lunt said! If this trap system isn't destroyed, it'll rip the whole space-time continuum wide open! Imagine the confusion, with Genghis Khan galloping around the middle of World War One, and Louis the Fifteenth coming face to face with de Gaulle, and Teddy Roosevelt bumping heads with LBJ, and—"

"All right, all right, you've made your point." Q'nell slumped back, breathing hard, promptly sat up again. "But are you sure you don't really want to—"

"No! Stick to the subject at hand! The Channel! It's not hard, Q'nell; just close your eyes and try to sort of firm up the gray into a nice even sort of custardy consistency."

"I'm trying," Q'nell said, squeezing Roger's eyes shut. "But it just looks like a lot of garbage to me."

Roger closed the eyes of the body he was occupying. "There's really nothing to it," he said in a calm, reasonable tone.
"I
didn't have any trouble. You just exclude all extraneous thoughts from your mind."

"Did you know that when you run you have the most delightful jounce?" Q'nell said.

"I assure you, it's unintentional!" Roger said icily. "Now concentrate! Think about it!"

"I am! I can't think about anything else! Great galloping galaxies, T'son, I really have to admire you men for the little restraint you show! It's like . . . like . . . "

"It's like nothing else in the world," Roger said. "I remember it well—even though it all seems pretty silly now, which goes to show the decisive role glands play in philosophy."

"I suppose you're right," Q'nell said resignedly. "But since it's really your fault for scrambling us up like this, you ought to be willing to—"

"Don't go feminine on me now!" Roger yelped. "We'll
both
concentrate! Maybe together we can manage it!" He groped mentally toward the insubstantial stuff floating before his closed eyes, but it boiled imperviously, stubbornly refusing to coalesce into the characteristic gray of the Channel.

"How are you doing, Q'nell?" he asked.

"I'm not sure . . . but I think . . . maybe . . . "

"Yes? Keep trying! You can do it!"

"Maybe," Q'nell went on, "you'd better open your eyes."

Roger complied instantly—and was looking up into the massed spears of a company of ghostly blue riders hemming them in from all sides.

"The very idea," Roger said an hour later, after a rough ride strapped behind a sweating blue warrior, and an unsatisfying interview in a pitch-dark room with unseen locals. "Putting us together in the same cell!"

"At least this way we only have one door to break down," Q'nell said. "What did you expect, separate suites? His and Hers buckets?"

"Must you be crude?" Roger folded his arms, quickly unfolded them, disconcerted by the sensation.

"Just realistic," Q'nell said. "Let's face facts: I'm occupying an inferior brain. It's up to you, T'son. I did my best."

"What did you make of the interrogation?"

"What could I make of it? Total darkness, silent voices—I'm not even sure we were being questioned."

"Of course we were," Roger said loftily. "And they're not through yet. They'll be back soon."

"How do you know?"

"Feminine intuition."

"Oh, that!" Q'nell said disparagingly. "Just a mish-mash of wild guesses and wishful thinking."

"You'll see," Roger said complacently. "Now be quiet. Since you seem to be helpless, I'll have to try to do what I can." He stretched out on the floor and looked into the grayness swirling before his closed eyes . . . 

 . . . and was awakened by a foot prodding his side to see Q'nell struggling in the grip of a pair of husky fluorescent guards.

This time they were hustled unceremoniously along dull-glowing corridors out into a walled courtyard under an open sky just beginning to gray at zenith. Several dark points were visible there, like negative star images on an astronomical photograph.

"I think I'm beginning to understand what makes the light so funny," Roger confided to Q'nell as they stood together against one pockmarked wall. "The whole spectrum is shifted; we're seeing heat—that's why living things glow—and visible light is off in the radio range somewhere."

"I'm beginning to understand something even more fascinating than that," Q'nell said. "Those ten blue men over there with the guns in their hands are a firing squad!"

"You're a big success as a negotiator," Roger charged bitterly. "If this is a compromise, what were they holding out for?"

"At least we're not going to be tortured," Q'nell snapped back. "Be quiet and let's start concentrating! Maybe the spur of dire necessity will help me use some of the ninety-two percent of your brain our instruments showed was lying fallow!"

"I don't know how to operate your brain!"

"Well, try! It's a finely tuned instrument, trained in all the subtleties of Culture One mental science! Put it to use!"

Across the eerie courtyard, the rank of armed men were lining up, eyeing their prospective targets with shining yellow eyes. Roger shivered.

"I can't," he said. "All I can think about it what it will feel like to be shot!"

"In that case, I guess it's goodbye," Q'nell said. "I'm afraid your body's panic reactions are inhibiting my concentration, too."

"About those passes you were making," Roger said, feeling a sudden tenderness toward the girl. "I didn't mean to be stuffy or anything."

"Actually, I admire you for your stand," Q'nell said. "Only a tramp would have given in."

"What! Why, you practically fell all over yourself trying to make time with me! And if I'd taken pity on you, that makes me a tramp?"

"Calm down! I was complimenting you!"

"Of all the nerve! And I thought you liked me! And all the time you were just amusing yourself, testing my reactions!"

"Hey, that's not true! You're very appealing! I just meant that, uh . . .  But what does it matter what I meant? This is the end. Goodbye, T'son. It's been very interesting."

Roger didn't answer. He was watching with fascination as the blue men loaded their guns . . . 

A vertical line of light quivered into existence between Roger and the aimed guns. It wavered, faded, firmed again, flickered . . . 

"T'son!" Q'nell said sharply. "It's a portal! It must be good old S'lunt!"

"He'd better hurry up and focus it," Roger said, gritting his teeth hard. "In about another two seconds—"

"On the count of three, hit the deck!" Q'nell hissed. "One!" The firing squad took aim.

"Two!"

The portal snapped into sharpness. A shape appeared, sliding forth from it—a bulbous shape, glowing a dull red, ringed about with jointed tentacles.

"Three!" Q'nell called. Roger dived flat, heard the close-spaced blips of silence that punctuated the background roar, saw the monster explode into a shower of fragments as it intercepted the fusillade intended for the humans. The shooters, astonished at the sudden obstacle that had interposed itself between them and their target, stood gaping dumbly as Roger and Q'nell came to their feet.

"Come on!" Q'nell yelled, and grabbed Roger's hand.

"But—but it's one of
theirs!"
he protested, pulling back.

"Any port in a storm!" Q'nell shouted.

"I guess you're right," Roger gulped, and together they dashed forward and plunged through the portal.

They spun outward in a swirl of silence and light. Light foamed about them, glaring, sputtering, pulsing red and green and blue and gold, like a breaking comber of jewels.

"It's beautiful!" Q'nell's voice sounded in his head. "But what is it? We're not in the Channel. Our extrapolated universe model never predicted anything like this!"

"Nevertheless, it's here," Roger said. "And we're still alive to enjoy it."

"We've got to find out where we are and where we're going, in a hurry! We may be sliding right into their home base!"

"Yes. We seem to be traveling pretty fast," Roger agreed. As in the Channel, the sensation was of motion not through space, but through some subtler medium.

"I'm going to give the parameters another try," Q'nell said. "Somehow they seem to be much more accessible when we're in a non-space environment."

"Just don't go twisting them," Roger cautioned.

"That's precisely what I intend to do!" Q'nell countered. "But I'm afraid it will take more than a twist to get us back where we belong."

The clouds of light were changing, receding, forming up into towering thunderheads that glowed with pale colors. Now it was as though they swam in a stormy sky amid heaped, multicolored cumuli, with no up, no down, no land in sight. They swooped like effortless gulls between towers and through canyons, hurtling past vast, bellowing domes, diving through airy tunnels, skimming the surface of cloudy plains.

"It's no good; I'm getting dizzy," Q'nell called at last. She was swooping in the middle distance, upside down. "There's no frame of reference whatever!"

"If we just had something underfoot," Roger said. "I'm afraid I'm going to be airsick!" As he spoke, he felt something nudge the soles of his shoes. He looked down, saw a patch of pale blue tiled floor.

"Q'nell! Look!" He waved to her, floating overhead now.

"Where did that come from?" she called.

"I just thought of it—and here it was!"

Q'nell swung closer, arced downward to thump lightly against the floor. "Say, T'son, you may be on to something here!" She poked at the floor with a finger, pounded with her fist. "It feels solid enough. This is amazing! We seem to be in a malleable continuum, which can be concretized by thought impulses!"

Roger went to hands and knees, crawled to the edge, reached under and felt around.

"It's about an inch thick," he said. "Rough on the underside."

"Careful now, T'son," Q'nell cautioned. "Don't do anything that might shift our parameters, but . . . do you think you could extend it any?"

"I'll try . . . " Roger closed his eyes, imagined the floor extending outward twenty feet on every side, ending in a smooth edge.

"You did it!" Q'nell said excitedly. "Good boy!" Opening his eyes, Roger was delighted to find the floor exactly as he had imagined it. They walked to the edge.

"You know, this is a little vertiginous, looking down at all that open air," Q'nell said, edging back. "How about filling it in a little?"

Roger pictured green grass under spreading shade trees.

"Remarkable!" Q'nell exclaimed, surveying the parklike result. "Suppose I have a try?"

"Careful," Roger said. "Just anyone may not have the brainpower to do it."

"Stand back," Q'nell said. As Roger watched, a wall winked into existence before his face. For a second or two it was plain white plaster; then a slightly crooked window with a purple-and-pink curtain was suddenly there, with sunlight streaming through it. Roger turned. He was in a room, walled, roofed—and carpeted a moment later in a pattern of pink and yellow flowers.

"Nothing to it," Q'nell said. "Now, a couple of chairs . . . " Two massive mismatched rockers appeared, complete with glossy black satin cushions lettered saigon and mother in glowing blue.

"Horrible," Roger said. "Have you no taste?" He pictured a pair of delicate Chippendales, added a side table with a silver tray bearing a steaming teapot and a pair of dainty cups. He seated himself.

"I'll pour," he offered.

"I'll take a drink of something with some vitamins in it!" Q'nell snorted, and a bottle with a garish label thumped to the table. She produced a corkscrew next, poured out a stiff cupful.

"Hey, that's good stuff!" she exclaimed, smacking loudly. "Want a snort?"

Roger caught a whiff of the powerful brew and shuddered. "Certainly not."

Q'nell poured herself a second, strolled around the room, adding garish pictures in gold frames to the wall, placing lamps with grotesque shades here and there while Roger winced.

"Not bad," she said. "But it still lacks something . . . " She stared at a wall; a door appeared. She opened it on a bedroom containing nothing but an enormous bed.

"How about it, T'son?" she leered. "Feeling tired?"

"Now don't start all that again," Roger said. "The only purpose of this house-building spree was to help us with our orientation, remember?"

"All work and no play make Jackie a dull girl," Q'nell said.

"You've already given me your opinion of playgirls!" Roger yelled. "And anyway, I'm a man! Now stop horsing around and give your attention to the problem!"

"I am, T'son—I am!" Q'nell poured a third hearty libation, drank it, put the cup down, and reached for Roger. He leaped up and dodged behind a rocker.

"Stop it or I'll imagine the biggest policeman you ever heard of!" he yelled.

"Oh yeah?" Q'nell made a grab, missed, almost fell. "Say, that booze is getting to me," she murmured. "Oh well, it helps the party atmosphere." She tossed the cup aside and lunged, hooked a foot on the rocker, and landed headfirst.

"I warned you!" Roger closed his eyes and picture a seven-foot storm trooper, complete with spurred boots, brass knuckles, and a knotted leather whip. There was a soft
thud!
and a metallic tinkle. He opened his eyes to see an empty uniform collapse to the floor.

Q'nell leaped to her feet. "I didn't think you'd have the heart!" she cried blurrily, starting around the chair. Roger pictured a stairway, dashed for it, went up the steps two at a time, found himself on a landing open to the sky. Feet pounded below.

"More stairs!" he commanded, and dashed on. It was a glass-and-chrome-rail construction, rising in a gentle spiral. Too bad he hadn't called for an elevator; he was getting winded.