The Third Magic (8 page)

BRUNCH WITH THE DOC BIKERS

W
hile the skirmish involving
the knights and the bikers in the red bandannas was Backing up traffic nearly to Sturgis's Main Street, four Doc Bikers were settling down to a late breakfast eight blocks away.

They actually were doctors, all four of them from hospitals within a ten-block radius in Chicago. Once a year for the past three years, they left their BMWs and Jags in their driveways and burned rubber away from the city with strains of "Born to Be Wild" thrumming through their brains.

The house in Sturgis where they stayed was a modest ranch with petunias in the flower bed and dime-store ceramic statuettes of cherubs and kittens perched on little corner knicknack shelves in every room. The focus of the living room was a reproduction of a painting of a clown. On the opposite wall was a mounted fish whose mouth, when activated by changes in light, opened and closed while a computer chip implanted in its innards produced a voice singing "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow."

The weekly rental for this dwelling was roughly equivalent to that of a five-star hotel in Paris.

For many of the local residents, who fled from the encroaching motorcyclists as if they were hordes of locusts, renting out their homes during Rally Week provided enough income to last the rest of the year. They could, in fact, have charged double the going rate. As it was, most of the bikers who attended slept on the ground in sleeping bags. Some brought tents and stayed at campgrounds anywhere within a hundred miles of the rally. A very small number stayed in the few hotels and motels in the area, and then only if they had booked their rooms several years in advance. But only the richest bikers—the ones with Italian leather chaps and special cell phone cases built into their handlebars—got the houses.

One of the Doc Bikers, an anesthesiologist named Barry Cohen, was cooking eggs and sausages while the others moved about in various states of readiness for their first day at the rally. The table, like the rest of the furniture in the house, was in the Early American style, and was decorated with orange plastic flowers, salt and pepper shakers shaped like chubby pilgrims, and a game purchased from a truck stop featuring golf tees stuck into a triangular piece of wood. It was a weird setting for men accustomed to gadgets and style. Another of the doctors—a young neurologist with a future worth watching—sat absorbed in the tee game, his perfectly coiffed hair falling into his eyes.

"Is someone going to set the table, or do you just want me to tip the frying pan into your mouths?" Dr. Cohen asked.

"I've just got one more move," the neurologist said, shifting the tees in the game.

"I'll do it." A tall man wearing a vest of Australian lambskin opened the cabinet near the window. "Ed, get us some juice."

"Ed?" the fourth man said, pretending to be offended.

The tall man rolled his eyes. "Sorry. I meant Sandbag."

"Sandman." Ed—in his alternate life a cytopathologist, chained to a microscope in a laboratory—had announced the previous day that he had taken a biker name. It was an initiation of sorts, an entree into the macho mystique.

"Oh, right." The tall man slapped his forehead. "Sandman. Sorry."

"Very funny."

"So pour some juice, Sandman."

"Si, mon capitaine!"
Ed saluted.

"Geez, even the dishes are repulsive," the tall man remarked, turning a scallop-edged plate with a design of brown flowers in the center of it. "Where do these people…" He frowned. "What in the hell..." He put down the plate and strode toward the door.

Cohen looked out the window. "Oh, man," he said with a sigh. "Will you look at that."

Outside, a scruffy biker with a week's worth of beard and mud up to his knees was urinating in the petunia bed.

"Tom'll get him out of there," Ed said. Indeed, even as he spoke, the tall doctor in the beautiful leathers came into view in the window's frame. He gesticulated to the scruffy biker, indicating without any doubt that he wanted the man to leave at once.

The biker was strangely unmoved by being discovered and thus confronted. He zipped up slowly and then turned with a swagger to face Tom, who was much taller than he was. Deliberately, he ground his foot into the petunias.

"Tough guy," Cohen said. Ed laughed.

Then Tom reached out with his long, elegantly clad arm and grabbed the lapel of the little man's leather jacket. He managed to make the biker lose his footing momentarily, but the fellow didn't fall. Instead, with a snarl, he pushed Tom back with both hands.

"Oh, he's getting touchy now."

Cohen turned off the stove. "Maybe we should call the police."

"Over a guy pissing in the yard?" Ed rolled his eyes. "Tom can handle this, okay? Besides, there are four of us."

"Yeah, you're right. I guess," Cohen said. Both figures were now out of sight of the window.

"Can you imagine what the local cops would say? 'Yep. Reckon you city slickers couldn't lick an ice cream cone, har har.'”

At that moment there was a loud thump as the front door slammed open and both men hurtled inside.

Their positions were reversed from the scene in the window: This time the short biker held Tom by his lapels. By his throat, really. With one hand. And Tom's eyes were registering stark terror because in the biker's other hand was a .45 semiautomatic thrust right up to Tom's Adam's apple.

For the first time, the neurologist looked up from his tee game. "Oh, my God," he whispered.

Cohen inched toward the wall phone.

"Get away from that," the biker said.

As soon as Cohen retracted his hand, the biker fired the gun point-blank into Tom's eye. The wall behind him, thick with blood and brain tissue, shook. Several ceramic figurines wobbled and fell to the floor. Then, releasing Tom's body, he trained the barrel of the .45 on the other three.

"Howdy," he said as a slow smile spread across his face. "Name's Pinto."

He fired the second round into Cohen's forehead.

When all four of the occupants of the house were dead, Pinto looked irritably at the blood-spattered breakfast. He was hungry, but no way was he going to eat anything off that table. He headed for the door, then thought better of it. The cost of food at the rally was sky high. He went back into the kitchen, discarded the first layer of sausage patties, then picked up the rest in one hand. Eating the pile like a sandwich, he sauntered back to his bike and headed toward the rally.

FUN TIMES IN HELL

T
he fight in which
Hal had been knocked cold on the street had fizzled out quickly. It was still early in the day, and the bandanna'd bikers soon discovered that they were more interested in slaking their thirst than in recapturing the damsel in the transparent jeans, who did not seem overly distressed, in any case.

Within twenty minutes, both Lugh and Curoi MacDaire were sharing a drink with them in the cavernous vastness of the Full Throttle Saloon while the woman whose bare bottom had started the dispute selected tunes on the jukebox. Momentarily exhausted, none of the participants in the fracas had enough energy left to do anything with her except to admire the woman as she swayed with the music, displaying the creamy white moons that had launched the day's events.

"Tonight," the huge, red-bearded leader of the bikers in bandannas panted, raising his bruised fist in the air, "we got the wet T-shirt contest!"

The room rocked with whistles and shouts and a loud stomping of feet. Lugh, who had no idea what the man was talking about, nevertheless put his arm around him and made noises of approval while chewing a strip of beef jerky.

He liked the red-bearded man. Even though the man was an outlander from this strange place that the knights had been forced to inhabit, he at least behaved like a true man. That was what had most befuddled Lugh about the New World: The men here appeared to take pride in behaving like perfumed eunuchs.

Everywhere he went, Hal—who was himself rather too peace-loving for Lugh's taste, although he had proven himself in battle more than once—was constantly upbraiding him for what Lugh considered normal behavior. Brawling, drinking, lusting after tarts... Hal disapproved of all of these. Even such commonplace activities as boasting, singing, or competing in games of weaponry were frowned upon by the man they were bound to follow as their leader in this place.

In this aspect, Hal was even more stern and joyless than Launcelot—a feat which Lugh and the other knights would once have not believed possible. At least with Launcelot, a man was entitled to do what he deemed necessary to bring wrongdoers to justice. Hal would not even countenance that. Launcelot's attitude could be explained by the fact that he was a Christian, but Hal went even beyond that.

Through the window he could see Launcelot still kneeling over Hal. His nursing was not necessary—Lugh and Curoi MacDaire had dragged Hal into the shade—but that was Lance's way. Besides, in some way that involved the dread Merlin and fearful magic, Launcelot and Hal were of the same blood.

So that would account for why the two of them were inclined to act like old women, one worse than the other. Lugh would never say such a thing, of course. Early on in life, he had found it better for a man as physically imposing and verbally limited as himself to say as little as possible under most circumstances.

Through the tavern window, Launcelot saw Lugh raise a glass with the red-bearded man. Launcelot shook his head in disapproval.

It was unseemly for the knights to associate with the citizenry so intimately. Still, Launcelot could see the affinity between those two. The red-bearded fellow, like many others in this gigantic fair of headless, mechanized horses (which were, according to Bedwyr, not called horses but
hogs
), was a welcome change from most of the men in this place where Merlin had transported them with his magic.

It was the magic, Launcelot thought, that was so hard to get used to. That, and the idea that, against his will, he was alive again.

L
auncelot had died a
violent and less than honorable death.

The year was 524, two years before the death of Arthur Pendragon. Once the cleanest and most modest of the Round Table knights, Launcelot had died filthy, naked, and mad. He had by then been living alone for years in the forest near the Pictish border far to the north of Hadrian's Wall.

He had never recovered from the events concerning the queen. Launcelot's exile, which he had hoped would help him to forget his fallen state, had instead sharpened his memory, causing him to suffer every moment of every day for his inadvertent betrayal of his King and friend.

In the end, he threw himself off a cliff.

Death came virtually instantly. Aside from the long, terrifying fall toward the boulder-strewn stream below, it was painless, which was why he had regretted it as soon as he jumped.

Launcelot had wanted his death, like his exile, to serve as penance for his sins. But in the end, neither had seemed a sufficient punishment. While he tumbled toward death, he thought of the others who, unlike him, had died bravely in battle, bearing the pain of their mortal wounds until such time as the Angel of Christ came to claim their souls. He had been called the greatest of all knights, but in his own mind he was the most lowly, a view punctuated by the ignominy in which his life had ended with his coward's fall to oblivion.

But oblivion had not come, at least not of the permanent variety. There had been an angel, to be sure, a being more magnificent and loving than Launcelot had ever imagined. His ghost, rising from his broken, stinking body, had wept in speechless gratitude at the sight of the genderless spirit who had come to take him to his God.

And that was as far as it went. He ascended, not to the Christian heaven he had anticipated so fervently, but to a sort of holding area, where he found himself alone and mute, surrounded by a thick white fog as if he were a carved figurine encased in wool.

I'm in hell,
he thought, noticing that the angel had vanished. Of course he was. Suicides didn't get to heaven. That, too, had been part of the penance. To suffer not just on earth, but also for eternity. To commit oneself to the flames of damnation for all time.

Yet even in this, Launcelot felt a sense of failure. This was not torture. It was not paradise, certainly, but never could one construe this state of blankness, of comfortable, inert nothingness as anything resembling the punishment he deserved for cuckolding the King of England.

And then he saw a face through the fog, and heard an old man's voice droning....

His heart sank. It was the Merlin! That damned meddling pagan magician was chanting some kind of spell, something so wicked that Launcelot could hear it even through the veils of death and time. Was the old man himself dead, he wondered. If so, why was he here? Surely a sorcerer deserved the most fiery sort of hell. If this place was too good for Launcelot, he thought, then surely it was too good for the wicked Taliesin.

His head was spinning, speculating. Perhaps this was some sort of pagan afterlife. Yes, that would be a suitable eternity for a failed Christian like himself, wandering among the heretics. But then, he mused, what about those who had not found the true way because it had not been introduced to them? Had the heroes of ancient times also come here, he wondered? Was this the resting place of those great warriors who had not known of Christianity?

He pulled himself up short. But that could not be, he thought wildly. Could his ancestors possibly be here with him, him, the failed one, here? In hell? That would be an outrage! His great-grandfather Dulac, who had served as a general under the great Vercingetorix ...

"Oh, do be still. Lance!" the Merlin said crankily.

"Where are you?" Launcelot demanded. "You may not cast a spell on me!"

"I most certainly may. Now be quiet."

In fact, there was very little Launcelot could do. He was, in addition to being dead, not really even speaking, except in the telepathic manner of spirits. Only the Merlin, concentrating now in the extreme way of wizards, could hear him, and heathen beast that he was, the old man was not in the least concerned with Launcelot's immortal soul.

"Consider this your penance, if you must," the Merlin said as the white woolly fog began to swirl. "It's all to serve a good purpose, though."

It was the strangest sensation for Launcelot, as if he were traveling through a dimension other than space. He perceived—without actually seeing, hearing, or feeling—the other knights moving closer to him. He felt a kinship so profound that he believed his heart would break.

I
am not in hell, then,
he whispered in his mind.

"No," the Merlin answered.

"Alas. I do not deserve to be in heaven."

"No doubt," Taliesin said. "But have no fear. This is hardly heaven. You and the others are just being held until you're needed."

"What others? Needed for what?" The white fog around Launcelot twisted into vibrating spikes.

"Calm down. By Mithras, what a worrywart you always were!" The Merlin made a
tut-tutting
sound. "The others are the Knights of the Round Table. And you'll know what you're being held for soon enough."

"They're all here? With me?" He thought silently,
In hell?

"For the last time, it's not hell!" the old man snapped. "Ask the others."

"I don't see any others."

The Merlin exhaled a long, exasperated breath. "That is because you are dead," he explained patiently. "Your eyeballs are rotting somewhere in the Scottish Highlands. Find another way."

Launcelot cast his mind about, sniffing with his soul-senses like a dog.

"There you go," Taliesin said.

"My son Galahad. He's not here. Perhaps he's not dead."

"Not anymore," the old man answered cryptically.

"I beg your pardon?"

"He was dead. But he's been sent back."

"You can't do that!" Launcelot said, aghast.

"Of course I can," the old man bristled.

"It's unnatural!" Launcelot sputtered, then fell silent, trying to control his grief and fear. "Did he die young?" he asked at last. "Galahad, my son?"

There was the slightest hesitation before the Merlin spoke. "He did. He died when he found the Grail."

"He... He actually found it?" There was something close to ecstasy in Launcelot's voice.

"Yes."

"Then the King ..."

"No. It didn't help, really. Arthur died anyway. In battle. Gawain and Kay went with him. Lugh, too. It was the end of all of them," he added softly.

Valiant knights who died honorably
, Launcelot thought, forgetting that thoughts and speech were the same in the state of being in which he found himself.

"But the bravest of all was Galahad," someone else spoke up. It sounded like Fairhands, who had always been as beautiful as a painting, and blessed with the gift of music. "He went back, you know."

"To wait for the King." Another new voice. Bedwyr, Master of Horse.

"I thought the King was dead."

"We're all dead," Curoi MacDaire said with a chuckle. "But Arthur's going to come back. It's the prophecy, don't you know."

"More pagan magic." Launcelot muttered.

"Galahad's gone ahead to wait for him." This from Geraint Lightfoot, who added, "It should have been me. I'm the fastest of the lot of you. I'd run the length and breadth of the whole world to find him."

"It should have been me," another said. It was Agravaine, known to his enemies as Cat's Claws because of the hook that had replaced his severed hand. "I wouldn't have minded going back. Even if I didn't find the King, I'd have had two good hands."

"Well, that's why you weren't picked, isn't it?" boomed Dry Lips. "Galahad will find the King, just as he found the Grail. Aye, and he's earned the privilege, too. No one loved Arthur so well as that one."

Certainly not I,
thought Launcelot,
though I'd wished it with all my
—

"Oh, shut up," Merlin snapped. "Do you really have to feel guilty even after you're dead?"

The others laughed. Now Launcelot knew that he truly was in hell. Still, he admitted grudgingly, it was good to hear the voices of his old friends. "How long has Galahad been back?"

"Four lifetimes," Merlin said casually.

"Four whats?"

Taliesin sniffed. "Since I don't know exactly when Arthur's going to come back, someone has to wait for him."

"And what's he been doing these four lifetimes, besides waiting for the King to be born?"

"Oh, I don't know," the old man said peevishly. "Whatever they do. Let me see. They're calling this year 1258, I think. Ah, yes, he's a baker in Turkey."

"A baker!" Launcelot shouted. "My son, finder of the Holy Grail, greatest of all the Knights of the Round Table, a baker?"

"There's only so much a wizard can do," Taliesin explained defensively.

"A baker of turkeys," Lugh said in amazement.

"Rest easy, Lance."

"Who are you?" the knight seethed.

"It's Tristan. I understand these things."

Launcelot's thoughts made a strangled sound. "You don't understand anything beyond what's kept between a woman's legs! A baker!"

Tristan went on calmly. "But that's how it works, Lancelot. We aren't always knights. Sometimes we go back as bakers. Or cobblers, or farmers, or thieves... or even women."

"I have not been a woman!" Dry Lips bellowed.

"You're the woman, Tristan!" Kay shouted.

"Where's my sword?"

Lugh chortled. "If I was a woman, I'd like a pair of great fat teats and an arse all pink and shiny." No one paid any attention to him.

"By the horned balls of Cernunnos!" thundered Kay.

The Merlin took in a long, exasperated breath and left them there, in the corner of the Summer Country that he had taken for his spell, for another seven and a half centuries.

I
n the meantime, Galahad
waited. Lifetime after lifetime he returned to wait for the King he had vowed to serve for all eternity. He was not aware of the waiting, of course, at least not on the level of human consciousness. The bond he had with Arthur had been forged on another plane altogether.

So while the soul of the man who had been Galahad, son of Launcelot and true champion of Arthur Pendragon, served as a sentinel for the return of the once and future King, his human self carried on quite autonomously.

In addition to his life as a baker, Galahad also lived as a blacksmith, a fishwife, an astronomer in the court of Wenceslas of Prague, a mason who died in a fall off a scaffold while erecting the great cathedral at Rheims, a horseman under Kublai Khan, a Japanese geisha, a beggar in India, an Arab mathematician, a Mexican hairdresser.... There were so many lives, and in each of them there was a feeling that he had been unable to put into words, a feeling of lack that had followed him throughout every minute of every life. He had waited so long, and with so much disappointment, that at the end of the twentieth century, when he was living as an American FBI agent, he threw it all aside one day and got drunk. The sensation was such a relief that he decided to spend the rest of his life in that condition.