The Universe Twister (17 page)

Wearily O'Leary put one foot in front of another—hay foot, straw foot, hay foot—He stumbled over a bundle half buried in the sand. Clothes, dry clothes—pants, shirt, boots, a jacket; probably left behind by some picnicker. He knew he'd been too tired to think of them, and besides he hadn't had that universe-slipping feeling. Hastily, O'Leary put on the dry clothes. There that was better. He felt in the pockets. Miraculously, if that was the word, they were filled with Taffy kisses. He was too bushed to figure this one out now. He scraped a hollow in the sand, building the sand up on one side as a windbreak, and went to sleep.

By midmorning, O'Leary estimated, he had covered no more than five miles of loose sand, in which his feet floundered and slipped with the maddening sense of frustrated progress so familiar in dreams. At each step his boots sank in to the ankle, and when he thrust forward, they slid back. Every time he lifted his blistered feet, it was like hauling a cast-iron anchor out of soft mud. At this rate, he'd never reach the mountains.

He sat down heavily. He pulled loose the bandanna he had tied over his head as an ineffective shield against the increasingly hot sun and mopped his forehead. He wouldn't sweat much more today; there was no moisture left in his body. No hope of a drink in sight, either. He shaded his eyes, scanning the stretch of rippled sand ahead. There was a slight rise to a wind-sculptured crest three hundred yards distant. What if there should happen to be water on the far side of the hill . . . And why shouldn't there be? He envisioned the scene, marshaling what was left of his Psychic Energies. There—had he felt the slight jar that signaled success?

With a sudden sense of urgency, he scrambled up, made for the ridge, stumbling and falling. He was getting weak, he realized, as he rested on all fours before getting up and plowing on. But just over the rise would be an oasis, green palms, a pool of clear, cool water, blessed shade.

Only a few yards now; he lay flat, catching his breath. He was a little reluctant to top the rise; suppose the oasis wasn't there after all? But that was negative thinking, not the sort of thing Professor Schimmerkopf would approve of at all. He got up, tottered on, reached the hilltop and looked down across a gentle slope of sun-glared sand at the square bulk of a big red Coke machine.

It stood fifty feet away, slightly tilted, a small drift of sand against one side, all alone in the vast wasteland. O'Leary broke into an unsteady run, stumbled to a halt beside the monster and noted approvingly the soft hum of the compressor. But where did the power come from? The heavy-duty electric cable trailed off a few yards and disappeared into the sand. But never mind the nitpicking details!

O'Leary tried his left pants pocket, brought out a dime and dropped it with trembling fingers into the slot. There was a heart-stopping pause after the coin clattered down; then a deep interior rumble, a clank and the frosted end of a bottle banged into view in the delivery chute. O'Leary snatched it up, levered the cap off in the socket provided, and took a long, thirsty drag. It was real Coke, all right, just like uptown. Funny; it was a long way to the nearest bottling plant. Lafayette lifted the bottle, peered at its underside.
Dade City, Florida
, said the raised letters in the glass. Amazing! Civilization was penetrating even into the most primitive areas, it appeared.

But what about Artesia? Surely it wasn't included on the rounds of the soft-drink distributors. Ergo, it could only have come from the "real" world—transported here by the concentrated O'Leary will.

He had already established that, when he evoked conveniences like bathtubs and dresses, his subconscious merely reached out and grabbed the nearest to hand. The idea that he could reach them all the way from Dade City was a bit frightening. Still, it was a comfort in a way; it lent a note of some sort of rationality to what had heretofore seemed pure magic.

What it boiled down to was that he had somehow stumbled onto the trick of moving objects around from one spot to another—not dreaming them up out of whole cloth. But that seemed to imply that Artesia was a real place! If that were so, where was it?

O'Leary put the question aside.

Ten minutes later, refreshed and with two spare bottles tucked in his hip pockets, O'Leary resumed the march toward his distant objective.

* * *

It was late afternoon when he reached the foothills—bare angles and edges of broken, reddish rock, thrusting up from the sea of sand. Cool air moved here in the shadow of the peaks above, soothing his sunburned face. He rested on a flat ledge, finished his last Coke, emptied the sand from his boots for the twentieth time since dawn, then resumed his trek, bearing northwest now, following the line of the escarpment. Still a long way to go, but the footing was better here. The sand was firmer, and there were patches of pebbly ground and even a few stretches of flat rock—a real luxury. With luck he should make the pass by dark; then tomorrow the final leg to Lod's HQ. As for water, that was no problem; he'd just provide a nice spring up ahead somewhere—and while he was at it, why not a steed, too?

O'Leary stopped dead. Why hadn't he though of that sooner? Of course, it would have been a little difficult to convince himself that there was a horse standing by, all by himself, out in the desert. An animal wasn't like a Coke machine; he had to have food and water. A long extension cord wouldn't do the job.

But here, with plenty of opportunities for nice deep caves, and hidden fastnesses up in the hills, sure, a mount could be wandering around here. In fact, he'd find him, just around one of those outcroppings ahead. A fine, sturdy beast, adapted to the desert, strong, high-spirited, bright-eyed, and not too nervous to get close to . . .

Four outcroppings and two hours later, O'Leary's pace had flagged noticeably. No horse yet—but that didn't mean, he reminded himself, that he wouldn't find him soon. He hadn't said which outcropping he'd be behind. Probably this next one, just another half a mile ahead.

He plodded on. Getting thirsty again. He'd have to produce that spring pretty soon—but first, the mount. His boots had been designed for riding, not hiking. The sand inside his collar and under his belt was wearing the hide away, too. Not much fun, walking across a desert—but then, Adoranne probably hadn't enjoyed her crossing, either.

He reached the point of rock, thrusting out like the prow of a ship, a vertical escarpment looming up forty, fifty feet above the sands. He angled out to skirt the far end, rounded the point, and found himself looking along a canyonlike ravine, cut through the towering mass of rock. The pass! He had reached it!

He hurried out into the lane of late sunlight streaming down through the gap, his long shadow bobbing behind him. The sun was an orange disc above the flat horizon, reflecting bloodily from the walls of the defile. The sand here was disturbed, as though by the passing of many feet; the low sun etched the prints of boots and hoofs in sharp relief. A horse had passed this way not too long ago—several horses: Lod and his party, with Adoranne, no doubt. There were other prints, too, O'Leary noted—the trail of a small lizard, a row of catlike paw marks—and over there—what was that? O'Leary followed the tracks with his eye. They were large—impossibly large, great three-toed impressions like something made by a giant bird. But who ever heard of a bird with feet a yard across? He smiled at the whimsy. Probably just a trick of light on shifting sand. But where was his horse? He had definitely ordered it for delivery before clearing the pass . . .

There was a sound from ahead, startling in the stillness. Ah, there he was now! O'Leary stopped and cocked his head, listening. The sound came again, a scrape of hoof on rock. He smiled broadly and tried out the whistle Roy Rogers used for calling Trigger. With his parched lips, it came out a weak
tweet
. Far up the pass, a shadow moved.

Something grotesquely tall detached itself from the deep shadow of a buttress of stone at the side of the ravine—a shape that stood fifteen feet high, slender necked, great bodied, stalking on two massive legs like a monstrous parody of a Thanksgiving turkey, except that the knees bent forward. A head like a turtle's turned his way, eyed him with bright green eyes. The lipless mouth opened and emitted a whistling cry.

"Th-that wasn't exactly wh-what I had in mind," O'Leary announced to the landscape. It occurred to him to run, but somehow his feet seemed frozen to the spot. Through them he could feel a distinct tremor in the rock at each step of the titan. It came on, moving with ponderous grace, its relatively small forearms folded against a narrow chest, the great curve of the belly gleaming pink in the failing light. Fifty feet from O'Leary, it halted, staring over his head and out across the desert as though pondering some weighty problem unrelated to small, knee-high creatures who invaded its domain. O'Leary stared, rooted to the spot. The seconds were ticking past with agonizing slowness. In a moment, O'Leary knew, the iguanodon—he recognized the type from an admirable illustration he had seen in a recent book on dinosaurs—would notice him again, remember what had started it lumbering in his direction. He pictured it wandering on, an odd leg hanging carelessly from the corner of the horny mouth, half swallowed, already forgotten.

He caught himself. No point in helping disaster along with vivid imaginings. He wasn't dead yet. And maybe he wouldn't be, if he could just think of something—anything!

A second lizard, to engage the first in mortal combat while he scuttled away to safety? Too risky; he'd be squashed in the sparring. How about a tank—one of those German Tiger models, with the big 88mm. gun! No, too fantastic. A diversion, perhaps—a herd of nice fat goats wandering by. But there weren't any goats out here. Just himself and the dinosaur—Lod's dragon, the thought dawned suddenly! And he'd dismissed the whole thing as a superstitious fancy. He'd been wrong about that—and about a lot of other things. And now he'd never have a chance to correct his errors. But he couldn't give up yet. There had to be something.

The great reptile stirred, swung his head about; O'Leary clearly heard the creak of scaled hide as it moved. Now it was turning back, dropping its gaze, fixing on the small figure of the man before it. A low rumble sounded from its stomach; it raised a foot, came striding forward.

O'Leary reached to his back pocket and yanked out a handful of taffy kisses. With a roundhouse swing, he hurled them straight at the oncoming monster's snout. The mouth opened with the speed of a winking eye and engulfed the tidbits. O'Leary turned to run, twisted an ankle, fell full length. The shadow of the giant fell across him. He tried to evoke the image of Colby Corners, willing himself there. Even drowning in the bay was preferable to serving as hors d'oeuvre to an oversized Gila monster—but his mind was a shocked blank.

There was a peculiar, sucking sound from above, like a boot being withdrawn from particularly viscous mud. He turned his head, looked up; the monster was poised above him, chewing thoughtfully, strings of sticky taffy linking the working jaws. O'Leary hesitated. Should he lie still and hope the monster would forget him or try a retreat while it was occupied?

A pointed tongue flicked out, snagged a loop of taffy dangling by one horny cheek. The behemoth cocked its head and eyed O'Leary. It was a peculiarly unnerving scrutiny.

O'Leary edged away, scrabbling backward on hands and knees. The dinosaur watched; then it took a step, closing the gap. With a final snap, it downed the last of the candy. O'Leary scuttled faster; the titan followed. O'Leary reached the wall of the canyon and started along its base. The monster came after him, watching with the same sort of interest that a cat evinces in a wounded mouse.

Ten minutes of this race, O'Leary decided, flopping down to breathe, were enough. If the thing was going to eat him, it could go ahead. Unless he could banish it, somehow.

Go away
, he thought frantically.
You've just remembered your—your mate, that's it—and you have to hurry off now
.

It wasn't going to work. The dinosaur was too close, too real, with its warty, crevassed hide, its cucumber smell, its glittering eye. He couldn't begin to concentrate. And now the big head was dropping lower, the jaws parting. This was it! O'Leary squeezed his eyes shut . . .

Nothing happened. He opened them. The vast reptilian face was hanging before him, not two yards away—and the look in the eyes was . . . hopeful?

O'Leary sat up. Maybe the thing wasn't a man-eater. Maybe it was tame. Maybe—

But of course! He had ordered a steed! This was it! Back in the palace, when he'd ordered a bath, he had gotten the next best thing. This time it seemed he had somehow summoned the neighborhood dragon—and it liked taffy!

O'Leary tossed another sample of Aunt Hooty's best to the monstrous beast. It caught it like a dog snapping at a fly, except that the clash as the jaws met was louder.

O'Leary tossed half a dozen together, then the rest of the handful. The dinosaur leaned back on its tremendous tail with a sigh like a contented submarine and munched the goodies. O'Leary sighed too, slumped back against the rock. That had been a harrowing quarter hour—and it wasn't over yet. If he could just sneak away now.

He started off, moving as unobtrusively as possible. The iguanodon watched him go. Twenty feet, thirty feet; just around that next turn now, and he'd bolt.

The reptile came to its feet and padded after him, dainty as an earthquake. O'Leary halted; the huge creature squatted, holding its head low, as though waiting.

"Go 'way," O'Leary squeaked. He made shooing motions. The dinosaur regarded him gravely—almost expectantly.

"Scram!" he shouted. "Who do you think I am, Alley Oop?"

Then an idea struck him. He'd already deduced that the monster had appeared in response to his yearnings for a steed. Could it be? What an impression he'd make on Adoranne if he came cantering up to Lod's hideout on
that!
And since it didn't appear that he'd ever shake the brute, he might as well give it a try. He wouldn't be any more vulnerable seated on its back than he was jumping around under its nose, and anyway—hadn't that book said the iguanodon was a vegetarian?