“Tedwar?”
“Downstairs. Locked up, I’m afraid. He’s in bad shape. Chameleon found out what’s wrong with him.”
“Don’t tell me. I already know. Can you see to it that he isn’t released? I promised him I’d help him.”
‘1 hope it works out.”
I told her where I wanted to go and she agreed to accompany me. Not long after, we both leaped through a yellow ring in Gothland and landed in the oil camp. The black fluid still gushed from the pipe and down onto the barracks. The entire place was deserted. Kisko, Wheaty, Deron and the working crew were all gone, to jail I presumed.
It was easy when we both called the ring at the same time. It rose gracefully into the air, carrying the pipe with it and then we directed it to dart forward, which it did, leaving the pipe suddenly unsupported. The flow of oil abruptly ceased. The ring made a hasty departure straight down into the ground while the loose section of pipe crashed onto the buildings. How the fire started I neither knew nor cared. Lamana and I escaped through the first blue ring we saw while behind us Gorwyn’s brilliant plans went up in smoke.
Til meet you at the farm in five or ten minutes,” I said to Lamana and left her. Traveling through D for a few seconds, I stepped into Gothland again. Choosing a familiar labyrinth, I loped down its length to a crevice jam-packed with a couple of people I knew. There wasn’t a goth or slok in sight. Thankfully the deterioration process in the dimension was extremely slow so that it wasn’t overly unpleasant to take a haunch in my jaws and haul one body topside. Within a short time I had both corpses lying beside a smoking volcano on the surface. Calling a yellow ring, I laboriously shoved the twins through onto good old mother Earth.
They cried because of their bad memories, laughed with relief at being alive, frowned at thoughts of their own idiocy and the fact that once again I had pulled their chestnuts out of the fire.
“We’re sick of being killed and then restored but mostly of the first,” said Pat. “You have our solemn promise that we’ll never again interfere in your life.”
“Trouble follows you,” said Mike. “Knowing you isn’t a good idea. I think maybe we’ll go to China and hunt for work. Are you sure Gorwyn and Erma aren’t hunting for us?”
“Yes”
“You could have let us follow you. They wouldn’t have killed us if you hadn’t had your Indian friends take the receiver.”
“Bye, bye,” I said.
For the first time they noticed where they were. “What is this place?” said Pat “Why did you bring us here? I don’t see any rings anywhere.”
A few drifted here and there but they were the skittish kind and useful only to someone like myself who could force them to settle down for a moment or two. As for the twins, they couldn’t control rings which meant they would have to hike more than forty-six hundred meters down Mount Whitney. I hoped the trek took them a year.
So I popped back to my farm to meet Lamana and together we would decide what to do about our problems, but it didn’t work out that way because I was careless and walked right into Erma’s waiting arms.
“Where are they, flea?” she said after she nearly knocked my brains out with a gentle cuff of her hand. At least Olger hadn’t been hurt too badly. Tied to a chair before the fireplace, she had a few bum marks on her arms but I could tell she was in good shape by the contempt in her expression. Lamana sat nearby, untied but dazed. Apparently Erma had started on her just before I arrived.
“Why do you think I worked for that coconut?” said the big woman to me, and I assumed she was referring to Gorwyn. “I meant to get the glasses and have myself some power.” Holding me with one hand, she opened my bottom lip with the other. “Don’t pretend you don’t know all about them. Bass saw you wearing them at the camp. She saw you disappear into D. Where are they? Where’d you hide them?”
Lamana staggered up behind her and crashed a chair down on her head. Cursing, Erma reached back and tried to grab her. Meanwhile I wriggled from the heavy grasp and climbed out a window. There were rings all over the place and as I was in the act of only thinking about one of them, Erma made like a tackle behind me, got me by one foot, brought me down hard and caused the goggles to fly out of my pocket. They landed three meters in front of us where Lamana scooped them up and ran.
For a few minutes we played toss over Erma’s head. It was like daring a runaway tank and I knew that sooner or later this huge killer would get the idea that if she broke one of our necks, the game would stop.
“Here comes a fat blue onel” cried Lamana, tossing the glasses over Erma’s head.
I caught them, feinted to the left and then darted to the right. It wasn’t an entirely successful move because the big woman in the red dress was neither dumb nor slow. I stepped in the way of a strong gust of body odor before her reaching fingers took hold of my thigh. Bellowing in pain, I yanked free and ran. Heavy footsteps pounded behind me as I caught up with Lamana and then the two of us, or maybe it was three, tumbled headlong into Gothland. At least the glasses were left behind and I would pick them up when I muted back onto Earth. Or maybe I shouldn’t have felt so relieved, after all. Erma had only to knock me out or kill me and then shove me through a yellow ring and the goggles would be there in my hand.
Three of us went tumbling down a scorched hill of tar, lava and brimstone. I was a big goth, Lamana was a medium-size one while Erma had to be the biggest monster I had ever seen. Her fangs were at least sixteen centimeters long and her paws looked like round pillows fringed with daggers. She took one look at me and snorted.
Deliberately I ran away from Lamana. Erma didn’t particularly want her but would no doubt kill her at the first opportunity, besides which this chase wasn’t going to end in a snout to snout confrontation if I could help it. There was no virtue in inviting defeat.
Erma came for me and Lamana followed us for a while but soon fell far behind. I leaped and scrambled up and over the smoky terrain as athletically as I could but still the giant behind me gained ground. Not intentionally did I enter the labyrinth since the jagged entrance looked like a hole leading to some high rocks, but once inside I found the way barred except for a narrow tunnel. Thinking it might become too small for Erma to follow, I sped into the darkness only to find that the corridor soon widened. She almost caught me as I entered an amphitheater but I was accustomed to playing in those surroundings and knew there should be a hidden tunnel above the one I was just exiting. Erma took a chunk out of my flank as I made a quick right turn and leaped for sloping rocks.
The labyrinth wasn’t as small as I hoped but it slowed my enemy a bit and allowed me to reach a three-way fork. I turned left and experienced a thrill of triumph as I saw a green ring drift through the rock wall and hover in my pathway. But then I knew my victory wasn’t all that complete as the sound of big paws slapping stone came close behind me. Erma had also taken the left fork.
The ring remained where it was and I dived through it in a hurry. Mutating into a tiny swimmer, I darted toward a large cluster of seaweed and wound my way as deeply into it as possible before Erma grabbed it and shook it to pieces. Obviously she had known exactly where I had gone. Naturally she couldn’t know which section flung me with it and so while she demolished first one and then another I tried slipping away by moving above her. Cunning, crafty and ever on the alert, she saw me and plunged upward through the water.
It wouldn’t have mattered to me what color the ring was floating just to the north of me. I entered it quickly, not caring that its purple hue really wasn’t alluring, nor was I fond of its oval shape.
I muted back into human form except that I was now unusually hairy. In fact I was decked from head to toe in a natural fur coat. Also I was wading knee-deep in an icy stream while a blizzard howled around me. The sky was dark with driving sleet, the stream continued to be freezing cold and in the meantime Erma made loud splashing noises behind me. I guessed she grew weary of the chase. Impatiently weary, not tired.
Sloshing
along, I suddenly ducked as a boulder-size rock flew at me. It hit Erma but I was too busy to be amused. Either this planet rained stones as well as frozen water or it had natives who resented our intrusion.
I never saw the planet’s people which was just as well since I hadn’t the time or presence of mind to appreciate them. Altering my course, I plowed upstream until it occurred to me that Erma probably couldn’t see any better than I in the raging storm. Locating a particularly shadowy spot, I paused and waited, shielded my eyes and watched as a huge and hairy creature lumbered past me. Just seeing her made me shudder from more than the cold. Bad enough without fur, Erma now looked worse than my old acquaintance, the lummox, who used to be on Lamana’s mountain.
She might have been half blind but her hearing was just fine, and she proved it by changing course and following me. I plunged toward the place where we had first entered the dimension, stopped and blinked sleet out of my eyes while I hunted for the ring. It was no longer there but another one was, a small blue specimen that suited me well enough. Anticipating a tight squeeze, I stuck in my arms and head and then grunted in surprise and dismay as the thing expanded and dumped me off an escarpment in Gothland.
First my mind had tired and gradually every physical form I assumed during the chase became weary. Now as I loped up a smoldering hill of cinders and red rock I knew what exhaustion was. Erma was not going to let me mute to Earth and grab the glasses. She must have been tired too but the lure of much power evidently lent her extra stamina. She came after me like a juggernaut bent on my destruction.
I tried running my legs off while I ran out of ideas. As a matter of fact I wasn’t thinking too clearly throughout all that stampeding and muting. Conceivably I could have stayed on the lookout for a ring that would take me to Lamana’s clinic or even to Solvo’s office. Of course both places might be empty, so I wouldn’t be any better off, but it made no difference since I never thought of them. There wasn’t time.
Just as I was giving serious attention to the idea of dying, I saw a ring on the top of a low escarpment. Normally I wouldn’t have given it a second glance since I knew very well what lay between its ugly gray boundaries. Having already been that way once before, I knew it was a doorway to a world where fliers, sphex and huge, smelly glots lived.
Erma raked me with a claw as I hurtled off the incline and dropped into a shallow tar pit. She jumped in after me. Being smaller and lighter, I could wade faster than she, reached the shore ahead of her and made as if to climb the mountain again. She bit off a piece of my left rear paw.
Now I was more than ever determined to reach the gray ring for I was all out of opportunities. Erma still wasn’t all the way clear of the tar pit so I stopped long enough to kick her in the head. As she fell backward, I braced myself and leaped for the top of the escarpment.
There was no need for me to look to see if my pursuer still followed. I could feel her breath on my haunches, hear her pant as she anticipated my death and, trying to make the best leap of my life, I went into the gray dimension fast and hard, hoping she would do the same. She did.
Dinglo, or some monstrosity exactly like the one I had known, squatted in the valley with his heavy lidded eyes looking for all the world like twin pools of mud. He stank like a thousand corpses. Fliers worked on his body to keep him healthy while mites hovered above him in thick clouds.
I zoomed into the gray sky directly over the valley, needing no time to adjust to my new body. Owning a set of strong wings, I used them to bank sharply to the left, and the movement was made just in time to evade an endless banner of a tongue that roared out of Dinglo’s mouth. The dripping weapon stretched greedily for me, flicked back into the cave as it missed and then emerged again as Erma burst into the dimension.
It’s hard to say what she saw in her last few moments of life. She was a large flier with powerful wings but she was also human and needed a few spaces of time in which to orient herself. Of them she was deprived. The glot knew a tidbit when he saw one and Erma screamed loud and long as she stuck fast to the red banner. One moment she was a writhing, shrieking flier and in the next she went into the trap like a bird into a cuckoo clock.
Shaking, shivering, shuddering, nauseated and full of regret that I was alive, I ignored the fliers who came to investigate me, soared high toward a yellow ring and entered its enveloping folds. I went home, from one menace to others and perhaps the new ones would be my last.
Lamana sat on a fence at the farm, waiting for me. She would never be as blank faced as her father and I read the anxiety in her expression as she stared behind me while I walked toward her.
“She’s gone,” I said. “Permanently. Dinglo.”
She gave a slight shudder. “My father called. He’s located Gorwyn on the campus at Mutat. Raving mad.”
I hadn’t done any work in my human form but I was tired. “Let’s call him back and finish this.”
It took us only a few minutes to arrive at the school and there we waited for Solvo’s copter. He brought Tedwar and Bud Jupiter with him as I had requested.
Gorwyn hunted for his lost goggles in the grass of the campus. Sometimes he scrambled on his hands and knees, parting blades with great care, while at other times he leaped about and stamped the ground with rage. Now and then he raced across the lawn to a new area where he began his search anew. He looked nothing like the sedate scholar I had known but his face was a weird and frightening mask of glaring eyes, pinched nostrils and slack jaw. He needed a shave, shower and change of clothes. He needed a new brain.
Not having all the facts, I could only guess how he had inserted himself with Orfia Kint and her colleagues at the university. Most likely he had simply walked in and asked for a job, and why wouldn’t he be given one when he probably knew more about rings than anyone living? Who else but an expert and a genius could poke an oil pipe through a pair of rings and make them stand still for it? It was too bad Croff hadn’t been a part of the inner group for then he would have known everything, or most of it; he would have told me about it and something might have been done sooner.
Gorwyn merely bared his teeth when he saw me after which he resumed his insane hunt for a pair of goggles he had never owned and which at that moment rested in my pants pocket He reacted differently when Tedwar stepped from Solvo’s copter, let out an animal-like howl of derision, contempt and fear. Only later did he notice Bud Jupiter who was supported on each side by Solvo’s people. Gorwyn stiffened and stood like a statue for a second or two before giving a shriek of rage. With an air of desperation he flung himself down and searched through the grass. Strangely he made no protest as two men lifted him up.
“You promised to help me,” Tedwar said to me. He looked around, saw Gorwyn, saw Bud Jupiter, frowned as if he were trying to remember something. “What are we doing here?” he asked.
“If you do what I tell you you’ll be all right.”
“Why should I trust you?” His tone was rough as his mood changed in a flash. “I never liked you.”
“Yes, I know. I should have kicked you around like everyone else did and then you wouldn’t have minded me.”
I put on the glasses, caught a blue double ring zooming across the sky, halted its progress and caused it to land gently in front of us. I didn’t know how clearly he saw it “You want me to go through that thing?” he said. “Is that it?”
“Of course she does, stupid,” said Bud Jupiter. Momentarily lucid, he let a grin twist his evil old face. “You’re me when I was little and this son of a maniac over here is me when I was grown. Any way you look at it, it’s me. Let’s go.” Jupiter took a firm grip on a writhing, whining Gorwyn and kicked him until he stood up.
Tedwar looked at me. “That cant be right. I’d remember a thing like that, wouldn’t I? Just because I can’t pin down the memory of what happened—”
Jupiter pushed him through the ring before he could finish the sentence. I saw the startled look on his face just before he disappeared. That was the way he w
ent out, too surprised and puzzled to be scared. As for Gorwyn, terror made his knees give way and he went through the ring with Jupiter’s boot in his rear.
A rush of horror and grief nearly bowled me over as I stared at the spot where Tedwar had vanished. “Maybe I’m wrong,” I whispered to Lamana. “I hope I’m wrong.”
Seeming to read my mind, she said, “You aren’t. Chameleon got it all out of his subconscious. Don’t have too many hard feelings about the old man. As soon as he did it, he wanted to go right back into the ring but Gorwyn ran away. Tedwar followed him.”
Bud Jupiter came shambling back onto the campus a few minutes later. He was alone and cackling in amusement. I stood there staring, waiting for Gorwyn and Tedwar to become real and living again, and all the while fear beat a hollow cadence somewhere inside me.
“We did a thing or two in my time, didn’t we?” said Jupiter. “Too bad I didn’t use one of those other stalls. It would have been wilder if I’d split up ten ways. I think I’ll go back in.”
They grabbed him.
“I always had a condition, you know?” he said. “From my infancy on. Interfered with my work and finally made a mental cripple of me.” Looking at me, he said, “Just before I had my last breakdown I started making those glasses. That other me, that Gorwyn, must have had the upper hand in finishing the job. Nobody but he could have done it. They rightly belong to me.” He was put back into the copter and taken away.
That was the end of another of my enemies. Or was it two or three? Now there was just one left; Orfia Kint.
Having put the goggles back in my pocket, I took them out and used them again, stepped into 4-D and hunted through that alien universe until I found the corridor of the blue double rings. Up and down the hallway I went, sealing every doorway, and when I had finished I was satisfied. No one would be going through double blue rings anymore, at least not while I had anything to say about it.
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