by Rick Shelley
"Did you have to bring that up?"
"Yep, I had to. Okay, let's give Chicago a try, but cautiously. Stay behind me while I open the way."
"You really believe this stuff, don't you?"
I shook my head, as emphatically as I could. "I've had my face rubbed in it too many times for any of it to be a question of belief. The rules are different here. Each of my two elf swords came from a dead elf warrior. Parthet has the head of the second one in his workroom, in a tub of booze. He's cooked up some magic that lets the elf talk to us. And the danger sense has been keeping me alive for more than three years. It's all real, Joy, whether anyone believes in it or not. Like gravity."
Joy's face got a little pale.
"It takes time to sink in, I know," I said, softer. "But this isn't Wonderland or Never-Never Land. This is as real as the Coral Lady or lung cancer."
"And just as dangerous?"
"At times. But there's danger everywhere. You just have to know how to deal with the particular dangers of the place you are. Like street smarts, knowing how to stay out of trouble in a city back home. Chicago is probably a lot more dangerous than Varay. You just have to get used to a different set of dangers."
Joy nodded, very slowly.
"There's something else maybe we should talk about," I said. "Your parents. Your brother and his family."
"What about them?"
"There are no telephone lines or mail deliveries between St. Louis and Varay, for one thing. For another, if things keep getting weird, this may be the only safe place left. Relatively safe. At least there are no nuclear bombs or crazy terrorists willing to kill thousands of innocent people to get their names or beliefs mentioned on the news." No, terrorism in the buffer zone was retail rather than wholesale.
"How can I tell anyone back home about this place? I'm not sure that I believe it yet."
"I know the problem," I reminded her. "Look, we don't have to do it right this minute, maybe, but you should be thinking about it. Maybe the next target will be the Gateway Arch or one of the riverboats on the Mississippi."
"If you're trying to scare me, you're doing a darn good job."
I sat on the bed and shook my head, slowly this time. "I'm not trying to scare you, Joy. This Coral Lady bombing and all the strange things that have happened here-I don't know how to handle it all myself yet. And I don't know how much more of this roller-coaster up-and-down we'll have. This world has dangers. It has elflords and dragons, and evil wizards. It has sicknesses that our world hasn't seen in ages, but not as much as you might think. It's primitive and it can be uncomfortable for anyone who's only known the comforts of modern civilization back home. But it doesn't have as many wholesale dangers as what I used to call the 'real' world."
"And this is where you belong." No question. Joy looked out the bedroom window, then came over to the bed. "So this is where I belong too. I'll get used to it." Her smile was weak, but she sat next to me and put her head on my shoulder.
"I will get used to it," she repeated.
"I know you will," I said. "Come on. Let's go get some lights and whatever else we need. I've got a pair of good camping lanterns with fairly fresh batteries back in Chicago."
"No hurry. I don't think I'll be doing much reading tonight. Besides, I just thought of something else. Aaron disappeared from Joliet again. They may come looking for you."
"It's possible," I agreed. "But if he simply disappeared out of a room filled with people, after we left, they're going to be pretty confused to start with." I started to laugh, then stopped quickly. "It's really not funny," I said. "I feel sorry for them, especially the aunt and uncle. They had enough shocks to deal with already."
I stood and stretched. "You were right about the psychology, though. Let's visit Chicago anyhow. See what's on the news. It's been more than forty-eight hours since the Coral Lady explosion. There ought to be something fresh about it on the airwaves."
"You're sure you want to go?"
"Yeah. Just remember what I said about when I open the doorway. Stay behind me. If there's big danger close, I'll know."
Joy nodded, and we kissed before we went to the doorway.
I hesitated before I touched the silver tracing, though, thinking. Danger can come in a variety of guises. At the moment, a crowd of police uniforms in my Chicago apartment would be almost as dangerous as a raging elf warrior, especially if they saw my entrance and the elf swords I had slung back over my shoulders. Even though I wasn't around when Aaron Wesley Carpenter disappeared from a room filled with people, there would certainly be questions for me. There was a damn good chance that my connection to him might make me a fugitive in my native world. I sure as hell couldn't explain the way he vanished so that Illinois bureaucrats would buy it. Partly, that was why I wore the elf swords even though we were going back to the other world. Mostly, it was because I was more used to blades than guns by this time. A sword can't misfire, and it never runs out of ammunition. But it would sure add to the confusion if police saw me appear out of nowhere with those blades over my shoulders.
Finally, I touched the silver tracing, ready to back off and break the connection if I had to. But there were no uniforms visible, no flood of danger signals pouring through the passage. Joy and I stepped through and I made a quick tour of the apartment to make sure that there were no surprises.
"Perfectly safe," Joy said. I don't know if that was for my benefit or her own. She stayed close to me through the entire inspection.
"Looks like," I agreed. "But if there's a knock at the front door, we bail out the nearest exit. I'm not ready to stand around and answer questions." I showed her where all of the magic doorways were and told her where each one led.
"What time is it?" Joy asked.
I shrugged, then headed into the bedroom, where the nearest clock was.
"Ten-fifty," I said, even though Joy was still at my side and could read the clock as easily as I could. "Too late for the regular news. Nightline should still be on, though, and then we can switch over to CNN." We headed for the living room.
"I'm going to call home, since we're here," Joy said. I nodded and turned on the television. I was only moderately surprised when a quick scan of the channels showed that there was still coverage of the disaster on all three regular networks. It took a few minutes to find out that the shows were just long special reports. The continuous coverage had finally ended, earlier that day.
I tuned in during the middle of a piece from the State Department. There had been strident complaints and threats out of Teheran, Beirut, and Tripoli. The complaint was that the United States had strafed, bombed, and firebombed a city in North Africa, totally destroying it and killing as many as fifteen thousand civilians. The threats were of massive retaliation against American citizens and installations around the world. The Pentagon, the State Department, and the President acknowledged that we had attacked a training camp for terrorists in the Libyan desert and suggested that the total number of casualties, killed and wounded, had to be considerably below five hundred.
While Joy was on the telephone talking to her mother, I kept the volume low on the television, just loud enough so I could hear it. And although I was listening to the news, I couldn't help overhearing parts of Joy's conversation, which got more agitated as it went on and Joy heard more of the news, from her mother and from the TV.
"Gil and I got married yesterday. I think it was just yesterday," Joy said after nearly ten minutes of other talk. I nodded. It had been just the day before.
"Well, it was a spur-of-the-moment decision," Joy said. "You know we talked about it before Gil went off on his business trip, and we just decided that the time was right, you know, after that bombing."
Close enough, I thought.
"No, I am not pregnant."
Then the conversation got interesting.
"We got married in a castle… No, we're not in Europe. I'm calling from Chicago… Well, I can't really explain where the castle is over the phone, but I can
show you if you and Daddy come up here to visit."
By that time, Joy and I had seen film of the bombing runs made against the terrorist school in retaliation for the Coral Lady. The TV in the living room has a forty-five-inch screen. It's almost like being at the theater. Joy was staring at it while she talked on the phone. The only way that fifteen thousand people could have been in the few buildings we saw in the film was if they were already dead and stacked up like firewood.
Then reporters covered another string of threats against the United States and all things American.
"Why don't you come up over the weekend?" Joy said on the phone. "Get Danny and his family and all of you come… It is? You're sure today is Friday?… I guess it is. Well then, next weekend. That gives you a whole week to get hold of Danny and make arrangements… You have the address here. We're right on the lake… That's right, not too far from Wrigley Field… No, I don't know who's playing next weekend. I don't think Gil does either."
I shook my head. I didn't even know if they were in town. I hadn't been out to a Cubs game since April, the first week of the season, just before I started my goodwill tour of the buffer zone.
"No, he says he doesn't know. We'll check and let you know… Okay, next week, Saturday morning. Bye, Mom." Joy hung up and came over to sit next to me on the sofa. Close. She seemed drained by the call.
"They're coming?" I asked.
"Mom and Dad, for sure. I don't know about Danny and his family. Mom thinks I'm on drugs or something, talking about castles. She wants to see the castle, and she wants to see a marriage certificate."
I laughed. "You knew it wouldn't be easy."
"We don't have a marriage certificate."
"I'll have Baron Kardeen draw one up. Real parchment. That should impress your mother."
"Once we convince her that's it legal."
The network anchorman on the television was drawing in comments from a half-dozen correspondents stationed around the world now, with the predictable reactions of diplomats in the capitals of our allies and others.
"It is going to get worse here, isn't it?" Joy asked.
"Probably," I said. "That's why you decided to get your family here, isn't it? To take them to Varay?"
Joy nodded. "I guess. I'm still not sure how we're going to manage it, though. Can we find room for them?"
"No problem," I assured her. No problem except, maybe, time. Eight days was long enough for a lot of varieties of hell to break out. But it wouldn't help to worry Joy about that too quickly.
"I may be busy by then," I added, "but you've got the rings, so you can make the transfer. Get my mother to help if you have to. She knows both worlds. If I'm away, just don't spend too much time here."
"Where are you going?"
"I don't know yet." I know I had just finished telling Lesh that I didn't want anyone scaring Joy with stories of my "exploits," but I couldn't keep Joy completely in the dark. I just had to try to ease her into it gently. "It depends on what Parthet and Kardeen find out about the dragon eggs and all the other crazy things going on. I'm the official Hero. When things get rough, there's plenty of work for the Hero." And then, because Joy had a right to know what I was getting into, I started to tell her about the interview with the dead son of the Elflord of Xayber, about the family jewels of the Great Earth Mother and the quest I would have to begin as soon as Parthet could point me in the right direction-until a new item on the television stopped me.
"Perhaps understandably," the anchorman said, "there has been a dramatic increase in the number of UFO sightings since the bombing of the Coral Lady. But tonight, we have the following videotape recorded by a news cameramen from our affiliate in Chattanooga, Tennessee, during the station's eleven-P.M. newscast."
The beginning of the sequence showed the full moon in a clear sky over the city. The network anchorman continued to talk over the footage.
"This scene was being shown live as a backdrop for the weather segment on the local news. Viewers in the Chattanooga area saw this just as you're seeing it now, except that the day's weather statistics were superimposed."
And then a large silhouette crossed, and almost totally eclipsed, the full moon.
"This is exactly how the television viewers in Chattanooga saw it live," the network anchorman repeated.
Then there was another tape, obviously a recording of the newscast itself. One of the local news anchors introduced the station's "certified meteorologist," who went right into his opening spiel as the day's high and low temperatures and the other weather statistics appeared on the screen over the full moon and night sky. The weatherman was into his third overlay before he noticed something on his monitor off to the side.
"Everybody wants to get into the act," the meteorologist joked after doing a double take. "We seem to have a star-struck bat or something angling in for a close-up." He moved a step toward the side of the frame, closer to his monitor.
"I've never seen a…"He stopped, then looked off past the camera in the studio. "Can we get a better shot on this, Dave?" he asked. There was a delay, and then a zoom just before the creature left the moon behind.
"That doesn't look much like any bat I've ever seen," the weatherman said. "I think we've got something interesting here, folks. Maybe our technical people can go back and get us more detail." He recovered then and hurried through the rest of the weather report.
The scene shifted back to the network anchor, who had one eyebrow arched.
"This is what the station's video technicians came up with."
I really didn't need the grainy enlargements, the series of stop-frames. I had recognized the creature the first time.
"That is a dragon," I said, and Joy clutched at my arm.
"How?" she asked. Good question.
"I guess it's just part of the general disruption," I said. The trend that Parthet told me to watch.
"… The Air Force has refused any comment at all concerning this sighting, but civilian air traffic controllers at Chattanooga did report an unidentified radar echo crossing their air space at the same time as the videotape was being filmed. Naturally, we'll have any further information for you as soon as it becomes available." The network anchorman smiled and shook his head. "Frankly, I don't have any more idea what that could be than you do."
He cleared his throat and moved on to the next segment, a panel of security experts who gave viewers tips for protecting themselves against terrorists. I switched channels and saw part of the videotape of the dragon again.
"A dragon," Joy said softly. "How much damage can one of those things do?"
"A lot, I suppose, but I don't think it will last long in this world. They're carnivorous, vicious, and big, but they can be killed. The Air Force should be able to bring it down."
"How big?"
"The biggest ones can get to be a lot bigger than a 747."
"Do they breathe fire?"
"I don't think so. They don't need to. The second one I killed, I could have ridden my horse right into its mouth, down as far as its tonsils." If it had tonsils. I didn't know. The finer points of draconic anatomy held little interest for me. "And my horse is bigger than the Budweiser Clydesdales."
"What do we do now?" Joy asked.
"Go home, get some sleep. I'll get the lanterns. That's what we came for."
"I'm going to raid your library too," Joy said, almost dreamily-as if she were suddenly half asleep. "If you're going to be off on another trip, I'm going to need something to read."
I was tired too. Coming back from my goodwill tour of the western kingdoms, I had looked forward to catching up on my sleep and just resting for a long time, and I had been busier than ever. Once I got out of the hospital. That seemed like ages ago, not just a few days. I didn't have the slightest pain left from the stabbing or from the surgery… stabbing of another kind. I was almost completely healed from both. In fact, I could almost forget it all except when I was naked and saw where they had shaved me before my surgery, or felt the ha
rd ridge of new scars still in the angry, raw stage.
There are some disadvantages to living in Varay-no music from home, no movies or television. What hurt most was that I mostly had to do without music in Varay. The occasional minstrel who stopped by Castle Basil was no replacement for MTV. I had tried taking a portable stereo back, in my early days there, but it didn't work. All the radio picked up in Varay was static. There were no stations in the buffer zone, or anywhere close enough to penetrate. Going through the passages to Varay erased all of my tapes, and the batteries wore down incredibly fast when I tried it with compact discs. The battery lanterns we were taking along so Joy could read would have the same problem. If there was time, we'd have to do some shopping and pick up a few extra Coleman kerosene lanterns and a good supply of fuel for them. Or we would be doing most of our reading in the daylight.
Joy and I spent about twenty minutes collecting stuff to take along. This time I piled up a lot of things that I might never need but wouldn't want to miss if something happened. I just piled things by the doorway. I planned to let Joy hold the passage open while I carried and pushed it all through.
"Are you planning on moving everything you own?" Joy asked.
I stopped and looked at what I had already stacked up. "It looks that way, doesn't it?" I shrugged. "I keep thinking that I ought to take the stuff through while I can."
"If you really think it's going to get that bad, maybe we should make a list and buy up everything we can think of tomorrow."
I nodded. "Good idea. You make up the list. Be as extravagant as you want to be. Money's no problem." That led me to think of something else. I went to my safe and took out a small locked drawer.
"If things get really bad here, this may be all scrap paper, but I must have something in the neighborhood of six or seven million dollars lying around this world."
"Lying around? Six or seven million dollars?" Joy actually looked impressed. We had never really discussed money. She knew that I had enough to do just about anything we wanted to do together. One time she had remarked that I never asked how much when either of us saw something we wanted.
