Castle for Rent

by John Dechancie

  “Yeah, but I’d still like to do some exploring.” Gene looked over his shoulder. “Take that big house over there.”

  Linda looked at the top of the huge dome that barely showed above the crest of the hill to the right.

  “Did you ever go over and take a good look at it?”

  “No,” she said.

  “It’s a monster. It obviously belongs to someone, as does this whole estate. But the place is deserted.”

  “I guess that’s why everyone in the castle comes here to picnic. It’s nice, and there’s no one to bother you.”

  A bird chirped in a nearby tree. Wooly clouds plodded sheeplike across a blue-violet sky. Gene sighed and stretched out, hands laced together at the back of his head. A sword in its leather scabbard lay in the grass at his left side.

  Linda said, “The way I hear, some of the castle’s worlds are pretty depopulated, due to wars, plagues, and other nasty things.”

  Gene looked off into the sky. “‘The castle’s worlds.’ Say it that way, and it sounds like none of these places would exist if the castle didn’t. I wonder.”

  “I never heard that. Kind of weird to think that our whole Earth existed just because Castle Perilous created a time warp, or whatever you call it.”

  “Spacetime warp. That’s a scientific way of putting it. But Castle Perilous and everything about it has to do with magic, not science.”

  “Maybe the magic is just like science, only with different laws.”

  Gene shrugged. “Hard to say.” He yawned. An insect buzzed about his head. He ignored it.

  Linda stretched out one leg and adjusted her tights, then recrossed her legs. She echoed Gene’s yawn. “Stop that, it’s catching.”

  Gene feigned a loud, ripping snore.

  Linda chuckled. “Maybe I should Z out, too. It was cold in the castle last night. I shivered all night long.”

  “Yeah, it does get cold sometimes,” Gene murmured, eyes closed.

  Linda looked off down the slope of the meadow.

  “Gene?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Have you ever seen a world with blue-skinned, muscle-bound creatures that wear green armor?”

  Gene’s right eye popped open. “Eh?”

  “Look.”

  There were three of them, trooping in step up the hill. They were armed with swords and pistols, and all three wore backpacks.

  Linda, said, “Something tells me these guys don’t live here.”

  “Right, they’re definitely prospecting, checking the place out.”

  “Their armor’s pretty.”

  “Yeah. Linda, does your magic work here?”

  “I’ve never tried. I whipped the food up back in the castle.” She looked off, her brow furrowed. “I think so.” She made a motion with her hand. “Yeah, it works a little.”

  “Good. Then maybe those guns they’re toting won’t work.” Gene’s right hand went to the hilt of his sword. “Here they come, straight for us. Get ready to move fast.”

  At the last minute, the three strange creatures changed course to the left and marched by, their big webbed feet crushing the overgrown grass in purposeful steps. One of them regarded Gene and Linda coldly. The others looked straight ahead.

  When they disappeared over the rise, Gene let go of his sword. “I wonder what that was all about.”

  Linda shrugged.

  Gene snapped his fingers. “Wait a minute. I thought something was familiar about them! Don Kelly was telling me about how people have been seeing strange-looking new aliens around the castle. Blue-skinned, short, chunky guys, lots of them, usually going around in threes. They don’t mix, keep to themselves. In fact, they’re supposed to be kind of belligerent, if pressed. Those must be the ones.”

  “I wonder what their world is like.”

  Gene shook his head. “Each one of those guys must go two seventy-five, maybe three hundred pounds. At least. They look like good fighters. Too good.”

  “Do you think they’re trouble?”

  Gene shrugged. “No real reason to think they would be. They seem to mind their own business.” He mulled it over. “Trouble is, they look like they have business.”

  Linda nodded. “Serious business.”

  They were silent for a while.

  “Have we been here a year, yet?” Linda asked.

  “Who’s keeping trade of time? Yeah, I guess.”

  Linda let out a long breath. “It seems shorter. Sometimes I still think this is all a dream.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “A year ago I’m in Los Angeles, leading a normal life. I have a dull job, but I live near the beach in Santa Monica. It’s okay, I guess. But I get depressed sometimes. A lot of the time. And I take a lot of pills. Then one day, when I’m feeling especially down, I open my closet and find that someone’s torn out the back wall. I walk through and find this place that looks like the inside of a castle.”

  Gene broke in, “And the opening closes behind you, and you can’t find a way back to your closet. And then you find there are all kinds of people in this castle, some good, some bad, some strange, some not. And the place is absolutely crazy, with doorways that lead to a million different worlds and universes —”

  “Crazy isn’t the word. Insane. Bonkers. Stark raving Looney-Toons.”

  “Never a dull moment. And there’s even a king in this castle, by the name of Incarnadine.” Gene sighed. “Yeah. Sounds familiar, except I came in by way of an odd doorway in a parking garage in downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Of all places.”

  “Want to go back?”

  “Huh? To our world? The good old USA, where I was born, like the song says?”

  “Well, I meant the castle. But answer the question any way you want to.”

  “I dunno. The only thing that worries me is my parents. They must have given up hope by now.”

  “And mine.”

  “Sure wish there was a way to get a message back.”

  “Just a message?”

  Gene nodded. “I like Castle Perilous. It’s the ultimate trip, to use an expression out of the sixties.”

  “Let’s trip back to the castle. I want to take a nap.”

  “At once, milady.” Gene got to his feet and strapped on his sword.

  Linda packed the wicker basket while Gene folded up the square of white linen they had used for a ground cloth. Then they both headed up the hill. The portal leading back to the castle stood among some trees just over the rise.

  “I’m glad Snowclaw finally found a way back to his world,” Gene said.

  “Poor baby. He was practically dying from the heat.”

  “Yeah. He was in pretty bad shape. His fur was coming off in hunks.”

  “I miss him.”

  “So do I.”

  35th and Madison

  When Alice Sussman heard the name of the author who was out at the front desk, she had to run to the files. Sure enough, the Spade Books backlist did show five titles published under the name of C. Wainwright Smithton. The titles hadn’t been reprinted in years — decades.

  She went to her “who’s who” shelf and consulted several reference books. C. Wainwright Smithton was mentioned once or twice but information was sketchy. He was British, but emigrated here, wrote for the pulps in the thirties and forties, and published a few science fiction novels over the next two decades. His work had attracted much critical attention. One book referred to him as an “elusive genius.”

  As senior editor of science fiction and fantasy, it was Alice’s duty to show hospitality to important writers who dropped in to visit — even if no one had ever heard of them.

  “Very nice to meet you, Mr. Smithton,” Alice said as she took the hand of the handsome white-haired gentleman in the checked overcoat. “You haven’t been in to see us in quite some time.”

  “Oh, thirty years, I should say,” Smithton said with a laugh. “I had a little trouble tracking down Spade Books, until I learned it had been bought out by the
Bishop Publishing Galaxy.”

  “Spade Books still exists, Mr. Smithton, and it’s doing fine. In fact, it’s one of our strongest fiction lines. Won’t you please come back to my office?”

  Alice got him settled down with a cup of coffee on the couch in her office. She took the chair.

  “What can we do for you, Mr. Smithton?”

  “Oh, you can give me a book contract with an advance in six figures and one hundred percent of subsidiary rights.” He grinned.

  She grinned back. “We’d love to see a proposal from you, Mr. Smithton. I’m sure you still have many fans out there who’d buy a book with your name on it. After all, you’re one of the veteran writers in the field.”

  “I’d be surprised if any of my old fans were still alive. I haven’t had anything in print for years and years.”

  “Yes, I know. We put out reissues of backlist titles every month. Your name has come up several times during our weekly editorial meetings. Uh … I’m sorry to say we haven’t actually done anything about it yet, but —”

  “Quite all right, Ms. Sussman. You couldn’t have, anyway. The rights have long since reverted to me, and I was out of contact for so long. I’m not complaining. I’ve been out of the country for years. I just recently came back to New York to look into some financial affairs of mine. Unfortunately, things haven’t worked out the way I’d expected, and, frankly … to use the modern idiom, I’m having cash-flow problems.”

  Alice sat back and crossed her legs. “I see. Well, we’d certainly like to do all we can to help. But of course —”

  “I certainly don’t expect a contract and a check today. A few days would be fine.”

  Alice chuckled. “That’s asking a lot of the machinery around here. Generally it takes a few weeks to produce a contract, and another few weeks to grind out a check. Minimum.”

  “I understand. Of course, I wouldn’t expect special treatment just walking in here after thirty years —”

  “Well, we’d like to do anything we can. We’ll certainly look into reprinting some of your books, Mr. Smithton. I’m afraid I can’t promise you anything at the moment, but —”

  “You’re very kind. What titles do you think would go these days?”

  She teethed her lower lip. “Well … ”

  “Fortress Planet, perhaps?”

  “A classic, and one of my favorites,” she lied whitely.

  “You flatter me. Blood Beast of the Demon Moon?”

  “Is that a horror number?”

  “On the cusp. How about my fantasy, Castle Ramthonodox? Then, of course, there’s my story collection, Bright Comets and Other Obfuscations.”

  “Your work has been somewhat … neglected.”

  “I’m a has-been, you mean. Forgotten.”

  “Hardly,” she said.

  “Oh, it’s true. And I never was prolific —”

  “Unfortunately, quantity does count, as well as quality.”

  “— but it seems to me that I never did receive the last few royalty statements that were due.”

  Alice sat up. “Oh.”

  “I realize that thirty years is a long time, and your records … ”

  “Well, as a matter of fact, we do have a number of open files. Authors whose estates or heirs we can’t locate. It may very well be —” She got up. “Won’t you please wait here while I check with our accounting and legal departments?”

  * * * *

  He cashed the check at a local bank and walked down Madison Avenue, heading for a little curio shop he used to know in the Lower East Side.

  It had been tough persuading Alice Sussman — and the people in accounting — to cut him a royalty check this very day. The domination spell he had cast over the entire office had barely worked. Back home, everyone in the Bishop Publishing Galaxy would have been his willing slave. They all would have leaped out a ten-story window for him, single file. Here — forget it. The spell had only oiled the machinery a little bit. But it had worked. Done the job.

  Well, there’d been a little give-and-take. Allie (at lunch she told him to call her that) had just about insisted that he submit an outline and sample chapters of a new book. Instead, over chicken lo mein, he spun out the plot of a sequel to Fortress Planet, quite off the top of his head, and she loved it. Well, the spell helped there a little, he had to admit. He hadn’t written a word of fiction in years, and it must have been dreadful bilge he spilled out. Anyway, she’d offered a $14,000 advance, and he couldn’t bring himself to refuse … Besides, he was stranded here and needed the money.

  All in all, New York hadn’t changed as much as he’d expected. Numerous landmarks had disappeared, replaced by austere modern structures (he rather disliked the ubiquitous Bauhaus influence), but plenty of familiar sights were still left. He remembered this part of town well.

  He began to notice that there were more distressed people milling about than he recalled seeing during the Great Depression. He passed a slovenly middle-aged woman who carried two great bags stuffed with debris. She was followed by an emaciated man in a filthy overcoat who seemed to have difficulty controlling his tongue. These and other unfortunates made up a good percentage of the sidewalk population.

  Wetting a mental finger and putting it up into the psychic wind, he got a subtle but overriding sense of decay, of desuetude, of things coming apart. Pity. It was a good town, but it had once been a great town.

  The curio shop was just where he remembered it to be. The shops around it had been long since boarded up. A derelict lay unconscious on the sidewalk a few doors away. In the other direction, a nervous-looking youth regarded him from the doorway of an abandoned storefront.

  He entered to the soft tinkling of a bell. The place was stuffed to the ceiling with an amazing collection of miscellaneous junk, and he was astonished to recognize some pieces from years before. Obviously business had not been brisk. The place smelled of must, dust, and stale cigar smoke.

  There was a sallow young man behind the counter. He did not smile when he asked, “Can I help you?”

  “Is Mr. Trent in?”

  “Why … yes, he is. Who shall I say is calling?”

  “Carney. John Carney.”

  “One moment.”

  The young man slipped through a tattered curtain into a back room. There was a murmuring of voices. Then the young man returned.

  “Mr. Trent will see you. This way.”

  He followed the young man into the back room. There, seated at an ancient rolltop desk, was a man in his early sixties wearing a gray suit of fashionable cut, along with a burgundy tie, a tailored shirt with a crisply starched collar, and oxblood loafers burnished to a mirror shine. Even in the dim light he cut an imposing figure. His hair was blond-white, his face thin. His eyes were ethereal blue disks over a thin blade of a nose. The mouth was small and precise. He regarded his visitor, eyes narrowing, straining for recognition. At length and with some astonishment, he said, “It is you.”

  “Hello, Trent.”

  Trent rose and offered his hand, nodding to the young man, who retreated through the curtain.

  “Incarnadine,” Trent said.

  “Greetings, my long-lost brother,” Incarnadine said in Haplan, the ancient tongue of the even more ancient tribe of the Haplodites. “How dost thee fare?”

  “Thou art a sight for longing eyes,” Trent answered. “Let’s stick to English,” he added, “or Alvin will start to wonder.”

  “Alvin looks okay. I’ll bet he’s heard many a strange thing back here.”

  “You’re right. Have a seat.” Trent dragged up a battered hardback chair.

  Incarnadine sat. “It’s been a long time.”

  “How did you ever manage to get here?” Trent said.

  “Well, I’ve been meaning to crack the problem of the lost gateway for the longest time. Just recently it occurred to me that it could be one of the orbiting variety, the kind that don’t necessarily stay inside the castle. So, I whipped up a flyer, searched the sky ove
r the castle — and sure enough, there it was. Had a devil of a time chasing it down, though.”

  Trent lit a small brown cigar and puffed on it. “After thirty years, you decide to do this. Why?”

  Incarnadine shrugged. “Any number of reasons. I miss New York … I miss this world. Lots of memories here.” He smiled. “I thought you might have been stranded here when the spell stabilizing the gateway went on the fritz.”

  Trent looked hard at him. “You thought. And it takes you thirty years to decide to find out for sure?”

  “What is time to a spawn of Castle Perilous? Sorry. Were you stranded? Are you?”

  “You said yourself that you found the thing floating in the sky. Where did it leave out?”

  “About three thousand feet over the East River.”

  Trent whistled. “And you were flying a magical contrivance?” He shook his head. “Tough spot to be in.”

  “Yeah. I’d really forgotten how hard it was to practice the Recondite Arts around here.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Well, when the plane dissolved, I tried just about everything on the way down. At about three seconds to impact I tried a simple protection spell, and that saved the day. And my hide. I hit pretty hard, though. Fortunately, it was only a few strokes swimming to shore. I didn’t get a drop on me.”

  “You were lucky. Still, I wonder why you risked it.”

  “We’ve been getting a lot of Guests from here in the past few years. Some of them would like a way back. I’m here to see if I can establish a permanent gateway again.”

  Trent’s pale brow rose. “You did it for the Guests? Those losers?”

  “It’s the least I could do. I would have seen to it long ago, but — one, I’ve been busy. Two, most of the Guests like the castle and want to stay. But some don’t, and I thought we owed them.”

  “How about all the rest?”

  “Some have stabilized gateways. The others … well, someday I mean to do something for them, too.”

  “Most of those damn holes should have been plugged long ago,” Trent said, scowling. “The place is nothing but a big, drafty fun house.”

  “Do you realize how much power it would take to keep all the aspects sealed up? Keeping the particularly nasty ones shut up uses enough already.”