by Lionel Fenn
"We're trying to get to the top." He pointed. "We really didn't have much time to... to... acquaint ourselves with the cliff culture, of which we know nothing."
Junffer nodded. "Well said, human thing. You'll be pleased to know I won't have to kill you."
Gideon smiled his gratitude, and wrapped a brotherly hand around Tuesday's bill before she could take the rest of his boot. Then he ducked away from a particularly fierce blast of wind and suggested, when the dust had settled and the duck was tucked firmly under his arm, that they carry on before disaster struck.
Junffer, whose ribs were whistling symphonically in the same wind, agreed. And he watched as Gideon reset the supply rolls on Red's back, had a word with the duck, which resulted in a promise neither to continue her peckish behavior nor ask stupid questions until they were safely out of the wind, and slipped the bat back into its holster.
"Are you finished?"
Gideon nodded.
"Then walk this way, please."
Not if I live a hundred years, he thought as he pressed against the rock face in an effort to keep the brunt of the wind from toppling him to his death.
Luckily, they didn't have that far to go. Up this ramp, up the next, and at the top of the third they were virtually blown into what he had thought was a cave but learned quickly enough was only the mouth of an extraordinarily long tunnel. Torches in silver brackets on the walls lighted the way, and Red was careful to stay in the center of the floor since he was nearly as wide, and as tall, as the smooth-walled excavation.
Their footsteps echoed.
Gideon, unable to fathom what animated the creature and absolutely positive he didn't want to know and wouldn't ask even if tortured, remained behind Junffer, his curiosity finally swamping his good sense once they had completed their first hour of walking. "Tell me," he said to the skeleton's back, "what exactly is it you're a star of? Television? The movies? What?"
Junffer lifted his head proudly. "Killing." And he stabbed at the air with his suddenly long spear.
Gideon stopped; Red stopped; Tuesday walked around the lorra and quickly started back toward the ledge.
"Killing," Gideon said.
"It's what makes a star these days, don't you think? Lots of killing."
"In... the movies?"
Junffer's voice was fading. "Movies? What's that? No, I just kill anyone who hasn't heard of me, and before you know it, everyone knows who you are. God, it's incredible, isn't it. You wouldn't believe the things you can get away with when you're a star. Ask my mother. My father was a star too. As a matter of fact, the last time I saw him..."
Gideon had a choice—he could either hurry after his sister and let her berate him deservedly for being such an idiot, or hurry after Junffer to find out more about cliff stardom. His sister was angry. And since there was only one of the skeleton, it stood to reason, however much of it remained, that they should carry on. Red alone ought to be able to handle the creature, should there be any trouble. One swipe of those horns, and Junffer would be dead.
Or whatever passed for it in his condition.
Ivy, he thought, you'll never know the sacrifices I make.
With a call to Tuesday and a warning glance to the lorra, he broke into a trot until the skeleton came into view, just entering what proved to be a massive cavern whose sheer sides were brilliantly white, whose semivaulted roof was starred with torches, and in whose center was a chrome-sided escalator which rose out of a wide hole in the floor. It hummed. The railing flowed like upwardly mobile black water. The steps climbed into the glaring light above. And on each step was a chair upholstered in shades of cinnamon and lavender.
Gideon strode over to a plank which served as a boarding ledge, and looked down. As far as he could see, the escalator gleamed. He shook his head. No. It couldn't reach all the way to the bottom. This couldn't mean he could have saved himself hours of agony, pebbles in his boots, cramps in his thighs, rocks in his head. It was, like everything else, an illusion.
Junffer was leaning against the side, watching with amusement the look on Gideon's face. "Yes," he said at last.
Gideon groaned.
"All the way up," Junffer said with a laugh.
Gideon scowled at Red when the lorra reached him. "Did you know about this? No, don't answer. I don't want to know. I want to think that you would have shown me the entrance before we started." He held up a hand. "No, Red. Not a word. Just let me keep my—"
"Gideon, for Christ's sake, is that what I think it is?" Tuesday flew into the cavern, banked over the escalator, and landed on the ledge. "It is," she said glumly. "And it has chairs."
"I didn't know," he said, with a pointed look at the lorra. Then he turned to Junffer and indicated the steps with a nod. "This will take us where we want to go?"
"Of course. A star never walks, you know."
Tuesday winged to a chair, rode it halfway up, and flew back. "Soft," she said wistfully. "But not too soft." Her eyes narrowed as best they could. "Giddy, you are—"
"Jeko," Gideon said loudly, "you never did tell us how you knew who we were."
"A star knows all and sees all," the skeleton said. "And I have been a star for quite a long time."
"How long?" Tuesday asked.
"Ever since I killed my father."
"Right," she said, and flew back to a chair. "I'm not coming back, Giddy," she called. "You can sit there and chew the fat all you want. I am not coming back."
"You'd better," Junffer called after her. "It's dangerous up there. There are... things! Terrible things. That's why I—" He stopped shouting when Tuesday landed back on the ledge. "That is why I came for you. To protect you."
"Who sent you?"
"Do you know Ivy Pholler?"
Gideon's heart stalled, stuttered, revved, and raced. He gasped a hoarse "Yes," and looked longingly upward. She cares, he thought with a broad smile; by god, she cares!
"What things?" Tuesday said.
Ivy, I'll be there soon. Hang on, my love. I'm coming as fast as I can.
"Oh, dommers, vacs, things like that. You'd never make it without me. That's because I'm a star."
Gideon leaned against the escalator and assumed that the beatification he felt was not unlike the sensation experienced by those who were blessed enough to achieve sainthood without the bother of martyrdom; not, he thought suddenly, that he was in any way comparing himself to a saint. But true love, in its purest and least lustful form, did have that hint of halo about it, that touch of sanctification, that hint of carnal purification that has endeared itself to so many for so long.
He sighed.
He shifted his gaze from his inner vision of Ivy to the outer form of Junffer, and decided that perhaps carnal was too narrow a parameter, though he supposed there were possibilities and eyes of the beholders.
"What's a vac?"
Junffer cracked a smile. "You'll see, little bird. You'll see soon enough."
She turned in a huff. "Gideon, I really think this man—"
"Watch your mouth, bird!"
"Who the hell are you calling a bird, cage?"
Gideon placed his hand lovingly on Red's neck and guided him over to the ledge. Through gestures, grunts, and practical demonstration, he showed the lorra how simple it would be to ride with hind legs on one step and forelegs on the other, rump on a chair to give him support. Red looked doubtful. Gideon kissed his nose and told him not to be silly. Red sneezed, and waited for Gideon to go first, indicating his desire by putting the tips of his horns delicately, but meaningfully, against his chest.
"I am a goddamned star!"
"You are a goddamned—Gideon, where the hell are you going?"
"To see Ivy," he called over Red's head.
"Alone?"
"No, I have Red."
She flew up before he vanished through the ceiling. "But what about the boneyard?"
"He'll be coming," he said blissfully.
"He says he won't unless I apologize."
"Then apologize, Tuesie
."
And he would have added to the endearment a sermonette on the Golden Rule, had he not looked up and seen a flurry of winged things pass over the moving steps on the next level. Instantly, he sobered, though not quite in time to keep his arm from being ripped open by a claw.
CHAPTER FOUR
Pain, Gideon thought as he fell to the moving steps and grasped his left forearm just below the elbow, is not what it's cracked up to be.
The gash was a good three inches long and, after a blurry examination of the parted flesh and running blood, he did his best to tie the remnants of his shredded shirt-sleeve around it to stanch the bleeding. He did not call out for help, in spite of the fire that seemed to have caught quite nicely in his veins—the others were too busy with the flying things that swarmed over them the moment they rose above the next floor.
They were dommers, according to Jeko's shrill identification, and exceedingly ugly, about the size of a fat robin dipped in unpreserved buffalo fat, with claws on their wingtips and hooked beaks that sounded like metallic fingers snapping. Their battle cries were loud, persistent whines, and their death throes were, to the objective spectator, somewhere between the collapse of the fat lady in an opera and the writhings of an aged thespian determined to make a permanent mark on the stage.
There were, at a conservative estimate, several hundred of them.
Junffer used his spear with consummate skill, spinning it at such a high speed that it became little more than a deadly blur, which split more than one avian skull and ruined the manicures of dozens more; Tuesday, for her part, darted through the dommers' formations like white lightning, her wings powerful enough to disrupt the things' internal gyros while her beak, used as a club, was equally as effective as Junffer's spear; and Red used both tail and horns to stun and thrust, frustrated not to be able to rise up on his hind legs and give his clawed hooves the chance they craved.
By the time they reached the third level, the dommers were gone, whining their defeat and huddling against the walls like so many quivering blobs of sodden grease.
Gideon had been unable to do a thing. His arm was aflame, and each time he attempted to regain his feet, a wash of dizziness sent him down on his back. Tuesday hunched at his side, demanding someone do something before her brother bled to death. Red was helpless and could only lash his tail about in frustration.
Then Junffer, laying aside his spear, knelt noisily at Gideon's side and untied the makeshift bandage. "Oh, I say," he muttered when he saw the extent of the damage. "That's going to leave a nasty little scar, isn't it."
"Do something," Tuesday pleaded.
The skeleton wiped his hands on Gideon's jeans and leaned closer. "Touchy. Very touchy. If I make a mistake, he could lose that arm. What a waste."
Gideon stared at the cloud-grey in the eye sockets, and laid the blame on impending death when he thought he saw tiny bolts of red lightning flash through them. Not with a bang but a whimper, he thought, and wished he could have been more original, something his sister could quote to the sports editor of the Times when she returned to report on his heroic demise.
Tuesday nudged the skeleton's arm. "You gonna admire him or cure him or what?" she demanded.
"Well, he isn't all that good-looking," Junffer said huffily.
"So?"
Junffer sat back, leaning against the gentle whisper of the escalator's moving inner wall. "My dear duck," he said, "I did not get to be a star by saving lives."
Gideon saw an image of Ivy floating before his eyes. He reached out his uninjured arm and tried to caress her face.
Tuesday's feathers puffed alarmingly. "You mean you're going to let him die?"
Red's tail stilled, his hooves scratched on the gleaming metal stairs, and his eyes began to shade from white to black.
"But you were supposed to bring us to the surface," the duck reminded Junffer. "You could get in big trouble if you don't produce what you promise."
They passed into the fourth level, a much dimmer cavern whose shadows ticked and husked, and on whose walls tiny red things crawled.
"I promised nothing. I simply said I'd lend a hand."
Ivy's face drifted closer, and Gideon pursed his lips in anticipation.
Tuesday, facing downward, paced in anger without leaving her place, and finally whirled on the skeleton. "You can't let him die, he's a star!"
Junffer tittered. "How can he be a star? I've never heard of him."
"Where we come from," she said, "he's one of the biggest stars around. If you let him die, a lot of people are going to be very annoyed."
Junffer eyed Gideon as best he could and touched a finger to his chin thoughtfully. "A star?"
"Are you kidding? Hundreds of thousands of people have cheered him on in his lifetime."
"Hundreds of thousands?"
Tuesday remembered the occasional completed pass, and nodded with only a fair bolt of guilt. "If he hadn't come for me, it might even have been millions."
"Millions, you say?"
Gideon smacked the air where Ivy's lips had been, and sighed at the ghostly honey that lay upon his lips. Truly, he thought, I have arrived in my heaven.
Tuesday watched her brother's face grow deathly pale, and worse in contrast to his godawful shaggy beard. "We haven't got much time. Are you going to do something, or what?"
Junffer peered at the wound again.
Red inched closer and lifted his upper lip to expose a row of teeth long and sharp. He snapped them together once, and Junffer stared at him in quick alarm.
Then Gideon raised himself up on his good elbow and smiled at his sister, winked at the lorra, and said to the skeleton, "Blue star, forty-eight, on two, and for Christ's sake don't drop it this time." And collapsed again.
Junffer gaped.
Tuesday told him her brother was delirious.
"Delirious my pelvic girdle!" Junffer said. "That man was talking football!"
"I don't care if he was talking Danish; will you please do something before I become an only duck, for god's sake?"
"But..." Junffer clasped his hands over his sternum. "His name is Gideon?"
"Yeah."
"Not... not the Gideon? Gideon Sunday? Gideon Sunday, the finest third-string quarterback in the entire known universe? That Gideon Sunday?"
Tuesday's lower bill sagged. She could only nod.
"And you... you're his sister?"
She nodded again.
"But you're a duck!"
She closed her eyes; it was the only sane thing to do.
Gideon, however, upon hearing his name taken in what could only be transporting adoration, unless it was the fever that had taken hold of his brain, opened his bleary eyes and stared at the skeleton. And immediately wished he hadn't.
As they passed into the fifth level, he saw a stream of grey slip from between Junffer's ribs and coil around his open wound; flickers of blue light made his skin tingle, and darts of golden stars made the exposed muscle twitch in electric excitement. Yet he could not turn away as a second and a third extension of the cloud-grey in the thing's torso reached for his forearm, and he could not do much more than swallow when he saw the ragged edges of the gash begin to close, as if the tip of some magical, medicinal zipper had been grasped and was being pulled up toward his elbow.
By the time they reached the seventh level, Gideon's arm was whole again, not to mention his shirt, and he was sitting in a high-backed chair, legs crossed, grinning like an idiot while he told stories of his career to a patently admiring skull. Tuesday, who had wept in her fashion at the miracle she had seen, flew on ahead so as not to ruin her brother's fantasies, and returned in less than five minutes, breathless and afraid.
"So I said to the guy from the network," Gideon was saying, "that I couldn't take less than a mil a year, including endorsements and anchoring. They weren't too happy, I can tell you, but when you're dealing from a position of strength, there isn't anything you can't have." He sighed. "It's a hell of a feeling, one glorious
hell of a feeling."
Junffer sighed ecstatically. "That's great, Gideon! I swear, that's absolutely marvelous! Oh, I'm just green with envy, simply green, if you know what I mean. What's television?"
Gideon blinked.
Tuesday stabbed his knee and said, "There are more things up there, Giddy. Big things. Crawly things."
"Oh, not to worry," Junffer said airily as he reached for his spear. "Probably just a herd of vacs, that's all. I'm sure we'll be able to handle them with no trouble at all."
Gideon picked up his bat and looked toward the roof of the cavern. His sigh was rueful. It had been nice there for a while, remembering things that had never happened and making up the rest, not feeling the slightest bit guilty about indulging Junffer's illusions about him, since he had done it to himself hundreds of times when he wasn't being realistic about his chances for survival.
The trouble was, though he didn't feel guilty, he felt lousy instead, and vowed to tell the skeleton the entire truth once they had reached the surface. Of course, Junffer might then be annoyed, and might be tempted to maintain his star status by pitting his spear against the bat. No, he decided, it was best not to destroy an idol. Let the skeleton have his dreams. Gideon would be secure enough in knowing that he would still have his life.
"I really wouldn't stand, if I were you," Junffer said from behind and below him.
Gideon wanted to ask if the skeleton expected him to fight sitting down, but he didn't. He had already seen the gap in the roof, and the things in the gap—the wormy things, the slimy things, the things with hundreds of razor-like projections along their wormy, slimy, writhing pink sides. They were stretched over the opening in a congealed and disgusting web, and when he sat, abruptly, Junffer climbed to the steps above him and set his spear whirling again.
"This is so messy," the skeleton complained. "They really ought to do something about it."
Tuesday wasted no time finding cover beneath Red's long hair, only the tip of one foot and the hint of a bill poking into the open. Red himself had hunkered down as low as he could get, and the silken blanket across his spine fairly rippled in disgust.
"Are they attached to anything?" Gideon asked, pointing the bat toward the wormy, slimy web.
