Dog Days

by John Levitt

  I opened my mouth to agree but got distracted by Lou pulling on the leg of my pants and growling softly. The distraction cleared my head. Eli and I stared at each other with sudden realization.

  “Damn, they’re good,” I said.

  “Indeed they are,” he agreed. “Even forewarned didn’t help. No wonder no one ever disturbs them.”

  “Any ideas?” I asked.

  “Well, probably we should go back to the van to come up with a counter for this. I’m not thinking too clearly so close to the—” He broke off with a curse, something he hardly ever does. “Damn it! I can’t even tell if that idea is mine or not.”

  Lou was entirely unaffected. He came up behind Eli and started nipping at his ankles. Eli jumped away with an agility that belied his bulk. “Hey, stop it!” he said.

  “I think there’s our answer,” I said, pointing at Lou. “We need a sheepdog. Look, you’re already two steps closer than you were a moment ago.”

  “It’s not very dignified,” he protested.

  “Come on,” I said, and started walking toward the group again.

  Every time a new excuse to turn around popped into my head and I tried to stop, Louie was behind me snapping at my heels. When we unaccountably found ourselves veering to one side, Louie steered us back on track, doing a stellar imitation of a Border collie herding a couple of recalcitrant sheep. About a hundred yards from the group, he eased off and, job done, scampered ahead toward some bushes at the edge of the clearing. We walked on with no further problem.

  “I guess if you get this far you’re supposed to be here,” I observed.

  As we got closer I recognized several people I knew, which was no surprise, but there were a lot more that I didn’t, and that was unusual.

  “You know any of these people?” I asked.

  Eli nodded. “A lot of them. I haven’t seen most of them for some time, though.”

  As we got up to the edge of the crowd, a middle-aged woman in a tan business suit approached us. She looked like a younger version of Miss Marple, with glasses, a benign expression, and wisps of graying hair escaping from a somewhat untidy bun.

  “Eli!” she exclaimed. “Why, you’re the last person I’d expect to see here.” She glanced casually at me but I got the feeling she’d registered everything she wanted to know about me in that one quick look.

  “Sascha. Good to see you,” said Eli. He didn’t introduce me.

  She smiled fleetingly. “Have you come to see Christoph? There’s this woman from San Diego who traveled up for a challenge. She’s supposed to be truly amazing, really hot stuff.”

  So Christoph was involved in this. Well, well.

  “I thought it might prove interesting,” Eli said blandly, acting as if he knew exactly what she was talking about.

  “Well, to tell the truth, I kind of hope he’ll get taken down a peg or two. He’s becoming a bit insufferable lately, if you know what I mean.”

  “I know the type.”

  She chuckled. “Yes, I’ll bet you do. How’s Victor, anyway?”

  “Oh, he’s fine. Doesn’t much approve of this sort of thing, you know.”

  “Yes, I know. And yourself?”

  “You know me. I’m interested in all sorts of things.”

  She looked over at me for the first time. “I don’t think I know you,” she said. “Come to try your luck?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “Maybe another time.”

  “Well, good luck if you do.”

  She twirled her fingers at Eli and rejoined the larger group. Several of them glanced over at us with curiosity. I felt like the new kid on the first day of school. Eli was standing calmly, observing, but his hands were busy clenching and unclenching into fists. He was not happy.

  “Problem?” I asked.

  “This is a travesty,” he said. “This isn’t about resolving differences or settling disputes. This isn’t serious. This is entertainment. This is like the Roman arena. This is a game to them, for God’s sake.”

  I didn’t say anything. It didn’t seem like such a big deal to me, but Eli has a great respect for tradition and history. It was a big deal to him.

  The subdued muttering of the crowd took on a note of pleased anticipation as a man detached himself from the gathering. His longish hair was white, but it must have been dyed, since he was young, no more than twenty-five. He was nattily dressed in black jeans, a black silk shirt, and so help me, a black cape.

  “Give me a break,” I whispered. Eli made a shushing motion with his hands.

  “Okay, everyone,” the man said. “Today we’ve got something special, so we’re going to dispense with the preliminaries. You all know Christoph?” There was a murmur of assent from the group.

  “You know that freak?” I asked, whispering again. Eli made the same shushing motion.

  The white-haired guy set up two folding chairs facing each other. He turned back to the crowd with a flourish.

  “Our challenger,” he announced.

  A woman made her way out of the crowd. Thirty-five, maybe forty, zaftig with waist-length straight brown hair and sparkly rings on every finger. An ankle-length colorfully patterned dress draped her ample body, leaving only her bare feet uncovered. Since the temperature was rapidly dropping, I thought she might at least have considered sandals. She was exactly who you’d expect to find behind the sales counter if you entered a store that sold incense and tarot cards. Sascha reappeared by Eli’s elbow.

  “Don’t be fooled by that New Age hippie look,” she warned. “This woman is one very tough cookie. And she’ll need to be. Christoph doesn’t like to lose.”

  The guy with the white hair showed her to one of the folding chairs, where she sat down and waited comfortably. He then paused theatrically, and throwing his arms up in the air, shouted, “I bring you…CHRISTOPH!”

  I half expected pyrotechnics and a smoke machine, maybe with “We Are the Champions” playing in the background, but Christoph simply walked out of the crowd and took his place in the remaining chair. He was wearing a wool poncholike garment striped in grays and blacks, and he nodded formally at the woman in the opposite chair as he sat down. Power crackled around him; he’d been partially shielding at Pascal’s party. I was annoyed with myself. I should have seen through it. White-hair walked over and addressed them both.

  “Christoph, you are the challenged party. You choose the field of play.” Christoph nodded. White-hair faced the woman.

  “Moira,” he said, “you must either escape or overcome.” She nodded, never taking her eyes off the man sitting across from her.

  “Are you both ready?” Two slight nods. “Then begin.”

  The crowd became still. For some thirty seconds nothing seemed to happen. I wondered if there were some kind of mental struggle going on between them, intense and unseen. If so, it wasn’t providing much in the way of entertainment. I noticed the fog was beginning to close in and realized it wasn’t the usual San Francisco winter mist. It was a dark murk, paradoxically glowing with inner light as if a car with its high beams on squatted in the center. It settled down over the entire area of the Polo Fields, and as the outside world was cut off, the tendrils of vapor divided and started forming shapes, leisurely at first, more rapidly as the process continued. Slowly a picture emerged, a forest of fantastic plants and giant trees, all in a spectral monochrome. Then, gradually, color emerged, infinite shadings of green shot through with red and yellow flowers, then purple birds and huge butterflies, then a yellow tropical sun too bright to look at beating down on the jungle, and finally the sound of birds calling, insects buzzing, and a myriad of noises too obscure to identify.

  Christoph leaned back in his chair, not relaxing, but clearly well pleased with himself. He had a right to be. I had never before seen an illusion so complex, not counting the singularity I’d been in, which wasn’t precisely an illusion. This was not the same Christoph I’d met a couple of years ago. Eli might pooh-pooh the idea of anyone gaining huge amoun
ts of power to boost their natural talent, but he’d acquired something from somewhere. An appreciative murmur ran through the crowd. Sascha took me by the arm.

  “Pretty remarkable, don’t you think?” she said, keeping her voice low. I was too impressed to come up with my usual flip response.

  The woman in the chair bowed her head, tented her fingers so that the tips of them touched her chin, and exhaled noisily. She momentarily went out of focus until an astral body separated itself from her and rose to its feet. It wavered and then snapped into focus, looking as real and substantial as the original woman.

  “Doppelgänger,” explained Eli, unnecessarily. “In the old days she would have gone in there herself. If she got out alive, she won. If not…”

  His voice trailed off as the double walked toward the edge of the rainforest. A path opened up invitingly before her and as she hesitated, the white-haired emcee moved up to where the original Moira still sat and laid his hand on her shoulder. The man nearest him took hold of his other hand, and a woman next to the man took his. The whole group crowded closer together, arms linking up until it looked like a peace rally or a sixties love-in. Eli and I got caught up in it, with Sascha between us. She put her arm around my waist, but couldn’t manage to get the other around Eli’s bulk and was forced to settle for linking her arm through his. People on both sides of us grabbed our free arms. I felt distinctly uncomfortable.

  The point of all this became immediately apparent. There was a temporary dislocation before I found myself looking at the entrance to the jungle through Moira’s eyes, or at least through the eyes of her doppelgänger. And it wasn’t limited to just vision. I could also feel the oppressive heat, smell the rotting vegetation, hear the rustling of unknown creatures hidden in the tangle of luxurious foliage. Except for having no control over voluntary movement, it was no different than being there myself.

  I/she/we took a step forward onto the path that reached out into the forest. It ran straight for about fifty yards and then curved off toward the left. Moira started down the path with a confidence I certainly wouldn’t have possessed. Maybe she was more used to this sort of thing than I was. At the point where the path curved, a large spotted jungle cat stepped out from behind concealing bushes. It appeared to be a cross between a jaguar and a leopard, stocky yet agile and lithe. It looked back down the path with huge unblinking golden eyes before stepping back around the curve and out of sight.

  “Christoph,” Eli said, speaking quietly in my ear.

  Moira moved down the path, all of us moving with her. It was a weird overlay; I could hear the noises of the jungle and, at the same time, low-voiced comments from people around me in the crowd. About halfway to the curve, the path began to close off behind her, greenery rippling in waves as it boiled up and choked off any avenue of retreat. Directly ahead, a series of vines started rapidly growing out from the side of the path, giant green snakes writhing and twisting. She chuckled easily, obviously not intimidated. With her right arm she reached inside a pocket hidden somewhere in the voluminous dress and pulled out what felt like gritty sand. With the other she described a circle in the air as she threw the sand onto the path, at the same time uttering a single word.

  “Wither,” she hissed with such malevolence that it made me slightly sick to my stomach. Or her stomach. I was still having trouble getting a handle on the dual perception thing. The vines curled up and did just that, rotting away with fast-forward videotape speed. She turned and extended her hands at right angles to the path.

  “Wither,” she hissed again, with even more venom. The forest melted away in front of her, lush green plants turning yellow, then brown, then crumbling away like wisps of memory. Trees were left standing, but stripped bare of leaves, limbs jutting out stark and sere like oak trees in the dead of winter. She walked through the suddenly bleak terrain, territory which turned barren in front of her with every step, as if she were ushering in ahead of her a plague of biblical proportions.

  My attention was distracted by an gentle tugging on my pants leg. Caught up in the drama of the contest, I ignored it. The tugging became more urgent, so I wrenched my consciousness back to a mundane level and glanced down to see what the problem was. Lou, of course. He saw he’d caught my attention, raised one paw, and stiffened into a parody of a bird dog spotting a quail. I followed his sight line and saw Christoph sitting motionless on his chair. His hands were folded in his lap, covering something. Something bright and glowing, light shifting like a tiny aurora borealis. Or a jewel of swirling colors.

  As soon as Lou saw I’d noticed, he scurried off again. I relaxed my focus and allowed myself to be drawn back into the construct. I hadn’t missed too much of the action. Moira was now walking through the path of destruction up a small rise. At this rate it wouldn’t be long before she sliced her way out of the jungle, but Christoph didn’t come by his reputation for nothing.

  She crested the rise, and on the other side was a wide lake, stinking and muddy under the tropical sky. Since it blocked her progress, she started walking parallel to the shore, but the lake moved right along with her, transforming the green jungle into a muddy swamp.

  Frowning, Moira walked up to the lake’s edge and stared across the water. Jesus, I thought, she may be powerful but she’s not very bright. Maybe she didn’t watch enough television. Anyone who has ever seen nature shows on cable knows what happens when you walk up to the water’s edge in the tropical jungle. Besides, although she obviously could see whatever I could, she didn’t seem to notice the faint ripples ruffling the muddy water ten feet from shore.

  The only thing that saved her was her serendipitous decision to retreat from the water’s edge mere seconds before the water erupted. A twelve-foot crocodile launched itself out of the lake and onto the bank, moving incredibly fast for something that huge and massive. The other part of my senses heard several muffled shrieks from the watching crowd, all of whom of course were experiencing it just as I was. Moira threw herself backward as it lunged toward her, roaring like some berserk prehistoric monster. She scrabbled frantically in one of her pockets, just managing to come up with a lump of clay which she threw right into the gaping jaws. The minute it made contact, it expanded like a deploying airbag. The beast choked and twisted on the ground, the thrashing tail almost doing the job the jaws had failed at. The crocodile lost all interest in Moira and slithered back off the bank to the safety of the water, still trying to disgorge gunk from a mouth suddenly full of clay.

  Without a second glance, Moira walked a few more paces away from the lake and stared out over the water. Reaching into yet another pocket, she pulled out a scrap of material, a handful of toothpicks, and a silver dollar. Moira had come prepared, I’ll say that for her. She shook her head, obviously dissatisfied, and reached up to run her fingers through her hair. She looked down at her fingers, something evidently catching her eye. All I saw was fingers covered with rings. She wrenched one of the rings off and held it up to the sky. It was a large crystal, too large to be a diamond, but nothing like our problematic gems. Cubic zirconium? That just seemed wrong. Whatever it was, Moira was pleased with it. She began humming a tune that was almost familiar, but not quite, drawing out and holding the pitch at the end of each phrase. The crystal began vibrating, charged with energy. It rapidly heated up and when it reached the stage where it became almost too uncomfortable to hold, she intoned, “As above, so below, like calls to like,” and tossed it into the lake. A bit too New Age for me, but the results were impressive. I could hear an immediate hissing sound and the place where the crystal sunk boiled up in a frantic rush. The turmoil expanded rapidly from that point, until the entire lake was seething.

  When I was a youngster, I once tried to make fudge from scratch. Unfortunately I got distracted and cooked it way, way too long. As long as the syrup was still hot it seemed fine, dark and liquid and creamy. But as it cooled, it reached some critical point of temperature and suddenly expanded with that same hissing noise until the entire pot
was filled with a rock-hard brown confection. It couldn’t have taken more than five seconds for the whole thing to go from liquid to solid. And what a solid. It was so hard you could barely chip it out with a chisel, and I had to throw the pot away, fudge and all.

  This was the exact same thing on an immense scale. Within seconds the entire lake had solidified into one solid mass, foamy and uneven, just like a giant batch of ruined fudge. Moira gave a grunt of triumph and stepped out onto the frozen surface. She started off at a good clip but slowed down significantly before she was halfway across. The energy she had expended up to this point was taking its toll. Still, the edge of the forest was now visible straight ahead, just past a series of rocky outcroppings that started a few yards from the opposite shore.

  Moira reached the shore, moving slowly. I didn’t think she had enough stamina left to overcome another obstacle, but I wouldn’t have bet against her either. As Sascha had said, she was tough. She avoided a path that led through a series of large boulders, choosing instead to walk directly up the slight grade toward the edge of the illusion. She passed by a particularly large outcropping of granite, moving warily. As she rounded the bulk of it, a figure appeared in front of her. It was a perfect copy of Moira, or rather a copy of a copy, a “tripleganger” if you will. Both she and her twin stood motionless, and then her twin slowly reached up behind her own neck and undid the clasp holding the back of her dress. She smiled and started disrobing. How embarrassing for Moira, I thought, naked with an entire crowd of strangers looking on. Then I got it. It was the signature ploy. I automatically tried to spin around, forgetting that I was nothing more than a passenger along for the ride. I had the advantage of having seen this sort of thing before; I wondered if Moira would figure it out before it was too late.