It also had put into the head a new mixture of bran and needles. What it called its "brains." The mixture that the punning charlatan, the Wizard Oz, said would make the Scarecrow sharp. Bran-new brains mixed with needles. But that was what the Scarecrow wanted, believing that it was unintelligent, brainless. Yet it had had from the beginning a great wisdom, though it was also uneducated and naive.
Hank shook his head. How could this being be alive? Except for the old tattered floppy-brimmed hat, which was not a part of it, it was entirely new. A different entity from yesterday's. Fully replaced in substance. But not in essence.
What was the thing that made the Scarecrow a living continuum? He believed that there was something that made up the Scarecrow and which inhabited his clothes, boots, and head-sack. Was it some kind of energy configuration? A tightly contained invisible complex of electromagnetism? Or some other kind of energy? A combination of e.m. energy with some unknown energy?
He dared then to voice his questions to the Scarecrow.
The round blue eyes looked surprised, but they always had that look.
"You are a profound young man, as philosophical as you are tall," it said. "I have thought and thought about these enigmas, but I just don't know. I'm wise, but wisdom can't go far without knowledge. And I don't have the knowledge I need. Perhaps Glinda could tell you. Us."
"She's very evasive about such things."
"If she is, she must have very good reasons."
A few minutes after dawn of the next day, the Jenny took off. Three miles due west of the capital was a rough circle of heavy woods about two miles in diameter. This, Ot said, was one of the domains of the wild beasts. Humans never ventured there unless they were fleeing justice.
"Go that way," she said, indicating with a foot a southwest direction.
"Why?" Hank said.
"It's only a little out of the way. You'll see something very interesting."
Hank shrugged and turned the Jenny's nose. Very quickly, he saw a clearing in the green mass. Near its edge on the ground was what looked like an overturned balloonist's basket or gondola.
"What's left of the Wizard Oz's balloon," Ot said. "He came down here after he left The Emerald City because he'd been exposed as a fake wizard. He didn't get far, did he?"
Hank had not expected the Wizard to stay afloat for very long. When the Wizard had risen from the city, he'd been in a balloon the envelope of which had been filled with air heated from a wood fire on the ground. As a result, the hot air had soon cooled after the balloon ascended. The Wizard had been lucky to get as far as he had.
"What happened to Oz after the balloon came down?" Hank shouted.
"He went to the northwest," the hawk said. "Very few humans saw him, but reports from animals and birds indicate that he took off for the wild country that way."
Hank wondered if he could still be alive. He'd been an old man when Dorothy met him, and about thirty-three years had passed since then. Surely, Glinda, who had spies all over the land, would know what had happened to the Wizard. He would have to ask her about him when he got back to Suthwarzha.
It took twenty minutes to leave Ozland. Then the plane was I over heavily forested, hilly country which became near-mountainous in ten minutes. This was the difficult terrain which his mother and her three strange pals, two animated objects and a self-doubting lion, had crossed. After sixty miles of increasingly rough air, Hank landed at a depot. It was a mountain meadow at the edge of which were three large tents and a group of people.
When Hank turned the ignition off, he said, "Little Father, how do you like flying?"
"I wasn't cut out to be a bird. I felt rather, ah, uncertain."
The Scarecrow unbuckled the belt without seeming difficulty. Hank had not been sure that it had enough strength to do it. It got out of the cockpit and climbed down. When it jumped off the wing, it sprawled forward on its face.
Hank got out. The Scarecrow got up and said, "I must be the most undignified monarch in two worlds."
"Maybe," Hank said. "But you are the most sober."
It looked at Hank, then laughed phonographically.
"Ah, you mean that I don't drink because I can't. Very good. However, the way I stagger, stumble, and fall, people who don't know me must think I'm a drunk."
By then the Winkies were by the plane. They had a two-wheeled cart on which was a barrel of ethyl alcohol, a funnel and a can. There were six of them, men in clothes of various colors but all wearing yellow conical hats. Hank supervised the refueling, did all that was needed before flight, and took off.
The flight was uneventful, and he landed near the huge gray castle formerly occupied by the Witch of the West. The Tin Woodman, notified by a hawk that the Jenny was coming, was waiting with his entourage at the edge of a meadow. He hurried across it and was by the plane just as its propeller quit whirling. Hank and the Oz monarch got down from the cockpits. The Woodman, however, ignored the customary salutations and embracings to blurt out a message.
"A messenger from Glinda said that we should come as swiftly as possible! She says that the invasion might come sooner than expected. Therefore, we should leave at once."
Niklaz Sa Kapyar (Nicholas the Chopper) did not much resemble the illustrations of him by Denslow and Neill. The runnel hat was missing, and the top of his head was in wavy metal, simulating the curly hair he had once had. The face did not have the comically long and thin cylindrical nose, nor was the jaw a separate piece attached by hinges. It was a lifemask in tin, the features of a young man with large flaring ears, a broad square face, bushy eyebrows, deepset eyes, snub nose, wide mouth (set in a grin by the artisan who'd made it), and a prominent, deeply clefted chin. The eyes had once been painted on, but blue glass eyes had replaced them.
The head was set on a horizontal disc above the thick short neck so that Niklaz could turn the head at 360 degrees if he felt like it.
The trunk had a deep chest to which was welded tin nipples and tin hair. It also had a simulation of a navel.
In the illustrations in Baum's books, the arms and legs were attached to the tin trunk by thick pins, and the joints were similarly secured. The real Tin Man, however, had joints which were like those in a knight's suit of armor, and the arms and legs were not flat but rounded in a lifelike manner. Though he could move less awkwardly than Baum's Tin Man would have been compelled to, he still was not graceful or swift.
Like the Tin Man of Denslow and Neill, he did not wear clothes. However, the artisan had omitted the sex organs.
He wore no crown. Why should he? There was only one like him in the land, and everybody knew that he was the ruler of the west country. A servant did, however, carry for him the symbol of the office and the man, the tin ax.
Now that the king had delivered his message, he embraced the Scarecrow. They told each other how glad they were to meet again, and they asked about each other's health (which Hank thought was funny since they never got sick), and then the Scarecrow introduced Hank, which was also unnecessary, since his identity was obvious.
The Tin Woodman spoke in a voice as phonograph-sounding as his stuffed friend. He said that he was happy to meet him, and then he relayed Glinda's message.
"I had hoped you could spend some time in my palace," he said. His right arm swiveled slightly to gesture at the huge somber stone pile on top of a hill. "But we must leave now."
Hank said they could go as soon as he had refueled and checked the oil supply and inspected for leaks and loose wires. A half hour later, the two kings were in the front cockpit. Hank and Ot got into the back one, the carburetor was primed with ether, the propeller was spun, and the engine coughed, turned, and roared. After taxiing to the far end of the field, the Jenny took off southeastwards.
The rough country got even hillier, then became a mountain range. Hank flew between the mountains, many of which were over twelve thousand feet high. The sun was covered with clouds. Generally, he followed a broad winding river at the bottom of a canyon, but s
ometimes Ot told him to go through passes to shorten the distance. They had been in the air for an hour and a half when Ot said, "Turn right into that pass there. The first refueling station is two miles from the river."
"Good!" Hank said. "I don't want to get caught in a storm."
Hank brought the Jenny up and out of the canyon, over its edge, and started down above a downward slope. He was at a thousand feet above the ground when Ot screamed, "Great God!"
"What is it?" Hank said. He could see no cause for alarm.
"Hawks!" Ot cried. "About fifty! Straight ahead!"
Hank still could not see anything.
"What about them?"
"They're flying straight for us! They can't be up to any good! It must be an ambush! They're Erakna's, I'll bet! She's sent them here to attack us! She can wipe us out, kill two of her greatest enemies, kill you, wreck the airplane! Oh, my God!"
Hank saw a swarm of dots ahead. He twisted around to look back, and he swore.
"Looks like there's an equal number behind us!"
"See! I told you so! It's an ambush! What do we do now?"
The hawks had planned well. The Jenny was between two precipitous mountains towering over eleven thousand feet. She had about four miles on both sides to maneuver, but she could not turn tail and try to ram through the hawks behind. She might escape them, but she'd run out of fuel before she could get to the next station.
Hank had to fly westward.
He began climbing. He could not gain altitude faster than the hawks and so fly over them. But he was going to need room for maneuvering. He didn't want to smack into a mountainside while he was trying to elude the attackers.
He looked upwards, and he was startled.
There seemed to be several hundred dots up there dropping at terrific speed. Then they became recognizable as hawks as they hurtled down in their two-hundred-mile-per-hour dive.
"Lord, we're done for!" Ot moaned. "Holy Marzha, Mother of Mercy, bless me! Holy Nantho, Mother of Hawks, protect me!"
"How about the rest of us?" Hank yelled. "Say a prayer for us, too!"
Then he said, "What the hell?"
The hawks above had flattened out their dives somewhat. One group was headed towards an intersection point with the hawks approaching from ahead; the second, towards the hawks behind the plane.
Ot screamed with delight.
"They must be Glinda's! She found out about Erakna's ambush and set up an ambush for the ambushers!"
Hank hoped that that was true. He also wished that Glinda had warned him about this so he could have flown another route. But maybe she'd not had enough time.
Hank quit climbing and dived somewhat before leveling out. He pushed the throttle in all the way. He would need all the speed he could get to bull his way through the oncoming enemy. The altimeter indicated that he had almost a thousand feet altitude above the ground below him. He was five thousand feet above sea level, which meant that the engine had less power. It needed more oxygen. He was making only sixty miles per hour ground speed.
Then the Jenny was among a cloud of hawks. Ten seconds before, Glinda's birds had struck the enemy like bolts of feathered lightning. The fifty or so headed for him had suddenly become about a dozen. But these were out to kill him and were checking their speed to match his. They would be trying to board the Jenny as if they were pirates.
The Scarecrow and the Woodman had unstrapped the safety belt and were standing up. The Winkie king held his ax up, ready to chop at the onslaughters. The Ozian was waving his arms about as if he could scare off the birds. Or perhaps he was just expressing his fear.
Hank cursed and howled at them to sit down and belt themselves in again. He could not make any violent maneuvers that might throw the two out of the plane. Then he thought that, yes, he could. The Scarecrow could land almost as safely as if it wore a parachute. The tin man would be battered and bent and maybe his limbs and head might be torn off. But he could be repaired.
However, he had no time nor room for dives, loop the loops, chandelles, Immelmanns, or anything like that. Even if he had, he'd have been followed by the hawks.
A hawk landed on the upper right wing and sank its talons into the fabric. This ripped away, and the dispossessed bird, a screeching frustrated fury, shot by Hank.
Another hawk managed to grip the edge of the front cockpit windshield. Nilklaz's ax flashed, and the hawk was split. Blood spattered the windshield and cockpit and covered parts of the rear windshield. Hank suddenly could not see ahead.
That did not concern for the moment. There was a thump, a perceptible jarring and slowing down of the plane. Feathers sprayed by him and pieces of flesh and a severed glaring-eyed head. The plane began to quiver and to shake. And the motor roared peculiarly.
One or more hawks had encountered the whirling propeller. The vibrations increased; the plane bucked. Hank cursed once more, and he cut the ignition off. The propeller presently was still, revealing that the outer part of a blade had been broken off.
"What is it? What's happened?" Ot screamed.
"We have to make a deadstick landing!" Hank said. He did not have to yell now. The only sound was the singing of the wind through the wires connecting the wings and the fuselage. And the far-off shrieking of the battling hawks.
He looked behind. Glinda's divebombers had knocked out over two thirds of the enemy, but the survivors were battling hard.
He looked below on both sides. Two miles ahead was the broad though sloping meadow that was to be his first landing on the home-leg. It still was. Fortunately, the wind had not become stronger, and it was only slightly gusty.
The two in the front cockpit were yelling at him now. They wanted to know what would happen.
Hank shouted back at them, but the wind carried his words off. He sent Ot to them with his message.
"And stay with them or abandon ship," he said. "I don't care which. Just get out of the cockpit. I need all the room I can get."
Ot delivered the information. The two sat down, and the hawk did the intelligent thing. She flew away.
The wind was from the west today. Hank glided steeply enough into it to keep the Jenny from stalling but not so swiftly that he would, he hoped, land at such a velocity that he'd run out of landing area. When past the meadow, he banked and came back across it and then turned towards it again. The wheels knocked leaves off from the top branches of a tree. Having cleared that, Hank at once side-slipped the plane to lose altitude swiftly. He had just time enough to straighten it out before his wheels touched. Up went the plane, bouncing, came down on wheels and tailskid, leaped again, landed hard, bounced a little, and then the grass and flowers of the meadow were streaming below them and the trees ahead were racing toward them. He did not have brakes; he could only pray that the Jenny would stop in time.
She did. Under the limbs of a tree, the propeller hub only a few inches from a thick gray-black tree trunk.
Hank sat and said nothing for a while. His breathing and heart slowed down. The two ahead of him also sat quietly. From a distance, thunder rumbled and the cries of men running from the camp came to them. Ot landed on the edge of the cockpit, startling him.
"A bad landing for a hawk!" she cried. "But I suppose it's a good one for a man?"
"Very good under the conditions," Hank said.
The Scarecrow rose and turned around. It had some blood spots on its face and the point of a feather stuck near the edge of its painted lips. Though its face did not lose its smile, its voice quivered.
"Does this happen often?"
"Nothing exactly like it has ever happened before," Hank said. "But I've been in worse situations. Anyway, we Earth pilots have a saying. Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing. So this is very good."
Rain dropped, gently at first, then poured. The Scarecrow got under a wing. If watersoaked, it became heavy and slow-moving. The Woodman did not mind the rain. Despite what Baum had said, it did not rust. That was a nice touch Baum had made up, as was t
he Woodman's weeping and then getting rusty joints from the tears. Niklaz had no body fluids or tear ducts.
Ot said, "Glinda has to be notified about this. I'll get a messenger if there's one available. Do you have anything special to tell her?"
"Yes. We may be three days late. Or more. I have to get a new propeller. And I have to take out the propeller shaft and see if it's been bent. If it is, then it has to be straightened. Also, we can't fly if it keeps on raining. We won't take off until the repairs have been made and the weather's good."
"I'll see she gets the message," Ot said, and she flapped off.
By then men had arrived. They were wild-looking, their hair growing waist-length, their beards spreading out like wild mushrooms, their cloth garments tattered, torn, and dirty, and they bristled with daggers, swords, spears, and axes.
According to what Niklaz had said before they'd taken off, these were outlaws. Glinda had made contact via hawk with several groups of "wild men," as they were called. She had offered them pardons if they would act as guerrillas for her. They had set up the refueling stations in these mountains. After the plane had left, they would go northward, slip across the Gillikin border, and terrorize the citizens. Or, if the Gillikins invaded, the guerrillas would harass the armies.
Ot introduced him to the leaders of the band, which numbered exactly forty.
Call me Ali Baba, Hank thought. Forty thieves is right. They could have stepped out, been run out, rather, from The Arabian Nights for being too unsavory. I never saw such a bunch of cutthroats, not even on Wall Street.
The two that especially got his attention were Sharts the Shirtless and Blogo the Rare Beast.
Sharts was a giant among his own kind, as tall as Hank's six feet two inches and broader and more heavily muscled. A "Strangler" Lewis. A handsome one, though, the only clean-shaved man in the crowd. He could have posed for a collar ad. His thick wavy hair was sunset-red. His eyes were strange and disconcerting, purplish with aquamarine flecks and with a hint of madness about them. He had a habit of whistling tunelessly while by himself or when someone else was talking to him. This was going to irritate Hank considerably, but at the moment he just thought that it was an eccentricity to note.
A Barnstormer in Oz Page 10
