Maureen Birnbaum, Barbarian Swordperson

by George Alec Effinger

  "—because I'm the one with the broadsword," I go. "Okay, I'll get dressed and be right there."

  Immediately I had like this gross image problem: The proper costume to accompany Old Betsy was the metallic bra and G-string, of course. We're talking New England winter, though, and if I got into my familiar barbarian drag, I'd freeze my tush off. And the alternative—wearing the Ann Taylor shirtdress with the broadsword—was too ludicrous even to consider.

  I compromised. I wore the leather harness and gold bikini, and zipped up the ski jacket over them. I hefted Old Betsy, made sure I had my hotel key and bus fare, and headed out fearlessly into the night.

  By the time I got to Branford and the entrance to the chapel in the base of Harkness Tower, my legs had goosebumps the size of loquats, I'm telling you. My Rod was waiting for me. He rushed to me and enclosed me in his arms. "Don't be afraid, my dear," he goes. "I've picked up some spells along the way that I'm confident will protect us against most of the perverse beings we may meet up there."

  "Most?" I go. I shuddered. I really wished he hadn't said 'most.'

  "If you guard my back," he goes, "I'll lead the way." He was so brave! Finally, here was a man I could respect.

  I also wasn't crazy about his use of the word 'spells.' He was introducing at this late date a severely fantastic element into what had been—except for that Saint Graal business, which was no doubt just the nightmare effect of a late-night pizza or something—clearly a super-scientific series of adventures. I explained my objection to Rod.

  "I'm dead certain that there's a super-scientific explanation to this, too," he goes. "We just have to find out what it is. Come on, now."

  I wasn't crazy about his use of the term 'dead certain,' while we're at it. "I've got a flashlight, Maureen," Rod goes bravely. "A lot of predatory animals flee bright light."

  "Oh yeah," I go. "How many slime-trailing, sleepless, slimy, slobbering things do you know that will run and hide from your Eveready?"

  "Okay," he goes, "you've put your finger on the major difficulty of our expedition here. We're up against the unknown, and we can't predict how successful our conventional fighting techniques will be. It may be that my spells and your broadsword ability will avail us naught against the poisonous entities from beyond the stars. But I ask you, what else can we do?"

  I didn't hesitate long, let me tell you. "We could wait for help in the morning. We could consult more learned authorities on campus—and surely there are a few paraphysicists who could help us. We could give your roommate up for lost and go have breakfast in a short while. We could hope that Cthulhu or whoever is intruding on our peace might just decide to look around and go home. There are any number of other courses of action beside going up this spiral stairwell."

  "Let's climb, anyway," Rod goes. "There isn't much other choice."

  "As long as you'll take the first attack from beyond the stars. That will give me time to scramble back down the stairs. Just kidding, of course."

  We did climb nearer and nearer the carillon bells, and nothing more disturbing interrupted us for a time. After a while, however, the carillon began to sway a bit in the non-existent breeze, clapping together and making strange, unearthly, ancient-sounding bell melodies. At the same time, I noticed that pulsating, poisonous patterns were written out on the stone walls in nacreous, glowing runes that neither Rod nor I could identify, as well as terrible, twisting pictographs that moved of their own accord. They writhed before us, and we had no way of knowing how to interpret them.

  There were overwhelmingly strong hints of monsters, of gods or creatures from beyond our time and space. I wondered how we could possibly understand them—and if we couldn't understand them, then how could we battle them? Were we doomed to become slaves to their will?

  No. I'll let you know that right up front, Bitsy. At this point in the investigation, the manifold forms of the The Great Old Ones did not possess us. We had a means of escape. Let me tell you about it.

  Rod had apparently studied many of the subtexts that dealt with the rites of the Great Old Ones, as well as others that involved the Outer Gods and other alien races and monsters.

  There were, unfortunately, many, many classes of ancient, unknown, inhuman, mind-numbing gods. The one encountered by me and good old Rod was called a Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath. Though less formidable than some of the other Outer Gods, it still appeared in a horrible, unspeakable, repellent form.

  It was a gigantic, grasping thing, a hideous animated "tree" with poisonous tentacles for branches; the tentacles ended in black hooves, and the creature could shamble clumsily across the ground. It had many puckered mouths, each dripping the same gruesome green slime we'd seen in Rod's Branford suite. The Dark Young reeked like an opened grave, and it towered over us some fifteen feet tall. I'll tell you once, dear, it was certainly not pleasant in any respect.

  Rod was prepared, however; he knew a brief cantrip that freed us from the horror of the Dark Young. I didn't understand a word of the spell, as it was spoken in some lost language that delighted in words ending invowel-t-h and other vocabulary that was so guttural that you could get gall stones just listening to it. My Greenberg School dabbling into European dialects was hardly enough to keep me informed of what was happening.

  Anyway, the Dark Young seemed to freeze. It became absolutely motionless, and then began to shrink. To me, it looked like it was disappearing down a dark, featureless tunnel. We didn't wait around long enough to see what would happen next. "Follow me, sweetheart," I cried, and I led the way down the staircase and out of the tower. You must know by now that I have no problem being decisive and, anyway, I didn't want that green goo all over my trusty broadsword.

  I realized that I'd been holding my breath, and it was good to inhale deeply in the fresh, cold air of the Branford courtyard. "I'll see you back to the Taft," Rod goes. "First thing in the morning, we'll pay a call on the Sterling Library. I believe they have some texts that will help understand what's happening here."

  I nodded. Of course, I yearned to get into battle, but I was also wise enough to realize that we had some homework to take care of first. "What about Sandy, your roommate?" I go.

  Rod rubbed his strong, square chin. "I think Sandy is the prisoner of some greater, more grotesque evil. The Dark Young was there merely to stall us, or to frighten us into giving up the chase."

  "Fear?" I go, laughing. "It's not even in my primary word-list. I'll meet you here at nine-thirty tomorrow morning. I want to get myself a pair of jeans, a sweatshirt, and some good sneakers. I don't want to go up against the Vast Unclean from Dimension X in an Ann Taylor shirtdress."

  "Whatever you say, Maureen," he goes. "The forces of the profane will be patient."

  That made me shudder despite myself.

  Time passes. That's a quote, by the way, Bitsy, and a Snickers bar if you can tell me where it comes from. Give up? Dylan Thomas, you remember. Time passes. It's morning, I bopped by the Co-op again and got myself some horrible new stiff blue jeans, a blue sweatshirt with "Yale University" printed in teeny tiny letters—reverse ostentation, I called it—and some canvas gym shoes. This was in the Nouveau Stone Age before Reeboks, you know. I'm wearing the ski jacket and carrying the shirtdress in a bag with Old Betsy. I was ready to get down. As it were.

  Well, I trudged back to High Street and Branford College. I have to admit that I suppressed another shudder as I passed beneath Harkness Tower, but it was daytime now and bright and warm under the sun, and the Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath might have been just some black-and-white monster from a movie somewhere between Godzilla and Mothra.

  Hey, did you ever wonder how, when a new monster appears in Japan, the people immediately know its name? I figured it out. They have a list, like with hurricanes. A new monster gets the next name on the list. The giant turtle appears and everybody goes, "Ohhh, Gammera the Invincible!" It's simple if you understand the Asian point of view. Well, of course I do, what do you know about it?

  Rod
was waiting for me in the courtyard, fidgeting a little. "Good morning, Maureen," he goes. He like gave me a chaste, heroic kiss on the cheek. Jeez, he was almost perfect!

  "Let's do it," I go. My voice was deep and nimbly. I was fully in my fighting-woman persona again.

  We walked to the Sterling Memorial Library. This time when I went in, no one made a fuss. I looked like Suzy Co-Ed, even though, as I've mentioned, Yale hadn't yet got its act together about that. Maybe the librarians and security guards all believed I was some Smith or Bennington talent down for a few days.

  Rod murmured to me, "The texts we need to consult are in a special section, the Omega Collection. They're generally not available to the public, but I'm a good friend of the curator. I've used that material before, and I'll explain to Dr. Christenson that this is an emergency. He'll understand."

  About a quarter of an hour later, a very old, very fragile book came down a dumbwaiter for us. It was so ancient, it could've been like the first rough draft of the Old Testament, you know? Rod treated it with caution and great respect, and carried it over to a table where we could browse through its mystic text.

  "This is an English translation of the Necronomicon," Rod goes, "hand-copied from Dr. John Dee's original manuscript sometime in the last two or three centuries. It is extremely rare, and literally priceless in value. It's a very great honor to be allowed to view this book."

  "Well," I go, "I'm suitably impressed."

  "This is also the source of the photocopied drawings and inscriptions that I've received," he goes. He turned a few pages. "Hello! What's this?"

  Another photocopy had been inserted between two of the book's crumbling pages. It said, "R.M."—that must have stood for "Rod Marquand," I guessed—and then some numbers. "What does it mean?" I go.

  "If I'm correct, this is a certain longitude and latitude. We'll need to consult an accurate atlas next."

  "Is it a warning?" I go. "Or a challenge?"

  Rod gazed at me steadily. "Perhaps both," he goes. He didn't show the least hint of fear.

  A few minutes later, we'd established the location indicated on the photocopy. The city of New Haven, Connecticut is hemmed in by two large ridges, West Rock and East Rock. Both are easily climbed, with roads twisting back and forth from their bases to their summits. They make for pleasant hiking in the spring and fall.

  The intersection of longitude and latitude fell right at the topmost point of East Rock. "There," Rod goes, stabbing his finger down on the map, "that's where we'll find It. And, I hope, my roommate Sandy."

  Rod had a bicycle and he borrowed another for me, and together we pedaled toward our grim destination. I was completely lost, because I didn't know New Haven very well beyond the immediate environs of the university. It was too early in the season for the journey to be picturesque. No flowers bloomed, and the oaks and elms loomed above us naked and black in their leaflessness.

  It was good warrior-woman exercise, though, and I could feel the burn in my mighty thews as I pushed the Italian ten-speed up the long slope of East Rock. I've found that just as everyone in the universe miraculously speaks English, and that I miraculously never seem to age, also miraculously I rarely put on too much weight. Oh, there'll be a pound or two now and then around the holidays or after some wanton barbarian feast, but my active life has toned me up much better than your exclusive health club seems to have done for you. No offense, Bitsy, of course I'm not being catty.

  "Look, there!" Rod goes. He was like freaking out on me.

  I stared where he was pointing, and I couldn't see a goddamn thing. He dragged his bike across the road, and I followed. When I got closer, I saw why he was so excited. He'd discovered a small crack in the rock that proved to be the entrance to a noxious, noisome, unspeakable cavern.

  Lord only knows how many thousands of people had passed right by that place, but it took the eagle eye of Rod Marquand to spot the significant opening. I knew there was nothing in the Yale student guide to New Haven about noxious, noisome, unspeakable caves. Unspeakable rival schools, maybe, but nothing about caves.

  "We're getting close," he goes. "I can feel it."

  It was dark, and there were webby things hanging down in my face. "It sure is unspeakable in here," I go. "Indescribable, too."

  "Don't talk, Maureen," he goes. "Save your energy for It."

  "What is this It we're going to be going up against?" I go. "Can you give me an idea?"

  Rod's voice came from further into the cavern, whose floor had begun to slope upward. "Perhaps Great Cthulhu himself. There's no way of knowing. I hope you have a tight grasp on your sanity."

  "I've got a tight grasp on Old Betsy," I go. "She's always been enough for me so far."

  "You've never been confronted by one of the Slobbering Obscene before."

  "Except last night," I go, reminding him. He did not answer. That bothered me, too.

  I could not see Rod, so I trudged along behind him. It had become stiflingly warm inside the cave, and I unzipped the ski jacket. I wanted to drop the jacket altogether, because I could better wield my sword without it, but I thought, "Hey. What if we run into the Ice Abomination from the Moons of Pluto?" Better safe than sorry is the motto of our wing of the Birnbaum clan, you know.

  Ahead of me I heard Rod go "Courane? Is that you?" There was an awful moment of silence, and then he goes, "My God, Sandy! What's happened to you?"

  I go, "Oh boy, here we go. Get yourself ready for Interstellar Pudding Monsters."

  In a marvelous testimony to my innate courage and like sheer, overwhelming gutsiness, I did not hesitate. I hurried along until I beheld the excruciating, festering creature that Rod's friend had become.

  "It must have been the contact with the Great Old Ones," Rod goes in a frantic, fearful voice.

  Sandy had become a gnarled, aged man, lurching and clutching blindly in the flickering greenish glow emanating from some sort of well in the midst of the cavern. His hair had turned white and most of it had kind of fallen out, you know? And he drooled a weird substance that was truly, truly ichorous. He could barely be called human anymore, and if it were up to me, I wouldn't have. Yet, after all, he was still in some way connected to his elder self—Rod's companion and roommate.

  "I can't stand it!" Rod goes. "Maureen, beware! That which caused this change in Courane lies nearby, and you risk the soundness of your mind should you chance to make contact with it!" I thought Rod's speech had taken a sharp turn into the melodramatic, but I didn't say anything about that.

  Around Sandy floated odd shapes—illusions, lesser monsters, or thought-projected weapons I could not tell. They looked like . . . well, apart from being indescribable, they looked like drab-colored, hovering paisleys.

  "Paisleys, Rod!" I go. "Sandy is trying to tell us something!"

  "Tell us something? How? And what is he trying to say?"

  "I don't know!" I go. Like I was putting most of my attention on what had once been your average college student. I didn't want to hurt Sandy, but I knew that I might have to, in order to like save our lives. I concentrated my attack on the paisleys. There were red paisleys, blue ones, and green ones. That cavern looked like an explosion in the Land's End tie factory.

  I learned very quickly that when I whacked a floating paisley, it became two small floating paisleys. Something told me that it would be like ever so harmful to let one of them touch us. I backed away a little more. The Sandy-creature took a step forward, and the paisleys advanced with him.

  "Be careful!" Rod goes helpfully. "He's trying to cut us off from the way out!"

  I'd already noticed that, but then, of course, I'm a fierce fighting-person, well-schooled in hand-to-hand combat, and therefore much better informed than Rod in such warlike mysteries as strategy and tactics. Instead of slashing at the nearest paisley, I just poked it a little. Just to see what happened.

  It exploded. Into about a thousand micro-paisleys. "Jeez," I go. I was starting to be troubled.

  "He's humming!"
Rod goes, all excited. "He's humming some spell!"

  "What is it? What's it mean? You got a counter-spell?"

  I couldn't see Rod, but his voice was sad. "No," he goes. "Unfortunately, it's in the one Aramaic dialect I neglected in my studies. Wouldn't you just know it?"

  "Great," I muttered through my clenched teeth.

  Onward Sandy came. Further back the floating paisleys pressed us. I could feel the low wall of the gruesome well against my legs. Rod and I retreated further. "Help me, Rod!" I go.

  At about this very moment, Rod decided he'd had enough, and he de-invited himself from the remainder of this confrontation. I did not hold it against the dear young man. This may have been his first meeting with such an onslaught of demonic activity, and he did not have either the experience or the fierce determination that I had.

  Further into the gloom we stumbled. I felt a single moment of despair, and then suddenly I knew just what to do, as usual. I understood that I had to capture Courane's attention, and I had to appeal to the small crumb of human intelligence that still remained to him, unsullied by the dire alien influences.

  "Sandy," I go, "paisley! Think paisley! I know what you're trying to tell us. If you concentrate, I know I can pull you out of this horrible mind-control."

  "Yeah?" goes Rod.

  I ignored him for the moment. "Sandy, think about your paisley ties! Think Ivy League, think crocodiles, think Lacoste shirts! Think Branford! Above all, think Yale!"

  Courane roared and staggered back. He brought his twisted, knotted hands to his face, and he fell to one knee.

  "I think you're on the right track, Maureen," goes Rod.

  "You bet." I swung Old Betsy low, and she whanged off the fetid stone of the glowing green well. Sandy's eyes opened a little wider, and he crawled back another short distance.

  "Remember the Clock at the Biltmore!" It still existed in this time, I knew. "Think L. L. Bean, Sandy! And will Great Cthulhu supply you with gin and tonics? I think not!" He was on both knees now, clawing at me either in supplication or in a fevered, fiendish attempt to rip open my throat. I wish you'd seen me, Bitsy. I was like stupendous.