Maureen’s mind continued to stalk forward, softly as a cat. “And what happened?” she said, still with her eyes irritably on that rising trickle of smoke.
“Trial,” he said. “Dragged in and both told we’d earned the death penalty. That was true. Then the High Head visits me in the death cell—I never heard what happened to Antorin, maybe they killed him—and he tells me I could commute my death sentence to exile, by coming here and serving the Brotherhood another way—the way I seemed to be good at, he points out—if I wanted.” He laughed, staring into the distance. Maureen crept on. Sleep soon. Soon now. “You know, I was disgusted! I refused. I said I’d broken Oath and I’d rather die. Would you believe that! So he went away. Then he came back and said if I behaved well and got him the information he wanted, Arth wanted, then I’d be allowed to come back—he’d reinstate me in the Brotherhood.”
“So you agreed?” Maureen said, inching on.
“Life is sweet,” Joe said. Maureen, as she crept, spared an exasperated little thought for the way Joe always had to speak in clichés, even when he was sincere. Go on, go on talking, she thought. Nearly there. Then sleep. “Yes,” he said. “I agreed. They put me through the transmutation ritual and I arrived here. And I did my best to be obedient. It was better than being executed, even working in that music shop. But if you ask me—Hey! What are you doing?”
But Maureen was there. Her mind sprang and leaped on his and twined with his and dragged him down with hers like a nixie, wrapped tight together. Sleep, sleep, sleep. On the sofa, both their bodies lapsed slightly and remained utterly still, barely breathing. After a while, the burning cigarette end smothered in the rest of the ash and went out.
* * *
2
« ^ »
Gladys had sensed that things had gone wrong. Next day, when she attempted to trace Zillah, she realized how badly.
She withdrew her mind from Arth and considered. The deaths of some of the party, she and Maureen had agreed, were probably inevitable. It had seemed likely that there would be analogues of one or two of the strike force in the pirate universe, and most theories held that two versions of the same person could not exist in the same space.
“Though I did hope it would turn out to be like twins,” Gladys remarked to Jimbo, as usual, crouched by her feet. “No reason why not, on the face of it.”
What shook her was the evident number of the dead. She had simply not been prepared for two-thirds of them to die. The virus-magic—well, she had no hopes for that really. It stood to reason that those wizards up in Laputa-Blish had ways of protecting themselves from outside magics. She had made them as a psychological device mostly, so that the strike team would not think it was being sent without a weapon. And now, not only were they without a weapon, but both boys and eleven girls were dead. Thirteen analogues.
“I never bargained for that number,” she told Jimbo.
“It means that the place must be more like here than we’d realized. But thirteen, Jimbo. I feel so responsible.”
Most dreadfully did she wish that there had been some way of telling who had an analogue in the pirate world and who had not. But when they were selecting the team, neither she nor Maureen could think of any way of finding out. And now what could six girls do in a worldlet full of mages? Except there were not six. When she looked for Zillah, Zillah was—gone. Not dead. Just not there—though there were traces enough to show Gladys that Amanda had been right. Zillah had gone with the strike force, even if she was not with them now.
“It’s too bad!” she said to Jimbo. “She took that child, and that child’s not safe at all. Silly, irresponsible girl. What do I do about that, Jimbo?”
There was no response from Jimbo. She got the impression he was rather carefully keeping quiet. She considered some more.
“It’s like this,” she said. “Am I, or am I not, making allowance for it being what I want to do? Come on, Jimbo. You know me. Shall we take a hand ourselves?” She found she was grinning as she spoke. The same grin was resonating off Jimbo too, purring and fibrilating through her. Jimbo liked a joke and a bit of excitement as much as she did. “And why not, Jimbo? Someone has to take a bit of thought for that poor child—but the truth is, I’ve been so envying those girls. What did you say? Yes. Well. If there turns out to be another Auntie Gladys over there, it’s just too bad, isn’t it?”
She heaved out of her chair and shuffled among the jungle for the phone, where she dialed a number in Scotland.
“Aline?” she said, when it was answered. “It’s me. It’s that emergency at last. I’m going to have to ask you to have the cats for me.”
While she spoke, the cats began gathering in a circle around her, staring accusingly.
“Well, cancel it then,” she said. “I’m not having you go off and leave them. They’ll feel strange. And they know. They’re all here now—except that Jellaby. She knows too, but she’s hiding. Just a moment.” Gladys broke off to make a brief mental search around the house. Ah. Under the spare bed. After a struggling moment, tortoiseshell Jellaby landed in the midst of the other cats, glaring, distended, and angry. “Stupid,” Gladys said to her. “Aline’s nothing like the vet’s.” To the phone she said, “That’s all of them now, and you’ll find they’re no trouble. They all look after themselves, except they can’t open tins. I’ll send the cat food up with them. And you know what to do about the message, don’t you? Thanks. ’Bye.”
This important matter being settled, Gladys shuffled to the strangely empty kitchen to pick up her fat black handbag. “There’s no point in traveling anything but light,” she told Jimbo, who still scuttled at her heels, “but I still don’t trust that place to make a proper cup of tea.” She took up her box of tea bags and emptied two-thirds of them into the bag. “Amanda’s going to need the rest when she comes,” she murmured, snapping the handbag closed. It was one of those that shut by twisting together two knobs the size of marbles. She stood considering what else she needed. “Nothing for Maureen—she’s not coming here at all,” she muttered. Then the grin spread on her face again. “And why not?” she said. “It’ll be far more fun if I dress up in style.”
She shuffled out of the kitchen and upstairs to her dark and cluttered bedroom, where she opened cupboards and chests and proceeded to array herself. She put on first a wondrous cocktail dress dating from the twenties (which had belonged to her great-aunt: Gladys was by no means as old as she liked people to think), an extraordinary creation of limp blue chiffon covered with swags and dangles of glass beads all over. The beads clacked gently with her every movement. To this, after some thought, she added a white feather boa and a flame pink scarf for warmth. To her head, with some puffing and critical grunting, she attached the crownlike headdress that reputedly went with the dress. Apart from further blue beads, its chief feature was a curling blue feather—somewhat crimped with age—which rose from the center of the creation in the middle of her forehead. With this nodding over her face, she bent to consider her feet.
Her normal tennis shoes did not seem to conform with the rest of her. “Got to be comfortable, though,” she observed, “and warm. And look expensive.”
Bearing these criteria in mind, she fetched out and laboriously trod into her most treasured footgear—a pair of large white yeti boots. She had never worn them much because she had always feared that someone had killed and skinned at least four persian cats to make those boots. But there was a time and a place for everything. She looked at herself critically in the mirror.
“Yes, I know, I know,” she said to Jimbo, who appeared to be crouched on her bed, probably surveying her finery with considerable astonishment, “but I don’t want anyone to take me too seriously, do I? You should know all about that. Besides, you may be all right, but I need to take my mind off that other Auntie Gladys over there.”
It only remained to consider what was the best way to take. Gladys half closed her eyes, cocked her feathered head on one side, and contemplated the defenses
surrounding the pirate universe. The window Mark had found was no longer available to her. But there was one spot in the defenses she had had her eye on from the beginning. A careful person could use that spot, provided she had Jimbo to help. The plainest way to use it was to summon her faithful taxi and have it take her to the nearest place of power.
“No, no,” she said irritably. “Too much hassle, too obvious, too easily traced, and it’s not fair to mix Jim Driver up in this anyway. I’ll have a go at getting in from the garden, Jimbo. All we need is a wood of some sort.”
She gathered Jimbo in her arms and went downstairs, where twilight had arrived at midday with low, bruised clouds and a storm building. “Hm,” Gladys said as she hid the key in the usual place. “Something is brewing, isn’t it? This looks like a disturbed storm to me. But it can wait. Amanda can probably see to it when she gets here.”
* * *
3
« ^ »
Tod came to himself. He was sick, disorientated, and rather cold. Some of the chill seemed to be due to the garments his uniform had been transmuted into, which left his arms largely bare and struck him as decidedly tight in the crotch, as well as inadequate for the climate of wherever this was. He seemed to be lying face downward on cold, varnished boards listening to the chilly patter of rain. There was a pair of shoes hazily within his line of vision, and he wondered querulously why. As he turned his face to focus on them, the shoes moved—an impatient sideways shuffle. A man’s voice from above them said, “Are you with me yet?”
Tod groaned. “Oh, probably,” he said. He sat up, considerably increasing his wretchedness.
He was in a cheerless alien room. Everything in it was like the contents of rooms he was used to, in that he could recognize a sofa, a table, a cooking stove (Why? Did aliens cook in their living rooms, the way all the shops in Leathe sold lipstick?), a yellow mat on the varnished floor, and a chest of drawers; but each item was subtly and distressingly different in its proportions, its color, and the substance of which it was made. It all added up to something that seemed to belong to another dimension entirely—which, he realized miserably, was exactly what it did. He thought he might be going to be sick.
To take his mind off it, he raised his eyes from the impatiently shuffling shoes to the man who was wearing them. He was fair-haired and a total stranger. He was wearing what Tod recognized as an alien version of a sober formal suit, and his blond hair was cropped in a manner that even Brother Wilfrid would have found excessive, since it left the man only with an interesting golden wave drooping across his forehead. Despite this, he was undeniably good-looking. Behind him was the window against which the rain pattered.
“Who are you?” Tod said. At the sight of that cold, wet window, his teeth began to chatter.
“I was Brother Antorin—I’m called Tony here,” the other answered. “Drink this.”
Tod bent dubiously over the mug that was thrust into his chilly fingers. To his surprise, it contained coffee—coffee thin and unfragrant and no doubt subtly shifted from the drink he knew, but drinkable all the same. He drank, and his teeth clattered on the rim. “Where is this?”
“Pengford, Surrey—in what you call otherworld,” Brother Tony replied. “These are my lodgings, but they’ll be yours from now on. The High Head tells me you’ll be taking over from me. I’ve been posted to Hong Kong instead, thank the Goddess! It looks as if all my obedience has paid off at last. What’s your name? You’re new since my time in Arth.”
“Tod,” said Tod. Shaken though he was, he did not want to antagonize this Brother by confessing he was heir to a Fiveir.
“Lucky,” said Brother Tony. “I’m fairly sure that’s a name here too, so you won’t need to get used to a new one. Now, what else do you need to know?”
Probably everything, Tod thought. At the moment all he could think of was how wretched and how cold he was. Anxious inspection showed him that his feet were in light, laced shoes, but at least they were still feet. The crotch-clutching lower garments were heavy blue cotton, inside which his legs were icy, but still legs; and above those he proved to be wearing a short-sleeved yellow thing of much thinner cotton. Below the little sleeves every hair on his arms stood up with chill, but he still recognized his own arms when he saw them. Funny. On Arth they had given him a distinct impression that he was about to be changed into something quite other. “Have you,” he said, “anything warm I can wear?”
“I expect so.” Brother Tony went and rummaged in a lower part of the chest of drawers, saying over his shoulder, “You’ll find the climate in this sector averages a good ten degrees below what you’re used to—unless you’re from North Trenjen, of course. That’s one of the many reasons why I’m so glad to be going to Hong Kong. Here. This should do.”
He tossed Tod a heavy woollen floppy thing made of gray-brown knitting. The maker of it had industriously twisted the stitches into an ornate plaited pattern. It looked ethnic. After turning it around several times, Tod discovered it had sleeves. Possibly it was a wool-work smockfrock. When Tod put it on, it came nearly to his knees, but at least it was warm—although he had a shamed moment when he was glad his parents could not see him in it.
“It’s called a jumper,” Brother Tony told him. “The people here have queer names for things, but they’re actually much more like real people than the experts of Arth seem to think. Are you feeling better now? We’ve not got much time if I’m to show you the ropes before my flight leaves.”
Tod cautiously stood up. The ethnic garment showed no signs of jumping, and to his increasing relief, the messages coming through from his body seemed to be all the usual ones. His left big toe cracked when he put his weight on it, the way it always did, and the ragged edge of his top back tooth caught his tongue in the usual way. His hands putting the empty mug back on the alien table were his own square hands—though they trembled a bit—and his height in relation to Brother Tony was what he expected: quite a bit shorter.
Brother Tony looked at him critically. “You look rather foreign at the moment,” he said. “We’d better get your hair cut and perhaps shave off that mustache too.”
Tod located a mirror over a white sink-thing. Despite the rainy dimness of the light, it was himself looking back out of it. He had seldom been so glad to see anyone. “Oh no,” he said. “My hair stays as it is—all of it. I want to recognize myself when I see me.”
Brother Tony did not argue. “Well, I’ve only got a couple of hours,” he said, stooping and picking up a bundle of booklets and papers that had been on the floor beside Tod, “but you’ll find you’ll want to rethink that hairstyle after you’ve been here a day or so. These are yours. They came through with you. Arth’s getting quite good these days. They’re all here—credit cards, bankbook, insurance, checkbook, and they even remembered a driving license. You’re better off than I was. I had to get most of this stuff for myself. What do they mean by putting you down as Roderick Gordano?”
“Because that’s my name,” Tod said. He took the bundle from Brother Tony and sorted through it bemusedly. Otherworld script was balder than that of the Pentarchy, but much the same. Someone had scrawled his name on the various cards and documents without even attempting to imitate his signature. He was going to have to learn to forge his own name. And on such a lot of things. Tod had often complained about the number of documents he was required to carry about at home, but they were not a tenth of these. “My friends call me Tod,” he explained to Brother Tony.
“Great. Well, I don’t have time to be friends, Roderick,” Brother Tony said briskly. “My job is just to make sure you’ve got it straight in your head what you’re here for before I leave for Hong Kong. How much were you told?”
What had that sod—the High Head—said? “I’m supposed to be the lover of some female and report back what she says.”
“That’s right as far as it goes,” Brother Tony said. “Actually, Paulie’s the wife of the equivalent of the High Head here in this country, and you’
re supposed to report about him. Paulie’s very communicative—you’ll see—but Mark’s a complete clam. Doesn’t let his own wife know what he’s up to most of the time, and quite possibly misleads her when he does tell her. Paulie and I both know he’s been up to something lately, but that’s all we know, and that’s all I’ve been able to tell the Head. Did he—our Magus—explain that the ritual gives him a thread to your spoke in the Wheel, so that he comes through direct to your mind?”
Tod shook his head, or nodded. He could not remember. All he knew was growing rage. How had Arth the right to do this to him?
“Well, he does,” said Brother Tony. “It can be damned awkward if he comes on at the wrong moment. What else did he tell you? Did he explain that if you behaved yourself and reported faithfully, they’ll bring you back to Arth when you’ve worked out your sentence?”
Tod shook his head.
“No? I suppose they left that up to me to explain. He’s told me that often enough—and I assure you, Brother, it pays to be as obedient as you damned well can. Look at me. I asked to be relieved here, and they sent you almost at once. My sense is that I’ll be fetched home after this stint in Hong Kong. I’ve behaved myself, see.”
Tod nodded glumly, wondering why Brother Tony seemed so joyous at this idea.
“So if you’re ready,” Brother Tony said, “I’ll take you out and make sure you know where everything is.”
“Out?” Tod looked at the window, where raindrops were now pattering less fiercely, but still pattering. “Won’t we get wet?”
Brother Tony laughed. “Takes getting used to after Arth, doesn’t it? Don’t worry. You can wear this.” He unhooked a limp blue garment from a hook behind the door and flung it to Tod. It seemed to be a waterproof jacket. Tod put it on and wrestled with the unfamiliar zip, while Brother Tony took up a smart gabardine raincoat from a nearby chair and put that on over his suit. He picked up a shiny leather grip. “Ready?”
A Sudden Wild Magic Page 20
