Yodsess slung the gleaming Insight over her brawny shoulder. “Cockaigne has slid inevitably a long way back toward the chaotic conditions reigning when first we regained our home.”
“To think that the starostas once cruelly ruled over all the Land,” said Aniatis. “Why Lord Iatros ever created them in the first place, I shall never understand.”
At the mention of Iatros’s name, all the trees bent and the grasses murmured, though no breeze passed.
“Unriddling the ways of our Creator concerns us not,” Yodsess chided. “Our mission must be to reestablish the critical balances we once so carefully engineered.”
“We are more than halfway to Castel Djurga,” Dormender said, pointing with pristine Salvor toward the east. “Soon, if the lumpkins spoke accurately, we will cross into the misshapen Jumbles. But at the moment, if memory serves, a covey of Roast Fowls is wont to nest nearby, hard upon a patch of Mead Gourds. Let us refresh ourselves, then make hard march.”
They sallied forth in high spirits then, while the elephant-sized carcass behind them slowly deliquesced into the scorched turf.
* * *
Eagerly the four sweaty teens shucked their daypacks and fell with near-unanimous exclamations of relief onto the coarse grass of the clearing.
“Ow!” complained Hazel, “I landed on some kind of pricker!”
“Better than landing on some kind of prick,” Calla dryly observed.
Pike reacted to the bawdy comment unmercifully. Since his fainting spell, he had switched from being the biggest detractor of Cockaigne to the biggest defender of Iatros and his message.
“Shut up, Calla. This has nothing to do with sex. We’re here to find our true home and save it from decay.”
Westbrook shrugged. “We’ll know the truth of it all for sure in a few minutes, won’t we?”
Hazel said, “I still don’t see why we couldn’t stage this test inside.”
Pike patiently explained. “Zonked out in somebody’s bedroom, we’d be more likely to get discovered by horrified adults. But no one ever comes up here, except maybe some other kids once in a while. If anybody stumbles on us, they’ll think we’re just on some kind of nut and berry nudist trip.”
“Trip is the right word,” said Calla. “Despite everything, I’m still half expecting this stuff to be nothing but acid.”
“And if it is plain old LSD—something you’ve talked about trying more than once, Calla—this setting should be safe and pleasant enough to give us a good trip. Okay, enough talk. Everybody strip.”
Westbrook, Hazel and Pike undressed swiftly enough, but Calla hesitated, three-quarters turned away from her friends.
“Oh, come off it, Calla. I’ve seen you naked plenty of times in the locker room already, and you’ve got nothing to be ashamed of.”
“I can’t help being modest, Hazel.”
“Modesty won’t cut it where we’re going,” admonished Pike. “When I was out of it under the stairs, I saw vague shapes of the things we have to fight, and they won’t care whether you’re naked or not before they try to rip your head off.”
“Which poses an interesting question,” Westbrook said. “Can our bodies here be hurt by whatever happens to us in Cockaigne?”
“Don’t know. But if we ever manage to shut up and do it, we’ll learn that too.”
Naked, the foursome found comfortable spots in the wild pasture in which to sit. A vagrant breeze riffled the fine down on the girls’ arms and tightened the boys’ scrotums. Pike held the blotter paper. Once settled, he ripped it into quarters and passed the emblemed squares out. Regarding each other with fervent determination, the teenagers placed the chalky papers on their tongues, then linked hands.
Within ninety seconds, their souls were loosed.
The sun climbed across the sky, reached its height, then began to fall, while clouds raced or ambled and wind pimpled the insensate flesh of the immobile, softly breathing adolescents. Finally their errant spirits returned, relighting their visages.
“Pike, you were awesome!”
“That canyon!”
“Those rapids!”
“The way those leopard-deer things ran!”
“What did we call them? I can’t quite bring up the name now.”
“But there’s so much wrongness there to put right!”
Calla held forth her arm. “Feel the spot where the stained-glass thorn went in.”
Her friends took turns pressing an area above her wrist.
“So cold, so very cold,” Westbrook said.
“All right, all right,” Pike admitted. “So we have to be careful. But didn’t you feel more or less invincible? Powerful too! What could stand against us in Cockaigne, once we get our bearings?”
“Nothing—so long as we stick together.”
* * *
Upon first beholding the mad unnatural sprawl of the Jumbles, the trio felt their souls truly quail, for the first time since their return to Cockaigne.
“Can it be that here once stretched the Chocolate Vale?”
“And what of Lemonade Lake and the Doughnut Isles?”
“I bring to mind the gay flocks of Marzipan Macaws that used to darken the skies.”
From a promontory they surveyed the cankerous conglomeration that cordoned Castel Djurga, that distant towered and buttressed manse just visible on its own isolated mesa at the center of the abominable territory. Even the firmament above the Jumbles appeared tainted with smoke and ashes.
A grid of hard-surfaced black streets divided the landscape into harsh lines. Flanking the streets without so much as a blade of grass between them, one tall glass and steel box after another revealed their hive-like interiors, lit with actinic lights. The residents of the Jumbles—small simulacra resembling the godlings, dressed in drab uniforms, their faces dull, their voices reedy—rushed into and out of the buildings, clutching rigid cases and small, ear-braced deities to which they ceaselessly prayed. Down the streets, in obedience to colored signals, raced noxious self-powered carriages.
Dormender spat upon the outcropping of marbled bacon rock on which they stood. “This obscenity touches some dim nightmare in the recesses of my brain.”
Aniatis said, “Ever unhappy with his surroundings, Theriagin seeks to recreate what we all willingly left behind.”
Yodsess exclaimed, “Ah, of course! Despite his stated dream, to possess all Cockaigne forever, he quickly reverted to a facsimile of what he had deliberately abdicated.”
The three titans hefted their weapons: Salvor, Insight and Caritas.
“Further speculation avails us naught. Let us wade through these vermin now, and confront our errant brother.”
With seven-league strides they descended into the Jumbles. At the sight of the giants, whose heads topped the second story of each building, the deformed and mindless inhabitants of the Jumbles panicked like ants. Above the sounds of their synthetic screams and the crumpling of metal and crashing of glass, the laughter of the three conquerors rang like rolling thunder, as Caritas spitted, Salvor cleaved, and Insight hewed.
* * *
“I don’t understand why we can’t divide the doses into four sets, and each keep our own.”
Westbrook had obviously been brooding on this topic for some time. Confronting Pike now, the homely-looking boy could not hide the indignation in his voice. Pike ignored the provocative tone, and replied matter-of-factly.
“First, Iatros handed the sheaf of hits directly to me, remember? ‘Theriagin,’ he said, I entrust these to you.’”
Supportive of Pike, Calla chimed in. “True. That’s what the doctor said. Just before he told us he’d be gone for a short time.”
Pike nodded smugly. “Second, by having a single guardian of the drug, no one can be tempted to make a solo trip to Cockaigne.”
“No one but you, that is.”
Pike turned on Hazel. “What are you saying? Are you accusing me of visiting Cockaigne alone? Where’s your proof?”
“
I don’t have any proof. Just a suspicion. The last time we were all there, the Land felt different somehow, as if—I don’t know! It’s so hard to retain impressions and memories from Cockaigne, or even to find the words for them back here on Earth.”
“What if I swear to you all by the stones of Castel Djurga that I haven’t been cheating? No solo trips. Would that satisfy you?”
Westbrook tentatively said, “I suppose it would have to.…”
Calla moved closer to Pike. “I don’t know why you two are ganging up on Pike, but I don’t like it. We all need to trust each other. Do you want to suspect the comrade guarding your back when a pride of poppyfaces or a school of basikores is attacking? I certainly don’t!”
Hazel agreed. “There’s no way the Tetrad can succeed in rehabilitating Cockaigne if we don’t all work together.”
Pike clapped his hands as if gavelling a motion closed. “It’s settled, then. I’ll hold on to the doses.”
“How many do we have again?”
“Fifty four-part blotters. At two trips a week, that’s roughly six months’ worth. Doctor Iatros will certainly return by then.”
Calla shivered. “Six months from now is November. I don’t plan on being butt-naked outdoors by then. We’re going to have to figure out some other jumping-off place.”
Hazel said, “I wish we could afford to go more than twice a week. The time differential between Cockaigne and here cuts two ways. One of our excursions lasts a long time in Cockaigne’s frame. But between trips a lot of time continues to pass. I hate going back and seeing stuff we worked so hard on wrecked by the starostas. Just look at the mess they made of Bugtown.”
“True. But twice a week is a good compromise. Spacing out the trips this way actually allows us to gauge the long-term effects of our actions. Aren’t you glad we got to see the consequences of nearly eliminating the Sewing Needles, before we totally exterminated them?”
Westbrook grimaced. “Major screwup! None of the Turkey Trees got pollinated.”
“It’s hard to be a god,” Pike said.
“Gods,” said Hazel, frowning. “Hard to be gods.”
* * *
They paused, breathing stertorously, to lean upon the gore-slick machicolations and crenellations of Castel Djurga. In this brief lull from carnage, there was no time for such niceties as cleaning of nicked steel or bold asseverations of justice. The sole task the three tattered and wounded warriors could focus on was filling their laboring lungs with air enough to battle anew.
Reaching the foot of the bluff upon which loomed Castel Djurga had presented no real challenges. The puny mock-citizens of the Jumbles had offered no substantial resistance, fleeing madly or at the most hurling small harmless pebbles from noisy hand-throwers. At the base of the bluff, Aniatis, Yodsess and Dormender had halted before setting eager feet upon the Adamantine Stairs. Halfway up they had met the first line of Theriagin’s inner defenses, a barrage of razor-headed hoopsnakes tumbling down the narrow way. Upon sighting their foes, the snakes had loosened teeth from tail to arrow futilely at the armored bosoms of the invaders. Meeting that assault successfully, the trio hastened forward, reaching the pastille-tiled top of the butte, only to encounter wave after wave of enslaved malignant beings. In a frenzy of slaughter, the godlings dispatched spike-tailed, acid-dripping, scalpel-toothed beasts by the bloody scores, amidst a furious storm of shrieking, scratching, and snarling. All the while they wept at seeing Castel Djurga—where many and many happy, peaceful years had been passed with song and laughter and sensual dalliance—so besmirched.
Their goal was the Council Chamber on the highest level, where they intuitively sensed Theriagin had closeted himself.
Now, interrupting their hard-fought recess, a last-ditch wave of defenders sought to whelm them. More in the nature of domestic servitors than soldiers, these imps and halflings nonetheless brandished implements of potential harm. Tearful yet determined, the godlings perforce slayed them all.
At the wide brass-studded double doors of the Council Chamber, they hammered defiantly. Her flaming hair clotted with alien matter, Yodsess shouted, “Theriagin, your long-delayed bane arrives! Open for your doom!”
The doors swung soundlessly apart under no man’s hand, and the three avengers entered.
A stalwart figure, brawny of torso and wry of lips, Theriagin confronted them from the far wall of the tapestried, raftered room. They halted, and Aniatis said, “Advance, traitor.”
“Alas, I cannot greet you properly, old friends. My situation is rather, ah, inflexible.”
Moving cautiously closer, all quickly realized what Theriagin meant.
Their comrade of yore formed a living bas-relief, integral with the wall of Castel Djurga. Soul melded to stone, only the frontward third of his body, including his entire arms but not his legs, retained an independent existence from the marmoreal stratum.
“Only thus,” said Theriagin, “and at such price, did I insure my solid anchoring in this realm throughout all these lonely centuries.”
Dormender cursed. “And so you chose perpetual tainted exile over any sane return! Now you can only die!”
Heeding Dormender’s decisively voiced declaration even before it ceased ringing in the air, Yodsess broke from the others and, ululating wildly, with axe upraised, plunged toward the tethered villain.
Theriagin’s right hand, concealed in shadow till this fatal moment, swung up, bearing Success, the flail. Yodsess either failed to see the threat or cared not for her own safety.
The barbed chains of the flail wrapped around the woman’s neck, and Theriagin yanked.
The sound of Yodsess’s axe cleaving the mortal breastbone of the granite-backed godling coincided with the sharp crack of her own snapping spine.
* * *
Amidst the debris of a small New Year’s Eve party, the four teenagers, alone together, unsupervised by adults, huddled mournfully after all their cheerful peers had departed.
“What are we going to do now?” Hazel moaned. “He’s overdue by two months.”
“I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m really hurting,” said Westbrook. “Without Cockaigne, the rest of my life seems like a joke.”
Calla’s hand sought Pike’s. “That’s just how I feel too. What good is the future, if we can never return to the Land? How can we grow up without Cockaigne? The whole experience is already fading, like some kind of wonderful, impossible dream.”
Pike patted Calla’s hand, then released it. “Have faith. Doctor Iatros will come back sooner or later.”
“But till then—how do we go on?”
No one had an answer. And after a short silent time of being alone with their thoughts, Westbrook strode off with Hazel into the empty new year.
Calla fell into Pike’s arms. He cradled her with a certain remoteness. “If only the four of us had just one more dose apiece,” she murmured.
“I have one more dose. For myself.”
Calla shot out of his tepid embrace. “What!”
“You heard me. I kept a dose aside. Several sheets, actually. But they’ve all been used up except for one last hit. I’m going into Cockaigne tonight, Calla—and I’m not coming out.”
“But, but—that’s impossible!”
“No, it’s not. On my earlier solo trips, I learned how to get around the inherent flaw of Iatros’s creation. There’s a price to pay, but it will all be worth it. The sacrifice is a non-issue.”
“Caitiff bastard!” Eyes leaking behind her glasses, Calla balled her fist and raised it as if to strike Pike. He awaited her assault patiently, until, quivering, she finally dropped her unclenched hand and threw herself on him.
“Pike, don’t go! Wait with us, please. Iatros will return soon, I know it. Pike, if you stay, I—I’ll sleep with you!”
Delving beneath her shirt, Pike said, “Oh, really?”
Calla made no reply, but lowered her eyes and began to unbutton her blouse.
When they had finished having sex,
after Calla had fallen asleep in his arms, Pike, still naked, disengaged himself without waking her, took out his wallet, removed a tab of blotter paper, and slipped it beneath his tongue.
* * *
The lugubriously droning equipment revealed that all of Pike’s vital signs had flatlined, his twenty-year coma ended. Unbreathing also, Westbrook, spine shattered, lay contorted like a broken doll upon the linoleum floor.
Donning their clothes quickly yet without any signs of agitation, Hazel and Calla failed even to flinch when the banging started on the jammed door of Pike’s room. What terror could such mundane assaults hold?
After shrugging into her coat and slipping on her shoes, Hazel bent to kiss Westbrook’s cooling brow. “Always did fiery Yodsess exhibit more bravery than caution.”
“The Land will enshrine her name forever.”
As an ethereal gleam faded from their eyes, the women hugged each other, then moved toward the door.
“If he found Westbrook after so long—” began Calla.
“Then, Dormender, plainly Iatros can find us,” finished Hazel.
“And when he does, Aniatis?”
“What else? Would you have all this death among the Tetrad be for naught? We return. We return to Cockaigne.”
THE SHORT ASHY AFTERLIFE OF HIRAM P. DOTTLE
The head of the spike bites deep into the hard substance of my body, and the man’s blunt teeth grip the lower part of my anatomy with compulsive, fearful force. The spike supports me, while my body in turn supports the man’s entire weight. He’s a small, dumpy fellow, to be sure, but still the strain on me is considerable. Relying thus on a small piece of rusty hardware for our lives, both of us dangle over five stories of empty space, the cobbled street far below us a rain-slick bumpy surface lit by a few dim streetlights casting golden pools of lumi just then the gunshot rings out.
Little Doors Page 27
