The Fanciers & Realizers MEGAPACK

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  Now that I had been apprised of her gender, I had the satisfaction of seeing the guerilla’s beard vanish as I drew nearer. Her clothing took on the appearance of an Indian scout’s fringed buckskin; and, as I stepped forward with both palms out and open at about waist level, to show my own lack of violent intent, she smiled in her turn and sheathed both her blades. Her companion’s appearance changed not one whit, nor did the canine’s.

  “So where are we, anyway?” said M. Thorn, the guerilla.

  By this I understood them, despite the lateness of the hour, to be visitors. “You see nestled at the bottom of this sculpted, open-air amphitheatre,” I replied with a guidelike gesture of my arm, “the Sparks McFarlane Memorial Outdoor Pool. M. McFarlane, winner of seven gold and three silver medals in the Olympics of 2044 and 2048, spent most of her professional life, until her tragic and premature death in 2061, as swimming professor here at Upper Wabash University. The pool named in her honor is regulation Olympic size, fed with the purest filtered water, and maintained at between nineteen and twenty-four degrees Celsius the year around. If you have standard reality perception, you should be able to see the white quartz guidelines at the bottom of the pool. I am reliably informed that they show up well in moonlight. To me, however, this is the dank tarn of Auber in the misty mid region of Weir, and the vault of the lost Ulalume lies just yonder—on competition days, it’s the concession stand, naturally closed up now and shuttered. To one of my friends, this pool is an outpost well of Great Cthulhu; to another, the Wishing Lake of Svend von Jarmode’s prize-winning novel of 2037; and to quite a few, it is the shining water into which the Lady of the Lake drew King Arthur’s sword Excalibur when it was thrown there after his last battle. What is it, M.’s, if I may ask, to you?”

  “What the h—lbog?” said M. Thorn. “Is your young Reverence a raving zany?”

  At this, I fear that I stared a few seconds, first at M. Thorn and then at the white angel, before recollecting my manners and bending to cover my confusion by stroking the canine, who acted doggishly grateful for my attention.

  “My friend meant no offense,” said the angel.

  “None is taken,” I made myself reply. “I am, however, neither a theology student, nor is this a theological seminary. I have therefore no claim to the title ‘Reverence.’ Simple ‘M.’ will do.”

  “I’m sorry,” she replied, “I think I didn’t quite catch the title. It sounded like ... ‘M.’”

  Now and again, one meets fanciers who remove themselves from the standard present in all respects, cleaving to the customs of their chosen eras until it becomes a minor social inconvenience, harmless though tedious to their friends and acquaintances. Beginning to suspect that I now dealt with two such, I suggested, “If you would identify your own world or worlds for me, it might better facilitate our finding titles of respect for one another.”

  “Then you know!” exclaimed the angel, and I thought she would have liked to catch my arm.

  “Careful, Frost,” said her companion. “D—n it, you should know by now that maybe being sorcerous doesn’t make ’em all safe and friendly.” Whereupon she unsheathed her knife again, as if casually. Though she continued the gesture by paring a fingernail, I thought best to take a step backward before inquiring what it was that I knew. The dog moved with me.

  The white angel so aptly named Frost told her friend, “Nor are they all dangerous, Thorn.” Looking once more upon me, she explained, “This is the eleventh world we have visited ... ‘M.’…and the tenth was one of the worst.”

  “I am extremely sorry to hear it,” I assured her. “Please rest secure in the knowledge that the standard-reality rating places this locale among the safest in quite a relatively safe country and century. But do I understand that you not only share the same worlds, but the same progression of various worlds?”

  “Would you split up and probably never be able to get back together again?” said M. Thorn. “Not to mention that we’ve only got the one Circle, and Frostflower is the only one with the sorcery to manage it.”

  “But not very well, it seems,” M. Frostflower added with a rueful smile.

  “Mesdames,” said I, “how do you perceive the ground of this amphitheatre?” And upon their reply that they perceived it to be a grassy, leafblown lawn overlooking tiers of stone benches which looked down upon the pool, I proposed that we continue our colloquy seated. When we had arranged our limbs comfortably, which was easier for them, since to me the depression was semi-mountainous and I had to find a convenient outcropping of rock, I probed further, as gently as I could: “Your Circle and its sorcery suggest a magical world, yet your perception of this amphitheatre as standard realizers describe it suggests ... Well, it would be compatible, I suppose, with classical antiquity, or perhaps heroic-age Ireland. Do you perceive yourselves as faeries or deities?”

  “I perceive you,” said M. Thorn, “as an addlepate. Frost—”

  “Not yet, Thorn.” Shaking her head, the pale lady laid one graceful white hand on her friend’s shoulder as though to hold her in place. “It seems safe here, and peaceful, and I believe that he means us well. We may not find a better spot to rest a while.” Again to me: “‘M.,’ will you tell us of your world? We know nothing at all about it. We thought we had seen our own through the Circle, but I have not yet found the trick of holding it steady while walking through.”

  They seemed indeed to know nothing of the world; they were like aliens from a distant sphere, come into ours with some slippery grasp of its language and no more. To need continual reminding of the commonest title of respect in current usage may annoy fellow mortals, but to require continual re-elucidation of the entire framework and quotidian working of society argues an idiocy which these two showed little indication of possessing in any other respect. Glimpsing at last the dream—as opposed to merely dreamlike—nature of my present experience, I began to guess that it was another of those soul-searchings through which all thoughtful persons must pass in judging the personal rightness of their perceptional modes. I therefore explained with great patience how various philosophers throughout history have observed that no individual can perceive the world otherwise than through his or her own senses, so that perceptions must perforce vary in lesser or greater degree; how at about the beginning of our own twenty-first century Law at last caught up with Philosophy in recognizing this fact, so that, despite protests that such recognition would encourage what certain turn-of-the-century reactionaries persisted in seeing as an “abnormal” condition, the final (2013 C.E.) revision of the New Reformed Constitution spells out and guarantees the rights and privileges of so-called “fantasy perceivers”; how the personal perceptional world of a fancier develops from childhood in accordance with a complex interplay, not even yet fully understood, of subconscious and conscious preferential factors; and how, although the distinction is a continuum rather than a dichotomy, for legal and social purposes every individual must register as either a fancier or a realizer, the simple declared preference usually sufficient to register in the first, but a minimum score of seventy-five percent on the standard reality perception Test being requisite to register in the second category—in spite of which, registered realizers still constitute the majority of the adult population in all countries practicing the system, which now include most nations on the face of the globe. In brief, I gave the standard textbook view, which I then accepted more or less unexamined and still believe to be sound in substance, though susceptible to modification in certain details: e.g., our legal recognition may have been less a philosophical than a practical consideration, when we grew too visibly numerous for the rest of society to continue institutionalizing us all as zanies.

  I have mentioned my patience in outlining all this. It took very great patience indeed to explain it to the guerilla Thorn, whose running commentary I interpret as the dream voice’s demands for clarity, accuracy, and strict self-honesty. I was more than rewarded
with the white angel Frostflower’s attentive respect, in which I found and find a token of the personal rightness of my own half-chosen, half-compulsive perceptional world.

  “And us?” she inquired at length, with another gracious smile. “How do you perceive us, M.?”

  “You, M. Frostflower,” I made answer, tentatively bold, “appear to me as Psyche, the Soul, ethereally lovely, clad all in shining white—”

  “White?” M. Thorn chuckled. “You do have a condition, don’t you, boy?” she went on. “Frostflower’s clothes are as black as your own, sweetfella, and a lot dirtier. We’re all of us pretty blasted travelstained, even the mutt. Hey, Dowl?” She rubbed the dog’s head and went on, “All right, M. Fancier, how do you see me?”

  Being by now somewhat out of sorts with M. Thorn, I decided on honesty above diplomacy. “As a mercenary soldier, M. Thorn. Hard-bitten and world-weary.”

  She laughed again. “Well, you got that right, anyway. Especially the worlds-weary. Very doggone worlds-weary!” she editorialized, emphasizing “worlds” in the plural.

  “At first glance,” I added, “I saw you as a man.”

  That appeared to take her aback. “A man? A male?”

  “With a heavy black beard.” Fearing lest I had gone too far, I explained, “While female soldiers may have been rather more common in many places and eras than was once popularly believed, I have met relatively few accounts of female mercenary soldiers.”

  M. Frostflower began, “I don’t understand—”

  “I think he means fighting for pay as opposed to fighting for ... I don’t know,” said M. Thorn. “Why else would anyone fight, except to earn her living?”

  “Patriotism,” I offered. “Pride of arms. Love of the cause perceived to be just. Self-defense. Honor. Loyalty to some liege lord—”

  “Rot!” said the guerilla. “Self-defense, yes. The rest of it sounds like hogsnorts and demonsbreath. But I guess that’s what happens when males do the fighting as well as paying us women to fight.”

  “In fact,” I informed her—a little stiffly, I fear, “aside from the occasional state of riot or localized uprising, most of the globe has been at peace for a century and more.”

  The guerilla looking puzzled, the white lady intervened. “What you call—’state of riot’?—M. Fancier,” said M. Frostflower, “sounds like the sort of fighting our homeland has always known. Until these journeyings, we had never heard of either male warriors or very large battles.” Turning gently to her friend: “But you do have honor, Thorn. And you would prefer hiring out to a good farmer-priest or townruler rather than a wicked one.”

  “I’d prefer hiring out to a rich and generous one.”

  “And you defend me without pay.”

  Reminded by M. Frostflower’s “Fancier” that I had yet to supply them with my personal caller, I elected to do so now. “My registered name, M.’s, is Poe. M. Corwin Poe.”

  “Well, Poemcorwinpoe,” said M. Thorn, occasioning further explanations. These, however, were effected with comparative ease, after which she went on, “Well, M. Corwin, I can’t always be quite sure about Frost or this mangy mongrel, but as for me, I’ve been a hard-bitten reality perceiver my whole d—n life. Want to hear how I perceive you?”

  “Since we fanciers can rarely rely upon the strict accuracy of what we behold in our mirrors,” I replied, politely—although not, I confess, devoid of apprehension, “I should be most interested.”

  “Not too tall. Not too broad in the shoulders—or anywhere else. Plain and simple black clothes—good quality, though—trousers and tunic—”

  “No ruffles?” I asked, probably wistfully, for at that time I always perceived myself clad after the fashion of the 1820’s.

  “No ruffles,” she said firmly. “Black hair cut just below the ears. Hairline peaks back at the corners of your forehead. Makes your face look a little longer than it might otherwise, at your age. Not a bad forehead, by the way. Not a bad face, either…and you’ve been shaving a year or two at the longest. Been initiated yet?” she finished, with a grin of invitation.

  I was secretly much relieved and gratified; and had the angelic white Frostflower thrown the line, I cannot rest confident ... As it was, however, I decided to parry by pretending to mistake the guerilla’s meaning. “Of course I have been initiated—by three different Greek fraternities—but found not one of them to my taste.”

  M. Thorn shrugged. “Well, so that’s that.”

  M. Frostflower put in quickly, “M. Corwin, if we were to tell you our tale as fully as you’ve told us yours, I fear you’d think us mad.”

  “Perhaps, M. Frostflower. But the world is happily long past locking anyone away on grounds of simple, harmless lunacy.”

  “Go ahead and slap him with it, Frost,” the guerilla said recklessly. “You should be about rested enough for another try, anyway.”

  The white lady sighed and told me their tale. Had I grounds for supposing all this other than a dream, I should postulate that they were world-shifting fanciers who had found a faery framework for the shifts. By M. Frostflower’s account, they had been spirited away from their own homeland by one Dathru, a malevolent sorcerer seeking, vampire-like, to suck her powers, M. Frostflower being herself a sorceress (“and a darned good one,” said M. Thorn) in her own world. It had been pure misfortune for the warrior and dog to be dragged along, but their misfortune became the entire party’s salvation when M. Thorn defeated their kidnapper with grim finality. Now they sought to return to their own world through use of the dead Dathru’s imperfectly understood glamour.

  In this long dream there remain passages whose significance continues to elude me.

  Very early M. Frostflower had discovered how to operate the sorcery that enabled them to communicate with the inhabitants of each new world into which they stepped, although the said communication could falter when either language contained words or concepts with no clear equivalents in the other. This would explain our occasional misunderstandings. As a dream symbol, I surmise that it has reference to the static between conscious and subconscious in the civilized brain.

  But so far all M. Frostflower’s efforts to return home through the magic portal had proven fruitless. “And I would prefer to rest a while longer here,” she finished, with another sigh, “as this seems a safe and peaceful world, for all of its ... peculiarities.”

  “All right. Judging by him, I guess they’re harmless and friendly enough.” Yawning, M. Thorn stood and stretched. “Any ideas where we can bed down for the rest of the night, sweetboy?”

  It was already after curfew, the inmates of my former fraternity houses would hardly prove suitable company for M. Frostflower (however they might tickle M. Thorn), and the undergraduate residence halls were strictly gender-segregated. I should have been willing to risk smuggling them into my own dormitory room; but it possessed only the single bed, too narrow for both ladies to rest therein with any comfort. I regretted not yet having indulged in a rented pied-a-terre in town (reserving that luxury for my last two years at the school). I suggested one of the town’s hotels.

  M. Frostflower prudently inquired whether their attire would raise questions, to which I replied that costume, full or merely accessorized, was far from unknown amongst borderline fanciers and even realizers on holiday. M. Thorn pulled out a palmful of coins and small jewels, held it beneath my nose, and demanded whether any of it would pay for their lodging, or could I tell? I replied on my dignity that, while we fanciers might perceive currency of the country as anything from pieces of eight to wampum, almost all of us could distinguish legal and acceptable species from toy or counterfeit money with as much ease as could reality perceivers; and though I felt little doubt that the stuff in her hand might serve in some worlds, it would not serve in ours, neither for currency nor for barter—since no business concern large enough for a single employee had accepted the barter syste
m since the close of the 2020’s. They might have been able to pawn or sell M. Thorn’s pieces, but unfortunately all the pawnshops and curiosity boutiques were closed at this hour. I offered them the contents of my money clip: I had only pocket money with me, but still enough to buy them at least one night’s fine lodging and several good meals.

  The guerilla nodded, took my money, and tried to press on me three or four gold and silver coins of an exceedingly outre mintage, claiming that they boasted the equivalent buying power in her own world. Having long before then learned the utter futility of attempting to bring anything material directly out of a dream, I refused. “Let us call it,” said I, “a loan.”

  “You mean a gift,” grumbled M. Thorn. “Gods willing—or even unwilling—we’ll probably never get back here. And I don’t want to stay in anybody’s debt forever.”

  “In that case,” I answered, struck by inspiration, “pay me by demonstrating this golden Circle for me. Show me, say, half a dozen worlds, and I shall consider myself munificently repaid.”

  With a smile and a blameless wink, as much as to tell me that I might have watched a dozen worlds for the mere asking but, in regard to M. Thorn’s financial scruples, we wouldn’t let on, M. Frostflower brought forth the Circle, set it up on the rocks (keeping one hand upon it as though for balance), and closed her eyes. That was all her visible technique, this simple momentary dropping of both eyelids—no passes, no gestures nor gesticulations, neither cantrips nor incantations—yet by the time she unclosed her lids, a silvery mist had filled the Circle and dissipated again, to reveal the image of a grassy, sunlit valley where goats grazed round the foot of a crumbling stone tower.

  What I had expected, I know not: whether to have been entertained five minutes with a screenshow or to have had to make polite noises and say, for the sake of satisfying M. Thorn’s scruples, that I had seen worlds where I had in fact seen nothing but the rocks on the other side of the ring. What I “actually” saw might have persuaded anyone, realizer or fancier, that if this had not been a dream, it would have been one of the most remarkable sleights of the century. The Alpinish valley faded into a grim and gloomy dungeon scene, replaced in its turn by a roseate cloudland, then a lighthouse on an isolated rocky island against which I could discern the very spray of the waves as they dashed and broke, whilst the infinitesimal “V” shapes of gulls winged their way witherward against a sky filled with slowly moving clouds.