The Fanciers & Realizers MEGAPACK

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  Gillikin put in a moderate suggestion that if it really was a sword it should be quarantined for fear of accidents, and if it was the umbrella he still saw—why, there wasn’t much chance of rain in here, was there?

  Petrovka said in a bored voice, “Let her keep it, and let us be done with this quarrel.”

  To that, Windsong quipped, “Ah, but arguments are the life and chief entertainment of trips like these, aren’t they?”

  “Oh, I hope not!” said the honeymooning bride.

  Her groom said nothing. Nor did the musician Ariella Celeste, whom Ilna could sense radiating nearby like a warm green pulse. That the plant-woman should offer no opinion was natural. A hint as to the young husband’s thoughts would, however, have interested the She-Wolf of the SS.

  But from the lounge to the bridge was not many strides, and how long could the transfer of control require? Before Ilna had time to probe the newlyweds further, Captain Denne joined the party in the lounge. Her footsteps on the deep-pile carpet might have been inaudible to most ears, but Ilna heard them, lighter and brisker than those of the zeppelin’s second in command.

  “Now, then!” said the captain. “I’m sorry, M. Ribald, but we’ll have to insist you put up your weapon for the duration of the flight.”

  “Then you are no friend of mine,” said Belladonna the Ribald.

  Poe asked quietly, “Is this a matter on which we may vote?”

  “No, M., it isn’t,” replied the captain.

  “Understood. I merely inquired on the notion that some of us might wish to go on record as among M. the Ribald’s friends—i.e., those who would not have insisted on parting her from her weapon.” He phrased it very cleverly, but by the relief she sensed in his voice Ilna gathered that he was well content this Dungeon Chessite, whether authentic fancier or costumed reality perceiver playing at Let Us Pretend, should lose her sword for the journey’s duration.

  “What we will do, M. Ribald,” Captain Denne went on, “is permit you to carry it up to the storage space and stow it away yourself.”

  “With you guiding me there, Captain?” said the Dungeon Chessite. “Alone?”

  For once, Ilna wished that she could see their faces. Mere vibrations were inadequate to help her classify the tensions in this lounge. Which of them had caught the implied threat in the Ribald’s words? Valkyrie assuredly, for she raised her head and pricked her ears slightly beneath the hand of her mistress. Poe, no doubt; Windsong, possibly; the madre—perhaps, though she made no comment. The young bride, probably not. Captain Denne, yes, by the faint amusement in her reply, as if she were answering the challenge of a child half grown: “Well, I haven’t got anything better to do for the next few minutes. The ship’s lifting nicely, and M. Flier is always happy at the helm.”

  “Kapitan Denne.” Ilna stood. “I wish to accompany you.”

  After a very short hesitation, the captain replied, “Our catwalks are pretty narrow, M. ... Junge.”

  “They are so narrow that one risks plunging down through the fabric of the zeppelin at the first false step,” Ilna agreed. “Ja, we have all been carefully warned, we passengers. Yet you will lead Fraulein the Ribald into so much danger? And I am Doktor, or Obersturmbannfuehrerin, or Grafin von Cruewell, or, if you must, Major. I am not ‘M. Junge.’”

  “Well,” Denne confessed, “our catwalks are almost twice as wide as the ones in the old twentieth-century airships. And they have rope handrails. Nevertheless, they could still be dangerous for laity. That’s why I’m going up with M. Ribald.”

  The Pagan priest said, “‘Laity’ in your present sense meaning anyone who isn’t airship personnel, Captain?”

  Ilna said: “I repeat. If you can guide Fraulein the Ribald there and back again in safety, you can also guide us, my Leibstandarte and me. I am not ‘laity,’ Kapitan Denne. I am a military offizier of the same Fatherland that gave zeppelins to the world.”

  She imagined the captain’s thoughts: Could Denne with honor yield to one passenger and still hold her sway over all the others? Jawohl, when the one was Ilna von Cruewell, She-Wolf of the SS, with Valkyrie beside her, and the others were Dungeon Chessites, wide-eyed newlyweds, squabbling clerics, and dwellers in the Land of Oz.

  “You’ll both have to sign and fingerprint releases, of course,” said Captain Denne. “And remember, all of you: the catwalks are strictly off limits to all passengers except by pre-arrangement and with special advance clearance. Frankly, folks, you can get just as good a view of the superstructure through the steelglass ceiling panels in the promenade deck.”

  * * * *

  Angela guessed that most of their fellow passengers were morning people, like herself. Either that, or they were wide awake with all the excitement.

  Vasilisa the Firebird was the first to yawn. Almost as soon as Captain Denne had taken Dr. Junge and Belladonna into the Authorized Personnel Only section to fill out release forms and suchlike, the dancer asked Miz Ming to show her to her stateroom. Since all the doors were labeled, she could have found her own way. But what would be the good of being famous, Angela thought, if famous people couldn’t ask for special courtesies?

  At the very next lull in conversation, while Miz Ming was taking orders for drinks, Corwin stood up, explained about his being a night person, and excused himself. He wouldn’t have had to excuse himself or explain why, but it was his style to follow old-fashioned etiquette and treat a cracknew group of fellow airship travelers as if they were a formal dinner party.

  Using sly sideglances, Angela watched him down the stateroom corridor into the Honeymoon Suite. She waited five minutes, and mused in passing that Captain Denne must have Belladonna and Dr. Junge up inside the superstructure by now. Then she said, “Oh, I wonder if the library has any pictures of the kind of costume you say M. Belladonna’s wearing,” got up, and carried her coffee down the stateroom corridor.

  The door labeled “Library” was behind the VIP Suite, across the hallway from the Honeymoon Suite. Angela looked back. This far down the corridor, she had a good view of the Musician of the Spheres, who was still sitting on a little divan in the middle of the lounge. And she could see Winterset, who was talking with expansive gestures. But Mother Frances and Ozzie were all but hidden behind the angle of the divider walls, and Miz Ming was completely out of sight.

  Even though Winterset wasn’t looking her way and the musician didn’t seem to be looking at anything, Angela guessed that she was fooling nobody, and that anyone who came to the library and found her missing would know exactly where she was. Still, it was fun to play at being shy. She nipped across quickly into the Honeymoon Suite.

  A goldtone wall screen, showing a decorated map of their planned air route, was slid in place over the window, darkening the cabin to dusklight. She could just make out that if he’d opened his eyes when she came in, he’d shut them again right away, for a joke. After taking one more sip of coffee, she set her cup down on the tiny white marbeline table. Whatever it really was, coffee or tea or plain hot water, when it got cold she would taste it as milk or lemonade.

  She undressed, slid into bed, and brushed a circle on his cheek with her fingertip. She always kept her nails emeried very round and short. “Pundit, do you really want to sleep?”

  “Until time to dress for luncheon, Pundita,” he replied without opening his eyes. “But not quite yet.”

  * * * *

  To Ilna’s amusement, Captain Denne continued her very diligent attempts to impress them with the risk. She told them the release demanded not thumbprint alone, but a full set of prints from all fingers of the dominant hand. Ilna was ambidextrous. In that case, Grafin von Cruewell, your right hand, please.

  Ilna’s walking-stick was polished ebony, smooth and cool to the touch, with tip and knob of streamlined steel wearing its own spartan color from the forge. She disdained the white tip, as she disdained to clutch the rope handrail, wh
ich brushed against her elbow from time to time, not as her own steps strayed, but as Belladonna the Ribald played with the rope a few paces ahead. One hand on Valkyrie’s harness, the other clicking the cane’s steel tip smartly against the catwalk’s edge, Obersturmbannfuehrerin von Cruewell walked with stride as firm and straight as the captain’s own. The duralumin walkway sent echoes up to the vault of girders, cloth, and gas cells, which in due course sent them back down to register another time in the watchful ear.

  “A cave in the sky!” said the Dungeon Chessite.

  “Do you even see stalactites, M. Ribald?” the captain asked, sounding mildly amused.

  “Like ice and fire and glistening gold. And the deep, deep drop into the Balrog’s chasm below.”

  “Your gold and glistening stalactites,” said Ilna, “are duralumin and sized cloth. Your ‘Balrog’ is, I think, the whistle of a train below us on the ground.”

  “About two hundred fifty meters below,” said the captain. “We’ll be cruising at between three and four hundred meters most of the way. Approximately a fifth of a mile up. We’re passing above southern Indiana now, so that’ll be NTC’s Brown County Pufferbelly you hear.”

  “But there are no windows in this part of the zeppelin,” said Ilna, “so you may omit your travelogue, Kapitan Denne.”

  “Aye, there’s treasure hereabout somewhere,” said Belladonna the Ribald. “By Gandalf’s beard, I can smell it!”

  Valkyrie halted on the catwalk, tensed, and began a series of growls and barks.

  “Ach, Leibschen, was ist los?” Ilna murmured. The Dungeon Chessite was shouting some nonsense that she should keep her pet dragonet quiet, and the captain calling more imperiously but from a greater distance ahead. For the moment, the obersturmbannfuehrerin ignored them both. Feeling from the set of the harness which way her dog pointed, she began to probe the space with her walking-stick. Its tip brushed gently over the huge, curving sac, tighter than a well-stuffed sausage.

  “Dr. Junge!” the captain repeated. “If you can’t control—What the petersdick are you doing?”

  Ilna moved her walking-stick ten centimeters higher and retraced its path in the opposite direction. “You will be wiser, Kapitan, if you do not waste your breath with vulgarities, but come and help me find what my Leibstandarte smells. Your air sacs are not reliable if the little brush of my cane threatens them. Ach, mein Liebschen, mein Liebling!”

  The catwalk surged, creaked. Obviously the Ribald was trying to rush back first, obstructing the captain. SS dog and officer braced themselves and continued their activities, the woman smiling. Now her ears detected the faint sound of another person’s breath above them, guarded but heavy, as if soundless inhalation had turned almost to panting in fear of discovery. So it was human contraband which Valkyrie had found.

  “There!” shouted the Chessite, crowding in. “Up there hiding like a bloody coward!”

  “And hiding very well, it is obvious,” said Ilna, “but for my Leibstandarte’s sharp nose.”

  “All right, thou filthy ice troll, come down and meet thy doom like a man!” the Ribald bawled on. “Good thing I’ve still got my Widowmaker, eh, Captain Denne?”

  “Ice troll, am I? And e’en filthy, say’st thou?” the stowaway called down at last. A male voice, with a light British-Isles lilt. “Why then, say I, a small brown mole art thou! Have at ye, and look out below!”

  He landed on the catwalk with a jar that sent Ilna staggering against the rope handrail. Valkyrie scrabbled, yelped, barked, and might have gone over but for the obersturmbannfuehrerin’s grip on her harness. While Ilna rebraced herself and bent to help the noble dog get hind legs safely back on the rough-textured duralumin—above them to the forward, between them and the captain, metal clashed on metal twice with a steely ring. Ja, the Ribald’s blade was real enough, and also this stowaway’s blade was real.

  “Stop it, dammit, stop!” shouted Captain Denne. There came the duller thudding of flesh and bone against flesh and bone, a cry of frustration and a slithering click as something fell. Almost simultaneously, Valkyrie lunged at Ilna’s command, and the man gave a shout of pain.

  “Widowmaker!” wailed Belladonna the Ribald.

  “My leg!” howled the Britisher.

  “Gone! Crom blast thy soul, Captain Denne!”

  “Damn thy eyes, call off thy bloody hound!”

  Valkyrie growled through clamped teeth and went on scrambling at the walkway with her left hind paw.

  “Rot thy soul, let me go!” the Ribald was still babbling. “I’ll gut you all with my bare hands!”

  “Call off thy cur or—damme!—I’ll run him through!” cried the man. “I’ve still got my blade in hand!”

  At a calculated risk, Ilna batted her walking-stick and happily caught something—his shoulder? arm?—with a smart crack. Another human howl, another clicking slither.

  “Injure my Leibstandarte, Herr Stowaway, and you will soon beg me to let you throw yourself after it,” the She-Wolf said softly. “But I think that now you are disarmed also, nein? and will injure no one. Valkyrie, hold fast!”

  “I’m holding you for your own safety, M. Ribald,” came the captain’s voice. “For everybody’s safety. You can put a claim in later for the value of your blamed sword.”

  “Shrivel thee, shrivel thee, shrivel thee!” the Dungeon Chessite blubbered with the sound of true sentimental grief. “It was my sword—my constant companion for six long years—worth more than gold and jewels to me—if you hadn’t made me bring it up here—”

  “We did not make you come to fight this stowaway on a narrow catwalk,” Ilna said coldly. “You should hope, Fraulein, that your sword has not hit anyone below.”

  “Well, mine was but a good blade to me, no more,” said the Britisher, speaking as if through gritted teeth. “Aye, I’ll make out my claim for reimbursement, most gladly. But now, miladies, have you a surgeon aboard? For the calf of my poor left leg, which is chewed nigh unto the bone, and the joint of my right shoulder, which I fear me is dislocated or very near, curse thy quarterstaff!”

  “At least the weapon-storage problem has been blanked,” said the captain. “Well, Major von Cruewell, let’s get the dratted pair of them down to Doc Caduceus.”

  * * * *

  “Oh, suppose they can hear us?” Angela panted once. “And in the daytime, too.”

  “Far less likely to disturb other souls’ slumbers by day than by night.”

  “I think the Firebird has the cabin just next to ours. Doesn’t she?”

  “Ah, but if NTC’s advertising tells truth, the partitions, though thin, are of such excellent sound-soak that little short of playing the trombone can disturb one’s fellow passengers.”

  Chapter 4

  “... I walked a while among the Rocks, the Sky was perfectly clear, and the Sun so hot, that I was forced to turn my Face from it: When all on a Sudden it became obscured, as I thought, in a Manner very different from what happens by the Interposition of a Cloud. I turned back, and perceived a vast Opake Body between me and the Sun, moving forwards towards the Island: It seemed to be about two Miles high, and hid the Sun six or seven Minutes, but I did not observe the Air to be much colder, or the Sky more darkned [sic], than if I had stood under the Shade of a Mountain. As it approached nearer ... it appeared to be a firm Substance, the Bottom flat, smooth, and shining very bright from the Reflexion of the Sea below.…the Reader can hardly conceive my Astonishment, to behold an Island in the Air, inhabited by Men, who were able (as it should seem) to raise, or sink, or put it into a progressive Motion, as they pleased. ... I could see the Sides of it, encompassed with several Gradations of Galleries and Stairs, at certain Intervals, to descend from one to the other. In the lowest Gallery, I beheld some People fishing with long Angling Rods, and others looking on.”

  —Lemuel Gulliver, A Voyage to Laputa, &c., Chapter 1


  “For a pair of rank amateurs only three nights ago,” Angela said at last, with a happy sigh, “I think we’re doing very well.”

  “Three nights?” Without lifting head from pillow, he tallied the time drowsily on his fingers. “Yes, so it is. And so we are. All by ourselves ...”

  “Pundit?”

  “Mmm?”

  “Were you a little worried awhile ago when Belladonna raised that silly fuss about keeping her sword or umbrella or whatever it is with her?”

  “Curses. I had hoped you wouldn’t notice.” Coming awake, he propped himself up on one elbow. “Yes, having perceived whatever it is as a sharpened sword and its bearer as perhaps even less overburdened with stability than are most of us, I confess to feeling definite twinges of relief at Captain Denne’s decision.”

  “Well, that’s all to the good, isn’t it? Your seeing it as a sword, I mean. Your own old world must be tuning in stronger again.”

  “Must it? Didn’t M. Windsong say ...” He let his voice trail off, lay back down, and shut his eyes again. “But no doubt you’re right, Pundita. It’s all part and parcel of my returning perceptions.”

  He sounded so unenthusiastic that she sat up on one elbow in her turn. “Corwin, what is it? Surely you never really thought Belladonna might start swinging that thing about?”

  “No, of course not,” he replied without conviction.

  “Corwin Davison Poe! You know my world’s too rosy for my own safety, and I depend on you to warn me when there are dangers I ought to know about.”

  “I’m not entirely sure of your world’s overprotectiveness. You did quite well at perceiving the darkness and danger last year when it was a question of saving my life.”

  “That was different!”

  “Ah. Well, I see that my best course will be to tell you all, so that you need make no more of it than it deserves.” He drew his knees up beneath the satin coverlet and rested his arms on them. “It’s a mere matter of tensions: between the first officer and the stewardess, between M. Windsong and the madre, between the obersturmbannfuehrerin and M. Belladonna, between both of them and our good Captain Denne ...” He grinned. “And for some reason I have been unable to analyze, between Valkyrie and myself.”