You will want to pick a few handfuls of these leaves and eat them all at once. One word of caution: only a small percentage of Language Bushes are sentient, but it's always safe to assume that they are. Always ask permission before plucking off any of the leaves.
I looked behind me, and sure enough, there was a big bush with purple and yellow circles all over it. I walked up to it, and feeling really stupid, quietly asked, "Uh, is it all right if I, uh, grab a few leaves off of you so I can talk to some Munchkins and ask them where I am?"
A branch shot out from the rest of them and shook around, then stopped, then shook around again as if to say, "Go ahead, bonehead, what are you waiting for?" I reached for a handful of leaves, plucked and started chewing. I started on my second handful when somebody reached up from behind me, covered my mouth with his hand, and pulled me roughly to the ground.
Quiet as the breeze rustling the foliage, smooth as silk, a voice whispered into my ear, just loud enough for me to hear, "Don't make a sound, and look through those trees."
I did what the voice said. I looked through the brush, and not twenty feet away saw one of the biggest, ugliest guys I had ever seen in my life. In addition, the breeze shifted, putting him upwind, and I found out that he was also one of the smellier individuals I'd encountered up until then. Luckily, besides being big, ugly and smelly, he evidently didn't hear too well.
He was green, all tricked out in black leather and chain mail, and carried a gigantic broadaxe, which was covered with what appeared to be blood. There was a oversized Nazi-style helmet on his head with large horns poking out of either side. He was pissing against an old stately oak tree, one hand hanging on to the axe while the other directed the pee-stream. There was a human head hanging from his belt by its hair. It belonged to the latino guy from the gateroom, Gutierrez. I stifled the urge to puke.
After a few moments in which I experienced still, sheer terror, the Biker/Viking from hell turned and walked away. The poor, terrified tree waited a few seconds and shook itself vigorously, letting out a moan of disgust and humiliation. I felt kind of sorry for it, but it was a tree after all, and you'd think it would be used to that sort of thing happening all the time.
I got up and turned around to thank my savior. It was Ralph from the Gate. I decided maybe he wasn't such an asshole after all.
"Jeez, thanks," I said, "it kinda looks like you saved my ass just now."
"Don't mention it," he said, staring through the trees, "they're getting closer in all the time. Son of a bitch." He looked at me. "The rest of Gutierrez is hanging from a tree a little northwest of here. Really messed up his suit. Let's get the fuck out of here."
I was reeling from several different shocks: the shock of the transition from Earth, the shock of actually being in Oz, the shock of almost being butchered by a green neanderthal, and oh, I don't know, could have been any number of things at that point. I stuck out my hand and introduced myself.
He ignored it and said, "There's a bridge about half a mile south of here. Let's move."
He didn't have to ask me twice. We both took off in the direction of the bridge, looking behind us every once in a while to see if the incredible hulk was following. He wasn't. I didn't know it at the time, but he was already way out of his territory—some kind of advance scout.
We kept up the quick-step, though, until we were over the bridge Ralph was talking about. It was a little funny narrow thing, wrought iron covered with strange curly-cues, which I found out later were some kind of Munchkin hex signs.
"We can relax a little now," Ralph said, finally, slacking his pace, "those bruisers won't go past that bridge. Big magic on it."
Agiconic! Agiconic!
Shut up!!!!
Ralph went down to the edge of the water and stuck his face in it, cupped his hands and took a big drink. I followed him down and did the same, kind of amazed by how natural it seemed and thinking, wow, there's not a place left on the poisoned Earth where you could do that anymore.
He sat up and let the water run down his face. "Ralph," he said, finally, and held out his hand for me to shake.
"I know." I shook. Then I reached into my pack and took out my laptop.
Up until then, Ralph had seemed pretty blase about everything that was going on, even the rescue. But he looked astonished when he saw the laptop. "What is that?" he asked, incredulous, pointing at it.
"What do you mean? It's a Superbook Plus, with 1 gig of ram, and a terabyte hard—"
"NO. I know what it is, I mean, how did you get it here? I've never seen a computer get through in one piece. I've been coming here since before the Gulf War, and the only ones I've ever seen have been thrown together from whatever junk components happen to make it through. This is a goddam first. Congratulations." He whistled at it.
I looked at him, then down at the Superbook. "Yeah, well, congratulate me after I see if it boots up."
I flipped the switch, and listened for the little chime to sound and the smiley-face-in-the-monitor logo to come on. I heard something like a slide whistle, then the face came up. And winked at me. That should have been my first clue. I saw the desktop and icons appear as they should, except that every few seconds a couple of them would plow together like bumper cars, and careen to the other side of the screen, or zoom to fill the whole screen and then shrink again. I tried opening up a few applications to check it. Aside from the slight weirdness, it appeared to work fine.
"I'll be damned," Ralph said, looking over my shoulder. "I think it's been Mickied"
"What?"
"Animated."
I scrunched up my face at him. "Come again?"
I thought I knew about most of what was involved in coming to a place with slightly different physical laws, but I just kept learning new fun facts.
"There's somebody in there. I just hope it's one of the good guys. Wow. It's the One."
"The one what?"
"The One That Got Through. That's the way it usually works out."
After I put the laptop back in the pack, I did a quick check to make sure the other things I'd brought were still there. As far as I could see, they were, though I couldn't be sure they wouldn't start jumping around or crying or singing a song.
We started walking again, and Ralph pulled some smokes out of his coat, lit one up, and began to elaborate.
"Y'see, One of Everything seems to be the general rule, with exceptions. Not with people, or even most of their personal stuff. You already know how that goes. Toothbrushes, cooking utensils, camp gear, usually no trouble. I'm talking about consumer items. TV's, washing machines, electric can-openers, guitars, disposable cameras. It's really tricky with those things for some reason. Almost like the more labor saving or frivilous the tech (no offense), the more some—force—wants to screw it around. It might be Glinda or Ozma doing it, we don't know. They say not. Anyhow, maybe one in five hundred get through. So what people here generally do with the stuff that gets sent over as good will offerings, trade items, insidious advertising ploys, whatever, is make it community property. Well, everything produced is technically community property here, so it's not that revolutionary of an idea.
"Sometimes the item will do something novel that allows it to move into this existence more smoothly than it otherwise would have.
"I'll bet you never heard about the humvees"
I hadn't.
"There were six army hummers. Army colonel decides to give it a try, he and his men drive 'em into the Garage, so far so good. He makes it through with all of them! They drive about twenty miles, make camp for the night, park by the side of the Brick, and fifteen minutes later, they hear tires squealing and horns beeping.
"They jump up, but it's too late. The hummers are rolling away, off onto the plains. Eerie as hell, no engines running, lights flashing. That colonel was in a world of hurt for that one."
I thought he looked a little wistful there for a second, trying to recreate the scene. I said, "you sound like you know this guy."
> He stopped gazing off into space. "Yeah, I guess you could say that." He offered me a smoke, I declined.
"They're still around," he continued. "Run in a pack. We might see 'em tonight, actually."
"The army guys?"
He looked at me like he might slug me.
"Then there was the Mustang tree. This guy I know, works for the State Department. Brought over a Fender Mustang guitar. He takes it out of the case maybe a day after he got here. Fucking thing had started to bud. So this guy plants it, and about a week later, there were little green electric guitars hanging all over it. Weirdest little things you ever saw. They took about another month to ripen, and then they were ready to harvest."
I realized then that the guy at the x-ray machine probably thought my computer would melt or turn into a loaf of bread. Any one of those guys could have warned me to leave it behind. But since they weren't required to by law, since anybody's allowed to bring through a few items, no matter what they are, as long as they're U.S. legal, they let me go and potentially wreck my expensive toy. I started to get really pissed off. I told Ralph what I was thinking.
"Yeah, you have certainly beaten the odds today, my friend. Best to forget about those shitheads in Salina, though. They're just jealous because they don't fit the profile. Probably be sittin' in there checking luggage till they're old and gray."
We kept walking until we hit a bend in the dirt path; it plowed through some brush and met a wide, brick thoroughfare. Yellow. I looked at Ralph, then back at the road again.
"Yep," he said, confirming my thought, "this is the one. The Big Brick."
It really didn't look as impressive as I thought it would. It was just a big dirty yellow road. I felt sort of ripped off.
A tiny horsecart drawn by a tiny horse drove by. The munchkin farmer driving it waved and smiled. There was a cage full of ridiculous Dr.Seuss-looking animals piled onto the back: long ring-necks reminiscent of rodent's tails; fuzzy heads and bodies, with ludicrous hairy wings; big watery eyes that looked like coke-bottle lenses; big-lipped maws with slobbery tongues on the end of blunt, wide-nostriled snouts. They looked incredibly stupid, and smelled only slightly better than the troll. They gurgled at us as they passed. Ralph waved and smiled. I just stood there.
"What the hell are those things?" I asked.
"Goomers," he said. "The national dish. Most animals are smart enough to have citizenship. It's considered cannibalism to eat a cow, for instance. But these things are so stupid that nobody feels bad about eating them. Even dumber than turkeys."
"Oh," I said, as they and their fragrance receded.
We started walking down the "big brick," and it occurred to me that I didn't have any idea where we were going. Maybe it was the stress, maybe the disappointment over the condition of the road; all of the sudden all kinds of questions burst out of me:
"I'd assume this goes to Emerald, right? I mean, that's the conventional wisdom, but that doesn't really seem to be worth much lately. That is where I'm going. Where are you going? And who was that big motherfucker anyway? And how come you know so much about everything anyway?"
Ralph stared at me sidelong. "Emerald, huh? I'm going to Emerald. Yes, you follow the yellow brick road. That is accurate. As for the big motherfucker and why I know so much about everything...
"Look, it's starting to get dark. Whataya say I take you to meet a friend of mine? We can sleep out on his land, and I can fill you in on some recent history. But right now, I'm kind of all talked out. So let's just walk."
Ralph didn't strike me as the kind of person you'd want to have a big argument with, and I didn't have any better ideas. The sky was beginning to darken to a deep Maxfield Parrish blue, and the biggest moon I have ever seen in my life was starting to rise, cartoonlike, over the horizon.
Soon the moon was the only light we had, save the occasional distant glow from a farmhouse. Downtown Munchkinland was in the other direction. We were headed out into the sticks.
After about an hour of this, walking silently, a few people on horseback occasionally passing us and politely saying hello, we left the farmland behind. We finally came upon a side road, more a dirt horsepath than anything, that led straight into a grove of trees. I took my fluorescent lantern out of my pack and was going to turn it on, as it looked pretty dark in there. Ralph's hand shot out and stopped me.
"Don't do that," he said. "First of all, you'll wake up all the trees. Second, you will be wondering how you got so dead all of a sudden unless I do this:"
He let out a loud, warbling whistle.
Somebody awfully close by said, "Hello, Ralph. Back so soon, friend?"
Three guys were standing behind us, and two in front. I don't think there was any magic involved; I just think they were really good at sneaking up on people. First they weren’t there, then they were there.
The guy who spoke wasn't a guy at all. I mean he was a guy, but he wasn't exactly human. He was a monkey.
At first I thought he was wearing a big cape, but as he moved around, I realized that what I was seeing was actually a large pair of wings. They were poking out of holes in a long, satin jacket.
He had a ruffled shirt on, and a black cravat around his neck. His friends were similarly attired, but human as far as I could see in moonlight. I thought they looked a little over-dressed for camping but didn't say so.
There were greetings all around. Ralph introduced me. "Gene, this big ape is Gombo. This is Tiltel, Sool, and Pimbi. And this tall guy here is Kimbod of Ev"
They all said "hi."
"Hi," I said, "Gene of Los Angeles."
We moved off down the Brick, into the grove of trees, Ralph hanging on to my arm. Evidently everyone but me could see in the dark. After a few minutes, I could see the light of a campfire off the road, through the shadows of the great trees. As we moved off the road towards the fire, I heard Ralph say to Gombo, "So where is he?"
"Thinking," Gombo said. "Hasn't really left his tent for a couple of days. You know how he gets when he's got a heavy problem. Brooding. Weird. You want to stay far away from him when he gets like this."
"I've got something he needs to hear."
"I'll stick my head in there and tell him, but leave it to me. If he doesn't want to see you, you can camp until tomorrow, then you'll have to move on. Things are pretty tense right now, and we can't afford to have you around if you're not working."
"Understood."
We were close enough now to see the tents: eight big geodesic-looking things in a large semicircle around the roaring fire, taut plastic skin over skeleton domes. Three big logs were spaced around the fire, I guessed to sit on, so I went over and sat on one, throwing my pack up against the other side of it, upside down so that I could untie my sleeping bag.
Ralph sat by the fire too, along with Gombo and a couple of the others, bullshitting about this and that incomprehensible shared thing which I had no reference to. Soon I started to feel kind of left out.
I'd had enough anyway: I was tired, disoriented, with a bunch of strangers, one of whom had saved my life twice, and in a different universe on top of that. Of course, behind the exhaustion, deep down, I was excited and full of questions, but the questions could wait until tomorrow. I unrolled the sleeping bag and got into it, a little way back from the fire, behind the logs.
I rolled around in it for an hour or so, unable to shut my eyes, too hot, too cold, until finally I got up. I had to pee anyhow.
It looked as though everyone else had crashed out by that time. Ralph was not far from where my sleeping bag was, snoring under a pile of blankets someone had brought him.
I found a spot on the other side of the fire from the tents, not too close to the trees. After what I'd seen that afternoon, I was a little sensitive about offending any trees. Since I hadn't asked about the pee protocol, and this seemed to be the least offensive place around, I went for it.
The trees stayed asleep, and nobody jumped out and strangled me, so I smiled to myself and enjoyed the
new sense of emptiness for a moment. I zipped my fly and looked up into the sky, now brilliant with stars despite the full moon. I knew most constellations by sight, but none of these belonged to any I was familiar with. Shooting stars crisscrossed the sky, and an ephemeral aurora hung at the top, draped like neon silk. I crossed back to the campfire and sat on a log, looked up to see more of the show.
"Spider and the Fly," said a deep, dark, craggy voice. I jumped, looked up to see a hooded figure on the log with me, about five feet away. His huge, buckskin-clad arm was stuck in the air, his gloved hand pointing straight up at a group of stars.
"See it? There's the spider, over to the left is the fly."
"Oh yeah," I said. "There it is. Listen, is there any particular reason why you guys like to scare the shit out of me every time before you introduce yourselves?"
I got a laugh for that one, but I still couldn't see who I was talking to. I could see his legs, though, poking out under the bottom of his robe or whatever it was. They looked like prosthetic limbs, metal and cable all down to the feet, no shoes or boots covering them. It seemed pretty amazing that a handicapped man could get around so stealthily.
There was a serious lull in the conversation.
Finally, I pointed up at random. "What's that one?"
"The Cauldron," the raspy voice said. "See? Poomba is the bright green one on the end, then down further there's Elgi. The two legs."
It went on this way for a while, Astronomy with Dr. Doom, until he said, "What is it that Ralph wants to tell me?"
Talk about non-sequiturs. "I don't know," I said, "but, hey. I don't know a lot of things, like for instance your name. I am Gene, Gene of Los Angeles. And you are...?"
"You may call me Nick."
You may call me Nick. He said it so silkily, so calmly, so non-threateningly, that it was suddenly the most menacing thing in the world. A man-eating tiger was purring and letting me pet it on the head. I regretted having been so flip a moment before.
"Well, Nick," I said, my voice cracking a little, "I really can't guess on that one. I've seen a lot in last ten hours or so—Goomers, giant green bikers with human head trophies—"
The Emerald Burrito of Oz Page 3
