Horrors of the Dancing Gods

by Jack L. Chalker

  Irving felt sick. "Then we—that is, tonight, we—oh, no!"

  At least it explained why he had no power over her, but it also meant that she'd reversed his erotic dreams. She, if that was still the right term, had seduced him.

  "Quit feeling sorry for yourself!" Marge snapped. "She's the one with the curse and the problem, not you. And you are the one who took that drug with her by your choice, your lust. That's what I meant about growing up, Irving. In the end, nobody did anything to you but you. You removed your limits and your spells; you fantasized and lusted after her and dragged her into our group. She didn't try and join us, remember. And you took the drug with her. Now, how you handle this inside yourself and how you handle yourself in Larae's presence will determine just how grown-up you really are."

  Right now he didn't feel all that grown-up. It wasn't fair! Damn and double damn! He felt used. Unclean, sort of. Bits and pieces of just what they'd done earlier came back to him in his emotional torment, and he felt like blaming anybody but himself. Grow up? Hell, nobody ever was that grown-up!

  Oddly, as he stared out into the pitch darkness of the rain forest, a thought came to him from out of nowhere: This is how Dad must have felt.

  Felt wrong, weak, compromised, ashamed, and unwilling to admit the truth or face down his son. Joe hadn't acted very grown-up, either, had he? And the son had cursed and blasted him for running ever since.

  Now it was the son who wanted to run, who didn't want to face the way things were with somebody he'd sort of assumed responsibility for. But how could he just keep on after knowing? How could he treat Larae the same as before? Or even as just a friend? Even a companion? Particularly now that she'd used him.

  But hadn't he dreamed of using her? Wasn't that why he'd taken that drug with her in the first place?

  That was different!

  How?

  Only because in his own scenarios he was the user rather than the victim. Damn it, it made him feel like a skunk. She had done this to him, and here he was feeling guilty about it!

  But it was so—so unnatural!

  In a world of fairies, nymphs, gnomes, curses, demons on street corners, and resident sorcerers, what in hell was natural?

  So Dad had gone off to conquer the evil sorcerer and had been changed in the process into a wimp of a bimbo wood nymph. "Hi, Irving! Guess what? But don't worry, I'll stick around and be your role model, anyway."

  What if he had been the one who was changed? Would he have acted differently than Joe had? Would he have faced his son like that, forever like that, and would the son have accepted it? He'd been blaming his father for not doing just that for years, but what would his own reaction have been?

  He knew the answer. He knew that what he'd always thought he would have done was what he most certainly should have done under those circumstances, but it wasn't what he really would have thought or felt or done. Nobody grew up that quickly. Nobody should have had to.

  Marge had no idea what Irving was really thinking or how he'd finally resolve this, if he could, but she did emphatically sense the growing buildup of guilt, shame, and emotional turmoil within him.

  Maybe in another night or so he'd at least have worked up sufficient guilt to allow her to solve her immediate problem by helping him solve his.

  ****

  Poquah rarely smoked a pipe, and when he did, it was only when the most important things were imminent. It was a pleasure he shared with his elfin brethren but one that also never quite fit his self-image and lifestyle. But in the predawn hours he was on deck smoking the pipe and leaning against the rail, looking out at nothing in particular.

  Irving wasn't sure who he wanted less to see and talk to, Larae or Poquah, but as much as he wanted just to go overboard and make his way through the jungle to someplace where they'd never heard of him and wouldn't find him, he wasn't really about to do it. He wasn't at all sure he wouldn't have, though, if he'd also shared his father's immortality.

  Marge had reported the Imir as furious, but Poquah never showed emotion and was always in perfect control. He was not in fact nearly as angry as he'd been initially and not entirely angry at the boy or the girl, particularly since Marge had briefed him on all that had transpired and all that had been revealed.

  "Poquah, I—"

  The Imir, barely visible in the predawn grayness, held up his hand. "Growing up is learning, often by committing mistakes," he said softly. "The trick is to grow up and learn from those mistakes without allowing them to destroy you. Have you learned?"

  "I—well, sure, I've learned. I'm just not sure if I learned all that I could have or that the lesson is correct. Damn it, Poquah, it's not fair!"

  "Nothing much in life is certain except its unfairness. Good people die; evil lives to a ripe old age. Crime pays much of the time. Wars ravage schoolyards as thoroughly as battlefields. People tolerate and even create the grossest of dictatorships rather than risk hunger and uncertainty in freedom. Everybody expects a free lunch, but nobody can give such a thing. Someone always pays. That's not just something in the Rules, you know. It's the way things work. If we are not constantly tested by fighting through valleys of weeping and crucibles of fire, then nothing we can gain is worthwhile." He paused. "So what will you do now?'

  Irving shook his head. "I don't know. I don't know what to do."

  "She is asleep now. She has slept better tonight than at any time since she joined us. She also does not know that we all now know her secret. It is her great shame. I believe she is terrified that someone will find out."

  "Well, I can't hide it. I can't pretend anymore. I wouldn't know how. That's something more mature people can handle, maybe, but it's just not in me, not yet."

  "Then you must be totally honest with her, but that is a grave risk. If she cannot accept us knowing and you knowing in particular, she will react as your father did and will flee at the first opportunity. At least she cannot kill herself. That option is removed by her geas. She is not the owner of her fate and thus has no right to take her life. That at least we need not worry about."

  "Yeah, but if she runs, out here, in this . . ."

  The Imir nodded. "There is still a day and a night left. The creatures in there would be sensitized to her curse, but they would feel free to use or abuse her. She wouldn't die at their hands; she'd just wish she could."

  "Great! More load heaped on me!"

  "I wouldn't do it if there were any other way. Understanding, forgiving, sympathizing aren't enough. You must convince her that you accept her. That it doesn't matter. She has had enough of pity and of punishment, I think. This past night proved that. She seized an initiative and acted upon it, which is very encouraging. It means she's at the point of finally accepting her situation, of living with it as a permanent condition rather than just moping around and hoping she'll die or wake up. If she were to get the idea, particularly at this crucial juncture in our travels, that she could be an equal and not have to hide in shame, then she might actually have the potential to contribute to this expedition, which I think may be far shorter ahead than I originally thought."

  "Huh? How so?"

  "Something darker than anything I have ever experienced or even imagined is afoot here. I can feel its enormity, its oppressive weight and sheer power, the farther in we travel. Odd to think of Yuggoth as having a cancer, but it does, and that cancer is spreading at a rate that says there is no time for caution now. Something draws me as well to its source. Marge, too, I think, and you to a lesser but still important extent. We must settle all the turmoil within our company, and we must do so now. We will need each other like never before in very short order."

  ****

  Irving didn't sleep much at all after that, but he let Larae get up and wash and eat and get comfortable. She did seem different, both softer and more self-confident and definitely bound to him in some emotional way.

  That was going to make this pretty damned tough, and he'd gone over and over how he'd manage it. In a sense, he knew
he had her fate in his hands, and that was a heavy burden if he blew it.

  Finally, though, he couldn't put if off any longer. "Larae?"

  She smiled at him. "Thank you for last night."

  He tried not to show discomfort. "It's all right. I think maybe it's time I told you a little about my own self and other things in more detail than you've heard them so far."

  "You don't have to."

  "Yes, I do. And I want to start by telling you about my father ..."

  Chapter 12

  We're Off To See The Lizard

  Just say no to drugs or they will do something wrong to you.

  —Rules, Vol. XLI, p. 194(c)

  There! What did I tell you?

  —Reagan, N.

  At the upper limits of navigation on the river, whose name they never did quite get clearly in their minds—it meandered horribly, and with every bend it seemed to have a new and totally unrelated name—was a small inland town that nobody had named but that was clearly their first destination.

  In spite of its remoteness, the town looked oddly familiar to those from Earth, if a bit out of place in this geographic setting, with large Gothic-style Victorian houses peeking out of the ends of the jungle like an enormous collection of haunted houses. The jungle in fact ended within sight of the town and very dramatically; the mountains seemed to be a two-mile-high wall.

  Irving stared at the black rock beyond, and his jaw dropped. "Holy smokes! We have to go up there?"

  "Over it," Joel Thebes told him. "It is not all that bad but can be quite uncomfortable."

  "Hey, I'm in pretty fair shape, and there's no way I can climb that," the boy maintained. "As for the others, I don't think Marge can even fly that high, and she's the only other one with a chance."

  "You misunderstand," Thebes told him. "We do not climb. As usual, we ride. You'll see, you'll see."

  Larae was still uncomfortable with her secret out, as it were, but she at least accepted the fact that they were not going to cast her out, not even Irving, who had good cause for doing so. She was determined to do what she could for them.

  "Will we have to stay in this town overnight?" she asked Thebes. "It does not even look inhabited."

  "Oh, it is inhabited, all right," Thebes assured her. "Just not by folks who are still, well, like the rest of us." Considering that he was including himself in that "us," that meant that those who lived there were probably very unpleasant. "However, we should not have to remain here long if all the connections are right."

  Poquah surveyed the small dock area as their things were placed there for them and the chameleon faerie, as Marge had begun to think of them, filed off as well, spouting their inane bad dialogue but seemingly oblivious to their surroundings. Either they were totally in character and thus natural actors or they really were pretty dumb.

  "Be on your guard," the Irnir warned his party. "Irving, keep your sword ready."

  The boy looked around. "You see something I don't?'

  "No. I just feel the currents. Not all the denizens of this town are still on the side of the established order here. If that is the case, there might well be an attempt to prevent us from going farther."

  "Terrific," Irving responded glumly.

  Thebes, too, seemed to sense the danger, but when a creature emerged from one of the nearby houses and shambled toward them, he seemed to relax a bit, even though the thing was certainly tension-inducing.

  "That thing was once a human being?' Larae gasped.

  It was the size of an average man but bent, misshapen, twisted in such a way that it seemed both smaller and more massive. It had the look and stench of decomposing flesh and a skull-like face that looked more like an Eygptian mummy than a living being.

  Thebes walked out to the thing, which stopped, and they exchanged some sort of conversation too low to be heard by the others. Thebes pointed back to them, the thing nodded, and two dead eyes looked them over carefully.

  "I don't trust that little man," Larae whispered. "I don't care if he's one of you or not."

  "We don't, either, and he's not ours," Irving whispered back. "He's just sort of hired help to get us through."

  "I am not worried about Mister Thebes," Poquah told them. "Not until after we reach Mount Doom, anyway. If he could have reached our goal on his own, he would have been there long before now. He is not on our side or either of their sides. He is on his own side, which is a very lonely and dangerous position to be in."

  Thebes came back over to them. "We should get moving without delay," he told them. 'There appears to be danger here if we stay. Get your things and follow our gimpy guide there through town. No deviations or temptations, please. There is nothing alive—as we know it, anyway—left here."

  "You expect an ambush?" Poquah asked him, looking around.

  "I don't know. I don't think they're strong enough for that, but with these types you can't tell. When you're already dead and looking like that, you don't exactly have a lot to lose, yes?'

  The town smelled like death; even Marge, who would not normally be alert enough to do much good for anybody, found herself strangely wide awake in that grim place. There were few signs in writing of what it might once have been but some indications that at one time it had been a much larger place and that part of it had been consumed by fire. Just once was there anything that might be helpful in identifying it, but it was only a fragment of an old sign—interestingly, in Latin letters—that read "J-E-R-U." Nothing more.

  They were more than conscious of being watched from the houses and dark places as they walked through the town in the gray gloom. Dead eyes, yes, but envious eyes, too, and hungry ones.

  The deathly stillness was also unnerving, and when it was broken now and again by the loud cry of a tropical bird, they all jumped and hands went to weapons. Only the "machinists" seemed unconcerned, just blithely walking through as if it were a bright sunny day in Mister Rogers' neighborhood. Not worth a bite, Irving decided, and they knew it. Their very vacuousness was their protection. They were very close to clearing the town proper now, going through the remnants of burned-out buildings and charred timbers from a onetime small-town business center, when they saw their destination. While much more ordinary in many ways than the town and its denizens, it was no less scary a sight.

  "A cable car? Here?" Marge gasped.

  And a big one, too, from the looks of it, more than able to carry them all, some freight that was being hauled along on a cart by the crew of the sailing ship, and anything else that might want to go. It was like a giant old-fashioned trolley car without wheels, and it appeared that once out of its berth, it would be suspended by two thick black cables that went up at perhaps a thirty-degree angle toward the mountain wall, quickly losing them in the clouds and mist up there.

  "We're gonna take that up there?" Irving said, both nervous and incredulous.

  "What powers it?" Poquah asked, fascinated more than worried.

  "You do not want to know," Thebes responded, then proceeded to pretty much tell him anyway. "A lot of very naughty souls on some amazing treadmills beneath us."

  "I don't like it," Irving told them. "Once we're in that contraption up there, we're sitting ducks."

  Poquah was ever the pragmatist. "You would perhaps prefer to climb? It is one or the other."

  Thebes looked around nervously. "Well, I think we better decide very quickly on this. I'm afraid some of the locals want us to stay!"

  Swords came out, and they whirled to see horrors emerging from the cellars of the burned-out structures: misshapen humanoid creatures that might once have been people but were now dripping with foulness.

  "Holy shit! It's The Night of the Living Dead!" Marge cried, the last bits of lethargy slipping as she launched herself into the air and then straight for the waiting car.

  Thebes opened his white coat for the first time and revealed a virtual smorgasbord of weaponry in nice little holders along the lining. It was no wonder he always looked like an unmade bed; t
here were wooden stakes and mallets, crosses, crescents, Stars of David, silver daggers, wolfsbane: it was an incredible sight.

  "Zombies!" he muttered irritably. "What the hell stops the zombies?"

  'Take it from experience—very little!" Poquah shouted. "Run for the car, everyone! Irving and I will try to buy you time."

  Irving gave the Imir a quick, nervous glance and gulped. "We will? Um, yeah, I guess we will."

  The things came on pretty fast for zombies, which had a reputation for being slow and shuffling. One reached very close to Irving, who was trying to backpedal and not trip while making as good time as possible. Now he swung the short sword in a series of broad, professional strokes that sliced right through decaying yet animated limbs, shearing them off as if they were made of butter.

  That, unfortunately, stopped neither the severed limbs nor the trunk from coming on. Slashes at the legs with that sword were out of the question. "I got to get a longer sword," Irving muttered, then turned and ran so hard for the open door that he overran both Poquah and Larae. Thebes seemed to have given up on his quest for a talisman or weapon and to have got there ahead of them.

  Irving made the open door of the cable car, then turned to hold it as long as possible. He saw Larae running, but she stumbled and fell, and he started to run back toward her to help her. Almost immediately he realized that a zombie was going to beat him to her.

  She turned onto her back as the undead creature lunged at her, but as the zombie tried to pounce on her and rip out her throat, her legs came up, caught the thing at the hips, and then, with a powerful somersault roll, sent the zombie flying while somehow Larae got back on her feet, pulling her skirt down almost below her ass.

  Irving saw a half dozen more of the creatures closing in as he reached her. "Don't bother getting pretty now!" he shouted, picking her up and sprinting for the open door, where now only Poquah guarded the entrance.