Vengeance of the Dancing Gods

by Jack L. Chalker

  Chinese Fortune Cookie

  ALTHOUGH THEY TRIED TO TALK MARGE OUT OF IT, SHE would not be restrained from going out that evening and visiting some of the old places where she'd lived much of her life. She was quite confident of herself and won out when she argued that she'd better find out now if she couldn't fool the people of her old world when it would just be an incident and not a deadly blunder.

  In fact, it was useful to allow them all out for a while in Earth society, if only to get accustomed to a new and different world. Joe and Tiana, who was now human-appearing once more, decided on some evening shopping to fill out their wardrobes; Poquah took Macore in tow, although the little thief somewhat protested, to get him oriented to the basic rules of survival on Earth. Macore, after all, had never seen a stoplight, didn't know from which direction traffic came in this world, and had to get used to this funny worthless paper being treated as if it were something of value.

  For Marge, it was a matter of flying over the area and seeing how much had changed and how much had stayed the same over the years. She had been born and raised in the area and knew it and the nearby town of Odessa like the back of her hand. It did, of course, look different from the air, and the sights, sounds, and even odors seemed more chaotic, more irritating, than she remembered. This was the true Texas, though; flat and dry, with an economy based on oil, gas, and cows, now pretty much in that order.

  Her grammar and high school were still there, but they'd torn down the old junior high and the neighborhood in which she'd been born and raised seemed less tranquil and dirtier than she remembered it.

  The feelings and the sensations of the people below were almost overpowering to her. If this place was typical of Earth, the amount of misery, guilt, and anger radiating from the relatively peaceful city below would keep a thousand Kauris busy for the next century. She would have no trouble feeding here; indeed, the problem would be not taking on such a load that it weighed her down and made her ponderous and depressed, for she could not cleanse herself of any excess.

  Her thoughts turned to Roger, and she couldn't help wondering if her ex-husband still lived in the same mobile home and the same trailer park outside of town. He wasn't given to taking chances or doing anything without being forced to—she had even had to propose to him—so it was quite likely. She circled around and headed southwest.

  She landed just outside the trailer park and took on the guise of her old self. She'd been plain and rather unattractive most of her adult life, or so at least she had always thought, and she took a little time to adjust the image here and there. A bit more of a bust, tight clothing that was well-styled, a nice hairdo, good makeup, that sort of thing. It was very easy to do—she just wished it, and saw it in her mind's eye, and it was so. It was all illusion, but of a broadcasting sort. Any who saw her, even if she didn't know they were there, would see her as she intended to be seen. Only changelings, ones with the power, and those of fairy blood could see, hear, and know her as she really was. The Kauri were somewhat like method actresses, who literally became their parts, yet never lost touch with their true natures.

  If indeed he still lived in the old place, he'd bought a new pickup, but that was to be expected. She stood there, looking at the place, and the memories came back, both the good and the painful ones. All of a sudden she didn't really understand why she had come here or what she expected to see. All the real love and affection had gone out of this relationship long before she'd taken that long walk to nowhere up the interstate, and she certainly neither wanted, nor was it possible, to have a resumption of their relationship. The Kauri nature, which was her nature, made that impossible. Or was it, perhaps, some inner desire for revenge? Kauris were generally above all that, or so she'd thought; they sought revenge only for things done to themselves or their sisters, and she had been someone else back then. The place was lighted, though, and from the windows came the blaring sound of baseball play-by-play.

  Suddenly the door banged open and Roger came out, a beer in one hand and a plastic trash bag in the other, dressed in shorts and T-shirt. He'd grown much older in the few years separating them; his hair seemed flecked with gray, his muscular body had gone somewhat to flab, and he had a definite potbelly. He opened a trash can over to one side, stuffed the bag in, closed it again, then turned and caught sight of her. He smiled first, as if acknowledging a neighbor, then frowned; his mouth dropped. "My lord. Marge! Is that you?"

  She sighed. "Hello, Roger," she said.

  He came over to her, still disbelieving his senses. "Good God Almighty! Where'n hell you been all this while?"

  "Away. Other places. Places I never even knew existed."

  "Well, wherever it was, it sure as hell was good for you! Jesus! You look as fine as the day we got married!" He paused a moment. "You want to come in and sit a while?"

  Without really replying, she followed him into the trailer, still not really knowing what she was going to do or why. This had already gone much further than she'd intended.

  The place was a mess, with stuff all over. A small color TV in the combined living and dining room blared into the darkness and there were lots of empty beer bottles around. Aside from being messy as hell and from the very well-worn upholstery she remembered as new or nearly so, it looked pretty much the same.

  Roger seemed a little at a loss but also happy. She could read the deep guilt within him that her reappearance had brought to the surface once more, although it was never very deeply suppressed. "Can I get you a beer or a pop or something?"

  "No, nothing, thanks." She took a seat in the old chair she'd bought years ago at a flea market in Odessa. It had always been her favorite chair. He turned a kitchen chair around and sat on it, just looking at her for a while. Finally he asked, "Why'd you come back. Marge?"

  "I really don't know, Roger. I was just coming through this way for the first time since—well, since—and I just wanted to see how you were making out. I can't stay very long. I'm meeting some people in Midland in a little while."

  He seemed crestfallen at that, and for the first time she realized that he had really thought, or at least hoped, that she had come back to him. She felt suddenly very awkward, and the situation seemed more wrong than before.

  "What sort of people? What you been doin' all this time, anyway?"

  "Oh, I've been pretty much of a free spirit," she responded evasively. "I travel light and make enough to get by and see to all my needs." She decided to change the subject. "I see that you didn't remarry."

  "Oh, after you left I played the superstud for a while, I guess, and even had a girl or two live here now and again, but didn't none of 'em hold a candle to you. Marge, and that's God's honest truth. The ones with the bodies didn't have no brains, and the ones with the brains had better sense than to take up with me. After three days we found out we didn't have nothing to talk about. Jesus! I missed you. Marge!"

  "I didn't miss you, Roger," she said coldly.

  That hit him where it hurt, but he was too happy to see her to get mad. Instead he asked, "If that's true, why didn't you just keep goin' past this little piss-ant piece of nowhere?"

  She shrugged. "I don't really know. Curiosity, mostly, I think, and maybe some nostalgia. I had some good times here, at the start, before it got all bad."

  He stared straight into her eyes. "And now you're a whore, huh? A traveling whore that ain't got nothing to her name. Is that what the girl I married's become? A damned whore. A damned college-educated whore!" His anger was now masking his guilt, and doing a very good job of it. He would either break into violent action, or, she sensed, he would break into pieces. Although he couldn't see it or sense it, her Kauri wings were spread wide now, not for flight but as sensory organs. And suddenly she knew why she'd been impelled to come here, and what she had to do. So much guilt, anger, hurt, and pain. There was an illness in Roger that could only eventually destroy, perhaps others first and then, fast or slow, Roger himself. It was her function, and her power, to treat such t
hings.

  The wings spread wide, and she held him suspended in her powers. She kicked off imaginary shoes, and then began to shed imaginary clothing.

  Joe had become worried at the sight and sound of an approaching thunderstorm. They tried to hail several taxis, but discovered that the white drivers seemed to ignore them. Some things still hadn't changed. Finally one dropped off a fare near the entrance to the mall and proved to be driven by an elderly black man, and he invited them in.

  They had no luck. The storm hit, suddenly bathing the cab in a torrent of water. The sound of the storm beating on the taxi's roof masked the sound of ripping jeans as Tiana's spell was negated and her lower half was restored to its natural form. It had not been necessary actually to be out in the storm; she was literally surrounded by water and that was all it took. Tiana had a strange mixture of relief at being comfortable again and anxiety at her current condition; Joe had only the anxiety to deal with.

  They finally pulled into the motel and directed the driver to their room. When they got there, the storm had already abated and, in fact, was almost over, no help to Tiana.

  "Let me open the door first," Joe said hurriedly. "My wife has real bad arthritis and this storm's left her unable to walk."

  "Okay," the driver said, sounding friendly and concerned. "Want me to help?"

  "Oh, no! I can handle it." Joe got out and opened the door with his key, propping it wide with a chair, then quickly returned. The cabbie was getting out and making for the trunk, which held most of their boxes. Joe looked at Tiana, who shrugged, and waited for the trunk to open, then quickly scooped her up, took her out, bumping her head in the process, and carried her quickly into the motel room. Their beds, of course, were still unmade, and he put her on one and she quickly pulled the covers up an appropriate length and sat up, watching them.

  The driver was in a moment later with about half the packages. He seemed a bit surprised to see her already in bed, but he didn't comment. He and Joe went out to get the rest of the stuff. "Just set it here. I'll get it in," he told the cabbie.

  The old man did it, then stood there, scratching his head for a minute, and it was clear that he'd seen, or thought he'd seen, something odd when Joe carried her in. He started to say something, then thought better of it, and accepted his fare and a sizable tip. He said good-bye, got into his cab, and slowly drove off, thinking, I been working too hard. Even if there was such things as that they wouldn't be in this country. And they sure as hell wouldn't be black.

  Joe returned and took the chair away, closing the door. "Close," he muttered. "Too close."

  "I suppose I should not have come after all," Tiana moped. "I am far more of a burden here than any help. And this is dry country! What will happen when we get to places where this happens all the time?"

  He came over, sat on the bed beside her, put his arm around her, and kissed her. "We've all got our problems. I need you here. Leaving you alone back in Husaquahr with that Master-of-the-Dead creep still on the loose would have worried me so much I couldn't have thought straight here anyway."

  "I was also pretty upset tonight, not just with the taxis, but with some of the places and people. Nothing was restricted or segregated or anything like that, but I still often felt hostility here and there. And for no reason!"

  He chuckled. "Honey, don't you worry about that stuff. I know you're second class in these parts, but don't think all that was directed at you. There's a class around here down at the bottom real far below whites, blacks, Mexicans, and anybody else. That's Indian—and I'm it."

  Roger had not seen her come, and he was sleeping peacefully when she left, so she walked back out after turning off the lights and turning off the TV. It was late, later than she'd expected to be here, but still early enough to see a bit more. She was certainly no longer hungry, and would not be perhaps for several days, but she knew she'd lifted two burdens tonight and buried her last personal ghost as well.

  There was no one apparently around, so she flew into the night, circled one last time around the trailer park, and headed back toward Midland.

  There were several thunderstorms in the area and she grew worried about Tiana. She knew she should go back immediately, but she was overly full and needed to work some of it off, changing it to energy, or she might be nasty or mean as hell when she didn't intend to be.

  The storms attracted her childish inner nature. There was nothing quite like a west Texas thunderstorm in late spring, one whose violence and power was enormous but whose boundaries one could see from a great distance. She had been in awe of them as a girl and in fear of them as an adult in a trailer park, but she'd never before seen them with fairy eyes, in which their power was tangible and somewhat mystical.

  Now the lightning was no threat to one who swam in volcanic fires, and the tremendous updrafts and down- drafts were like a super roller coaster. She knew that she could be slammed to the ground, but she was confident of her abilities to recover before that time. For now, she played at dodging the lightning bolts and rode the violence she could not merely sense but see, and it worked off a lot of excess energy.

  It was while doing this that she suddenly had a strong stabbing sensation. It was brief, and not painful, more as if some great invisible lance vibrated through her midsection. Play stopped, and she tried to find the sensation once again. She knew it, although she had never expected to sense it on Earth, and particularly not here, so close to home.

  It was a universal, racial call for help. It was the sensation you got when a fairy was hurt and needed help— not just Kauri, any kind.

  With two or three of her sisters, it would have taken no time at all to locate the source, even in the storm; but, although the storm passed quickly, it took her the better part of an hour to find that strong pulsing vibration once again, and even longer to be able to hold onto it and follow it down. It was not a strong signal, which could mean many things, one of which was that one of faerie was dying.

  She came down, at last, on the grimy tar and cinder roof of a building, now awash in deep puddles. Her only thought was that perhaps something terrible had happened to Poquah, but the Imir would be easy to spot up here on this roof, and it definitely was coming from on the roof rather than inside the building.

  She extended her wings and followed the signal's intensity, weak even here, to its source. There was nothing evident on the roof at all, and she grew puzzled, when suddenly she heard a tiny sound from over near the roof edge. She walked over and saw the creature, so small that at first she'd taken the glow to be just reflection on a puddle.

  It was the figure of a slender, athletic-looking girl, almost snow white in color but with very short blond hair. From her back extended a set of proportionately large transparent wings, like those of a dragonfly, and she had the shell-like, pointed ears of most fairy folk. She was nude, as were virtually all the flying kinds, and. Marge saw, her body gave off a weak but definite self-luminescence that seemed to pulse with regularity.

  She was also perhaps four inches from head to foot.

  There were many such creatures in Husaquahr, including a fair number in Mohr Jerahl, but they were usually as territorial as wood nymphs. Unless this one had stowed away on the ship coming over, there was no way to explain finding a pixie on an urban rooftop.

  The tiny creature stirred, then managed to open her eyes and bring herself to a sitting position. She was instantly aware that she had company and looked up at Marge in surprise. Her voice was as tiny as she was, and, like that of all pixies, was pitched far too high for human ears, so that only the overtones could be heard as a high, ringing sound by those with good hearing, like children. Marge, of course, could hear it fine, although there were the usual city noises and the rumblings of the storms in the distance that made her bend low to catch it all.

  "So what da hell are yow?" asked the pixie, in what sounded like fluent Brooklynese. "And wud'dya starin' at, anyways?"

  "I'm a Kauri. I heard your distress cry and came to h
elp if I could."

  "A what? Man, oh man! Dey grow deir fairies as big and mean as deir thunderstorms in dis sucking state of Texas!"

  Suddenly Marge was struck by a memory chord: with Peter Pan's glow.... "Of course!" she muttered to herself. "Tinker Bell!"

  "Don't give me none of dat Tinker Bell shit!" the pixie retorted angrily. "Ain't been no end of grief since dat Limey wrote dat play da foist time!"

  "You're—a native of Earth, then?"

  "Sure! Born 'n bred in Prospect Pock. Dat's in Brooklyn, you know."

  "I would never have guessed."

  "Been dere since da Limeys shot up da place. Made a mess, but we couldn't complain. Because of dat dey left it as a pock. Prob'ly da only big slice o' green left around dere."

  "I've never been there, but I'm more interested in how you happened to wind up here."

  "Yeah, well, I ain't too sure on dat, neither. Pact is, I was dumb, dat's all. I mean, dere ain't no place worth livin' outside o' Brooklyn, 'cept maybe New Yawk and dey even mug da fairies dere dese days. Dat's why most of us up and left a long time ago. Me'n a few udders, we stayed on. I mean, if you can't live in Brooklyn, why live at all?"

  "But you left."

  "Obviously! I din't have no choice. Dey been takin' little bits and pieces of da pock for yeahs and yeahs, and finally it just got so dere was no way to live no more. We need flowers 'n trees 'n all, and 'cause it's so urban, like, the stuff'd die no matter what we did 'less the city came in and helped out. So dey cut the pocks budget again and again until dere was nothin' really left 'cept for trimmin' the battle monument. Dey sent clods out wit' no feelin' for growin' tings, you know? Not only did dey not do da job, dey screwed the place up so much it'll take yeahs to get it goin' again. I was da last—maybe da last fairy in Brooklyn.

  "Now, what was I supposed to do? Go live in Joisy, for cryin' out loud? So I says, 'Gimlet old goil, you either gotta get planted forever in dear old Brooklyn or make it over to da udder side somehow.' Now, dere's only six places dat even used to be ways over and out, you know? One's in da Swiss Alps, one's in China, one's in da Amazon, one's in da deserts of Australia, one's somewheres between da Nile 'n da Congo, and one's someplace in Texas. Maybe I got da right spot, since you're here and I don't even ever hear of your kind before, but maybe I'm wrong. That Texas accent of yours is somethin' else."