Hart & Boot & Other Stories

by Pratt, Tim

  He put his hands on his belly and laughed. He’s pretty pudgy for a ninja, I thought. “You’ll never have it! I’ve hidden it below my castle, in the Cellar of Icy Madness! You can’t possibly breach my gates!”

  I glanced at Griffonious and wrinkled my nose. Were-apes rot fast. I’d forgotten that. “Maybe the ape has a key in his pocket,” I said hopefully.

  “Not necessary,” she said. “We’ll fly.”

  She touched my elbow and we rose from the ground, slowly at first, then faster. We rushed toward Montrose. He stumbled back. Only his shocked, wide eyes showed above his mask. He hadn’t expected such a direct approach.

  I held on to my stick and tried not to get queasy. Most damsels don’t do much besides get kidnapped and look pretty. I preferred my damsel to the standard variety. She was the sort of woman I’d like to get involved with in the real world, if I wasn’t going to die in a year or three.

  Thoughts of reality don’t belong in an outing, so I let them go. I put my foot on the rampart and leapt for Montrose. He escaped down a trapdoor before I could reach him.

  My damsel led the way down, through dim rooms filled with hags and ghosts and, yes, ninjas. She dispelled the supernatural creatures with her spells and I dispatched the others with my staff. We reached the bottom floor and found Montrose standing before the entrance to the Cellar of Icy Madness. Frosty air blew from the recessed doorway. He cackled and drew down his mask.

  Revealing Dr. Montressor. His image, anyway. I must’ve had a lot of repressed bitterness and suspicion for my subconscious to cast my doctor in this role. “Follow me, if you dare!” He ran down the cellar stairs.

  I lifted my staff with a snarl and started for the frigid entrance. The damsel put her hand on my arm. “Wait,” she said, “before we go I want to—”

  ***

  Franny again, with the anti-Vision. I sighed. “You know, once upon a time I could finish a thread and wake up between storylines. Not anymore.”

  “Time for your appointment. You want me to walk with you?”

  I didn’t look forward to going into the world, but I didn’t want Franny to worry. “No, it’s only a few blocks. I’ll be fine.”

  I got to the office and sat in the waiting room. Brass lamps, bland landscapes on the wall, white carpet. All very tasteful and not at all homey. The nurse apologized for making me wait. “Dr. Monstressor’s with another patient.”

  I twiddled my thumbs and read a fishing magazine. I heard Doc’s voice and looked up.

  My damsel walked at his side. I recognized her instantly. She had frizzier hair than she did on the outings, and shadows bagged under her eyes. Even so, she looked good. She thanked the doctor and went toward the exit. She paused with her hand on the doorknob, frowning at me, then shook her head and went on.

  I swallowed. “Hey, Doc,” I said. “Who was that?”

  “Hmm? A new producer, just got diagnosed a few months ago. This was her third or fourth draining. She says she’s been hallucinating, and she was worried about the accelerated strain of Hammond’s disease, but she does Vision, so it’s probably just that.” He grunted. “Just that.’ As if that isn’t enough.”

  I didn’t talk as he drained me. I thought about Vision, the collective unconscious, the Serum, and telepathy. I wondered if Doc was having a new house built, a big ostentatious Gothic folly, but I didn’t ask. I thought about all sorts of crazy shit, to be honest, but I couldn’t make it fit together.

  When the doc put my blood bag in his metal refrigerator, I thought I saw a golden gleam on one of the shelves. But I wasn’t sure, and I didn’t want to ask about it.

  ***

  “— kiss you. We’ve fought together this far, and I’ve come to care for you, rogue.”

  “And I for you, damsel.” She was definitely the woman I’d seen at Doc’s office. Had I seen her before, and subconsciously cast her in this role? That seemed more likely than the possibility of us somehow Visioning together. This wasn’t a massively multiplayer RPG—this was the territory inside my mind. Besides, if she was the woman from the office, why hadn’t she recognized me?

  As I thought about it, I realized that she couldn’t have recognized me. Lachrymose doesn’t look much like Larry, the real me. Lachrymose looks like the guy who played Robin Hood in the old movies, with a thin mustache and a twinkle in his eye. The real me is a normal brown-haired brown-eyed average-height sort. “Before you kiss me,” I said, “I must reveal my true face. I have traveled in disguise for years, but you deserve to see me as I am.”

  I wanted to know if I’d lost my mind. I concentrated and changed my appearance to match the guy I saw in the mirror every few days, when I wasn’t out on Vision.

  Her eyes widened. She opened her mouth, but no sounds emerged. It’s hard to talk about reality from inside an outing, almost impossible, but she recognized me.

  That, or my subconscious created the illusion that this Vision-construct recognized me. Multilevel mental breakdown and nested hallucinations can be pretty confusing.

  Before she spoke, a dozen ninjas burst literally from the walls, bricks and mortar exploding outward as they came. They screeched and whirled various nasty weapons. I grabbed the damsel’s hand and we raced down the cellar stairs. The door slammed shut behind us, cutting off the ninja pursuit.

  Those ninjas came at a convenient time, I thought. My subconscious must have been trying to protect me from an awkward moment. I glanced at the damsel. Or maybe her subconscious was protecting her.

  The Cellar of Icy Madness was cold, the kind of cold that makes the outer layer of your skin feel like chapped leather. We shivered and hurried down the stairs. “So this egg,” I said, “is there enough for two?”

  “Would you share immortality with me?”

  “I wouldn’t turn it down.”

  “I don’t know exactly how it works. The tales vary. Some believe it is the rare Phoenix egg, and can be used only once. Others say it can be used to decant the elixir vitae, the elixir of eternal life. I suspect it can be used only once, and I don’t think Montrose has used it.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “If he were immortal, why would he flee and send his minions after us?”

  I wanted to say, “Because this is an outing, a Vision-trip, and it’s more exciting that way.” Instead I said, “You’re right. But why wouldn’t he use it?”

  “Another legend says the golden egg can only be used by one with a love-filled heart. Montrose’s heart is cold. The egg would poison him.”

  “Right you are.” Montrose stood at the bottom of the stairs. We’d reached the lowest level of the Cellar of Icy Madness. He held the golden egg, a gleaming ellipsoid bigger than a baseball, in one hand. “But if I cannot have immortality, no one will!” He lifted the egg high overhead, as if to dash it to the floor.

  “No!” the damsel and I shouted, and Montrose flung the egg—

  ***

  “Already?” I shivered.

  “Yeah.” Franny put down the needle.

  “How long was I out?”

  “A week. That must’ve been some super-strong Vision.”

  I rubbed my forehead. The golden egg, immortality, flung to the Cellar’s floor—I couldn’t stand to think about it.

  I went to the doc’s office for the blood-drain. I sneaked glances at his specimen refrigerator the whole time. When he put away the blood bag, I distinctly saw gold inside. “I’m out of anti-Vision, Doc. Want to give me some, take it out of my payment?”

  He made a face. “Sure.” He left the room.

  I opened his refrigerator. Icy wind blew into my face. There it was, the golden egg, nestled among beakers and racks of test tubes. It can’t be real, I thought. I’m hallucinating. I picked up the egg, and found it fragile and lighter than I’d expected. I slipped it into my jacket pocket. Doc probably wouldn’t notice the bulge. He might not even know about the egg. He wasn’t really the ninja king—just a guy making a living on my death.

  The do
c didn’t suspect anything. I took the anti-Vision and the money and left.

  When I got home, Franny said, “Going under again? Or I could make a meatloaf, if you want some real food.”

  “I’d like that.” I put the golden egg in the refrigerator, in the vegetable drawer under some broccoli.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. I think I’m going to lay off the Vision for a while.”

  After dinner I stood in the living room and twirled my staff. I dropped it a lot, but I had fun. I went to bed, to ordinary sleep, for the first time in ages. I had dreams, not Visions. Montrose was there, and the damsel, and Franny, and the were-ape, and a cast of thousands. I dreamed of golden fruit, a rising Phoenix, and men in star-patterned robes boiling lion’s blood in beakers.

  I woke early and went to the kitchen. I poured a glass of milk. Franny sat reading the paper at the table. She looked irritated at my intrusion. She usually had the run of the house, aside from emptying my piss-bag. She’d have to get used to me staying awake. I didn’t want to go on another outing anytime soon, not if it meant seeing the egg smashed and Montrose triumphant. Could the damsel, if she was really the woman I’d seen in Doc’s office, go to the Cellar of Icy Madness without me? I hoped not. I hoped the egg survived, whole, in both worlds.

  Someone knocked on the door. I answered before Franny could.

  The damsel stood in the hallway. She wore yellow stretchpants, and I couldn’t look at her enough. “You don’t know me,” she said. “I got your name and address from Dr.—”

  “Franny!” I shouted, startling the damsel and my sister both. I made a shooing motion toward the door. “Out, Franny, out, take a walk, go, go, go.”

  “Larry, what are you—” She saw the damsel and lifted an eyebrow. “Hey there.”

  “Go!”

  She took her purse and kissed me on the cheek. “Be good, brother,” she said, and slipped out.

  “I’ve got the egg,” I said when the damsel came in.

  She leaned against the kitchen counter as if she couldn’t support her own weight. “It’s real?”

  “I hope so. If you can see it, too, then I’ll believe it.”

  I took down a frying pan and turned on the stove. My hands were shaking

  “Wait.” She stepped toward me. “We never had a chance to kiss. The ninjas came.”

  “I remember.” I put my arms around her, not too awkwardly. Her breath didn’t smell of roses, but it was nice. After the kiss broke I said, “This is really stupid. We’ve both got Hammond’s. I don’t have much longer to live. You’re younger, but...”

  “There’s the egg.”

  I shook my head. “It’s crazy. We’ve got to be hallucinating, we’re Vision-heads.”

  “Maybe we’re only seeing the truth in a different way.”

  I opened my mouth, then closed it. Was it a golden egg, or did I just see it that way? “You think it might be the cure. The cure that isn’t supposed to exist. That we read the doc’s mind somehow, and found out about it.”

  “I don’t think anything. I’ve never been in this situation before. I haven’t even seen the egg, if it is an egg.”

  “I’ll show you.” I opened the refrigerator, dug under the broccoli, and lifted out the egg. I held it wordlessly.

  “That’s a lovely potato,” she said. “Where’s the egg?”

  I relaxed my hands and let the egg fall. A potato. I wanted to cry.

  She shouted and dove, catching the egg before it hit the floor. She looked up at me, and I saw the woman who’d propelled us through the air, the woman who’d shoved a were-ape’s face in the mud. “Crazy! I was kidding! I thought you could take a joke! Yes, it’s the golden egg, I see it!”

  I closed my eyes. I could react in one of two ways. One involved shouting and anger. I chose the other. “You’re too much. You really had me going.”

  She grunted and handed me the egg. “I like them scrambled.”

  I felt its roundness. If it looks like a golden egg, and it feels like a golden egg, let it be a golden egg. “A woman after my own heart.”

  I lifted the egg over the pan and suddenly everything shifted. The cold air of the Cellar of Icy Madness chilled me. I held my quarterstaff, with the damsel at my side. Montrose cackled and flung the egg down before we could reach him, before we could possibly reach him, and the egg struck—

  —and broke into the pan, where it sizzled. The enormous yolk gleamed, brass-colored. I set the shell fragments aside reverently. When Franny got home, would she see pieces of golden shell, or the shards of a glass test tube?

  The damsel, whose name I still didn’t know, looked into the pan with me.

  “Maybe we should have it sunny-side up,” I said. “We can share the yolk.”

  “Sure.” She took my hand and squeezed it. “And tomorrow, I’ll make breakfast.”

  Dream Engine

  The Stolen State, The Magpie City, The Nex, The Ax—this is the place where I live, and hover, and chafe in my service; the place where I take my small bodiless pleasures where I may. Nexington-on-Axis is the proper name, the one the Regent uses in his infrequent public addresses, but most of the residents call it other things, and my—prisoner? partner? charge? trust?—my associate, Howlaa Moor, calls it The Cage, at least when zie is feeling sorry for zimself.

  The day the fat man began his killing spree, I woke early, while Howlaa slept on, in a human form that snored. I looked down on the streets of our neighborhood, home to low-level government servants and the wretchedly poor. The sky was bleak, and rain filled the potholes. The royal orphans had snatched a storm from somewhere, which was good, as the district’s roof gardens needed rain.

  I saw a messenger approach through the cratered street. I didn’t recognize his species—he was bipedal, with a tail, and his skin glistened like a salamander’s, though his gait was birdlike—but I recognized the red plume jutting from his headband, which allowed him to go unmolested through this rough quarter.

  “Howlaa,” I said. “Wake. A messenger approaches.”

  Howlaa stirred on zir heaped bedding, furs and silks piled indiscriminately with burlap and canvas and even coarser fabrics, because Howlaa’s kind enjoy having as much tactile variety as possible. And, I suspect, because zie likes to taunt me with reminders of the physical sensations I can not experience.

  “Shushit, Wisp,” zie said. My name is not Wisp, but that is what zie calls me, and I have long since given up on changing the habit. “The messenger could be coming for anyone. There are four score civil servants on this block alone. Let me sleep.” Zie picked up a piece of half-eaten globe-fruit and hurled it at me. It passed through me without effect, of course, but it annoyed me, which was Howlaa’s intent.

  “The messenger has a red plume, skinshifter,” I said, making my voice resonate, making it creep and rattle in zir tissues and bones, making sleep or shutting me out impossible.

  “Ah. Blood business, then.” Howlaa threw off furs, rose, and stretched, zir arms growing more joints and bends as zie moved, unfolding like origami in flesh. I could not help a little subvocal gasp of wonder as zir skin rippled and shifted and settled into Howlaa’s chosen morning shape. I have no body, and am filled with wonder at Howlaa’s mastery of zir own.

  Howlaa settled into the form of a male Nagalinda, a biped with long limbs, a broad face with opalescent eyes, and a lipless mouth full of triangular teeth. Nagalinda are fearsome creatures with a reputation for viciousness, though I have found them no more uniformly monstrous than any other species; their cultural penchant for devouring their enemies has earned them a certain amount of notoriety even in the Ax, though. Howlaa liked to take on such forms to terrify government messengers if zie could. Such behavior was insubordinate, but it was such a small rebellion that the Regent didn’t even bother to reprimand Howlaa for it—and having zir rude behavior so completely disregarded only served to annoy Howlaa further.

  The Regent knew how to control us, which levers to tug and which leads to j
erk, which is why he was the Regent, and we were in his employ. I often think that the Regent controls the city as skillfully as Howlaa controls zir own form, and it is a pretty analogy, for the Ax is in its way as mutable as Howlaa’s body.

  The buzzer buzzed. “Why don’t you get that?” Howlaa said, grinning. “Oh, yes, right, no hands, makes opening the door tricky. I’ll get it, then.”

  Howlaa opened the door to the messenger, who didn’t find zim especially terrifying. The messenger was too busy being frightened of the fat man for Howlaa to scare him.

  ***

  I floated. Howlaa ambled. The messenger hurried ahead, hurried back, hurried ahead again, like an anxious pet. Howlaa could not be rushed, and I went at the pace Howlaa chose, of necessity, but I sympathized with the messenger’s discomfort. Being bound so closely to the Regent’s will made even tardiness cause for bone-deep anxiety.

  “He’s a fat human, with no shirt on, carrying a giant battle-axe, and he chopped up a brace of Beetleboys armed with dung-muskets?” Howlaa’s voice was blandly curious, but I knew zie was incredulous, just as I was.

  “So the messenger reports,” I said.

  “And then he disappeared, in full view of everyone in Moth Moon Market?”

  “Why do you repeat things?” I asked.

  “I just wondered if it would sound more plausible coming from my own mouth. But even my vast reserves of personal conviction fail to lend the story weight. Perhaps the Regent made it up, and plans to execute me when I arrive.” Howlaa sounded almost hopeful. “Would you tell me, little Wisp, if that were his plan?”

  Howlaa imagines I have a closer relationship with the Regent than zie does zimself, and zie has always believed that I willingly became a civil servant. Zie does not know that I am bound to community service for my past crimes, just as Howlaa zimself is, and I let zim persist in this misapprehension because it allows me to act superior and, on occasion, even condescend, which is one of the small pleasures available to we bodiless ones. “I think you are still too valuable and tractable for the Regent to kill,” I said.