by Eric Flint
The redhead and Spivey looked sulkily stubborn. Mario Jori suddenly got up and headed for the bar. Watters looked shifty-eyed.
"Got no choice," the redhead growled. "Can't win the War to End All Wars just with volunteers. And get on with the story."
The homunculus' eyes widened and he stretched out his hand to indicate me. "Can't, big buy. The lawyer's got a question needs to be answered, remember? How is it that a stone statue starts talking in the lobby of a major Las Vegas casino and nobody notices except me and his confederate?"
The redhead gave me a sour glance. After a moment, Dryck said: "It's the glamour, Ishmael. All Major, Minor, Lesser and Subsidiary powers involved in the War to End All Wars can cast a glamour when surrounded by mundanes. Whatever they do in the glamour goes unnoticed by non-combatants. We're pretty sure the same applies to aquanes, although we're not positive."
I stared at him. Then, stared at my mug—which, alas, was empty again. Then, stared at Sheila Rowen.
"I've been trying to decide," I mused, "whether we've fallen in with lunatics or whether we're suffering from hallucinations brought on by excessive alcohol consumption. The evidence, I believe, is finally in."
Rowen nodded. "We've fallen in with lunatics. Leaving aside the unlikelihood that we'd be sharing the same hallucinations, not in my wildest reveries would I come up with something this ridiculous."
"Well, it's true," muttered Spivey. He poked his finger at the homunculus. "So back to the story, you."
Mario returned at that point, with, thankfully, some full mugs to pass around. Lunatics or not, at least they weren't teetotalers.
"So then Mr. Sure-I'm-A-Captain heads back to the coffee place and orders another non-fat extra-dry cappuccino. Once he gets it, he sits down at one of those silly little round tables with silly little wrought-iron chairs and starts talking to himself while he's drinking. Seeing my chance, I snuck up from behind to eavesdrop on the sorta-conversation."
"And what was he saying?"
Jonah gave Captain Ahab a very nasty look. "Same fricking gibberish. Something about being 'measured for a leg' and 'a cogent vice'—whatever that is—and 'a fierce red flame' but it was all a shuck because once I got close enough to hear much of anything I was suddenly seized from behind. I struggled, but it was hopeless. The bitch was even more muscled than Lady Lawyer here and"—he paused to give everyone a portentous look—"she had ten arms. Need I say more?"
"Kali," hissed the redhead. "So the rumors are true."
Spivey looked dubious, and waggled a hand back and forth. "Maybe, but probably not. Last I heard—we'll, never mind. Let's just say it was more likely to have been one of the nine navadurgas. Might have been a gauri, too."
The redhead rolled his eyes. "Dryck, have I ever told you what a royal pain in the butt you damn Hindoos are?"
"I'm not actually a Hindoo. Precisely speaking."
"'Course not!" jeered Watters. "Nobody is a Hindoo, 'precisely speaking,' which is why you buggers generate Major and Minor powers like confetti. Makes it bloody damn difficult for the rest of us, mate, just keeping track of the players."
The big redhead raised his hand. "Enough, enough. Let's get back to the story. So then what happened, shorty?"
"You shouldn't call me that!" snapped Jonah. "Not my fault I was born on Epsilon Eridani III. It's a hell-planet, you know that."
The redhead sneered. "Sins of the fathers onto the sons. If your worthless ancestors hadn't settled there, you'd have been normal-sized. And get on with it!"
The last was bellowed so loudly the table actually shook. Fortunately, the habituees were all experienced sots, so no ghastly spillage of brew occurred. Well, I suppose "ghastly" is excessive, seeing as how the brew in question was American beer.
"All right! All right!" The homunculus waved his hands in a pacifying gesture. "So the next thing I knew the she-devil had me hustled into one of those weirdo diagonal-moving elevators they got in the Luxor they call inclinators or something like that—think of an escalator except with a cage around you—and she punched every button for every floor. At first, I thought that was just excess enthusiasm on her part—I mean, think of a kid with ten arms in an elevator; the temptation's gotta be pretty irresistible—but it turned out it was actually because she had a confederate on every floor and they all piled into the elevator-they-call-something-else until I thought we'd all suffocate. But finally they got to the top and the whole crowd piled out and the next thing I knew they had me in one of rooms, with—"
He stopped, drew himself up majestically, and pointed a rigid finger at the muzzled and straight-jacketed miniature white whale. "J'Accuse!"
"Jack who?" demanded Watters. "Mate, this story makes less sense the longer it goes. Now you've got a 'Jack' coming in too?"
Dryck Spivey's eyes suddenly widened. He dipped a hand into a pouch he had connected to his kilt and brought out with one of those old-fashioned pocket watches. Flipping the lid open with a practiced thumb, he studied the dial.
"It occurs to me," he said, "that this mini-fellow's tale has gone on way too long, even by fish story standards."
The big redhead's eyes widened, too. Suddenly, the mini-whale started flapping his flukes frantically, in a weirdly uneven rhythm on the table.
Watters' eyes got very wide, at this point. "Hey, that's Morse code. The critter's flapping out . . . 'T-H-E-D-U-M-M-I-E-S-A-R-E-F-I-N-A-L-L-Y-G-E-T-T-I-N-G-W-I-S-E-F-E-L-LA-S.'"
"Bastards!" snarled the redhead. He reached into his carpenter's belt.
Watters kept translating. "Now he's flapping out 'P-L-A-N—"
The whale's last tail-flaps were so powerful they brought the critter erect, balanced on his flukes.
"B," concluded Watters.
Everything seemed to happen at once. Captain Ahab emerged from his stupor, raised his peg-leg and took dead aim with the stump at Spivey.
"Aye, Parsee!" he cried. "I see thee again!" Something flew out of the tip of the pegleg and smacked Dryck right on the nose. He flinched back so hard his chair tipped over, spilling him to the ground.
Ahab made a quick hop and brought the pegleg tip to bear on Watters. "Befooled, befooled!" Another something—call it a spitball, for lack of a better term—now smacked James on the tip of the nose, and he too went tipping over onto the floor.
Meanwhile, Jonah had sprung upon the whale and was working at the muzzle. The muzzle came off just as the big redhead's hand came up with a huge hammer.
" bas les Boches!" hollered Richard M. Dick. With a prodigious thrust of his flukes, the mini-whale flung himself right at the redhead. Then, twisting about in midair, ended up with a resounding slap of his flukes across the carpenter's face.
" moi, les braves!" the whale yelped on his way down. Then, springing back up from the table with another tail-thrust, he sailed back at the redhead and gave him another resounding slap across the face with his flukes. " nous, les pommes frites!"
The carpenter roared and took a mighty swing with his hammer, but Richard M. Dick was already back down and leaping toward the other end of the table. The missed hammer-swing unbalanced the redhead and caused him to fall onto one knee.
By the time he got to the end of the table, the mini-whale was almost completely erect, moving in prodigious bounds like a kangaroo, using his tail and flukes instead of legs. Weird-looking, it was.
Jonah was already on the whale, now working at the straight-jacket.
"Forget that!" yelped the whale. "I got no arms anyway!"
Captain Ahab leapt onto the whale as he passed by and held onto to one of the straightjacket straps. The whale flew off the table with a mighty fluke-bound, with both Jonah and Ahab riding on his back.
Watters was coming up off the floor at the same time. For his troubles, the whale somehow managed to twist around in mid-flight and give James a resounding smack in the face with his flukes.
"Pour encourager les autres!" the whale hollered gleefully. As soon as he hit the floor he was back up on his flukes and
making those great kangaroo-like bounds toward the door.
"Stop them, Jori!" bellowed the redhead, back up on his feet. Seeing that Jori was behind the bar, way off to the side, and in no position to intercept the fleeing weirdos, the redhead uttered a curse in some language I didn't know and hurled his hammer at the escapees.
Which turned out to be probably the stupidest thing he could have done, since the hammer missed, struck the door—which had heterofore been closed and would have posed a bit of a problem to open for one armless and straightjacketed miniature whale and two tiny homunculi—and did a splendid job of disintegrating it for them.
"Hey, thanks, you moron!"yelped the whale. And off he went, bounding outside.
"Follow them!" roared the redhead. He started racing for the shattered door with heavy, clumping strides. Watters and Spivey came after him, with Mario Jori closely behind.
Sheila and I stared at each other. Then, she shrugged.
"What the hell. I suppose they're still our clients."
So, off we went also—although I'd like it noted for the record that we drained our mugs before doing so. American dishwater beer or not, principles are principles.
* * *
Once outside, we had to pause for a moment to let our eyes adjust to the bright mid-afternoon sunlight of Southern California. Which, let me state here, is a completely unnatural phenomenon. A blue sky, unmarred by any hint of clouds, with an ambient temperature—here, at least, not more than a block from the beach and the Pacific Ocean—that teetered between perfect and sublime. It's no wonder those people are half-crazed, with that constant assault on any sense of reality.
In fairness to them, they do try to compensate with heroic pollution. Still, it's a losing battle.
Once our eyes adjusted, we spotted the targets of our search.
"Oh, what a laugh!" cried Sheila.
Indeed so. The miniwhale was still bounding about with his two passengers, like a tiny fluked kangaroo, and still yelping jibes back at his pursuers. For their part, the four worthies were looking as clumsy as you could imagine, weaving through mobs of volleyball players, some teams male and some female, and each with far larger mobs of admirers of the opposite sex. Oddly, neither the players nor the spectators seemed to notice the bizarre pursuers and their still more bizarre prey.
Yes, yes, I know. I should have realized then that there was more to this "glamour" nonsense than nonsense. I plead intoxication as my excuse.
After perhaps a minute, the chase came back in our direction. Then, the whale veered off toward the ocean and began bounding onto the looser sand near the waters. That slowed him down immensely, of course. The first foolish move the creature had made since his escape.
"I've got to see how this turns out," said Rowen, trotting toward the beach herself. There being no good reason to do otherwise, since the only alternative I could think of was another mug of American beer, I followed.
Just as Sheila and I started onto the sand, the redhead finally trapped his prey. The whale was now at bay, caught between his pursuer and a lifeguard tower. Too bad for him, of course. Had he been able to make another twenty feet, he'd have been at the water and could have swum off.
The carpenter had scooped up the huge hammer on his way out the door he'd splintered with it, and now brought it up for a mighty stroke. The miniature whale looked up at the towering figure above him. Somehow—don't ask me how, with no upper lip—Richard M. Dick sneered mightily.
"Hey, it worked!" I heard Jonah exclaim.
"To the last I grapple with thee!" shrilled Ahab. "From hell's heart I stab at thee!"
I heard a vast roaring from the ocean. Looking out, I saw a tsunami emerging from the ocean—except it was concentrated only in one spot.
"What the hell?" demanded Sheila.
"It's a trap, Red!" shouted Dryck Spivey. He pointed at the surge of water coming toward us. "They suckered us!"
The redhead's downward stroke stopped. He looked up. Gaped.
A monster's face emerged from the water-surge. Like a dragon, it seemed—except it suddenly dawned on me that no dragon in any mythology ever had jaws this huge. As the head came down, it could have swallowed the lifeguard tower like a man might swallow a canap. A very small canap, like they only serve at the swankiest parties.
"It's the snake!" bellowed Watters. "We've been ambushed!"
The redhead roared and hurled the hammer. It struck the monster right between the eyes, just as its head came down for the carpenter-gobble. Amazingly, the blow was powerful enough to cause the dragon to miss the strike. The redhead dodged aside and began racing away from the beach. Somehow, he had the hammer back in his hand.
"Get the goats!" he shouted. "Get the goats!"
The dragon reared back for another strike. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Richard M. Dick and his two passengers hopping into the waters. Just before they plunged in, I heard the miniwhale yelping " nous les femmes corrompu et dprav!"
"It occurs to me that dragons are probably not fussy eaters," muttered Sheila. "Perhaps—"
"We're lawyers," I pointed out.
Sheila pursed her lips. "Well . . . There was a story in the papers just a few months ago. Seems a lawyer somewhere in India—maybe Pakistan—got attacked by a crocodile. The reptile died horribly, of course. Still . . ."
She had a point—and looking upon the huge dragon as it drove its snout entirely in the sand in another missed strike at the scampering carpenter, I couldn't held but ponder the very low slope of its forehead. Not much room there for the sort of frontal lobes that lead your intelligent animals to avoid lawyers. Unfortunately, we don't come with the brilliant markings that those incredibly poisonous touch-my-skin-once-and-you-drop-dead toads do somewhere in the Amazon. True, we have attach cases—but, alas, all sorts of innocuous businessmen and accountants and the like have them also. Natural selection at work, there.
"Yes, you're right," I said. "Best we sidle off."
Unfortunately, I delayed just that little bit too long. The dragon kept ignoring us, in its frenzy to gobble the redhead. But the redhead himself didn't. The next thing we knew, from out of nowhere came some sort of grotesque cart drawn by two enormous goats. Spivey was guiding it, with Watters already aboard. The carpenter jumped in and took the reins. Then, sent the preposterous contrivance right at us.
Drawing the dragon after him, naturally, thank you very much. But before the dragon could strike again, the cart swept up and the redhead curtly ordered us aboard.
"I think we'll be going our own way, now," said Sheila, quite reasonably. "That thing looks more dangerous than a London minicab."
"Which syllable in 'conscript' don't you understand?" snarled the redhead. He hefted the hammer. "Get in, I said—with or without your heads attached."
Put that way . . .
We got in and the carpenter sent the cart racing off, just in time to avoid another dragon strike.
I looked back. The monster was huge. The rest of its body—Lord only knows how long it was, all told—was still in the waters of the Pacific. Only the first two or three hundred feet was visible, as the great serpent reared up to make another strike.
Our best chance, of course, was to race inland. But the lunatic redhead was driving the cart right down the beach, along the edge of the Pacific. A small part of my rapidly-sobering mind noted that the volleyball players and spectators and the various sunbathers still didn't seem to be noticing anything amiss, such as a giant snake trying to eat a cart drawn by giant goats.
"We should go that way!" I shouted, pointing toward downtown Los Angeles, not visible somewhere in the pollution but clearly many miles from the ocean.
"No point in that," said Dryck, shaking his head. Somewhere in the excitement, his turban had started coming loose, but he didn't seem aware of the fact. "L.A.'s only thirty miles wide or so. And after that it's just desert, perfect territory for the snake."
Sheila stared at him. "But . . . would it actually follow us that far?
"
"Who said anything about 'follow?'" said Spivey grimly. "The damn thing's long enough to encircle the world. It'd just keep stretching. No, our only hope—and there it is!"
His finger pointed ahead of us and a bit off to the side. Looking, we saw that a weird shimmering rainbow was taking shape. Impossible, of course. The atmospheric conditions weren't right—and I'd now sobered up enough to make the theory of alcohol-induced delirium sadly tenuous.
Impossible or not, there it was—and the next thing Rowen and I knew, the cart was racing up the steep incline.
"Ha-ha!" bellowed the redhead. He looked over the side of the cart and sneered down at the snake, still trailing after us. "Nice try, worm! Better luck next time!"
