“Remind me,” Gladys murmured to Jimbo, “never to get on the wrong side of this one.” His name was Tod, as she soon gathered.
“My misfortune,” he told her, “is to be heir to a Fiveir, you see. It’s not my fault I was born with this great lump of raw magery. Everyone in my family is, more or less, or we wouldn’t hold the position we do. And my old father may be a fool in many ways, but he did make sure I was trained to use my birthright properly — which made it all the more annoying when I got to Arth. I should perhaps explain that Arth is a tiny universe attached to the Pentarchy, full of mages who are supposed to protect the Fiveirs—”
“So Laputa-Blish is really called Arth,” Gladys remarked to Jimbo.
He said a great deal about Arth, and a certain Brother Wilfrid. He also talked of various Horn Heads and the High Head who seemed to be set above them. His account was not loving. Gladys sopped up all of it, and extrapolated more, while they edged through the next bank of prickles. So the girls were trying to carry on, bless them! It didn’t sound as if those mages of Arth were quite as clever as they thought they were. Centaurs, eh? What were gualdians? And what the flaming hell was Zillah doing, letting this boy make love to her when she was breaking her heart over Mark Lister?
“It was only because I gave her a shock, showing her a seeming of my favorite aunt,” he explained, just as if she had asked. Perhaps, in this place, she had. “It seems she’s the spitting image of her sister — and they’re both called Amanda, oddly enough. Analogues, I think. Zillah was shaken to hellband, and I tried to comfort her, that was all, but Brother Wilfrid walked in on it, and I got marched away and put through this ritual that sent me to otherworld. I should explain here that everyone on Arth is positive that otherworld is a kind of degenerate copy of ours, full of subhumans. With respect to you, madam. I was totally paralyzed with horror that they’d turned me into some kind of reptile to send me there, and I didn’t start to think of using my birthright until after I got confronted with a terrible creature called Paulie. I was supposed to be her lover, and spy on her. But there was this strong feeling of Leathe that I couldn’t place—”
So Paulie is our leak, Gladys thought. Not surprised.
But Tod paused, hand out to waft aside a long trail of vicious thorns, and the briar paused too, held in the shock he was evidently feeling.
“Great gods!” he said. “The Wheel down in hellband! I know why I kept thinking of Leathe now! That woman’s husband — whatsis, Mark! He was the very image of a perfectly horrible creature I met in Leathe — if you take the horrible man’s horrible beard off. Man called Herrel. He’s the son of the Coven Head of Leathe, and he’s a sort of evil extra hand to the woman. Something so wrong with him, it makes your flesh creep. This Mark man was the same. I suppose it was another pair of analogues.”
“I’m not sure,” Gladys said somberly. “Given what I know of Mark Lister, I don’t think so. I’m more inclined to think someone has been very wicked indeed — not that Mark ever quite makes my flesh creep. But I know what you mean. So what did you do? Run?”
She chuckled heartily when he told her how he had changed cars. “Well, it was a lovely car,” he said defensively. “And I miss my Delmo-Mendacci. As soon as I got it on the road, I realized I hadn’t been properly happy for months. And your world turns out to have decent countryside after all. I sang for miles. Then I ran out of fuel, and I even had plenty of money to get more. There was so much money that I decided to spend the rest on food. I thought Arth owed me a decent meal. The roadhouse there did steaks almost as good as you get in Frinjen — but about the time I was thinking of choosing a liqueur, I realized that they were following me. And there was a big sending coming up from somewhere—”
“There was, wasn’t there?” Gladys agreed. “I’m afraid I left that for Amanda to deal with.”
They were nearly out of the wood. Daylight streamed around them, making gold-green slantings through the leaves of what were now mighty forest trees.
“Young man,” said Gladys, “is everyone in your world like you?”
“No,” he said. “Most of them are taller.”
“I meant,” said Gladys, “are they all so immoral — or do I mean amoral?”
“Well,” Tod said, “my father’s like me, and my uncle’s viler. But my cousin and at least two of my brothers-in-law are quite saintly really. Why?”
“Because,” she said, “I expect to fit in quite well.”
The next moment they were out, truly into Tod’s world, into a wide, moist meadow, where, by the light, it seemed to be midmorning. Gladys looked with interest at the small, chunky young man beside her, with his dapper little mustache and his neat cone of hair. He was looking at her with — well — politeness, and plainly wondering if she could possibly fit in anywhere. Indeed, as his eyes fell on the yeti boots, she could see it cross his mind that these were actually her own furry feet and that she might indeed be some kind of subhuman species. Gladys drew herself up. Every bead of her finery rattled. “Young man—”
“You’ve got an ether monkey!” he exclaimed. “I’ve never heard of anyone taming one of those!”
Gladys forgot her reproof and looked down at Jimbo. Jimbo, realizing he was in the presence of another person who could see him as she did, stopped his defensive scratching and sat up in the long grass with all his hands held out and his bright black eyes ruefully on hers. Not my fault, Gladys. “Is that what they’re called?” she said. “But he’s not tame, you know. He just decided to live with me soon after I was widowed. He never eats. It worries me.”
“They live on low-band energies,” Tod explained. “He’s had plenty. He looks to be thriving.” While he was speaking, Jimbo took his revenge on Tod for recognizing him by reciting to his extraordinary bead-hung and feathered companion Tod’s full name and titles. “But I’m Tod to my friends,” Tod told Gladys hastily. And he told Jimbo, “Come off it, ether monkey. You knew I was bound to suss you. You heard me say I’d been properly educated. You come from a spoke of the Wheel that—”
Jimbo did not want Tod to say where he came from. It was somewhere quite near hell, Gladys had always believed. “Yes, and he wasn’t any happier there than you were in this place you call Arth,” she said. “He had an enemy. That’s why he left. Now, if you don’t mind, I have a bit of work to do before we go on.”
From the moment she stepped into this meadow, Gladys had been feeling a brightness and exhilaration beyond anything she knew from Earth. There was a cleanness. Some of it was, no doubt, simply the air, which smelled infinitely less polluted than Earth’s. Tod, as he stepped back respectfully to let her work, was taking deep, long breaths of the air and smiling. But there was more to it than that. The lines of force, as Gladys tentatively reached for them, were far stronger and easily twice as clear as those of home. It was going to be a pleasure working with them. So why did she feel, at the back of all this glowing strength, that something was badly wrong?
“Hm — more than high time I came here,” she remarked. “Let’s ask a few questions.”
She took firm hold of the forces. They almost fell into her hands, so plain were they and so ready for use. What a world! She envied Tod. He must have been able to do this in his cradle! Selecting the correct line, and holding the others she might need ready and wrapped around the little finger of each hand, she softly exerted her power — gently, not to offend here where she did not belong. There was instant response. Oh, what a world! Politely and deferentially, she requested, “The Being who has care of the physical level here — I apologize for not knowing your name — may we speak?”