"The time," he said. "When you found Iduna in your study what time was it?"
"Late afternoon." Gustav sounded baffled. "Earl, I don't understand what you are getting at. What does the time matter?"
"You have only one window and the sun sets to one side. Am I correct?"
"Yes. The window faces to the north and the sun sets in the west." Sudden understanding warmed the man's voice.
"The light? You think the intensity of light had something to do with it?"
"Perhaps. Marita, lower the brilliance of the lights." Dumarest frowned as they died. "Don't kill them, woman! Just dim them."
"How? We have no rheostat in the circuit."
"Then fit one!" Kathryn was sharp. "And be quick about it!" As the technician hurried to obey she said to Dumarest, "You have discovered something? You have a plan?"
"An idea. It may be nothing." He knew she wanted more. "A question of attitude," he explained. "I feel it could be important."
"Is that all?" She frowned her disappointment, the frown clearing as Marita called that all was ready. The woman had worked fast. "Have you seen enough?"
Dumarest nodded. The gamble had to be taken, there was no point in extending delay.
"Then commence!"
Guards stepped from where they had been lurking in the shadows, armed, armored, strong women dedicated to the Matriarch. Invisible until now but always Dumarest had been conscious of their presence. Watching, waiting for him to move, to make the journey which others had taken and which, for them, had ended in mindless dead. One he had no choice but to take in turn.
"Dim the lights," he ordered. "More. More-keep dimming until you emulate a shadowed room."
The harsh glare faded as he began to walk toward the Tau, dulling even more as the complimentary lights died so as to leave the enigmatic object apparently unsupported and shining with a soft effulgence as if oil had been spread on glowing water.
Dumarest stared at it, concentrating, adjusting his attitude, blanking out the threat of guards and possible horror. Forgetting those who had gone before aside from one. Iduna who now lay quietly sleeping in a room of sterile whiteness.
And, walking, he stepped through time and space to a point years in the past when a happy, carefree child came skipping into a deserted study to discover something new and wonderful which held an immediate fascination. A bright and glowing object illuminated by the dusty light of the setting sun. Enigmatic, mysterious, magical.
And he became that child, running now, entranced, eager to discover what a doting parent had bought. To reach out with open arms. To fold them around the Tau. To hug it close and to press his face against the bright enchantment. To feel the faintest of tingles and to see the luminosity suddenly expand to engulf him. To take him elsewhere.
Chapter Four
He was in a room designed for the use of giants with walls which soared like the face of cliffs and a ceiling which looked like a shadowed sky. The floor was covered with a carpet with a pile so thick it reached to his ankles and all about loomed the bulk of oddly familiar furniture. Turning he studied grotesquely distorted tables, chairs, something which could have been a desk, something else which held stuffed and sagging dolls.
"Hello, there! Will you play with me?"
Dumarest spun to see a waddling shape come hopping toward him. A parody of what a human should be; the face round as were the eyes, the mouth a grinning slit, the chin merging into the neck, the whole dressed in a clown's attire.
"Will you play?" The voice had a high-pitched squeakiness. "I know lots of fine games. We could hunt the slipper or find the parcel or we could roll marbles or climb. Don't you want to play?"
"Who are you?"
"I'm Clownie. I'm the one who makes you smile when you are sad and unless I am very, very good, very good, you give me no tea but that isn't often because always I am good."
"Tea?"
"Tisane. See? Tee for tisane. Tea. Isn't it fun to make up words?"
"Where are we?"
"In Magic Land. Where you always go when you're alone. Now hurry and meet Bear."
Bear was as tall, covered in short brown fur, nose and lips of black, eyes round and gleaming. A wide ribbon adorned his neck and his voice was deep and a little gruff as befitted a serious person.
Solemnly he held out a paw. "You are welcome to join me in a game. What shall it be? Soldiers?"
"For that we need armies."
"We have armies. They are in the boxes but if you call them they will come on parade." The bear glanced at the clown. "He doesn't seem to know what to do."
"He needs to eat," said the clown. "I'll get the cakes and you call the others. Hurry, now."
They came from nowhere, oddly shaped creatures of garish colors and peculiar appearance. Eyes and heads and faces seemed alien and yet totally familiar. They moved and talked and aped the style of humans but they were not and could never have been fashioned in human form. They were more like caricatures of familiar types; the fat one with the round, shining face, the fox-like one, the pigs, the toad, the nodding, weaving monkey, the solemn policeman with his truncheon, the giggling girl, the staid matron-the playmates of a lonely child.
Dolls!
Companions of the mind created from the toys of childhood when imagination took things of rag and wood and stuffing and gave them life and form and voices. And the vastness of the room and the furniture.
Dumarest knew the answer.
Leaning back, ignoring the babble around him, he looked at the nursery. The bed would be elsewhere but here, surrounded by comfort, he would play with the toys provided and with the magic of childhood endow them with individual personalities. But he was not a child but a grown man so why should he be in the nursery?
"A cake!" The bear was insistent. "You must have one of these cakes. Mistress Gold baked them and she will be very angry if you do not take one. She may even order you to be shut up in a cupboard for a whole hour. You wouldn't like that, would you?"
"No," said Dumarest.
"Then take a cake." The bear nodded as he did so. "And one for you, Clownie. And for you, Foxie. And for you, Toadie." His voice was a drone above the clatter of cups and the ritual of pouring tisane or tea as they called it. A party. A tea party. A pastime beloved by the young, especially young girls who aped their mothers in playing the hostess.
Had Iduna played such games?
Iduna!
Dumarest looked at his cake and set it aside. This was her world, not his. The soft and comfortable world of a loved and cherished child who would find the living toys perfectly natural. A delightful realization of an often-pretended charade in which they would have been placed around the table and fed tisane and cakes and moved and placed and given words in the entrancing world of make-believe which every child could call his own.
"You dirty thing!" The matron seethed with anger as she glared at one of the pigs. "You spilled tea on my gown! You did it on purpose!"
"It was an accident."
"Don't talk such lies! You should be beaten for having been so bad. Look at my nice new gown! You've spoiled it!"
"Be calm," rumbled the bear. "Ladies, be calm."
"Hit them," suggested the clown to the policeman. "Hit them both."
"Now, now there!" The policeman lurched to his feet. "We don't want trouble, do we?"
"Why not?" The toad gaped and seemed to blur. "Why not?"
The giggling girl half-turned and froze as she lifted her cup to hurl its contents in the face of the red-cheeked drummer who smiled as he toppled to one side to lie with his head in a quivering mass of jelly, his hands still jerking to produce a death-like rattle from his drum.