The clerk actually had a table for us, with room for all, against the far wall near the bar and directly athwart a huge stone fireplace. We all sat, and I thanked the clerk. I asked him his name, silently wondering if I should tip him. I reached into my pocket.
"Zack Moore, sir. And save the gratis for the help. Enjoy."
"Thank you, Zack."
On his way out he shooed a buxom barmaid over to us, then waved and left.
"Hello, there! What're you people having today?"
The others started ordering. I was noticing the alien grain of the wood. It was almost geometrical, oddly shot through with greens and purples, but the overall color was a dark brown. Didn't look as though the wood had been stained. I knocked a knuckle against the wall. It felt like iron. I turned around, sat back, and listened to the group sing-along. Odd lyrics. A group at a table near the bar sang the verses, the rest of the crowd taking up the chorus, which went something like:
Each verse grew progressively more absurd and off-color. Transvestism and other variations were broadly hinted at. Individual poetasters stood up and sang their own verses, each more outrageous than the last. The crowd howled. After the last verse, they'd sing it all over again, adding more verses. I asked the barmaid where the song had come from. She didn't know, but said in so many words that it was most likely traditional. She'd been hearing it ever since she came to Talltree as a child (last Tuesday, from the looks of her―but, hell, maybe I'm just getting old).
We all listened while waiting for our order to come. By the time the beer arrived, Suzie and John were convulsed, with Darla and Roland smiling, a little unsure. Carl loved it, too. Winnie and Lori were trying to talk above the din.
The beer was Inglo style, dark, bitter, served at room temperature, but the high alcohol content more than made up for it. I drained my pewter mug in three gulps and refilled it from the glazed crockery pitcher.
Only when the food came did I think about Winnie. She certainly couldn't eat this stuff-braised pork ribs, roast game hen, fried potatoes and vegetables, sliced warm bread with mounds of fresh butter. The barmaid told us that almost nothing on the planet was edible without extensive processing. All the fare before us had been raised on local farms.
Lori came over and shouted in my ear.
"Winnie wants to go outside. Says she can find something to eat."
"Here?" I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was. "Well, okay, but I should go with you."
"We'll be fine. You go ahead and eat, I'm not very hungry."
"How's your head? Still feeling woozy?"
"Nah, I'm fine."
"Okay, but be careful." I was reluctant to let them go, and briefly considered asking Roland to tail them and keep an eye on them, but I knew Lori was fiercely independent for her age, and more and more I had come to consider Winnie the equal of an adult human in intelligence and maturity―maybe even more than equal. Lori could do very well on her own; however, I still wanted her to be checked over by a competent medic, if one could be found. That was a minor problem. The big one was what the hell to do with her. With the Laputa either lost or pirated, she had no place to go except to her former foster parents' home on a planet named Schlagwasser, which lay on Winnie's Itinerary. Unfortunately, Lori had not been on good terms with her foster parents, and had run away.
But it wasn't certain that the Laputa had been lost. Good for Lori… maybe… but not good for me. At least three groups of people and beings aboard that strange ship-animal wanted my blood. In regard to the alien party, that could be taken quite literally. The Reticulans practiced ritual hunting in bands known as Snatchgangs, and dispatched their captured quarry by ceremonial vivisection. If Corey Wilkes, their human ally, had survived, he'd still be teamed with the Rikkis to get the Roadmap from me. And then there was the Laputa's master Captain Pendergast, who had been in cahoots with Wilkes and Darla's father, the late Dr. Van Wyck Vance, in a scheme to run antigeronic digs into the Outworlds. To those who wanted to keep these Consolidated Outworlds isolated from Terran Maze and independent of the Authority, the Roadmap represented a threat. Doubtless Pendergast viewed it as such, but he might yet be unaware of Wilkes' betrayal; Wilkes wanted the map to give to the Authority in return for, among other things, amnesty for his part in the drug operation. Pendergast was not alone in his desire for a free Outworlds. He most likely shared it with every inhabitant of this maze. After all, everyone here had taken a desperate gamble in shooting a potluck portal to get here. There was a way back to Terran Maze by Skyway. Problem was, it went through Reticulan Maze, where few humans, or any rational human who wanted to keep his skin intact, dared to go. But it was a fair possibility that a bold or foolish few had braved the trip back and had lived to tell of what was on the other side of the potluck portal on Seven Suns Interchange, though that might be only one of several portals leading into the Outworlds.
The upshot: if the Laputa had made it, the problem of what to do with Lori would evaporate, but I just might, too.
Problems, problems.
What would the Teleologists―John, Susan, and Roland―do now? That would take priority on the agenda, after we had eaten.
The food was great―ribs spicy and done just right, the game hen crispy-skinned and juicy inside. The bread was golden brown with a thick crust, flaky and tender. And the vegetables were there to pass the time between bouts of wolfing down the entrees, with draft after draft of beer to sluice it all down the pipes. If this was bar food, I wondered what delights the dining room offered. The waitress kept bringing side dishes, compliments of the house, she said. Along with free rounds of beer came bowls of sliced pickled beets, onions, pickled eggs and cucumbers, multi-bean salad, assorted condiments, and piles of bread and butter.
On the down side, we were getting stared at: It wasn't our table manners; in that regard we fit right in. Word had spread, I thought, as to who I was―which immediately brought to mind the question of just who the hell I was. Jake McGraw, Olympian god-type, who came back through time to bring the secret of the Roadbuilders to mankind? Just a man around whom a cloud of wild rumors had settled? Or was I being confused with someone else?
No, the latter two possibilities were out; the Black Cube, the paradox of Darla, and other realities spoke volumes about the rumors being true. Some of them, anyway. That left the Olympian hero. Anybody got a fig leaf?
Finally the singing stopped, and all the food was gone. I was stuffed, and halfway drunk. I don't like doing things halfway. We ordered more beer.
"My God," John breathed, sitting back and massaging his stomach, "I can't remember ever eating so much at one time. Hope I won't―" He burped liquidly. "Ohhh. Excuse me."
"Bring it up again and we'll vote on it," Lori said, returning with Winnie
"I can't believe you found food," Darla said.
Winnie smiled and waved a handful of plum-sized pink fruit with blue speckles all over them. Lori dumped a pile of leaves and stems down on the table, and sat down.
"Eat up, folks!"
Everyone groaned. "Here, honey, I saved you some chicken," Susan said, sliding a plate toward her.
"Kinda small for chicken, but thanks."
"It's game fowl, Susan," Roland corrected. "Raised domestically."
"Whatever."
"How did Winnie know…?" John motioned vaguely at the pile of vegetation.