"Thanks again," said Nash."My name's de Nêche, and if I can ever do anything for you, let me know."
"Aye-aye, Mr. de Nêche. I'm Cap'n Jones; Ahab Dana Jones." He looked at Nash expectantly, which that young man took to be a hint that a little cash on the barrel head would be welcome.
"Take this horse," said Nash, dismounting."If you don't want to keep him, he'll bring a good price."
"Aw now, mister," said Captain Jones, "I wouldn't want to separate a man from his beast like that. Why, I had a parrot to once—"
"No, I insist," said Nash, realizing that as far as the sailors knew the animal was his own. After more Alphonse-Gaston parley the horse was accepted, and Nash walked quickly off, leaving the sailors arguing whether the creature should be taken into their house, and, if so, how.
Eleanor Thompson Berry had rounded up the other two riderless horses and was waiting for him near where Reginald Vance Kramer still sat on his post and smoked. The detective said to him as he neared: "For a bird who thinks there's too much fighting around here, you haven't done half badly in the last twelve hours."
He indicated the two bodies. Nash looked, and saw that they were really just bundles of clothes from which the contents had vanished.
"You weren't much help, m'sieur," he said belligerently.
"My dear chap, what could I do? I work with the jolly old bean, when I work at all. The snickersnee's more your line."
"Oh, well," said Nash."Who were those people, do you know?"
"Probably soulless ones belonging to one of the sheiks or sultans, out shopping for the harem. My guess would be that they were Arslan's." Seeing by Nash's expression that the cavalier was bursting with more queries, he added: "No more questions, please, there's a good chap. I want to work on my book on ancient musical instruments." Therewith Kramer got out a notebook and began scribbling furiously.
Nash shrugged and turned away. Now that he had a horse he could cover ground fast enough to learn what he had to. He mounted. Miss Berry did likewise, though her costume was hardly suitable.
"You don't talk much," commented Eleanor Thompson Berry.
"Oh, don't I?" said Nash."No, not like that other man—Mr. Kramer. Except to ask these people the way, you've hardly said a word."
"Uh-huh."
"But why? Is there a reason? I want to know; I have so much to learn before I can be a lecturer. You are... let me think... sad? Is that it?"
"Well," said Nash, "I killed—" he almost added "two men," but decided not to raise the ghost of the robber of last night. What Miss Berry didn't know wouldn't hurt her, especially if she were going to join the forces of whatever government held out in the City Hall.
"Was that wrong? Should you have let the men in white take me?"
"I don't suppose it was wrong, exactly. I just don't like killing people."
"But then why—"
"Excuse me, but do you mind if we talk about something else?" This suggestion brought a stream of questions about the astral plane to which Nash did not know the answers.. He was glad when they hove in sight of the City Hall.
"There's your destination, madame," he said."And now if you'll excuse me—"
The woman said: "I wish you'd go in with me, chevalier; I don't know anyone."
Nash almost weakened, but the thought of the officials detaining him while they investigated the puncturing of two of their citizens—who might, for all Nash knew, have influential friends—stiffened his spine.
"Sorry," he said, "but I have an errand of my own. Au 'voir." He waved his hat and trotted off before she could protest further. Now for the Shamir, before he got involved in any more bloodletting!
The wide street that ran north from the City Hall Plaza corresponded to the mundane New York's Broadway; some of the street signs in fact said "Broadway." But others said various things, such as "Christopher Magellan Avenue" or "Shin Fane Boulevard." The stretches bearing these names began and ended without visible plan, as if half the population had tried its hand at putting up street signs with whatever names pleased their fancy. Many stretches were much too narrow to make the name "Broadway" appropriate, and there were twists and jogs that the mundane plane's equivalent lacked. Nash even had to detour around a couple of Indian tepees set up in the middle of the street, with Indians sitting crosslegged in front of them.
The buildings were still smaller than those of Prosper Nash's New York, and there was not a skyscraper in sight. He did pass a couple of huge excavations that might have been meant as foundations for skyscrapers. But work on them had long been abandoned; the sides were caving in, in one case taking a good part of the avenue with them.
Nash inferred that the astralites tended toward picturesqueness at the expense of practicality. The chevalier whose body he inhabited was probably of that sort, too; always getting into fights— But if the chevalier was something thought up by Nash, wasn't it Nash's own fault? An unanswerable question.
The park to which Kramer had referred must be the equivalent of Central Park, though what a desert island would be doing there remained a puzzle. Nash had reached what he judged to be the latitude of the Fifties when the faint popping of gunfire reminded him that there was a war on. He hesitated, and noticed a restaurant, and was reminded that he had not yet eaten lunch.
As he hung up his hat he was startled to see that it shared the hatrack with a golden crown. The owner of the crown was evidently the dignified person in the embroidered robe sitting at the counter. A king who was lunching on coffee and sinkers ought to be as good a source of information as any.
"How's the war going, m'sieur?" he asked when he had ordered.
"Ah," said the royal dunker."You may well ask." After an impressive pause, he added: "They've cleared the Aryans out of the southern half of the park, though they still raid down the west side." Another pause."Well?"
"Well what?"
"You're supposed to say, 'Your sage majesty is most gracious. '"
"Your sage majesty is most gracious."
"Ah. That's better."
The counterman put in: "Heh, he's a good one. You'd think he was really a king still."
"Ah, but I am, my good varlet. 'Not all the water in the rough rude sea can wash the balm off from an anointed king; the breath of worldly men cannot depose the... the—' How does it go?"
"I don't know how it goes," snapped the counterman, "but if you want to. eat here on credit any more you better not call me 'varlet. ' "
"But my dear—commoner, if you prefer—think of the curiosity trade which my patronage brings—"
"Ga wan, kings are a dime a dozen—"
Nash left them arguing and continued on his way. Pedestrians were fewer. Despite the variation in their costumery, which gave the city the air of movie lot during lunch hour, there was a certain uniformity about their physical type that struck Prosper Nash. They were nearly all stalwart, handsome men and women between twenty and forty; there were hardly any old people, and no children.
A few blocks farther north Nash came upon a barricade of cobblestones and furniture, which had once stretched clear across the avenue, but which had since been broken down in the middle to let traffic through. A little later he passed a group of soldiers uniformed like movie ushers. The statement is not literally accurate, for the "uniforms" were far from uniform, but they made up in gorgeousness what they lacked in similarity.
Presently a horseman passed him at an easy canter: a man in a cloth cap and a shabby twentieth-century civilian suit, with a red band tied around his arm and a rifle slung across his back. He gave Nash a suspicious glance as he went by, and Nash saw a small reddish beard under a pair of sharp slightly Mongoloid eyes.
There were more soldiers, and the sound of distant shots broke out again briefly. Then Nash sighted greenery ahead: Without doubt the park corresponded to Central, though its borders were irregular; it was much wilder. The paths were fewer and in an advanced state of disrepair. Moreover there were dwellings in it: a Colonial cottage here, nearly hidden by vegetation; a log cabin there. The trees were shedding bright autumnal foliage.