The Warlock Wandering (20 page)

"Aye, he is well."

Rod pried an eyelid open. "Yeah." The other eyelid opened, too, and he rolled both eyeballs over toward Yorick.

"Just a little tired."

"He did aid me in the moving of the vessel," Gwen explained.

"A little tired." Yorick nodded. "Sure, Major. Uh—before we do anything else—how about a little nap?" Rod shook his head, loosening his webbing and struggling to his feet. "Haven't got time. We've got to get out of here before dawn."

Yorick reached out to stop him, saying, "No, Major. You're not..." But Rod was already past him, tottering toward the hatch.

Yorick shoved himself to his feet with a shrug. "Well, he's got a point. We landed pretty close to the terminator, as I remember my last glimpse of the viewscreen." Chomoi hurried after Rod, bleating, "But how do we know the air is even breathable here!"

"Because approximately two million colonists are already breathing it." Yorick swung into step beside her. "And, of course, there's always the hole in our own roof. Nice try, lady, but you're not going to stop him with cobblestones for roadblocks."

Rod threw his weight against the locking lever and shoved. The door swung open, and he went with it. He half fell, half jumped, and felt as though he were dropping through molasses. As his feet touched the ground, Gwen was beside him, holding onto his elbow. "Gently, I prithee, my lord!"

"Why, with you there to cushion my falls? Thanks, though, darling."

Gwen smiled, and shook her head. "Wilt thou not rest, my lord? ...Nay, 'tis even as thou sayest, we must be gone—yet favor thine own weakness, I prithee!" Rod smiled gently at her. "You can always float me, if I collapse, dear. After all, I won't be able to float alone...." He looked around. "Hey! Not bad."

One moon was high in the sky, and another just above the horizon. Between them, they gave just enough light to show manicured lawns and sculpted trees all about them. Rowers rustled in formal beds, their petals closed against the night, and a small pond gleamed like a mirror a few hundred yards away.

"Why... 'tis beautiful," Gwen breathed, looking about. Yorick sidled up next to Rod and nudged him with an elbow, pointing toward Chomoi. She was silent, her face strained and eyes haunted, drinking in the lush beauty around her.

Rod looked and nodded. "Yeah. Glad we get her off that prison planet."

"Aye, the poor lass!" Gwen said. "To have so much of beauty, after years of such bleakness...."

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"We may have it again, if we don't get out of here." Rod scanned the trees and shrubbery, feeling his fatigue shoved into the background as adrenaline spiked him. "No way to tell which inviting piece of topiary is hiding a vision pickup. Maybe even sound."

Yorick nodded. "Somebody's got to have noticed we dropped in on them."

"Well, then, let's see if we can disappear before they send a welcoming committee." Rod turned away. "See if you can't wake up Chomoi, will you?"

Yorick reached out carefully, touching Chomoi's arm. Her head jerked around, eyes wide, and Yorick stepped back fast, just as a precaution. "I really hate to interrupt your reverie, Ms., but we gotta get going, or we're going to have company."

Chomoi whirled, staring about her, wild-eyed.

"Right." Yorick nodded. "No telling where from. Only that they're on their way."

"We can't be sure of that." Chomoi swung back to him.

"But we'd be fools to take the chance. Which way did the Major go?"

Yorick pointed, and Chomoi set off after Rod and Gwen at a pace that made Yorick hustle.

They came out onto cobblestones as dawn was lightening the sky, permeating everything with a dim, sourceless light, punctuated by slivers of late moonlight. It was the time when night had died and day hadn't been born, a time between realities, when nothing is definite and everything is possible—a time of fantasy when anything can happen. And the landscape was right for it. Mist rose about their knees, and its tendrils wisped up to veil a row of halftimbered houses, their second stories overhanging the street. Shop signs creaked in the breeze. Far away, something barked.

"Why, 'tis like home," Gwen said, wide-eyed.

"Yeah." Rod frowned. "Wonder what's wrong?"

"Why're we talking so softly?" Chomoi whispered.

"Who could be loud in a place like this?" Yorick murmured.

"Besides, we might wake the neighbors." Rod shouldered his fatigue and mustered his resolution. "And we don't want them to see us—just yet."

"Wherefore not?"

"Because they're going to find that capsule that brought us here, and we don't want some idle bystander with a high sense of drama telling the authorities that they saw us near the park this morning."

"I get the point," Yorick said. "Some enthusiastic soul might jump to the conclusion that we came in on that ship."

"But wherefore ought we wish him not to?" Gwen looked from man to man, puzzled. "We were aboard it."

"Yeah, dear, but whoever tried to shoot us down thinks we're dead. We wouldn't want to disillusion him, would we?"

"Or her," Chomoi put in.

"But when they find the empty ship, they will know we do live!" "Yes, but they won't know what we look like!"

"Camouflage, Lady Gallowglass," Yorick explained.

"Odds are that our attacker doesn't know what we look like, aside from a general description. He'll know we escaped, but nothing more since nobody on Otranto has seen us. But if he can get a detailed description from an eyewitness..."

"Hold on!" Chomoi held her hands up like a football referee. "Time out! You're both assuming that pirate was out to get us! He could have just been after the ship!" Rod looked at Yorick. Yorick looked at Rod.

"All right, all right! I get the point!" Chomoi snarled, yanking her hands down. "Come on, let's go!" She set off down the street, walking fast.

Rod followed after her. "Can I help it if I'm^ cynic?"

"Dost thou wish to?" Gwen murmured.

Four blocks later. Rod came to a sudden halt. "Would you look at that! You'd think a surveyor had drawn a line 758 Christopher Stasheff

and a town board had declared a zone."

"Probably did," Chomoi declared.

"There goes the neighborhood," Yorick sighed.

"And the business district begins." Rod agreed.

"But what manner of business isn't?" Gwen wondered.

"Woman's oldest," Chomoi stated.

"Oh, they're not that exclusive." Rod pursed his lips. "I see at least three gambling halls in there, and five saloons."

"And five feelie theaters, three dance parlors, two opium dens, and a pawnshop." Yorick looked up and down the street. "Have I missed anything?"

"Yes. But they haven't."

As far as they could see, the street was one mass of blinking, scrambling, writhing holographic displays in garish colors, advertising every form of pleasure conceived by mortal man and woman.

"Wonder what the buildings look like?" Yorick mused.

"Who can tell?" Rod shrugged. "Even if you could see one, you couldn't be sure it was real."

Chomoi nodded. "That about sums up this whole planet, from what I've heard."

"I thought it was a resort."

"It is. And it's amazing what people will resort to, if they can find the money."

"Otranto," Rod said, remembering the planet's reputation, stronger than ever in his own time, five hundred years later. "Isn't their motto, 'It's been a business doing pleasure with you'?"

"No, but it will be," Yorick assured him. He took a deep breath. "Well, folks—we gotta get through it, right?"

"Right." Rod squared his shoulders and stepped manfully in. "Breathe every five steps, friends." That wasn't as easy as it sounded. The signs weren't just visual—most of them were aural and olfactory, too. And, occasionally, tactile. The company waded through a melange of sounds and smells, their senses assaulted by every

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glamour in the state of the art. Erotic images gyrated and beckoned, male and female; delectable aromas wafted out to envelop them; images of riches and luxury flashed before their eyes. Holographic hucksters stepped out to entice them, as real as life and twice as pungent. They gritted their teeth and forced themselves to keep going, wading through every distraction they had ever desired.

A sleek, unbelievably handsome young man stepped out of a doorway, muscles rippling underneath his evening clothes, one arm full of long-stemmed roses, the other dangling a diamond necklace. Chomoi swerved after him like a needle to a magnet.

"Hold it, sister." Yorick caught her arm. "Just illusion, remember? Besides, he costs money."

Chomoi shook herself, coming out of her trance with a gasp. "Thanks. They almost got me with that one."

"Close," Yorick agreed. "Courage, lady. You're almost out of it."

"How do you know?" Chomoi wondered.

"I don't—but this kind of thing can't go on forever!"

"Optimist," she snorted.

However, the colony was young yet; the cheapside didn't last more than a quarter mile. They came up out of aromas and sensations with huge, rasping gasps, into clear, quiet air.

"I don't think I could have taken much more." Rod sagged against a lamp post.

"And you didn't even have any money." Yorick finally took his hand off his hip pocket and flexed it. "I think I've got cramps."

Cramps in your soul, friend? Does this mortal world pain you, with its plethora of Philistines?"

They looked up, startled.

A monk stood before them—the real, genuine article, in a brown robe and rope belt. No tonsure, though.

"Why, he is quite like those at home," Gwen cried. 160 Christopher Stasheff THE WARLOCK WANDERING 161

"Uh, well, no, not really, dear." Rod scratched the tip of his nose. "Just looks like it."

"Nay! He doth wear the badge! Dost'a not see?" Gwen pointed, and Rod looked. The robe had a breast pocket, and in it was a small yellow-handled screwdriver.

"You're a Cathodean."

The monk bowed his head in greeting. "Brother Joseph Fumble, though my acquaintances generally call me Brother Joey. And yourselves?"

"Gwen and Rod Gallowglass." Rod pointed at his wife.

"She's Gwen." He gestured toward the other two. "He's Yorick, and she's Chomoi."

"Pleased to meet you," Brother Joey said, with a small bow. "I don't suppose any of you would be interested in taking up religion?"

"Uhhhh..." Rod glanced uncomfortably at Gwen. "We're, ah, pretty well set along that line, thanks. I take it you're a priest?"

"No, but I'm working on it."

Rod eyed the man; he wasn't all that young. "But you are a deacon."

"Oh, yes, everything set except final vows." Brother Joey sighed and shook his head. "It's just that I'm not really sure I'm cut out for this sort of thing."

"For what? The priesthood?"

Brother Joey nodded. "I've got the drive, mind you; I've visited nine planets so far, but I've had spectacularly little success as a missionary. Only two converts so far, and they were both religious recidivists." He brightened. "I'm an excellent engineer, though."

"I see the problem," Rod agreed. "But isn't Otranto a rather odd place to be preaching?"

"Apparently it is, but I thought it would be an excellent, ah, 'hunting-ground,' if you follow me. Sort of a virgin wilderness of the spirit. I mean, if there's any planet where people need religion, it's Otranto!"

"Yes, but considering how much money most of them have spent to come here to wallow in pleasure, and how much more the rest are making from giving it to them, it's the last place I'd expect to find people in remorse."

"And, apparently, your expectations are sharper than mine," the monk sighed. "But it seemed such an excellent idea!"

"Yet not all clergymen must needs be missionaries," Gwen said gently. "Mayhap thou wouldst be more suited to a village church."

"Uh, if you two are gonna talk about it..." Rod glanced nervously along their back trail. "Would you mind if you keep walking while you do? I admit it'd take a genius of a bloodhound to track us through that aroma heaven back there, but we did kind of stand out, being live people in the vapor-light district at this hour of the morning. I need room."

"Well, you'll find it in this neighborhood, I assure you." Brother Joey fell into step beside them, gesturing about him. Rod had to agree with him. The houses, if you could call them that, were far apart and far back from the road, each one sitting centered on several acres of ground, with flawless lawns rolling down to the walkway. The nearest was a gloomy old Tudor manor house, but right next to it was a Gothic castle. A rambling Georgian mansion glowered across from it, and the lot after that held a medieval ruin.

"Odd notion of housing developments they have here." Rod frowned, looking about him, and sniffing the air. "Smells like rain."

"It always does, here," Brother Joey assured him, "and it's always overcast, except for the first half-hour after dawn each day. Just enough so that those who like sunrises, can have them."

"They're doing such wonderful things with weather control these days." Rod shook his head in wonder. "But why?"

"To make Otranto stand out," Brother Joey explained.

"There are only a half-dozen of these pleasure-planets so 162

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far, but that's already enough to make the competition strong—after all, there are just so many really wealthy citizens in the Terran Sphere."

Chornoi nodded. "And most of them want to go to Orlando."

"Orlando does seem to have the general tourist trade locked up—'something for everyone,' and all that. I understand they have a separate continent for each amusement theme."

"More like very large islands," Chomoi said, "but there are a lot of them, yes."

Brother Joey nodded. "So the other pleasure-planets have to specialize. They draw only a small percentage of the customers, but that small percentage comes to a billion a year. They attract those customers by doing only one theme, but doing it in all the variations that a whole planet has room for."