Out of This World

Chapter Two

The nagging in the back of his head had been there for a few days, and he didn’t really consciously notice it any more-until it abruptly stopped. For a moment he was startled by the sudden mental silence; then he realized what had happened and smiled broadly.

It had stopped.

About time.

He had never figured out what caused that odd feeling, but whatever it had been, it was a relief to be rid of it.

* * * *

Angela Thompson burst out crying, and when her mother finally got an explanation it took a real effort not to slap the girl for getting hysterical over nothing.

“Mr. Nobody stopped talking to me,” indeed!

* * * *

Ray Aldridge didn’t like it when the messages stopped, but it was no big deal. They weren’t providing all that much useful material, anyway-no bulletins from dead millionaires or miracle diet plans. He had gotten along without them for years, and he could get by without them again. He would just go back to making up his own.

* * * *

Oram Blaisdell wasn’t so complacent as the others. When the angels from Venus stopped talking to him, he concluded that Satan had somehow killed them all. He got his old twelve-gauge from the back room and went out to his pick-up and headed north.

He wasn’t any too sure where Goshen, Maryland might be, but he reckoned he could find it.

He got as far as Radford, Virginia before the cops picked him up for speeding. Listening to his story, they decided the poor old guy shouldn’t be running around loose. They called up his kids back in Paulette.

Between Henry Blaisdell’s coaxing and the state troopers’ story about a secret government campaign against the Satanists in Goshen, Oram finally decided to go home and mind his own business.

Satan wouldn’t get him without a fight, when the time came, but why go looking for trouble where he wasn’t wanted?

* * * *

Pel Brown was sitting in his favorite chair, re-reading C.S. Forester’s Ship of the Line, when someone knocked.

He glanced up, annoyed. He had been in the middle of the scene where the Sutherland, Hornblower’s ship, tears up an entire Italian army on the Spanish shore road, and he resented the interruption. He had been comfortably absorbed in ships’ broadsides and Napoleonic politics.

Nancy and Rachel were out shopping, he remembered, partly to return the duplicate tape of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ Rachel had gotten at her party yesterday, but mostly after groceries. They weren’t around to answer the knock-but maybe whoever it was would go away.

Whoever it was didn’t go away, but knocked again instead.

Why would anyone knock, anyway? Was the doorbell broken?

Sighing heavily, Pel got up out of the recliner and put the book down on the endtable, using the unpaid cable TV bill as a bookmark. He plodded to the front door and opened it.

No one was there. The porch and front steps were empty. No one was on the sidewalk or the lawn, either. More annoyed than ever, Pel turned and headed back for the recliner.

The knock sounded again, and he realized it wasn’t coming from the front door. It was coming from the door to the basement.

Had Nancy come home without his even noticing it and somehow got herself locked in the basement?

No, because then where was Rachel? She was never this quiet. And besides, he hadn’t been that involved with the book; he’d have heard them come in.

Maybe a meter reader had come in from outside and needed to talk to him about something?

On Sunday? Not likely.

There was one easy way to find out. He opened the basement door.

The man standing on the steps was a complete stranger. Pel blinked at him, startled. It was only when he saw this new apparition that he remembered seeing the little person while assembling Rachel’s wagon two nights before.

“Good day, sir,” the stranger said. He bowed, right arm across his chest, a hat in his right hand, a feather bobbing on the hat.

“Hi,” Pel said. “Who the hell are you?”

“I am called Raven,” the stranger replied, with another bow. “And whom do I have the honor of addressing?”

Pel stared for a moment.

He had, he felt, plenty of reason to stare. The man before him was of medium height, maybe five foot eight or so, with curly black hair and a tan. He was wearing a black tunic with silver embroidery and gold trim, black woolen hose on his legs, and a fine black velvet cloak thrown over one shoulder. The hat he held was a wide-brimmed, flat-crowned black felt, with a curling white ostrich plume in the band.

It didn’t look like a stage costume, though-the materials were too heavy, the detailing too fine, without any of the glitzy look of theatrical attire. The clothes had a solid reality to them.

So did the man who wore them. He had a long nose, dark eyes, and lines at the corners of a thin-lipped mouth; Pel estimated him to be in his late thirties or early forties. He looked more like a Mafioso than an actor.

He was waiting for an answer.

“Pel Brown,” Pel said at last.

The stranger straightened up a little more and said, “Your servant, sir. Are you the master here?”

“It’s my house, if that’s what you mean.” Pel considered it odd that the man’s speech was rather flowery, in accord with his garb, but his accent was faint and seemed somewhere between Australia and the Bronx, not at all in the traditional British upper-class manner.

“Indeed,” Raven said. He moved his eyes.

Pel took the hint and stepped aside. “Come on up out of there,” he said.

The man who had introduced himself as Raven obliged, and for the first time Pel realized that the stranger’s tunic was belted with a wide band of black leather, and that a sword hung from that belt. Not a dueling foil, as his outfit might have led one to expect, but a sheathed broadsword.

“Come on over here,” Pel said.

Raven’s eyes darted about, taking in the passageway, the kitchen that was visible through the doorway, the family room, the bookcases, the etageres, the couch, the recliner, the video set-up, the Maxfield Parrish print on the wall.

Pel stepped back and closed the basement door, making sure that it latched and that the lock was set. Then he followed his guest into the family room.

Upon spotting the stranger the household cat, Silly Cat by name, leapt up from his place on the back of the couch and made a dash for the stairs. He was a timid beast, much given to hiding under the bed, and would hardly ever stay in the same room with an unfamiliar human being.

“Have a seat,” Pel said, gesturing at the couch.

“Thank you,” Raven said. He sank onto the sofa and seemed startled by how soft the cushions were. His sword got in the way; he swung it to the side, and had to unbuckle the belt to get comfortable. He pulled the leather band out, wrapped it around the scabbard, and then laid the whole package gently on the coffee table, carefully not disturbing the two issues of TV Guide or the beer-stained coaster. His velvet cloak he draped over the back of the couch, where, Pel was sure, the velvet would pick up cat hairs.

Pel settled back into his recliner, his hand reaching automatically for his book. He stopped himself, leaned forward, and asked, “So, Raven, you said?”

The stranger nodded.

“Okay,” Pel said. “So what were you doing in my basement? You have anything to do with the elf who turned up down there night before last?”

“Elf?” Raven’s face expressed polite puzzlement.

“Something like that-little guy, about this high.” Pel held out his hands to show his tiny visitor’s height. “Said he was from Hrumph.”

“Oh.” Raven nodded. “Aye, that would be Grummetty.”

“Grummetty, huh?”

“Aye,” Raven said. “A little person. He’s no elf; the elven are another sort entirely. Of a time, we called Grummetty’s people gnomes, but ‘twould seem they find the term offensive now, so we… well, most of us try to oblige them. Particularly now, in their days of exile.”

“I asked him if he was a fairy,” Pel said.

“Alack for that!” Raven exclaimed. A wry grin flickered quickly across his face, then vanished. “He made no mention on that. I’ll hope he took not too great an offense at it.”

“No, he accepted it as an honest misunderstanding, I think. So, he’s a friend of yours?”

“An ally, more than a friend, I would say,” Raven replied judiciously.

“Oh,” Pel said, accepting the distinction without comprehension. “Well, so you got into my basement the same way he did?”

Raven nodded. “Exactly. It pleases me well to see that you’re a man of such quick intelligence.”

Pel gave a self-deprecating smile. “Sure. So now that we’ve got that straight-who the hell are you people, and how are you getting into my basement, and why?”

“Well…” Raven’s eyes roamed the room again, the green wall-to-wall carpeting, the textured ceiling, the green drapes and the sliding glass door to the patio, the books and records and CDs and videotapes, the throw pillows that Rachel had stacked on the floor as a fort for her Barbie dolls.

Pel waited.

Raven sighed. “’Tis a long story,” he said, “and I scarce know where to start.”

“Begin at the beginning,” Pel said, without thinking. “And go on till you come to the end; then stop.” The quote from Lewis Carroll was an old favorite.

“Indeed, that’s the wisest course for most tales,” Raven agreed. “But I think I’d do best to start by asking you a question. What know you, sir, of other worlds than your own?”

“It depends how you mean that,” Pel replied cautiously. He did not intend to set himself up for anything.

“What I mean, good sir,” Raven replied, “is that I am not of your world. In truth, I know nothing of it save what Grummetty told me, and what I have seen for myself. Your pardon, but your world seems to me passing strange; your chamber here reminds of nothing so much as a wizard’s secret chamber, yet the door-it is a door?-aye, the door yonder is sheerest glass, is it not? Not some mage’s trickery?”

“It’s glass,” Pel agreed. “Go on.”

“Doors of glass,” Raven said, shaking his head in amazement.

“Get on with it!” Pel snapped. His patience was wearing thin. If this was all some elaborate stunt he was getting tired of it, he wanted the punchline. If it was real-well, that was another matter entirely. That was frightening.

It was downright terrifying, in fact.

“Your pardon, sir,” Raven said, ducking his head. “As I was saying, your world is not my own, nor from what I see here does it much resemble my own, though men are yet men, and the trees and grass I see through the pane seem familiar, and we speak the same tongue.”

That fact had already struck Pel. It seemed very unlikely that people from another world would speak English.

“It seems to me that you speak it as the little people do, rather than as my own, yet ‘tis certainly the same tongue,” Raven continued.

Pel began to wonder if he would ever get to the point. “All right, you’re from another world,” he said. “How’d you get in my basement?”

“’Tis the doing of our mage, Elani, with a spell stolen from the foe; she sent first Grummetty, and then myself, to see what manner of world it was that the Imperials had found in their quest for aid against Shadow.”

“What?” asked Pel, thoroughly confused. Raven’s accent seemed to be thickening, and his phrasing becoming more complex, as he settled into the conversation. The words didn’t seem to make sense, but he tried a little free association. “You’re in trouble with Lamont Cranston’s Chrysler?”

“How’s that?” Raven expressed polite puzzlement.

“Never mind,” Pel said, waving it aside. “Go on.”

Raven nodded. “As I said, ‘tis a long tale. Know you aught of Shadow, or perchance of the Imperials?”

“No,” Pel said flatly. He decided not to try any Little Anthony jokes.

“I feared as much.” The stranger groped for words, then began. “Shadow,” he said, “is an evil thing. ‘Twas once a mortal wizard, the legends say, but I’d not swear to that. Whatever it is in truth, its magic is great, its slaves and servants many and mighty, and in its realm its power is absolute. For centuries, since before my family’s first father began the archives, Shadow has been growing, spreading its power, fighting and defeating and devouring mages and wizards, learning their spells and consuming their power. In its wake come death and terror; castles are thrown down, their inhabitants horribly slain. Villages are burnt, the people devoured, crops and livestock vanished. For centuries, men of good will have struggled against Shadow, have resisted the offers it made of power in its foul realm-but weaker men have sold their souls for empty promises and brief pleasures.”

Pel listened appreciatively. Raven told the story well, despite his curious accent. Pel had heard it before, of course, in any number of fantasy novels and movies. “And you’ve found some way this Shadow can be defeated?” he asked, anticipating the next step in the traditional plot. “Some talisman that can kill it, or something?”

“No,” Raven said, startled. “Of course not. Such things are the stuff of children’s tales. We know of no way Shadow can be fought save by slaying its creatures and combating its spells, as we have done since my grandfather was a babe.”

“No?” It was Pel’s turn to be startled.

“No! No, there can be no easy victory-can there?” An odd, hopeful note crept into Raven’s voice. “Do you know of some way that Shadow can be defeated? Has something like this happened in your world, and was a way found?”

“No, of course not,” Pel replied, confused. “Magic doesn’t work in the real world.”

For a moment Raven was silent, his face slowly reddening; then he stood up angrily. “You mock me, sir,” he said, in a tone that was pure threat.

If this was a joke, Raven was a superb actor; he sounded utterly sincere. Pel blinked up at him, startled anew, and for a long silent moment the two men stared at each other.

“No, I don’t,” Pel said at last. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean any mockery. Go on with your story.”

Raven glared for a moment longer, then slowly settled back onto the couch. He stared at the far wall for a moment, where a blonde in white gauze rode a swing before a landscape of impossibly vivid colors.

Pel had always loved that print, but Raven seemed puzzled by it.

At last the stranger said, “Magic does not work in your world, you say?”

“No,” Pel said. “At least, we generally don’t think so, except for a few loonies. Real magic doesn’t work. It never has.”

Raven nodded.

“That,” he said, “might well account for Grummetty’s illness. ‘Tis said by some that the little people are magical in origin, and yet need a trace of that magic to live. Perhaps in your world that magic is gone, and they cannot exist. Grummetty told us all that he felt as if his own flesh were burning him when he came here, and indeed he was sore ill when he returned to us. At first we feared he might not live, but when his fever broke and his strength began to return, I ventured through the portal. As yet, I’ve felt no ill here.”

“Oh,” Pel said. “He said he felt sick. I wondered about that.”

Raven nodded. “We sent a little person at the first because he might more easily hide, should danger arise. He said he found no danger save the illness, only a metalsmith at work. Would that be you, sir?”

“I was putting together a wagon for my daughter,” Pel explained, a little impatiently. “She just turned six, and we had a party for her yesterday. Now would you go on with your story about the Shadow, and what you’re doing here?”

“Indeed,” Raven said. “And gladly will I speak, an it be that my words can sway. That thing we call Shadow has conquered all my world, now; the darkness is everywhere. From one edge to the other it is supreme, and only in isolated pockets do a few of us still resist its dominion. In truth, we can do little ‘gainst it. And having thus triumphed, ‘twould seem that the evil seeks new challenge; our surviving free mages, working in secret, spied upon Shadow, and learned that it had sought new worlds to conquer-and had in fact found them.”

“Earth, you mean?” Pel asked.

Raven stared blankly at him. “Earth?”

“This world, I mean,” Pel explained.

“Oh,” Raven said, with a glance out through the glass of the sliding door. “You call this Earth? How odd.” He shook his head. “’Tis no matter, though. No, ‘twas not this world Shadow found, but another, the realm of the Imperials.”

“Oh. Okay, who are they?” The tale, Pel thought, was getting unnecessarily long and complicated, and he wished that Raven would get to the point.

“They are men, like us,” Raven told him, “and they rule not one world, but many. Not worlds that are reached by magical portals, such as the one that brought me hither, but worlds that float separately in the sky, among the stars, and that can be sailed to in special flying ships-or so I am told. I do not pretend to understand it, not having been there. They call all the worlds gathered under their rule the Galactic Empire, though I know not whence the name derives.”

“The Galactic Empire?” Pel objected. “Aren’t you mixing genres?”

“What?” Raven asked. His confusion was beginning to have a constant visible admixture of anger, and Pel decided not to provoke him with explanations of the difference between science fiction and fantasy.

“Never mind,” Pel replied. “Go on.”

“As you will,” Raven said, calming. He continued, “When ‘twas learned that Shadow sought these other realms, certain mages among those who strove ‘gainst the darkness took careful study and discovered the secrets of the spells Shadow had used in its researches-Elani was one such. Those mages then opened portals to the worlds of the Galactic Empire, that they might forewarn the Imperials, and thereby gain their aid in fighting Shadow. However, those who passed through these portals found that the Empire was strange beyond our understanding, and was perhaps itself no better than the lesser of two evils. Some, my group among them, therefore resolved not to trust the Imperials, but to proceed on our own.”

“So you looked for another, better world, and you found us?” Pel asked.

“No,” Raven answered. “The Imperials did that. Once they learned that one other reality existed, and that ‘twas ruled by a hostile force, they set about finding another, in hopes of acquiring an ally in their coming battle against Shadow. They have no mages, but they have men and women who can hear the thoughts of others…”

“Telepaths?” Pel suggested.

“Aye, telepaths, the very word they use!” Raven agreed, startled.

Pel nodded. For once he’d guessed right about something in Raven’s tale. “Go on,” he said.

Raven continued, “’Twould seem that these telepaths had sometimes found traces of thought for which they could not account. Some, it seemed, had leaked through from my own native realm-but some, so it chanced, came from your world. Thus, they sought out your reality, and attempted to send messages to a few receptive individuals therein. When that yielded no useful results, they devised a means of transporting one of their sky-ships into whatsoever other realities they might find, and sent that ship hither, to your land. This morning it arrived, and if Elani’s spell be sound, not far from here. My group learned about these plans, and our mages opened a portal, that we might communicate with your people-this, that you might have some contact with our realm other than through the Imperials, and that, perhaps, we, too, might benefit from whatever your people can teach us.” He frowned. “We had hoped that our messenger might bespeak your rulers ere the ship of the Imperials came, but alas, Grummetty’s illness cut short our first attempt, and ‘twas not until some hours after the ship was sent that we made another.”

Raven spread his hands.

“And here I am,” he said, just as Pel heard the whir of the garage door opener.

* * * *

Amy Jewell watched as the last of the crewmen from the spaceship-if that’s what it was-climbed reluctantly into the police van.

“What’s going to happen to them?” she asked.

The plainclothes cop beside her looked up from his notepad. “Them?” he said, pointing his pen at the van.

Amy nodded.

The cop shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “I never heard of anything like this before. If it’s a publicity stunt I expect the movie company will bail them out tomorrow morning-not today, because it’s Sunday and the judge won’t be in, but probably first thing tomorrow. If it’s for a movie. And they didn’t resist arrest or give us any trouble at all-hell, you probably heard them, they were asking to talk to the authorities-so even if they don’t get bailed out we may not be able to hold them.”

Amy nodded again. “I see,” she said, though she wasn’t sure she did.

“You worried about them?” the cop asked, giving her a shrewd glance.

Amy grimaced. “Not really,” she said.

The cop didn’t answer.

“What about the airpl… the shi… that thing?” Amy asked, pointing. “How are you going to get it off my lawn?”

The cop frowned. Then he sighed. “I don’t know, lady,” he said. “That’s not my job. I’m sorry, but it’s not police business. Either you can move it, because it’s your yard, or they can move it, because it’s their ship. Either way, they’re liable, but you’ll probably need to sue them to collect.” He glanced at the huge purple object. “The FAA people are supposed to be on their way out here now, you know, Sunday or not-they want to look at the thing and figure out how it got here. You probably shouldn’t touch anything until they get here.”

A siren started up, then cut off abruptly; a white pumper truck with GAITHERSBURG-WASHINGTON GROVE FIRE DEPARTMENT lettered on the doors in gold pulled away, engine roaring and the tires spitting gravel from the roadside. Amy and the cop watched it go.

“I’ve gotta say,” the plainclothesman remarked, “that this is the weirdest damn thing I ever heard of.”

Amy nodded.

“If worse comes to worst,” he suggested, “you could sell tickets and run tours.”

“I suppose so,” Amy said, unenthusiastically. She wasn’t really very interested in the idea; she wanted her yard back, not a tourist trap. She didn’t really need so dubious a source of additional income.

As she watched the pumper depart she spotted a blue sedan creeping up the road. She thought it looked as if it had writing on the door, but at that angle and distance she couldn’t make it out.

“That’s the FAA boys now,” the cop said. “I’ll be going along. If you could come to the station tomorrow and let us know whether you want to press charges or anything, we’d appreciate it.”

“All right,” Amy said distractedly.

“That’s it, then,” the cop said, closing his notepad. “Have a nice day.”

He turned and ambled toward the remaining county police cruiser as the van pulled away and the blue sedan coasted to a stop.