The Witch Doctor

Chapter Twenty-Three

The duke hit the floor with the heel of his staff. It struck with a huge, booming reverberation, out of all proportion to its size. Then he thrust it up high, swirling its tip above his head in a widening helix and calling out. The call became rhythmical, settling into a chant.

I frowned, straining to understand; the language sure wasn't the one I'd been hearing. It seemed older somehow, kind of like Latin. Latin! Once I realized that, I was able to catch the occasional cognate. "Sun," that word had to be, and "heat," which made sense and sure as taxes that next one had to be "water," or a near relative, "days" after it? Wasn't that? That was a number - five! And was that a negative suffix, though ? But why negative? ... The duke finished his chant, brandishing his staff again, and the peasants repeated the verse; the cavern boomed with it. Then all of a sudden they went quiet, and the duke shouted out a last sentence, punctuating it by slamming his staff against the floor again ... Where the heel struck the rock, an explosion blossomed in silence, a burst of searing white light against the cavern's gloom, swelling, expanding, filling the chamber ... it was the sun.

I squeezed my eyes shut against the glare; afterimages danced. I gave my eyes time to adjust to the crimson, then opened them just a little, squinting.

I was still lashed to the rock - but it was surrounded by miles of sand. Heat waves shimmered about me, and the sky was a brazen coin in pitiless blue. There wasn't a cloud in sight, and the heat baked me as if I were in an oven. I could have sworn I could feel the rock heating up below me, and I was already bathed in sweat. Suddenly, the significance of the duke's "five days" hit me - I was supposed to stay bound to this stone bed for a hundred and twenty hours! And the negative suffix was about water!

In panic, I realized Frisson had been right - like it or not, I'd have to try to work magic on my own. Call it working within the frame of reference of the hallucination, call it selling out, call it whatever you like - I was going to have to do it, or die. Preferably without drawing on either the powers of good, or of evil.

I tried to think of some verse that would stop my sweat glands - I was going to need every ounce of water my body held. Then I remembered that without sweat, I would overheat in an hour.

Decisions, decisions!

It was going to be a long day.

I decided it had been a long day already, but the sun was still ominously close to the zenith. My tongue felt like a piece of leather, and my skin felt about right for writing. How long had it really been-an hour? Maybe less?

No matter - I wasn't going to last the day, and I had a notion my body was going to stay there without me for at least twenty-four hours. I had to have water, fast - or something to drink, anyway. What I wouldn't have given now, for a cola ...

Inspiration struck. Commercial jingles! Could I remember one?

Could I ever forget?

Could I talk enough to recite it?

I smacked my lips, or tried to - and found I couldn't get them to open. In desperation, I worked my cheeks, trying to pump up some saliva - but nothing came. Panic began to grow, but I forced it down sternly while I kept working my cheeks ...

Pain lanced through my lower lip. Blast! I'd bitten it again. It hurt, on top of everything else, and I tasted blood ... Blood.

Moisture.

I moved the tip of my swelling tongue against the inside of my lips, pushed hard - and they opened. I took a deep breath ... And the blood dried up.

Quickly, before my mouth could seal up again, I cried,

Something slapped into my palm, something cold and wet. I breathed a sigh of relief and started to bring it to my lips ... My hand wouldn't move, it was tied over my head.

I bit down against anger, and called up a verse:

I felt a writhing about my wrists and ankles that made my innards twist in revulsion. Sternly, I schooled my stomach; it was only the ropes untying themselves - I hoped. I lifted the arm with the soda in it, experimentally ... it lifted. And was instantly filled with a hundred hot needles. I let the arm fall back, groaning with agony. But I had to get at that soda. I lifted again, but the effort made my body roll, and I finished up scraping the can across the stone toward my mouth. I made it, and my teeth closed on aluminum.

Just aluminum. No soda.

I had forgotten to open the can.

I just lay there a second, marveling at my own stupidity. Then, with another groan and a great deal more stabbing pain, this time in the upper arms, shoulders, and chest, I managed to work my way up onto my elbows and achieve the stupendous feat of hooking a finger through the ring. I pulled; the top popped; I bowed my head and lifted, and a splash of soothing, chilly Sass-Pa-Rilla flowed into my mouth. Most of that first shot ran down my chin and sizzled onto the rock, but enough of it sloshed into my mouth to fill me with the blessed, icy taste, burning the cut where I'd bitten my lip. My throat worked, and I felt the trail of cold all the way down into my stomach.

I sighed, lifted the can, and took a real swallow. I had never known a commercial product could taste so good and decided I'd never make a joke about Sass-Pa-Rilla again.

Which was very good because, as I lifted the can, it disappeared. I stared at my cupped and empty hand as if it had betrayed me. Then I curled it into a fist, feeling the anger rise. Not my hand, but somebody else, some person, had betrayed me - and I had a notion who. The duke had decided he didn't want the rules changed. I didn't feel sorry for him; after all, I'd told him I was a wizard before he tried hanging me out to dry. He shouldn't have been so sure I couldn't survive yen though, come to think of it, I wasn't all that sure of it, myself.

But I was also a wizard who was going to need a little help to fight back - and whatever I was going to do, I was going to have to do it quickly, before the spurt of energy from the cold drink wore off. Already, I could feel the searing heat enveloping me again, and the first tendrils of a headache were rising to meet it. Where could I get reinforcements?

Of course! The local spirits. Every little location had them - the nature spirits, the sprites and dryads and nixies and pixies, the spirits of trees and streams and even grass!

Well, Shakespeare would forgive me.

Tendrils of mist started to rise from the ground around me, from the boulders and the sand-mist, where there was no moisture. I breathed a sigh of relief and croaked, "Let's hear it for animism." Then the spirits finished taking form.

There wasn't much of them - just tenuous, smoky-looking, hulking shapes about knee-high. Behind them was a miniature whirlwind filled with sand - a dust devil?

"You have called," one of the rock-faces croaked. "We have come."

"What manner of spirits are you?"

"You have called for the spirits of the land," another boulder-type grated. "We are they - spirits of rock and sand."

"I should have realized," I groaned. "Mineral spirits."

"We will aid you, if we can," the first rock-ghost growled. "How may we do so? "

"Hanged if I know," I muttered. "You wouldn't have anything cool about you, would you?"

"At midday?" hissed the whirlwind. "Nay! We all are heated through and through."

"I figured as much." The rock under me was getting hot even in my shadow. "And none of you have any moisture, do you?"

"You cannot get water from a stone," a boulder grated. The whirlwind drifted closer. "Shall I fan you with my breeze?" The first tendrils of moving air caressed me, and I gasped, drawing back. "Uh, no thanks! I appreciate the intention, but you have all the charm of a furnace!" A horrid notion crossed my mind.

"Uh-what do men call your kind of spirit?"

"A dust devil," the whirlwind answered.

"I thought so." I swallowed, painfully. "You, uh - haven't come hot from Hell, have you?"

"Nay!" The tone was indignant. "You asked what men call me, not what I am!"

I nodded. "I thought so. What's in a name? Not much, in this case. You're no more a part of the Hell crew than-" I broke off, my eyes widening.

"Than what?" the dust devil pressed.

"Than something I learned about in general physics! Of course! If I'm hot and I want to get cool, who should I call for but Maxwell's Demon?"

"I know of him," the dust devil hummed. "We dwell in neighboring realms and are much alike in that we are neither evil nor good, but much maligned by men."

"Can you get him here? He's an expert in air conditioning! If anybody can save me, he can!"

"I shall try," the dust devil said, and whirled faster and faster until it had flung itself to bits, disappearing.

I stared. That was going home? Then I realized what I had asked for, and waited in dread. Maxwell's Demon was a gimmick James Clerk Maxwell had dreamed up, in an attempt to get around Newton's laws of thermodynamics. Being from the never-never land of scientists' whimsy, he wouldn't be either good or bad - he'd be an impersonal force. So he wouldn't be one that could be ordered around - and might decide not to help me. In fact, there was no guarantee he would be here; he came if he wanted to, and didn't if he didn't.

Maybe I hadn't made the situation clear. I tried again.

I wasn't sure about the "eftsoons" part; after all, Maxwell had invented his Demon in the nineteenth century, but the air split with the sound of gunshot, and the Demon was there, a point of unbearably intense light, with the dust devil rising from the sand again behind it. The Demon was singing and humming, "What have we here? What other mortal knows of me in this universe of magic? "

"The name's Saul," I said, with my most ingratiating smile. Then the implications of the spark's remark hit me like a ton of books.

"Other mortal?"

Aye. I have a friend who knows my name, though he learned of it in another realm within the curves of time and space." I forced myself not to ask; first things first, and right now, survival was kind of the top priority. "I don't suppose you'd be willing to lend a hand to another know-it-all, would you?"

"Mayhap," the Demon hummed, "if it strikes me as amusing. Know, mortal, that the bane of existence of immortals is tedium. If you can offer me respite in the form of some unusual event, I shall be quite pleased to intervene on your behalf, What diversion can you offer me?"

"How about saving my life?"

"I have saved mortals before." The Demon seemed irritated.

"What is new in the fashion in which you would have me save you?" I began to realize that I was really dealing with an embodiment of physical principles - impersonal, like a computer, and therefore needing explicit instructions that it would follow to the letter. Unlike a computer, though, it wanted to be amused.

I would have to be very careful of what I said.

"I specialize in paradoxes," I told the Demon. "You might have fun watching."

"Paradox?" The Demon sounded interested. "In what fashion?"

"Well, for openers, I contradict myself every five minutes, especially since I came to this universe. Not my own idea, by the way."

"I doubt it not." The Demon's hum deepened to a lower pitch. "In what manner do you contradict yourself?"

"I'm bound and determined not to be committed, you see - not to a woman, not to an idea, not even to myself, if I can help it - but especially not to good or evil."

"Amazing," the Demon murmured. "How have you endured more than thirty seconds in this universe in which all action stems from either good or evil, from God or Satan?"

"By pure dumb luck, I guess, until I found out what was going on. But as soon as an emissary from each side had tried to recruit me, I dug my heels in and turned mule-headed. I was bound and determined not to be a tool for either one - so every time I accidentally did something a little bit good, I tried to follow it with something a little bit bad."

" 'Tis a set of poles, not a continuum," the Demon corrected me in an abstracted tone. "Indeed you live in contradiction - not in thoughts or words alone, but in deeds. Yet do you dare no more than little bits?"

Indignation hit, along with the age-old alertness that someone was trying to infringe on my identity, to twist me into his own path. "I'm me," I said, "not an extension of somebody else, natural or supernatural. I have to be me; I can't be anybody else. If I go in for big gestures, stupendous feats of nobility, I'm committing myself to good so thoroughly that I become just an extension of it. Worse, I'd have to counteract that by doing something really vile, which would mean I'd have to infringe on someone else's identity, destroy their integrity, little bits of good and evil, and that's just flat-out wrong. No, I'll do I thank you, but all I'll go for in a big way is being me."

"Excellently stated!" the Demon hummed. "You have grasped the essence of paradox!"

I had?

"I cannot allow a mind such as this to be wasted and withered," he went on. "What would you of me?"

"Shelter!" I gasped-then, afraid of seeming too eager, I tried nonchalance. "As you can see, I'm in the kind of a bind only you can save me from."

"Save?" The Demon hummed, surveying the situation. The local spirits groaned and winked out, vanishing into their boulders and sand grains.

"Kin!" the dust devil gusted. "Source and lord!"

"In some measure, mayhap," the Demon hummed, and to me, "wherefore seek you my aid? Here is one with power enough!"

"Only to make things hot," I groaned, "and my species doesn't do too well at temperatures above ninety degrees Fahrenheit."

"Aye-I had forgotten you were so fragile," the Demon answered.

"I ken not how your kind has survived so long, balanced on so fine a line of energy."

"Cultural evolution! Artificial temperature control! Technology! But the duke and his men stranded me out here without any machines, and I'm just not built for it! Please, Demon - take me some place cool! About seventy degrees Fahrenheit," I added quickly. Somehow, I didn't think I wanted to be where it was cool for the Demon.

"Someplace that is neither hot nor cool, rather," the Demon corrected me, "a barrier between heat and cold. Aye, I know of such a place. But 'tis such a realm as would drive a mortal mad." Ingrained caution welled up. "How so?"

"Why, for that 'tis a realm of paradox incarnate, where a mortal would be lost in confusion . . ." The Demon's voice trailed off, then ignited with enthusiasm. "Aye, we shall put you to the test of yourself! Do you think that you are so wholly dedicated to paradox as to withstand the confrontation of it?"

I hesitated - but he was putting me to the test of my self-image.

"If I'm not," I said, "I want to know about it." Then the counterimpulse made me say, "Besides, if I can't, you can always drop me back in the real world-preferably at some point a little less extreme in temperature.

The Demon keened with delight. "You contradict yourself indeed! Nay, let us see how you withstand the test that you yourself conceive! Come, mortal, away!"

The landscape tilted and slid-or was it I who was sliding? I didn't know, but suddenly, blessed coolness surrounded me. In fact, I shivered.

"Sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit," the Demon informed me.

"I'll get used to it," I promised, "fast. Thank you, Demon. You're a lifesaver." I looked around, and found myself in a realm of formless gray. Mist seemed to fill all the volume about me, and beyond it were only clouds. I looked down and, for all I knew, I could be sitting on another cloud. "Where are we?"

"Where you have wished to be," the Demon said, "the barrier between the cold and the hot. I looked up, startled, finally recognizing the reference.

"Welcome to my home," the Demon sang.

"Uh-thanks." I looked around, feeling kind of weird-new boy in town, and all. And a town there was; shapes were beginning to show through the mist-houses, or things that my mind was interpreting as houses; it occurred to me that I probably wasn't seeing what was really there - or, rather, that I was seeing it, or my eyes were, but my mind couldn't accept it or comprehend it, so it was giving me familiar analogs. If that was the case, then the mist would be the fog of my own confusion. One way or another, it was thinning as I began to be able to recognize forms, and I was feeling a bit better at being able to see houses - in the shapes of geometric solids, and with polygons for windows and doors, but definitely houses. And a street - though it looped about in a funny way, and I couldn't see anything supporting it. And some strange, amorphous masses of greenery that kept fluxing and flowing and changing shape, like vegetable amoebas; I figured they had to be analogous to trees and bushes.

And there were animals.

Or should I say, "creatures"? The first ones to come ambling up were a pair of cats that hadn't quite made it into twins-there were two of them from the middle forward, but at the end of the rib cage, they joined, and only had one set of hindquarters. A single tail snaked around and tickled the ear of the head that had its eyes shut; they opened, and the other head's eyelids closed.

That unnerved me, not to mention its offending me - how would you feel if someone sauntered up to you and fell asleep? "What's the matter?" I asked the wide-awake head. "Early morning last night?"

"Nay," the cat answered, which somehow didn't surprise me. "He has died-and I have come alive."

I stared.

Then I said, "Is he going to come alive again, too?"

"Aye, at some odd moment. We can never know when, though. We know that when he lives, I die, for the two of us cannot both be alive at one time."

Something connected. "I thought that only applied when you were in your box," I said.

"Nay," he contradicted me. "When we go home to our box, both become comatose-neither alive nor dead."

"Till someone opens the lid," I said. "You're Schredinger's Cat." Which explained the joined hindquarters - only the front part had split into two time lines yet.

The cat turned to the Demon with a look of surprised approval.

"You have found a mortal with some modicum of sense."

"No," I said, "just a little knowledge."

"Then you are very dangerous."

"More than you know," the Demon sang. "I did not find him - he called for me!"

The cat looked at me and shuddered. "You could visit chaos upon us all! "

"I could?" I said blankly, then realized that I was throwing away a bargaining chip. "Oh, yeah, I could! I wouldn't, of course - especially since your friend Maxwell's Demon has helped me out of a tight spot. "

"A hot spot, rather," the Demon explained. " 'Twas like to fry his brains. " The cat looked at me as if that might be an improvement. "Can you not send him back?"

"Aye, when the night has come, and coolness with it" I glanced around at the alien setting, feeling kind of nervous. "If you don't mind the waiting." I wasn't sure I didn't.

"Oh, we need not wait!" the Demon sang. "From this space-time, we may project you to any point within your own."

"Oh," I said, feeling stupid. "You mean I'm not even in the same universe?"

"Nay. This realm lies between universes."

"Then it's a universe of its own."

"Mayhap, though I would be reluctant to term it so, when it is so small."

I sat bolt-upright, galvanized by a sudden revelation. "Then you could just as easily send me back to my home universe!"

"I could," the Demon agreed. "Do you wish it?" That brought me up short. I frowned, considering alternatives, Angelique, and the fun I'd been having not working magic, and Angelique, and the adventure, and Angelique, and the friends I'd gained - or companions, at least - and Angelique, and the fact that I felt as if I was worth something. Especially to Angelique. Okay, there was danger in it, too, but at least it wasn't boring. "No," I said slowly, "not just yet."

After all, I couldn't commit myself to not committing myself, could I?

"Then to the universe of Allustria, whence you came," the cat urged.

But the Demon asked, "Are there many like you, in your home universe?"

"Not enough for comfort." I frowned; a long horizontal plane was coming into focus, looking like a fence made out of a continuous sheet of plywood. "Like me in what way?"

"In believing in Maxwell's Demon."

"Oh." I relaxed, shaking my head. "No, not many. Maybe a million."

"A million!"

"Out of three billion," I said quickly. "Even out of the ones who know about you, most of them think you're just a scientific fable."

"But we are," the Demon and the cat sang together, and the Demon went on, "This is the home of all such fables - and of those of logic and reason, too."

But I was distracted by the big eyeballs and the long nose peeking over the fence. When I glanced directly at them, though, they disappeared. "What's he doing here?"

The Demon didn't even look. " 'Tis as much his home as Yehudi's."

"Yehudi"' I glanced around, noting a series of level planes rising away off to' my left, like a staircase - but it was empty. "I don't see him. "

"Of course not; the little man is not there," the cat said contemptuously. Behind him, I noticed two guys with saffron robes and bald heads, sitting in lotus position facing each other; each was holding a light bulb, but one was so dark it must have been burned out.

"I suppose that makes sense," I said. "Then the Gremlin is here, too?"

"Shh!" The cat glanced about with apprehension. "Speak not of him, for if he comes, he will make all go awry."

"I don't think so; we've been getting to know each other." I felt in still wasn't home - and even better, better, knowing the Gremlin from the cat's look of surprise. I noticed a guy with medium-length hair and a very bland face, in a powder-blue oxford-cloth shirt, blue jeans, and running sneakers, strolling along the row of polygons.

"Who's he?"

"The Norm" the Demon sang.

"I thought he didn't really exist."

"Be still!" the cat spat, but he was too late. The Norm faded away and disappeared. "Now you have done it." The cat sighed, "It will take him many days to believe in himself strongly enough to manifest again," so I whispered the next one.

"Sorry," I said, feeling very guilty, "Who's the anorexic over there?" I was talking about the guy who was a stick figure, like the ones kids draw-a featureless circle on top, with straight lines for arms and legs and torso.

"The Statistical Abstract," the Demon hummed softly. "You need not fear; he will not go away."

A robot came clanking up and ground to a halt.

I stepped back, ready for trouble. "He doesn't belong here! Where I come from, he's real - these days!"

"Only my body," a voice said, but the robot's mouth just opened once, and a wispy form drifted out of it to float in midair before us.

"I had wondered how long 'twould be ere you came amongst us!"

"Hey, I know you!" I said. "You're the philosophy assignment I really resented!"

"The Ghost in the Machine," the breezy voice agreed. "Wherefore did you resent me?"

"Not you," I said, "just having to prove that you didn't exist, when something inside me told me you did!"

"Indeed I do, but only in this realm that defies all logic, agreed the ghost "Oh," I said. "So that's why you thought I'd come here some day."

"Indeed," the ghost agreed. "Do you still rail against reason, even as you practice it?"

"Not really," I said with a smile. "Kant got me out of that."

"Even so," said the large, egg-shaped guy who came strolling up. I looked closer and realized he really was an egg. " 'Tis even as I've said about words - only a matter of whether they will master you, or You will master them"

"Right." I nodded. "Logic's just a tool. You can't let it run your life by itself." But I was bothered by the implication of his knowing my inner thoughts so well - was I really as much of a fence sitter as he was?

Yes. I had that sense of balance.

In the distance, I heard a long and mournful whistle, and a locomotive chuffed by drawing a train around a circular track, with so many cars that the engine was both pulling the tender and pushing the caboose, which was pulling it. I didn't have to look; I knew it had no driver. It was going faster and faster the longer it ran, and I looked away.

"Say, you wouldn't know where I can find the Dinganzich, would you?"

"It is not here the ghost lamented."

"We have only its shadow among us," the Demon said.

"No," I said with regret, "I was looking for the real thing. Next dimension, huh? "

"Nay; beyond them," the Demon commiserated. "I fear, mortal, that what you truly seek is not here."

"And probably not anywhere," I sighed, except inside me after all.

"Or in Heaven," one of the monks spoke up. I frowned, looking up at him. "Thought you guys didn't believe in that state."

"It has many names," the monk explained.

"Look, I gave up on trying to find God a long time ago." The monk shook his head. "Foolish. You must seek while you live, if you would find Him after death."

But that had a false ring to it. "Next thing I know, you'll be telling me the Ultimate Buddha is in Heaven along with Jehovah."

"Nay," the monk contradicted. "They are Heaven, and they are one it."

"One what?" I asked, then felt a chill pass over my back and into my vitals. I tried to chase it by saying, "You would think that way," but I shivered and turned to the Demon. "I think maybe I'd better get out of here. I'm not ready for this."

"Will you ever be?" the cat mocked, but the ghost said, "He may be, if he never leaves off seeking."

"Yet for now, you have the right of it," the Demon told me. "Back to your Ordeal, mortal. Are you refreshed?"

"Enough to last," I told him. "Could you send me back to just before sunrise at the end of the fifth night after you found me?"

"Gladly," the Demon said. "Prepare yourself."

"Hey, just a minute!" I said. "I almost forgot. This other guy in that universe - the one that you said knew about you, too. Who is he? "

"He is Matthew Mantrell, Lord Wizard of Merovence. Do you wish to go to him?"

It was tempting - but there was Angelique, and the need to get her body back. "No," I said slowly, "I'm just glad to know he's alive and well."

"He is," the Demon assured me. "Now let us see to yourself. Lie back and relax, mortal."

I did, closing my eyes.

"Awake," the Demon's hum said right next to my ear. I opened my eyes and sat up - and realized I could sit up. Of course - I had spelled away the ropes. No reason to think they would have come back, was there?

"Thanks, Demon," I said. "I won't forget you for this." I could feel an impulse to laughter somewhere around me, and the Demon's voice hummed, "I am rewarded in your mere existence, mortal, so long as you seek to remain poised on the cusp of paradox. Farewell, for the sun is rising."

I looked toward the east just as the first ray pierced the lightened sky. "Good-bye, Demon," I said into the roseate glory of the new Chapter morning. "And thanks."