Glory Road Read online

  “Yes, but prostitution has almost died out. Hell, I wouldn’t know how to go about finding a whorehouse even in an army town. I’m not saying that you don’t wind up in the hay. But it’s not commercialized. Star, even with an American girl who is well-known to be an easy make-out, if you offered her five bucks—or twenty—it’s ten to one she would slap your face.”

  “Then how is it done?”

  “You’re nice to her instead. Take her to dinner, maybe to a show. Buy her flowers, girls are suckers for flowers. Then approach the subject politely.”

  “Oscar, doesn’t this dinner and show, and possibly flowers, cost more than five dollars? Or even twenty? I understood that American prices were as high as French prices.”

  “Well, yes, but you can’t just tip your hat and expect a girl to throw herself on her back. A tightwad—”

  “I rest the case. All I was trying to show was that customs can be wildly different in different worlds.”

  “That’s true, even on Earth. But—”

  “Please, milord. I won’t argue the virtue of American women, nor was I criticizing. Had I been reared in America I think I would want at least an emerald bracelet rather than dinner and a show. But I was leading up to the subject of ‘natural law.’ Is not the invariability of natural law an unproved assumption? Even on Earth?”

  “Well—You haven’t stated it fairly. It’s an assumption, I suppose. But there has never been a case in which it failed to stand up.”

  “No black swans? Could it not be that an observer who saw an exception preferred not to believe his eyes? Just as you do not want to believe that Igli ate himself even though you, my Hero, forced him to? Never mind. Let’s leave Socrates to his Xanthippe. Natural law may be invariable throughout a universe—seems to be, in rigid universes. But it is certain that natural laws vary from universe to universe—and believe this you must, milord, else neither of us will live long!”

  I considered it. Damn it, where had Igli gone? “Most unsettling.”

  “No more unsettling, once you get used to it, than shifting languages and customs as you shift countries. How many chemical elements are there on Earth?”

  “Uh, ninety-two and a bunch of Johnny-Come-Latelies. A hundred and six or seven.”

  “Much the same here. Nevertheless a chemist from Earth would suffer some shocks. The elements aren’t quite the same, nor do they behave quite the same way. H-bombs won’t work here and dynamite won’t explode.”

  I said sharply, “Now wait! Are you telling me that electrons and protons aren’t the same here, to get down to basics?”

  She shrugged. “Perhaps, perhaps not. What is an electron but a mathematical concept? Have you tasted one lately? Or put salt on the tail of a wavicle? Does it matter?”

  “It damn well would matter. A man can starve as dead from lack of trace elements as from lack of bread.”

  “True. In some universes we humans must carry food if we visit them—which we sometimes must, if only to change trains. But here, and in each of the universes and countless planets where we humans live, you need not worry; local food will nourish you. Of course, if you lived here many years, then went back to Earth and died soon after and an autopsy were done with fussiest microanalysis, the analyst might not believe his results. But your stomach wouldn’t care.”

  I thought about this, my belly stuffed with wonderful food and the air around me sweet and good—certainly my body did not care if there were indeed the differences Star spoke of.

  Then I recalled one aspect of life in which little differences cause big differences. I asked Star about it.

  She looked blandly innocent. “Do you care, milord? You will be long gone before it matters to Doral. I thought your purpose these three days was simply to help me in my problem? With pleasure in your work, I realize—you threw yourself into the spirit of the occasion.”

  “Damn it, quit pulling my leg! I did it to help you. But a man can’t help wondering.”

  She slapped my thigh and laughed. “Oh, my very darling! Stop wondering; human races throughout the Universes can crossbreed. Some crosses fruit but seldom and some mule out. But this is not one of them. You will live on here, even if you never return. You’re not sterile; that was one of many things I checked when I examined your beautiful body in Nice. One is never sure how the dice will roll, but—I think the Doral will not be disappointed.”

  She leaned toward me. “Would you give your physician data more accurate than that which Jocko sang? I might offer a statistical probability. Or even a Sight.”

  “No, I would not! Nosy.”

  “It is a long nose, isn’t it? As you wish, milord. In a less personal vein the fact of crossbreeding among humans of different universes—and some animals such as dogs and cats—is a most interesting question. The only certainty is that human beings flourish only in those universes having chemistries so similar that elements that make up deoxyribonucleic acids are so alike as not to matter. As for the rest, every scholar has his theory. Some hold to a teleologic explanation, asserting that Man evolves alike in all essential particulars in every universe that can support him because of Divine Plan—or through blind necessity, depending on whether the scholar takes his religion straight or chases it with soda.

  “Some think that we evolved just once—or were created, as may be—and leaked across into other universes. Then they fight over which universe was the home of the race.”

  “How can there be any argument?” I objected. “Earth has fossil evidence covering the evolution of man. Other planets either have it or not, and that should settle it.”

  “Are you sure, milord? I thought that, on Earth, man’s family tree has as many dotted lines as there are bastards in European royal lines.”

  I shut up. I had simply read some popular books. Perhaps she was right; a race that could not agree as to who did what to whom in a war only twenty years back probably didn’t know what Alley Oop did to the upstairs maid a million years ago, when the evidence was only scattered bones. Hadn’t there been hoaxes? The Piltdown Man, or some such?

  Star went on, “Whatever the truth, there are leakages between worlds. On your own planet disappearances run to hundreds of thousands and not all are absconders or wife-deserters; see any police department’s files. One usual place is the battlefield. The strain becomes too great and a man slides through a hole he didn’t know was there and winds up ‘missing in action.’ Sometimes—not often—a man is seen to disappear. One of your American writers, Bierce or Pierce, got interested and collected such cases. He collected so many that he was collected, too. And your Earth experiences reverse leakage, the ‘Kaspar Hausers,’ persons from nowhere, speaking no known language and never able to account for themselves.”

  “Wait a minute? Why just people?”

  “I didn’t say ‘just people.’ Have you never heard of rains of frogs? Of stones? Of blood? Who questions a stray cat’s origin? Are all flying saucers optical illusions? I promise you they are not; some are poor lost astronauts trying to find their way home. My people use space travel very little, as faster-than-light is the readiest way to lose yourself among the Universes. We prefer the safer method of metaphysical geometries—or ‘magic’ in the vulgar speech.”

  Star looked thoughtful. “Milord, your Earth may be the home of mankind. Some scholars think so.”

  “Why?”

  “It touches so many other worlds. It’s the top of the list as a transfer point. If its people render it unfit for life—unlikely, but possible—it will disrupt traffic of a dozen universes. Earth has had its fairy rings, and Gates, and Bifrost Bridges for ages; that one we used in Nice was there before the Romans came.”

  “Star, how can you talk about points on Earth ‘touching’ other planets—for centuries on end? The Earth moves around the Sun at twenty miles a second or such, and spins on its axis, not to mention other motions that add up to an involved curve at unthinkable speed. So how can it ‘touch’ other worlds?”

  Agai
n we rode in silence. At last Star said, “My Hero, how long did it take you to learn calculus?”

  “Why, I haven’t learned it. I’ve studied it a couple of years.”

  “Can you tell me how a particle can be a wave?”

  “What? Star, that’s quantum mechanics, not calculus. I could give an explanation but it wouldn’t mean anything; I don’t have the math. An engineer doesn’t need it.”

  “It would be simplest,” she said diffidently, “to answer your question by saying ‘magic’ just as you answered mine with ‘quantum mechanics.’ But you don’t like that word, so all I can say is that after you study higher geometries, metaphysical and conjectural as well as topological and judicial—if you care to make such study—I will gladly answer. But you won’t need to ask.”

  (Ever been told: “Wait till you grow up, dear; then you will understand”? As a kid I didn’t like it from grownups; I liked it still less from a girl I was in love with when I was fully grown.)

  Star didn’t let me sulk; she shifted the talk. “Some crossbreedings are from neither accidental slippages nor planned travel. You’ve heard of incubi and succubi?”

  “Oh, sure. But I never bother my head with myths.”

  “Not myths, darling, no matter how often the legend has been used to explain embarrassing situations. Witches and warlocks are not always saints and some acquire a taste for rape. A person who has learned to open Gates can indulge such vice; he—or she—can sneak up on a sleeping person—maid, chaste wife, virgin boy—work his will and be long gone before cockcrow.” She shuddered. “Sin at its nastiest. If we catch them, we kill them. I’ve caught a few, I killed them. Sin at its worst, even if the victim learns to like it.” She shuddered again.

  “Star, what is your definition of ‘sin’?”

  “Can there be more than one? Sin is cruelty and injustice, all else is peccadillo. Oh, a sense of sin comes from violating the customs of your tribe. But breaking custom is not sin even when it feels so; sin is wronging another person.”

  “How about ‘sinning against God’?” I persisted.

  She looked at me sharply. “So again we shave the barber? First, milord, tell me what you mean by ‘God.’”

  “I just wanted to see if you would walk into it.”

  “I haven’t walked into that one in a mort of years. I’d as lief thrust with a bent wrist, or walk a pentacle in clothes. Speaking of pentacles, my Hero, our destination is not what it was three days ago. Now we go to a Gate I had not expected to use. More dangerous but it can’t be helped.”

  “My fault! I’m sorry, Star.”

  “My fault, milord. But not all loss. When we lost our luggage I was more worried than I dared show—even though I was never easy about carrying firearms through a world where they may not be used. But our foldbox carried much more than firearms, things we are vulnerable without. The time you spent in soothing the hurt to the Doral’s ladies I spent—in part—in wheedling the Doral for a new kit, almost everything heart could wish but firearms. Not all loss.”

  “We are going to another world now?”

  “Not later than tomorrow dawn, if we live.”

  “Damn it, Star, both you and Rufo talk as if each breath might be our last.”

  “As it might be.”

  “You’re not expecting an ambush now; we’re still on Doral land. But Rufo is as full of dire forebodings as a cheap melodrama. And you are almost as bad.”

  “I’m sorry. Rufo does fret—but he is a good man at your back when trouble starts. As for me, I have been trying to be fair, milord, to let you know what to expect.”

  “Instead you confuse me. Don’t you think it’s time you put your cards face up?”

  She looked troubled. “And if the Hanging Man is the first card turned?”

  “I don’t give a hoot! I can face trouble without fainting—”

  “I know you can, my champion.”

  “Thanks. But not knowing makes me edgy. So talk.”

  “I will answer any question, milord Oscar. I have always been willing to.”

  “But you know that I don’t know what questions to ask. Maybe a carrier pigeon doesn’t need to know what the war is about—but I feel like a sparrow in a badminton game. So start from the beginning.”

  “As you say, milord. About seven thousand years ago—” Star stopped. “Oscar, do you want to know—now all the interplay of politics of a myriad worlds and twenty universes over millennia in arriving at the present crisis? I’ll try if you say, but just to outline it would take more time than remains until we must pass through that Gate. You are my true champion; my life hangs on your courage and skill. Do you want the politics behind my present helpless, almost hopeless predicament—save for you! Or shall I concentrate on the tactical situation?”

  (Damn it! I did want the whole story.) “Let’s stick to the tactical situation. For now.”

  “I promise,” she said solemnly, “that if we live through it, you shall have every detail. The situation is this: I had intended us to cross Nevia by barge, then through the mountains to reach a Gate beyond the Eternal Peaks. That route is less risky but long.

  “But now we must hurry. We will turn off the road late this afternoon and pass through some wild country, and country still worse after dark. The Gate there we must reach before dawn; with luck we may sleep. I hope so, because this Gate takes us to another world at a much more dangerous exit.

  “Once there, in that world—Hokesh it is called, or Karth—in Karth-Hokesh we shall be close, too close, to a tall tower, mile high, and, if we win to it, our troubles start. In it is the Never-Born, the Eater of Souls.”

  “Star, are you trying to scare me?”

  “I would rather you were frightened now, if such is possible, than have you surprised later. My thought, milord, had been to advise you of each danger as we reached it, so that you could concentrate on one at a time. But you overruled me.”

  “Maybe you were right. Suppose you give me details on each as we come to it, just the outline now. So I’m to fight the Eater of Souls, am I? The name doesn’t scare me; if he tries to eat my soul, he’ll throw up. What do I fight him with? Spit?”

  “That is one way,” she said seriously, “but, with luck, we won’t fight him—it—at all. We want what it guards.”

  “And what is that?”

  “The Egg of the Phoenix.”

  “The Phoenix doesn’t lay eggs.”

  “I know, milord. That makes it uniquely valuable.”

  “But—”

  She hurried on. “That is its name. It is a small object, somewhat larger than an ostrich egg and black. If I do not capture it, many bad things will happen. Among them is a small one: I will die. I mention that because it may not seem small to you—my darling!—and it is easier to tell you that one truth than it is to explain the issues.”

  “Okay. We steal the Egg. Then what?”

  “Then we go home. To my home. After which you may return to yours. Or remain in mine. Or go where you list, through Twenty Universes and myriad worlds. Under any choice, whatever treasure you fancy is yours; you will have earned it and more…as well as my heartfelt thanks, milord Hero, and anything you ask of me.”

  (The biggest blank check ever written—If I could cash it.) “Star, you don’t seem to think we will live through it.”

  She took a deep breath. “Not likely, milord. I tell you truth. My blunder has forced on us a most desperate alternative.”

  “I see. Star, will you marry me? Today?”

  Then I said, “Easy there! Don’t fall!” She hadn’t been in danger of falling; the seat belt held her. But she sagged against it. I leaned over and put my arm around her shoulders. “Nothing to cry about. Just give me a yes or a no—and I fight for you anyway. Oh, I forgot. I love you. Anyhow I think it’s love. A funny, fluttery feeling whenever I look at you or think about you—which is mostly.”

  “I love you, milord,” she said huskily. “I have loved you since I first saw you. Yes, a
‘funny, fluttery feeling’ as if everything inside me were about to melt down.”

  “Well, not quite that,” I admitted. “But it’s probably opposite polarity for the same thing. Fluttery, anyhow. Chills and lightnings. How do we get married around here?”

  “But, milord—my love—you always astound me. I knew you loved me. I hoped that you would tell me before—well, in time. Let me hear it once. I did not expect you to offer to marry me!”

  “Why not? I’m a man, you’re a woman. It’s customary?”

  “But—oh, my love, I told you! It isn’t necessary to marry me. By your rules… I’m a bitch.”

  “Bitch, witch, Sing Along with Mitch! What the hell, honey? That was your word, not mine. You have about convinced me that the rules I was taught are barbarous and yours are the straight goods. Better blow your nose—here, want my hanky?”

  Star wiped her eyes and blew her nose but instead of the yes-darling I wanted to hear she sat up straight and did not smile. She said formally, “Milord Hero, had you not best sample the wine before you buy the barrel?”

  I pretended not to understand.

  “Please, milord love,” she insisted. “I mean it. There’s a grassy bit on your side of the road, just ahead. You can lead me to it this moment and willingly I will go.”

  I sat high and pretended to peer. “Looks like crab grass. Scratchy.”

  “Then p-p-pick your own grass! Milord… I am willing, and eager, and not uncomely—but you will learn that I am a Sunday painter compared with artists you will someday meet. I am a working woman. I haven’t been free to give the matter the dedicated study it deserves. Believe me! No, try me. You can’t know that you want to marry me.”

  “So you’re a cold and clumsy wench, eh?”

  “Well… I didn’t say that. I’m only entirely unskilled—and I do have enthusiasm.”

  “Yes, like your auntie with the cluttered bedroom—it runs in your family, so you said. Let it stand that I want to marry you in spite of your obvious faults.”

  “But—”

  “Star, you talk too much.”