Multiverse: Exploring the Worlds of Poul Anderson Read online

  She shrugged. “There’s always a gimmick, dealing with the deities in this region of the hell universe. We’ll just have to see how it works out.”

  Since I didn’t have a better plan, I nodded. “Where’s the first test?”

  “From what I gather, as soon as we leave this edifice.”

  That test turned out to be a giant jaguar, the size of a big tiger. Piece of cake, even though I was outweighed by at least three hundred pounds.

  It’s not so much that dromaeosaurids are intrinsically more ferocious than modern predators—although they probably are. But the biggest factor is brains. A jaguar, even a giant one in Hell, is no smarter than any big cat. Even without a human intelligence riding piggyback, any dromaeosaurid can easily equal it. When you add the human intelligence, even as dimmed as it invariably is in were form, it’s just no contest.

  Except for bears, modern predators almost exclusively use their teeth as their killing tools. Their claws and talons are a means to hold prey, not weapons. So I knew the jaguar wouldn’t be expecting me to shift to the side and disembowel it with one kick as it leapt at me. In Deinonychus form, the second toes on my rear feet have large sickle claws that will cut through almost anything short of thick metal or hardwood.

  Normally, I would have just let the jaguar bleed out. Why take any risks at all? But since I figured time was pressing and had no idea what the rules of the test might be, I finished it off quickly with a bite to the neck. A Deinonychus has a bite force that’s even greater than a hyena’s, and almost equals that of a modern alligator of equal size. One bite was enough.

  The next test required us to enter another stone edifice. Once inside, we found ourselves in a large chamber full of sharp obsidian blades. The blades were round and about the size of dinner plates.

  “Oh, swell,” said Sophia. “The House of Razors.”

  As soon as we entered, the blades lifted off the ground and started humming. Then, a few seconds later, began a complex series of motions that I soon realized constituted an impenetrable barrier if you wanted to get through them. It was like a moving version of the laser beam networks that are used in some security systems.

  There was another door visible at the far end of the chamber. The nature of this test was depressingly clear.

  While I’d been studying the pattern of the blades’ movements, Sophia had gotten that now-familiar intent look on her face. I only half-noticed, though, until she nudged me with her elbow.

  “I think I can talk our way through them,” she said.

  My contribution was: “Huh?”

  But, sure enough, she started humming herself and before you knew it the blade pattern shifted to leave a narrow corridor in the middle. Sophia immediately hurried through, not quite running. After taking a deep breath, I followed.

  Worked like a charm.

  The next test went by the name of Cold House. The one after that, Bat House.

  The first was full of hail the size of golf balls, freezing rain and winds just barely this side of hurricane force. That was purely a matter of endurance. The second one was full of—what else?—bats. Not fruit-eating bats, either. Vampire bats.

  Wannabe vampires, I should say. Sophia started a godawful caterwauling that she told me later was the mating calls of lamias. That seemed to confuse the bats mightily. It would have scrambled my wits as well except that I shifted into were form. Theropods react to horrible noises about the same way they react to horrible smells: the blithe indifference that generally goes along with being on top of the food chain.

  When we emerged from the Bat House, we looked around.

  Nothing, beyond a lot of trees crowded around the small clearing where the stone edifice was situated.

  “Those rotten bastards,” I grumbled. “We passed four tests. Boatright and his partners add up to four. So where are they?”

  Sophia pointed to a tree off to our left. “Well, there’s one of them. Part of one, I should say.”

  I followed her finger. There was a human head, perched in a fork of the tree about ten feet off the ground. A severed human head, to be precise.

  “I think that’s Boatright himself,” I said. “Judging by the photos we had.”

  We went over to the tree. Even in human form, it wasn’t hard for me to get up into the tree high enough to haul down the head.

  “Yup, that’s Boatright. I wonder where the rest of him is?”

  Sophia spotted a trail leading out of the clearing. “Let’s try that way.”

  That way led to the House of Fire, followed by the House of Snakes. Along the way, we picked up the head of one of Boatright’s partners, the left foot of another and the upper body of a third. (They didn’t belong to Boatright. Wrong size and in the case of the foot, wrong color.)

  “This sucks,” I said. “The Lords of Xibalba are going to work us to death.”

  Wearily, Sophia nodded. We were both a lot worse off than we’d been at the start. Leaving aside exhaustion, we’d picked up enough bruises and minor cuts to make us look like extras in a zombie movie. Judging from the number of body parts we’d collected so far, we weren’t more than halfway there. I didn’t think we could last long enough to finish. Not doing it this way.

  I said as much. Sophia grimaced. “I don’t disagree, but what’s the alternative?”

  “We need to take a fifteen-minute break anyway. Let me think about it while we’re resting. There’s got to be something.”

  It took me ten minutes to figure it out. Three minutes to explain the plan to Sophia. Five minutes to quell her doubts and objections.

  Eighteen minutes all told, three minutes over my self-imposed time limit. Sue me. Watches don’t work right in Hell anyway.

  4

  When we re-entered the first of the stone buildings—Greasy Grimy Godlet Guts House, I called it; 4-G for short—the Lords of Xibalba immediately started gibbering at us. They sounded angry to me; but then, they always sounded angry to me.

  Sophia gibbered right back at them, and there was no doubt at all that her tone was hostile. Even the lords seemed to draw back a little from the fury in her voice.

  “Guess I told them,” she said with self-satisfaction, after her tirade wound down. She didn’t bother to translate because I already knew the gist of what she’d been saying. It was my plan, after all.

  You lousy bums are a bunch of cheats and chiselers and think you’re pulling a fast one, but you just wait and see. You’ll get your comeuppance. First, though, I have to sacrifice my loyal minion to regain my strength. Then I’ll bring him back to life as good as new—and you just watch what happens next!

  That was about the gist of it. Add maybe a thousand Xibalba equivalents of Anglo-Saxon four-letter words.

  As soon as she was done, she pulled out her machete. I flopped to the ground and rolled over on my back. Playing the part of a loyal minion to perfection, if I say so myself.

  Sophia looked down at me, her face tight with anxiety. She was definitely paler than usual, too. It was obvious despite her complexion.

  I winked at her. “Relax. Pretend we’re on our first date and I just made the crudest, grossest and most male chauvinist remark you ever heard. Hell, anyone ever heard.”

  That made her grin. That same sly grin I was getting really very fond of.

  I held up the flash, and did the transformation. Once in were form, I did my best to stay on my back. I couldn’t manage that very well, since the anatomy of a Deinonychus really isn’t suited to a supine posture. But I got close enough for our purposes.

  The machete came up. The machete came down. Right into my belly.

  It hurt like you wouldn’t believe. And I didn’t stint on the howling and shrieking because that was pretty much de rigeur in this crowd.

  Sophia must have been a butcher in a previous incarnation. Either that or—probably more likely—she just had a will of iron. It didn’t take her more than a half a minute to hack her way into my abdomen, do the needed quick and crude surgery, a
nd haul out a section of my intestines.

  In dramatic terms, this would have worked better if she’d cut into my chest and taken out my heart. The problem is that therianthropes in beast form are more vulnerable than most people think. You don’t need a silver bullet or blade to kill a were, it just makes things a lot easier and less chancy because you’ve got a metabolic poison working for you at the same time as whatever physical damage you’ve done. But enough physical damage in the right place will do the trick all by itself. Silver be damned. If you can stop a vital organ like a heart, a were will die.

  But guts don’t fall into that category. My intestinal tract was already healing. As long as I didn’t transform back into human form until it was done, I’d survive. The process was very painful, but it really wasn’t any more dangerous for me than a root canal.

  I didn’t think the Lords of Xibalba would know that, however. As deities went, these were some real lowbrows.

  Sophia held the intestines high in her left hand, tilted her head, and squeezed some of the blood into her mouth. I don’t think she hesitated more than a split-second, if she hesitated at all. Even in my pain and dizziness I was impressed.

  That done, she cast the piece of gut aside as if it were so much trash and sprang to her feet. Before we’d entered the 4-G House, Sophia had taken a couple of the emergency stimulant pills she’d had in her supply kit. The chemicals would wear out in a few hours, at which point she’d be completely exhausted. But for those few hours, the pills gave her an enormous amount of energy.

  It took about ten minutes for the effects to kick in. Right about now, in other words.

  Oh, she was leaping and springing all over the place, gibbering with zeal and glee. To all outward appearances, a woman reborn. True, if you looked closely you’d still spot the bruises. But we’d figured the Lords of Xibalba wouldn’t notice them at all. Why would something that looked like a chunk of shredded meat left out in the sun too long even think about a measly little bruise?

  Me? I was already healed. The truth is, if I hadn’t still been putting on the act of being at death’s door, I’d have already been up and moving about in human form.

  Eventually, Sophia left off her capering and came over to me. Then, she started waving the still-bloody machete around and chanting what sounded like really serious incantations. I found out later they were actually curry recipes, spoken in the Caribbean Hindi dialect found in Suriname and Trinidad.

  When she came to the climactic finale of her peroration, she spread her hands wide and shouted “Arise, reborn!” in standard English. Then, for good measure, repeated it in Xibalba gibberish.

  My cue. I rolled up onto my paws, Sophia used the flash, and a few seconds later I was back on my feet as a human being. To all outward appearances, completely unharmed.

  Sophia started gibbering again. She’d now be telling them how we were going to charge back outside, knock down whatever other pitiful tests they had worked out for us, gather up the human parts we’d come for—boy oh boy are you guys screwed—and then come back and deal with them, dirty lousy conniving stinky cheaters that they were.

  There was silence for a moment, when she finished. This was the critical moment. Would they fall for it . . . ? Or would they call our bluff?

  If the latter, we’d have no choice but to return to our own universe with our mission unaccomplished. Or only partly accomplished, at best. We were simply too beat up to keep going for much longer. Being a therianthrope, I’ve got a lot more stamina than most people. But there are limits, even for weres. And Sophia would be completely out of gas, once the stimulants wore off.

  I didn’t think they’d be very smart, though, gods or not. You have to figure that a deity who embodies ulcers just isn’t going to measure up intellectually against a god or goddess of wisdom. Or a reasonably bright twelve-year-old kid, for that matter.

  And this was a mythos that took blood magic more seriously than any other the human race has ever produced. The thought of being completely revitalized by blood sacrifice would be incredibly attractive, even to godlings.

  They started gibbering at Sophia again. She gibbered back, making a big show of appearing reluctant and hesitant. Their gibbering got more and more animated until they sounded downright frantic.

  Finally, bowing her head, Sophia yielded to their demands. She pointed to the lord on the far left of the group and motioned it into the center of the chamber. The creature—this one was the god of lice, I think—squirmed and oozed its way forward.

  Once it arrived in position, Sophia wagged her finger at it and gibbered sternly. She’d be telling the critter—and all the others listening—that it couldn’t expect as quick a recovery as her loyal minion had made. Being as I was accustomed to the process and they weren’t.

  Gibber, gibber, gibber. The machete came up, came down. Since she had no idea which portion of the creature’s horrid body held critical parts and which didn’t, she just sawed away merrily once she got inside. After a minute or so, she hauled out a quivering chunk of who-knows-what-and-I-don’t-want-to-know, and held it over the god’s analog to a mouth. There was a bit of guesswork there too, but it didn’t really matter because it was pretty obvious that the monster was already dead or as close to it as you could ask for.

  Still, good theater is good theater. She took the time to squeeze out some blood—blood analog, rather; don’t ask—into the gaping orifice before she cast it aside and summoned another of the lords to come forth.

  Which, it did. Eagerly, in fact. She repeated the same process, again and again and again, allowing for the variations needed because no two Lords of Xibalba had the same form or anatomy.

  It was a good thing she was on stimulants. That was more hacking and hewing of flesh—flesh analog, rather; really don’t ask—than a meatpacker did in a full day’s work.

  Believe it or not, the Lords didn’t get suspicious until there were only two left. But Sophia managed to sweet-talk—okay, sweet-gibber—one of them into undergoing the “revitalization” process. The one left finally realized that something was amiss and started putting up a fight. But this one was apparently the god of athlete’s foot. A puny critter, when all was said and done. Measured, at least, by the standards of a two-hundred-and-forty-pound Deinonychus.

  But I didn’t eat the organs. Organ analogs, rather. Really really really don’t ask. Even theropods have limits.

  So ended the Lords of Xibalba. For a time, anyway. Given the underlying premises of this region of Hell, they’d almost certainly come back eventually. Reborn out of pain and suffering, so to speak. But that would take quite a while; far more time than we’d need to find and collect all the body parts we needed to bring back.

  Then, we finally got a break. Within half an hour we came across the rest of Rick Boatright’s body. It was wandering around the area with a gourd where the head used to be.

  The gourd had facial features painted on. Someone, presumably a Lord of Xibalba or one of their agents, had even carved out a rough mouth.

  The thing could talk, after a fashion. I couldn’t understand a word it was saying, but Sophia got that look of intense concentration again and we were off to the races.

  Boatright—or should I say, Boatright-analog?—led us to the rest of his party. Their pieces, rather. Eventually, we collected them all and brought them back to the clearing in front of the 4-G House.

  Unfortunately, for all her quasi-magical linguistic powers, Sophia wasn’t an actual witch. If she had been, she could probably have figured out a way to return to our own universe from where we were. As it was, neither of us knew any better way than to return to our arrival locus. The State Department’s witches would be keeping watch at that location and would be ready to draw us back into our own universe.

  That left the problem of how to haul the stuff there. Whole or in pieces, four human bodies still weigh the better part of half a ton. If it were absolutely necessary, I was strong enough that I could probably carry it all back to our
arrival spot. But I sure didn’t want to.

  Fortunately, there was an obvious alternative. We had the makings for a travois and the dumb beast to haul it.

  Rick Boatright. His body hadn’t been harmed and with a gourd for a head, he wasn’t likely to argue his way out the task.

  He didn’t even try. He just picked up the travois handles, lowered his gourd, and set off after us.

  Along the way, we stopped at the pit to pick up Sophia’s sidekick. By then, Ingemar had drunk all but a handful of the Four Hundred Boys under the table. (Figuratively speaking. They’d actually been drinking from troughs made out of—never mind. Don’t ask.)

  I wasn’t surprised. Despite the nickname, “black elves” are actually a variety of dwarves. No one in their right mind gets into drinking contests with dwarves.

  5

  It was slow going, of course. That would have been true over the best ground, much less this muck. But eventually we got there, the State Department’s witches were indeed keeping a watch, and it wasn’t long before we found ourselves back where we’d started.

  “Oh, yuck!” screeched one of the witches, scurrying away from the travois.

  Which . . . was a real mess. That part of the hell universe took death and dismemberment in stride, so to speak. That’s the reason you could plant a gourd on the shoulders of a decapitated man, paint crude facial features on it, and expect it to walk around and even talk after a fashion.

  But once we arrived back home, the conditions of our universe took over. The results were . . .

  Unfortunate. Let’s put it that way.

  The first thing that happened was that the gourd rolled off Boatright’s shoulders and Boatright’s body collapsed to the floor. The gourd wound up underneath one of the chairs against the far wall and Boatright’s body started spreading across the floor.