Multiverse: Exploring the Worlds of Poul Anderson Read online

  They set out, the reindeer pulling the wagon and its load, leaving Portolondon and humankind, making for the Outway and Troll Scarp, solitary and far distant against the always-darkening horizon. No sun this time of year; no daylight, no day. It was night all the time or maybe twilight for a little while each day, and the people who lived in Arctica soon got used to the idea. Behind them, the Gulf of Polaris glimmered green-gray under skies brightened marginally by two small moons brought close together in their present orbits, both dwarfed by the dazzle of Charlemagne. Lights from the city lent their smudged and diffuse glow, but it did not penetrate the darkness far beyond the city. The Outway was its own space and kept its own presence and did not suffer intrusions from men or the consequences of their inventions.

  “Better wrap up in this, Jimmy Cullen,” the little man said after a time. He held a long switch in one hand for urging on their wagon’s furry engine and he held the reins in the other, but he laid down the switch long enough to hand Jimmy a blanket. “It gets cold out here for those not born of the Outway, especially those come to us as you have, desperate and soul-bereft. Go on, now. Take it.”

  He did so, pulling it about him, altering it to give further warmth to Barraboo. She was beginning to stir and soon would cry. But he had nothing with which to feed her, neither food nor milk. He had love, but he knew you could not live on that alone or even survive on it. Ask Pearl. Tears flooded his eyes as he thought the name and the memories surfaced.

  “How do you know the way?” he asked Ben, anxious to deflect the consequences of his awakened feelings.

  “I just do,” the other answered, and said nothing more.

  “Are you one of them?” Jimmy asked, glancing over for a close look.

  Ben shook his head. “Not I. But I know of them, and I do what I can for them. I am a link in what has become a very long chain.”

  “Were you looking for me back at the station? You seemed quick enough to find me. I don’t look the sort that many would want to help. Only avoid. Yet you asked me right out. Do you know me? Have we met before and I’ve forgotten?”

  The old man laughed softly, not in a mean-spirited way, but gentle and kind. “I know you well. Not by name, but by look.”

  “An addict, you mean?”

  “A type, I mean.”

  “At the end of a rope. Lost to everything, including themselves. Wanderers in a world that wants nothing to do with them—only for them to go away and not come back. Rejects. Embarrassments.”

  Ben seemed to consider. “I would not use those words, Jimmy Cullen, although they are true enough in the world of humans. In your world, so many have no place. They are discarded and ignored and have no value, as you say. But how did they come to be that way? Have you asked yourself?”

  He could not answer right away because he wasn’t sure, couldn’t remember, so he said nothing. Under him, the wagon rocked about and rolled along, and the night was sweet smelling and deep. He was already in a different place, away from the things that had ground him under their collective boot and left him shattered. The urge to take something to ease the hurt of it had diminished, and he wondered suddenly why that was. By now, he should have been screaming for his drug. By now, he should have been sweating and shaking and clawing at his skin. Barraboo would be howling, and he would be unable to stop her from doing so because his all-encompassing need blinded him to hers.

  Something slid along the side of the wagon, a sheeting of dark mist, a skein of dust and shadows. He caught a glimpse of it and then it was gone, disappeared as quickly as water in dry earth. He blinked and looked out among the patches of firethorns and steelflowers, watched the shimmer of flitteries as they caught the light in small snatches of iridescence, smelled the brok and thought of how long it had been.

  “I was just a boy when they took me,” he said suddenly, keeping his voice low so that maybe only Ben could hear. “I was snatched away from my sleep out of an armed camp, right out of my mother’s tent where she slept close beside me, and not a single soul knew until the morrow. Dogs were drugged, robot guards blinded and alarms bypassed. I might have been left to my fate and forgotten if not for my mother. My Barbro. She would not give me up to Old Folk or anything of flesh and blood. She came for me, all steel and fire and determination, carried in a war machine piloted by a detective from Christmas Landing who believed in the Old Folk but wanted to better understand what they were.”

  He inhaled and exhaled slowly. “They took me back, but I never really returned, never came all the way back. My body was theirs to mould, to shape as they felt they should, but my mind was lost. I heard the stories. You were never the same once the Fey had taken you. You could never be again what you were before. Maybe so. I tried to find my way in my mother’s world, but couldn’t. I was an outcast even to myself. Sweet Barbro tried to help me, but she never understood. She still doesn’t. Drugs are an experience not so different from dreams. They take you somewhere you cannot otherwise be. They reshape your reality. When you need that to happen, when it’s all you can think about, sometimes drugs are the best you can do.”

  The old man said nothing.

  “She was Queen, then,” Jimmy Cullen said quietly. “I remember her.”

  “Was?” Ben asked sharply. “Is that what you think?”

  “I think I have to find out. I think I have to know if what was hers once still is.” He shook his head, clearing away a few more of the cobwebs that filled it. “I think I have to see if any of it can still be mine. And Barraboo’s.”

  “Hmmm,” the old man hummed, as if considering the possibility.

  The long switch touched the reindeer’s flank softly, and their speed increased.

  Barbro Engdahl Cullen pushed through the door to Chief Constable Dawson’s office, ignoring the commands of the deputy at the front desk who ordered her to stop and was attempting futilely to reinforce his words with gestures of displeasure. She was decided on this meeting, and no one was going to stop it from happening, least of all a mere functionary. If Sherrinford had been there, he would have been readily admitted. But she was held in less esteem, and Eric was beyond coming through himself.

  “Mrs. Cullen,” the Chief Constable greeted her, rising from behind the inadequate protection of his desk. “I thought we settled all this in our phone conversation. Apparently, I was mistaken. You will not take no for an answer, will you?”

  “I didn’t back then, and I certainly won’t now. Why don’t you just resign yourself to this meeting and we can get this business over with.”

  He had grown older, as had she, put on weight and added wrinkles, as she had not, but she would have known him even out of uniform. She was no stranger to him either; the years had not diminished his memory of when she had come to him for help when Jimmy was stolen and he had rejected her. That led her to Eric and the search and recovery of Jimmy and ultimately to the beginnings of what would become the second true love of her life. Dawson must have thought himself shuck of her for good after that, yet here she was again.

  “Back looking for your boy, you said.” He shook his head at her. “I thought we were done with all that. He’s grown now. I don’t have any authority to go out looking for him just because he’s wandered off again—even if it’s back up there in that wilderness where you and Sherrinford found him before. Why isn’t your husband out looking if you want him back?”

  “Eric is dead, Chief Constable. He died last year. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here, asking you.”

  Dawson mopped his brow with his hand, slid the hand down his face and let it drop to his lap. “I’m sorry about that, Mrs. Cullen. I didn’t know. I liked your husband. I admired his skill and his dedication to his work. But that doesn’t change things. I still can’t help you.”

  “You can’t or you won’t. He took my granddaughter. Little Barraboo. Not a year old. He left me a note so I wouldn’t worry. I can’t imagine what he was thinking. I want her back.”

  Dawson stared at her. “Where’s her mot
her?”

  “Dead. She was an addict, like my son. Both of them strung out all the time, five years of it. Maybe more. I can’t be certain. It caught up with her just like it’s going to catch up with him. Jimmy moved out and didn’t stay in touch. Eric tracked him down several times, but he refused to come home. He said he wanted to go back to the Fey. He said that was his real home, those were his real people. Eric tried to tell him why he was wrong, but Jimmy wouldn’t listen.”

  “Mrs. Cullen . . . ”

  “Let me finish.” She was a big woman, and she leaned forward to lend emphasis to her size and the strength of her determination. “My son was never the same after we brought him back. Oh, maybe for a short time, but not after that. The Fey changed him. They seduced him with their magic and they changed him. Once I thought he would be all right after I found him and took him home again. Now I don’t think so. I don’t think I can ever get him back. But I will not let the Old Folk have my granddaughter, too! I will not stand for that!”

  The Chief Constable shook his head. He was sweating, and he couldn’t seem to look at her. “The Old Folk are just legend. You know this. In spite of Jimmy and what happened back—”

  “Stop talking like that,” she interrupted, waving him off. “You don’t believe a word of it.”

  He stopped and looked up again. “What did the note say, Mrs. Cullen?”

  “That Barraboo’s mother was dead. No surprise in that. She was headed down that road long ago. They found her body two days after I made enough of a fuss about it they had to go looking. Jimmy’s note said he was going home and he was taking Barraboo with him.”

  “Well, then, couldn’t he have meant somewhere in Christmas Landing? Couldn’t he have been talking about somewhere other than out here? How would he even get this far if he was an addict? Where would he get the money? Mrs. Cullen, don’t you think it would be better just to wait awhile and see if he doesn’t come back on his own? Going over Troll Scarp and into the Outway isn’t something anyone wants to do.”

  She drew back from him, straightening herself. “This is twice you have refused to help me, Chief Constable. I don’t know why I bother asking.”

  Dawson held her gaze. “I don’t know why either, Mrs. Cullen.”

  She nodded. “Perhaps you know of someone I might hire? Not of Eric’s caliber, but with a need for money and a bit less concern about trespassing in the lands of the Old Folk?”

  He started to say he didn’t, but she could tell when he hesitated that he was thinking better of it.

  “I might know someone,” he said finally.

  When she left his office, she found a taxi and rode to the machine shop address he had given her, thinking through what she would say to Stip Quince. She could tell from the way Dawson gave out the information that this wasn’t someone you would go to unless you wanted results and didn’t care how you got them. Which was fine with her. She wasn’t going back into Outway country a young woman searching for her missing baby boy. She was going back a full-grown woman and a grandmother, no longer frightened by much of anything and determined she would not be tricked or intimidated by the Fey.

  She found herself humming the old song of Arvid the Ranger, recalling how she had sung it once for Sherrinford. It had a hold on her then, a grip that kept her wondering and doubting, a spell cast by words and music and her own superstitious nature. But that was all gone. The Fey were just an obstacle to be overcome. She had done it once with Eric; she could do it again with this man she was being sent to find.

  Even though the Queen of Air and Darkness herself was waiting.

  She regretted the thought the instant it was made. She wished she could take it back. She couldn’t explain it; it just felt instantly wrong that she had permitted it to surface, even in the privacy of her thoughts.

  Eric had once told her that the Old Folk had developed aspects of science different than those of humans, most particularly a command of telepathy born of a deeper understanding of their very different biological makeup. They might not have developed talents in chemistry and physics and mathematics as humans had, but what they had learned to do with telepathy far surpassed anything humans had achieved. Manipulation of human minds had allowed them to create a set of beliefs and superstitions that had helped keep the Old Folk safely isolated in the wilderness of their ancestral lands for centuries. It was only of late, and in part because of her deliberate intrusion, that this had changed and questions about their presence in the Outway had surfaced.

  Sherrinford had always believed those questions would be thoroughly examined once they returned with Jimmy and made their report. What he had missed seeing was the stubborn refusal by the larger part of Arctica’s inhabitants to want to challenge the old beliefs and superstitions. By now, with centuries gone, those beliefs and superstitions formed an integral part of their human makeup. It wasn’t necessarily so that men wanted to discard them in favor of rational thought. There is in all humans a need to believe in things that cannot be seen or understood, a need to embrace the possibility there are things larger and more powerful than they are so they can find a way to accept that when these things happen they do not need to make sense of them or explain them away.

  So it was that a general reluctance to look too closely into the possibility the Old Folk might be something other than what the legends said they were prevailed. Dawson sided with the majority; she could tell by his unwillingness to involve himself in her search for Jimmy and Barraboo. Sherrinford had once said that if she had looked closely at Dawson on the monitor during the long conversation the first time Jimmy went missing, she would have seen how afraid he was. Not much had changed. He believed in the Old Folk, Eric had insisted. You could see it in his eyes.

  If Sherrinford had been with her this time, as well, he would have seen it in Dawson’s eyes again.

  Other inhabitants of Arctica, particularly those in Portolondon and even more so those in the Outway, would have experienced that same fear. Leave well enough alone, they would insist. Let the Old Folk be.

  Well, she wasn’t going to do any such thing. She wasn’t afraid. She was angry.

  Stip Quince turned out to be big and burley and curt, disinterested in anything but the money she was offering and time he would have to expend to accomplish what she was asking. His price was dear, but he was willing enough to trespass into the Outway.

  “I’ve heard the stories, Mrs. Cullen,” he told her as they finalized their arrangements. “Bunch of nonsense. Tales of things that go bump in the night fabricated by the locals—people who’ve been swallowing that nonsense whole since they were babes. Stories get passed down from one generation to the next. Gives people something to do at night when there’s no video, no technology, nothing but blank walls and shadow shows to provide entertainment.”

  She pursed her lips. “I’ve seen them,” she said quietly. “They’re real enough.”

  He nodded. “So you’ve said. Didn’t scare you off, did they? Here you are, ready to stand up to them once more. Nothing to it. When we go into Troll Scarp, we’ll be going with armed men carrying weapons and riding in war machines. Whatever we come up against, we can disperse or eradicate. Same as you did before.”

  Folding his big hands on the top of the desk he had moved behind to write down her story, he leaned forward. “These are illiterate, uneducated, wild-eyed aborigines with a few cheap tricks at their disposal. Sure, it’s their land and they know it better than we do. But they can’t fight us and expect to win. They can’t rely on the sorts of sophisticated arms and varied skills we can bring to bear. In the end, they’ll turn and run and go back into hiding.”

  She believed him. The Old Folk were hopelessly outmatched against civilization no matter what they really were or how long they had occupied the Outway. They were Old Folk or Fey or Faerie kind, but ultimately they were barbarians unequipped to deal with civilization and the terrible strength its sciences would use against them. They were a remnant of a different time, and tha
t time was gone.

  She would have Barraboo and Jimmy back home within a week, and that would be the end it.

  Jimmy Cullen lurched awake as the wagon bounced through a deep rut and juddered to a stop. He blinked and glanced over at Ben. The little man still held the reins to the hauling beast, but had put down the switch and from somewhere produced a bottle filled with milk.

  “Give her this. She needs to eat.”

  Jimmy looked down at the blanket on his lap. Barraboo was gone.

  “Back there in the necessaries box,” the old man said. “I was worried you’d let her roll right off your lap after you fell asleep.”

  Jimmy reached back, found his daughter tucked away and squirming and brought her back into his lap, rewrapping her in the blanket. She was starting to fuss, but when he placed the bottle to her lips, nipple sliding into its accustomed place, she went quiet again.

  “Why are we stopped?” he asked.

  The old man pointed ahead. “Him.”

  The pooka flew out of the darkness in a rush of air and brightly colored feathers, gliding on widespread wings. Landing in front of the cart, he bounded swiftly to Jimmy’s side on claw-footed legs that were muscular and strong.

  “Ohoi, the boy who was a baby firstly returns anew!” he whistled. “Remember you Ayoch?”

  Jimmy nodded. “I do. Even now.”

  “’Twas a long time gone. But time can be caught up and made over. I see you brought a present for me?”

  He shook his head. “No, not for you. Not for anyone. I brought her to find a better life. Perhaps it will be your present to her.”

  Ayoch exchanged a glance with the driver. “Bold talk from a newly-come-back penitent. Are you intending to ask forgiveness of the Star Mother for bringing the wrath of your humankind upon the Fey? Or will you simply make your demands and hope we will forget about the before?”

  The dwarf shook his head. “Leave him be. He has much to work through and don’t need a pooka reminding him.”