I saw nothing to explain the brown smoke rings, nor all the racket we’d heard while we were coming down the hill.
The wood was perfectly still now. Not a bird had a word to say. Not a bug sang one bar to his ladylove. A few leaves did stir in the breeze but they kept their voices down. The only sounds to be heard were the distant, excited voices of vineyard workers who had decided they were far enough away to slow down and gossip.
When I stopped and counted them up in my head I doubted that there’d been more than a dozen workers, total.
We four froze with the moment, some listening, some sniffing. I turned slowly, trying to get a direction for the sense of presence I’d begun to feel.
I whispered to Singe, “The Casey creature is here in the grove somewhere. Can you scent him?”
“The odors here are very strange, Garrett. I am confused. I do scent something that might be Casey but I cannot locate him.”
A breeze stirred the leaves and branches. My eye kept going to an oddity of shadow that didn’t stir with everything else. I examined it from the corners of my eyes. I squinted, right and left and direct. I moved several times so I could try everything from a variety of angles. Several times the dance of bright sunlight and deep leaf shadow made me think that I had glimpsed something that might have been Kayne Prose crumpled up beside a stump, trapped inside something like a heat shimmer. When I concentrated I discovered a shadow being cast onto the ground by something not apparent to the naked eye.
I looked left and right. Nothing told me why the vineyard hands had run for it. Nothing told me where Playmate might be now. Nothing indicated the current whereabouts of the three silver elves not sprawled underneath their silvery discus. Nothing told me much of anything.
I drifted toward the shadow that shouldn’t have been, beckoning Marsha to follow, laying a finger to my lips. I got a few more glimpses of Kayne Prose. She didn’t appear to be awake. The invisibility spell keeping her unseen was sputtering and maybe needed a little punching up from somebody who’d had enough schooling to know what they were doing.
The spell did a whole lot of nothing to fool my sense of touch.
I got Marsha down on his knees, guided his hands. “That’s his head. You hang on in case he wakes up. If he does, let him know who’s in control. Without killing him, if possible.”
“Gotcha.”
I began the task of frisking and disrobing a body I couldn’t see. The stripping part didn’t go well at all.
A totally bedraggled imitation Kayne Prose materialized suddenly. In the same moment Singe said, “Gleep! Where did Garrett go?”
Inasmuch as I had not gone anywhere I gazed with suspicion at the small gray fetish I’d just taken off Casey. “Singe. Come over here.” When she arrived I put the device into her paw. She vanished. I assume I reappeared. “Now you’re invisible. Hang on to that. It might come in handy.”
“Nobody can see me? Whoo! Ha-ha! What I could do with this!”
“What couldn’t we all do? Why don’t you sneak over there and see if Saucerhead is still breathing?” I had a recollection of having turned up horizontal myself a few times after running into these elves. Only they hadn’t knocked themselves out, too, those times.
I couldn’t see Singe but she did still cast some shadow when she stepped into the light. She said, “Mr. Playmate must have climbed up the ladder.”
“Singe! Don’t go in there!”
My last two words even I couldn’t hear over the Crump! as a sudden ring of brown smoke blew down off the bottom of the discus. The smoke hit the ground, ricocheted back upward, into the sky. It seemed much less substantial than had the earlier clouds.
“Singe? You all right?”
A ratlike squeak resolved itself into, “Garrett? Can you hear me? I cannot hear right now. But otherwise I am all right. I am going to finish climbing the ladder now.”
“You damned fool! That’s what just —”
“I found Mr. Playmate. He is right inside here. Out cold. Lying on a metal floor with two more elves. One has a broken arm. At least it is bent the wrong way.”
Meanwhile, on the ground, I was continuing to make sure that Casey and the other unconscious elf wouldn’t be able to go anywhere when they woke up. “Let’s see if we can’t get this costume off this one.” I’d given up trying to strip Casey. And to Singe, “That’s a good job, Singe. Don’t go wandering around in there. Singe?”
She didn’t respond.
The girl was getting a little too sure of herself. “Would one of you guys reach up in there and drag Playmate out?”
Doris had taken over trying to get Casey’s silver suit off him so Marsha crawled under the discus. It was a tight fit. He ended up twisting himself around so he was seated on the grass, his head and shoulders inside the opening. “Gosh, Garrett, it’s weird in here.” A moment later he dropped an elf.
“Hey! You damned near hit me with that.” I was having no luck stripping the elf who had fallen with Saucerhead. The new arrival didn’t look like he’d be any easier.
“Here comes the one with the broken arm. You might want to take him so he don’t get hurt any worse.”
I jumped up just in time to grab the body Marsha handed down.
The elf weighed hardly anything at all.
“Hey, Garrett! Look at this.”
I turned. Doris was standing up, his top half up in the foliage. He seemed to be looking back up the hill that we had descended to get to this adventure. I shed my burden, skipped a dozen yards to a point where I could see the hillside myself.
I thought the vineyard workers would be up to something. But they were just making tracks.
Instead, Dojango was in deep sludge. But he hadn’t noticed yet.
46
It was kind of funny, actually, because he didn’t see it coming until after Doris and I began watching. He was, probably, just sitting there throwing pebbles at grasshoppers and congratulating himself on having gotten out of all the work when he spotted the glowing balls. By that time they’d bracketed him and were descending.
Doris said, “Maybe he didn’t make up all that shit about them pulling him inside and doing something to him. They sure didn’t have no trouble finding him again, did they? Even after we ditched that cart and all that magical stuff.”
“An excellent observation, brother.” I watched Dojango jump up, try to run in several directions, all of which turned out to be blocked as soon as he chose them. He never stopped trying though, like a squirrel in a box trap. While prancing on stones because his tender feet were bare.
I noted that the vineyard workers were trying to make themselves seem scarce while they watched, too.
Once the balls of light were on the ground they faded to become three eggs of lead-gray metal with little in the way of exterior features.
I said, “We can probably expect their company in a few minutes. We’d better roll up our sleeves and get ready.” Playmate came flopping down out of the discus. Marsha started dragging him away. I said, “Hide all these people in the woods. Under the brush, maybe. Then get yourselves out of sight. Where is that girl?” I hopped over the foot of the ladder. “Singe!”
Singe didn’t respond.
I said, “On second thought, leave Saucerhead and Playmate lying out in the open. This guy, too.” I used a toe to nudge the silver elf lying nearest the ladder. “That’ll give them something to focus on. So they’ll maybe overlook the rest of us. You guys hide. Take whatever steps seem appropriate.”
Gritting my teeth, I reached out and touched the metal ladder. Quick and cautious, using just the tip of one finger.
Nothing happened.
Not even a hint of brown smoke.
47
The ladder took me up into a small metal room that was maybe ten feet across. Its ceiling was five feet high. I had to move in a stoop that started my back aching in moments. At its extremities the room’s floor conformed to the external curve of the discus. The room itself seemed suitable onl
y for storage.
“Singe?”
My voice sounded strange in that place.
Singe didn’t answer me.
“Don’t be playing games just because you’re invisible.”
Still no answer.
The back side of the ladder went on up to another level. I swung around there, looked up.
There did seem to be an opening — which was closed. Mostly closed. A bit of fabric had gotten caught in a gap where the closure abutted the head of the ladder. The lighting was poor but the fabric resembled that of Singe’s shirt.
I pushed. Nothing gave but the muscles in my back. I tried again, twisting. The closure slid sideways an inch. I thought I had it now. I pushed and twisted some more. The crack widened a few more inches, then wouldn’t respond to any effort I made.
I tried to look through the crack. I couldn’t see anything but nothing. I followed up by snaking a cautious hand in to feel around. Nobody stomped on my fingers. It’s a wonderful life when the highlight of your working day is that nobody stomped on your fingers.
I felt around some more. It seemed that the main reason the entry wouldn’t open any farther was that Singe was lying on it. Getting her off proved to be a challenge. But I was up to it. I was a trained, veteran Royal Marine.
Eventually I slithered through the gap. Singe was lying in plain sight, mostly on another metal floor like the one below. This room was perfectly round, with another ceiling that had to be uncomfortably low even for the elves who used it. One of those was slumped in one of four chairs gracing the room. The chairs were all fixed to the floor.
The wonders of that round room were too numerous to recount. I think I was too numb to recognize a lot of them as anything special. There seemed to be thousands of little glowing lights, for example. Some were green or red, or yellow or purple or even white. Some kept flashing on and off. Most seemed content just to be there, showing themselves.
I’ve seen some wild sorcery in my day, including the kind that melts mountains. Yet I was more impressed with this vision than I’d been with anything I’d seen before. The numbers were what did it.
Then there were windows something like the one at Casey’s, most of them more nearly horizontal than vertical. But the really eye-popping thing, the overwhelming thing, was the outer wall, all the way around the room.
It was like that was missing, not there at all until you touched it. The woods were visible there pretty much as I would’ve seen them had I been standing on a fifteen-foot-high platform. I was seeing the world from the altitude that Doris and Marsha saw it.
I couldn’t hear anything, though.
I checked Singe’s pulse. She’d be all right. I checked the elf. Somebody had slugged this one from behind. I’d bet on any invisible ratgirl. I couldn’t find a pulse in any of the usual places but he was twitching already. I got him plucked of his possessions and tied up with odds and ends. Just in time.
And just in time for the arrival of the three glowing balls. Those touched down carefully after a wary approach.
When he saw that happening, my captive elf began to kick and struggle. He wasn’t pleased. I felt an inarticulate mental pressure but he never said an actual word.
I shut the door in the floor and parked both Singe and the elf atop it. When he tried to move I admonished him gently with a toe. He learned faster than a pup.
I looked outward again.
The three glowing objects gradually stopped doing that. They turned out to be dull gray lopsided metal eggs not more than ten feet tall, the fat half of each egg downward. Each stood on three metal legs as skinny as broom handles.
Nothing happened for a while. Then, as an opening began to appear in the side of one of the gray eggs, Doris came bounding out of the woods and dealt that very egg a mighty overhand smack with his club. The blow left a sizable dent.
Then there was a flash. And Doris staggered away, not knocked down but not real sure where he was anymore. A vaguely feminine silver elf dropped a ladder from the assaulted egg and scrambled down to the ground. She seemed to be seeing the fact but didn’t want to believe that Doris hadn’t been destroyed by the flash.
I got all that from feelings within me and from elven body language that probably meant nothing of the sort because the creature wasn’t human.
It hit the ground running toward Doris, in a truly foul mood. The groll himself had gotten lost in the woods. He was blundering around in confusion.
The other two silver elves left their eggs. They showed hints of femininity, too. From the remove at which I watched I couldn’t be completely sure, however. Though there did seem to be minor physical differences from the other elves, nothing was absolutely convincing. Maybe if you were a silver elf you could tell. Kind of the way slugs can tell the boys from the girls.
Plainly, they didn’t label themselves the way humans do, sexually or by pinpointing weirdness, physical disparity, or attractiveness.
Never mind. I don’t need to get my ulcers burning about human nature. I’m all growed up now, Maw. I know we ain’t gonna get nowhere wishin’ an’ hopin’. People are too damned stubborn.
Speaking of stubborn. Here came Marsha, half the size of a house, crawling on his belly, sneaking up on the lead egg only abandoned a moment earlier by a silver elf with cute little crabapple breasts. Marsha had learned something while watching his brother precipitate attack.
When he was close enough Marsha reached out and, with a sideways swipe of his club, swatted one of the egg’s legs out from under it.
Which didn’t turn out to be quite as clever as I’d thought before he did it.
When the egg fell it tipped straight toward him. He had to scramble to get out of the way. And even then he wasn’t safe.
The elves decided to chase him.
The violence of the egg’s fall shook the discus. For a second I was afraid I was going down, too.
The fallen egg began to glow in a patch on its bottom. Then it started sliding around drunkenly, darting and stopping like a water bug, spinning, tearing up trees. It knocked over the only uninjured egg, struck the discus a ferocious glancing blow, and panicked the new arrivals. They didn’t know which way to run. Finally, the egg blistered off in a straight line, ripped through the pond and the woods beyond, then plowed a deep furrow through a vineyard almost all the way to the top of the slope before it came to rest. At that point it seemed both to melt and to sink slowly into the earth.
Marsha had to be amazed by what he’d accomplished.
The silver elves were amazed, too. And distraught in the extreme.
I was now reasonably confident that they did communicate the way the Dead Man does. I couldn’t pick out any words but the atmosphere was pregnant with emotion. There was a lot of blaming and finger-pointing going on, driven by a terror of being marooned. That fear became a notch more intense when the three examined their surviving egg and discovered that Doris’s ill-advised attack had crippled it somehow.
“Uh-oh.”
The three all stared at the disk like it might be their salvation. After a brief commune they all produced a variety of gray fetishes and began poking at them with long, skinny, nailless fingers. One of the little girls came forward, toward me, passing out of view beneath my feet. Two minutes later there was a whining noise from the area where Singe and the captive elf lay sprawled.
I scooted over there. The door in the floor was trying to move. The weight piled on it kept it from doing so. I sensed a considerable frustration down below. That was one — maybe — lady who didn’t think things ought to be going this way. A — maybe — woman whose day had been on the brink of triumph, but which had turned to shit in her hands in a matter of minutes.
“Been there, sweetheart,” I muttered. I began to look around, seeking something identifiable as a nonlethal weapon. I didn’t want to hurt anybody if I really was dealing with women. Possibly the most bizarre aspect of this business so far was the fact that no one had gotten killed. We had one elf with a broke
n arm and we had me with a bumper crop of aches and bruises — acquired from ratpeople not directly involved in the case — but otherwise the whole thing was almost civilized. And no silver elf had yet done anyone a direct physical injury.
I didn’t find anything that could be used as a weapon. Maybe I could rip an arm off the elf I did have and use it to harvest the new crop. I did retain plenty of pieces of steel in a variety of shapes and sizes, all with very sharp edges, should the situation grow hair, though.
Even so, these weird people didn’t seem to be impressed by weapons. Which left me wondering just how bright they could be.
The elf downstairs tried to get the floor door open again. I sat down nearby, ready to crack her knuckles with the butt of a knife if she stuck a hand through the way I had. I’m not always a perfect gentleman.
Some of the little flashy lights expired suddenly. Outside, the most voluptuous elf began to jump up and down. Evidently she’d solved some puzzle and was totally excited. She didn’t jiggle much, though.
The other elf looked over her shoulder. Clearly, she disapproved of her sidekick’s demonstration but was pleased with their results. Her daddy longlegs fingers began to prance across another of those gray fetish things.
More lights went out. There was a declining whine, fading fast, never noticed until it went.
“I don’t think that’s a good sign,” I told myself.
Still more lights went out.
“Definitely not a good sign.”
Up on the see-through wall — which I just now noticed had a curved shape in the vertical dimension that allowed it to show a lot more than a flat window would — I saw a large piece of deadwood come arcing out of the woods, spinning end for end horizontally. It was a log I would’ve had trouble lifting.
It got both silver elves.
I felt their rush of pain inside my head.
48
The elf downstairs made a run for it. She dropped out the bottom of the disk and headed up the path already blazed by the self-immolating egg. Marsha didn’t have any luck catching her. I didn’t let it worry me. She was completely weird and doubtless had no clue how to get by in the country, without help from her strange, sorcerous toys. She should not be hard to track. Just follow the commotion she caused.