Multiverse: Exploring the Worlds of Poul Anderson

  “By Dunsany’s Jodphurs, are you even paying attention, Pogocashman? This isn’t your world and that isn’t your moon—in fact, it’s not even a real moon, it’s a medieval moon filtered through at least two or three different storytellers. It’s probably made of some kind of cheese. No, I don’t mean that, and don’t you dare ask me the question I can see forming even now.”

  Pogo grunted his disappointment. “So?”

  “This religious thing truly worries me. Anderson’s story-structure allows you some leeway to make mistakes, but they were expecting someone with an elementary knowledge of things like history and science that you don’t seem to have.”

  “I’m doing all right so far . . . !”

  The dwarf waved his hand. “Yes, yes. But you’re going to have to talk to the saints about your love of Christ and your holy vows as a knight before they help you. How are you going to get through that with . . . what did you call it? Guidelines for Retail Management?”

  “Well, then tell me what to say!”

  “You don’t understand.” The dwarf was sitting on his own bed now, his feet dangling well above the stone floor. “I studied story construction. My background is in themes and influences, in the sometimes very thin line between homage and plagiarism. Religious instruction is not my field!”

  “Okay, yeah. That’s kind of a drag.” But Pogo was too tired and too full of good food to worry about it. He only wanted to sleep. “Don’t sweat it, little dude. I’ll figure out something to tell them tomorrow.”

  “You don’t ‘figure out’ how to talk to the saints about religion,” said Quidprobe in the helpless tone of a veterinarian trying to get a particularly stupid pit bull to let go of his arm. “These are the founding fathers and mothers of the Christian religion. It’s all they think about!”

  But Pogo Cashman had shut his eyes.

  Somehow, though, despite the great and comfortable weariness that it was his greatest wish to surrender to, Pogo couldn’t fall asleep. The idea that he would have to pay for this hospitality by answering questions about something he knew next to nothing about was beginning to trouble him, too. He doubted they would consider the story of his dad’s light bulb enough to get him off the hook. Also, now that he was having his first comfortable night in a while, Pogo was perversely beginning to miss his tiny apartment and especially his television and stereo, and wondering if he would ever get back. The experience hadn’t been too bad for an acid flashback, which he had been assured back in high school consisted mostly of imagining you could fly and then jumping out of tall buildings, but it was definitely short on the modern conveniences. How long had he been here, anyway? How many episodes of WKRP In Cincinnati had he missed? John the Baptist was all well and good, but Pogo needed a weekly dose of Johnny Fever.

  Quidprobe said he needed help from these religious guys to finish his quest, so he obviously wouldn’t be getting to see Loni Anderson in her tight sweater unless he convinced them. He hated dealing with people who wanted him to learn a bunch of shit that only they cared about. In fact, it reminded him more than a little of one of his supervisor’s Sunday Schools, a nightmarish event that happened every couple of months where he kept all the employees in the store for hours after closing time, making them take tests about stock numbers and the “Courtesy Checklist” and learn slogans like “Remember the G.S.M. FAT! (Greet, Seat, Measure—Fit, Accessorize, Ticket.)” As manager, Pogo usually had to do the lion’s share of work at these meetings, and sometimes even lead them while the supervisor watched him like mall security following a shoplifter. The only way he had found to escape the worst of these Sunday School sessions was to throw another employee under the bus, usually by saying something like, “Gee, sir, I’m having trouble getting Fernando to understand the value of bringing a packet of socks with every shoe he fits. Maybe it’s the language barrier.” This despite the fact that Fernando had been raised in Northridge and spoke English at least as well as Pogo—better if you counted all that grammar stuff. “I’m out of my depth, sir,” he would tell the supervisor while Fernando pleaded with his eyes to be spared. “Perhaps you could show us the best way to get through to him.”

  Which was usually enough to light an evangelical fire in the supervisor’s eye, and then Pogo could kick back and watch poor little Fernando get put through two hours of hell in his place, learning how to foist off expensive tube socks on various customers who were acted out by the supervisor.

  Which wasn’t that bad an idea for his present problem, now that Pogo thought about it. Of course, Fernando, the perfect victim, wasn’t here, and Pogo was nervous about how he would get back home without Quidprobe, but that didn’t mean a suitable subject couldn’t be found . . .

  “Oh, yeah,” he told John the Baptist when he had been ushered in to see the venerable Evangelist, “I’d totally love to talk about my holy vows and how hard I’ve been shrivening and everything, but first I need your help with a little religious matter. Kind of a spreading-the-faith problem, if you get what I mean.”

  The old man’s eyes glinted like those of an avid shopper spotting a two-for-one table. “Spreading the faith? Why, yes, I suppose I’d be the one to ask!” John the Baptist tried to chuckle affably, but it had a slightly hungry sound. “Not meaning to toot my own horn, of course, but that’s pretty much what I’m known for. Of course, all these centuries living here, waiting for the Last Judgement and surrounded by those who are already saints, I don’t get much call to practice my trade . . . ” His hand fastened on Pogo’s; it was kind of alarming how hard the old man squeezed. “Tell me, how can I help, my son?”

  “It’s not me, sir, it’s . . . it’s the giant.”

  John’s eyebrows climbed several centimeters nearer to Heaven. “Really? That monstrous creature is desirous of joining the fold?”

  “Oh, sure, yeah, I think so . . . but maybe this isn’t a good time, with you needing to talk to me before you send me on to the moon, and, like, Charlemagne in so much need and everything.”

  “Nonsense,” John said firmly. “Always time to assist an errant soul looking to find its way to the bosom of our Almighty Father.”

  “Well, I can’t help noticing that Caligorant talks about being hungry all the time, and I’m beginning to think he means in a kind of, um, spiritual way. Do giants have souls?”

  “That is in dispute,” said John, his eyes growing distant. “In fact, this might be a fascinating opportunity to determine . . . ” He trailed off, then made an effort to focus again. “I’m sorry, but we really should discuss your quest first, then perhaps we can find time to pursue this interesting sideline afterward. Now, perhaps you can tell me about the religious training of your youth—were you a squire to a pious knight?”

  “Oh, definitely.” Inwardly, Pogo was cursing. He’d had the Baptist on the hook, he could tell. C’mon, Cashman, he told himself. Like the Kirby Shoes manual says—“Nothing shows if you don’t close.” He cleared his throat. “I mean, yeah, we totally have to deal with the important stuff first. And I’m totally going to answer your question, too. It’s just that . . . well, he cries at night. When he thinks no one is around.”

  “The giant?” asked John the Baptist in tones of astonishment. “He laments his state?”

  “Cries about all the innocent people he’s eaten, yeah, absolutely. You should talk to him about it. I really think he’s, like, all ready to come to Jesus.” He wondered if lying like this was a sin, but since this was only a made-up version of John the Baptist, and he was lying to him about a made-up giant, too—well, how bad a sin could it be?

  “Clearly I must speak with this deluded creature,” said John, standing up and brushing off his crimson cloak. “Not to mention that the prophet Daniel, who has always been very certain of who and who would not be redeemed, would be most . . . instructed if I should convert the creature.” His eyes gleamed. “And smarty-pants Isaiah would be pretty surprised, too . . . ”

  “Um, just to warn you, he won’t . . . admit it or
anything. I mean, he’s really stubborn.” Pogo forced a laugh. “Ha ha! You know these giants! You’ll have to keep after him. It may take a while.”

  John seemed full of energy and high spirits. “No fear—after all, we have until the Second Coming!”

  Pogo almost had to run to keep up with the ancient Evangelist, who seemed to be heading right for the stables, so keen was he to begin the ogre’s conversion. “But what about me getting to the moon?”

  “Don’t worry,” John called back over his shoulder as he broke into a run. “I’ll have one of the grooms hitch up the chariot for you. Practically drives itself . . . !”

  As the golden chariot was tugged into the sky by the four ruby-red horses, and the ground fell away with sickening speed, causing Quidprobe to grab the railing and gasp at the unfamiliar (and queasy) feeling of acceleration on organic skeletal structure, he could still hear the giant bellowing far below.

  “No! Shut up and leave Caligorant alone! ‘Suffer little children’ only good part!”

  Quidprobe looked down at the retreating ground once, then decided not to do that again. Instead he tried to focus on the great, pale orb of the daytime moon, which was growing larger every moment.

  “Are the horses going to be able to breathe?” the Pogocashman asked. “Like, in space?”

  Quidprobe shook his head, although he was mildly impressed with the question: the Pogocashman hadn’t shown much interest in such practical things to this point. “This is based on the medieval imagination, not reality,” he said. “Point one—these horses are magical flying horses, so they can probably breathe where we’re going. And, if we’re lucky, so can we.”

  “Huh.” The Pogocashman looked down at his armor. “Hadn’t thought about us. This isn’t exactly an astronaut suit, is it? Pretty cool, though. I mean, if I was twelve again I’d think this was the greatest thing ever.” His bemused smile didn’t last long. “Right now, though, I’m just kind of wanting to go home.”

  Quidprobe sighed. “When I was a youngster, I dreamed of being the world’s foremost jelly-tube architect. I never imagined I’d be flying around in the open air, wearing a body with bones in it.”

  “Poor little dude,” the Pogocashman said, patting him on the head in a way that made Quidprobe’s dwarf-whiskers bristle. “Don’t sweat it—we’ll get out of this okay. You said it’s a story, right? Stories always end happy.”

  Quidprobe was glad none of his colleagues from the Existential Despair Division were present. Clearly the Pogocashman was familiar with only the most elemental kinds of fictional universes. A moment later, though, Quidprobe realized that he desperately wanted the Pogocashman to be right.

  By the Silver Buttocks of Eddison and the Smoking Jacket of Cabell! he thought in sudden horror. What if this is one of those stories where the companion dies?

  Quidprobe spent the rest of the ride sitting in the bottom of the chariot trying not to hyperventilate.

  The surface of the moon was even crazier than Pogo had thought it would be, like the abandoned set to some ancient black and white movie, with bits of ruined walls and statues poking through shifting dunes of sand and the Earth hanging close above their heads in a most disturbing way. The saint who rigged up the chariot had told them to head toward the highest hills, and soon they were standing on the peak of the highest looking down into a bowl-shaped valley which from this distance appeared to be nothing so much as a badly tended landfill littered with a zillion odds and ends. They left the chariot on the hill and made their way carefully down the slope.

  “So this is it?” Pogo asked as they neared the lake of bric-a-brac. “We’re supposed to find Roland’s brain in all this?”

  “Everything here is something that someone on earth lost,” the dwarf explained. “That was Ariosto’s idea, anyway. The saints said all the lost wits are in one part.”

  “Ah, I got it, just got to find the right section. Like Men’s Casuals, or Children’s.”

  Quidprobe looked puzzled, but Pogo was on familiar ground now. He scrambled a little way back up the slope and began to scan the valley, looking for clues as to how the merchandise was inventoried. In his store, they kept all the similar things together, so all the men’s black dress shoes were in one area, all the brown ones beside it, and a little farther away, the men’s casuals and sport shoes. It shouldn’t be too hard to make sense of this, if he could only recognize what the various objects were.

  “Start walking around,” he called down to Quidprobe. “Tell me what some of this stuff is.”

  The little man began an awkward tour through the mounds, calling out what he found to the best of his ability to recognize it. “Lost keys!” he shouted as he stepped through a field of clinking bronze and iron. “Letters!” he yelled, then picked one up to read a few lines. “The prose is quite romantic—think this might be lost loves.” He trudged along, stopped to shade his eyes against the Earth-glare. “There’s a mountain over there that looks like it’s made of . . . suitcases and steamer trunks. Goodness, it’s quite big!”

  “Lost luggage, I bet,” Pogo called. “Keep going!”

  The dwarf picked his way through artifacts both real and imaginary—the collars of thousands of lost dogs and cats, a lake of corroded clocks representing lost time, and an even larger sea filled with silver and gold coins and paper money, perhaps the monetary losses of drunkards and gamblers. For a moment, Pogo considered slaloming down the sandy hill and filling his pockets with some of those coins—the gold itself should at least be worth something—but since Quidprobe kept telling him this was all imaginary stuff, he doubted it would come back with him . . . if he even made it back home, that was.

  Immense piles of bent swords and broken arrows which might represent lost battles or lost nerve; delicate masks cracked and dirtied—Quidprobe guessed they might have something to do with lost reputations—and an immense, uneven field of toys and dolls that the little man suggested might stand for lost innocence, the dwarf listed them off and Pogo took note, trying to see something like the organizational grid he had learned in his management training workbook: Knowing Your Inventory = Sales Power! As the timeless day wore on and he could begin to make out some patterns, he scrambled down the slope and joined the little man. All of the saddest and most personal things seemed to be clustered at one end of the immense sea of lost wages, savings, and livelihoods, where the coins glittered like the foamy caps of frozen waves, so he led Quidprobe there and they began to search every mound, puzzling for long minutes sometimes over what the objects might represent.

  “Hey, Dickrobe,” he called. “I think I found something!”

  “It’s Quickpoop!” snarled the little man, kicking something in his irritation. “No, Quidprobe! Quidprobe! See what you’ve done! I don’t even know my own name anymore!”

  “Whoa. Mellow, dude. I was just messing with you.” He’d actually figured out the dwarf’s correct name several days ago, but it was more fun to make up new ones, especially because each time he pretended to get the name wrong, Quidprobe squeaked like a rubbed balloon. “Anyway, I think I might have found what we’re looking for—it’s a bunch of little jars with people’s names on them.” He bent and picked one up, read the carefully engraved label. “Who’s Em-pee-dockles?”

  “Empedocles—Greek philosopher,” called Quidprobe from somewhere on the far side of a heap of lost opportunities. “Jumped into a volcano to prove he was a god.”

  “Was he?”

  “No.”

  “Jackpot!” Pogo picked up another. “Pie-thuh-gore-ass?”

  “Pythagoras. Another brilliant thinker, except he thought beans had little human souls in them.”

  “Okay, this is looking good. Joan of Arc?”

  “Heard voices,” said Quidprobe. “Trusted the English. Crazy as a coot.” The dwarf sounded much more cheerful. “Hold on, I’ll come help!”

  As he and the little man clambered over the mounds of shifting glass jars, each one filled with a cloudy but slightly lu
minous liquid, a label caught Pogo’s eye. He picked it up and examined the jar, which was larger than most of the others, although still no bigger than a soft-drink can. CALIGULA. He knew the name—it was a dirty movie about some emperor guy who had sex with everything that moved and a few things that didn’t; there had been ads all over one of the men’s magazines Pogo kept in a box in his closet. If this was that Caligula guy’s wits, did that mean his memories were inside it, too? Pogo lifted the jar up and tried to stare into the shifting fluids, hoping for just the faintest visible scene of a Roman orgy, but no matter how he stared he couldn’t make out anything but the cloudy liquid.

  “Oh! Oh!” Quidprobe began to shout quite close by, startling him. Shamed, he hid the Caligula jar.

  “What? What is it?”

  “By the Hierarchies of Heinlein, I believe I’ve found it! Come over here!”

  Pogo made his way across mounds of shifting cut-crystal jars to the dwarf’s side. The little man was holding up a container nearly as large as Caligula’s. Pogo squinted at the silver name-plate and shook his head in disappointment. “No, man, this belongs to some dude named ‘Orlando.’”

  “That’s the Italian way of saying Roland,” the dwarf told him. “And look at how big it is! It’s his, it must be!”

  By the little guy’s excitement, Pogo could tell that Quidprobe was feeling ready to go home, too. “Well . . . cool, then, I guess. Let’s take it and get going. Good job.” But Pogo was a little sad he hadn’t found it himself. After all, wasn’t he supposed to be the hero of this story?