“You may approach,” declared a voice.
Jon-Tom whirled and stared toward the poorly lit far end of the room. The voice was heavily accented. Was this Markus the Ineluctable? He moved toward the voice, ready to retreat as best he could if the wizard reacted with blind rage.
As he crossed the room he made out a large wooden throne resting on a dais several steps higher than the rest of the chamber. Small tables held silver candlesticks. Leaning up against one leg of the throne was an exquisite, bejeweled, and quite functional sword. Jon-Tom was cheered by the sight. It hinted that the Great Markus didn’t have total confidence in his magical abilities.
Markus the Ineluctable slouched on his throne and regarded his prisoner imperiously. Resting by the wizard’s right hand was by far the strangest object in the room. Jon-Tom couldn’t take his eyes off it.
“I am,” the inhabitant of the throne announced grandly, “Markus the Ineluctable, Markus the Great, Ruler of Quasequa and all the Lakes District and all the lands that conjoin them. Soon to be Emperor of the World.”
“Yeah,” Jon-Tom replied evenly, “I know who you are. What I want to know,” he said, pointing at the alien intrusion lying next to the wizard’s right hand, “is if that’s a pastrami on rye. It looks like a pastrami on rye.” He sniffed. “It smells like a pastrami on rye. It’s got to be a pastrami on rye!” His mouth was salivating. He could smell the mustard ten feet away.
Markus’s eyes widened as he stood. Jon-Tom had a clear view of him for the first time. He wore a strange black suit backed by a dirty white shirt and black bow tie. The tie rode the collar slightly askew. There was a moth-eaten black top hat on his head. In his left hand he held a stick or cane of black plastic tipped with white at both ends. A black cape trailed across the throne behind him.
All in all he presented a moderately impressive appearance, except for one thing which the inhabitants of Quasequa would tend to overlook. Markus’s shoes were brown brogans.
“How dare you digress in my presence!” he snapped, but there was evident uncertainty in his accusation. It lacked conviction.
Five six, maybe five seven, Jon-Tom decided. In his late forties and not in real swell shape. In fact, despite the wizard’s strenuous efforts to suck it in, a substantial paunch kept creeping out over his belt line. There didn’t appear to be much hair beneath the black top hat. Bushy brown eyebrows framed deeply sunk, dark eyes. Bags sagged beneath. The nose was flat and almost triangular. Jon-Tom couldn’t tell if the shape was natural or the result of having been broken several times.
The mouth was thin and delicate, almost girlish. Frizzy sideburns exploded from both sides of the head. An enormous fake diamond ring glistened on one finger.
“Excuse me. It’s just that the last time I saw a pastrami on rye was in the Westwood Deli on Wilshire Boulevard. If you knew what I’ve been eating these past months, you’d understand my reaction.”
Markus the Ineluctable descended from his throne and found himself in the awkward position of having to stare up at his prisoner.
“Where’d you hear that?”
“I’ve heard it all my life.” He was no longer afraid. Still not too hopeful, but no longer afraid. “I’m a graduate student … I was a graduate student … in law at UCLA until I found myself yanked over here.”
“UCLA,” Markus mumbled. “Well, I’ll be damned.” He circled his visitor slowly, inspecting him as carefully as would a museum curator who’d just unwrapped a newly arrived statue. “You aren’t putting me on, kid? You’re for real?”
“Damn right I am. The question is, who the hell are you?”
At this the wizard straightened slightly. “I’m Markus the Ineluctable, that’s who. Ruler of Qusquoqua.” He shook his head. “Damn. Never can get that right. Ruler of Quasequa.”
“Can the bullshit and tell me who you are and how you got here.”
Markus nodded up at him. “All right.” He removed his top hat, set it on a nearby table. Jon-Tom saw that he was bald all the way to the back of his head.
“But first you tell me how you got here, kid.”
“I don’t know,” Jon-Tom told him truthfully. “A local wizard needed help, and for some reason I got picked on. It was a mistake, but that hasn’t made me feel a whole lot better. He can’t send me back, at least not for a long time. So I’m stuck here. I’ve been stuck here for quite a while. How about you?”
“Well, you know, kid, it’s the damndest thing…”
Jon-Tom found a chair and settled down to listen.
XV
“SEE,” MARKUS TOLD HIM. “I’m a professional magician.” Jon-Tom chose not to comment on this. Hear him out, he told himself. Markus was more than willing to talk; indeed, he seemed eager to do so.
“Markus the Ineluctable’s my stage handle. My real name is Markle Kratzmeier, from Perth Amboy, New Jersey. I’ve been doing the same schtick for years, all up and down the East Coast. I mean, I knew I’d never get rich, but it was better than pushing lettuce around in the market, and you can work your own hours. And you never know when some agent might see you and ask you to go out to Vegas.
“Haven’t made it yet, though. Once played a nice joint in Manhattan and a couple of times a real sharp club in Atlantic City, but usually I ain’t that lucky. I do the usual gigs: private parties, bar mitzvahs, kids’ birthdays.” He made a face. “God, I hate doing kids’ birthdays. Little snot-noses always crawling all over you, throwing up and begging for candy. I’ve also worked most of the bump-and-grind joints from Jersey City all the way down the coast to Surf City. I’ve seen a lot of life, kid, and not much of it pretty.” He took a deep breath and leaned on one of the tables for support.
“So anyway, there I am in this Con Edison power plant. Bunch of the guys who run the place are throwing a stag party for their foreman because the sap’s getting married the next day. They don’t have enough money to rent a hall, so they get together with the night shift and decorate part of the plant on the sly, see? Wasn’t so bad. I’ve worked in worse dumps. It was noisy in there, but at least it was clean.
“I’m doing my stuff, building to my big finish, and it’s going pretty good because they’re all smashed or stoned anyway.”
“Big finish?”
“Yeah.” Markus beamed proudly. “I saw one of the gals or one of the guys from the audience in half.”
“That’s original.”
“Hey, don’t knock it, kid. Maybe it’s an old trick, but it still buffaloes the marks. Anyway, I have to do one more thing before I get to go home. There’s this big cake, see?”
“I get the picture,” Jon-Tom said, nodding.
“Yeah. They hired this bimbo from one of the local topless joints.” He paused, thinking, and those bushy brows drew together. “Merill, or Cheryl, I think her name was. Anyway, she’s gonna pop out of the cake in her swimsuit. The trick is I’m going to wave my wand after the guys get through moaning and make her suit fall off. Pretty neat, huh?”
“Very witty,” Jon-Tom admitted carefully.
“So I’m trying to do it up right, give these guys their money’s worth. I’m waving my wand all over the place”—he demonstrated by fluttering the cheap plastic wand—“only I don’t look where I’m going. Suddenly everybody’s shouting, and the broad is screaming, and I feel myself going ass-over-backwards, and I think, okay, that’s it, you dumb schmuck, you finally bought it. Had to overdo it for a couple of extra tips. I’m falling over and over and the damn cape’s in my eyes and I can’t see a thing except I get just a quick look at this big dynamo or generator or whatever the hell it was.
“Then I hit it. Tell me something, kid. When you were little, did you ever get real clever and stick your finger in a socket?” Jon-Tom nodded. “Well, for about ten seconds there I felt like I’d done just that, only with my head. I’m shaking all over before I black out.
“When I wake up, I’m lying in a room in this rockpile and there’s this big dumpy character leaning over me asking me
if I feel okay.” Markus’s tone was earnest. “Kid, I don’t mind telling you that this is a little tough to take, coming off a stag party where I didn’t have a damn thing to drink. I swear, not a drop! Couple of beers maybe, one shot of rye. Pretty good stuff too. But I know I ain’t drunk.
“So I try to keep cool even though this refugee from a horror flick is standing over me, and I get the idea to wave my wand and make with a few magic words to try and scare it away, and what do you think happens? Something picks the big jerk up and throws him across the room.” He paused to take a long drink from a pewter tankard. “Local booze ain’t half-bad, kid. Anyways, I see that this mass of talking meat is more scared of me than I am of him. So I start fooling around with the old wand”—he conducted his words with the plastic as he spoke—“and what do you think I find out?”
“What?” asked Jon-Tom guardedly.
“That all those cheap tricks I’ve been practicing for twenty-five years, all the junk I’ve been doing for spoiled brats in Westchester and their tight-assed mothers who wouldn’t give me the time of day, they all work here. For real. I can do real magic. Not only like the stuff I’ve always done, but new stuff, too. Ain’t that a pip? “So I talk to this big dummy who found me and see that he’s long on muscle but slow upstairs, and I get the lay of the land. I find out that there’s another magician here who kinda runs things from an advisor’s post. I feel my way around, introduce myself real nice, and finally meet up with a couple of the guys who sit on this Quorum or Mafia or Congress or whatever you want to call it. Some of them see which way the shit’s flying and some of them don’t, and with a little magic and the help of the ones who see right, I take over the whole damn city.” He spread his hands and grinned.
“Just like that. Me, Markle Kratzmeier from Perth Amboy. Now I’m the advisor, the chief, the head honcho. And this is only the beginning, kid. Only the beginning. These hairy rubes think I’m the greatest thing to hit them since chopped liver. And you know what? I am. There’s got to be stuff I can do I ain’t even thought up yet. Me, Markle Kratzmeier. After years of eating dirt and yessiring and no-ma’aming and putting up with you wouldn’t believe what kind of shit, I’m on top. You know what? It feels good!”
“That sounds swell,” Jon-Tom agreed. “You know what else? I can do a little magic myself.”
“Izzat so?” Markus suddenly looked wary.
“Oh, nothing big, nothing like what you’ve done,” Jon-Tom hastened to reassure him. “Just small stuff. Entertaining, like that.” He took a chance and moved nearer. Markus didn’t back away from him.
“Now, what I was thinking was that with the two of us working together on the problem, maybe we could figure out a way for both of us to get back home.”
Markus eyed him in disbelief. “Get back home? Why the hell would I want to get back home, kid? I mean, look at the setup I’ve got here. Tell you what, though. You play your cards right and don’t screw up and maybe I can use you. It’d be nice to have somebody to talk with about back home. But go back?” He waved at the lavishly decorated room. “You want me to trade this in and go back to doing bar mitzvahs and weddings and working crappy clubs up and down the Jersey coast? You got to be nuts, kid.
“Anyway, I wouldn’t know how to start getting home, even if I cared to try it. No way. See, these rubes know what money is, and what power is, even if most of them do look like they came out of the local zoo or dog pound. In other words, they know what’s important in life. Maybe some of them have whiskers that grow sideways instead of down, and paws instead of palms, and fur coats instead of skin, but they’re still people. And I-can run the whole bunch of them. Hell, I am running the whole bunch of them! And like I said, this is just the beginning.
“Know something else?” He winked and Jon-Tom felt suddenly unclean. “There’s even people like us here.”
“I know.”
“And some of the dames look pretty good. I’ve seen some broads around here who could’ve made it big in the big casinos except for what they all seem to be a little on the short side. That suits me fine since I ain’t no center for the Knicks myself. They’re all in awe of me, afraid of me.” Markus’s sunken brown eyes looked more piggish than ever, Jon-Tom mused.
“I like that. I like it a lot, kid. I like them all bowing and scraping and cowering in front of me. Go back home?” He laughed, a short nasty sound. “If I tried touching any broads who looked half as good as the ones here back in New York, they’d spit on me and call a cop. You, you’re young and good-looking, kid. You never had that happen to you. You haven’t the vaguest idea what it’s like for a woman you idolize to spit on you.
“Well, nobody spits on Markus the Ineluctable!” he snarled. “Go home? I’d sooner cut my own throat right now. All my life I’ve gotten the short end of the stick. All my life people have cut me down. Well, no more. This is my chance to get back at them, and I ain’t giving it up!”
Jon-Tom listened to Markus rave on and forbore from pointing out that the people of this world had never put him down. Jon-Tom was just old enough and had seen just enough of the world to know for the first time exactly what he was up against in the person of Markus the Ineluctable.
He was one of the faceless ones, one of the insignificant, uninspired, nameless persons whose only real purpose in life was to occupy a few bytes in a government computer. A number more than a reality, an organic something in the shape of a man who took up space. Someone who under normal conditions was incapable of doing good and too incompetent to do evil.
But a twist of space-time, a jog in the smooth procession of events, an irony of eternity had thrust him into this world and had placed him in a position to do damage all out of proportion to his naturally constituted self. In his own world Markle Kratzmeier would simply have faded away without making much of an impression on existence one way or the other.
But in this world, Markus the Ineluctable and his ability to work magic posed a terrifying threat to people who had never known of his history, his problems, his concealed envies and hatreds. That didn’t matter to someone like Markus, who believed that all the forces of the universe were arrayed against him. He wanted to strike out, strike back against life, and it wouldn’t matter to him who or what got in his way. So Jon-Tom had been both right and wrong. The man who had usurped power in the city-state of Quasequa was indeed from his own world, but only in body. In spirit he was an alien, an evil import, and a danger to everyone who came in contact with him. The problem now at hand was not one of getting home, but of saving himself and his friends.
It was clear that Markus’s only interest lay in gathering as much power to himself as possible.
Carefully. Jon-Tom was going to have to proceed very carefully. Markus wasn’t stupid. He was no scholar, but he had street smarts, and those could prove more dangerous than real intelligence.
“I understand. I mean, you’ve got a helluva setup here. A couple of expatriates like you and me from the good old U.S. of A., we ought to stick together. Like I said, I’ve got a little talent myself. Nothing like what you can do, of course, but I can do small stuff. I know we wouldn’t be equal, wouldn’t be a team. I wouldn’t expect that. But with my abilities augmenting yours, we could really show these dumb animals a thing or two.”
“Yeah. Hey, you know what I’d really like?” Markus told him after he’d finished making his proposal. “I’d really like a couple of Big Macs, some fries, and a vanilla shake.”
“I could go for that, too,” Jon-Tom told him enthusiastically. “Why don’t you let me do this one?” He looked around as if searching for something. “I do my magic better with some music, though. It’s like with your wand. Kind of helps to set the mood, if you know what I mean. Your guards took my instrument away from me. If I could have it back I promise you a regular MacFeast.” He pointed. “Right on that table there. Then we can make plans.”
Markus stared at him for a long moment, then repeated his thoroughly unpleasant laugh. “What’s the mat
ter with you, kid? You think I was born yesterday? You think I’ve spent all my life poking through every dump on the East Coast without learning nothing about people?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jon-Tom said lamely.
“The hell you don’t. You’re too eager. Too eager to throw in with me, too eager to help, too eager to throw your buddies over, and you’re sure as hell too eager to get your mitts on your guitar or whatever it was that my boys took off you.” He smiled. It was no more pleasant than his laugh.
“Tell you what, though. I’m a fair guy. This buddy of mine I was telling you about earlier? His name’s Prugg. Maybe I’ll let you wrestle him for your duar. In fact, I’ll go one better than that. You beat him and I’ll take you on as my partner, fifty-fifty split, straight down the line. How’s that, kid?” Before Jon-Tom could reply, Markus looked past him and whistled.
“Hey, Prugg! Come on out and join us. I want to introduce you to smart-boy here.”
Something moved in the darkness near the back of the room. A section of wall pivoted on its axis, revealing an immense shape. It stepped out into the room. In one paw it easily held an iron club that looked like an Olympic barbell that had been melted to a stub at one end. A leather cuirass two inches thick covered it from chest to thighs.
The bear was nearly nine feet tall and probably weighed in the neighborhood of a ton and a half.
“Kill now?” it rumbled expectantly.
“No, not now.” Markus looked back up at Jon-Tom. “How about it, kid? Can you take him?”
“Come on,” Jon-Tom said uneasily, “this isn’t funny.”
“You bet your smart ass it ain’t.” Markus’s smile vanished as he moved forward until he was standing right next to his prisoner. “You fucking college boys Prugg smiled thinly and let out a grunt that rolled through the room like thunder.