Roger Zelazny - Doorsways in the Sand

Zeemeister kicked Ragma, who had chosen that moment to attack, away from him. Still clutching the stone, he produced a long, shiny blade from somewhere in the vicinity of his forearm. Then he shouted to Jamie but stopped in mid-cry.

I looked to see what had happened and decided that it must be another hallucination.

Jamie's weapon lay half a dozen paces behind him, and he stood rubbing his wrist, facing the man with the neat beard and the amused expression, the man who held one hand in his pocket and twirled a shillelagh with the other.

"I'll kill you," I heard Jamie say.

"No, Jamie! No!" Zeemeister cried. "Don't go near him, Jamie! Run!"

Zeemeister backed away, pausing only to slash one of M'mrm'mlrr's tentacles, as if knowing the source of his mental anguish.

"He's not much," Jamie called back.

"That's Captain Al!" Zeemeister shouted. "Run, you fool!"

But Jamie decided to swing instead.

It was instructive to almost behold. "Almost," I say, because the cudgel moved a bit too fast for me to trace its passage. So I was not certain exactly where or how many times it touched him. It seemed only an instant after Jamie began his swing that he was falling.

Then, still twirling the stick, casually, jauntily now, the hallucination moved past Jamie's crumpled form and headed on toward Zeemeister.

Not taking his eyes from the advancing figure, Zeemeister continued to retreat, holding the knife low before him, edge upward.

"I thought you were dead," he finally said.

"Obviously you were mistaken" came the reply.

"What interest have you in this thing, anyway?"

"You tried to kill Fred Cassidy," he said, "and I've invested a lot in that boy's education."

"I did not associate the name," Zeemeister replied. "But I never really intended to harm him."

"That is not the way that I heard it."

Zeemeister continued to back away, passing through the gate in the guardrail, moving until the rotating platform of the Rhennius machine brushed the backs of his pant legs. He spun then and slashed at Charv, who was passing by, brandishing a wrench. Charv bleated and fled the platform, dropping to the floor near M'mrm'mlrr and Nadler.

"What are you going to do, Al?" Zeemeister inquired, turning back to face the other.

But there was no reply, only a continued advance, a continued twirling of the club, a smile.

At the last instant, before he came into shillelagh range, Zeemeister bolted. Raising one foot to the platform, he sprang back on it, turning, and rushed forward all of two paces. Its rotation, however, had so positioned the apparatus that he collided with the central unit, which faintly resembled a wide hand cupped as in the act of scratching.

His momentum and angle of incidence were such that his stumbling rebound bore him down atop the belt. His knife and the towel-swathed star-stone flew from his hands as he tried to stay his fall. They bounced from the platform down onto the floor as he was borne on into the tunnel. His scream was cut short with an ominous abruptness and I looked away, but not in time.

It apparently turned him inside out.

Which of course delivered the contents of his circulatory and digestive systems to the floor.

Also, it seemed to have inverted all of the organs which were now exposed.

The contents of my own stomach sought egress, reinforced by the noises which had begun about me. Like I said, I looked away. But not in time.

It was Charv who finally managed to get up stomach enough to get to them and throw someone's coat over the remains, where they had fallen from the belt as it advanced toward the perpendicular. Then, and only then, did Ragma's practicality return, punctuated by his near hysterical "The stone! Where is the stone?"

Through watering eyes, I sought for it and then beheld the racing form of Paul Byler, bloody towel clutched beneath his arm, on his way across the hall.

"Once a jolly swagman," he called out, "always a jolly swagman!" and he was gone out the door.

Pandemonium reigned. Over the just and the near just.

My hallucination then gave a final spin to his stick, turned, nodded in my direction and approached us. I rose to my feet, nodded back, found a smile and showed it to him.

"Fred, my boy, you've grown," he said. "I hear you have acquired a high degree and a responsible position. Congratulations!"

"Thank you," I said.

"How are you feeling?"

"Rather like Pip," I told him, "though my expectations are simple things, I never realized what your export-import business was actually all about."

He chuckled. He embraced me.

"Tut, lad. Tut," he said, pushing me back to arm's length again. "Let me look at you. There. So that's how you turned out, is it? Could be worse, could be worse."

"Byler has the stone!" Charv shrieked.

"The man who just left-" I began.

"-shan't get very far, lad. Frenchy is outside to prevent anyone's departing this place with unseemly haste. In fact, if you listen you may hear the clatter of hoofs on marble."

I did, and I did. I also heard profanity and the sounds of a struggle without.

"Who, sir, are you?" Ragma inquired, rising up onto his hind legs and drawing near.

"This is my Uncle Albert," I said, "the man who put me through school: Albert Cassidy."

Uncle Albert studied Ragma through narrowed eyes as I explained, "This is Ragma. He is an alien cop in disguise. His partner is named Charv. He is the kangaroo."

Uncle Al nodded.

"The art of disguise has come a long way," he observed. "How do you manage the effect?"

"We are extraterrestrial aliens," Ragma explained.

"Oh, that does make a difference then. You will have to excuse my ignorance of these matters. For a number of years and a variety of reasons have I been a man whose very blood is snow-broth, numb to the wanton stings and motions of the senses. Are you a friend of Fred's?"

"I have tried to be," Ragma replied.

"It is good to know that," he said, smiling. "For, extraterrestrial alien or no, if you were here to harm him, not all the cheese in Cheshire would buy your safety. Fred, what of these others?"

But I did not answer him because I had chosen that moment to glance upward, had seen something just as he had spoken and was in the process of having the 1812 Overture, smoke signals, semaphores and assorted fireworks displays simultaneously active within my head.

"The smile!" I cried and tore off toward the rear of the hall.

I had never been past the door at that end of the place, but I was familiar with the reversed layout of the roof and that was all that I needed to know just then.

I plunged through and followed the corridor that lay behind. When it branched, I headed to the left. Ten quick paces, another turn and I saw the stairway off to the right. Reaching it, I swung around the rail post and took the steps two at a time.

How it all fit I did not know. But that it did I did not doubt.

I reached a landing, took a turn, came to another, took another. The end of things came into view.

There was a final landing with a door at the head of-the stairs, all enclosed in a kiosk with small, meshed windows about. I hoped that the door opened from the inside without a key-it looked like that sort of handle arrangement—because it would take a while to smash through a window and its grillwork, if I could do it at all. As I ascended, I cast my eyes about, looking for tools for this purpose.

I spotted some junk that might serve that end, as no one had apparently envisioned anyone wanting to break out of the place. It proved unnecessary, however, for the door yielded when I depressed the handle and threw my weight against it.

It was of the heavy, slow-opening sort, but when I had finally thrust it aside and stepped out I was certain that I was near to something important. I blinked against the darkness, trying to sort pipes, stacks, hatch covers and shadows into the notches my memory provided. Somewhere among them all, beneath the stars, the moon and the Manhattan skyline, was one special slot that I had to fill. The odds might be against it, but I had moved quickly. If the entire guess held true, there was a chance ...