Lawrence Watt-Evans - Out of This World

“Maybe he doesn’t want you to phone him unless you’re psychic yourself, and can guess the number,” Ted remarked, grinning. Nobody laughed.

“What about the one in Tennessee?” Amy suggested.

“Oram Blaisdell,” Prossie said.

“Yeah,” Pel said. “What about him?”

Prossie shook her head. “He probably doesn’t even have one of those telephone things,” she said. “Besides, he’s a crazy old man. He thought we were angels talking to him.”

“Mr. Brown,” Cahn said, “it was a good idea, but forget it. None of the original contactees are going to be any help. It’ll be up to my crew and myself to lend whatever aid we can, in exchange for transport home; we won’t drag you innocent civilians into it.”

“Sir?” Soorn said, uneasily.

Cahn turned.

“Sir,” Soorn said, “speaking purely for myself, I would prefer… well, you said that this was voluntary?”

“Yes, spaceman?”

“Sir, I’m afraid I must decline to volunteer. I’d prefer to wait here and hope for rescue. This world doesn’t seem all that bad-I mean, dangerous. I’d rather stay here and wait than risk going into some fairyland where this Shadow thing is all-powerful.”

Cahn stared at him, and Soorn, after a moment of awkward silence, added, “I saw some of what they found on Lambda Ceti IV, sir. I’m not going.”

“All right,” Cahn said, “I said it was voluntary, and it is. You can stay here, and fend for yourself.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“You can’t stay here ,” Nancy protested. “I’m sorry, but not in my house you don’t. I don’t know anything about you!”

Soorn looked at her unhappily. “I can find someplace, then, can’t I?”

“Maybe a hotel?” Susan said.

“Do you have any money?” Pel asked.

Soorn shook his head.

“Lad,” Raven said, “Shadow is powerful, and nominal ruler of all the world, but it’s not all - powerful. Come with us, and see for yourself! Lend your arm to a worthy battle!”

Soorn looked at him and said nothing.

“Come and take a look,” Donald coaxed. “See for yourself! And should our land not please you, our wizards can see you safe home to your Empire, while those who would brave it may stay and fight.”

Soorn glanced at Cahn, then at Nancy; neither of them gave any sign of yielding.

“You, too, mistress,” Donald said, leaning forward and making a beckoning gesture to Amy. “And you,” adding Susan, “come and see our realm! See what it is we wish to save! Then perhaps you’ll think more kindly of us. All of you, come and take a look, and if you be not pleased, ‘tis but a moment’s work to step back through the gate to the cellars here-or should Elani wish it, to the Empire whence most of you came!”

“I could do that?” Amy said. “Just step through and take a look around, and step right back?”

“Why not?” Donald asked, with an expansive gesture.

“Then I’d know whether it was real,” Amy said.

Donald nodded.

Pel glanced at Nancy. “Y’know, I think I’d like to take a quick look, too,” he said. “I’ve always loved fantasy stories, and ever since that gnome first turned up-I mean, it’s scary, but I’d like to take a look.”

“You people are all crazy,” Nancy said. “Especially you, Pel.”

“Oh, don’t be such a stick-in-the-mud, Nancy!” Ted said. “Let’s all go see just what sort of dream-world I’ve come up with!”

“Nancy, think of it, seriously-a world where magic is real ,” Pel said.

“ Black magic,” Nancy retorted.

“Not all of it,” Pel replied. “That gnome-you’d like seeing him.”

“Ha.”

“Well, I’m going to go look,” Pel said, annoyed. “For one thing, as Amy said, how else will we ever be sure this is all real?”

“Are you going to take a camera?” Nancy asked. “And take pictures or something?”

“Sure, why not?” Pel said.

She glared at him, and then turned to Raven and demanded, “Are you sure we can step right back?”

“Oh, yes, my lady,” he said. “Have we not done so, my comrades and I?”

“You’re coming?” Pel asked.

“If you go, I’m going, too,” she said. “To keep an eye on you.”

“What about Rachel?”

Nancy hesitated. “She’s upstairs playing,” she said. “But we’ll bring her, too. Maybe she’ll like seeing those gnomes you talked about.”

“She’ll want to tell everyone at school about it,” Pel said, smiling.

“They’ll never believe a word,” Nancy retorted. “Not even Jenny would buy a story like that, even if it’s true. Which I’m still not entirely convinced of.”

Pel shrugged. “You’re probably right,” he said.

“Then you’ll come?” Raven said. “Perchance even a quick glance will tell you somewhat, and some thought may strike you that would serve our cause.”

“Not likely,” Pel said.

The doorbell rang, and Nancy’s hand flew to her mouth.

“The pizza,” she said.

Small feet pattered down the stairs as Rachel ran to answer the door.

Amy watched as the self-proclaimed spacemen sampled the pizza. If they were acting, they were doing a very convincing job of it; under other circumstances she wouldn’t have doubted for a moment that they had never before seen pizza, or tasted Pepsi. If they had claimed to be foreigners, or from some isolated little place somewhere, that would have been fine.

But they claimed to be, not just from another planet, but from another universe .

Believing that would mean changing her entire way of dealing with the world. She had long ago decided that she was never going to be rich or famous, never going to have any wild romances, never going to climb Mount Everest or fly to the Moon or do anything else exciting and dangerous. It was safer and more comfortable to just stay at home and read about all that. She didn’t need to do anything herself.

And if the books weren’t enough, there were her decorating clients, with all their little stories about where this knicknack or that had come from, or why they had moved here, or what all the gadgets in the kitchen were for. She got customers who were in the foreign service, back stateside for a couple of years, and most of them were eager to tell stories about their time in places like Qatar or Tanzania. She got some buyers who were immigrants, who had grown up in places like Morocco or Taiwan or Syria. Listening to them was better than actually going to all those exotic, dangerous places.

Meeting people like that was fine; she could find Syria and Taiwan on the maps, hear about them on the evening news. But she didn’t want to be one of them. She didn’t want anything exciting to happen to her.

And she had her tidy little ideas of how the world worked, of how everyone was alike, really, the world over. All those people shared a single planet, and despite all the differences in language and culture, they were all part of the same reality, and that reality didn’t include purple and gold spaceships falling out of the sky, didn’t include swordsmen in black velvet or wizards wearing braids.

If she believed these people, it meant losing control of what was real and what wasn’t. If magic could be real, if spaceships could appear out of nowhere, how could she ever be sure of anything ?

It would change her entire perception of the world-and she’d already done that once, when Stan had come home drunk that night, and beaten her, and then left her for that bitch in Florida. She didn’t want to do it again. Last time she’d had to learn that the world was not going to look after her, that she couldn’t have everything she wanted, that bad things could happen even to her-what would she have to learn this time? That she couldn’t trust anything at all, not even the sky overhead?