Макс Фрай - The Stranger

I was astounded. My own world, the world I had inhabited so cozily and comfortably, had fallen apart before my very eyes. Infallible Sir Shurf, solid and dependable as a rock, imperturbable and pedantic, completely devoid of a sense of humor and ordinary human weaknesses—where had he gone? And my other colleagues, headed by Sir Juffin Hully, who turned out to have been the staid “Kettarian Hunter”—what did I really know about them? What other surprises were in store for me?

“Now is a good time to do some of those exercises I taught Max, Marilyn,” my companion advised me. “You shouldn’t get so upset about things that happened long ago, when we weren’t even there.”

“Words of wisdom!” I exclaimed, and threw myself into Lonli-Lokli’s breathing exercises.

In about ten minutes I was absolutely calm. The mysteries of an exciting new World were gradually being revealed, and this was a great boon. Nonetheless, I still thank fate that the wonderful revelations of my colleagues didn’t come down on me all at once.

“Mr. Abora Vala just sent me a call,” Lonli-Lokli said. “The caravan is going to stop for lunch now. You have behaved perfectly this morning, Marilyn. Try to keep it up. By the way, I have long wanted to remark that in doing his breathing exercises, Sir Max breathes just as sharply and unevenly as he speaks. You should do something about it.”

“All right, I’ll try,” I murmured. “Do I really speak so poorly?”

“Yes, of course, but it will pass in time. Let’s stop, Marilyn. Get ready to change the subject, all right?”

“Agreed. By the way, our Master Caravan Leader doesn’t have bad timing, either. I could eat a horse.”

“No, Marilyn: ‘I’m hungry as a horse,’ or, simply, ‘I’m famished.’ Mr. Vala has no sense of timing whatsoever. Our caravan leader just stops at the taverns whose proprietors pay him for delivering clients.”

I laughed.

“How do you know, Glamma?”

“I looked him in the eye when we met.”

“Oh, I see! Still, he stopped just on time. I’m very hungry.”

“Here we go, then,” said Shurf, and chivalrously helped me out of the amobiler.

The meal was nothing to write home about; for me, anyway. As a budding gourmet and the favorite pupil of Sir Kofa Yox, I wasn’t about to jump for joy at your average country cooking. But our traveling companions turned out to be ordinary, dull tavern philistines. I was surprised to realize that the wonderful new World I so adored was not perfect. I suppose the average inhabitants of all Worlds are rather lackluster. I wasn’t exactly dizzy with delight at the prospect of socializing with a large number of these good-natured, simple souls. But a journey is a journey, and even such annoyances as bad food and the uninspiring company of fellow travelers had its charms.

After lunch I persuaded Lonli-Lokli to let me drive the amobiler. He didn’t want to risk it at first; my common sense didn’t exactly fill Sir Shurf with confidence. But Lady Marilyn begged him so!

After an hour of crawling at a snail’s pace, I was rewarded.

“I would never have imagined that you could exercise such restraint,” Shurf said.

It occurred to me that this was the biggest compliment I had ever been paid before.

“Why are you so surprised, Glamma? If someone tells me ‘you mustn’t,’ I fully intend to heed the advice.”

“This isn’t merely about things one must or must not do. The amobiler moves at the speed its driver wishes it to, and our wishes are often at odds with necessity.”

“Really? Are you serious? Good golly! I had no idea.”

“You didn’t know?” asked Lonli-Lokli. “I was sure you were simply fulfilling your childhood dream of high-speed racing when you got behind the levers.”

“No! Up till now it just seemed to me that I wasn’t as cautious as other drivers, and pushed it to maximum speed.”“Of course, that’s what I had in mind when I didn’t want to let you behind the levers. Only there’s no ‘maximum speed.’ It’s all a matter of the driver’s inner speedometer. I underestimated your self-control, however. I believe I owe you an apology.”

“You shouldn’t apologize, Glamma. That’s nonsense. So all this time I’ve been driving this jalopy, I didn’t know how it worked. I’ll be a monkey’s uncle!”

I sighed, and wiped the drops of perspiration from my forehead. Too much strange, new information for one day.

“The important thing is that you know how to drive it. And you can’t be an uncle, even a monkey’s. You keep forgetting who you are, my dear.”

We rode in silence until deep in the night. Lonli-Lokli, no doubt, had already exhausted his quota of words for the next three years. And I was mortally afraid of asking another questions—I’d had enough amazing revelations for one day, thank you very much.

We spent the night in a large roadside motel. Our guide sat down at the small bar for a game of Krak. Some of the travelers were happy to join him.

“This is how to do business,” Lonli-Lokli said. “Two nights on the road to Kettari, and two nights on the return trip. This Master Caravan Leader is a very rich man, I’m willing to bet.”

“Do you think he’s a cardsharper, too?”

“No, but Kettarians are very good at card games. They have a true talent for it. So fleecing even the luckiest dwellers of the Capital comes naturally to them. I think we need a good sleep. We have a hard day ahead of us.”

“Yes, of course,” I said uncertainly, knowing I’d hardly be able to go to sleep this early, even after a hard day.

“You know, Lady Marilyn,” Lonli-Lokli said, arranging himself under a fluffy blanket. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to leave our room. It won’t look very plausible—pretty married women don’t usually sit in the bar until dawn after a hard day on the road. People might think things aren’t quite right between us.”

“It would never have entered my head. No nocturnal ramblings! If tipsy barflies begin making passes at Lady Marilyn, I’ll have to spit at them. And that doesn’t conform to my notions of propriety and discretion.”

“In that case, I beg your pardon. Good night, Marilyn.”

My companion dozed off. I crawled under my blanket and let my mind wander. I had quite enough to think about after our instructive conversation. At the same time, I could take advantage of the free time and snatch a few cigarettes from under my wonder-working pillow.

I only managed to fall asleep at dawn, and an hour later Sir Shurf, already impeccably groomed and alert, thrust a tray with kamra and sandwiches under my nose.

“I’m very sorry, but we’re leaving in half an hour. I think you ought to use some of your supply of Elixir of Kaxar.”

“No, it’s better if I sleep in the amobiler,” I said, lifting my heavy head from the pillow. “Thanks for your concern, Glamma. Your wife—I mean the real wife of Lonli-Lokli—must be the happiest of women.”

“I hope so,” said Shurf. “I have a strange fate, Marilyn. Real wife or no, I’m the one who serves her kamra in bed, and not the other way around.”

“Sinning Magicians, was that a joke I just heard?”

“It’s simply a statement of fact. If you wish to bathe, you’d better hurry.”

“Of course I want to!” I swallowed the kamra down in one gulp, I couldn’t even look at the food.

I settled down in the back seat of the amobiler, leaving my fellow travelers to contemplate the dreary, monotonous plains stretching to the west of Uguland. I fell asleep so soundly that Sir Lonli-Lokli’s attempts to make me come out for lunch proved futile. “Just tell them that the lady is suffering from motion sickness,” I grumbled sourly, and dove headfirst into the sweetest of sweet dreams.