Лайон Спрэг Де Камп Array: The Green Magician

He was still looking at Belphebe, who glanced up at the darkening sky. «My lord,» she said, «I am somewhat foredone. Would it not be well to seek our rest?»

Shea said, «It’s an idea. Where do we sleep?»

Cuchulainn waved a hand toward the grove. «Where you will, darlings. No one will disturb you in the camp of Cuchulainn.» He clapped his hands. «Gather moss for the bed of my friends.»

When they were alone, Belphebe said in a low voice: «I like not the manner of his approach, though he has done us great good. Cannot you use your art to transport us back toOhio?»

Shea said, «I’ll take a chance on trying to work out the sorites in the morning. Remember, it won’t do us any good to get back alone. We’ve got to take Pete, or we’ll be up on a charge of kidnapping or murdering him, and I don’t want to go prowling through this place at night looking for him. Besides, we need light to make the passes.»

Early as they rose, the camp was already astir about them and a fire lighted. As Shea and Belphebe wandered through the camp, looking for Brodsky, they noted it was strangely silent, the elaborate confusion of the previous evening being carried on in whispers or dump show. Shea grabbed the arm of a bewhiskered desperado hurrying past with a bag of something to inquire the reason. The man bent close and said in a fierce whisper, «Sure, ‘tis that himself is in his sad mood, and keeping his booth. If you would lose your head, it would be just as well to make a noise.»

«There’s Pete,» said Belphebe.

The detective waved a hand and came toward them from under the trees. He had somehow acquired one of the deerskin cloaks, which was held under his chin with a brass brooch, and he looked unexpectedly cheerful.

«What’s the office?» he asked in the same stage whisper the others were using, as he approached them.

«Come with us,» said Shea. «We’re going to try to get back toOhio. Where’d you get the new clothes?»

«Aw, one of these muzzlers thought he could wrestle, so I slipped him a little jujitsu and won it. Listen, Shea, I changed my mind. I ain’t going back. This is the real McCoy.»

«But we want to go back,» said Belphebe, «and you told us just yesterday that if we showed up without you, our fate would be less than pleasant.»

«Listen, give it a rest. I’m on the legit here, and with that magical stuff of yours, you could be, too. At least I want to stay for the big blow.»

«Come this way,» said Shea, leading away from the center of the camp to where there was less danger of their voices causing trouble. «What do you mean by the big blow?»

«From what I got,» said Pete, «I figured out when we landed. This Maev and Ailill are rustling out the mob and heeling them up to give Cuchulainn a bang on the head. They got all the cousins of people he’s bumped off in on the caper, and they’re going to put a geas on him that will make him go up against them all at once, and then boom. I want to stay for the payoff.»

«Look here,» said Shea, «you said only yesterday that we had to get you back within a week. Remember? It was something aboutyour probably being seen going into our house and not coming out.»

«Sure, sure. And if we go back, I’ll alibi you. But what for? I’m teaching these guys to wrestle, and what with your magic, maybe you could even take the geas off the big shot and he wouldn’t get shoved over.»

«Perhaps I could at that,» said Shea. «It seems to amount to a kind of psychological compulsion by magical means, and between psychology and magic, I ought to make it. But no — it’s too risky. I daren’t take the chance with him making eyes at Belphebe.»

They had emerged from the clump of trees and were at the edge of the slope, with the early sun just touching the tops of the branches above them. Shea went on, «I’m sorry, Pete, but Belphebe and I don’t want to spend the rest of our lives here, and if we’re going, we’ve got to go now. As you said. Now, you two hold hands. Give me your other hand, Belphebe.»

Brodsky obeyed with a somewhat sullen expression.

Shea closed his eyes, and began: «If eitherA or (B or C) is true, and C or D is false.» motioning with his free hand to the end of the sorites.

He opened his eyes again. They were still at the edge of a clump of trees, on a hill inIreland, watching the smoke from the fire as it rose above the trees to catch the sunshine.

Belphebe asked, «What’s amiss?»

«I don’t know,» said Shea desperately. «If I only had something to write with, so I could check over the steps. No, wait a minute. Making this work depends on a radical alteration of sense impressions in accordance with the rules of symbolic logic and magic. Now we know that magic works here, so that can’t be the trouble. But for symbolic logic to be effective, you have to submit to its effects — that is, be willing. Pete, you’re the villain of the piece. You don’t want to go back.»

«Don’t put the squeeze on me,» said Brodsky.

«I’ll play ball.»

«All right. Now I want you to remember that you’re going back toOhio, and that you have a good job there and like it. Besides, you were sent out to find us, and you did. Okay?»

They joined hands again and Shea, constricting his brow with effort, ran through the sorites again, this time altering one or two of the terms to give greater energy. As he reached the end, time seemed to stand still for a second; thencrash!and a flash of vivid blue lightning struck the tree nearest them, splitting it from top to bottom.

Belphebe gave a little squeal, and a chorus of excited voices rose from the camp.

Shea gazed at the fragments of the splintered tree and said soberly, «I think that shot was meant for us, and that that just about tears it, darling. Pete, you get your wish. We’re going to have to stay here at least until I know more about the laws controlling magic in this continuum.»

Two or three of Cuchulainn’s men burst excitedly through the trees and came toward them, spears ready. «Is it all right that you are?» one of them called.

«Just practicing a little magic,» said Shea, easily. «Come on, let’s go back and join the others.»

In the clearing voices were no longer quenched, and the confusion had become worse than ever. Cuchulainn stood watching the loading of the chariot, with a lofty and detached air. As the three travelers approached he said, «Now it is to you I am grateful, Mac Shea, with your magical spell for reminding me that things are better done at home than abroad. It is leaving at once we are.»

«Hey!» said Brodsky. «I ain’t hadno breakfast.»

The hero regarded him with distaste. «You will be telling me that I should postpone the journey for the condition of a slave’s belly?» he said, and turning to Shea and Belphebe, «We can eat as we go.»

The ride was smoother than the one of the previous day only because the horses went at a walk so as not to outdistance the column of retainers on foot. Conversation over the squeaking of the wheels began by being sparse and rather boring, with Cuchulainn keeping his chin well down on his chest. But he apparently liked Belphebe’s comments on the beauty of the landscape. As it came on to noon he began to chatter, addressing her with an exclusiveness that Shea found disturbing, though he had to admit that the little man talked well, and always with the most perfect courtesy.

The country around them got lower and flatter and flatter and lower, until from the tops of the few rises Shea glimpsed a sharp line of gray-blue across the horizon; the sea. A shower came down and temporarily soaked the column, but nobody paid it much attention, and in the clear sunlit air that followed everyone was soon dry. Cultivation became more common, though there was still less of it than pasturage. Occasionally a lumpish-looking serf, clad in a length of ragged sacking-like cloth wrapped around his middle and a thick veneer of dirt, left off his labors to stare at the band and wave a languid greeting.