Castle War

Four Keep — Earth Aspect

Gene stood before the castle doorway that led to Earth and home.

“What the hell …?”

What he should have been looking at was the interior of a spacious country manor. Located in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, “Halfway House” served as a way station between the castle and Earth. But all that appeared beyond the outline of the portal was an expanse of empty meadow fringed by a line of trees.

He looked up and down the hallway in the castle. No one was about. The guards would have been on the other side of the portal, stationed in the house.

“Damn thing must have moved again.”

The portal did sometimes shift, and usually Sheila Jankowski or Incarnadine would have to be summoned to nudge it back again.

Gene picked up his luggage again and stepped through. He looked around. The terrain looked familiar. He guessed that he was on the other side of the hill to the rear of the house. No problem. He’d just hike to the house and tell the guards where the portal had drifted to. One of them would have to step back into the castle and fetch Sheila, who would try to anchor the doorway back at the house again. It happened all the time. Very annoying.

Stepping briskly over dewy grass, Gene made his way up the knoll. The sun was low and the air was cool, conveying a hint of autumn.

Reaching the crest, he experienced a moment of disorientation until he realized that the meadow was on the house side of the hill. But the house was gone. Moreover, the ground looked as though the house had never been there.

This might be Earth, but it was one where Halfway House did not exist, had never existed. Everything else looked the same, but Gene knew he was not in the world where he belonged.

He checked the portal, a barely visible rectangle, one-dimensional and anomalous, standing in the hayfield below. It seemed to shimmer a bit, but looked stable enough.

There was nothing to do but go back to the castle. Something had happened to the Earth-Perilous link, and Gene would probably miss his plane.

“Rats.”

He couldn’t muster much disappointment. This surprised him. He suddenly realized that he really wasn’t as keen on going to school as he had thought.

So why was he going? He sat down on one of the suitcases and thought about it.

The reason might be a sense of obligation to his parents, or maybe a feeling of guilt for letting them down. After all, they had expected a lot from him.

At first things had gone pretty good. He took his B.A. magna cum laude and entered grad school. But he quit to try law school. He dropped out of that, too, then drifted in and out of a series of odd jobs. Eventually he wound up living at home, staring out windows. At that point he stumbled into Castle Perilous, and his life of fantasy began.

Sometimes the thought that it all might be a hallucination nettled him. The hallucination hypothesis was still in the running. If true, the castle was the most convincing phantasm in medical history, having as it did tactile and olfactory dimensions as well as visual and aural ones. It had more: it had downright spatial dimensions. It was the biggest delusion going.

Put medical speculations aside. Hallucination or not, the castle represented something in his psyche. What was it? The desire to escape? Now you’re talking. Escape what?

Life.

Why? Because life — as he knew it and had lived it — was disappointing. It was drab; it was colorless. It was the proverbial idiot-spun tale, full of sound but not a whole hell of a lot of fury unless you counted random violence, which it had in abundance but which was simply stupid. To him, “fury” connoted something interesting, even significant.

He craved a little significance. He wanted to accomplish something, to be involved in some activity that was not mundane, not quotidian. The castle had given him a taste of that. He had seen a thousand new worlds and had had adventures in half a dozen. He had met Vaya in one of those worlds.

As much fun as sword and sorcery could be, though, it was not enough. He felt obligated to apply himself to some significant — there was that word again — some important task. He wanted to find a cause worthy of his dedication.

It was as simple as that. The plan to help his parents was only the handiest one he could think of. As plans go, it wasn’t bad at all. But it certainly was mundane.

Yeah, it sure was. Cal Tech was a fine school. Computer programming? That sure as hell was not going to light his fire. Fiddling with computers was dandy and he really did want to learn, but —

Something was coming. There came a whine of turbines, the roar of jets. Trees swayed, and birds flushed from cover.

Before he could move, it was hovering directly above him at treetop level, angry with flashing red lights.

It was some sort of VTOL craft — vertical take-off and landing, pronounced vee — tol — with stubby wings and a bubble cockpit. Cylindrical weapon pods bristled from its sides and nose. The thing looked military, and deadly.

A loudspeaker burped, then blared.

“You there! Identify yourself!”

The noise of the engine was surprisingly subdued, more a deafening whisper than a roar. The voice was louder. It hurt his ears.

Gene was suddenly irked. “Who wants to know?”

After a pause the male voice came back: “Don’t move. If you move, you will be shot. Repeat — do not move.”

“Yeah, right.”

The craft landed on the crest of the hill, the downward blast flattening unmown hay. The whine of the engine died and the cockpit popped open. A helmeted man and woman climbed out wearing army fatigues and brandishing machine pistols. They approached.

The man spoke. “What’s your cognomen, citizen?”

“Cognomen? My name is Gene. What’s yours?”

“We’re recording. Recite your omnicode.”

“Say what?”

“Get up.” The man trained his gun on Gene. To the woman he said, “Pat him down.”

“Arms out,” the woman barked. She was short, light-browed, and heavy.

Gene spread his arms. The woman frisked him. He winced when she shoved her hand into his crotch.

She came away with his wallet and airline ticket and handed them over to the man. She covered Gene while the man examined the articles.

“What’s this garbage?” he said.

“Gee, now that just could be my wallet full of traveler’s checks and my goddamn airplane ticket for my goddamn flight, which I am now late for.”

They looked at each other.

“Maladapt?” the woman ventured.

“How do you explain these?”

The woman peered at the wallet and ticket. She shrugged.

“Outperson?”

“Maybe. He’s not an Outforces agent. He wouldn’t be sitting here.”

“Funny clothes.”

“Yeah.” The man raised his gun. “You. Come with us.”

Prodded by gun barrels, Gene walked to the craft. He glanced in the direction of the portal but couldn’t see it. He wondered if his captors would notice it, and what their reaction would be if they did.

There was a seat in a rear compartment that was separated from the cockpit proper by a metal grate, as in a squad car. They ushered Gene in and closed the rear hatch.

The woman went back for the suitcases. These they had a hard time storing in the cramped confines of the cockpit, but they managed.

The woman was the pilot. She nicked switches and the engine revved up. The craft lifted straight up, rotated slowly to the right, then began moving forward.

The craft gained altitude and speed. Gene could see through the grate and watched the countryside roll by. There were very few farmhouses; most of the buildings were ugly concrete high rises. He thought he could see masses of people out in the fields.

Now in full forward flight, the craft leveled off and cruised. The speed was considerable. Fields and farms gradually gave way to the beginnings of a suburban sprawl. More loathsome high rises. A river below. Gene wondered if it was the Monongahela or if the geography was totally different here.

It was a short trip. Presently, taller buildings came into view, stark steel towers arranged among squat pyramidal structures. Now he found out about the geography. Gene recognized the confluence of three rivers and knew that on this site in another world the city of Pittsburgh stood. What was laid out below was a different place altogether.

The craft landed on the roof of a tall wedge-shaped office building. At gunpoint he was escorted out of the craft and into an elevator, which descended endlessly. When the doors opened, Gene guessed the floor was underground. He was told to go right, and he did, following a long bright corridor that put him in mind of a hospital. Near the end of the corridor was a series of doors. He was told to stop in front of one of them.

The man pressed a stud on the wall and the door hissed open. He was motioned inside. He went in.

The cubicle was small. Walls, ceiling, and floor were padded. There was nothing else in the room. The door slid shut, and he was alone. Cold bright light came from a glowing panel recessed in the ceiling.

There was lettering stenciled on the walls. Slogans. One wall read:

The opposite wall told him:

The back wall stated:

He paced off the dimensions. Four steps by three steps. He palpated the walls. No one could hurt himself here. He had expected a cell, but not a padded one. Maybe this place was a hospital, after all. A mental hospital? He could think of no reason for his behavior being interpreted as evidence of mental instability, unless his answers had registered to the cops as gibberish. Could be; after all, a lot of what they had said was gibberish to him.

He waited for hours. No sounds conducted through the walls. His mind was curiously calm. He had trouble thinking, keeping his thoughts in order.

Sleepiness gradually overtook him. He couldn’t keep his eyes open. He fought it off for as long as he could, then gave in. He stretched out on the padded floor and closed his eyes.

The slogan kept repeating in his mind — Conscience is an inner voice.… Conscience is an inner voice.…