Glory Road

Chapter 22

I got back to the old drawing board, slugged away at books in the evening, watched a little television, weekends some fencing.

But I kept having this dream—

I had it first right after I took that job and now I was having it every night—

I'm heading along this long, long road and I round a curve and there's a castle up ahead. It's beautiful, pennants flying from turrets and a winding climb to its drawbridge. But I know, I just know, that there is a princess captive in its dungeon.

That part is always the same. Details vary. Lately the mild little man from Internal Revenue steps into the road and tells me that toll is paid here -- 10 percent more than whatever I've got.

Other times it's a cop and he leans against my horse (sometimes it has four legs, sometimes eight) and writes a ticket for obstructing traffic, riding with out-of-date license, failing to observe stop sign, and gross insubordination. He wants to know if I have a permit to carry that lance? -- and tells me that game laws require me to tag any dragons killed.

Other times I round that turn and a solid wave of freeway traffic, five lanes wide, is coming at me. That one is worst.

I started writing this after the dreams started. I couldn't see going to a headshrinker and saying, "Look, Doc, I'm a hero by trade and my wife is Empress in another universe—" I had even less desire to lie on his couch and tell how my parents mistreated me as a child (they didn't) and how I found out about little girls (that s my business).

I decided to talk it out to a typewriter.

It made me feel better but didn't stop the dreams. But I learned a new word: "acculturated." It's what happens when a member of one culture shifts to another, with a sad period when he doesn't fit. Those Indians you see in Arizona towns, not doing anything, looking in shop windows or just standing. Acculturation. They don't fit.

I was taking a bus down to see my ear, nose, and throat doctor—Star promised me that her therapy plus that at Center would free me of the common cold—and it has; I don't catch anything. But even therapists that administer Long-Life can't protect human tissues against poison gas; L.A. smog was getting me. Eyes burning, nose stopped up—twice a week I went down to get horrid things done to my nose. I used to park my car and go down Wilshire by bus, as parking was impossible close in.

In the bus I overheard two ladies: "—much as I despise them, you can't give a cocktail party without inviting the Sylvesters."

It sounded like a foreign language. Then I played it back and understood the words.

But why did she have to invite the Sylvesters?

If she despised them, why didn't she either ignore them, or drop a rock on their heads?

In God's name, why give a "cocktail party"? People who don't like each other particularly, standing around (never enough chairs), talking about things they aren't interested in, drinking drinks they don't want (why set a time to take a drink?) and getting high so that they won't notice they aren't having fun. Why?

I realized that acculturation had set in. I didn't fit.

I avoided buses thereafter and picked up five traffic tickets and a smashed fender. I quit studying, too. Books didn't seem to make sense. It warn't the way I lamed it back in dear old Center.

But I stuck to my job as a draftsman. I always have been able to draw and soon I was promoted to major work.

One day the Chief Draftsman called me over. "Here, Gordon, this assembly you did—"

I was proud of that job. I had remembered something I had seen on Center and had designed it in, reducing moving parts and improving a clumsy design into one that made me feel good. It was tricky and I had added an extra view. "Well?"

He handed it back. "Do it over. Do it right."

I explained the improvement and that I had done the drawing a better way to—

He cut me off. "We don't want it done a better way, we want it done our way."

"Your privilege," I agreed and resigned by walking out.

My flat seemed strange at that time on a working day. I started to study ‘Strength of Materials'—and chucked the book aside. Then I stood and looked at the Lady Vivamus.

"Dum Vivimus, Vivamus!" Whistling, I buckled her on, drew blade, felt that thrill run up my arm.

I returned sword, got a few things, traveler's checks and cash mostly, walked out. I wasn't going anywhere, just thataway!

I had been striding along maybe twenty minutes when a prowl car pulled up and took me to the station.

Why was I wearing that thing? I explained that gentlemen wore swords.

If I would tell them what movie company I was with, a phone call could clear it up. Or was it television? The Department cooperated but liked to be notified.

Did I have a license for concealed weapons? I said it wasn't concealed. They told me it was—by that scabbard. I mentioned the Constitution; I was told that the Constitution sure as hell didn't mean walking around city streets with a toad sticker like that. A cop whispered to the sergeant, "Here's what we got him on, Sarge. The blade is longer than—" I think it was three inches. There was trouble when they tried to take the Lady Vivamus away from me. Finally I was locked up, sword and all.

Two hours later my lawyer got it changed to "disorderly conduct" and I was released, with talk of a sanity hearing.

I paid him and thanked him and took a cab to the airport and a plane to San Francisco. At the port I bought a large bag, one that would take the Lady Vivamus cater-cornered.

That night in San Francisco I went to a party. I met this chap in a bar and bought him a drink and he bought me one and I stood him to dinner and we picked up a gallon of wine and went to this party. I had been explaining to him that what sense was there in going to school to learn one way when there was already a better way? As silly as an Indian studying buffalo calling! Buffalos are in zoos! Acculturated, that's what it was!

Charlie said he agreed perfectly and his friends would like to hear it. So we went and I paid the driver to wait but took my suitcase inside.

Charlie's friends didn't want to hear my theories but the wine was welcome and I sat on the floor and listened to folk singing. The men wore beards and didn't comb their hair. The beards helped, it made it easy to tell which were girls. One beard stood up and recited a poem. Old Jocko could do better blind drunk but I didn't say so.

It wasn't like a party in Nevia and certainly not in Center, except this: I got propositioned. I might have considered it if this girl hadn't been wearing sandals. Her toes were dirty. I thought of Zhai-ee-van and her dainty, clean fur, and told her thanks, I was under a vow.

The beard who had recited the poem came over and stood in front of me. "Man, like what rumble you picked up that scar?"

I said it had been in Southeast Asia. He looked at me scornfully. "Mercenary!"

"Well, not always," I told him. "Sometimes I fight for free. Like right now."

I tossed him against a wall and took my suitcase outside and went to the airport—and then Seattle and Anchorage, Alaska, and wound up at Elmendorf AFB, clean, sober, and with the Lady Vivamus disguised as fishing tackle.

Mother was glad to see me and the kids seemed pleased—I had bought presents between planes in Seattle—and my stepdaddy and I swapped yarns.

I did one important thing in Alaska; I flew to Point Barrow. There I found part of what I was looking for: no pressure, no sweat, not many people. You look out across the ice and know that only the North Pole is over that way, and a few Eskimos and fewer white people here. Eskimos are every bit as nice as they have been pictured. Their babies never cry, the adults never seem cross—only the dogs staked-out between the huts are bad-tempered.

But Eskimos are "civilized" now; the old ways are going. You can buy a choc malt at Barrow and airplanes fly daily in a sky that may hold missiles tomorrow.

But they still seal amongst the ice floes, the village is rich when they take a whale, half starved if they don't. They don't count time and they don't seem to worry about anything—ask a man how old he is, he answers: "Oh, I'm quite of an age." That's how old Rufo is. Instead of good-bye, they say, "Sometime again!" No particular time and again well see you.

They let me dance with them. You must wear gloves (in their way they are as formal as the Doral) and you stomp and sing with the drums—and I found myself weeping. I don't know why. It was a dance about a little old man who doesn't have a wife and now he sees a seal—

I said, "Sometime again!"—went back to Anchorage and to Copenhagen. From 30,000 feet the North Pole looks like prairie covered with snow, except black lines that are water. I never expected to see the North Pole.

From Copenhagen I went to Stockholm. Majatta was not with her parents but was only a square away. She cooked me that Swedish dinner, and her husband is a good Joe. From Stockholm I phoned a "Personal" ad to the Paris edition of the Herald-Tribune, then went to Paris.

I kept the ad in daily and sat across from the Two Maggots and stacked saucers and tried not to fret. I watched the ma'm'selles and thought about what I might do.

If a man wanted to settle down for forty years or so, wouldn't Nevia be a nice place? Okay, It has dragons. It doesn't have flies, nor mosquitoes, nor smog. Nor parking problems, nor freeway complexes that look like diagrams for abdominal surgery. Not a traffic light anywhere.

Muri would be glad to see me. I might marry her. And maybe little whatever-her-name was, her kid sister, too. Why not? Marriage customs aren't everywhere those they use in Paducah. Star would be pleased; she would like being related to Jocko by marriage.

But I would go see Star first, or soon anyhow, and kick that pile of strange shoes aside. But I wouldn't stay; it would be "sometime again" which would suit Star. It is a phrase, one of the few, that translates exactly into Centrist jargon—and means exactly the same.

"Sometime again," because there are other maidens, or pleasing facsimiles, elsewhere, in need of rescuing. Somewhere. And a man must work at his trade, which wise wives know.

"I cannot rest from travel; I will drink life to the lees." A long road, a trail, a "Tramp Royal," with no certainty of what you'll eat or where or if, nor where you'll sleep, nor with whom. But somewhere is Helen of Troy and all her many sisters and there is still noble work to be done.

A man can stack a lot of saucers in a month and I began to fume instead of dream. Why the hell didn't Rufo show up? I brought this account up to date from sheer nerves. Has Rufo gone back? Or is he dead?

Or was he "never born"? Am I a psycho discharge and what is in this case I carry with me wherever I go? A sword? I'm afraid to look, so I do—and now I'm afraid to ask. I met an old sergeant once, a thirty-year man, who was convinced that he owned all the diamond mines in Africa; he spent his evenings keeping books on them. Am I just as happily deluded? Are these francs what is left of my monthly disability check?

Does anyone ever get two chances? Is the Door in the Wall always gone when next you look? Where do you catch the boat for Brigadoon? Brother, it's like the post office in Brooklyn: You can't get there from here!

I'm going to give Rufo two more weeks—

I've heard from Rufo! A clipping of my ad was for warded to him but he had a little trouble. He wouldn't say much by phone but I gather he was mixed up with a carnivorous Fraulein and got over the border almost sans calottes. But he'll be here tonight. He is quite agreeable to a change in planets and universes and says he has something interesting in mind. A little risky perhaps, but not dull. I'm sure he's right both ways. Rufo might steal your cigarettes and certainly your wench but things aren't dull around him—and he would die defending your rear.

So tomorrow we are heading up that Glory Road, rocks and all!

Got any dragons you need killed?