Out of Their Minds

13

I slumped in the seat and tried to sleep, but I couldn't seem to sleep. My body needed sleep, but my brain cried out against it. I sank close to the edge of it, but never seemed quite able to drop off into it.

A parade went marching through my brain and there was no end to it and no reason, either. It was not really thinking, for I was too played out to think. I had been at the wheel too long; all night until an early morning stop for breakfast somewhere near Chicago and then driving against the rising sun until Kathy took the wheel. I had tried to sleep then and had napped a little, but I hadn't gotten much rest. And now, after lunch somewhere near the Pennsylvania line, I had settled down, determined to build up some sack time. But it wasn't working out.

The wolves came again, padding down my brain in the same nonchalant manner as they had padded down the street of Woodman. They closed in upon me as I backed against the building and, although I was watching for her and waiting for her, Kathy did not come. They closed in upon me and I fought them off, realizing that in the end I could not fight them off, while the Referee perched upon the bracket that held the creaking sign and in his piping voice was yelling foul at me. My legs and arms grew heavy and I had trouble moving them, my body aching and sweating in a desperate effort to make them move the way they should. The blows I struck with the bat seemed to be feeble blows, although I put all the strength I had into the striking of the blows and I wondered and worried most intensely why this should be so until the realization dawned upon me slowly that I held no baseball bat, but a writhing, limber rattlesnake.

At the realization, the snake and the wolves and Wood- man faded from my mind and I was talking once again with my old friend huddled in the chair that threatened to engulf him. He gestured toward the doors that opened on the patio and, following his gesture, I saw that the sky was tenanted by a fairy landscape with ancient, twisted oaks and a castle that thrust snow-white spires and turrets far into the air, while on the road that went winding up the wild and breathless crags leading to the castle marched a motley throng of assorted knights and monsters. I think that we are haunted, my old friend told me, and he had no more than said these words when an arrow came whizzing past my head and sank deep into his chest. Off in the wings, as if this place where I stood was some sort of stage, a sweet voice began declaiming: Who shot Cock Robin? I said the Sparrow… and looking very closely I could see with clarity that my old friend, with an arrow in his chest, was certainly no robin, but surely was a sparrow and I wondered if he'd been shot by another sparrow or if I had misunderstood and it had been a robin that had shot a sparrow. And I said to the little monstrosity with the pointed head, which was the Referee, now perching on the mantle, why don't you yell foul, for it is, indeed, a most foul thing that a friend is done to death. Although I couldn't be sure if he were done to death or not, for he still sat as he had before, engulfed in the chair, with a smile upon his lips and there was no blood where the arrow had gone in.

Then, like the wolves in Woodman, my old friend and his study went away and for an instant the slate of my mind was clean and I rejoiced at it, but almost immediately I was running down an avenue and ahead of me I saw a building that I recognized and I strived mightily to reach it, for it was important that I reach it and finally I did. Sitting at a desk just inside the door was an agent of the FBI. I knew he was an agent because he had square shoulders and an angular jaw and wore a soft black hat. I leaned my mouth close to his ear and whispered about a terrible secret that must be told to no one, for it was death to anyone who knew it. He listened to me with no change of expression, without a single twitch of a muscle in his face and when I had finished, he reached for a phone. You are a member of the Mob, he told me, I can recognize one of them at a hundred paces. And then I saw that I had been mistaken, that he was no agent of the FBI, but merely Superman. His place immediately was taken by another man in another place—a tall man standing dignified and rigid, with white hair combed meticulously and a clipped, white, bristly mustache. I knew him immediately for what he was, an agent of the CIA, and I stood tall, on tiptoes, to whisper in his ear, being very careful to tell him, in its exact phraseology, what I had told the man I had thought was the FBI. The tall and rigid man stood and heard me out, then reached for a phone. You are a spy, he said. I can recognize one of them at a hundred paces. I knew then that I had imagined all of this, both the FBI and the CIA, and that I was in no building, but on a gray and darkling plain that stretched flat in all directions to a far horizon that was gray itself, so that I had some difficulty in determining where the plain left off and the sky began.

"You ought to try to go to sleep," said Kathy. "You need the sleep. Do you want an aspirin?"

"No aspirin," I mumbled at her. "I haven't got a headache."

What I had, I knew, was far worse than a headache. It was no dream, for I was half awake. I knew all the time that these other things were running in my mind that I was in a car and that the car was moving. The landscape outside the car was lost on — me; I was aware of tree and hill, of field and far-off village, of the other cars upon the road and of the road shimmering out into the distance, of the sound of engine and of tires. But the awareness was a background awareness only, dimmed and dulled, a surface awareness that seemed to make no impact upon the visions summoned up by a brain that had lost its governor of reason and was running wild, summoning up the fantasy of the might-have-been.

I was back on the plain again and I saw now that it was featureless, a lonely and eternal place, that its flatness was not marred by any hill or ridge or tree, that it ran on forever in its utter sameness and that the sky, like the plain, also was featureless, without a cloud or sun or star and it was hard to tell whether it might be day or night—it was too light for night and too dark for day. It was a deep dusk and I wondered whether it might be always like this, a place where it was never anything but dusk, reaching toward the night, but never getting there. As I stood there on the plain, I heard the baying coming from far away, a sound that was unmistakable, the very sound that I had heard when I had stepped out for a breath of air and had heard the pack go crying down the notch of Lonesome Hollow. Frightened by the sound, I turned slowly, trying to determine from what direction it might come, and in my slow turning I caught sight of a thing that stumbled its way along the far horizon, its blackness dimly outlined against the grayness of the sky. Dim, but not to be mistaken, not that long sinuous neck which terminated in the ugly, darting, seeking head, not that serrated backbone.

I ran, although there was no place to run, certainly no place that one could hide. And as I ran I knew what sort of place it was, a place that had existed forever and would exist forever, where nothing had ever happened or was about to happen. Now there was another sound, a steady, oncoming sound that could be heard in the silences which lay between the baying of the wolves—a flapping, plopping sound that had an undertone of rustling and at times a harsh, hard buzzing. I spun about and searched the surface of the plain and in a little time I saw them, a squadron of humping, wriggling rattlesnakes bearing down upon me. I turned and ran, the air pumping in my lungs, and as I ran I knew there was no use of running and no need. For this was a place where nothing had ever happened and where nothing would ever happen and because of this it was a place of perfect safety. I ran, I knew, from nothing but my fear. It was a safe place, but by that very token, a place of futility and of hopelessness. But nevertheless I ran, for I could not stop the running. I heard the baying of the wolves, no closer and no farther off than they had been at first, and the slap, slap of the hunching rattlesnakes keeping pace with me. My strength ran out and my breath ran out and I fell, then got up and ran again and fell again. Finally I fell and lay there, not caring any more, not caring what might happen, although I knew that in this place nothing at all could happen. I didn't try to get up. I just lay there and let the hopelessness and the futility and the blackness close in upon me.

But suddenly I became aware that something had gone wrong. There was no motor hum, no hiss of rubber on the pavement, no sense of motion. There was, instead, the sound of a quiet wind blowing and the scent of many blossoms.

"Wake up, Horton," Kathy's startled voice said. "Something happened, very, very strange."

I opened my eyes and struggled upward. I lifted both my fists and scrubbed at sleep-smudged eyes.

The car had stopped and we were no longer on the highway. We were on no road at all, but on a rutted cart track that went wandering down a hill, dodging boulders and trees and brightly flowering shrubs. Grass grew between the deep wheelmarks and a wildness and a silence hung over everything.

We seemed to be on top of a high ridge or a mountain. The lower slope was heavily forested, but here, on top, the trees were scattered, although their size made up for the fewness of them—most of them great oaks, their mighty branches scarred and twisted, their boles spotted with heavy coats of lichens.

"I was just driving along," said Kathy, shaken, "not going too fast, not as fast as the highway limit—fifty more than likely. And then I was off the road and the car was rolling to a stop, its engine killed. And that's impossible. It couldn't happen that way."

I still was half asleep. I rubbed my eyes again, not so much to get the sleep out of them as because there was something wrong about the place.

"There was no sense of deceleration," Kathy said. "No jolt. And how could one get off the highway? There's no way to leave the highway."

I'd seen those oaks somewhere before and I was trying to remember where I might have seen them—not the selfsame trees, of course, but others that were like them.

"Kathy," I asked, "where are we?"

"We must be on top of South Mountain. I'd just passed through Chambersburg."

"Yes," I said, remembering, "just short of Gettysburg." Although when I had asked the question, that had not been exactly what I'd meant.

"You don't realize what happened, Horton. We might have both been killed."

I shook my head. "Not killed. Not here."

"What do you mean?" she asked, irritated at me.

"Those oaks," I said. "Where have you seen those oaks before?"

"I've never seen.. **

"Yes, you have," I said. "You must have. When you were a kid. In a book about King Arthur, or maybe Robin Hood."

She gasped and reached her hand out to my arm. "Those old romantic, pastoral drawings..»

"That is right," I said. "All oak trees in this land, mo*. likely, are that kind of oaks, and all poplars tall an.. stately and all pine trees most triangular, as in a picture book."

Her hand tightened on my arm. "That other land. The place that friend of yours…"

"Perhaps," I said. "Perhaps."

For even knowing that it could be no other places that ii what Kathy said were true, we'd both be dead if it were not that other land, it still was a hard thing to accept.

"But I thought," said Kathy, "that it would be full o' ghosts and goblins and other horrid things."

"Horrid things," I said. "Yes, I'd think you'd find their here. But more than likely some good things as well."

For if this were actually the place my old friend had hypothesized, then it held all the legends and the myths, all the fairy tales that man had dreamed hard enough for them to become a part of him.

I opened the door of the car and stepped out

The sky was blue—perhaps a shade too blue—a deep, intense and still very gentle blue. The grass was slightly greener, it seemed to me, than grass had the right to be, and yet in that extra-greenness there was a sense of gladness, the kind of feeling an eight-year-old boy might have in walking barefoot through the soft, new grass of spring.

Standing there and looking at it, I realized that the place was entirely storybook. In some subtle way that I could sense, but could not really name, it was not the old and solid earth, but a bit too perfect to be any place on Earth. It looked the way that painted illustrations looked.

Kathy came around the car to stand beside me.

"It's so peaceful here," she said. "You really can't believe it."

A dog came pacing up the hill toward us—pacing, not trotting. He was a crazy-looking dog. His ears were long and he tried to hold them upright, but the upper half of them folded over and hung down. He was big and ungainly and he carried his whiplike tail straight up in the air like a car antenna. He was smooth-coated and had big feet and was unbelievably skinny. He held his angular head high and he was grinning, with a fine display of teeth, and the funny thing about it was that they were human instead of canine teeth.

He moved up close to us and then stopped and stretched his front paws out on the ground and put his chin down on them. His rear end was elevated and his tail went round and round, revolving in a circle. He was very glad to see us.

Far down the slope someone whistled sharply and impatiently. The dog sprang to his feet, swinging around in the direction from which the whistle had come. The whistle sounded again and with an apologetic backward look at us, the caricature of a dog went swarming down the hill. He ran awkwardly, his back feet reaching forward to overlap his front feet, and his tail, canted at an angle of forty-five degrees, swung furiously in a circle of overwhelming happiness.

"I've seen that dog before," I said. "I know that I have seen him somewhere."

"Why," said Kathy, surprised at my nonrecognition, "it was Pluto. Mickey Mouse's dog."

I found that I was angry at myself for my stupidity. I should have recognized the dog immediately. But when one is all set to see a goblin or a fairy, he does not expect to have a cartoon character come popping out at him.

But the cartoon characters would be here, of course— the entire lot of them. Doc Yak and the Katzenjammer Kids, Harold Teen and Dagwood and, as well, all title fantastic Disney characters let loose upon my world.

Pluto had run up to see us and Mickey Mouse had whistled him away and we, the two of us, I thought, accepted it as a not unusual fact. If a man had stood off from this place, to one side of it, and had looked upon it in a logical, human manner, he never could have accepted it. Under no circumstances could he have admitted there was such a world or that he could be in it. But when he was there and could not stand aside, the doubt all dropped away, the zaniness rubbed off.

"Horton," Kathy asked, "what do we do now? Do you think the car could manage on that road?"

"We could take it slow," I said. "In low. And it might get better as we went along."

She walked around the car and got behind the wheel. She reached for the key and turned it and absolutely nothing happened. She switched it off and turned it once again and.there was no sound, not even the clunking of a balky starter.

I walked around to the front of it, unlatched the hood and lifted it. I don't know why I bothered. I am no mechanic. There was nothing I possibly could have done to get at the trouble.

I leaned over the radiator and had a look at the motor and it looked all right to me. Half of it could have been missing and it still would have looked all right to me.

A gasp and a thump jerked me upright and I banged my head against the hood.

"Horton!" Kathy cried.

I stepped quickly to one side of the car and Kathy was sitting beside the road. Her face was twisted up in pain.

"My foot," she said.

Her left foot, I saw, was wedged tightly in a rut.

"I got out of the car," she said, "and stepped back, not looking where I stepped."

I knelt down beside her and worked her foot free as gently as I could, leaving the shoe jammed in the rut. Her ankle was red and bruised.

"What a stupid thing to do," she said.

"It hurts?"

"You're damned right it hurts. I think that it is sprained."

The ankle looked as if it might be sprained. And what in hell, I wondered, did one do with a sprained ankle.in a place like this? There'd be no doctors, of course. I seemed to remember that you fixed a sprain with an elastic bandage, but there was no elastic bandage, either.

"We ought to get the stocking off," I said. "If it starts to swell…"

She hiked up her skirt and unfastened a garter, pushing the stocking down. I managed to work it down over the ankle and once it was off, there could be no doubt that the ankle was badly hurt. It was inflamed and there was some swelling.

"Kathy," I said, "I don't know what to do. If you have some idea…"

"It's probably not so bad," she said, "although it hurts. In a day or two it should be better. We have the car for shelter. Even if it won't run, it will be a place to stay."

"There might be someone who could help," I said. "I don't know what to do. If we had a bandage. I could rip up my shirt, but it should be an elastic…"

"Someone to help? In a place like this!"

"It's worth a try," I said. "It's not all ghouls and goblins. Perhaps not even many of them. They are out-of-date. There would be others…"

She nodded. "Perhaps you're right. That idea of using the car for shelter doesn't.cover everything. We'll need food and water, too. But maybe we're getting scared too soon. Maybe I can walk."

"Who's getting scared?" I asked.

"Don't try to kid me," said Kathy, sharply. "You know we're in a jam. We know nothing about this place. We're foreigners. We have no right to be here."

"We didn't ask to come here."

"But that makes no difference, Horton."

And I don't suppose it did. Someone apparently wanted us to be here. Someone had brought us here.

Thinking about it, I grew a little cold. Not for myself—or, at least, I don't think for myself. Hell, I could face anything. After rattlesnakes, sea serpent, and werewolves, there was nothing that could faze me. But it wasn't fair for Kathy to be dragged into it.

"Look," I said, "If I got you in the car, you could lock the doors and I could take a short, fast look around." She nodded. "If you'd help me."

I didn't help her. I simply picked her up and put her in the car. I eased her into the seat and reached across her to lock the opposite door.

"Roll up the window," I told her, "and lock the door. Yell if something shows up. I won't be far away."

She started to roll up the window, then rolled it down again, reaching down to the floor of the car. She came up with the baseball bat and stuck it through the window.

"Here, take this," she said.

I felt a little foolish going down the path with the bat in hand. But it made a good heft in my fist and it might be handy.

Where the path curved to go around the big oak I stopped and looked back. She was staring through the windshield and I waved at her and went on down the path.

The ground pitched sharply. Below me the forest closed in, dense and heavy. There was no breeze and the trees stood up motionless, the greenness of their leaves glinting in the sun of late afternoon.

I went on down the road and at a place where it twisted again to dodge another tree, I found the signpost. It was old and weather-beaten, but the legend still was clear. TO THE INN, it said, with an arrow pointing.

Back at the car, I told her, "I don't know what kind of inn, but it might be better than just staying here. There might be someone who could doctor up the ankle. At least we could get some cold water or some hot water—which is it you use to help a sprain?"

"I don't know," she said, "and I don't like the idea of an inn, but I suppose we can't stay sitting here. We have to get an idea of what is going on, what we should expect."

"I didn't like the idea of an inn any better than she did—I didn't like anything that was going on; but what she said was right. We couldn't stay huddled on that hilltop and wait for whatever was about to happen.

So I got her out and perched her on the hood while I locked the door and pocketed the key. Then I picked her up and started down the hill.

"You forgot the bat," she said.

"There was no way to carry it."

"I could have carried it."

"More than likely we won't need it," I told her and went on down the road, picking my way as carefully as I could so I wouldn't stumble.

Just below the signpost, the road twisted again to make its way around a massive heap of boulders and as I rounded the boulders, there on the distant ridge was the castle. I stopped dead when I saw it, shocked into immobility by the unexpectedness of the sight.

Take all the beautiful, fancy, romantic, colorful paintings of castles that you have ever seen and roll them all together, combining all their good points. Forget everything you have ever read about a castle as a dirty, smelly, unsanitary, drafty habitation and substitute instead the castle of the fairy tale, King Arthur's Camelot, Walt Disney's castles. Do all of this and you might get some slight idea of what that castle looked like.

It was the stuff of dreams; it was the old romanticism and the chivalry come across the years. It sat upon the distant ridgetop in its gleaming whiteness, and the multicolored pennants mounted on its spires and turrets rippled in the air. It was such a perfect structure that one knew instinctively that there never could be another one quite like it.

"Horton," Kathy said, "will you put me down. I'd like to sit awhile and simply look at it. Did you know it was there all the time and you never said a word…"

"I didn't know it was there," I told her. "I came back when I saw the sign about the inn."

"We could go to the castle, maybe," she said. "Not the inn."

"We could try," I said. "There must be a road."

I put her down upon the ground and sat down beside her.

"I think the ankle may be getting better," she said. "I think that I could manage even if I had to walk a ways."

I took a look at it and shook my head. It was red and shiny and had swollen quite a lot.

"When I was a little girl," she said, "I thought castles were shining and romantic things. Then I took a couple of courses on the society of medieval days and I learned the truth about them. But here is a shining castle with all its pennons flying and.."

"It's the kind of place," I said, "that you thought about, the kind of castle that you and a million other little girls formed within their romantic little minds."

And it wasn't only castles, I reminded myself. Here in this land resided all the fantasies that mankind had developed through the centuries. Here, somewhere Huckleberry Finn floated on his raft down a never-ending river. Somewhere in this world Red Riding Hood went tripping down a woodland path. Somewhere Mr. Magoo blundered along on his near-blind course through a series of illogical circumstances.

And what was the purpose of it, or did there have to be a purpose? Evolution was often a blind sort of operation, appearing on the surface to be of no great purpose. And humans, perhaps, should not attempt to find the purpose here, for humans were too entirely human to conceive, much less understand, any manner of existence other than their own. Exactly as the dinosaurs would have been incapable of accepting the idea (if dinosaurs ever had ideas) of the human intelligence which was to follow them.

But this was a world, I told myself, that was a part of the human mind. All things, all creatures, all ideas in this world or this dimension or this other place were the products of the human mind. This was, in all likelihood, an extension of the human mind, a place that took the thought the human mind had formed and used that thought as raw material by which a new world and a new evolutionary process had been fabricated.

"I could sit here all day," said Kathy, "and keep on looking at the castle, but I suppose that we should start if we ever are to get there. I don't think I can walk; do you mind a lot?"

"There was a time in Korea," I told her, "during a retreat, when my cameraman got it in the thigh and I had to carry him. We had stayed behind a bit too long and…"

She laughed at me happily. "He was much bigger," I told her, "and much less lovable and most dirty and profane. He showed no gratitude."

"I promise you my gratitude," she said. "It is so wonderful."

"Wonderful?" I asked, "with a busted ankle and in a place like this.."

"But the castle 1" she cried. "I never thought I'd see a castle like that—the kind of castle I used to dream about."

"There is one thing," I said. "I'll say it once and I'll not mention it again. I am sorry, Kathy."

"Sorry? Because I got a busted ankle?"

"No, not that," I said. "Sorry that you're here at all. I shouldn't have let you mix into this. I never should have let you get the envelope. I never should have phoned you from that little place—from Woodman."

She crinkled up her face. "But there was nothing else that you could do. By the time you phoned, I had read the paper and I was involved. That was why you called."

"They might not have touched you, but once we were in the car, heading east for Washington…"

"Horton, pick me up," she said, "and let's be on our way. If we're late getting to the castle, they may not let us in."

"All right," I said. "The castle."

I got up and stooped to lift her, but as I did the brush rattled to one side of the path and a bear stepped out. He was walking upright and wore a pair of red shorts with white polka dots on them, held up by a single suspender looped across a shoulder. He carried a club across the other shoulder and he grinned most engagingly at us.

Kathy shrank back against me, but she didn't scream, although she had every right to, for this bear, despite his grin, had a look of disrepute about him.

Out of the brush behind him stepped a wolf, who carried no club and also tried to smile at us, but his smile was less engaging and somehow sinister. After the wolf came a fox and all three of them stood there in a row, grinning at us in right good fellowship.

"Mr. Bear," I said, "and Mr. Wolf and Br'er Fox. How are you today?"

I tried to keep my voice light and even, but I doubt that I succeeded, for I didn't like these three. I wished most earnestly I'd brought along the ball bat

Mr. Bear made a little bow. "We are gratified," he said, "that you recognize us. And it is most fortunate we meet I take it that the two of you are new to these environs."

"We have just arrived," said Kathy.

"Well, then," said Mr. Bear, "it is good we are well met. For we have been searching for a partner in a goodly undertaking."

"There is a chicken roost," said Br'er Fox, "that needs some looking into."

"I am sorry," I told them. "Maybe later on. Miss Adams has sprained her ankle and I must get her somewhere for medical attention."

"Now that is too bad," said Mr. Bear, trying to look sympathetic. "A sprained ankle, I would think might be a painful burden for anyone to carry. And especially for milady, who is so beautiful."

"But there is this chicken roost," said Br'er Fox, "and with evening comin' on…"

Mr. Bear rumbled throatily at him. "Br'er Fox, you have no soul. You have nothing but a stomach that is forever empty. The chicken roost, you see," he said to me, "is an adjunct to the castle and it is well guarded by a pack of hounds and various other carnivores and there is no hope for such as the three of us to gain entry to it. Which is a crying shame, for those hens have grown overfat and would make toothsome eating. We had thought, perhaps, that if we could enlist a human we might sit down and work out a plan that had some promise of success. We have approached certain of them, but they are cowardly creatures, not to be depended on. Harold Teen and Dagwood and a great many others of them and they all are hopeless. We have a luxurious den not very far from here where we could sit down and evolve a plan. There would be a comfortable pallet for milady and one of us could go and fetch Old Meg with potions for the injured ankle."

"No, thank you," Kathy said. "We are going to the castle."

"You may be too late," said Br'er Fox. "They are over-meticulous with the closing of the gate."

"We 'must hurry, then," said Kathy.

I stooped to pick her up, but Mr. Bear reached out a paw and stopped me. "Surely," he said, "you are not about to dismiss with so little thought this matter of the chickens. You like chickens, do you not?"

"Of course he likes them," said the wolf, who had not spoken until now. "Man is as confirmed a carnivore as any of us."

"But finicky," said Br'er Fox.

"Finicky," said Mr. Bear, aghast. "Those are the plumpest hens these old eyes have ever seen. They'd be finger-licking good and surely there could be no one who would want to pass them by."

"Some other time," I told them, "I'd view your proposition with overwhelming interest, but as of the moment we must be getting on."

"Some other time, perhaps," Mr. Bear said, bleakly.

"Yes, some other time," I said. "Please look me up again."

"When you are hungrier," Mr. Wolf suggested.

"That might make a difference," I admitted.

I lifted Kathy and held her cradled in my arms. For a moment I wasn't sure they would let us go, but they stepped aside and I went down the path.

Kathy shivered. "What terrible creatures," she said. "Standing there and grinning at us. Thinking we would join in their chicken thievery."

I wanted to look back, to be sure they are still there and not stalking along behind us. But I didn't dare to look, for it would have made them think I was afraid of them. I was afraid of them, but that made it all the more important that I not show it.

Kathy put her arms around my neck and hung on with her head against my shoulder. It was much more satisfactory, I told myself, carrying her than that benighted, foul-mouthed cameraman. And, besides, she didn't weigh as much.

By now the path had led off the fairly open ridgetop into deep and stately woods and only on occasion could I see the castle through some accidental woodland vista and then only portions of it. The sun was falling close to the western horizon and the depths of the woods were filled with smoky twilight and in their shaded recesses I became aware of many furtive stirrings.

The path forked and became two and there was another signpost, with two pointing arrows this time, one pointing to the castle, the other to the inn. But just a few yards down the path leading to the castle a massive iron gate barred any further progress, and stretching out on either side of it was a high fence of heavy steel mesh, with barbed wire on top of it. A gaily striped kiosk stood to one side of the gate and a man-at-arms leaned against it with a halberd held very sloppily. I walked up to the gate and had to kick it to attract his attention.

"Ye be late," he growled. "The gate is closed at sunset and the dragons are let loose. It would be-worth your life to go a furlong down that road."

He came to the gate and peered closer at us.

"You have a damsel with you. Is she hi distress?"

"Her ankle's hurt," I said. "She cannot walk."

He sniggered. "If such be the case," he said, "it might be arranged to provide escort for the damsel."

"For both of us," said Kathy, sharply.

He wagged his head in mock sadness. "I stretch the point to let one past. I cannot stretch for both."

"Someday," I said, "it will not be a point but your neck that will be stretched."

"Begone!" he shouted, angrily. "Begone and take your slut along. At the km, the witch will mutter spells to mend the ankle."

"Let's get out of here," said Kathy, frightened.

"My friend," I said to the man-at-arms, "I shall make a point, when I am less encumbered, of coming back and raising lumps on you."

"Please," said Kathy. "Please, let's get out of here!"

I turned around and left Behind us, the man-at-arms roared threats and banged the gate bars with his halberd. I turned down the path that led to the inn and once out of sight of the castle gate stopped and let Kathy to the ground, crouching down beside her.

She was crying, more with anger, it seemed to me, than with fear.

"No one," she said, "has ever called me a slut."

I did not point out to her that manners and language of that sort sometimes went with castles.

She raised her arm and pulled my head down close beside her face. "If it hadn't been for me," she said, "you could have clobbered him."

"That was all talk," I told her. "There was a gate between us and he had that fancy stabber."

"He said there was a witch down at the inn," she said.

I turned my head and kissed her gently on the cheek.

"Are you trying to take my mind off witches?"

"I thought it might help," I said.

"And there was that fence," she said. "A wire fence. Who ever heard of a fence around a castle? Back hi those days they hadn't even invented wire."

"It's getting dark," I said. "We'd better head for the inn."

"But the witch!"

I laughed, not that I really felt like laughing. "Mostly," I told her, "witches are just old eccentric women no one understands."

"Maybe you are right," she said.

I lifted her and got on my feet.

She held up her face and I kissed her upon the mouth. Her arms tightened about me and I held her body close, feeling the warmth and the sweetness of her. For a long moment there was nothing in the empty universe but the two of us and it was only slowly that I came back to a realization of the darkening woods and of the furtive stirrings in it.

A short way down the path I saw a faint rectangle of light that I knew must be the inn.

"We're almost there," I told her.

"I won't be any bother, Horton," she promised. "I'll not do any screaming. No matter what there is, I'll never scream."

"I'm sure you won't," I said. "And we'll get out of here. I don't know exactly how, but somehow we'll make it out of here, the two of us together5"

Seen dimly in the deepening dark, the inn was an old ramshackle building, huddled beneath a grove of towering, twisted oaks. Smoke plumed from the chimney in the center of the roofline and the feeble window-light shone through diamond panes of glass. The inn yard was deserted and there seemed no one about. Which was just as well, I told myself.

I'd almost gotten to the doorway when a bent, misshapen figure moved into it, a black, featureless body outlined by the dim light from inside.

"Come on in, laddie," shrilled the bent-over creature.

"Don't stand gawping there. There is naught to harm you. Nor milady, either."

"Milady has sprained her ankle," I said. "We had hoped…"

"Of course," the creature cried. "You've come to the most likely place to have a job of healing. Old Meg will stir up a posset for it."

I could see her somewhat more clearly now and there could be no doubt that she was the witch of which the man-at-arms had told us. Her hair hung in wispy, ragged strands about her face and her nose was long and hooked, reaching for an up curved chin and almost reaching it She leaned heavily upon a wooden staff.

She stepped back and I moved through the door. A fire that blazed smokily upon the hearth did little to relieve the darkness of the room. The smell of wood smoke mingled with and sharpened the other undefinable odors that lay like a fog upon the place.

"Over there," said Meg, the witch, pointing with her staff. "The chair over by the fire. It is of good construction, made of honest oak and shaped to fit the body, with a wood sack for "a seat. Milady will be comfortable."

I carried Kathy over to the chair and lowered her into it.

"All right?" I asked.

She looked up at me and her eyes were shining softly in the firelight.

"All right," she said, and her words were happy. "We're halfway home," I told her.

The witch went hobbling past us, thumping her staff upon the floor and muttering to herself. She crouched beside the fire and began stirring a pan of steaming liquid set upon the coals. The firelight, flaring up, showed the ugliness of her, the incredible nose and chin, the enormous wart upon one cheek, sprouting hairs that looked like spider legs.

Now that my eyes were becoming accustomed to the darkness, I began to make out some of the details of the room. Three rough plank tables stood along the front wall and unlighted candles, set in candlesticks upon the tables, leaned askew like pale and drunken ghosts. A large hutch cabinet at one end of the room held mugs and bottles that glinted faintly in the stuttering firelight nickering in the room.

"Now," said the witch, "just a bit of powdered toad and a pinch of graveyard dust and the posset will be finished. And once we fix the damsel's ankle, then there will be food. Aye, yes, there will be food."

She cackled shrilly at a joke I could only guess at— something about the food, perhaps.

From some distance off came the sound of voices. Other travelers, I wondered, heading for the inn? A company of them, perhaps.

The voices grew louder and I stepped to the door to look in the direction from which they came. Coming up the track, climbing the hill, were a number of people and some of them were carrying flaring torches.

Behind the crowd came two men riding horses, but as I watched the procession, I saw after a little time that the one who rode behind the other rode a donkey, not a horse, with his feet almost dragging on the ground. But it was the man who rode in front who attracted my attention and very well he might. He loomed tall and gaunt and was dressed in armor, with a shield upon one arm and a long «. lance carried on one shoulder. The horse was as gaunt as he was and it walked with a stumbling gait and with its head held low. As the procession approached closer I saw, in the light cast by the torches, that the horse was little better than a bag of bones.

The procession halted and the people parted as the " horse carrying the tall scarecrow in armor stumbled through the crowd and to the front. Having walked clear of the crowd, it halted and stood with hanging head and I would not have been surprised if, at any moment, it had fallen in a heap.

Man and horse held motionless and the crowd as well and watching them warily, I wondered rather vaguely what might happen next. In a place like this, I knew, it could be anything. The whole thing was ridiculous, of course—but that was no consolation, for it was a judgment based On the manners and the mores of the human twentieth century and it was not valid here.

The horse slowly raised his head. The crowd shuffled expectantly, with the torches bobbing. And the knight; with what seemed a conscious effort, straightened and stiffened himself in the saddle and brought down the lance. I stood there, in the innyard, an interested spectator and just a bit befuddled as to what it might be all about.

Suddenly the knight was shouting and, although his voice rang out loud and clear in the silence of the night, it took an instant for me to sort out what he said. The lance, braced against his thigh had leveled, and the horse had launched itself into a gallop before I realized the intent of his words.

"Catiff," he had shouted, "wretch, dirty infidel, make ready to defend thyself!"

And it must have been me he meant, I gathered, because the horse was thundering toward me and the lance was pointed at me and, God knows, I had no time at all to prepare for my defense.

If there had been time, I'd have taken to my heels, for I knew I was outclassed. But I didn't have the time to do anything at all and I was, in fact, half frozen by the craziness of it and in the few intervening seconds that somehow seemed like hours I stood and watched in fascination as the glittering lance point came bearing down upon me. The horse was no great shakes, but he was good for a sudden burst of speed and he was thundering along like an asthmatic locomotive.

The lance point was only a few feet away and about to spit me when I came alive enough to move. I jumped backward. The point went past me, but as it did the knight seemed to lose control of it, or the horse might have shied or stumbled—I don't know which it was—but, in any case, the lance swung sharply toward me and, reaching out my hands, I batted at it blindly to shove it away from me.

I hit it and deflected it downward and the point plunged into the ground. Suddenly the lance, its point plunged into the ground. Suddenly the lance, its point deeply buried, became a catapult so that its butt, catching in the armpit of the knight, hoisted him off the saddle and high into the air. The horse dug in its feet and skidded to a halt, with the stirrups swinging wildly, while the bowed lance straightened and hurled the hapless knight like a rock fired from a slingshot. He arched through the air and landed, face downward and spread-eagled, at the far end of the yard and when he hit the ground there was a clangor such as one might make if he hit an empty steel drum a resounding lick with a heavy hammer.

Up the road the people who had formed the procession for the knight were convulsed with glee. Some of them were doubled over, laughing, with their arms wrapped about their middles, while others of them were rolling on the ground, helpless with their guffaws.

Shambling down the road came the lop-eared little donkey, still carrying the tattered man whose feet almost dragged upon the ground—poor, patient Sancho Panza coming once again to the relief of his master, Don Quixote de la Mancha.

And those others rolling in the road, I knew, had merely come along for the fun of it, willingly bearing torches to light the way for this scarecrow knight, knowing very well that one of his never-ending misadventures would sometime in the not-too-distant future provide amusement for them.

I turned away, back toward the inn—and there wasn't any inn.

"Kathy!" I shouted. "Kathy!"

There was no answer. Up the road the amusement-seeking company still was howling out its laughter. At the far end of what had been the inn yard Sancho had dismounted from the donkey and was trying manfully, but with small success, to roll Don Quixote over on his back. But the inn was gone and there was no sign of either Kathy or the witch.

From somewhere in the woods and down the slope came the shrill cackling of the witch. I waited and the cackle came again and this time I pinpointed the direction and went plunging gown the slope. I crossed the few feet of cleared space that had served as the inn yard and ran into the woods. Roots clutched at my toes, seeking to trip me up, and branches raked my face. But I kept on running, with my arms outstretched to protect me against running into a tree headfirst arid beating out what little brains I had. Ahead of me the insane cackling still went on.

If I could only catch her, I promised myself, I'd wring her scrawny neck until she took me to Kathy or told me where she was, and after that the temptation, I knew, would be great to continue with the wringing. But I knew even then, I think, how little chance I had of catching her. I banged into a boulder and fell across it and felt my way around it and went on running down the slope, while ahead of me, leading me on, never any farther off, never any closer, the crazy laughter still went on. I ran into a tree, but my outstretched hands found it first and saved me from a cracked skull, although I thought for a moment that both the wrists were fractured. And, finally, one of the roots on the forest floor managed to trip me up and I went cartwheeling through the air, but I landed soft—in the edge of a woodland swamp. I landed on my back and my head went under and I sat up coughing and retching, for I had swallowed some of the foul swamp water.

I sat there, without stirring, knowing I was licked. I could chase that cackle through the woods for a million years and not lay hands upon the witch. For this was a world, I knew, with which neither I, nor any other human, could cope. A human would be dealing with the fantasies he'd hatched and all his worlds of logic would not come up with any answers.

I sat in the mud and water to my waist and above my head the cattails swayed and off to my left something—I suppose a frog—went jumping through the muck. Dimly I became aware of a light glowing faintly off to the right of me and, I got up slowly. Mud fell off my trousers with little, sodden plops as it hit the water. But, even standing, I could not see the light well, for I sank close to my knees in muck and the cattail growth came up around my head.

With some difficulty, I began to make my way toward the light. It was not easy going. The muck was deep and sticky and the cattails, mixed with water-loving bushes, helped to impede my progress. I plodded forward slowly, forcing my way through the heavy growth.

The mud and water became shallower and the cattail growth began thinning out. I saw that the light was shining from a point somewhere above my head and I wondered where that light might be, but a moment later, when I came to a sloping bank, I knew the light was atop the bank. I started to climb the bank, but it was slippery. Partway up, I started skidding back and as I did, a great brawny hand came out of nowhere and I grabbed at it and felt the fingers of it close hard around my wrist.

I looked up and saw the thing that the hand belonged to, leaning down from the bank, with his arm outstretched. The horns were there, set upon his forehead and his face was a heavy face, coarse in texture but with a foxy look despite the coarseness of the features. His white teeth flashed at me in a sudden grin and for the first time since it all had started, I think that I was scared.

And that wasn't all. There, perched upon the edge of the bank beside him, was a squatty thing with a pointed head and when it saw that I had seen it, it began hopping wrathfully.

"No! No!" it screamed. "Not two! Just one! Quixote doesn't count!"

The Devil gave a jerk and hauled me up the bank in a single motion and set me on my feet.

A lantern was set upon the ground and by its light I could see that the Devil was a chunky character, a bit shorter than I was, but built most powerfully and running to a lot of fat. He wore no clothes except a dirty loincloth tied about his middle and his overgrown paunch hung across it in a fold.

The Referee kept on with his squeaky squawling. "It is not fair," he shouted. "You know it is not fair. That Quixote is a fool. He never does things right. The beating of Don Quixote is no facing of a danger and…"

The Devil turned and swung his foot, the cloven hoof flashing in the lantern light. The kick caught the Referee somewhere in his middle and hoisted him and sent him sailing out of sight. His squawling trailed off into a reedy sound and ended in a splash.

"There now," said the Devil, turning back to me, "that will give us a moment of honest peace and quiet, although he is a most persistent pest and will be crawling out to pester us again. It doesn't seem to me," he said, switching quickly to another subject, "that you appear too frightened."

"I'm petrified," I said.

"It is something of a problem," the Devil complained, switching his barbed tail back and forth to show his puzzlement, "to know just how one should appear when he confronts a mortal. When you humans persist in portraying me in so many different guises, one can never know which of them is the most effective. As a matter of fact, I can assume any one of the many forms which are attributed to me if you have a preference. Although I must confess that the one in which you see me now is, by all odds, the most comfortable to carry."

"I have no preference," I said. "Continue in your comfort." I was getting back some courage, but I still was shaky. It's not every day one converses with the Devil.

"You mean, perhaps," he said, "that you've not spent much thought on me."

"I guess that's it," I said.

"That is what I thought," he answered, dolefully. "That has been the story of my life in the last half-century or so. People almost never think of me and when they do they aren't scared of me. Oh, a bit uncomfortable, perhaps, but not really scared. And that is hard to take. Once upon a time, not too long ago, the entire Christian world was plenty scared of me."

"There may be some who still are," I told him, trying to comfort him. "In some of the backward countries, they must still be scared of you." And as soon as I'd said it, I was sorry that I had, for I could see that it was no comfort to him, but only made him feel the worse.

The Referee came clambering up the bank. He was covered with mud and his thatch of hair was dripping, but when he reached the top, he went into a wild war dance of rage. "I will not have it," he shouted at the Devil. "I don't care what you say. He still has two to go. You cannot deny the werewolves, but you must deny Quixote, who is no fit antagonist. I tell you the Rule will go for nothing if…"

The Devil sighed in resignation and reached — to grip my arm. "Leave us go," he said, "to some place where we can sit and talk."

There was a mighty swish and a peal of sudden thunder and a smell of sulphur in the air and, in the space of one short breath, we were otherwhere, upon a rise of cleared ground that rose above a swale. We were standing near a clump of trees and beside the trees lay a heap of tumbled boulders. From the swale below us came the peaceful croaking of happy, springtime frogs and a little breeze was rustling the trees. All in all, it was a much more inviting place than the bank beside the swamp.

My knees were buckling under me, but the Devil held me up and led me to the boulders and there he sat me down upon one of the boulders that proved very comfortable. Then he sat down beside me, crossed one leg over the other and curled his spiked tail around until the end of it rested in his lap.

"Now," he said, "we can converse without undue disturbance. The Referee may hunt us out, of course, but it will take some time. I pride myself, beyond all others, upon my mastery of the art of going elsewhere very rapidly."

"Before we settle down to any lengthy conversation," I told him, "there are some questions that I want to ask. There was a woman with me and she has disappeared. She was at the inn and…"

"I know all that," he told me, with a leer. "Name of Kathy Adams. You can rest easy concerning her, for she has been returned to Earth—the human Earth, that is. Which is just as well, for we didn't want her. But we had to4ake her, because she was with you."

"Didn't want her?"

"No, of course not," the Devil said. "You were the one we wanted."

"Now, look here…" I started to say, but he cut me off with an airy wave of a massive hand.

"We need you as a negotiator. I suppose that's the way to say it. We've been looking for someone who could do a job for us, you might say be our agent, and then you came along and…"

"If that was what you wanted," I told him, "you went about it in a ham-handed sort of way. Your gang did their best to kill me and it was only by good luck…"

He interrupted me with a chuckle. "Not good luck," he said. "A well-honed sense of self-preservation that worked far better than anything I've seen for years. And about this business' of trying to do you in—I can promise you that there are certain expediters here who have smarted for it. They have one-track minds and too much imagination and there'll be some changes made. I was busy with too many other things, as you can well imagine, and did not hear, at first, of what was going on."

"You mean that this rule of three times is a charm.."

He shook his head sadly. "No, I regret to tell you there is nothing I can do to change that. A rule's a rule, you know. And, after all, it was you humans who made up the rule along with a bunch of others that made no sort of sense. Like 'Crime does not pay, when you know damn well it does, and all that foolishness about early to bed and early to rise." He shook his head again. "You can't begin to imagine the kinds of trouble those fool rules of yours are always giving us."

"But they aren't rules," I said.

"I know. You call them adages. But once you get enough people to believe there is something in them, then we are stuck with them."

"So you are still going to have one more go at me. Unless you agree with the Referee that this Quixote business…"

"The Quixote business stands," he growled. "I agree with the Referee that this crack-brained character out of Spain is not difficult for anyone above the age of five to handle. But I want you out of this and the quicker and the easier I can get you out of it, the better it will be. There's business to be done. What I can't understand is what misplaced sense of chivalry made you agree to take on another round. Once you polished off the serpent, you were in the clear, but then you let that slimy Referee talk you into…"

"I owed Kathy something," I told him. "I got her into it."

"I know," he said. "I know. There are times I can't get you humans figured out. Most of the time you go around slitting one another's throats and sticking knives into your fellow humans' backs and climbing over them to achieve what you call success, then you turn around and get so damn noble and compassionate it's enough to make one sick."

"But why, in the first place, if you have some use for me, and I really can't believe you have—but if you do, why try to kill me? Why not just reach down, if that is how you do it, and simply pick me up?"

He sighed at my ignorance. "To kill you we must try. That also is a rule. But there was no need for so good a job of it. No need for all the fancy business. These expediters sit around and think up these fancy schemes, and it's all right if that's the way they like to spend their time, but they get so hopped up about these fancy ways of doing it, that they have to try them out. The trouble they will go to accomplish simple homicide is past all understanding. It's all you humans' fault, of course. You humans do the same. Your book writers, your comic artists, your script writers—every one of your creative people—sit around and think up all these crazy characters and these impossible situations and we are the ones who get stuck with them. And that, I think, brings us around to the proposition I wish to talk with you about."

"Then get on with it," I said. "I've had a tough day and could do with about twenty hours of sleep. That is, if there is a place where I can bed down."

"Oh, there is," he said. "In between those two boulders over there is a bed of leaves. Blown in by the winds of latest autumn. It will be a restful place to catch a needed nap."

"Complete," I asked, "with rattlesnakes?"

"What do you take me for?" the Devil demanded, wrath-fully. "Do you think I have no honor, that I would entrap you? I pledge to you that no harm will come to you before you're well awake."

"And after that," I asked.

"After that," he said, "there is yet another threat and danger to fulfill the rule of three. You can rest assured that you have my best wishes in that encounter, whatever it may be."

"O.K.," I said, "since I can't weasel out of it. I wonder if you might just speak a word for me. I'm getting slightly worn down. I don't think I'd care right now for another serpent."

"I can promise you," the Devil said, "it won't be a serpent. And now let's get down to business."

"All right," I told him, somewhat weakly. "What is on your mind?"

"It is," the Devil said, somewhat petulantly, "this junky fantasy that you are feeding us. How do you expect us to build any kind of life system with all this fuzziness and froth? Little dicky birds perching on a branch and yelling 'I thought I saw a putty tat—I did, I did, I did, and the fool cat down there on the ground leering up at the bird in a helpless and half-guilty manner. Where, I ask you with wholesome honesty, can we arrive at any decent character in a situation such as this? You gave us, to start with, a foundation that was solid and substantial, born out of firm conviction and a sound belief. But now you are facetious, and you give us character patterns that are both improbable and weak, and material such as this, rather than contributing to our strength, is undermining all we have accomplished in the past."

"You mean," I said, "that it would be a more healthful setup for you if we continued to believe in devils, ghouls, and goblins, and such-like."

"Much more healthful," said the Devil, "at least if you believed with some sincerity. But now you make a joke of us…"

"Not a joke," I protested. "You must remember that, for the most part, the human race is not aware that any of you actually exist. How could they be when you go about killing off the ones who have some suspicion that this world exists?"

"It is this thing," said the Devil, bitterly, "that you designate as progress. You can do almost anything you want and you keep on wanting more and you fill your minds with hopeful expectations and have no room for introspection on personal values—such as one's own shortcomings. There is no fear in you and no apprehension.."

"There is fear," I said, "and plenty of apprehension. The difference is in the things we fear."

"You are right," the Devil said. "The H-bombs and the UFO's. What a thing to conjure up—crazy flying saucers!"

"Better, perhaps, than a devil," I reminded him. "A UFO a man might have some chance to reason with, but a devil, never. You kind of folks are tricky."

"It's the sign of the times," the Devil mourned. "Mechanics instead of metaphysics. Would you believe that in this sad land of ours we have a horde of UFO's, most detestable contrivances and inhabited by all manner of most horrendous aliens. But with no honesty in their horror such as I carry in my person. Gimmicky creatures — that make.no sort of sense."

"Perhaps it's bad for you," I told him, "and I can see your point. But I don't know what can be done about it. Except in certain culturally backward areas you find few people now who believe in you with any honesty. Oh, sure, they talk of you at times. They say 'to the devil with it' or that it's the devil's work, but mostly they don't even think of you when they are saying it. You've become a very faintly dirty word. The belief in you simply isn't there. Not the way it once was. I don't think that attitude can be changed. You can't stop human progress. You'll simply have to wait for what comes next. It might just possibly be something that will work to your advantage."

"I think we can do something," the Devil said, "and we're not about to wait. We've waited too long now."

"I can't imagine what you'd do," I said. "You can't…"

"I am not about to reveal my plans to you," he said. "You are by far too clever, with that dirty, weasely, ruthless cleverness of which only a human being can be capable. I tell you this much only so that sometime in the future you will understand and then perhaps will find some willingness to act as an agent for us."

And, saying this, he vanished in a puff of sulfurous smoke and I was left alone upon the ridgetop, the smoke of his leaving drifting eastward with the wind. I shivered in the wind, although it wasn't really cold. The coldness was, rather, from the company I'd been keeping.

The land was empty, lighted palely by the moon— empty and silent and foreboding.

He had said there'd be a bed of leaves between two boulders and I hunted for and found it. I poked around in it, but there were no rattlesnakes. I hadn't thought there'd be; the Devil didn't seem the kind of being who'd tell a downright lie. I crawled between the boulders and arranged the leaves so I'd be more comfortable.

Lying there in the darkness, with the wind moaning on the land, I thought, with thankfulness, of Kathy safely home. I'd told her that somehow we would make it back, the two of us together, and when I'd told her that I had not dreamed that within another hour she would be safely' home. Through no effort of my own, of course, but that didn't really matter. It had been the Devil's doing and although his act had not been dictated by compassion, I found myself feeling rather kindly toward him.

I thought of Kathy, her face turned up toward me in the firelight from the blaze upon the witch's hearth, and I tried to catch again the happiness that had been upon her face. I couldn't seem to get the right expression and while I still was trying I must have gone to sleep.

To wake to Gettysburg.