Читать книгу The Unicorn Girl - Michael Kurland - Страница 8

CHAPTER TWO

If you ever find yourself at a romantically lit table in the rear of an old roadhouse cum gambling casino that’s been turned into an entertainment coffeehouse, staring into a beautiful girl’s large eyes and telling her that she’s your princess and you’re going to help her find her unicorn, there’s a cure. Go outside with her into the parking lot. It’s impossible to keep any sort of romantic illusions intact in a parking lot —even if it fronts the Pacific Ocean thirty miles south of San Francisco. There we were, standing among orderly rows of squat electric cars and hulking gas buggies, feeling silly. At least, I was feeling silly. It was hard to tell what Chester was feeling, with his collar turned up against the damp breeze and the recorder clutched like a club in his right hand, but somehow I knew that neither of us looked like a gallant unicorn-rescuer.

Sylvia was splendid. Head erect, she marched between the rows of cars to the private sound of her own orchestra. A slightly pixilated orchestra, to judge by the skip in her step. We two followed, marching to the somber beat of a different, and much more melancholy, drummer. When we entered the glare of the single, powerful spotlight that illuminated the entrance to the driveway, Sylvia paused and looked around. For the first time the cars were lit up well enough to see clearly, and she stared at them in evident surprise. “What,” she asked, pointing a delicate hand vaguely at the parked vehicles, “are these beasts?”

“Cars?”

“Automobiles,” Chester explained. “Horseless carriages. Nothing a girl hunting for her unicorn would be expected to know about.”

“Are they common in this part of the world?”

I looked at Chester. “Time travel?” I suggested.

“Love to,” he replied. He mouthed his alto recorder, and lustily blew “Barkus Is Willing” into the night, while I tried to explain to Sylvia how it was with horseless carriages.

“Yoo hoo, Sylvia!” a deep baritone boomed out of the dark.

“Sylvia,” a mellifluous tenor added, “is that you?”

Sylvia clapped her hands together delightedly. “My friends,” she exclaimed. “My comrades. Perhaps they have found Adolphus.” She rose up on the toes of her tiny feet and cupped her hands to her mouth. “Here,” she called. “Over here!”

There was a clopping sound, and three figures appeared in the shadows. “Sylvia,” the baritone called. “We were beginning to think we’d lost you, too.” The figures moved toward us.

I now had a good working definition of the old phrase too much. This was too much. Much too much. Girls of my dreams suddenly appearing and asking me to help find their unicorns I could accept. After all, if Alice hadn’t fallen down that rabbit hole, where would the world be now? But believing in Sylvia’s friends would require practice. The first, in order from left to right, was a tall, slender girl with long, red hair, dressed in an off-white, off-the-shoulder Grecian style gown. I could believe in her. The second, however, was a centaur. From the waist up, he was wearing a lace-trimmed shirt, fluffy silk tie, and an eight button jacket with wide lapels. From the waist down he was a horse. The last was a man, eight feet tall and wide as a church door, but still a man. He had the build appropriate for a giant: I could see the muscles ripple under his net shirt. When he got one step closer, I noticed something else: he had only one eye ---which was centered above his broad nose.

The centaur, I could see as they came under the light, was a deep Olive green. The cyclops was wearing a monocle.

“Anderson,” I yelped. “You promised, You swore faithfully that you’d never do it again. How can I learn to trust you if I can’t trust you?”

Chester had taken the sopranino recorder from his belt and was squinting at the spotlight and playing both machines at once. I refused to be impressed. He stopped playing when I prodded him and squinted at me. “What’s the trouble, son?” he asked in an irritated voice.

I said calmly, “I had your solemn word that there’d be no more chemicals in my orange juice.”

“Not even saltpeter,” he assured me.

“I hate to doubt your word,” I said....

“Sylvia!” the cycloptic baritone boomed.

Chester looked. His sleepy expression vanished. “Those?” he asked prodding the air in front of him with the alto recorder.

“‘Those,” I told him. “You see them too?”

He nodded. “What do you think we’re on?”

The centaur cantered up to us. “Glad to see you’re all right,” he said. “Who are your friends?”

“Chester and Michael,” Sylvia identified. “They’re going to help us find Adolphus. This,” she told us, “is Ronald.”

“That’s the idea,” the centaur said, looking us over. “Mobilize the locals.”

The cyclops and the redhead joined us and were introduced. The cyclops was named Giganto, but he assured us it was just a stage name. “My nom-de-carnival,” he said. “But it will do for fetching and carrying, calling and scribbling. You’d never be able to pronounce my real name. It’s Arcturian, of course.”

Of course? I wondered.

The redhead was named Dorothy, and at close range she was stately and beautiful. She was beautiful at a distance too, but I’m nearsighted, and most girls look blurredly good to me at a distance. Her skin was fair, her hair was long, her features were delicate and proud, and her dress clung like the one Praxiteles sculpted onto his Aphrodite. She extended her hand to each of us in turn. I shook it, and was surprised at her strength. Chester pressed it gallantly to his lips.

“Delightful,” she said. “Tell me, was’t you I heard tootling upon the flageolet?”

Chester bowed, holding his alto before him like a gift offering. “Fair lady,” he said, “was it pleasing to you?” Chester always was partial to redheads.

No one, I reflected bitterly, was going to believe this tomorrow morning. Including me. I wasn’t too sure that I believed it now. Then I thought of the subminiature camera I carried in my pocket in case of fire, flood or natural disaster: A color print would be reassuring to look at in the future. I slid the camera out of my pocket and checked meter. The light multiplier was really going to have to prove itself. There was less light out here than inside the Trembling Womb. I focused as best I could on Giganto.

There was the sound of galloping; the mighty hoof beats of the great centaur Ronald, and the camera was snatched from my hands.

“Now look,” I yelled, but I was yelling at Ronald’s retreating end.

“What’s happening?” Giganto boomed.

Ronald swiveled around, waving the camera. “He was going to use this,” he explained.

I pointed an outraged finger at the horse’s front end “What’d he do that for?”

Chester shrugged. “Bad man black box steal away soul, he suggested.

“Now, now,” Giganto said, rolling his voice off the local mountains. “You know there’s no taking pictures of the performers without a special permit. You’ll get the camera back after the show.”

“That’s right,” Dorothy agreed, shaking a stern finger at us. “It’s nothing against you. It’s policy.”

“What show?” I asked.

“What show?” Chester echoed.

Sylvia tossed her long hair through a figure eight “What show indeed! I’m certainly not going to take part in any show until we find Adolphus.”

The bushes behind us snapped and a white figure, dimly fluorescent in the dark, appeared. Sylvia clapped her hands. “Adolphus!”

The figure got closer and resolved itself into a man and woman clutching hands and stumbling forward together, staring with wide eyes at Ronald.

“My god!” the man declared. “That stuff was supposed to be coffee!”

“I told you tamarind was some kind of dreadful drug,” the woman said. Then she noticed Giganto. “Yarp!” she said, pointing. “Yarp!”

The man looked up, following her outthrust finger. “My god,” he remarked, standing stock still and staring stupidly. “God, god, god.”

“Now that you’ve reaffirmed the Trinity,” Dorothy said sharply, “is there something in particular you wish?”

“No, sir,” the man said. He was shook. “Come on, Lizzy, let’s find our car.” Pulling the woman behind him, he quavered off into the parking lot.

The circus people went into a huddle to discuss ways of retrieving Adolphus And believe me, you haven’t seen a huddle until you’ve seen one with a centaur in it. I took a step closer to Chester.

“Do you swear it?” I whispered.

“What?”

“No altering of my perception: No LSD, no DMT, no PJ, no reality pill, no pot, no hash....”

“Now you know pot couldn’t do this.”

“After you’ve had hold of it for a while, anything could do everything. I remember that meatloaf you made....”

“Here’s what we’ll do,” Dorothy announced, breaking up the huddle. “We have to find Adolphus as soon as possible, preferably before morning. We’ll break up into separate search parties. The two natives will go with Sylvia, since the fifing might attract him. Back down the twisty road toward camp. The rest of us will have to scatter through the woods. Have you all your silver whistles?”

Each of the circus people-cyclops-centaurs produced a thin silver whistle and brandished it in the air. Sylvia was wearing hers on a fine silver chain around her neck.

“Fine,” Dorothy continued. “If you find Adolphus, or have any trouble, use the whistle.”

A pair of headlights swung silently around the lot, and an electric pulled up to us. Our frightened friends were in it. The man stuck his head out and stared intently at us for a long moment. “I shall write to The Barb about this,” he said in a tight voice.

“Don’t be silly,” the woman said as the car pulled away. “You know you can’t write.”

Giganto went off into the woods, chanting “Haroom, haroom,” under his breath like a rehearsing foghorn. Ronald adjusted his tie, nodded, and trotted away.

“I’d like to thank you for helping us,” Dorothy said. “I’ll see that you both get free passes. Good luck.” She shook hands with each of us. “Watch out for Sylvia, if you would. She’s very bright and capable, but she does tend to be a bit impulsive.”

“I’ll stay close to her,” I assured Dorothy.

“Now, Dorothy, I can take care of myself. It’s Adolphus we should worry about. He’s never been in the wild before.” Sylvia smiled up at me. “But I thank you, good sir, for your assistance.”

“And your friend for his beauteous tootling,” redheaded Dorothy added. “Would you consider a short gig with our circus while we’re here in Nueva España?”

“Gig?” I asked.

“That’s circus for job,” Sylvia told me.

“I know,” I said. “But somehow—”

“Nueva España?” Chester asked.

“Go off, people. We’ll talk later.” Dorothy shooed us down the narrow path leading away from the parking lot.

“Chester,” I said, feeling the gravel crunch under my feet, “how long has this path been here?”

“Why,” he said. Then he stopped. “Wait a second.”

“What is it?” Sylvia asked, turning back to us.

“There’s a stone wall all around the parking lot.”

“No there isn’t,” Sylvia said.

“Right,” I agreed. We plunged into the darkness, following the luminescence of the path. “Sylvia, tell me something about the circus.”

“What sort of something?”

“Where the—acts—are from. Like that.”

“Well...Adolphus is a mute, of course. Rhan Kik’hik Pyrtmyr is from Arcturus.”

“Ran—”

That’s Giganto. That’s his real name. Ronald is from somewhere in the Quagdirian Federation. He’s here writing his thesis on Pre-Human Religion. Something about the emergence of the centaur myth. The circus is just a way of earning money while he’s here; his grant isn’t too liberal.”

“I understand his problem. And the unicorn is a mute. Is that mutant?”

“Do you know of any unicorns that aren’t?”

“The young lady has a point,” Chester said, pausing between versus of “Barkus Is Willing.”

“Time travel?” I again suggested.

“I don’t know. Sylvia, tell me: what year is this?”

“That’s silly,” said Sylvia. “Nineteen thirty-six.”

“I should have guessed,” Chester said, regarding his recorder strangely..

“I think I hear something,” Sylvia said. “Please don’t play for a moment.”

“Parallel I time tracks,” I said. “Each moving at a slightly different speed. I remember a story....”

“Maybe they just number the years differently,” Chester suggested.

“Hush!” Sylvia whispered. “Listen to that. It certainly doesn’t sound like a unicorn.”

It certainly didn’t. A thin, high whistling sound with undertones of bass honk, it seemed to come from all around us.

“Look,” Chester said quietly.

I looked. Up in the air, slightly off to the left, hung a thing. A long, cigar-shaped thing with portholes giving off blue flashes. It was etched in the sky so sharply in red light that it gave the impression of being outlined in neon tubing. It wasn’t moving.

“Look at what?” I asked Chester nonchalantly. “The flying saucer?”

Chester took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “All right,” he agreed. “Look at the flying saucer. Isn’t it wonderful how all you have to do is label something to understand it?”

“What is that thing?” Sylvia asked.

“It’s not one of yours then,” I said, “from the circus or somewhere?”

“It is not,” she assured me. Her eyes were getting wide. I think this was the first time she realized there was something wrong besides a missing Adolphus.

“How far away do you think it is?” I asked Chester.

“That depends,” he said. “How big is it?”

“We could triangulate,” I suggested. “How’s your trig?”

“Just fine,” Anderson snarled. “How’s yours?”

“I just thought....”

“At a time like this, your scientific experiments are out of place. Set up your fun-fair project tomorrow.”

“I think it’s important to know how far away it is,” I informed Chester.

“The only thing that’s important,” Chester told me calmly, “is that it doesn’t get any closer.”

It got closer. Adding a weird meep meep sound to its orchestration, it started blinking an insistent red light at us and growing smoothly larger.

“Is it after us?” I asked.

“Come on,” Chester said. “Let’s not stay here and find out.”

We started running, following the trail. Chester and I ran as fast as we could, which was pretty fast considering our sedentary lives. Sylvia loped along with us with the easy grace of a young gazelle. I decided to tell her to run faster if she could and let us catch up, but I didn’t have enough breath to talk and run at the same time.

The saucer swerved slightly, correcting its aim and settling whether it was after us or not, and I tripped. Flat on my face. The gravel dug into my nose and forehead and something sharp scraped across my leg. My eyes filled with a warm, sticky wetness and I couldn’t see. There was no pain, and my brain seemed curiously clear. Everything was happening in slow motion. I tried to get up, but my leg wouldn’t work and I fell back down. At least, I thought, this will give Chester and Sylvia a better chance to get away. I wondered whether there would someday be a brass marker at the spot where I had fallen.

Two hands tugged at my elbow, a slim arm was slid under my shoulder, and in a second I was on my feet. “Can you walk?” Sylvia inquired anxiously.

“You are the clumsiest person on the whole West Coast,” panted Chester.

It is a curious trait of the human animal that in times of stress, if he doesn’t panic, he tends to become overly polite and verbose. Well, anyway, I do. “If you two would proceed up the trail, I shall endeavor to follow as soon as possible,” said I. “Not that I don’t fully appreciate your stopping for me.”

“Don’t be silly,” Chester said. “Here, wipe the blood off your face.” He handed me a great square of fabric.

“Look!” Sylvia said.

“Wow!” Chester breathed.

“Where?” I asked, trying to clear my eyes. “At what? What’s happening?” As soon as I could see, I looked around. There was nothing in sight but trees. “Where is it?” I yelped, turning quickly through three hundred and sixty degrees. “What happened to it?”

“It disappeared in sections,” Sylvia said. “I saw it blink out.”

“In sections?”

“Yars,” drawled Chester in the accent he uses to explain anything he doesn’t understand. “In sections, from left to right. As if it were the moon and a cloud passed in front of it.”

“You don’t think that could be it, do you?” I asked, staring apprehensively at the sky. “Or maybe it just turned its running lights out.”

“No,” Chester said “There was something permanent about this. Besides, you can see stars through where it was. It’s gone.”

I brushed myself off. “I wonder what it was.”

“I thought we’d already settled that,” said Chester, smiling tightly at me. “It’s a flying saucer.”

I discovered I could walk, so we continued down the trail.

“I hope it didn’t frighten Adolphus too much,” Sylvia said.

I had the sudden notion that it might be what had happened to Adolphus, but I didn’t say it.

“Are you all right?” Chester asked me. “Do you want to go on, or go back and get medicated?”

“I’m okay,” I said. “Just a few abrasions. Continue the quest.”

Sylvia took my hand and looked at me solemnly. “I’m glad, Michael the Theodore Bear, that you were not hurt.” Somehow the nickname, which Chester had fastened on me when the world was young, didn’t sound so silly when Sylvia said it.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Then, let us find Adolphus.” She sang, “Trala, tralee. Would you tootle a little, Chester?” Sylvia had amazing powers of recuperation. She skipped ahead of us on the path.

“A lot of things seem to be happening all at once,” I told Chester.

“Enemy action,” he replied.

“Huh?”

“That’s what you told me once. An old Army motto you had found when you were doing those war books. ‘Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.’ This is the third time.”

“You have a point,” I admitted as we walked down the path together. “I wonder what next?”

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