Castle War c-4 Read online

  The right berm graded off to a steep drop, leading down to woods. He made a decision. He braked and pulled off the road, skidding to a stop.

  “Get out!” he told her.

  She did, and he put the transmission in neutral, got out, and let the car roll down the slight grade, steering to the right as he walked with the car. The car crossed the berm and headed for the edge. He closed the door and let it go. It rolled down the embankment and crashed through a wall of underbrush, and when it stopped at the bottom of the gully it was wheel-deep in a creek and was very hard to see from the road.

  He took Alice’s hand and led her down the embankment. She slipped on the loose shale and slid most of the way on the seat of her pants. At the bottom he hoisted her up and they splashed through the creek, ducking into woods on the other side.

  They clambered up a hill. There was no trail and they had to hack through weeds and nettle. At the top they went straight until they came to the end of the woods and the edge of an overgrown hayfield.

  They went to the left, keeping well inside the tree line. For the next few minutes they ran, trying to get as far from the road as possible.

  When they heard the craft, they hid underneath a pine tree. The gunship whined irritably above them, searching the woods. The loudspeaker blared but the words were indistinguishable. The craft continued its pattern for a good ten minutes before going away. They listened to the engine sounds die in the distance.

  Presently birds began singing again. A cricket chirped nearby.

  They were lying on their bellies on a bed of brown pine needles. He rolled to his side and looked at her.

  “You okay?”

  She smiled. “Yes. How are you?”

  “Adrenaline must do something. I feel better now.”

  “Good.”

  “But our situation isn’t. We’re still a long way from where we want to go, and now they’re looking for us.”

  “We’ll make it,” she said.

  “Yeah, even I’m beginning to believe it.”

  Twenty-five

  Someplace

  “Isis”

  A hand ran soothingly across his forehead. “Here, Jeremy.”

  “Jeez. Where are we?”

  “I don’t know, but we stopped.”

  “Was I out?”

  “Just for a minute. We hit pretty hard.”

  Jeremy waited for his eyes to focus. When they did he saw a jumble of weeds and leaves pushed up against the view port. He looked around. The deck was canted sharply, but the interior of the traveler looked otherwise undamaged.

  “Computer!”

  “Someone get the number of that earthquake.”

  “You okay, still functioning?”

  “I’ll have to run a few tests, but from all appearances I am undamaged, Captain.”

  “Good. Report on the condition of the ship.”

  “Uh, that’s not so good.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, for starters,” the Toshiba said, “the main drive is inoperable.”

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  “Cracked thermocouple on the primary coil, it looks like. That’s how I interpret the diagnostic readings, but you’d really have to eyeball it to be sure. Also, the graviton polarity generator is nonfunctional. No telling what’s wrong with it.”

  “Damn,” Jeremy said.

  “Yeah. Also hell and botheration.”

  Isis said, “We’ll simply have to fix it.”

  “Oh, sure,” Jeremy scoffed. “Yeah, we’ll just get out the old Sears toolbox and make a couple trips to the auto parts warehouse.”

  Isis sat down and gave Jeremy an admonitory look. “That’s negative thinking again, Jeremy.”

  “Sorry. Okay, we’ll fix it. Computer, d’you have any idea where we are?”

  “Not the foggiest. Not the slightest glimmer of an idea. Not even the —”

  “Okay! Make a guess, already.”

  “Very slim chance that we’ve hit one of the universes listed in the castle data base. The probability is that we’re in one of an infinite number of quantum universes. We could be anywhere.”

  “Well, there’re trees.”

  “Yes, this world looks Earth-like from first readings. Breathable atmosphere, tolerable temperature range, et cetera.”

  “Maybe we’re on Earth.”

  “The odds are against it.”

  Jeremy sighed. “I guess we should go out and take a look.”

  “That’d be a good idea.”

  “You sure about the air and stuff?”

  “I’m fairly sure you won’t keel over dead the moment you open the hatch. But my sensors aren’t equipped to scope out some of the real possibilities. Hostile natives, hungry fauna, infectious organisms, inconveniences like that.”

  “Right. But we gotta go out there.”

  “I guess you gotta,” the Toshiba said.

  Jeremy unstrapped and got up, bolstering himself with a hand on the bulkhead. “I’ll go first,” he told Isis. “No telling what’s out there.”

  “Anything you say, Jeremy.”

  “It’s Duke Wayne, as I live and breathe,” the Toshiba said.

  “Shut up, you piece of plastic junk, before I smash the crap out of you.”

  “Abuse! Abuse! Call my social worker.”

  Jeremy went aft and punched buttons on a small panel. The hatch popped open, letting in light and the smell of mountain laurel. He climbed out.

  He slid down the flange of the hull and hit the ground. He turned and looked. The interdimensional traveler had landed in a copse of saplings and high bushes in the middle of a clearing. He walked around the bell-shaped craft. The front edge of the flange was hung up on rocks. The hull was intact. Whatever damage there was, it was underneath.

  A dirt road ran by not far away. The surrounding woods looked very Earth-like. In fact, it looked for all the world like a deciduous forest of the familiar sort.

  He went back to the hatch and yelled for Isis to come out. She appeared, and he helped her down.

  “What’s the situation?” she said.

  “It doesn’t look so bad, but that doesn’t mean anything. See those trees over there? Looks like we clipped the top of them coming down. And then we whanged up against those rocks. See?”

  Isis stooped and looked, nodding. “Bad luck.”

  “We could’ve been smeared. We could’ve hit anything, or wound up at the bottom of an ocean or something. We were damn lucky.”

  “I suppose that’s right.”

  “You bet. But now we’re stuck here.”

  Arms folded, Isis turned slowly around, inspecting the surroundings. Her high heels and daring black dress were incongruous in the setting. “It doesn’t seem like such a bad place.”

  “Kinda … rural.”

  “Yes. I like it. It smells so nice.”

  Jeremy sniffed. “Like weeds and stuff.”

  “You city boys are all alike.”

  “Yeah. I’ll take Manhattan. Or even Queens.”

  “What should we do, Jeremy?”

  “Well.” Jeremy shoved his hands in his jeans. “I guess we should take a walk down that road and see if we can get help.”

  “Good idea. I’d love to take a walk.”

  “Wait till I set up the security system, and then we’ll go.”

  The road wound down a forested hill. The midafternoon sun was yellow, the sky blue, clouds a fleecy white — everything was as it should be. Tall maples and beech were in full leaf. A crow cawed in the distance.

  “I love this place,” Isis said. “I don’t get out much.”

  “Me neither,” Jeremy said. “I like to stay in and either work or watch TV. Though I haven’t done much TV watching since I came to the castle. Kinda miss it.”

  “What kind of shows do you like?”

  “Movies, mostly. That prime-time stuff is junk. Sports. I watch football. Mostly, though, I like to play around with computers.”

  “You’re
good at that. Don’t you like to go out into the country once in a while, though?”

  “Yeah. Sometimes. I used to go camping.”

  “With a girl?”

  “Uh, no. I told you, I never had much to do with girls. Women. Girls. I never really had one. I mean … Look, that doesn’t mean that I’m …”

  She grinned at him. “What?”

  “You know. I like girls. Women. They just don’t like me.”

  “I like you.”

  “Yeah. Right.”

  “I do.”

  “Well … I do, too.”

  “You like you?”

  “No! I like you, is what I’m saying. Not just because you’re pretty, either. I mean, you are that. Very pretty.”

  “Thank you.”

  “What I’m saying is that you have smarts, and guts, as well as beauty.”

  “Thanks again.”

  “Girls don’t usually … what am I saying? What I mean is, I used to think that a woman …”

  “Hm?”

  “Forget it. Anyway, the truth is, I’ve never had a girlfriend. Dates, yeah. A couple of those. But then I stopped doing it, because it never led anywhere.”

  She took his hand. “Well, you have a girlfriend now.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Come with me, Jeremy.”

  She led him off the road and into tall grass. She bade him lie down. Standing over him, she slipped off her dress. Underneath there was black lace, very little of it.

  Jeremy’s nostrils flared. He looked up at the computer-modeled perfection of her body, his eye following the rigorous geometry of her legs, her thighs, her hips, her breasts. He held out his trembling arms and she lay down with him and they were together.

  A short time later Jeremy sat up and started unbuttoning his shirt. He froze when he saw the little girl.

  Isis noticed his stare and turned. The little girl was watching them with big moon eyes, pale blue. She had on a shapeless, faded cotton dress, dirty and tattered, and her face was smudged. Her hair was pale yellow, almost white.

  “Hello,” Isis said.

  “Hello,” the girl said solemnly.

  Jeremy sighed and buttoned his shirt. Isis got up and picked up her dress.

  “Is your momma around?” Isis asked.

  The little girl nodded and pointed down the road.

  The house was a ramshackle bungalow with a gang of children playing in the junk-strewn front yard. The children fell silent when Jeremy and Isis approached.

  “Can one of you kids go get your mom or dad for us?” Jeremy asked. “We want to speak to them.”

  A boy of about ten ran into the house. Presently a woman opened the front screen door and looked out. She was dressed in a threadbare housecoat. Her face was thin and her corn-silk hair was mussed and tangled. She eyed Isis up and down, then looked at Jeremy.

  “Kin ah help you?”

  “Yeah. We had a breakdown, up the road a little. Is —?”

  “Say whut?”

  Jeremy cleared his throat. “Our … vehicle broke down a little ways back up this road. Is there a town near here where we can get someone to help us fix it?”

  “Y’say yore vee-hicle broke down?”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “An’ you want someone for tuh fix it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, you jus’ go right into Peach Holler, there, and see Luster Gooch and his brother Dolbert. They’ll fix yore car.”

  “Peach Holler?”

  “That’s right, jus’ right down this here road a piece, take you right into town. You go an’ see Luster Gooch and see iffen he cain’t help you any. Ah cain’t stay and chew the fat with you, got somethin’ on the stove. Good day.”

  She let the screen door close and disappeared into the odoriferous darkness of the house.

  Peach Hollow (as the faded sign read) was a hamlet consisting of about a half a dozen houses, a few sheds, and the Gooch brothers’ garage. The garage was a good walk from the road, and the front of the place was littered with wrecked automobiles and their rusting components. There were other sorts of junk, everything from old wringer washers to piles of bedsprings.

  The big wooden barn doors were open. Jeremy and Isis walked in. The place reeked of oil and gasoline and decayed wood. A pair of dungareed legs was sticking out from under a battered car of indeterminate make.

  Jeremy said, “Excuse me … hey, mister?”

  “Yo!”

  “You got a minute? We need some help.”

  “Start talkin’, it’s yore nickel.”

  “A woman up the road told us that you —”

  “Say whut?”

  “Uh, our vehicle broke down up the road a ways, and we need some tools and stuff, and, like, someone to help.”

  “Y’say yore vee-hicle broke down?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you want someone for tuh fix it?”

  “Uh … yeah. We’re in a big hurry and we’re sort of in a spot. Can you help us?”

  “Well, ah don’t rightly know. What sorta vee-hicle d’you got?”

  “Um. It’s a foreign make.”

  The man under the car chuckled. “Hear that Dolbert?” he called.

  A derisory cackling came from the back of the garage.

  “Feller’s got hisself one of them there foreign jobs.”

  The cackle rose in pitch. A shape came forth from the dim recesses of the garage. It was a short, chubby, homuncular man with a three-day growth of beard and most of his teeth missing. He was shirtless in grease-smeared bib overalls and wore big work shoes and a rat-chewed baseball cap.

  The man under the car squirmed out and stood up. He was lanky and lean and wore patched dungarees over red long johns. Thick blond hair came out from under a baseball cap that had been gnawed by ferrets. He looked at Isis first and smiled, touching the brim of his cap and nodding.

  “Ma’am,” he said, then looked at Jeremy. “Mister, ah don’t rightly know iffen ah kin fix one of them foreign jobs. Don’t see many of them around these parts.”

  “No?” Jeremy said. “Well, would you come take a look at it?”

  “Whut’s wrong with it? Does she start? Kin you drive it in?”

  “No, it won’t start. The engine’s … not working.”

  “Well, I guess you cain’t drive it in, then. We’re jus’ gonna have to git the truck and go up there and git it. This here’s mah brother Dolbert.”

  Dolbert’s grin was gap-toothed and wide. His head bobbed up and down as he cackled.

  “And ah’m Luster P. Gooch.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Jeremy said. “I’m Jeremy, and this is Isis.”

  “Pleasure to make yore acquaintance. Y’say this vee-hicle of yores is up the road a piece?”

  “Yeah, not very far.”

  “Wull, let’s go git it.”

  They piled into the cab of the ancient tow truck, Jeremy squeezing next to Dolbert. Jeremy wrinkled his nose. Dolbert quite obviously had very little experience in the soap-and-water department.

  Luster drove. “Where you folks from?”

  “Uh, we’re from the … the eastern part of the country.”

  “City folks?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Uh-huh. Whutchyall doin’ round these parts?”

  “Oh, just driving around. You know.”

  “Uh-huh. We don’t git many city folks out this way.”

  “No?”

  “Nope. Pretty quiet hereabouts.”

  When they passed the dilapidated house, some of the children waved. Luster waved back.

  “It’s right along here somewhere,” Jeremy said.

  “Cain’t see nothin’.”

  “Just a little farther. There, right there.”

  Luster stopped the truck. “Whut the hay-ull is that?”

  “That’s our vehicle.”

  “Wull, what the hay-ull is that thing?”

  “It’s a … vehicle.”

  “Dolbert, you ever
seen anything like that?”

  Dolbert shook his head vigorously.

  “Ah never seen anything like that in mah life. Whut the hay-ull is it?” Luster adjusted his cap. “Wull, whutever it is, let’s take her in.”

  Luster backed the tow truck into the clearing, and everyone got out.

  “There ain’t even any proper wheels on this thing. Lookit these little tiny wheels, Dolbert.”

  Dolbert chittered his amazement.

  “Don’t that beat all? How the heck are we gonna hook this thing up?”

  Isis said, “There are two retractable towing brackets along this edge.”

  Surprised, Jeremy said to her, “There are?”

  Isis nodded. “They’re controlled by one of the multifunction switches. I’ll go deploy them.”

  When the brackets popped out Luster said, “Wull, ain’t that slicker than owl spit. I guess we kin tow it.”

  “Whut the hay-ull is this?”

  Squatting by one of the on-board jacks, Jeremy peered under the craft. Luster was on his back underneath, a stained piece of cheesecloth between him and the hard concrete of the garage floor. He had been a while unbolting the access plate; now he stared up in bewilderment at the arcane mechanical works of the Sidewise Voyager.

  “Who the hay-ull built this thing? I never seen nothin’ like this in all mah born days.”

  “Like I said, it’s a foreign make.”

  “Don’t that beat all. Dolbert? Crawl under here and take a look at this stuff.”

  Dolbert did. He shook his head and clucked.

  “You ever see anything like this?”

  Dolbert had to allow that he hadn’t.

  “You think you kin do anything with it?”

  Dolbert shrugged.

  Luster turned his head. “Dolbert usually does the foreign jobs when we get ’em. He kin fix anything.”

  “Can he fix this?” Jeremy asked.

  “Dolbert, you think you kin do anything with this here contraption?”

  Dolbert shrugged again, then nodded, chortling.

  “Yeah, he figures he kin do it. You got an owner’s manual for this here vee-hicle?”

  “Uh, sort of. There’s an on-board computer that has the complete technical specifications in its files. They’re hard to understand, though.”