But the faces were different; they did look wild but not brutish or savage.
The bus slowed down with a squealing of brakes. It stopped, a door swung open, and a youth with a beard and enormous spectacles leaned out and waved at them. They ran to the bus and boarded with the accompaniment of much laughter and the strumming of guitars.
The bus, driven by a youth who looked like Buffalo Bill, started up. Kickaha looked around into the grinning faces of six boys and three girls. Three older men sat at the rear of the bus and played cards on a small collapsible table. They looked up and nodded and then went back to their game. Part of the bus was enclosed; there were, he later found out, a toilet and washroom and two small dressing rooms. Guitars, drums, xylophone, saxophone, flute, and harp, were stored on seats or on the racks above the seats.
Two girls wore skirts that just barely covered their buttocks and dark gray stockings, bright frilly blouses, many varicolored beads, and heavy makeup: green or silver eyelids, artificial eyelashes, panda-like rings around the eyes, and green (!) and pale mauve (!) lips. The third girl had no makeup at all. Long straight black hair fell to her waist and she wore a tight sleeveless green and red striped sweater with a deep cleavage, tight Levis, and sandals. Several of the boys wore bellbottom trousers, very frilly shirts, and all had long hair.
The Nome King was a very tall, tubercular looking youth with very curly hair, handlebar moustaches, and enormous spectacles perched on the end of his big nose. He also wore an earring. He introduced himself as Lou Baum (born Goldbaum).
Kickaha gave his name as Paul Finnegan and Anana’s as Ann Finnegan. She was his wife, he told Baum, and had only recently come from Finnish Lapland. He gave this pedigree because he did not think that it was likely they would run into anyone who could speak Laplander.
“From the Land of the Reindeer?” Baum said. “She’s a dear, all right.” He whistled and kissed his fingertips and flicked them at Anana. “Groovy, me boy! Too much! Say, either of you play an instrument?” He looked at the case Kickaha was carrying.
Kickaha said that they did not. He did not care to explain that he had once played the flute but not since 1945 or that he had played an instrument like a pan-pipe when he lived with the Bear Folk on the Amerindian level of the World of Tiers. Nor did he think it wise to explain that Anana played a host of instruments, some of which were similar to Earth instruments and some of which were definitely not.
“I’m using this instrument case as a suitcase,” Kickaha said. “We’ve been on the road for some time since leaving Europe. We just spent a month in the mountains, and now we’ve decided to visit L.A. We’ve never been there.”
“Then you got no place to stay,” Baum said. He talked to Kickaha but stared at Anana. His eyes glistened, and his hands kept moving with gestures that seemed to be reshaping Anana out of the air.
“Can she sing?” he said suddenly.
“Not in English,” Kickaha replied.
The girl in Levis stood up and said, “Come on, Lou. You aren’t going to get anywhere with that chick. Her boy friend’ll kill you if you lay a hand on her. Or else she will. That chick can do it, you know.”
Lou seemed to be shaken. He came very close and peered into Kickaha’s eyes as if he were looking through a microscope. Kickaha smelled a strange acrid odor on his breath. A moment later, he thought he knew what it was. The citizens of the city of Talanac on the Amerind level, carved out of a mountain of jade, smoked a narcotic tobacco which left the same odor on their breath. Kickaha did not know, of course, since he had had no experience on Earth, but he had always suspected that the tobacco was marijuana, and that the Talanacs, descendants of the ancient Olmecs of Mexico, had brought it with them when they had crossed through the gates provided by Wolff.
“You wouldn’t put me on?” Lou said to the girl, Moo-Moo Nanssen, after he had backed away from Kickaha’s leaf-green eyes.
“There’s something very strange about them,” Moo-Moo said. “Very attractive, very virile, and very frightening. Alien. Real alien.”
Kickaha felt the back of his scalp chill. Anana, moving closer to him, whispered in the language of the Lords, “I don’t know what she’s saying, but I don’t like it. That girl has a gift of seeing things; she is Zundra.”
Zundra had no exact or near-exact translation into English. It meant a combination of psychologist, clairvoyant, and witch, with a strain of madness.
Lou Baum shook his head, wiped the sweat off his forehead, and then removed and polished his glasses. His weak, pale-blue eyes blinked.
“The chick is psychic,” he said. “Weird. But in the groove. She knows what she’s talking about.”
“I get vibrations,” Moo-Moo said. “They never fail me. I can read character like that!” She snapped her fingers loudly. “But there’s something about you two, especially her, I don’t get. Maybe like you two ain’t from this world, you know. Like you’re Martians … or something.”
A short stocky youth with blond hair and an acne-scarred face, introduced only as Wipe-Out, looked up from his seat, where he was tuning a guitar.
“Finnegan’s no Martian,” he said, grinning. “He’s got a flat Midwestern accent like he came from Indiana, Illinois, or Iowa. A hoosier, I’d guess. Right?”
“I’m a hoosier,” Kickaha said.
“Close your eyes, you good people,” Wipe-Out said loudly. “Listen to him! Speak again, Finnegan! If his voice isn’t a dead ringer for Gary Cooper’s. I’ll eat the inedible!”
Kickaha said something for their benefit, and the others laughed and said, “Gary Cooper! Did you ever?”
That seemed to shatter the crystal tension that Moo-Moo’s words had built. Moo-Moo smiled and sat down again, but her dark eyes flicked glances again and again at the two strangers, and Kickaha knew that she was not satisfied. Lou Baum sat down by Moo-Moo. His Adam’s apple worked as if it were the plunger on a pump. His face was set in a heavy, almost stupefied expression, but Kickaha could tell that he was still very curious. He was also afraid.
Apparently, Baum believed in his girl friend’s reputation as a psychic. He was also probably a little afraid of her.
Kickaha did not care. Her analysis of the strangers may have been nothing but a maneuver to scare Baum from Anana.
The important thing was to get to Los Angeles as swiftly as possible, with as little chance of being detected by Orc’s men as possible. This bus was a lucky thing for him, and as soon as they reached a suitable jumping-off place in the metropolitan area, they would jump. And hail and farewell to the Nome King and His Bad Eggs.
He inspected the rest of the bus. The three older men playing cards looked up at him but said nothing. He felt a little repulsed by their bald heads and gray hair, their thickening and sagging features, red-veined eyes, wrinkles, dewlaps, and big bellies. He had not seen more than four old people in the twenty-four years he had lived in the universe of Jadawin. Humans lived to be a thousand there if they could avoid accident or homicide, and did not age until the last hundred years. Very few survived that long, however. Thus, Kickaha had forgotten about old men and women. He felt repelled, though not as much as Anana. She had grown up in a world which contained no physically aged people, and though she was now ten thousand years old, she had lived in no universes which contained unhandsome humans. The Lords were an aesthetic people and so they had weeded out the unbeautiful among their chattel and given the survivors the chance for a long, long youth.
Baum walked down the aisle and said, “Looking for something?”
“I’m just curious,” Kickaha said. “Is there any way out other than the door in front?”
“There’s an emergency inside the women’s dressing room. Why?”
“I just like to know these things,” Kickaha said. He did not see why he should explain that he always made sure he knew exactly the number of exits and their accessibility.
He opened the doors to the two dressing rooms and the toilet and then studied the emergency door so
that he would be able to open it immediately.
Baum, behind, said, “You sure got guts, friend. Didn’t you know curiosity killed the cat?”
“It’s kept this cat alive,” Kickaha said.
Baum lowered his voice and came close to Kickaha. He said, “You really hung up on that chick?”
The phrase was new to Kickaha, but he had no trouble understanding it.
He said, “Yes. Why?”
“Too bad. I’ve really flipped for her. No offense, you understand,” he said when Kickaha narrowed his eyes. “Moo-Moo’s a real doll, but a little weird, you know what I mean. She says you two are weirdos, and there is something a little strange about you, but I like that. But I was going to say, if you need some money, say one or two thousand, and you’d just, say, give me a deed to your chick, in a manner of speaking, let me take over, and you walk out, much richer, you know what I mean.”
Kickaha grinned and said, “Two thousand? You must want her pretty bad!”
“Two thousand doesn’t grow on the money tree, my friend, but for that doll …!”
“Your business must be very good, if you can throw that much away,” Kickaha said.
“Man, you kidding!” Baum said, seemingly genuinely surprised. “Ain’t you really heard of me and my group before? We’re famous! We’ve been everybody, we’ve made the top ten thirty-eight times, we got a Golden Record, we’ve given concerts at the Bowl! And we’re on our way to the Bowl again. You don’t seem to be with it!”
“I’ve been away for a long time,” Kickaha said. “So what if I take your money and Ann doesn’t fall for you? I can’t force her to become your woman, you know.”
Baum seemed offended. He said, “The chicks offer themselves to me by the dozens every night. I’m not jesting. I got the pick! You saying this Ann, Daughter-of-Reindeer, or whatever her name, is going to turn me down? Baum, the Nome King?”
Baum’s features were not only unharmonious, he had several pimples, and his teeth were crooked.
“Do you have the money on you?” Kickaha said.
Baum’s voice had been questioning, even wheedling before. Now it became triumphant and, at the same time, slightly scornful.
“I can give you a thousand; maybe Solly, my agent, can give you five hundred. And I’ll give you a check for the rest.”
“White slavery!” Kickaha said. And then, “You can’t be over twenty-five, right? And you can throw money around like that?”
He remembered his own youth during the Depression and how hard he had worked to just survive and how tough so many others had had it.
“You are a weirdo,” Baum said. “Don’t you know anything? Or are you putting me on?”
His voice was loaded with contempt. Kickaha felt like laughing in his face and also felt like hitting him in his mouth. He did neither. He said, “I’ll take the fifteen hundred. But right now. And if Ann spits on you, you don’t get the money back.”
Baum glanced nervously at Moo-Moo, who had moved over to sit with Anana.
He said, “Wait till we get to L.A. We’ll stop off to eat, and then you can take off. I’ll give you your money then.”
“And you can get up your nerve to tell Moo-Moo that Ann is joining you but I’m taking off?” Kickaha said. “Very well. Except for the money. I want it now! Otherwise, I tell Moo-Moo what you just said.”
Baum turned a little pale and his undershot jaw sagged. He said, “You slimy …! You got a nerve! You think I’d double-cross you, turn you in to the fuzz?”
“That possibility did cross my mind,” Kickaha said, wondering if the “fuzz” was the police.
“You may have been out of it for a long time, but you haven’t forgotten any of the tricks, have you?” Baum said, not so scornfully now.
“There are people like you every place,” Kickaha said.
He knew that he and Anana would need money, and they had no time to go to work to earn it, and he did not want to rob to get it if he could avoid doing so. If this nauseating specimen of arrogance thought he could buy Anana, let him pay for the privilege of finding out whether or not he could.
Baum dug into his jacket and came up with eight one-hundred dollar bills. He handed these to Kickaha and then interrupted his manager, a fat bald-headed man with a huge cigar. The manager gestured violently and shot some hard looks at Kickaha, but he gave in. Baum came back with five one-hundred dollar bills. He wrote a note on a piece of paper, saying that the money was in payment for a debt he owed Paul J. Finnegan. After giving it to Kickaha, he insisted that Kickaha write him a receipt for the money. Kickaha also took the check for the rest of the money, although he did not think that he would be able to cash it. Baum would stop payment on it, he was sure of that.
Kickaha left Baum and sat down on a seat on which was a number of magazines, paperback books, and a Los Angeles Times. He spent some time reading, and when he had finished he sat for a long time looking out the window.
Earth had certainly changed since 1946.
CHAPTER TWO
Pulling himself out of his reverie, he picked up a road map of Los Angeles, which he’d noticed among the magazines. As he studied it, he realized Wolff and Chryseis could be anywhere in the great sprawl of Los Angeles. He was certain they were headed in that direction, though, rather than Nevada or Arizona, since the nearest gate was in the L.A. area. They might even be in a bus only a few miles ahead.
Since Wolff and Chryseis had taken the gate to Earth from the palace in Woff’s universe as an emergency exit to avoid being killed by the invaders, they were dressed in the clothes of the Lords. Chryseis may have been wearing no clothes at all. So the two would have been forced to obtain clothes from others. And they would have had to find some big dark glasses immediately, because anyone seeing Chryseis’ enormous violet eyes would have known that she was not Earth-born. Or would have thought her a freak, despite her great beauty.
Both of them were resourceful enough to get along, especially since Wolff had spent more time on Earth as an adult than Kickaha had.
As for the Beller, he would be in an absolutely strange and frightening world. He could speak no word of the language and he would want to cling to his bell, which would be embarrassing and inconvenient for him. But he could have gone in any direction.
The only thing Kickaha could do was to head toward the nearest gate in the hope that Wolff and Chryseis would also be doing that. If they met there, they could team up, consider what to do next, and plan on the best way of locating the Beller. If Wolff and Chryseis did not show, then everything would be up to Kickaha.
Moo-Moo sat down by him. She put her hand on his arm and said, “My, you’re muscular!”
“I have a few,” he said, grinning. “Now that you’ve softened me up with your comments on my hardness, what’s on your mind?”
She leaned against him, rubbing the side of her large breast against his arm, and said, “That Lou! He sees a new chick that’s reasonably good-looking, and he flips every time. He’s been talking to you, trying to get you to give your girl friend to him, hasn’t he? I’ll bet he offered you money for her?”
“Some,” Kickaha said. “What about it?”
She felt the muscles of his thigh and said, “Two can play at that game.”
“You offering me money, too?” he said.
She drew away from him, her eyes widening and then she said, “You’re putting me on! I should pay you?”
At another time, Kickaha might have played the game out to the end. But if the Beller adjusted to this world, and succeeded in making other bells, and then the minds in these possessed the bodies of human beings, the time would come when … Moo-Moo herself would become a mindless thing and then a body and brain inhabited by another entity.
It might not matter, however. If he were to believe half of what he read in the magazines and newspaper, the human race might well have doomed itself. And all life on the planet. Earth might be better off with humans occupied by the minds of Bellers. Bellers were logical
beings, and, given a chance they would clear up the mess that humans seemed to have made of the entire planet.
Kickaha shuddered a little. Such thinking was dangerous.
There could be no rest until the last of the Bellers died.
“What’s the matter with you?” Moo-Moo said, her voice losing its softness. “You don’t dig me?”
He patted her thigh and said, “You’re a beautiful woman, Moo-Moo, but I love Ann. However, tell you what! If the Nome King succeeds in turning Ann into one of his Bad Eggs, you and I will make music together. And it won’t be the cacophony that radio is vomiting.”
She jerked with surprise and then said, “What do you mean? That’s the Rolling Stones!”
“No moss gathered here,” he said.
“You’re not with it,” she said. “Man, you’re square, square, square! You sure you’re not over thirty?”
He shrugged. He had not cared for the popular music of his youth, either. But it was pleasant compared to this screeching rhythm.
The bus had moved out of the desert country into greener land. It sped along the freeway despite the increasing traffic. The sun was shining down fiercely now, the air was hot and stinking. His eyes stung, and the insides of his nostrils felt needled. A grayish haze was lying ahead; then they were in it, and the air seemed to clear somewhat, and the haze was ahead again.
Moo-Moo said something about the smog really being fierce this time of the year and especially along here. Kickaha had read about smog in one of the magazines, although he did not know the origin of the word as yet. If this was what the people of southern California lived in, he wanted no more to do with it. Anana’s eyes were red and teary and she was sniffling and complaining of a headache and clogging sinuses.
Moo-Moo left him, and Anana sat down by him.
“You never said anything about this when you were describing your world to me.” she said.
“I didn’t know anything about it,” he said. “It developed after I left Earth.”