Brilliant sunshine came in every window of the train cars as Chuck lurched along the aisle, coming back from returning his bedside book. It was such a beautiful day that even the second-class car looked pretty. The poker-playing men were sedately arranged around a game board marked out in squares and dotted with glass beads that lit up like jewels.
Chuck hadn't slept very well. He had decided to try reading Lawyers in Danger the night before. It turned out to be a poor choice. As much as he hated to admit it, the conductor was right. Chuck decided he'd take The Joy of Knitting and simply stare his critics in the face. It was better to be laughed at for one minute in daylight than to spend hours staring at the bedsprings overhead. The moon had been just a little higher in the sky, which meant its light had poured into his compartment all night long. He felt groggy as he pushed open the door to his carriage.
Shrill screams assaulted his eardrums, as a hairy, red-brown missile launched itself at his face. Chuck fended it off, and the small monkey ricocheted off him to hang, chattering with fear, from a wall sconce. Another bounded after it, kicking Chuck in the belly as it clambered after the first one. Chuck dodged just in time as a bowl of oatmeal hurtled toward him. It smashed on the door, and slid sludgily to the already-soiled Persian carpet. Food was all over the walls, hanging off the curtains, and smeared on the windows.
The whole car was full of screaming monkeys. Orangutans hung from the luggage racks. Apes jumped up and down on the seats. Smaller monkeys of every size scampered around through a ruin of dishes and spilled food. In the middle of the chaos sat Hiramus, reading his newspaper. His beard and hair were the same rusty red as the monkeys, but otherwise he was not at all simian. He put the halves of the paper together to turn the page, and noticed Chuck. He nodded politely.
Chuck picked his way through the mess toward him.
"What happened?"
"A little acrimony in a discussion over breakfast, which was served just after you left," Hiramus said, opening to the next page. "We hit a wave of influence and . . . you see the results." He shrugged.
Chuck eyed him curiously. "Why aren't you a monkey, too?"
Hiramus raised an eyebrow. "I didn't get involved in the argument." He went back to his paper.
Figures, Chuck thought, sitting down. Too bad. He could picture Hiramus as a gorilla, serious black face, furrowed brow, calmly reading in his high hat and gold-rimmed glasses. Well, he didn't want to spend the whole day in a zoo with one guy who wouldn't talk with him. It was clear Hiramus had no intention of helping to normalize things. It was up to him.
Chuck looked around. One of the bodies bouncing through the car had to be Keir. All he had to do was figure out which one it was, and get it to see reason. Keir changed shapes all day long with no trouble. The problem was, which one was he? The only way he would find out was by process of elimination. He was dismayed at the size of the task, but he didn't dare wait for the next wave of influence. What might they turn into then? Rhinoceri?
A graying spider monkey in a cap and glasses that landed on his shoulder clutching a tiny, large-eyed creature had to be Mrs. Flannel and Spot. He made a grab for her, and she bounded away, running on three legs with her pet held protectively to her chest. He captured her and sat her down in her chair, where she cuddled her pet like a baby. He chased a spectacled monkey that looked like Mr. Bolster up and down the car until he cornered it against the far door. It screeched and bit at him while he carried it back to its seat. Chuck gritted his teeth against the pain. It was worth a few scratches to get this mess under control. He wrestled the monkey into place. It bit him on the finger and flew up to cling to a ceiling fixture, swearing at him in Lesser Ape. Chuck was glad he couldn't understand it. So he'd gotten the wrong one. He'd just have to try all the monkeys in the puzzle until he got it right. Sooner or later he'd find Keir.
The largest of the orangutans pounded its chest with a fist and showed its teeth when Chuck tried to pull it down from the luggage rack. It wrapped its arm around his head, screaming in his ear like an air-raid siren at point-blank range. Wincing, Chuck pulled at the red-fringed arm. His feet slipped on something slimy on the floor, and he slid to the ground with the ape on top of him. Before it recovered from the surprise of falling, Chuck plumped it down in one seat after another until it stuck in one. It screeched protest, but stayed put. So that one was Kenner. Two down, fifty-eight to go. Next!
He made a dive for a matched pair of gray-brown monkeys that were huddled in the corner between the seat rows. They tried to split up when they saw him coming, but he was ready for them, arms spread wide. Before the female could make a break for it behind the wastebasket, he had them each by one limb. They hung upside down in the air, yelling and biting as Chuck carried them to the end row. By the insane expression on the male's face, he guessed they were Morit and Blanda. Sure enough, the couple stayed in their seats. As soon as he set them down they began to groom—more accurately, she started grooming him, and he screamed and batted at her, but they stayed where he left them.
As Chuck placed each anthropoid into a seat, the rest of the task seemed less and less daunting. He began to enjoy guessing where the next screaming monkey belonged. Keir was right: the temporary shape of a person had nothing to do with his or her personality. Chuck was able to figure out their identities, usually within a couple of tries, by the way they acted. The two meringue ladies who sat at the opposite end of the car from Keir's party were far more spry than they looked. He felt rewarded when he hauled two aged monkeys to that row and got them to remain in the seats. The second monkey bit him on the finger as he set her down. That was probably revenge for the last pie he'd thrown at her, which had landed square in her ear.
"One for you, ma'am," he said, grinning in spite of the pain.
In less time than he would have guessed, he was following the last orangutan up and down the aisle, though he was still missing two people, and Keir hadn't been found yet. Although Persemid was still missing, Chuck thought his quarry might be Sean because it seemed very nervous. It sent pressed-mouth grimaces back over its shoulder at him as it handed itself easily along the luggage racks or leaped from seat back to seat back. All the other apes kept on shrieking and chittering as if egging on their comrade. Chuck found the going hard. He had to stick to the aisle, which was sticky with spilled scrambled eggs, apricot jam, vegemite, peanut butter and oatmeal, and spiky with broken crockery, strewn serving dishes and flatware. He caught a lucky break. The train lurched around a curve, cutting short the ape's grab for the next overhead handhold. Chuck leaped for it and held it around the middle. It rained blows on his head and back as he dragged it to the two empty seats. It didn't fit in Sean's chair, so it had to be Persemid.
The moment he put her in her seat, the monkeys changed into people, and he found he was holding her around the waist. He let her go at once.
"Sorry," he mumbled, embarrassed.
"Thank you," Persemid said, sincerely. "I knew it was a stupid argument when it started, but I felt like I couldn't help myself."
Chuck looked around. The sconces on the wall had turned to smoky torches, and greyhounds gnawed at bones on the messy floor strewn with food. The restored passengers were clad in garments that had come straight out of medieval paintings. His comfortable chinos and sweatshirt were now a short belted tunic over a white puffy shirt and a pair of tight leather trousers striped in black and white. There was a codpiece on the front of his pants. Embarrassed, he tugged the tunic down front and back. Keir still wasn't there. He could have put this all to rights in no time, but for some reason left to let them settle the matter by themselves. Had he interfered unnecessarily? And where was Sean?
He heard groaning from the end of the car, and went to investigate. A heap of tablecloths shifted, and Sean poked his head out.
"Are they all gone?"
"Yes, they are. Well, they're back to being human again." Chuck helped him to his feet, so he could see for himself.
Sean glanced around, then sauntered with deliberate nonchalance back to his place. "Thank heavens. I've always had an unreasoning fear of apes. They were everywhere, flying around. I wasn't hiding, mind you," he said, giving Chuck the wary eye. "Just staying out of the way."
Bergold, who had been a small but magnificent silverback gorilla, and was once again a short round man, dressed in dusty beige and maroon robes, welcomed his seatmate back with a hearty handshake. "There did seem to be an essence of nightmare in that last round of influence, Master Sean. You were right to withdraw. Good work, young man," he told Chuck.
"Thanks," Chuck said. He eyed his chair uneasily. It was now U-shaped, the edges of the seat curving up to support gilded handrests, and the back a single slat topped by a carved griffin. Chuck doubted the cushion would keep his bottom from sliding into the hinge. Gingerly, he sat down. To his surprise, the chair was very comfortable, though the unyielding backboard made him sit up very straight.
Flanked by two trumpeters in tabards and tights, the conductor, in a dark blue houpelande edged with red, raised a mace. The trumpeters blew a fanfare.
"Next stop," the conductor shouted grandly, "the Rock of Ages!"
"Oyez!" the trumpeters shouted, tucking their instruments under their arms. The trio marched grandly down the aisle toward the next car. Chuck gazed at them, shaking his head in amazement. Now, who would dream something like that, and in such detail?
"We have time for another lesson in inner searching before lunch," a voice said. Chuck jumped. Keir appeared suddenly by Chuck's side, dressed in a court magician's robe made out of gray homespun. He had a tall stick surmounted by a crystal orb. Floating inside it was a yellow smiley-face.
"Where have you been?" Chuck demanded. The guide sat down on his chair arm.
"Oh, around," Keir said, with a small grin. "It's all part of your experience. You guessed that, didn't you? New things to stretch your mind, I told you, and you passed the test with aplomb. You jumped right in, solved a problem creatively."
Chuck preened a little, but he had to be honest. "I was trying to find you," he admitted. "The rest of it just happened. I guess I just got caught up in sorting monkeys until I was finished."
"Let that be the reason, then," Keir said, giving him a wise look. "I am grateful for your help this morning. I'll be counting on you more and more as we go along, I told you. As a reward, let's start with you today. We're going to be working more deeply on your powers of concentration."
"Fine by me," Chuck said, settling himself into his chair. The others looked at him enviously. Praise made the bites and scratches itch less. He liked being appreciated, and this time felt he had earned it. He'd be rid of those blue suitcases in no time. He could even ignore the ridiculous clothes.
This time he was not disconcerted by the contortions the seat went through to make him comfortable. The U-shape modified itself until it was a wide shell of handsome hardwood, carved on the outside but lined sumptuously inside with silk velvet. In fact, he used a bolt of influence to thicken the pillow supporting his lower back. The extra padding was just right. His smile was blissful as he wriggled into it. Boy, if he could only do that at home. He let his muscles relax, letting his hands fall open on the wide arm rests, shut his eyes and nodded to Keir.
"Good!" the guide said, his voice mellowing. "Now, concentrate. Think deeply. Ready . . . ? What is the sound you hear when the nightingale ceases its song?"
"Oh, come on," Chuck protested, opening an eye. "That's easy: breathing."
"No, no! Think eternally," Keir said, rapping him on the knuckles. The smiley-face stuck its tongue out at Chuck. "Let me give you some examples. Listen. How close to the cessation of sound is this?"
Boinnggg . . . a springy noise erupted right inside Chuck's mind. He jumped with surprise, but gave the sound serious consideration. He shook his head.
"You're so sure," Keir said, disapprovingly. "How about this?"
Jing-jing! was followed by achoo! Chuck knew that those two weren't right, either. Once again he was trying to be serious, and he suspected Keir was being frivolous. "Eh? How about this?"
"What I'd really like to know," Chuck said, interrupting the sound of a cuckoo clock in his ear, "is how I can get past the distractions of my life to find my real problem?"
"That isn't too hard," Keir said, reaching out to turn down an invisible volume control. The noises in Chuck's head ceased. The guide waited for Chuck to relax again. "Now. Picture yourself as a water buffalo trying to climb out of a vat of strawberry gelatin, but without the gelatin. Or the vat. Or without being a water buffalo. To reach the ultimate freedom of spirit you must divest yourself of all vestiges of glutinous desserts. Think about that."
While Chuck was struggling with this difficult concept, Keir trotted over to Persemid, assuming his wolf shape as he did so. The woman's outfit was decidedly medieval in cut, too: a loose-fitting, open-sided dress over a tight-fitting underdress that clung to her rounded curves with determination. Her red hair was just visible through a white veil floating on her head under a silver circlet. The fur trim on the loose dress looked just like Keir's fur.
"Your friend there is quite a guy," Kenner said, leaning over to rap Chuck on the arm with a casual knuckle. He was twice the size he had been the day before, his muscles defined and oiled like a bronze statue.
"He is," Chuck said, watching Keir sit down on the floor. Together, he and Persemid began howling a haunting keen that rode up and down the musical scale. "He looks just like I would have pictured a spirit guide."
"To me he looks like a one-armed paper hanger, running around after the five of you all the time," Kenner said, with a grin.
"I suppose so," Chuck said, eyeing Keir uneasily to see if he'd overheard. To his chagrin, the wolf leaning toward Persemid started to shift toward human, with a trace of white overalls, the left front paw shortening up toward the shoulder. Guiltily, he threw panicked thoughts of "Wolf! Wolf!" in Keir's direction, and was grateful when the transformation halted and reversed. Luckily, Persemid's head was thrown back and her eyes were closed, so she hadn't seen. She might have accused him of co-opting her time with the guide again. "But he's an extraordinary man," Chuck insisted, unwilling to downgrade Keir. Not only would it be unjust and unfair to Keir, who was tactful and very good with difficult people, of which Chuck conceded he was one, but it would cheapen his experience. If he became dissatisfied, he would stop believing in this plane and he wasn't ready to go back yet. "I think he's terrifically organized."
"No doubt, no doubt," Kenner said, agreeably.
Keir finished with Persemid and floated over to Pipistrella, creamy-skinned and clad in flowing royal blue trimmed with silver. She had poured a lapful of crystals out of one of her bags, and was playing idly with them. The two of them created a ring of the bright stones, which the pretty woman gazed into as if it was a window into another world. Sean Draper gave Chuck an accusing glance as Keir, in the guise of Sean's mother, made room for herself next to the tall man. Abashed for being caught staring, Chuck looked away. He'd better go back to musing on gelatin.
* * *
Chuck was surprised to get a tap on the shoulder. When he opened his eyes the sun was beating down almost directly on the top of the car, streaming in through stained-glass skylights. He must have been meditating for hours. Well done, he congratulated himself, and an invisible crowd broke into thunderous applause. Chuck grinned sheepishly at the others, who looked over to see what the noise was. He turned back to Keir, who pointed his smiley-headed staff toward the window.
"We're making up some of the time we lost yesterday," Keir said. They were still eastbound. The train was moving fast enough to blur the landscape close to the train, but beyond that Chuck could see scattered farms and houses, with a small town just atop a rise to the north. The mountains, higher than the Rockies or the Alps, curled around the edge of the landscape like a protective arm. The clicking of the tracks hollowed and grew fainter as the train passed over a river. Chuck let his eye follow the blue ribbon all the way back to its source, where it was a shrunken silver thread clinging to the mountainside. He had no means of judging perspective, but guessed it was a long way. Distances in this place were deceptive.
Just over the river, the train began to describe another slight right curve. Out the window on the opposite side, the engine came into view, throwing white puffs of steam over its steel shoulder. Beyond it a wall of coruscating rainbow concealed the approaching landscape from horizon to horizon.
"What's that?" Chuck demanded.
"Nothing to worry about," Keir said, reassuringly, but Chuck didn't feel his confidence. Remembering the bottomless pit that had almost swallowed them before, he worried about what could happen to them when they couldn't see exactly where they were going. He felt like jumping up and running to the cab, to warn the engineer. The train kept chugging blithely forward. As its nose touched the cloud of light, it seemed to vanish.
"I knew it!" Chuck said. "We're ceasing to exist!"
"What?" Persemid demanded, springing up to look. The others crowded over to the right side of the train, leaning over the other passengers.
"The train is disappearing?" Sean Draper asked. He grasped the edge of a seat, his hand white-knuckled with the pressure. The seat rail reached up to wrap securely around his wrist. Sean glanced down in surprise, but it held him steady. He seemed to relax a little.
"It's nothing that can hurt you," Keir insisted. "I told you we were making up lost time. We're just moving forward."
As he said that, the train gave a tremendous jerk, knocking all the standees but Sean into the laps of the others. Chuck landed on Morit, who grunted at him.
"Sorry," Chuck said, scrambling up to see what was happening. About a third of the train had been eaten by the cloud. Lists of things to do to help evacuate the train before their car passed into the shimmering wall scrolled before his eyes. There was no time to do them all. He was ready to start herding passengers out the back of the car, when he realized he could see a blurry image of the train itself on the other side of the portal. The cascade of light was translucent. Beyond it, the train had speeded up, elongating as it did so. Every car was at least twice as long as it had been. Gone were the decorative wheel bosses and the gracious wood paneling. In place of the Victorian steam engine was a horizontally ribbed, streamlined tube of silver with a chisel nose that hugged the track. It looked like it was in a hurry. As each car changed, the train jerked again, trying to maintain two speeds at once. Chuck crawled back to his seat. He braced himself to help the others into their places. The greyhounds and rush-strewn floors were gone, replaced by a very low-pile, nubby carpet woven in five shades of blue. He looked up. The aisle seemed to stretch out to infinity. The passengers had thinned out. There were fewer elderly people dressed for vacationing, and more dark-suited businesspeople with grim, worried expressions on their faces and cellular telephones pressed to their ears. Chuck grasped the edge of the molded plastic, ergonomic seat and hauled himself into it. He was glad to see seat belts. At the clip they were moving, a sudden stop would send everyone hurtling into the front wall. By the time he was sitting down, the jerking had ceased. The newly refurbished train was zooming forward on the tracks like a rocket.
The landscape flattened out into a blur of color, more indistinct than when the train had been heading for the abyss. Chuck looked down at his clothing. It had altered to suit the modern surroundings. The hated codpiece and leather pants were gone. Instead, he was wearing a collarless business suit and ugly ergonomic shoes. He'd gone from too ancient to too modern in the space of a breath. The conductor, whose sumptuous outfit had been pared down to a jumpsuit with embroidered insigne, handed himself into the car along plastic loops hanging from the ceiling, and announced lunch.
Chuck rubbed his hands together in happy anticipation. He'd meditated hard that morning, and he remembered only then that because of the monkey puzzle he hadn't had any breakfast. He sat up avidly as the uniformed attendants, now mostly female, circulated among them, placing trays before each diner. With dismay Chuck studied the plastic, sectioned plate and collection of white mylar bags and packages arrayed before him. They looked sterile and uninteresting.
Determined to be nicer and more patient with the foibles of others, he was in a quandary. He didn't want to cause a fuss, but it was hard to equate the good meals they had had up until then with this, this laboratory experiment. Pipistrella, whose gift for telling the truth was sometimes so inconvenient, spoke for all of them. She looked down at the sectioned plate and wrinkled her nose.
"Yuck," she said, feelingly.
Chuck asked Keir, "What happened to the fine-food service?"
"Well, we're moving at a greater clip, so the food, too, is getting faster and faster," Keir said. His everyday costume contrasted sharply with the crisp modernity all around him, but he looked as comfortable as ever. "You wait and see until we're traveling at the speed of light."
"If this can get any worse, I don't want to see it," Chuck said, picking up the entree plate. He sniffed the food. It had no aroma. All he could scent was Pipistrella's rose perfume from across the aisle.
"Oh, come on," Keir said, rapping him in the back with a friendly hand. "Consider it part of your education."
"Well, if you say so . . ." Chuck said, uneasily. He tore open a packet, but couldn't bring himself to eat the grainy, mushy contents. It looked like an example for what not to do to food.
The force driving the changes kept altering his meal, though never making it look good enough to eat. The tray narrowed, widened, rounded off the corners, grew extra ones, flipped up to have a rim, flattened out to lose it. The contents shifted from three helpings of dull-colored sludge to a hot dog in a bright green bun, something indescribable featuring overcooked noodles and multicolored sauce, a wedge of unidentifiable meat with limp vegetables sprinkled with fire-engine-red powder that made his eyes water, a gigantic chili pepper stuffed with what looked like rice pudding, and finally, wrapped sandwiches with oozing cheese stuck to the paper. Chuck's stomach did an unhappy flip-flop. He looked up at Keir.
"Eat it anyhow," Keir advised him. "Or don't. You don't actually need it to sustain your bodies, but if you want to continue the fiction of being hungry, you'll need to maintain the fiction of eating to get along. Form follows function."
"Indigestion follows ingestion," Persemid grumbled. "I notice you're not eating."
"Don't need it," Keir said. "But then, I have risen to a plane where I don't require the symbols of ordinary existence to get along."
"Good thing," Persemid said, prying up the top of her sandwich and letting it fall back. "Nobody could survive for long on this stuff."
Chuck couldn't have agreed more.
"It's pretty bad," he said. "Almost as awful as—"
The now familiar wave of energy hit him square in the back and kept going, rounding off the train walls until he couldn't tell where they ended and the ceiling began. Outside the windows, the landscape gradually dropped away until all he could see was sky and the tops of clouds.
"—Airline food," Chuck finished.
"You just had to say it, didn't you?" Persemid asked, dropping her fork back into her dish, which had shrunk a few more inches. The mess in the bowl looked completely unappetizing. A square, rock-hard biscuit sat on the brim. Bergold took a small book out of an almost invisible pocket and consulted a page. His eyebrows raised high.
"Goodness me, hardtack and swill!" He looked up at the others cheerfully. "You rarely see the genuine article. I suggest that you are attracting the original symbols. It's a pleasure!"
"It's an honor I'd surely forego," Sean said, his handsome face twisted in a sour grimace of distaste. Pipistrella sat with her dainty hands folded in her lap, an expression on her lovely face that suggested she was being subjected to Trial by Ordeal.
"You can get something to eat at our next stop," Keir said blithely, assuming the role of Sean's mother for just a moment. "It isn't real to us, as you know. Does it matter how it looks or tastes, so long as it sustains you?"
"Appearance, presentation and aroma aid in enjoyment, too," Hiramus pointed out. He was eating his dinner, with no enthusiasm whatsoever. Cheese sagged down from his fork in strings, threatening to stain his spotless suit.
"It won't be long," Keir said. "We're making good speed now." He stretched back in his seat, which reclined until he was lying flat with his sandals crossed. Chuck looked at the comfortable couch in disbelief.
"Now I know this place isn't real," he said.
| Title: | The Grand Tour |
| Author: | Jody Lynn Nye |
| ISBN: | 0-671-57883-9 |
| Copyright: | © 2000 by Jody Lynn Nye |
| Publisher: | Baen Books |