The sky was already growing rosy when the ship docked in the harbor of the Sunset Isle. As soon as the ship stopped moving everyone in the debarkation lounge surged forward onto the gangway to the pier. Chuck was going to wait behind until the crowd had cleared a little, but he was caught up in the mob and carried along in its midst. His feet scarcely touched the metal plank as the passengers moved out of the narrow corridor and into a narrow, painted stucco passageway that led between buildings. He couldn't see a thing except backs ahead of him, faces behind, and high above him, a sky growing richer in color by the moment. He hated to think that he might miss the whole event because he was stuck in a bottleneck.
Just as suddenly, the crowd thinned out. A constricted passage opened off to the left, then a slightly wider one to the right. Tired of claustrophobic conditions, Chuck followed the rightward alley, and immediately regretted it. The shadows were falling the other way. He was heading away from the sunset, instead of toward it. When a corridor angling back in the right direction offered itself, Chuck took it, even though it began with a flight of steep stairs.
From his slightly improved vantage point, he could see a little more of the island. Below him, thousands of people wandered a rat's maze of high walls. The blue sky was paling into handsome pastels on the west. Chuck glimpsed a knobby peninsula in that direction. That would be the best place to watch from. He thought he could see a way to follow this higher path over most of the crowd, even though it would be much harder going.
The hardy few who'd opted for Chuck's path were red-faced and panting by the time they reached the ridge that ran the length of the island. At the top were more stucco walls, just high enough to lean his chin on. The gleaming seas were visible from there, but he wanted to get as close as he could to the action.
To his amazement, Pipistrella was already at the top. The strangers thinned out between them until Chuck was immediately behind her.
"Hello," she said, smiling. "Isn't this lovely? Oh, look!" She pointed down over the wall at salt-white domes with painted, blue trim. "That's as pretty as a postcard." She stopped every few feet to gaze around her and look at the scenery. The way was so narrow he couldn't pass her without shoving her into the concrete wall, so he grew more and more hot and impatient. The people behind him were beginning to make angry remarks. He wished that he had been able to get up here before her, like Sean had. The mop of light-blond hair Sean sported after the latest round of influence was well out of sight in the bobbing crowd.
"Please, go on," he said. "We don't have a lot of time."
"You shouldn't be in such a hurry," Pip said, turning huge brown eyes to him. "That's your trouble, you know. You're always in such a hurry for the large revelations you don't appreciate the little things." The nearby roof spilled over with vines laden with scarlet blooms. She reached over to pluck one and offered it to him. "You see? It's all the same, in the end."
But the people behind Chuck didn't appreciate her little lesson either, shoving Chuck before he could take the flower. Chuck braced his arms on the stuccoed walls and pushed back, keeping them from knocking him into her. Pip never noticed the byplay. She tucked the flower into her waist-length tresses of rippling, black hair and floated on ahead of him.
To his relief, the way became wider. With a muttered apology to Pipistrella, he edged past her and strode along the descending slope, looking for a good place to sit. Sunset was big business here. Every little house had a balcony. Every little bistro and taverna had a sign that offered THE BEST VIEW ON THE ISLAND! There was an equal number of places painted with warnings that said, DANGER! DO NOT STAND HERE! The thousands of people obeyed the signs at first, but Chuck noticed that as soon as one person ignored them and stepped into forbidden territory, another followed. In no time the signs were hidden by milling tourists. He thought for a moment that he could feel the ground sway slightly under his feet. Was this place prone to earthquakes?
Chuck found a taverna he liked the looks of. It wasn't as close to the isle's end as it could have been, but he had a clear westward view because the line of the coast belled out slightly to the south. The proprietor, a loudly hospitable man in an open-necked shirt, escorted him to the best seat in the house. With a drink on the little table at his elbow, Chuck watched in comfort as everyone else pushed and shoved by. He was relieved to be out of the way.
"You'd think," a woman on the path near Chuck complained in a whiny voice, "that they'd pay attention to demand, and make this area larger!" The man ahead of her, obviously her husband, grunted agreement.
Chuck thought it was a little weird to want to enlarge a geographical feature, but he realized it wasn't out of the question in the Dreamland. He drank his wine, which tasted like warm Mediterranean days, while watching the sun pass through some mighty picturesque clouds. Birds flew across them. Chuck set down his glass. It sloshed slightly. He steadied it carefully. Perhaps the table legs were uneven.
The height of the prominence on which he sat became lower or higher as everyone around him kept altering their positions to get the best view. The eventual effect was of steeply raked arena seating. When everything settled out, his taverna reestablished itself as the highest and his seat the best placed. He heard some complaints from others without as much influence as he had. After all, most of them weren't sitting down, and few had table service. For once Chuck appreciated rank having its privileges.
Cameras appeared all around him, snapping pictures of the sky. The handsome scene was getting grainier or spread thinner on the sky. Too many people were taking photos, the woman near him complained, diminishing the view that was left. The colors were quickly restored. It would take more than a few pictures to dim the sunset.
Chuck's drink sloshed again, and a waiter on his way to serve other patrons tripped. This time Chuck distinctly felt a shudder underneath his feet. Would the whole island collapse like broken bleachers under the weight of the mass of tourists?
Less than a block away to his right, he could see Sean and Pipistrella seated together on a bench in someone's private garden. The shy young man really liked her. He wondered what Pipistrella did at home. Chuck figured that had to be in California. No one as out of touch with reality as she was could be comfortable anywhere else. Persemid sat a couple of rows below him, legs dangling, on a stone perch with a jug of wine and a loaf of bread. He glanced around for Hiramus. To his discomfiture, the older man, not far away, was looking at him. Their eyes met, and Chuck flinched. Hastily, he turned to search out Keir, but without success. The guide was a small man, and there were plenty of tall people around.
The sky grew more richly blue, tinting the sea darker, and the sun lowered a little more. It wouldn't be long now before what promised to be a glorious sunset. The crowd seemed to lean avidly toward the west.
"Ladies and gentlemen," announced a man with a megaphone. "Please spread out. The point is getting too crowded! Ladies and gentlemen, we ask for your cooperation!" Chuck glanced behind him. There were more and more faces crowding in along the narrow lanes, swarming over the tops of houses like ivy. He definitely felt an unsteadiness underfoot that he could not put down to the wine.
Clouds moved in, covering part of the sky. Instead of blocking the horizon, they formed an envelope that the sun inserted itself into like a celestial love letter. Streaks of light came through holes in the cloud and touched the sea. It was so beautiful Chuck found himself holding his breath. People crowded in from everywhere, unwilling to miss a single nuance of light. The sun started to peep below the edge of the clouds very close to the sea, tinting the sky with rose.
"Ladies and gentlemen!" the loudspeaker blared. "You are creating a dangerous situation here, folks! This place can't hold you all."
That was an understatement. The land started to wobble and tilt toward the west. Chuck clutched the pillar holding up the bar's roof as the floor lurched and his chair skidded away from him. It tilted back again. Crowds of people began screaming and running around.
"You're only making it worse," Chuck shouted, waving his free arm for attention. "Stand still! Hold onto something!"
Morit stood in a bowllike courtyard, clinging like a limpet to the stuccoed wall. He watched with satisfaction as his supporters pushed and shoved their way into the narrow lanes, filling them to capacity. Yes. Yes. The moment was nearly at hand.
"Look, dear," Blanda said, lowering her field glasses to point. "The sun is just going down."
Morit leaned over the wall and shouted to the milling crowd.
"Now!"
Wherever they were, his comrades surged forward toward the west. The whole island tilted upward, and dumped everyone on it into the sunset sea.
* * *
Chuck clung to the pillar by his hands, kicking frantically to get up to a level surface. Midnight blue waves lapped his feet. He'd been fortunate to be holding on when the island tilted. Everyone around him was flailing in the water, trying to get back on dry land. Where were his companions? He scanned the sea for signs of them. Terrified people were grabbing his legs, climbing up to hang on to the walls, to trees, to each other. He let them swarm up him like a ladder, and found Persemid hanging onto the concrete standard beside him.
"Tell me this wasn't supposed to happen," Persemid gasped.
"The others," Chuck said. "Can you see the others?"
"Over there," she said, looking out toward the west. Chuck squinted through seawater spray running down his face.
Sean popped into his field of view first. That beacon of golden hair bobbed up in the water. Beside him was Pipistrella's mass of black hair. He was helping her swim. All around them, people were going down for the first, second or third time. Chuck shouted at them to come toward him, but he knew his voice was swallowed up in the crash of waves and screams of hysteria.
"I see Keir," he exclaimed, drawing Persemid's attention to the huge wolf dog-paddling toward them. Hiramus was nowhere in sight. Chuck hoped he wasn't on the part of the island that was now submerged.
The clouds that had cloaked the sun suddenly dropped closer to the sea. They massed into a swirling funnel, and marched toward them over the water's surface, churning up huge waves. More people were sucked down, never to be seen again. Chuck grew frantic. Sean's progress was slow. They couldn't outrace a hurricane!
"Help me!" Chuck yelled at Persemid. "Throw all the influence you've got at that storm! Stop it! Slow it down!"
Persemid's face contorted as she concentrated. Together they made a barrier by turning the winds outward. The hurricane bounced against it. It tried to break through, or loop around it, but Chuck moved his influence to counter its moves. The storm's screaming wail increased, as if it was angry to be thwarted. Then, as if setting its shoulder to a door, it bowed over and thudded directly into the unseen wall.
Chuck could almost feel the strength of it pounding against his body. Each blow shook him physically. He felt himself losing his grip on the iron beam. He hadn't the practice to control influence and protect himself at the same time. What else could he do to turn the storm's strength against itself?
The hurricane sensed his dilemma, and whipped up its winds. Debris and thousands of gallons of seawater flooded against the upturned island. The pillar holding Chuck and dozens of others cracked alarmingly. He lost concentration as it broke off from its concrete bearings. The storm rushed in.
The image that burned into Chuck's mind before he got dumped into the ocean was of the storm, made up of thousands of angry, screaming faces bearing down on him. Sean and Pip were still swimming, looking over their shoulders in terror as the hurricane swept over them.
Splash! Chuck and Persemid fell into the tossing waves. Chuck fought his way to the surface, flailing with his arms to keep his head above water. He spat out the salty water.
Think calm thoughts, he kept telling himself, but it was too difficult when his ears were full of furious shrieking, and he couldn't tell which way was up.
"Change shape," Persemid gasped, popping up to the surface with her red hair plastered against her head. "Change shape. We're no good in these forms. Can't help anyone. The sea wins."
Chuck thought of all the shapes he could take, but he couldn't make up his mind which was the best. He had to hurry, or he'd drown. Persemid's face flashed before him for a moment, then she was a dolphin, arrowing through the water toward the hurricane's foot. That made Chuck's mind up for him. He had always wanted to be a seal, so he effected the transformation, and followed her. They had to save the others.
They swam among thousands of people all getting in each other's way. Bunches of them were sucked up by the tsunami. Screaming, they whirled upward, disappearing into the gray funnel. Chuck struck out grimly, making for the last point he had seen the others. They must not suffer the same fate! Persemid and Chuck got separated. He looked around for her, but spotted Sean and Pipistrella swimming frantically toward him. He flicked his tail, grateful for the advantages of influence, and swam toward them.
Just before he got within reach, the hurricane twisted its funnel around, seeking survivors on the water. Pipistrella, a few strokes behind Sean, was snatched up by the wind.
"Come back!" Sean shouted at her, holding his hands out. He tried to climb the hurricane, but it shrugged him off, blowing him a thousand feet away. His body splashed into the water. Chuck stared, shocked, until a high wave knocked him over and sent him rolling. He came to his senses all at once, and zipped toward Sean, vowing not to lose two companions. The hurricane bore down upon him. There was a moment when Chuck imagined the thousands of horrible faces grinning down at him from the whirling cloud. In his heart he knew storms weren't sentient, but this one seemed to loop back around to try for him, too. It wasn't possible, Chuck kept thinking, as he dove for the sea bottom.
When he surfaced, he spotted Sean right away. The fair-haired man was tossing limply in the waves, not trying to swim. Chuck came up under his arm and held his face out of the water. Persemid appeared at Sean's other elbow. They kept him afloat as they dodged the waves. Thwarted, the hurricane skittered away over the sea.
A brilliant white dot of light followed it, the angel Keir in hot pursuit. His shining wing feathers were buffeted by the winds. He chased the funnel cloud, but to no avail. A hole in the water opened up, and the waterspout swirled away like water going down a drain. On the sky, Chuck saw the faintest, thinnest line of silver snap upward from that point, like a strand of broken spider web. Chilled, Chuck realized it was Pipistrella's navel string. Keir was left hovering over the unmarred surface, his beautiful face contorted with grief.
"Now what?" Persemid asked, in a shrill voice that cut through Chuck's numb shock.
"Get to the ship," Chuck barked. The two of them started swimming back toward the island, hauling Sean between them.
The Dreamlanders who had not drowned had turned into sea nymphs, tritons and fish, frolicking in the calmed sea. The sun was now below the horizon. In the dusk, Chuck saw a huge wall loom up over him: the hull of a liner-sized rowboat. The hand of a giant fisherman swept a net down into the water, scooping them up and dumping them into the bows of the boat.
"Happens all the time," he sighed.
* * *
With the loss of Pipistrella, the cruise ship was plunged into mourning. The colored carnival lights that lined the deck were gone. In their place were dim lanterns and black bunting. The conductor and crew had rushed forward to swaddle the refugees in towels and blankets, murmuring words of sympathy as they escorted them into the warm lounge. Though grief-stricken, Chuck, Hiramus and Persemid were able to take care of themselves, but Sean obediently followed whatever directions were given to him. He accepted a hot drink and sat down where he was told while a fortune-teller in full gypsy rig came along to examine him and say he'd be all right.
"I can't believe she's gone," Sean kept saying, staring moodily out of the window at the water.
All their friends from the first-class cabins sat with them in the lounge, offering silent compassion. Bergold had performed almost the same transformation as Chuck. In the shape of a huge sea lion, he had nosed dozens of survivors toward the ship, including Mrs. Flannel and Master Bolster. Hiramus had saved dozens by changing the chair he'd been sitting on into an inflatable life raft. Kenner had bodily hauled ten women on board the cruise ship, nearly drowning himself to save them. Everyone was wet and exhausted from effort. Night had fallen. The faint, yellow lights on the ship only accentuated the darkness of the sea and the sky.
"I can't believe one of us could go," Hiramus said, huddled over a cup of hot soup cradled between his long hands.
"I am so sorry," Bergold said. "This is a terrible shock to everyone."
There was a long pause.
"It sounds really terrible," Persemid said, tentatively, "but do you think she even knows? I mean, that she's . . . dead?"
Chuck felt like crying and laughing at the same time. "With Pip, maybe not." He regretted his own behavior. If he'd known that moment on the path was the last he would ever have with her, he wouldn't have been so impatient. If only he'd been able to hold back the hurricane a moment longer!
"Someone's definitely out to get us," Persemid said, her large eyes haunted. "Did you see those faces in that storm? It was as though they were screaming at us. They hated us!"
"You're imagining things," Morit said. He and Blanda had been picked up almost at once by a speedboat operated by a conspirator. The two of them were dry and comfortable. He felt inwardly gleeful. At last, they had had a success! He knew he must stifle his pleasure. The others were holding a kind of wake for their departed companion. Blanda wept quietly into a handkerchief.
"I've never lost a client before," Keir said, pleating and unpleating the skirts of Sean's guide's dress. "I feel awful."
"Not your fault," Sean said, tersely. Although Sean was the chief mourner, he was the one who offered solace to the others. "You've warned us again and again this can be a dangerous place for us. She took the risks. We all did. You tried to save her. I saw that, and I thank you. All of you."
"I had to try," Keir said, quietly. "I don't know what more I could have done."
"You must all go home, at once," Morit said, feigning deep sympathy, though inwardly he was dancing with glee. "She wouldn't expect you to continue on with a pleasure trip." Chuck Meadows and Persemid Smith were nodding. If he could convince them to leave now, and take word of the death to all the Visitors waiting in the Waking World, no more would ever come!
But he was disappointed, and his disappointment came from an unexpected quarter.
"You're wrong, Master Morit," Sean Draper insisted, looking up, his blue eyes flashing. "We must go on to the end, if only in her memory. She did me a service, see, and I won't forget that." He glanced at Keir, nodded, then turned to the others. "I'm not here on purpose, like the rest of you. The last thing I remember in me waking life was walking down the street in the town where I live. There was a blast, you see. A bomb." Persemid bit her lip, but gestured to him to go on. "Well, I . . . I didn't know at first when I arrived here if I was alive or dead, or if any of this is real. I still don't know for certain. Keir there convinced me I was still alive but hovering on the brink. I had to be the one to make the decision whether or not it was worth surviving. I didn't care, you know. At bottom I was afraid to. But she made me care. I didn't get to tell her," he said, with a half gasp that was like a sob. "I waited too long."
"She knows," Persemid Smith said kindly, taking his hand. He squeezed her fingers.
"I hope so," he said, bowing his head.
"But you must return, in peace, in her memory!" Morit said, feeling he was losing ground. "Go back to the Waking World! It's not safe here!"
"No," Sean Draper said, without looking up. "She came here searching for truth. We'll find it for her."
"Hear, hear," said Chuck Meadows. "When I first got here I resented like mad having the rest of you here, but now that I'm past it, I admit freely how fascinated I've been by the range of experience that contact with all of you, including Pip, brought me. Instead of being sorry I'm not alone, I dread thinking what an empty astral plane would have been like. So we're richer for having known her."
"She was quite a lovely gal," Kenner said, raising a mug of coffee.
"Her memory will always live in the Collective Unconscious," Bergold said, gravely. "Nothing that she did will ever be completely forgotten."
"Right," Chuck Meadows said, resolutely. "So for her sake, we go forward. Right?"
"Right," Sean Draper agreed. "Thank you all." Morit glowered at them.
"I think it's so sweet of you," Blanda said. Morit turned his glare upon her, but she paid him no attention.
Persemid opened her Indian print bag, now much reduced in size because she'd dealt with many of her issues, and began to dig through it.
"Pip gave me some silk," she said. "Sean, I think you ought to have it, because I know you'll miss her the most." Puzzled, she came up with a small bunch of flowers. "This is all there was."
"Forget-me-nots," said Keir softly, with a gentle touch on Sean's shoulder. The young man took the posy and put his other hand over his face. "Let's leave him alone, my friends."
* * *
Chuck, Persemid and the others tiptoed away. The auditorium next door was darkened. Morit reached out and pulled them all into it. An appreciative crowd was already seated there, letting out sounds of pleasure as image after image was thrown up onto a movie screen.
"These are vacation images I have taken of Elysia," Morit said, taking his place behind the projector. "I know you will enjoy seeing them, so you will have an idea of what to expect when we arrive. The people are very friendly there." He picked up the control and jabbed the button with his thumb.
Chuck felt as though he had become trapped in a kind of nightmare. Carefully framed photographs of drearily dull family scenes, like Morit washing a car, or Blanda baking a cake, flashed before him. One of the frames was a map marked ELYSIA. In shape, it was much like the lower part of the state of Michigan without the thumb. The terrain was flat, and a pattern of rivers ran through it like veins. Place names stood out, marked in red beside large black dots.
"I have hundreds of slides of each of these attractions." Morit turned to look deliberately at Chuck. "I think you can see Enlightenment at the northern edge of the province. I think it will still be there when we arrive. You won't want to miss it."
Resigned to his fate, Chuck brightened a little bit. He was touched that even the grouchy Morit was trying to cheer them up after the loss of Pipistrella. He cleared his throat. "Thanks. I'm looking forward to seeing your homeland."
"Not so much as I am eager to show it to you," Morit said, courteously. He punched the button again. The screen showed a front yard in which concrete statues of two deer stared blankly at the camera.
"It ought to be fine there this time of year," Bergold said, settling himself comfortably in a high-backed couch. "In Mnemosyne we've had no bad reports from Elysia for a very long time. Things must be nicely stable."
"You have no idea, Master Bergold," Morit said. And, indeed, he knew that for a fact. No bad reports had gone to the crown because hundreds of his friends and supporters had been preventing anyone and everyone from leaving Elysia, sometimes by violence, for weeks. It wasn't as hard as it sounded, since the province was bounded on every side by bottomless gorges or the Lullay River. In fact, the situation was growing nicely unstable, but he was quite sincere about wishing to have the Visitors walk right into it, if he couldn't rid himself of them in the meantime.
| Title: | The Grand Tour |
| Author: | Jody Lynn Nye |
| ISBN: | 0-671-57883-9 |
| Copyright: | © 2000 by Jody Lynn Nye |
| Publisher: | Baen Books |