A mountain of a man looked down upon the sleeping figure and marveled at the color of his skin and the unusual dimensions of his small body. Taking a bite from a huge apple, he held his lamp-suck out over the man to get a better look. Even without it, in the diminished light of night, he could see that the man’s skin was oddly pale, a hue unlike any he had ever seen. And his size—he was no larger than a child, but this man was no child. True, there were a few who were of similar stature, but they all had misshapen bodies, not the proper proportions of the stranger before him. And those clothes. What kind of fashion is that? Where could such a person have come from? The little man’s appearance gave no clues. The smoothness of his face and darkness of his hair, however, betrayed his age—he was ninety, perhaps one hundred years old. And he was hurt. The stranger’s right hand, throat, and chest were covered with the brown grit of dried blood. Bright crimson mixed in where the wounds still seeped.
The giant stood over the stranger, finishing his apple, watching quietly as the exotic little man in the eccentric clothing stirred slightly in the dense clover of the hillside. He was uncertain whether to wake him or leave him where he lay. He looked into the distance, at the floodlight-drenched city wall, considering.
Feeling adventurous, the man chose the former. Reaching out with a right toe, he gently tapped the stranger’s leg. The sleeper stirred, a wince spreading across his face. “Julota crees,” the giant apologized to the waking figure. “Vetdrova keltrian, cusoona fes myhaal.”
T. G. opened his eyes at the odd sound and discovered the unusual figure towering over him. He stiffly sat up, gingerly bracing himself as he put his weight on the hip opposite his injured leg. The figure stepped back another couple of feet, carefully watching T. G.’s every move.
“English?” T. G. hoped, doubting that such would be the case. The figure only stared at him, his expression unsure, apparently waiting for a word or two he recognized.
Tossing his gnawed apple core aside, the giant looked upon the little man in puzzlement. Why does he make such odd sounds? The enormous man had known only one language all his life. The whole world spoke but one.
In its entire history, it had known only two.
T. G. became fearful as more of the strange language flowed from the giant’s lips, knowing that any chance for communication with the people here was unlikely. It was bad enough being dropped into the middle of nowhere, but it terrified him to realize that he was unable to speak the native language.
“So, where is this?” T. G. asked. “The Middle East, somewhere? No? Somewhere on Earth though, right?” There was a blank look on the giant’s face. “Please?”
“Vaya kesta,” came the reply, puzzlement in his tone.
T. G. spoke slower, as if it would help. “I just found myself here. I’m not from here. I hurt my leg, see?” he said, indicating his knee.
The giant looked down at the injured leg, understanding, and spoke again. More gibberish, this time with feeling.
T. G. studied the man holding the torchlike object, his eyes studying a figure like none he had ever seen. He was gigantic. His hands were twice as large as an average man’s. Beneath a wide, brilliant blue cloak his bright clothes were wrapped about him tightly, revealing that his frame was muscular and sharply defined. Even from a seated position, T. G. could judge that the man soared to well over seven and a half feet tall and maintained normal body proportions overall. His shoulders were tremendously wide and would have been the envy of Charles Atlas. His hair was quite short and golden brown. He appeared to be in his midthirties, as best T. G. could ascertain.
The most striking thing about the huge man was his coloring. His skin was an odd, almost metallic bronze, darker than T. G. s. His deep black pupils stood out in harsh contrast against the ghostly pearlescence that surrounded them. Despite their unusual appearance they were intelligent, bright eyes, and behind them T. G. could see that the man’s mind was working. At the same time, the piercing eyes seemed to stare right through him, making T. G. a bit uncomfortable as he looked up into them.
The giant smiled, disarming T. G. Reaching up with a massive frying-pan hand, he patted himself on the chest and introduced himself. “Pretsal.”
“T. G.,” he replied, making the same gesture. He then pointed at the man towering over him. “Pretzel?”
“Pretsal,” he nodded. “Teejee,” he pointed.
“Nice to meet you, Pretzel,” T. G. said uneasily. Without warning, the imposing figure bent down and easily lifted him, cradling him like a man carrying his bride delicately over the threshold. “Hey! Hold it … what are you doing?”
The giant moved toward the city in the distance, careful not to hurt T. G.’s injured leg. He spoke again, in a tone of voice his unwilling passenger had most often heard used in addressing dogs.
“I’m sure that’s all well and good, pal, but I’d just as soon as not … come on … put me down!”
Pretsal uttered a few short syllables in a reassuring tone as he continued downhill through the clover. T. G. talked himself into remaining calm.
He tried a few more times to get the huge man to put him down. Giving up with a loud sigh, T. G. looked ahead and for the first time saw the immense, glowing city that spread as wide and far as he could see. The powerful man was obviously bent on taking him there, and T. G.’s attentions turned from his leg to the priceless artifact hidden beneath his long coat.
“If I get mugged in there,” he began, looking up at the smiling Pretsal, “I’ll sue you for everything you’ve got.”
As if he understood, Pretsal reached up with one hand and unfastened the clasp of his cloak. Pulling it free, he placed it over and around T. G., hiding his unusual skin color and small proportions completely from any who might see.
“Revo pocuatos,” Pretsal said, nodding.
“Swell,” T. G. replied, his voice muffled beneath the wrap.
T. G. heard the sounds of thousands of people around him, though he could not see. A monotone of strange voices, all uttering the same, unfamiliar language. He heard voices only—no cars, no horses, nothing that one might expect when entering a city of this age or any other. Just voices.
After several minutes, T. G. felt Pretsal climb some steps. The sounds changed, becoming closer and quieter, and he knew they had entered some sort of structure. Music was playing, sounding a bit like the awful, easy listening-type stuff he had heard in every department store and elevator back home. Muzak rules the universe. He smiled. But this music had a different quality to it, one rife with disjointed percussion and woodwinds and reflecting a culture that T. G. already knew had little or nothing in common with his own.
More voices. Then Pretsal came to a stop. T. G. heard him insistently speaking to a woman, whose deep tone in return resonated with irritation if not anger. Then, almost at once, Pretsal began walking again. A turn to the left, more steps, then one to the right. T. G. was laid upon a table of some kind, and the cloak was pulled away.
The light momentarily stung his eyes, but as they adjusted he found Pretsal standing beside him, smiling. T. G. looked around and was amazed at the sophistication of the room.
Overhead, a faceted, inverted crystal bowl some thirty feet in diameter glowed with the purest pink light he had ever seen. Hanging down from within the bowl was a huge, complex device of intertwined colored glass and metal, comprising dozens of component units linked by polished metal rods. T. G. could only guess at their functions—assuming they had functions—for they looked more like a work of art than anything else. The room was nine-sided, its walls each seemingly cut from a single piece of a rosy, highly veined wood with which T. G. was not familiar. Metal instruments of incredible variety and complexity hung upon the walls, their polished surfaces gleaming. He lay on a cold, metal table that was much larger and longer than he was tall, putting him almost five feet off the ground. He felt like a child at a—
“Doctor’s office,” he realized aloud. “It’s a—”
Pretsal quickly motioned for him to remain silent by patting his sealed lips with a flattened hand, a motion similar to that of a child making a “woo-woo” sound while playing Cowboys and Indians. T. G. looked at him and shook his head, not understanding.
On the wall to his immediate right was a huge rack holding dozens of colored vials. Each was pearlescent and filled with a different, brilliantly colored liquid. On a tablelike protrusion beneath, three chromed spheres floated in the air, motionless, wholly unsupported so far as T. G. could determine. Another wall featured a holographic chart of the human body, or rather of the huge, gargantuan version of man he had seen reflected in Pretsal. There was no apparent door into the room.
Again Pretsal motioned that he wanted T. G. to remain silent. T. G. nodded, not really understanding, holding up a hand reassuringly. At that moment, one of the walls pulled soundlessly away from the others and another immense man, even larger than Pretsal, walked in. There was a bit of chatter between them, as T. G. looked on in fascination. Pretsal pointed to T. G.’s injured knee as the other man looked at the diminutive stranger with a scowl.
The man scolded Pretsal, it seemed, and he replied, apparently reassuring him of something. As T. G. watched, the man walked closer and leaned over his leg, looking down at the knee. So, you’re the doctor! He then grabbed T. G.’s chin and pushed his head back to examine the cut on his throat. Shaking his head, he muttered a few syllables, then lifted the lapel of T. G.’s coat and made an apparently derogatory comment about his clothing. The man obviously did not like having to examine him and was in a hurry to be done with it He took a cursory look at T. G.’s many minor wounds, and a few moments later, following the application of a bluish fluid that stung where it touched him, his cuts and scrapes had been cleaned and sterilized.
T. G. watched as the medical man reached up into the apparatus in the ceiling and pulled down a device, a metal rod with small spheres at either end, like a tiny dumbbell. It remained connected to the unit above by a flexible crystalline filament, which glowed faintly as the instrument neared his knee.
He looked worriedly at Pretsal, who smiled, trying to assuage his fears. The doctor held one end of the device against the injury, and T. G. instantly felt a warmth there. Just as instantly, an image sprang to life, filling one entire wall, floor-to-ceiling, with a three-dimensional magnified image of the knee along with all of its cartilage, tendons, and ligaments. The physician repeated the procedure on T. G.’s throat wound, then released the small device, which retracted back into its spot above. The image on the wall faded away.
T. G. almost spoke, but then he thought better of it and watched in quiet fascination as the doctor reached over and plucked one of the floating spheres from its place above the table. Holding it in one enormous hand, he placed the palm of the other against T. G.’s knee, spoke an unintelligible phrase to him, then looked down at the back of his hand. A warmth built anew beneath it, and T. G. felt a pleasant tingle in the knee. It lasted only a moment, after which the doctor pressed his fingers against the throat wound. More tingles, and T. G. had to bite his tongue to keep from laughing at the sensation. Then the huge man pulled his hand away and the sphere was returned to its hovering position.
The doctor again scolded Pretsal, shaking a finger at him. His tone seemed to be one of warning. Pretsal nodded and answered in apparent gratitude for the errand of mercy. The doctor spoke again, asking T. G. something. For several uncomfortable moments he scowled at the diminutive stranger, waiting for an answer. The giant man finally looked away, shook his head once more, then departed through the same passageway by which he had entered.
T. G. swung his legs off the edge of the table. His knee was no longer painful, no longer stiff. More than that, the constant ache he had known for years was gone. He tested it repeatedly, smiling at Pretsal. “That’s incredible … I mean, it hasn’t felt like this since …” He dropped the considerable distance to the floor, his long coat still concealing the artifact he had almost forgotten he was carrying. “Thanks. It feels great.”
Pretsal again wrapped the cloak around T. G., this time letting him walk under his own power. They left the medical building and stepped out into the busy streets of the city, and T. G., the cloak draped over and around his head like a hood, looked out upon a world carved from the stuff of legend.
Statues were everywhere, from the terrifying, gargoyle-like carvings that adorned most of the buildings around them, to the towering, two-hundred-foot-tall rock-hewn warrior figures that stood nearby. The sky overhead was largely obscured by ornate, monumental spires of stone and steel that soared thousands of feet into the air, their lines dramatically emphasized by dazzling rows of lights that gave an impression of highways ascending into the heavens. Forged human faces and highly complex geometric structures adorned their sides. Towering buildings of cut glass and brilliantly tooled granite—along with smaller structures that gave the appearance of shops and restaurants—seemed to extend forever in all directions, as if the streets below them were a hopeless maze.
Swarming like fireflies at and above the building tops were thousands of tiny blinking lights of red and white, swooping into graceful paths as they sought their destinations. If not for their motion, they would have been utterly lost in the dense celestial display overhead. The closer man-made stars were flying vehicles of some sort, but their size was impossible to determine without a readily identifiable sense of scale.
A more brilliant light ahead drew T. G.’s gaze, and he looked up at the huge city’s central structure, some five to ten miles distant, at the end of the wide street. It was an immense pyramid of mirror-polished stone and steel towering a mile into the night sky, dazzlingly brilliant in the red wash of the burning lights splashed upon it. At its summit a purple strobe flashed, possibly a warning to low-flying aircraft. What looked like immense open hangars with flat, oblong bases protruded from its sides at a point halfway up—landing bays, T. G. suspected. The pyramid’s surfaces gleamed with hundreds of thousands of brightly lit windows, shining like stars in a tightly packed, random pattern. Most of the other buildings immediately around him were just as beautiful, though more conventionally shaped.
Playing upon the still, cool air in front of the pyramid was an immense moving image, a speaking head. Its impressive face was stern and heavy with authority as it uttered word after word. Not elaborate sentences, not statements. Just single words, as if it were reading out of some bizarre foreign dictionary. T. G. watched it for a moment, and as the holographic projection continued its strange liturgy, he felt strongly that somehow, some way, it was speaking directly to him. For a few moments, he could not look away from it. Pretsal’s hand on his shoulder pulled his attentions back to ground level, and T. G. turned to see his companion smiling as he pointed down the way. They began to walk.
The city air was heavy—not with exhaust fumes, but with the scents of flowering plants and delicious foods. T. G.’s stomach flip-flopped in response to the delightful smell of something that had to be related to barbecued brisket, and only then did he realize how hungry he was. The wonderful aroma grew stronger as the pair walked along, and soon they passed in front of what appeared to be an open-air restaurant. T. G. saw dozens of people sitting and eating in a pleasantly lit dining area, with several reddish items that he did not recognize rotating on a cluster of rotisserie spits. As he watched, a chef basted the mysterious food with a rich, glossy brown sauce. Looking closer, he realized that the unusual delicacy was giant locusts, each nearly a foot long, eaten like chicken by the patrons.
Momentarily repulsed, his stomach continued to growl nonetheless. He began to think longingly of a thick, juicy rib-eye grilled to perfection and smothered in sautéed mushrooms. As his mind drifted to a small steakhouse he had frequented near the Cornell campus, he heard a deep, loud woman’s scream and looked upward, toward its source. Several stories up, in a window across the street, he saw a frantic woman obviously pleading to the streets below for help as she was attacked by several men, who finally dragged her away from the window to whatever fate they had in store for her. T. G. looked toward Pretsal, who kept his gaze forward. Why isn’t anyone doing anything to help her? T. G. wondered.
The deeper into the city they got, the more surreal and frightening it became for T. G. There were people everywhere, all brightly clothed, their conversations rising then fading as they passed by. There was no pattern to their motion, no direction as would be expected were they traveling along sidewalks. The tall bronze people moved in confused crosscurrents back and forth between the towering sculpted buildings, mindless, programmed, coursing like fish through the water of a cold lake.
Not all of those around T. G. were of flesh. Moving among the living—outnumbering them ten to one and apparently accepted as commonplace—were figures that could only be described as ghosts. The spectral, almost translucent beings gave an appearance of solidity yet at the same time were vaporous and incorporeal. They radiated a dim gray light and appeared to be young and old, male and female, wealthy and poor. Most were involved in conversations with their living companions, showing all the normal emotions one might have expected from anyone. On occasion, one of them would look up at T. G. in a passing glance, then stop suddenly to fixate upon him as if in recognition, its eyes igniting into flames of dull red. T. G. looked away each time, trying to avoid the piercing, nonliving stares. They gave him the creeps, causing the hair on the nape of his neck to stand on end.
Also among the throng, crowded into corners and begging for handouts, were persons in tattered clothing who were more disheveled in appearance than the others. They were smaller, about T. G.’s size, and their deformed bodies were bent and twisted, with oversized heads and feet. Males, females, and children, they appeared to have been victims of birth defects, genetic miscues whose lives had been made miserable through no fault of their own. Those who passed them largely ignored what must have been pleas for food or money. Apparently second-class citizens, they seemed fearful and wary, their dull gray eyes continuously darting from side to side.
T. G. watched as thefts and assaults occurred all around him, ending as startlingly as they had begun and leaving shaken victims in their wake. Disbelieving, he tightened his grip on the artifact hidden beneath both coat and cloak, growing paranoid that he had “victim” written all over him. Where are the police?
Many of those in the crowd topped nine feet, T. G. estimated, but the average height seemed to hover near seven and a half feet for men and seven for women. Several times T. G. became so fascinated by the enormity of the beings that he almost became separated from his guide, to be swallowed up into the sea of giants. But Pretsal was watchful and quite careful to maintain a fix on the stranger, never letting him stray out of arms reach.
The doorways were filled with women who again and again tried to lure passing men closer. Their profession was obvious to T. G., and he was startled by their aggression. One reached out and grabbed Pretsal by the sleeve, jarring him off balance as a second leaped up and put her arms around his neck. The big man uttered a few words and threw an arm up, knocking the woman back into her associate. As the harlots cursed Pretsal, he led T. G. onward, moving more quickly now. The shouts and whistles of the women went on behind them as they continued toward their destination.
Drug use of some kind was rampant. All along the way, T. G. noticed most of the men and women putting odd crystalline objects of differing colors and shapes to their faces as they walked, inhaling a bluish smoke that emanated from them. Each user’s expression became immediately unfocused, reflecting a mindless euphoria that lasted several minutes. How they could continue to walk, much less get where they were going, was beyond him. As soon as each dose wore off, the users took another, keeping them in a continuous, trancelike state.
Suddenly, only a few feet away, a loud crackle and flash sent a painful tingle across T. G.’s body. He spun to see a huge dark-haired man fall to the ground next to him with pavement-buckling force, viciously burned and obviously dead. A man with a strange metal device in his hand then hovered over the body, stripping it of valuables. T. G. was horrified and astonished at the nonchalance with which the others all around continued on, never even taking notice of the crime.
“Somebody stop him!” T. G. cried out, pointing at the murderer and thief. Pretsal yanked him violently backward and put a huge warm hand over his mouth, covering most of his face in the process. Those same people who had not so much as turned to look upon a murder taking place snapped their attentions toward T. G. and the strange words he had uttered, murmuring among themselves as they pointed at the odd-looking stranger. Pretsal hurried away, practically dragging T. G. with him.
They rushed down a side street and entered a moving walkway that sped along so quickly that T. G. had to grip the handrail to keep from falling. Pretsal looked down at T. G. with a concerned scowl and spoke in low tones. “Nosta ludana jeo, Teejee … kuda! Kuda!” T. G. could only stare back, totally confused and having no clue what the man had said.
“What was all that?” T. G. replied in vain. “A guy gets murdered, and there’s rape, and who knows what else out there, and you guys don’t even notice?! Where are the cops? What kind of place is—?” Pretsal’s hand once more shot up and covered T. G.’s mouth, silencing him.
“Nosta … kuda, Teejee…,” he slowly and deliberately whispered, his tone that of a man trying to save their lives. “Kuda …” After a moment, he slowly pulled the hand away, watching T. G.’s eyes. Then he relaxed, satisfied that no other words would be forthcoming.
T. G. had learned his first word.
Kuda—quiet.
The walkway ended almost a mile away in an area dedicated to vehicular traffic, and T. G. learned why he had not heard the usual sounds of scurrying automobiles. There were cars all right, at least their equivalent, but the hundreds that darted past did so in near silence. They had no wheels, no apparent engines, no exhaust. They hovered a foot or so above the smooth glassy streets, their sparkling windshields and metal bodies glistening in the light. Their general configurations approximated those of conventional cars, and all but a very few were open with no canopy of any kind.
Pretsal led T. G. onto a small platform next to the busy street. Almost at once, a rounded, oblong vehicle stopped and opened its door. It had no driver. The huge man took a seat on its leather-upholstered cushions, gesturing for T. G. to join him. T. G. reluctantly stepped into the car and sat opposite Pretsal, facing him, then watched as the door slid silently shut beside him. With an almost violent acceleration, the cab shot away from the platform and merged at a hundred miles per hour with the flow of traffic.
The wind filled the cloak over T. G.’s head and pulled it back, almost throwing it from the car. Even as he caught it and pulled it more tightly around him, T. G. studied the interior of the cab. The bench seat wrapped all the way around, covered with bluish leather. There was no instrumentation, no steering wheel, nothing that one might expect. Pretsal sat comfortably, obviously unconcerned by their great speed and lack of a driver.
“Amazing,” T. G. said, speaking quietly since there was no engine roar or sound of tires against pavement to overcome. Watching other vehicles, T. G. saw that many of them had drivers at some form of control console, and he surmised that those were personally owned cars, unlike the public transit unit in which he and Pretsal rode.
After a short minute and a half, the car pulled off of the main thoroughfare and traveled at a greatly reduced speed along a more narrow street. It came to rest at another platform identical to the first, and as soon as it stopped, Pretsal sprang to his feet and led T. G. off. The empty car shot back onto the concourse once again, apparently seeking its next passenger.
T. G. looked around, making certain that no one was close enough to overhear, and spoke, more for his own benefit than anything else. “How … how did it know where you wanted to go? You never said a word.” Pretsal simply motioned once again for T. G. to remain quiet.
They soon entered another crowd of pedestrians like the first. Again, though the living did not give T. G. a passing glance, the eyes of the ghostly figures ignited with light as they glared accusingly at him. Like an ocean wave they turned toward him, one after another, for as far through the sea of huge citizens as he could see.
T. G. defiantly stared back at what appeared to be the ghost of an elderly man and saw the dull red glow in its eyes intensify as if to threaten him. Reaching his creep threshold, T. G. finally averted his eyes and pulled the cloak farther around his face. As he did, Pretsal turned left into the arched doorway of a tall building of veined green stone, and none too soon for T. G. He wanted to get as far from the phantasms as he could, but he was dying to know what they were and why no one else gave them a second glance. Their dreadful eyes haunted him.
“Please tell me this is the Earth Embassy,” T. G. sarcastically whispered. They entered an open-air hallway lined with dozens of huge doors, each with an engraved metal plate upon it. An apartment building, T. G. guessed, only one far more exquisitely fashioned than any in which he had ever lived. The people of this world had refined masonry to an art, and as he followed his guide along the softly lit corridor, he studied the exquisitely carved murals in the marble of the walls and ceiling. Portrayed in vivid, full relief were heroic figures fighting huge monsters and gargantuan soldiers, their weapons drawn and ready—a vast, encompassing glorification of war surely rooted in mythology rather than history. Burnished wooden detail subtly melded into the stone, adding a clever and refreshing organic feel to the work. One character struck T. G. as being similar to the shadowthing, whose clutches he had narrowly escaped.
They reached a huge door fashioned from the same knotted pinkish wood T. G. had seen in the doctor’s office. Into it, like the walls, were carved complex and elegant patterns that played as if alive in the light of the hall. There were no hinges holding the door that T. G. could see, yet it smoothly and silently swung open at the slightest touch as Pretsal manipulated a jeweled plate next to it. Pretsal motioned for his guest to enter first, and T. G. reluctantly walked into the darkness that lay beyond the high, wide doorframe.
As Pretsal closed the door behind them a few dim lights came on, revealing three huge men standing to one side of the door. All three were clad in dark gray and dressed alike, wearing straight-cut robes with broad shoulders, and seemed shrouded in governmental authority. The apparent leader looked a lot like Ed Asner, T. G. thought, only much, much larger.
Before Pretsal or T. G. could react, the men pinned them to the wall and thrust weapons, such as the one T. G. had seen used in the street, into their ribs.
“IRS trouble?” T. G. asked Pretsal, under his breath. At that, he was slammed anew into the polished wood-and-plaster wall, bloodying his nose.
“Kuda!” the man ordered.
I know, T. G. almost said aloud.
“Hyra dou!” one of the men shouted at Pretsal, who to T. G.’s surprise seemed to be the primary focus of their attentions. “Kera fionica desla, te doco kir Shass!”
T. G. reacted to the sound of his name, turning to look up at the enormous man who had uttered it. How can he know my name?
Pretsal remained utterly silent as the men, one after another, continued to pummel him with questions. For several minutes the interrogation went on, questions mingled with blows, but Pretsal bit his lower lip and remained silent. The huge hand pressing T. G.’s head at an awkward angle into the hard wall was like iron, and he could do nothing but watch as the apparent leader reached into a shoulder pouch and withdrew a small gleaming sphere. He pressed it against the back of Pretsal’s neck, where it issued a soft hissing sound. Pretsal slumped, his unconscious form kept upright only by the grip of the third man. From the corner of his eye, T. G. saw the Asner-like Goliath with the sphere turning his way, reaching toward him. Something cold pressed against his neck, just below the base of his skull. Darkness came, and he felt himself falling. Then he felt nothing at all.
T. G. awoke with a tremendous headache. He sat up, reaching back to caress the tender spot on his neck where the device had been applied. He was centered on a hard, enormous leather cot, larger than a twin bed, and had to make a concerted effort to get his legs over the side. As he looked around, he immediately realized that he was in a cell, one not altogether different from holding cells he had seen on television back home. Adamantine bars of polished metal sealed off one end of the room, with stone walls making up the rest of the secured enclosure. He was in a sunken pit, and a few steps led up to the cell door. The corridor floor outside cut across the other side of the bars at waist level, forcing prisoners to have to look up at their jailers. He could hear others muttering, some loudly complaining it seemed, in nearby cells. Looking toward the other bed in his cell, he saw Pretsal sprawled there, still unconscious.
T. G. stumbled over to a basin mounted low against one wall. A mirror above it showed him that dried blood covered his upper lip, and he looked down at the sink, needing water. There were no faucet handles, but twin green-glass spigots extended up from the metal bottom of the basin. He dipped his hands beneath them and water immediately poured forth. He splashed his face and washed away the brown stain beneath his still-tender nose, then dried off on an odd leathery sheet of reddish fabric that hung to one side. I hope that was a towel …
He heard new, distinct voices outside, a few cells away across the corridor. Another prisoner had visitors.
T. G. went back toward his cot, momentarily swaying as his drugged body fought to find its center of balance. The stuff had nearly worn off, enough for him to realize he felt unusually light on his feet. A few seconds later, he understood why.
His long coat was gone. So was the artifact.
He cursed aloud, striking out against the air in frustration as he sat down hard on his cot. The yell pierced Pretsal’s sleep just enough to start him toward consciousness, and T. G. watched angrily as his companion began to stir.
“Nice planet you’ve got here,” he complained. Pretsal groggily opened his eyes and looked over at T. G., then tried to sit up himself. “And don’t give me that ‘kuda’ lecture of yours. What can they do, arrest me?”
Pretsal was fully awake now, having come around much faster than T. G. He stood and went to the bars, where he took a quick look up and down the corridor. “Cedri tycla, Teejee,” he said in a quiet tone as he sat back down.
“Save it,” T. G. moaned in frustration. The pressure and fear of being a stranger in a very strange land was getting to him. “I know one lousy word of your language. Come back in a year or so … by then I may be able to ask where the bathroom is.”
Pretsal looked away, obviously recognizing T. G.’s anger.
“They took my artifact,” he continued. “By now they’ve stripped all of the gold off it. They even took my coat …” He reached to his back pocket. “And my wallet. Great. If you were afraid of what would happen if anybody heard me talk, wait until they get a load of my driver’s license.”
The voices in the corridor grew louder. T. G. and Pretsal both looked up to see a family slowly walking past, their visit over. T. G. saw spectral figures, an elderly woman and two children, among them. A uniformed and armed guard whose expression indicated dissatisfaction with his career escorted the group. As the gathering shuffled past, the ghostly forms stopped and approached the bars of T. G.’s cell, their eyes igniting into the same hideous red glow he had witnessed earlier. The faces of all three flared into expressions of hatred, glaring intensely into his eyes as they stared him down. T. G. was grateful for the bars separating him from the ghastly things, though he had no doubt that the wicked apparitions could pass through them if they so desired.
T. G. became aware of something at his side, heavy against the leather of his cot as it slid up next to him. Startled and certain that it was one of the ghosts, he leaped to his feet with a cry and spun to look upon his assailant.
There was indeed something on the bed, but not an attacker.
The artifact had returned to him.
A sudden bloodcurdling screech came from the corridor. T. G. looked up to see the ghosts react to the artifact in terror and anger as their eyes burst into brilliant flames, hundreds of times brighter than they had been before. They backed away, their chilling shrieks ringing out as if they had reverberated all the way up from the basement of Hell. T. G. followed their gaze back to the artifact and quickly picked it up, holding it like a shield before the horrid phantoms.
His hands shaking, he took a step toward them. They backed away again, then screamed in unbridled fury and vanished as if they never were. Their final cries echoed down the corridor as the living members of their group, still present, peered into the cell in confusion. One of the women, upset by the abrupt disappearance of her spectral loved ones, cried out and wept hysterically, then was comforted and led away by the others with her. The guard outside walked closer to the cell and saw T. G. holding the object, then glanced at Pretsal. Without a word, he shook his head and walked away.
T. G. looked down at the relic, breathing a sigh of relief that it appeared undamaged. The transparent gold stones embedded into it were all still there, and the hide was as flawless as ever. Fortunately, it seemed the people of this world had no more clue about how to open it than he had.
Pretsal stood and slowly approached, then stopped and reached out with his huge hands. Gently, lightly, almost reverently, he touched the odd leather of the artifact and turned his head slightly to peer at the alien words tooled into its surface. He stroked the hide gently, almost dreamily, then held his hand up and gazed upon his subtly trembling fingertips. His eyes then found T. G.’s, an unspoken question playing upon his face.
“This is … uh … kind of hard to explain,” T. G. began, momentarily forgetting the language barrier between them as he saw the expression on the giant’s face. “Why are you looking at me like that? Pretzel?”
“Dovo Kosi,” Pretsal stammered under his breath, his breathing becoming erratic as he stared at the stranger before him. “D … Dovo … Kosi …”
“Dovo … what? What does that …?”
Pretsal extended a hand and touched T. G.’s cheek, then backed away a few steps and continued to repeat the phrase, amazement and disbelief in his voice. “Dovo Kosi … keil ta Dovo Kosi …” T. G. watched the huge man, seeing that he had been shaken by something very deep and very important.
“This?” T. G. hoped, holding the artifact a little higher. Pretsal reacted, and T. G. suddenly realized that for the first time an answer—the answer—was within reach. “You know what this is, don’t you? Speak English! Please speak English! Tell me what this is!”
“Dovo Kosi!” the gentle giant stammered, near tears.
“Pretzel!” T. G. demanded, indicating the artifact. “What is this? You have to make me understand! What is this? Where did I get it? Why do I feel like I’ve owned it all my life? Why is it following me around?” He walked closer to the man, holding the artifact higher. Pretsal backed into his cot and fell hard against it as T. G. stopped right before him. “This is Dovo Kosi?” T. G. asked, shaking the artifact slightly, then pointing to it. “Dovo Kosi, right?”
Pretsal’s brow knotted in puzzlement. That surprised T. G., who had expected a nod. The man reached out and gripped T. G.’s pointing hand, turning it gently until the extended index finger pointed at T. G. himself.
“Dovo Kosi,” he gently said, pressing the fingertip into T. G.’s chest. “Dovo Kosi ta Teejee!” Pretsal smiled, a little shakily, a hint of triumph in his voice.
Confusion reigned. “Me?” he asked, losing the handle on things he thought he was gaining. “What does that mean?”
Before the huge man could utter another syllable, the stone floor of the cell opened up for the barest fraction of an instant and, as Pretsal watched, T. G. and his artifact were swallowed into the icy nothingness between places, between worlds. Then, as fast as it had opened, the portal was gone and the gentle giant reached out with a cautious foot only to find solid stone.
Pretsal was alone. What had happened, he did not know. Who he had found lying on the hillside outside the city walls, he now did. He sat back onto his cot, his hands to his face, his mind and heart racing.
He pulled his hands back, hands that had crossed the ages, and gazed at them in stunned silence.
They had touched God.
As T. G. fell, the sense of shotgun acceleration once more swept him deeper into blackness. That meant, he knew, that he was about to come crashing down somewhere else, probably somewhere far from the jail cell.
Anger filled him. I almost had the answer!
As he clutched the artifact more tightly his acceleration slowed, and he sensed that the trip was nearly over. Does holding this thing the right way control my fall? With a sudden deceleration he had not experienced before, he almost came to a full stop before seeing daylight once again. He fell gently the last few feet, into a lush grass that caught him with soft arms. He lay there, his heart pounding, his breathing heavy. A warm breeze washed over him as he rested.
In the distance, he heard the sweet bells of the campus tower.
Home!
He opened his eyes to find himself back in Ithaca, where it was no longer cold and white. Once again, the fully adorned trees had embraced their springtime rebirth. The sun was just breaking through the cloud cover, its warmth welcome against his face. Time flowed differently where he had been, he realized. It wasn’t just days this time. Months passed here while I was away. T. G. looked up and saw the old rusty street sign that marked the intersection where the Brookfelder Building had stood sentinel since the First World War. He smiled, knowing that once again he had made it safely home.
He rose to his feet and picked up the artifact. He remembered the shadowthing and the unspeakable things it had done to his neighbors, his friends. Was it still up there, waiting? He turned and looked toward his apartment.
Rather, toward where his apartment was supposed to be.
Toward where the building was supposed to be.