The First Science Fiction MEGAPACK®. Fredric Brown
were footsteps. Then silence.
Coming round the corner, Jon saw the coat closet was ajar. He opened the door, took out a great cape and hood, and wrapped it around him, pulling the hood close over his head. He stepped into the foyer and went out past the doorman.
* * * *
At the edge of the Devil’s Pot, the woman with the birthmark on the left side of her face was tapping a cane and holding out a tin cup. She had put on a pair of dark glasses and wandered up one street and down another. “Money for a poor blind woman,” she said in a whiny voice. “Money for the blind.” As a coin clinked into her cup, she nodded, smiled, and said, “Welcome to the New World. Good luck in the Island of Opportunity.”
The man who had given her the coin walked a step, and then turned back. “Hey,” he said to Rara. “If you’re blind, how do you know I’m new here?”
“Strangers are generous,” Rara explained, “while those who live here are too frozen to give.”
“Look,” said the man, “I was told to watch out for blind beggars who weren’t blind. My cousin, he warned me…”
“Not blind!” cried Rara. “Not blind? Why my license is right here. It permits me to beg in specified areas because of loss of sight. If you keep this up, I’ll be obliged to show it to you.” She turned away with a huff and began in another direction. The man scratched his head, then hurried off.
A few moments later, a man completely swathed in a gray cloak and hood came around the corner and stopped in front of the woman.
“Money for the blind?”
“Can you use this?” the man said. From his cloak he held out a brocade jacket, covered with fine metal work.
“Of course,” said Rara softly. Then she coughed. “Er…what is it?”
“It’s a jacket,” Jon said. “It’s made pretty well. Maybe you can sell it?”
“Oh, thank you. Thank you, sir.”
* * * *
A few blocks later, a ragged boy, who looked completely amazed, was handed a white silk shirt by the man in the gray cloak. In front of a doorway two blocks on, a pair of open-toed black boots with gold disks were left—and stolen from that doorway exactly forty seconds later by a hairdresser who was returning to her home in Devil’s Pot. She was missing the little finger of her left hand. Once the gray cloaked figure paused in an alley beneath a clothes line. Suddenly he flung up a ball of gray cloth, which caught on the line, unrolled, and became identifiable as a pair of dark gray trousers. A block later the last minor articles of clothing were hurled unceremoniously through an open window. As Jon turned another corner, he glimpsed a figure ducking into a doorway down the dim street. The man was apparently following him.
Jon walked very slowly down the next block, ambling along in the shadow. The hoodlum crept up behind him, then grabbed his cloak, ripped it away, and leaped forward.
Only there wasn’t anything there. The mugger stood for a moment, the cape dangling from his hand, blinking at the place a man should have been. Then something hit him in the jaw. He staggered back. Something else hit him in the stomach. As he stumbled forward now, beneath the street lamp, a transparent human figure suddenly formed in front of him. Then it planted its quite substantial fist into his jaw again, and he went back, down, and out.
Jon dragged the man back to the side of the alley, fading out completely as he did so. Then he took the hoodlum’s clothes, which were ragged, smelly, and painfully nondescript. The shoes, which were too small for him, he had to leave off. Then he flung the cape back around his shoulders and pulled the hood over his head.
For the next six blocks he was lost because there were no street signs. When he did find the next one, he realized he was only a block away from the inn.
As he reached the stone building, he heard a thud in the tiny alleyway beside it. A moment later a girl’s voice called softly, “There. Just like that. Only you better do exactly as I say or you’ll break your arms or legs, or back.”
He walked to the edge of the building and peered into the alley.
Her white hair loose, Alter stood looking up at the roof. “All right, Tel,” she called. “You next.”
Something came down from the roof, flipped over on the ground at her feet, rolled away, and then suddenly unwound to standing position. The black-haired boy ran his fingers through his hair. “Wow,” he said. Then he shook his head. “Wow.”
“Are you all right?” Alter asked. “You didn’t pull anything, did you?”
“No,” he said. “I’m all right. I think. Yeah, everything’s in place.” He looked up at the roof again, two stories above.
“Your turn, Let,” Alter called up.
“It’s high,” came a childish voice from the roof.
“Hurry up,” said Alter, her voice becoming authoritative. “When I count three. And remember, knees up, chin down, and roll quick. One, two, three!” There was the space of a breath, and then it fell, rolled, bounced unsteadily to its feet, and resolved into another boy, this one blond, and slighter than the first.
“Hey, you kids,” Jon said.
They turned.
Jon looked at the smaller boy. His slight blond frame, less substantial then even Alter’s white-haired loveliness was definitely of the royal family. “What are you doing out here, anyway?” Jon asked. “Especially you, your Highness.”
All three children jumped.
It looked like they might balk, and after that descent from the roof, he wasn’t sure where they might balk to. So he said, “Incidentally, the Duchess of Petra sent me. How did you do that fall?”
His Highness was the only one to relax appreciably.
“And are you sure you’re supposed to be outside?”
“We were supposed to stay on the top floor,” Tel said. “But him,” he pointed to his ragged Highness, “he got restless, and we started telling him about the tricks, and so we went up to the roof, and Alter said she could get us down.”
“Can you get them back up?” Jon asked.
“Sure,” said Alter, “all we do is climb…”
Jon held up his hand. “Wait a minute,” he said. “We’ll go inside and talk to the man in charge. Don’t worry. No one’ll be mad.”
“You mean talk to Geryn?” said Alter.
“I guess that’s what his name is.”
They started back out of the alley. “Tell me,” Jon said, “just what sort of person is Geryn?”
“He’s a strange old man. He talks to himself all the time,” said Alter. “But he’s smart.”
Talks to himself, Jon reflected, and nodded. When they reached the door of the inn, Jon pulled his cape off and stepped into the light. A few people at the bar turned around, and when they saw the children, they looked askance at one another.
“Geryn’s probably upstairs,” Alter said. They went to the second floor. Jon let the children go ahead of him as they passed into the shadow of the hall. He only stepped up to them when Alter pushed open the door at the end of the hall and bright light from Geryn’s room fell full across them.
“What is it?” Geryn snapped. And then, “What is it, quick?” He whirled around in the chair at the rough wooden desk when they entered. The giant was standing by the window. Geryn’s gray eyes fidgeted back and forth. Finally he said, “Why are you out here? And who is he? What do you want?”
“I’m from the Duchess of Petra,” Jon said. “I’ve come to take Let to the forest people.”
“Yes,”