“Pretty good, Doc.” Gaby smiled and decided not to tell him that the grimworlders had such things in their cars.
Homes that could afford it tended to have one quadruple for entertainment and one double to act as a telephone. But if the double broke down, the owner could plug the quadruple into the Grid and use it for ordinary communications. Gaby found the arrangement handy.
“You,” Doc said, “seem to have an affinity for the Grid. You say you’ve never seen any entertainment broadcasts as Gabrielle.”
“Can’t remember any, no.”
“So the Grid may act as some enormous antenna for your Gift. Even across the gulf between worlds. I wonder if you could tap into the Grid of the grim world, too.”
“That would be something. But I don’t think I ever have.”
“We’ll try another time. For now, we’ll try a couple of tests. I want you to see if you can find and talk to a central Grid operator in Neckerdam. And then—well, I had Brian Banwite deliver a handful of talk-boxes for this craft, because I want you to try to blow some of them up.”
“Oh, good.”
“It wouldn’t bother me at all if some of the pieces broke off and stuck on impact,” Harris said.
Joseph nodded. “That simplifies matters. Instead of welding, we will solder.”
They started with a smallish bronze bowl. They assembled small pieces of iron or steel, each from one-half to one inch in length, and sharpened each one to a razory point or edge. Harris thought about sacrificing his lockback hunting knife from the grim world, letting Joseph cut it into shards, but decided that they had enough raw material from the bits of ferrous metal in the lab’s scrap drawer.
Joseph meticulously soldered all those blades to the convex surface of the bowl. The sharp edges pointed up; some were angled. When it was done, Harris decided that it looked like a cheese grater designed by a serial killer.
Joseph looked at it. “This will hurt someone very badly.”
“That bothers you, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“But you made it anyway.”
The giant was slow in answering. “All I want is for the world to leave me alone, and never again to hear bones cracking under my hands. But if the world must drag me back into its affairs, if it insists that I hurt anyone, I will hurt those who seem to find such joy in inflicting pain. Men like Duncan and those who serve him.”
With a hammer and ream, Harris punched three holes at regular intervals around the bowl’s rim and used a file to sand them smooth. He tied a long cord to each hole, then spent a while tying the whole arrangement on over his clothes.
He’d have to practice while wearing the thing. Otherwise he might carve himself when doing kicks.
Joseph looked at him. “You were right,” he said. “That is the product of a disturbed mind.”
Harris beamed at him. “Just the effect I was looking for.”
Gaby scowled at Doc’s face in the mirror of Gabrielle’s room. “Are you ready?”
“A moment.” She saw him pull on a pair of aviator-style goggles. “Now I am. Are you angry?”
“No, but I’ll force it.” She put all the heat and anger she could into her words: “I think you suck!”
Doc winked out. Gaby looked at her own, or rather Gabrielle’s, surprised expression.
She relaxed and came to in her own body, seated beside the talk-box. The device’s electronic guts, smashed and smoking, lay all over the lounge floor. “Cool.”
Doc pulled his goggles off. “Headache?”
“A little one. Not as bad as last time. But then, I wasn’t in as long.” She rubbed her temples. “How was it?”
“More violent than before. I think you’re improving. What is it that I suck?”
“Uhhh . . . ”
In the hours it took to make the toy, Harris took the occasional trip to the galley for food, to the water closet forward, and to the lounge to take a look out the windows.
The terrain graduated to low, mist-covered mountains, dramatic and beautiful as the Appalachians of his own world; much later, the land grew flatter and covered with the lush springtime growth of the southeastern United States.
He saw cities, but the land wasn’t crowded with them, and the infrequent roads looked like roads rather than a tight webwork of scars. There was wilderness down there, not crowded out by farmlands, and Harris abruptly wished he were in the heart of it, sitting with his back to an aromatic evergreen and wondering what sort of fair folk lived among the trees.
Well after dark, they landed at the airstrip serving the city of Lackderry on what would have been the Gulf of Mexico. “A good city for soirées,” Alastair said, beaming. “One of Jean-Pierre’s favorite places. On our way back perhaps I’ll go on the town and drink my own weight in his honor.”
They were flying again by midnight, south over the water, Noriko and Doc back at the controls.
Shortly after dawn, they crossed over the northernmost coastline of Aluxia and put down in an airfield—just a flat field with no pavement, no lights, and a tower that deserved to be called such only because it was two stories instead of one and featured a wind sock on a pole. Doc and Gaby went out to deal with the field officials—he because he’d been here before and knew the drill, she because her Spanish was recognizably the same as the Castilian spoken by half the people of Aluxia. Noriko, Ladislas, and Welthy went over the engines.
Hot, wet, heavy air flooded the Frog Prince and Harris decided that he didn’t feel like taking a walk outside. He stayed in the lounge.
“You’re looking haggard,” Alastair told him.
“Speak for yourself.” Alastair could have; he had dark rings under his eyes.
“Too much air travel. Trains are much better for the constitution. And for lovemaking.”
Half a bell later, with Welthy and Ladislas back at the controls, they were flying south over forest-covered flatland, the darkest living green Harris had ever seen, almost never broken by the path of a river.
Harris climbed the stairs to the upper deck.
One of the cargo holds was mostly empty. Harris dragged what cargo was there against the forward bulkhead and used the rest of the compartment for training. After an hour, he got pretty good at tying the new toy securely and was sure that he’d be able to move naturally while wearing the thing. Of course, he’d have to switch back to baggy fair world clothes for a while.
The aroma of meat and onions drew him back down. Alastair, singing to himself, cooked steaks with onions and mushrooms in the little galley. The doctor brought a huge platter of meat into the lounge and carried a smaller platter up to the cockpit. The others swooped down on the plate he’d left behind.
Harris briefly considered being mad at himself for enjoying the meal. Maybe, after the events in Cretanis, nobody should ever have an appetite again.
Nah.
Not long after noon, he heard a call floating down from the cockpit, Welthy’s voice: “She’s in sight, prepare to land.” But it was Gaby’s cry of “Oh, how beautiful!” that brought him forward to Jean-Pierre’s cabin.
It was standing room only; the sofas and chairs were already full. The view through the bubble-window showed him why.
The Frog Prince angled down toward a great sheet of blue water, a miles-long lake surrounded by green mountain peaks. To port, Harris saw three great mountains on the south side of the lake; to starboard, there was some sort of community built on the north slopes. Every moment of travel presented Harris with a new, glorious, picture-postcard view.
The lake grew larger and larger. The pilots obviously meant to land there.
The Frog Prince set down with a noise like a washing machine set on overdrive. Water sheeted up over the bubble-window and the plane shuddered with the friction of landing. Harris gripped the doorframe for balance.
Then the water drained away from the window and the Frog Prince heeled very slightly starboard, swinging slowly around to face the village on the slope. Harris could see terraces where small houses were built from wooden poles and thatch. As more of the village came into view, he gaped at the blood-red pyramid that dominated the other buildings. Below it, at water’s edge, was a dock protruding into the water; people, tiny forms barely visible at this distance, stood on it.