fatherland?
Again I was filled with a sense of desperate frustration. I loved my country and my world. All I wanted was the opportunity to fight for what was decent and honorable in both. I needed to take my place with those who resisted a cowardly terror. Who encountered cruelly philistine forces wishing to destroy everything that had ever been valuable in our culture. I told Oona this, as we continued to stroll through the winding canyons of the city, admiring gardens and architecture, exchanging pleasantries with passersby.
'Believe me, Count Ulric, ' she assured me, 'if we are successful, you will have every opportunity to fight the Nazis again. But there is much to be done. The same battle lines are being drawn on at least three separate planes and at this stage it looks as if our enemies are stronger.'
'You're suggesting I fight for the same cause by taking part in your struggle?'
'I am saying that the cause is the same. How you serve it will ultimately be your decision. But it will be simultaneous with other decisions.' She smiled at me and put her delicate hand into mine, leading me eventually into a great, natural circle, slightly concave, close to the city's center. Here there were no stalagmites, and the stalactites in the roof were hidden by the deep shadow created by the lake's glare.
I thought at first this was an amphitheater, but there was no evidence that it accommodated any kind of audience. Leading out of the circle was one wide main thoroughfare which seemed to go directly to the lake. If the Off-Moo were a different people I would have assumed it was designed to display some kind of military triumph-a returning navy might parade up this avenue and its victorious forces present themselves to the people in the great, shallow bowl. Oona was amused by my stumbling suggestions, my noticing that the floor seemed to have been worn smooth by thousands of feet, that there was a faint, familiar smell to the place.
'This is the only chance you will have to come here, ' she said. 'Assuming the tenant returns.'
'Tenant?'
'Yes. He has lived with the Off-Moo for as long as their history. Some think they came to this world together. There is even evidence that the city was created around him. He is very old indeed and sleeps a great deal. Periodically, perhaps when he is hungry, he leaves this place and travels down there'-she pointed to the broad avenue-'to the lake. The times of his disappearances vary, but he has always returned.'
I looked around for some kind of dwelling. 'He lives here without furniture or shelter?'
She was enjoying my mystification.
'He is a gigantic serpent, ' she said. 'In appearance not unlike the voluk, but much bigger. He sleeps here and offers no harm to the Off-Moo. He has been known to protect them in the past. They believe that he goes into the lake to hunt. A strange beast, with long side fins, almost like the wings of a ray, but primarily reptilian. Some believe he has vestigial limbs secreted within his body, that he is in fact more lizard than snake. Not unlike those resurrected husks they turn into rafts, though much larger, of course.'
'The World Serpent?' Half amused, half in awe, I referred to the mythical Worm Oroborous, said by our ancestors to guard the roots of the World Tree. Surprisingly her tone was sober when she replied. 'Perhaps, ' she said. Then, deliberately, she lightened her mood and took my hand again.
I was suddenly conscious that I was trespassing and was glad to let her laugh and lead me through another series of winding twit-tens to show me the pastel glories of the water gardens, fashioned from natural stone and cultivated fungi. Glimmering points of light from the misty miniature falls reflected all the subtle colors of the bizarre underground fauna. My guide was delighted at my enchantment, taking proprietorial pride in the wonders of Mu Ooria.
'Could you not learn to love this place?' she asked me, linking her arm in mine. With her I felt a friendliness, a comfortable closeness which I had never experienced with another woman. I found it relaxing.
'I love it already, ' I told her, 'and I think the Off-Moo a civil and cultivated race. An exemplary people. I could stay here for a year and never experience all the city has to offer. But it isn't in my nature, Fraiilein Oona, to take exotic holidays while my nation is threatened by a monster far more dangerous than Mu Ooria's adopted serpent! '
She murmured that she understood my concern and that she would do everything she could for me. I asked after Captain Bastable, the mysterious Englishman, but she shook her head. 'I believe he's engaged elsewhere.'
'So will you, who clearly can come and go at will, lead me out of here?'
'There are dream roads, ' she said. 'Finding them isn't difficult. But getting you back to where you came from can sometimes prove impossible.' She raised a hand to forestall my anger. 'I have promised you that you'll have the chance to fight your enemies. Presumably you would like to be as successful as possible?'
'You are telling me to be patient. What else can I be?'
I knew she was sincere. I gave her arm an affectionate squeeze. I felt I had known her all my life. She might have been one of my more attractive relatives, a niece perhaps. I recalled her rather odd expectation that I would know her. Now I understood that, in the conflicting time streams of the multiverse, it was possible for something to be both mysterious and familiar. She had no doubt mistaken me for someone else, even one of my myriad 'other selves' who, if she and the Off-Moo were to be believed, proliferated throughout a continuously branching multiverse. I was not comforted by her assurance that I had not one dop-pelganger but an infinite number. Which reminded me to ask her about the two bizarre figures I had seen earlier. One of them had been my double. She found my news disturbing, rather than surprising. She asked me precise questions and I did my best to answer. She shook her head.
'I did not know there were such forces at work, ' she said. 'Not such great forces. I pray some of them choose to ally their cause with our own. I might have misused or misunderstood my mother's skills.'
'Who were those armored men?'
'Gaynor, if he wears the armor you describe. The other is his mortal enemy, one of the greatest of your avatars, whose destiny is to change the very nature of the multiverse.'
'Not an ancestor, then, but an alter ego?'
'If you like. You say he was asking you for something?'
'My guess.'
'He is desperate.' She spoke affectionately, as if of a very familiar friend.
'What did Fromental see?'
'Nothing. These were glimpses only. But not illusions. At least, not in any sense I understand.'
'Not illusions, ' she confirmed. 'Come, we'll confer with Fromental and his friends. They've had long enough without us.'
We crossed a series of canals rather like those of Venice, one narrow bridge after another, following natural gullies and fissures employed as part of the city's water system. I was impressed by how the Off-Moo adapted to the natural formations of the earth. Goethe, for instance, would have been impressed by their evident respect for their surroundings. Ironically, those surroundings, if described in my own world, would have been taken for the fantasies of some opium-addicted Coleridge or Poe. A tribute to the majority's capacity to deny any truth, no matter how monumental, which challenges its narrow understanding of reality.
Eventually we entered a small square and Oona led me into a doorway and up a twisting, asymmetrical staircase until we came into a large room, surprisingly wide for an Off-Moo apartment. The place was furnished more to human taste, with large couches and comfortable chairs, a long table loaded with food and wine. Evidently a meal had been eaten while Fromental conferred with Lord Renyard and the three strangers who rose to greet us as we entered the room.
I had never, outside of a comic opera, seen such a collection of swaggering fantasticoes. Lord Renyard wore the lace and embroidery of a mid-seventeenthcentury fop, balancing his slightly unsteady frame on an ornamental 'dandy pole.' A scarlet silk sash over his shoulder held the scabbard of a slender sword. His eyes narrowed in pleasure as he recognized us. 'My dear friends, you are most welcome.' He bowed with an awkward grace. 'May I introduce my fellow citizens of Tanelorn-Baron Blare, Lord Bragg and Duke Bray. They seek to join forces against the common enemy.'
These three were all dressed in the exaggerated uniforms of Napoleonic cavalry officers. Baron Blare had huge side-whiskers and a wide, horsey grin displaying large, uneven teeth. Lord Bragg was a glowering, self- important cockerel, all blazing wattles and comb, while Duke Bray had a solemn, mulish look to his huge face. Although not as distinctly animal-like as Lord Renyard, they all three had a slight air of the farmyard about them. But they were cordial enough.
