Horrors of the Dancing Gods

trees, bushes, nothin' out there but grass and sand and this chalky dirt. You've got nothin' to defend yourself with if you need it. and wood nymphs don't travel much beyond where they live, do they? You're gonna stick out in your own way as much as I do.'

'I'm used to that,' Joe assured her. 'Don't worry. Besides, I have nothing, so there's nothing for anybody to steal; I want nothing except some conversation, so they either talk to me or they don't. And I long ago swallowed my pride and decided to let the nymph part work if I have to. Just take it easy and use the fields here to get around to the other side, like that bluff with the gumdrop-shaped bush on it over there, and wait. I shouldn't be too long.'

Alvi was strangely hesitant. 'Okay, but — I dunno. I just get a really strange feeling when I look at that little place there. I don't think I ever felt anything really like it before. It's — weird?'

Joe knew that such feelings weren't to be taken lightly in Husaquahr. 'What kind of feeling? Queasy? Shivers? Chills?'

'Nothin' like that exactly. I–I said I can't describe it. Like — like whoever's up there already knows we're corning. Like we're expected for dinner or something.'

Joe frowned. 'Well, if you're getting that kind of feeling, maybe concealing you isn't the best way, but I don't think we should give them both of us at once if it is something unfriendly. Trust me on this one. Easy, casual walk up the road and into town, but keep an eye out and play it by my signals. I've been in bad spots before.'

It was Alvi's turn to doubt 'It could just be my imagination…'

'Probably not. Particularly when you start to doubt yourself. That's probably in the Rules someplace. Just be on guard and proceed slowly with me. No weapons. Unless we're attacked or you or I get a strong feeling of serious danger, we might just be spooking somebody unnecessarily.'

It certainly didn't feel like an ambush. The tiny town of a half dozen ramshackle wooden structures looked to have seen much better days and to have survived mostly because the breeze off the land wasn't quite strong enough to blow it over the cliff. Once it had clearly been a way station for weary travelers on their way to and from the City-States and the Leander ocean resorts, but commerce, for some reason, had passed it by. From the looks of a boarded-up well and dry troughs, it appeared either that the well had run dry — unlikely in that climate — or that it was contaminated by something that had doomed this as a rest stop. Across the road were the remains of stables, now little more than boards on crude rock foundations.

As they drew close to the tiny town, Joe began to get the distinct impression that this was no ordinary town in a number of ways. The ramshackle buildings weren't close to the sort you'd find anywhere in Husaquahr, for one thing; for another, the signs were disturbingly out of place.

ALCOA PARA EL ALQUILER announced the faded sign on one half-falling-down building. EL ALIMENTO BUENO said another, weathered but clear enough for Joe to read. Inside was an arrow painted on one of the buildings that pointed to the wreckage across the road with the faded words LOS ESTABLOS. Below it, in a graffitilike scrawl, were the words 'Por un llamatio bueno de tiempo Tina, 555- 3721.'

'Sure looks weird,' Alvi commented.

Joe nodded. All the weirder because it was so familiar in many ways — but only to Joe.

A sudden wind came off the land as they actually crossed into the tiny ruin, its whistling sounds almost but not quite masking the sounds of the breakers on the cliff far below.

On the creaking porch of the old hotel sat a figure in a rocking chair, going slowly back and forth almost in time to the wind. It was wrapped in a colorful serapelike garment that looked to be perhaps Navajo or Hopi; the figure's head was down in its chest, masked by a huge sombrero.

As they cautiously approached, Alvi's hand went instinctively to the bow on her shoulder, easing it down in spite of what Joe had said. Now, quite close, the enigmatic figure, still rocking slowly, raised its head. The big sombrero came up, and inside was nothing at all, nothing but two glowing red eyes.

'Faith and begorra!' the apparition swore in a thick Irish brogue. 'Ya needn't be fearin' me much this trip! Put away yer weapons and be at ease!'

'You've got the wrong accent for the clothes and setting,' Joe noted, still wary, eyes on the thing, whatever it was.

'Oh, one's as good as the other, really, isn't it, now?' the thing responded. 'Spanish, English, Husaquahrian, or Navajo, what's the difference?'

'I'm an Apache,' Joe pointed out. 'Not much relation with the Navajos.'

The thing shrugged. 'Again, what's the difference? A priest's a shaman and a shaman's a priest, and ya talk yer talks in whatever's understood. Take this spit of a ghost town. Never was much to it in its heyday, and there's even less now. The Earth didn't even miss it when it got rotated out, now, did it? Now 'tis neither here nor there, y' see. The mortals, they be so blind, it don't even exist for 'em in either plane, except when they camp here or just glance back outa the corner of one eye and like that. Only them that's got faerie blood can truly see it.'

'But not you,' Joe noted.

The thing hesitated a moment. 'That's me own dear choice, y' see. It kinda limits what I can do, but it's a good deal safer. Lets me see and hear them what's linked without bein' really there to be noticed. And as fer the Apache, I never did see a green Apache of your likes!'

'This isn't exactly—'

'Oh, I know, Joe de Oro. I knows just who you were, but ya ain't no more, are ye?'

Joe was startled. 'So you know who I am! Then this isn't just an accidental encounter.'

'Faith! Nothin' I do is accidental! Strictly within the Rules, though, I be. Yes, strictly within the Rules. Not like some.'

'Everyone's bound by the Rules here!'

'Indeed, 'tis so, but perhaps not for much longer. They're coming, you see, and it's not likely they can be stopped.'

'Who is coming? What's all this about?' Joe asked.

'Well, there's Heaven and there's Hell, and then there's the other place. The place of the pretenders, those gods and demigods who may or may not have held sway for a while in one place or another but who in the end did not make it, you see. Kind of a dustbin of the gods, you might say. They are some of the worst things ever to have come out of creation. Individually, each could be vanquished. Even as a class, perhaps. But together — ah, together they create a new power. They were tossed where they were because their egos were such that there was no conceivable way they could combine forces. But they are combining now. They have their own unique definitions of good and evil and grudges against both Heaven and Hell. Surely you have felt them, felt how close they are to becoming real once more.'

Joe nodded. 'So that's what it is. But surely both Heaven and Hell can handle them.'

'They could,' the apparition agreed, 'but they won't. Heaven may be so disgusted with everything, it'll just take its remainin' folk out and leave the rest to these bastards. Hell — well, Hell only wants what Heaven desires, y' see. And besides, if such concentrated evil was to really overrun all this universe, then it'd pollute the very Sea of Dreams, bringin' nightmare to Earth and perhaps the battle Hell really wants. It's willin' to give up this place, then, to gain the bigger prize — but y' see, since most of the folks that'll be left if these creatures break through and rule are already in Hell's pocket, they're not too terribly pleased by the prospect. They're just too bloody evil to work together against the usurpers and treacherous enough to make separate deals and stab one another in the back.'

Joe began to see, and he did not like it one bit. 'And what happens if they do break through and take over here? To us, I mean.'

'There's far worse than death. Surely ya knows that much. They'll apportion for a while and remake all in their own images, but eventually they'll start to devour one another. Who can say? They don't look or act or think like anything or anybody ya knows.'

Joe sighed and shrugged. 'Why tell us this? What can we do about it?'

'Not 'us,' just you,' the apparition responded. Joe turned and saw that Alvi was just standing there, frozen, unblinking as a statue.