Horrors of the Dancing Gods

least kept them split, I think. He didn't want you going in that direction. He was really almost obsessed with saving you, Irving. He named his sword after you just so he'd always remember what he had left and what he was fighting for.'

'But then he brought me here and left me! So now I got to go and maybe get killed or worse savin' his neck and hide to boot. And you're tellin' me it's better here than back home? That I'm better off? Mom had problems, sure, but she was gettin' clean. I know she was.'

It was a point she couldn't press even though Poquah had pretty much clued her in that the boy's convictions were less that than they were the hopes and naivete of a young son who loved his mother far more than she loved him. In point of fact, Mom didn't have much use for her son at all; she just wanted him around because that denied the boy to Joe.

How did you tell a kid that, no matter what age he'd grown to be? And how did you make him believe it when there was nothing else to fill that hole with?

'When a marriage splits, the two people who loved each other turn that old love to hate as often as not,' she told him. 'It was because your mom wouldn't let your dad even see you that a lot of this happened. Poor kid, you were just a football in a lot of this, I think, like a lot of kids get to be in these cases.'

'You were human once. You ever have a kid?'

'No. I don't know if I couldn't or if it just didn't happen, but in the end it seems a good thing I didn't. If I had, I'd probably have stayed and taken it, and my husband would have gotten so drunk sooner or later, he'd have killed me or the kid and I'd have killed him.' She sighed. 'Kid, that's the one thing about this world. A select group of unhappy people from Earth get to try again here. Some make it, most don't, but they get the chance. You had no chance where you were. I'm not sure what chance you have now, but it's more up to you than it would have been had you stayed.'

'Maybe. But my dad took a kid out of his own comfortable world — a world that might not have been real nice but was one I knew — and plopped him down here in the middle of Fairyland. Then he went off to fight a war and didn't come back. Only he coulda come back. That's what I hold against him. If he'd lost an arm or a leg or been scarred or burned or something, he'd still have come back, and you know it. Come back and been a dad. But oh, no! He got turned into a Greenie, a girl. Can't have that. The boy'll get screwed up if I'm not macho, right? Heap big Injun chief became a squaw. That was something I could have accepted — I didn't know him much, anyway. But it wasn't something he could accept or deal with. It was still Dad inside, though, in the mind, in the head. Like that, well, maybe if he really cared more about me than about himself and his big image, he coulda spent some time raisin' me and teachin' me and givin' me a little love and whatever else I needed in that big, lonely place. But uh uh. The kid might not respect him now as just a nothin', a girl. So he ran away and left me to grow up without anybody. I can forgive all the rest, but I can never forgive him for that. In the end he was more scared of bein' what he was than he cared about me.'

'You're probably right on all that,' she admitted, 'but the fact is that being incredibly dumb in this area doesn't make him a bad guy, or girl, or whatever. He was raised in a very different way than either of us. I just don't think he could accept it. Maybe the other way, but the way it was, it was a kind of honor thing with him. I'm a little pissed off myself that he considered it a step down, but I wasn't raised his way. As dumb as it sounds or maybe is, I think he decided that you'd have no respect for him at all if he just showed up and told the truth. Somehow he really believed that if you could just be convinced he died a hero in that last battle, you'd somehow turn out better than if he showed up as a wood nymph. I don't know. Neither of your family ethnic cultures held women on a high plane. I think the real tragedy is that everybody just assumes. Nobody ever asks the kid what he thinks would be best.'

Irving shrugged. 'Well, I know one thing from reading this stuff. Either he's as brave as or braver than he ever was or he's even stupider than you say he is. I mean, Dad and one other girl went into Yuggoth cold turkey, without even the knowledge or powers we got, and that's not all that great.'

She nodded. 'Still, if you feel this way, why risk yourself to maybe try and save a perfect stranger, anyway?'

He gave a wan smile and said, 'Because I'm not about to do to him what he did to me. If I don't at least make the attempt to save him, am I any better than he was by not coming back and being a parent to me? Besides, I got to know a little about myself. I want to know if I've got the guts I think he should have had or if cowardice and stupidity run in the family.'

'I think you might be very surprised,' she told him. She was. Deep down, if she could keep him in that kind of mood, there almost seemed somebody she could actually like down there.

'Um, Irv, are you also aware of the effect you have on women?'

He gave a dry chuckle. 'Yeah. What a waste, huh?'

'You don't find them attractive? At all?'

'Oh, I guess, sort of. I don't understand women much. I've talked to you as an equal longer and more seriously than I think I've talked to any other woman since I left Earth. I understand on an academic level, I guess, but not personally. I know it's partly a spell — I have the knack for that myself, remember — but it's still not something I know firsthand. I'm not even sure I want to.'

'Huh? Oh, I can tell you, there's a lot of fun in it.'

'Fun? Yeah, maybe. Feel-good stuff, too. I know. But at what cost in self-control? You asked me if I hated my father. I'm trying very hard not to. I'm trying not to let any emotions overcome me other than maybe a sense of humor and a sense of tragedy. The spell itself isn't difficult, you know. It's a common spell used by adepts to keep themselves from being tempted during magical training. I see no profit in lifting it, particularly not now.'

'Scared you couldn't control it?'

'Perhaps. Maybe I'm scared because I see how those girls react to me and how my mom and others reacted to their men. I don't think I want that. Not now. It's too much of a diversion. Better for now I stay where I am until I can control all of my mind and body.'

Marge stared at him and sighed. 'You're right, kid. What a waste.'

Macore was still a few days away.

Quinom was an old and somewhat seedy but still very popular ocean resort on the southern coast of Leander. Although the town itself had obviously seen better days and the upkeep on a tropical tourist trap was a bit higher than the locals had been willing to pay, it still had a harbor crowded with small pleasure boats, fishing vessels, and all sorts of recreational craft.

Just beyond the pier was what Marge would accept as an obvious boardwalk area, a long line of shops, stalls, games, and whatnot that stretched in back of a wooden walkway that divided town from beach.

'The last I heard, Macore was talking about a nice, quiet, peaceful retirement,' she noted. 'This looks like a circus.'

'It is suited to his temperament,' Poquah responded dryly. 'One suspects that the phrase 'quiet, peaceful retirement' means in Macore's world view a place where he is not wanted by the authorities.'

'It's kind of a neat place,' Irving put in. 'I always loved it when the old man sent me down here for a while each year.'

Marge looked at the crowded harbor and town area and shook her head in wonder. 'Just where is he in all this? And what's he doing?'

'Up the boardwalk a bit, down at the end of that far pier there,' Irving said, pointing well off to their left as they came in toward the dock. 'This is the jumping-off point for the Mystic Islands, remember. Folks like to go out and see them and all the strange stuff without actually risking landing. With a good, fast vessel like Macore's you can get out there in about an hour, sail down the strip of islands for an hour and point out the main sights, then get on back. The tourists pay big money for that kind of thing.'

'Three-hour tours of the islands,' Marge muttered. 'And I suppose his boat's called the Minnow?'

'Yeah, it is! How'd you know that?'

She sighed. 'I'm afraid Macore's become too predictable. That's probably why he had to retire.'

Making their way from the main dock over to the tourist boat pier wasn't very difficult, although Irving felt