Horrors of the Dancing Gods

WE'RE OFF TO SEE THE LIZARD

Just say no to drugs or they will do something wrong to you.

— Rules, Vol. XLI, p. 194(c)

There! What did I tell you?

— Reagan, N.

AT THE UPPER LIMITS OF NAVIGATION ON THE RIVER, whose name they never did quite get clearly in their minds — it meandered horribly, and with every bend it seemed to have a new and totally unrelated name — was a small inland town that nobody had named but that was clearly their first destination.

In spite of its remoteness, the town looked oddly familiar to those from Earth, if a bit out of place in this geographic setting, with large Gothic-style Victorian houses peeking out of the ends of the jungle like an enormous collection of haunted houses. The jungle in fact ended within sight of the town and very dramatically; the mountains seemed to be a two-mile-high wall.

Irving stared at the black rock beyond, and his jaw dropped. 'Holy smokes! We have to go up there?'

'Over it,' Joel Thebes told him. 'It is not all that bad but can be quite uncomfortable.'

'Hey, I'm in pretty fair shape, and there's no way I can climb that,' the boy maintained. 'As for the others, I don't think Marge can even fly that high, and she's the only other one with a chance.'

'You misunderstand,' Thebes told him. 'We do not climb. As usual, we ride. You'll see, you'll see.'

Larae was still uncomfortable with her secret out, as it were, but she at least accepted the fact that they were not going to cast her out, not even Irving, who had good cause for doing so. She was determined to do what she could for them.

'Will we have to stay in this town overnight?' she asked Thebes. 'It does not even look inhabited.'

'Oh, it is inhabited, all right,' Thebes assured her. 'Just not by folks who are still, well, like the rest of us.' Considering that he was including himself in that 'us,' that meant that those who lived there were probably very unpleasant. 'However, we should not have to remain here long if all the connections are right.'

Poquah surveyed the small dock area as their things were placed there for them and the chameleon faerie, as Marge had begun to think of them, filed off as well, spouting their inane bad dialogue but seemingly oblivious to their surroundings. Either they were totally in character and thus natural actors or they really were pretty dumb.

'Be on your guard,' the Irnir warned his party. 'Irving, keep your sword ready.'

The boy looked around. 'You see something I don't?'

'No. I just feel the currents. Not all the denizens of this town are still on the side of the established order here. If that is the case, there might well be an attempt to prevent us from going farther.'

'Terrific,' Irving responded glumly.

Thebes, too, seemed to sense the danger, but when a creature emerged from one of the nearby houses and shambled toward them, he seemed to relax a bit, even though the thing was certainly tension-inducing.

'That thing was once a human being?' Larae gasped.

It was the size of an average man but bent, misshapen, twisted in such a way that it seemed both smaller and more massive. It had the look and stench of decomposing flesh and a skull-like face that looked more like an Eygptian mummy than a living being.

Thebes walked out to the thing, which stopped, and they exchanged some sort of conversation too low to be heard by the others. Thebes pointed back to them, the thing nodded, and two dead eyes looked them over carefully.

'I don't trust that little man,' Larae whispered. 'I don't care if he's one of you or not.'

'We don't, either, and he's not ours,' Irving whispered back. 'He's just sort of hired help to get us through.'

'I am not worried about Mister Thebes,' Poquah told them. 'Not until after we reach Mount Doom, anyway. If he could have reached our goal on his own, he would have been there long before now. He is not on our side or either of their sides. He is on his own side, which is a very lonely and dangerous position to be in.'

Thebes came back over to them. 'We should get moving without delay,' he told them. 'There appears to be danger here if we stay. Get your things and follow our gimpy guide there through town. No deviations or temptations, please. There is nothing alive — as we know it, anyway — left here.'

'You expect an ambush?' Poquah asked him, looking around.

'I don't know. I don't think they're strong enough for that, but with these types you can't tell. When you're already dead and looking like that, you don't exactly have a lot to lose, yes?'

The town smelled like death; even Marge, who would not normally be alert enough to do much good for anybody, found herself strangely wide awake in that grim place. There were few signs in writing of what it might once have been but some indications that at one time it had been a much larger place and that part of it had been consumed by fire. Just once was there anything that might be helpful in identifying it, but it was only a fragment of an old sign — interestingly, in Latin letters — that read 'J-E-R-U.' Nothing more.

They were more than conscious of being watched from the houses and dark places as they walked through the town in the gray gloom. Dead eyes, yes, but envious eyes, too, and hungry ones.

The deathly stillness was also unnerving, and when it was broken now and again by the loud cry of a tropical bird, they all jumped and hands went to weapons. Only the 'machinists' seemed unconcerned, just blithely walking through as if it were a bright sunny day in Mister Rogers' neighborhood. Not worth a bite, Irving decided, and they knew it. Their very vacuousness was their protection. They were very close to clearing the town proper now, going through the remnants of burned-out buildings and charred timbers from a onetime small-town business center, when they saw their destination. While much more ordinary in many ways than the town and its denizens, it was no less scary a sight.

'A cable car? Here?' Marge gasped.

And a big one, too, from the looks of it, more than able to carry them all, some freight that was being hauled along on a cart by the crew of the sailing ship, and anything else that might want to go. It was like a giant old- fashioned trolley car without wheels, and it appeared that once out of its berth, it would be suspended by two thick black cables that went up at perhaps a thirty-degree angle toward the mountain wall, quickly losing them in the clouds and mist up there.

'We're gonna take that up there?' Irving said, both nervous and incredulous.

'What powers it?' Poquah asked, fascinated more than worried.

'You do not want to know,' Thebes responded, then proceeded to pretty much tell him anyway. 'A lot of very naughty souls on some amazing treadmills beneath us.'

'I don't like it,' Irving told them. 'Once we're in that contraption up there, we're sitting ducks.'

Poquah was ever the pragmatist. 'You would perhaps prefer to climb? It is one or the other.'

Thebes looked around nervously. 'Well, I think we better decide very quickly on this. I'm afraid some of the