'Yup.'
'I see,' he said, nodding thoughtfully. He turned away, but kept eyeing me askance, as if he weren't sure about something.
That was his problem. But what he would finally believe might be mine.
Chapter 3
Our rooms on the second floor were primitive, but again there was antique charm in the rough wall paneling, the quaint lamps, the handmade furniture?beds, nightlamps, armoires, and chairs. The beds were especially nice, with simple floral carvings on the headboards. However, Susan didn't like hers.
'Lumpy as hell,' she griped, 'and the sheets are gray.'
'Be patient, Princess,' Roland teased. 'We'll get the pea out from under the mattress later.'
'Everyone I know is a comedian. Let's go eat.'
They all went downstairs. There was a mirror behind the door to the room, and I paused to look myself over. I was wearing what is for me formal dress: my maroon starrigger's jacket with its jazzy piping, rakish cut, and little pockets with zippers all over the place. Usually, my attire is medium-slovenly, but all my casual clothes had been left behind on various planets. This jacket and the fatigue pants were about all I had left, except for shorts and things I wear when lounging about the rig. The jacket made me feel faintly ridiculous. I looked like a goddamn space cadet.
I went down the narrow stairs to the lobby, where the gang was waiting for me. We started for the Vorpal Blade. There were even more people in the lobby now, trying vainly to get in. Just as we hit the edge of the crowd, the desk clerk intercepted us.
'We have a table for you and your party, Mr. McGraw. If you'll follow me.'
'A table?' I said incredulously. 'In there?'
'Yes, sir, right this way.'
I turned to my companions, but they weren't at all surprised. So we followed him as he made a swath for us through the clot of people pressing around the entrance to the bar. He seemed to know just about everyone he either politely brushed by or summarily shoved out of the way, none too gently, when
the parties concerned weren't immediately cooperative. His size, even when compared to these beefy loggers, gave him all the authority he needed, if he didn't own the place to boot.
The Vorpal Blade was dark, smoky, and noisy, redolent of spilled beer and cooking grease. A huge bar took up one side of the room. The walls were of barkless log, milled flat on the inside, and the ceiling joists were squared- off and planed. There were plenty of tables and chairs, but too many damn people, loggers mostly. The decor was apropos?walls hung with odd varieties of saws, axes, cutting tools of every sort, pairs of spiked climbing boots, ropes, and such. It was a sweaty, muscular, pewter-and-leather kind of place, awash with good fellowship and camaraderie. Everybody was singing, including the bartenders, and they were busy.
The clerk actually had a table for us, with room for all, against the far wall near the bar and directly athwart a huge stone fireplace. We all sat, and I thanked the clerk. I asked him his name, silently wondering if I should tip him. I reached into my pocket.
'Zack Moore, sir. And save the gratis for the help. Enjoy.'
'Thank you, Zack.'
On his way out he shooed a buxom barmaid over to us, then waved and left.
'Hello, there! What're you people having today?'
The others started ordering. I was noticing the alien grain of the wood. It was almost geometrical, oddly shot through with greens and purples, but the overall color was a dark brown. Didn't look as though the wood had been stained. I knocked a knuckle against the wall. It felt like iron. I turned around, sat back, and listened to the group sing-along. Odd lyrics. A group at a table near the bar sang the verses, the rest of the crowd taking up the chorus, which went something like:
Each verse grew progressively more absurd and off-color. Transvestism and other variations were broadly hinted at. Individual poetasters stood up and sang their own verses, each more outrageous than the last. The crowd howled. After the last verse, they'd sing it all over again, adding more verses. I asked the barmaid where the song had come from. She didn't know, but said in so many words that it was most likely traditional. She'd been hearing it ever since she came to Talltree as a child (last Tuesday, from the looks of her?but, hell, maybe I'm just getting old).
We all listened while waiting for our order to come. By the time the beer arrived, Suzie and John were convulsed, with Darla and Roland smiling, a little unsure. Carl loved it, too. Winnie and Lori were trying to talk above the din.
The beer was Inglo style, dark, bitter, served at room temperature, but the high alcohol content more than made up for it. I drained my pewter mug in three gulps and refilled it from the glazed crockery pitcher.
Only when the food came did I think about Winnie. She certainly couldn't eat this stuff-braised pork ribs, roast game hen, fried potatoes and vegetables, sliced warm bread with mounds of fresh butter. The barmaid told us that almost nothing on the planet was edible without extensive processing. All the fare before us had been raised on local farms.
Lori came over and shouted in my ear.
'Winnie wants to go outside. Says she can find something to eat.'
'Here?' I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was. 'Well, okay, but I should go with you.'
'We'll be fine. You go ahead and eat, I'm not very hungry.'
'How's your head? Still feeling woozy?'
'Nah, I'm fine.'
'Okay, but be careful.' I was reluctant to let them go, and briefly considered asking Roland to tail them and keep an eye on them, but I knew Lori was fiercely independent for her age, and more and more I had come to consider Winnie the equal of an adult human in intelligence and maturity?maybe even more than equal. Lori could do very well on her own; however, I still wanted her to be checked over by a competent medic, if one could be found. That was a minor problem. The big one was what the hell to do with her. With the Laputa either lost or pirated, she had no place to go except to her former foster parents' home on a planet named Schlagwasser, which lay on Winnie's Itinerary. Unfortunately, Lori had not been on good terms with her foster parents, and had run away.
But it wasn't certain that the Laputa had been lost. Good for Lori… maybe… but not good for me. At least three groups of people and beings aboard that strange ship-animal wanted my blood. In regard to the alien party, that could be taken quite literally. The Reticulans practiced ritual hunting in bands known as Snatchgangs, and dispatched their captured quarry by ceremonial vivisection. If Corey Wilkes, their human ally, had survived, he'd still be teamed with the Rikkis to get the Roadmap from me. And then there was the Laputa's master Captain Pendergast, who had been in cahoots with Wilkes and Darla's father, the late Dr. Van Wyck Vance, in a scheme to run antigeronic digs into the Outworlds. To those who wanted to keep these Consolidated Outworlds isolated from Terran Maze and independent of the Authority, the Roadmap represented a threat. Doubtless Pendergast viewed it as such, but he might yet be unaware of Wilkes' betrayal; Wilkes wanted the map to give to the Authority in return for, among other things, amnesty for his part in the drug operation. Pendergast was not alone in his desire for a free Outworlds. He most likely shared it with every inhabitant of this maze. After all, everyone here had taken a desperate gamble in shooting a potluck portal to get here. There was a way back to Terran Maze by Skyway.
