«No, there's something… I can't recall…»
He raised his tankard, clanked it against my own. «Enjoy!» he said. «Life is a cabaret, old chum!»
The cat on the stool beside me just kept grinning.
Sign of Chaos
1987
Chapter 1
I felt vaguely uneasy, though I couldn't say why. It did not seem all that unusual to be drinking with a White Rabbit, a short guy who resembled Bertrand Russell, a grinning Cat, and my old friend Luke Raynard, who was singing Irish ballads while a peculiar landscape shifted from mural to reality at his back. Well, I was impressed by the huge blue Caterpillar smoking the hookah atop the giant mushroom because I know how hard it is to keep a water pipe lit. Still, that wasn't it. It was a convivial scene, and Luke was known to keep pretty strange company on occasion. So why should I feel uneasy?
The beer was good and there was even a free lunch. The demons tormenting the red-haired woman tied to the stake had been so shiny they'd. hurt to look at. Gone now, but the whole thing had, been beautiful. Everything was beautiful. When Luke sang of Galway Bay it had been so sparkling and lovely that I'd wanted to dive in and lose myself there. Sad, too.
Something to do with the feeling… Yes. Funny thought. When Luke sang a sad song I felt melancholy. When it was a happy one I was greatly cheered. There seemed an unusual amount of empathy in the air. No matter, I guess. The light. show was superb…
I sipped my drink and watched Humpty teeter, there at the end of the bar. For a moment I tried to remember when I'd come into this place, but that cylinder wasn't hitting. It would come to me, eventually. Nice party…
I watched and listens and tasted and felt, and it was all great. Anything that caught my attention was fascinating. Was there something I'd wanted to ask Luke? It seemed there was, but he was busy singing and I couldn't think of it now, anyway.
What had I been doing before I'd come into this place? Trying to recall just didn't seem worth the effort either. Not when everything was so interesting right here and now.
It seemed that it might have been something important, though. Could that be why I felt uneasy? Might it be there was business I had left unfinished and should be getting back to?
I turned to ask the Cat but he was fading again, still seeming vastly amused. It occurred to me then that I, too, could do that. Fade, I mean; and go someplace else. Was that how I had come here and how I might depart? Possibly. I put down my drink and rubbed my eyes and my temples. Things seemed to be swimming inside my head, too.
I suddenly recalled a picture of me. On a giant card. A Trump. Yes. That was how I'd gotten here. Through the card…
A hand fell upon my shoulder and I turned. It belonged to Luke, who grinned at me as he edged up to the bar for a refill.
«Great party, huh?» he said.
«Yeah, great. How'd you find this place?» I asked him.
He shrugged. «I forget. Who cares?»
He fumed away, a brief blizzard of crystals swirling between us. The Caterpillar exhaled a purple cloud. A blue moon was rising.
What is wrong with this picture? I asked myself.
I had a sudden feeling that my critical faculty had been shot off in the war, because I couldn't focus on the anomalies I felt must be present. I knew that I was caught up in the moment, but I couldn't see my way clear.
I was caught up…
I was caught…
How?
Well… It had all started when I'd shaken my own hand. No. Wrong. That sounds like Zen and that's not how it was. The hand I shook emerged from the space occupied by the image of myself on the card that went away. Yes, that was it… After a fashion.
I clenched my teeth. The music began again. There came a soft scraping sound near to my hand on the bar. When I looked I saw that my tankard had been refilled. Maybe I'd had too much already. Maybe that's what kept getting in the way of my thinking. I fumed away. I looked off to my left, past the place where the mural on the wall became the real landscape. Did that make me a part of the mural? I wondered suddenly.
No matter. If I couldn't think here… I began running… to the left. Something about this place was messing with my head, and it seemed impossible to consider the process while I was a part of it. I had to get away in order to think straight, to determine what was going on.
I was across the bar and into that interface area where the painted rocks and trees became three- dimensional. I pumped my arms as I dug in. I head the wind without feeling it.
Nothing that lay before me seemed any nearer. I was moving, but Luke began singing again.
I halted. I turned, slowly, because it sounded as if he were standing practically beside me. He was. I was only a few paces removed from the bar. Luke smiled and kept singing.
«What's going on?» I asked the Caterpillar.
«You're looped in Luke's loop,» it replied.
«Come again?» I said.
It blew a blue smoke ring, sighed softly, and said, «Luke's locked in a loop and you're lost in the lyrics. That's all.»
«How'd it happen?» I asked.
«I have no idea,» it replied.
«Uh, how does one get unlooped?»
«Couldn't tell you that either.»
I turned to the Cat, who was coalescing about his grin once again.
«I don't suppose you'd know-» I began.
«I saw him come in and I saw you come in later,» said the Cat, smirking. «And even for this place your arrivals were somewhat… unusual - leading me to conclude that at least one of you is associated with magic.»
I nodded.
«Your own comings and goings might give one pause,» I observed.
«I keep my paws to myself,» he replied. «Which is more than Luke can say.»
«What do you mean?»
«He's caught in a contagious trap.»
«How does it work?» I asked.
But he was gone again, and this time the grin went too.
Contagious trap? That seemed to indicate that the problem was Luke's, and that I had been sucked into it in some fashion. This felt right, though it still gave me no idea as to what the problem was or what I might do about it.
I reached for my tankard. If I couldn't solve my problem, I might as well enjoy it. As I took a slow sip I became aware of a strange pair of pale, burning eyes gazing into my own. I hadn't noticed them before, and the thing that made them strange was that they occupied a shadowy comer of the mural across the room from me that,
