As for surrealistic landscapes like the double dawn, there were no further surprises. A permanent darkness settled outside the windows of the streetcar, making it easier to preserve my emotional equilibrium.
According to my approximate calculations, this idyll continued for three or four days. Who knows, though, how much time really passed in this extraordinary streetcar? To this day, the most inexplicable phenomenon of that experience remains the fact that I never once felt the call of nature or noticed the absence of a bathroom. This, to put it mildly, contradicts what I know of human capabilities. The whole time I waited with trepidation for the familiar distress signals from my plumbing system, all the while trying to come up with a somewhat hygienic solution to the awkward problem I anticipated —but it turned out to be unnecessary.
My final “awakening” was strikingly different from the previous ones, beginning with the fact that I found myself wrapped not in the scratchy throw, but in a fur blanket. And I could finally stretch out my long-suffering legs. Looking around, I discovered that I was lying not in a bed and not on a divan, but on a very soft floor in a huge, half-dark, and nearly empty room. At the far end of this room, someone was breathing heavily, menacingly, as it seemed to me. I opened my eyes wide, then turned over awkwardly and got up on my hands and knees. The breathing ceased, but a few seconds later something softly nudged my heels. To this day, I don’t know how I kept myself from screaming out.
Instead, still crouched on the floor, I pivoted around and found myself nose-to-nose with another one, very soft and moist. Then something licked my cheek. Indescribable relief nearly robbed me of my senses. Before me was an absolutely charming creature—a shaggy puppy with the face of a little bulldog. Later, I found out that Chuff wasn’t a puppy at all, but a seasoned canine. His compact size and exuberance had misled me.
Soon, a small figure draped in capacious garments flowing down to the floor materialized in the twilight of the room. Peering closely at him, I realized that it was not my dream companion. It was someone else. Could I have come to the wrong address?
“Mister Venerable Head is expected later this evening. If you please, sir, inform me of your wishes,” requested the stranger, a fragile, wizened old man with radiant eyes and a pensive, thin-lipped mouth. This was Kimpa, Sir Juffin Hully’s butler. Juffin himself did indeed arrive later that night.
Only then did it sink in that the unimaginable journey from one world to another had really taken place.
That is how I ended up in Echo—which I have never had cause to regret, even on days as hopeless as this one seemed to be.
While I was lost in reminiscences, the amobiler, manned by Sir Juffin Hully, was winding in and out among the luxuriant gardens of the Left Bank. Finally, we turned into a narrow driveway that seemed to be paved exclusively with semiprecious stones. At first I didn’t see the house amid the thick undergrowth. Sir Maba Kalox is probably a philosopher, and his philosophy requires that he become one with nature. That’s why he lives in a garden without any architectural superfluities, I thought cheerfully, just before we nearly ran smack into the wall of his house, all but invisible under the opaque curtain of vines.
“This is what you call camouflage!” I exclaimed admiringly.
“You can’t imagine how right you are, Max. Now do you see why I sat behind the levers of this blasted buggy? During my lifetime I have paid several hundred visits to Maba, and I have always been forced to find my way to his lair by guesswork. It’s impossible to memorize the way here. Every time you just have to arm yourself with the hope that you’ll get lucky. Maba Kalox is an unsurpassed master of discretion!”
“Is he hiding from someone?”
“No, not at all. People just have a hard time discovering his whereabouts. It happens of its own accord, with no help from him. One of the side effects of studying True Magic.”
“And why is your house so easy to find?”
“In the first place, we all have our eccentricities. And, second, I’m by no means as old as he is.”
“Do you mean to say—”
“I don’t mean to say anything. But I have to, since you asked. The Order of the Clock of Time Backwards has existed . . . let me see . . . yes, around 3,000 years. And I have yet to hear that there has been a succession of Grand Magicians.”
“Wow!”
I had nothing more to add.
Sir Juffin turned behind the well-concealed building. There we came upon a decrepit plywood door, more fitting for a toolshed than a Grand Magician’s villa. The door opened with a creak, and we found ourselves standing in the middle of a large, rather chilly hall.
Maba Kalox, the Grand Magician of the Order of Time Backwards, was known for having peacefully disbanded his Order several years before the onset of the Troubled Times, after which he managed nearly to disappear from sight without ever leaving Echo. This living legend was waiting for us in the sitting room.
The “living legend” was quite ordinary looking. He was a shortish, stocky fellow of indeterminate age with an animated expression. His merry, round eyes were the true embellishments of his face. If he could have been said to resemble any of my companions, it would have had to be Kurush, our wise buriwok.
“Haven’t set eyes on you in ages, Juffin!”
Sir Maba Kalox said this with such unfeigned enthusiasm that it seemed Sir Juffin’s presence filled him with cosmic joy.
“I’m happy to see you,” he said to me, making a low exaggerated bow. “You could have brought your marvel around sooner, Juffin. May I touch him?”
“Go ahead. As far as I know he doesn’t bite. He doesn’t kick. It’s even safe to drop him on the floor.”
“On the floor! That’s a good one.”
Maba Kalox really did probe me with his index finger, then immediately drew back as if he were afraid of getting burned. He winked at me conspiratorially, as if to say, “You and I know this charade is just for Juffin’s sake—so bear with me. Let’s humor the old geezer.” Sir Maba didn’t use Silent Speech, but somehow I knew just what the wink meant. I liked his approach, in spite of the fact that he had called me “marvel” and pinched me like fresh dough.
“Sit down, friends,” Sir Maba Kalox said, gesturing broadly toward the table. “I’ll rustle up some of your best black poison.”
By “black poison” he meant kamra, of course.
“It will probably be some potion of boiled herbs again,” Juffin commented peevishly. He could grow savage when someone took aim at one of his little weaknesses.
“Well, at least it’s not any of that liquid tar of yours. Whoever decided that was fit for drinking at all? No matter how often those misery-mongers muttered spells over it. Don’t pout, Juffin. Just try this. It really is something special.”
Sir Maba Kalox was absolutely right. The steaming, ruby-hued beverage that appeared on the table had a flavor somewhat reminiscent of Elixir of Kaxar, of which I was particularly fond, infused with some kind of celestial flower.
“Well, at long last I get offered something decent in this house,” Juffin said gruffly, beginning to come around.
“I haven’t seen you this tired since the Code was adopted,” our host said, standing up and stretching creakily. “Why worry so much about these murders, Juffin? When the World might really have collapsed you were much calmer about it—and for good reason.”
“First, if I can’t solve a case within an hour, it makes me very irritable, you know that. Second, Max has gotten an idea into his head that I don’t like one bit. At the same time, it would explain everything. If we left the door open between Worlds—well, Maba, you realize it’s nothing to joke about.”
“The door between Worlds is never really closed, Juffin. It’s time you realized that. In any case, I’m at your service, on the condition that you both drink another cup of my concoction. I’m extremely vain, you know.”
“And I was worried that you had left all your human weaknesses far behind,” Juffin said, grinning. Then he turned to me, “Sir Max, don’t sit there looking so stiff and awkward. This may be the only house in Echo where you have no cause to feel shy.”
“I’m not feeling shy. I just always need a little time to—”
