Marianne, the Matchbox, and the Malachite Mouse (13 page)

At a central kiosk labeled ‘Information,’ the ape asked, ‘When does the next Down Line Express leave?’

‘As soon as it’s full.’ The Information creature smiled vaguely, looking up from its crossword puzzle with one pair of eyes. ‘Be a while, I should think. One left yesterday.’

‘Where are all the other trains going?’

‘Other trains?’ Another vague smile.

‘The ones we hear coming in and going out?’

‘Oh,’ the creature pointed at a shelf near its feet where a tape player hummed. ‘That’s all just for atmosphere, don’t you know. Actually, the Down Line is a gravity train. Very quiet.’

‘We could use a little quiet in here,’ the tortoise said. ‘This racket is giving me a headache.’

‘Would you like it turned off?’ The creature reached down and switched the player off and silence fell into the enormous room like snow into a bucket. Only a few reverberating hoof-falls broke the peace. High above, in the web of steel, a flock of winged creatures argued melodically over a scrap of food. Somewhere someone asked, ‘Can I arrange a throw for Usable Chasm from there?’ the voice falling away into hush.

‘I rather like that,’ said the Information creature. ‘It makes a nice change. Perhaps we’ll just leave it like that until the train fills up.’

‘You said it might take a while?’

‘Several days, perhaps.’

‘But it’s supposed to be an express!’

‘Oh, it is. Expressly for Frab Junction. And very fast. When it leaves.’

‘Which is when it’s full.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Is there somewhere we can get food? Perhaps a bed for the night?’

‘Food booths are all along that wall,’ the creature pointed. ‘Medium of exchange is information about the game. New-comers are allowed to use imaginative assumptions and valid extrapolations from known data against future redemption.’

The ape thought this one over. ‘Like IOUs?’

‘Hmm, rather. There’s a dormitory up on the balcony. Better sleep in relays. They don’t announce departure, you know, and if you’re not there when it leaves, you may miss it.’

‘Thank you,’ said the tortoise weakly. ‘You’ve been very helpful.’

They wandered off toward the food wall, selecting a booth which provided sandwiches and beverages as well as fresh fruit of both familiar and exotic types.

‘So, what have you got to tell?’ the tentacled vendor asked them.

‘I have an imaginative assumption,’ said the ape.

‘First-timer, humph. The assumptions never come to anything, you now. Still, I’m required to accept them, so you might as well spit it out.’

‘I assume,’ said the ape, ‘that this game is played in many worlds, and that the creatures inhabiting the game are those who are currently playing it and haven’t yet found their way out.’

The creature barked with laughter, waving three tentacles and jittering on the remaining four. ‘That’s what I call an assumption. Now I’ll tell you one. If that’s true, what you just said, how come this place is getting more and more crowded all the time. You tell me that?’

‘Hmmm,’ mused the ape as he read the menu posted on the wall above the counter. ‘Do I need to answer in order to get two butterfilk sandwiches and a couple of pints of bitter?’

‘Not at all,’ the vendor replied, filling their order with alacrity. ‘I thought it might amuse you, that’s all. He who laughs last.’

‘Well, it does. If the place is getting more and more populated all the time, it would mean A) that more and more people are playing the game or B) that more and more people are unable to complete the game or C) that more and more people have no desire to complete the game. If the former is true, there are so many implications it would be difficult to list them all. If the latter is true, it could be because A) they enjoy the ambience of this particular place more than wherever they are from or B) the act of completing the game is, for some reason, unacceptable to them.’

The vendor twinkled in their direction as it provided woe cones in various flavors to an ill-assorted group of travelers. ‘Unacceptable is mild, stranger, mild, but clever of you, nonetheless. Easy come isn’t always easy go. For that little exercise in extrapolation there, I can offer you dessert. Cheese cake? Hot mud sundae? A nice piece of ripe squap?’

‘Melon,’ said the ape.

‘Perhaps an apple,’ said the tortoise, her head in the bottom of the bitter glass where she was attempting to sup up the last few drops.

‘Don’t you want your sandwich?’ asked the ape.

‘Not really,’ sighed the tortoise. ‘What I’d really like is a bowl of earthworms and some lettuce.’

The vendor removed the sandwich and supplied the requested articles, from which the ape averted his eyes. Only when he heard the first crunch of the apple did he look back again. The worm bowl was empty and the vendor was staring at the tortoise with contemplative eyes.

‘One man’s meat,’ he murmured to himself or to them. ‘You’d love Cattermune’s Worm Pits. You really would.’

The ape shuddered, delicately, as the tortoise nodded. ‘We’re together,’ she said. ‘Though I might relish a visit to the pits, I’m afraid the ape wouldn’t like it.’

‘Strange bedfellows,’ sighed the vendor, wrapping each of their empty glasses in a tentacle and dousing them in a bucket of soapy water.

‘Speaking of bed,’ said the ape. ‘I’m suffering from jet lag.’

‘And what might that be?’

‘I can’t remember,’ said the ape, ‘except that I’ve got it.’ He turned and climbed the stairs to the balcony, carrying the tortoise under one arm, where he found two adjacent cots. ‘Half an hour’s nap,’ the ape said. ‘Then we’ll go wait on the platform.’

They slept longer than half an hour, but the train was still there when they gained the platform. Thereafter, it was not as long a wait as they had feared. The train, consisting of a number of open cars like those on a roller coaster, stood at the platform untended, gradually filling up as this one and that one sat down and strapped itself in with every indication of staying until the device moved. Behind each seat was hinged a clear bubble, obviously designed to protect the bodies of the passengers from the lash of air or from something falling from above. The train was held back by a barricade of heavy wooden planks. When the last seat had been filled, the barricade pivoted outward and up, and the train slowly began to roll beneath it. When the last car had passed, the barricade rotated into place once more with a sonorous clang. The Down Line Express was under way.

It was not unlike a roller-coaster ride, except that there were long stretches of virtually level track and the few major inclines were brief. There was an initial drop to pick up speed, and from that point on, the cars rolled silently forward into what appeared to be limitless space. Ahead and behind the tracks ran into infinity, slender lines extending into forever, crosshatched by ties which were tied, thought the ape, to nothing at all.

Far away to the left was a tumbled glory of clouds and precipices, interspersed with rays of many colored lights. The aspect of this area changed from moment to moment, at one instant lending itself to interpretation as a landscape and at the next seeming to be an enormous garden of moving flowers.

‘The Illusion Fields,’ cried the scaled being behind them, reaching forward to point with a lengthy talon. ‘I was there once.’

‘Only once, though, isn’t that right?’ asked the ape. ‘You can’t go back again?’

‘True,’ said the being sadly. ‘The time for the Illusion Fields is ten thousand years. It was a very long time, but not bad. Better than ending the game, that’s for sure.’

‘What is this business about ending the game,’ drawled the tortoise. ‘I don’t like it at all, Ape.’

‘It does give one pause,’ replied the ape. ‘As I recall, it was our intention to get to the end of the game and await our friend there. We may have to change that intention.’

‘Our friend,’ mused Tortoise. ‘That would have been Mouse, would it not?’

‘It would indeed. Mouse. Malachite mouse. Who is now either behind us or ahead of us. Who could be anywhere at all. Who could be in the Illusion Fields, where she would stay for ten thousand years.’ The ape chewed a knuckle gloomily. ‘I have the feeling that all is not what it seems to be in this place.’

Some time passed. Ahead of them and still to the left they made out a mass, extending from illimitable space below to endless space above, vaguely man-shaped, the feet dwindling away into a bottomless chasm, the head lost in mist. ‘Gerald,’ commented their co-traveler. ‘I’ve never been there.’

‘Never been to Gerald?’

‘On Gerald. Or perhaps in. I’ve never been to George, either, but I suppose I’ll have to go sometime soon. I’ve been almost everywhere else. As we go past Gerald, take a good look off to the left, slightly up, and you’ll catch a glimpse of the Dinosaur Zoo. Sometimes the express stops for a while on a siding so the passengers can enjoy the view.’

‘A whole zoo of dinosaurs,’ marveled the tortoise.

‘For dinosaurs,’ corrected their guide.

The tortoise started to say something, then thought better of it.

Gerald grew larger and larger on their left until he filled the entire sky, the top button of his striped trousers even with the tracks on which they ran. Far below, dwarfed to baby bootees by the distance, were Gerald’s shoes, which even from this height could be seen to need polishing. As the train ran on, Gerald grew smaller once more behind them.

Another structure evidenced itself before them, also to the left, a clutter, a ragtag of color and movement, a confettilike swirl, suspended as though it were cloud, except that its edges were definite and unchanging. It came closer, growing larger in their view. The train slowed and ran off on a platformed siding on which were mounted a number of coinoperated telescopes. A conductor with a change dispenser moved along the cars, passing out coins in various denominations. The company apologizes for a brief delay,’ it intoned in a funereal voice. ‘The company offers free viewing of the Dinosaur Zoo while you are waiting.’ It dropped coins into the ape’s hand and moved on. The company apologizes …’

‘Would you like to see the zoo?’ Ape asked the tortoise.

‘Go ahead,’ said the tortoise faintly. ‘I’ll wait here.’

The ape put a coin in one of the telescopes and stared through it at the distant zoo, surprised at how close and immediate it appeared. It was a rather old-fashioned zoo, with rows of cages rather than ‘habitats,’ and strolling viewers dressed mostly in striped jackets and straw hats or shawls and bonnets, depending, he supposed, upon sex. They were all of the upright type of dinosaur with heavy hind legs and kangaroolike tails which served as props when groups of them stopped, as they frequently did, to chat together or share refreshments.

After gaping at the dinosaurs for a moment, the ape turned his attention to the inhabitants of the few cages he could see clearly. One was occupied by a large furry pig and its family; another by a very large bird with legs like an elephant; two more by several dozen serpents of various colors and diameters; and finally a malachite mouse in a cage by itself.

The ape left the platform hastily, returning in moments with the tortoise. ‘Is that her?’ he asked. ‘I never saw the mouse. It looks like a malachite mouse, but there might be more than one. Or perhaps not …’

‘It does look like her,’ replied the tortoise somewhat doubtfully. ‘If she has the matchbox, we’d be sure.’

The mouse took a golden matchbox from her pocket, removed something from it, and made the unmistakable motion of throwing dice. The mouse had only time to seize the dice before she vanished.

‘That was her,’ said the tortoise slowly. ‘That was her.’

‘I don’t suppose you could see how the dice fell,’ asked the ape plaintively.

‘I’m sorry, I couldn’t,’ answered the tortoise.

This is madness,’ responded the ape in a fretful tone. ‘A kind of madness which has no equal in any world I have yet contemplated. Complete madness. It’s like trying to go up on a down escalator.’

‘Wouldn’t that be a descalator?’ Tortoise asked. ‘From the word “descend.”’

‘All on board,’ cried the conductor. ‘Close the noiseproof hoods over your seats, please. We will be passing under the Puce Polemic. All on board!’

They hastily strapped themselves back in, lowered the clear, noiseproof hoods over their heads, watched as the conductor gave the train a small push to get it started, then reconciled themselves to the dubious pleasure of the Puce Polemic and what could not but be an interesting arrival in Frab Junction.

When Mouse arrived at the Dinosaur Zoo, she was relieved to find herself behind bars. An onlooker peered at her with a large and saurian eye, one which inevitably reminded her of that vast, moonlike orb which had been about to spy her as she so precipitously left G’nop, and she cowered timorously for a moment until she realized both that the bars were stout and that the creature staring at her was a civilized being. The first observer turned away to be replaced by two bonneted saurians, and when they noticed her discomfort, they politely averted their gaze and moved on. The dinosaurs were certainly courteous. A sign just inside her own cage made it clear that the zoo cages were occupied by transients. The sign read, ‘Time of transit, Dinosaur Zoo, from three to twenty-two hours.’ Next to this notice was a map of the game with a red arrow marked, ‘You are here,’ pointing to the zoo and a number of cards which Marianne did not bother to examine.