The Hero King (37 page)

I turned away from the kiosk before I even glanced at the headlines on the papers. They started strange things going on in my throat. The words were in English, but they didn’t all register at once.

“What the hell’s happened here?” I whispered when I could get anything out.

“You happened,” Aaron said, just as softly.

GASA REPORTS ANOTHER ALIEN CONTACT

A spokesman for the Global AeroSpace Administration has announced that a GASA survey team has found another intelligent race of ETs. This makes 34 known sentient …

ASIMOV QUITS SPACE

Isaac Asimov, emeritus Barrie Professor at Boston College and pioneer in the development of metaphysical Star drives, has resigned as director of SPACE, the Special President’s Advisory Committee on Exploration …

JACKSON: NO SECOND TERM

President Jesse Jackson has announced that he will not run for a second term. Instead, he will embark on a goodwill tour to the home worlds of the members of the Federation of Sentient Races …

“Hey, you do that?” Aaron asked. He was reading over my shoulder.

“I guess I did,” I said. “I seem to have done a lot.”

“You’re even better than I thought.”

“Let’s find someplace where we can sit and read,” I said, looking around. We were jamming up pedestrian traffic.

“Someplace with food,” Lesh suggested.

* * *

We found a small diner not too far off. There was plenty of room, since we had come after the coffee-break rush and before the lunch rush. We all ordered coffee and rolls and read, passing sections of newspaper around. I skimmed mostly, checking out headlines and sometimes a paragraph or two of a story, just trying to get some feel for the extent of the changes.

The Cubs and White Sox were both—according to these hometown newspapers—even money to repeat as pennant winners, with the exciting possibility of back-to-back subway series.

A
new
John Wayne movie,
One Small Step
, was premiering in town. The Duke was playing Neil Armstrong.

The AMA—the American
Magicians
Association—was holding its annual convention at Over-Galapagos, the American geostationary city.

Applications were being taken for emigrants to fill four colony ships—54,000 people were needed.

Laurel and Hardy were costarring in a stage revival of
The Odd Couple
at the Arie Crown Theater in McCormick Place on the lakefront.

The sections of the papers went around the. table. We followed our coffee and rolls with a generous lunch. We were all still hungry, but the diner didn’t serve alcohol, so we decided to move on someplace else. When I dropped a five-dollar bill on the table for a tip, Aaron picked it up, looked at both sides, then passed it back to me.

“Look at the back, near the top,” he said.

I did. Aaron pointed out the line he wanted me to read and I almost choked.

It said, “IN GIL WE TRUST.”

    My immediate response was to look at the rest of the money I had picked up that morning. It all had the same motto, the money I had carried along from Basil and the change that the vendor at the kiosk had given me. My next reaction was an instinct to head directly for the nearest bar and proceed to get totally soused.

—But I had Joy with me and we had to find formula for the baby.

So we did that. I hailed a taxi and Aaron threw in a magic chant to get it to stop for us, and we all piled in. We cleaned one supermarket out of the brand of formula Joy wanted, and we had trouble getting it all in the cab with us for the ride back to my condo. And then we had to wait for Joy’s father to arrive, though Joy took a can of the formula mix through to Castle Basil right away. She came back to wait with us, though.

There was no booze in the condo. That had been one of the “indispensable” items I had carted through to Varay back when I was worrying that I might never get another chance to visit Chicago.

But I waited. I could have gone through to Basil for a beer, or asked Lesh to haul back a keg, but I decided to wait.

Joy’s father arrived, and we all stepped through to Castle Basil. By that time, I was ready to chug-a-lug the nearest keg of beer, but Baron Kardeen intercepted me before I got to it.

“You have someone waiting to see you, sire,” Kardeen said, his face trying without much success to hide some sort of emotion. That was totally unlike my able chamberlain.

“Who is it?”

“The shop steward for the local Guild of Cobblers’ Assistants and Domestic Workers.” Kardeen’s voice sounded more than half strangled getting that out.

“A union steward? I didn’t know that Varay
had
any unions.”

“We didn’t, before. The steward is in the throne room.”

I knew that there was something more that Kardeen wasn’t telling me, but if he didn’t want to spell it out, I wasn’t going to order him to. I trusted him too much.

“You’d better don your regalia,” Kardeen said when I turned and started to head to the throne room. I stopped and looked at him.

“You mean the swords?”

“Yes, sire. Protocol, not danger.”

“I’ll get them,” Lesh said, and he hurried off toward the stairs before I could say anything.

I nodded to Kardeen. “Okay, this last time. I’m going to start some changes, though. This is a new world, so the old traditions don’t have to stay unless we want them too. Those elf swords have got to go.” When Kardeen started to protest, I cut him off.

“I know all about that ‘they’ll come back to kill anyone who abandons them’ line. New world, new rules. And anyway, I’m not going to abandon them. I’m going to put them where they’ll be safe. I want a pit dug below the crypt. Say a twenty-foot cube. Then I want enough concrete to fill the hole. We’ll put my two elf swords right in the middle, finish filling the hole, then pave it over with stone—with bits of Basil Rock itself. Anytime I need to wear a sword, I’ll wear my own, or Vara’s.”

“As you wish, sire.”

We started moving toward the throne room again, stopping only long enough for me to strap on the rigs with the two elf swords when Lesh got back.

The throne room has two entrances, one for me and one for people seeking an audience. Kardeen went in ahead of me to make the announcement of my arrival. There were no blaring horns, just the announcement. I knew just how long to wait before I followed him in and headed for my throne.

Before I got there, I knew what Kardeen had been keeping back. My chamberlain was developing a sense of humor.

The Elflord of Xayber was standing in the middle of the throne room waiting for me. He had plenty of open space around him. No one wanted to get close. I don’t know why. Xayber didn’t look
nearly
as fierce as he had before. Now, he was only about three feet tall, and he was dressed in a cute little children’s-elf/Robin Hood sort of outfit.

But he did look mad as hell.

I knew that I had to keep a straight face, that I didn’t dare laugh, but holding it back was the hardest chore I have ever had. It made all my prior Hero-work look like a breeze.

“You are the shop steward for the Guild of Cobblers’ Assistants and Domestic Workers?” I asked when I was almost confident that I would be able to control my voice.

Xayber took a quick step forward. “As if you didn’t know that,
sire
. I won’t forget this, I assure you. I’m not totally devoid of power yet. It’s just a matter of time. I will remember this insult.”

“It wasn’t intentional, I assure you, my Lord Xayber,” I said. “I do regret the inconvenience. Did you have a particular complaint to bring on behalf of your members?”

The next fifteen minutes were the longest of my life. I knew that I absolutely
had
to hold back the laughter until I got far enough away that Xayber couldn’t possibly hear me. And holding that all in threatened to rupture something important. The fairy tale about the shoemaker and the elves had found its way into my new world.

It was just too hilarious