The eerie screaming of seagulls woke me from the verser transition madness. I lay alone like a discarded toy atop wet, black rocks overlooking a grim seashore. My stuff lay about me, and in the distance I could sense other of my things which had been stored long miles away at the detective agency I’d worked for in the metropolis of Straits City.



Reeking seaweed got me up, and moving to gather my stuff. I decided to test things as I scooped them up. My horse pistol I dry-fired, and my M-5 after I flicked a switch to shift it to subsonic(gas vents opened in the side of the barrel shunting off much of the propulsive force), I shot a hole into the narrow beach forty feet beneath me down the slanting cliff of black, jumbled rocks I stood on. My Lekostian Star Empire cyberware’s expert system plainly refused to come on.



A test of clairvoyance worked, but it was so hard like pulling taffy after you’ve done it for ten minutes already, that I passed on the other skills. It would be nice in this cold, windy place to have a pyrokinetic campfire, but I’d have to do without.



I made a small tipi of dry tinder from my backpack, and spoke a few words while aiming my hand like a gun at it. Nothing. Feeling cold and depressed, I prayed for warmth and a lifting of my spirits. Nothing again.



Lastly, I checked my body related skills. A warm-up stretch used by some minor league baseball players of the ’20’s, the Green Sox, followed by Tai Ki taught me by Master Wau Lei in an alternate Hong Kong where Communism had never existed, and I went on to a vertical handstand followed by a fingertip handstand which was almost my toughest trick. I avoided going berserk because of its aftermath and the fact that I had no enemies needing to be mangled nearby. I also knew how to shapeshift my hands into claws, but it was a skill I rarely used seeing as it was easier to just pop my fingernail extenders and have a shining three-quarter inch of titanium alloy slide out from underneath my fingernails. Lee Press-on Nails (r) had nothing on me.



So the technological skills bias was medium to upper medium(I couldn’t narrow it down without more testing), and the psi was about Earth level which means really low. Magic was flatter than a pancake; possibly even negative because a prayer for relief from depression will often work on Earth which is notoriously flat in regard to magic. My Arts Magica firestarting spell had not worked, and neither had a prayer. The body area of skills seemed to be just fine; in fact better than Earth because I could not stand on my fingertips on Earth.



I threw on my gray medieval style cloak, and my backpack, and set out hiking. The landscape opressed, but the fun of climbing and the chill, clear air had me enjoying it all the same. My goal was my other supplies.



After a bit, I noted that they seemed to be moving. A check with my innate direction sense left me beaded with chilly dew on my forehead, and the certainty that I was right.



The tide came in just as I was considering walking on the beach because the rocks had not given way to easier terrain like I expected. Mile after mile I trudged, and it seemed harder than usual to keep up my spirits. Night fell quickly, and that confirmed that I was in the extreme latitudes (Northern or Southern) if this was a globe-shaped planet which it very, very likely was. I’d heard of places where the planet was flat, or the Sun and the Solar System orbitted the Earth, but the vast majority seemed to have a basic similarity of design. It was worth assuming this was likewise as that saved energy.



Finally, I came to a thin gravel road between hills of unforgiving rock that sprouted black shapes of pine trees to overshadow the road. A few scrapes, and I got down to the road. An eerieness had me looking over my shoulder at the suddenly frightening height I had come from, but I pushed this childish fear away, and hiked on.



Another mile uphill, and unusually tired, I came to the outskirts of a small town in the hollow between a hill and a harbor. Walking down its varying cobblestoned, and bricked and gravel winding ways which never let me have a clear line of fire for a great distance, I felt heavy and sad. Dead flowers nearly strangled the only live one in a box hung by a window, and the living one smelt like irises in a horrid, cloying scent. Trash floated like ghosts in the cold wind and flung itself violently down the occasional wind tunnel formed by the taller three story houses. If anything, it seemed colder in a still, bone-chilling, and merciless way inside the city than outside.



It occurred to me that such trash might well be a paper, and I could use it to find data, but now none was to be found now that I wanted trash.



A spot of light coincided with my scriff sense, and so gladly I headed toward it. The low murmur of exclusive conversation halted when I stepped into the door of the bar-restauraunt. The Kraken was filled with hard men in black and brown felt jackets and hand-knitted caps, and men in thinner clothes who looked worn-down, and a few woman serving, and a few with family who looked pious and respectable. In the middle of the room, a bulky man with a sherrif’s badge and gun conversed with a couple other notable sorts, a tall, thin man with burning eyes, and an outlandishly overweight man in a fine black broadcloths suit. Nearby another nervous and young fellow hovered intensely curious he sketched in his notebook with a fervid energy alien to the room which seemed composed of hard, metallic sorts of people. The waitresses were copper and easily bent, and the fishermen were wrought iron with the pious being brittle cast iron, and the inner circle being steel.



I had to walk up to a waitress even though I was in plain view of the whole, nearly filled room, and so I did, and grunted.

“What?” She asked hostilly looking blank on what I could want.

“Could I have a table, a menu, some Coca-cola?”

“Well, yes.” She said reluctantly after pausing to see if there was any reason she could think of to deny my request. I resisted the impulse to bellow at her. I just gritted my teeth.



“Coke, that’s bad stuff. Why don’t you know it has cocaine in it?” The sherrif said with false bonhomie which still felt like warmth in this room. The fireplace at each end of the long box-like room labored hard, but still it was too cool where I stood by the door.

“Cocaine isn’t bad; its got a lot of good medicinal properties, begging your pardon, Sherrif.” The sketcher in the notebook said.



“Ayup.” A few said, and I placed myself on the Northeastern coast of America.



“I know some of you use it to soothe your aches, and that’s okay, but some of those city folks and them Southerners drink it in all the time.” The sherrif placated, and virtuous nods of self-approval rippled around the room.



“Its just like me using laudanum to keep my little girl from crying at night because she’s scared of the Nixie. You only use it if you need it.” Someone in the crowd said with an air of pride at their restraint and good judgement. I ground my teeth.



Laudanum for children and cocaine instead of aspirin and IcyHot (r)!! Are these people nuts? My historical knowledge kicked in, and I remembered that laudanum had been used to get children to sleep. Considering the thirteen child family possible back then, and the way moderns doped their boys with Ritalin, I could maybe understand it, but I did not like it one bit.



I walked past the middle table set on a raised platform six inches above the floor. Someone said something to me, but seeing my plasma cannon, and most of my other stuff laying there spread out on the Queen Anne table caused me to gulp.



“I say stranger, anybody home, that’s a mighty peculiar cloak you got there.” The banker said as he knocked his knuckles on my scalp. The crowd laughed, and I barely restrained the snarl, and the wrist grab that would have flung the fat cat onto the floor. The sherrif noted my irritation, and eyed me more closely.



“Don’t mess with the do.” I said taking refuge in obscurity. Across the table the sketcher jolted, and looked up at me.



“What’s this stuff?” I asked pointing at my items. I checked to make sure they were not about to do anything really silly that would blow themselves up, or summon a demon or rend space-time. Most of the items required proper knowledge to use, or had safeguards. I did see an incendiary grenade laying there. Pull its pin, and very few of the people in the room were getting out alive. I gulped.



“This is obviously a weapon, a gun of some type. I think a blunderbuss, its so big.” The sherrif patted my plasma cannon which did indeed look weaponish.

“I’m not sure what it is,” The sketcher said, “My Astrological Studies revealed the Coming of this Great Moment of Change, but I think its some sort of Talisman of the Outer Dark, and we should destroy it.” The sketcher really did talk that way when he got going. That melodrama plus the fact that I knew the magic was flat or subzero let me know he was a charlatan or a deluded flake.

“We should Destroy It.” He finished.



I considered the likely consequences of opening a magnetic bottle containing half-a-million degree plasma by some Maine fishermen armed with axes if they managed to disengage the safety locks which they might. You’d be able to see the flash from space.



“No, its obviously valuable.” The banker said running a covetous hand over the smooth metal curves of my gun. “A genuine piece of art suited to add to my collection, Sherriff?”



The sherrif nodded. I pointed out the grenade, and the sherrif agreed with me.

“It looks like one of Kaiser Bill’s potato mashers to me, only different. Not something to play with.” The sherrif said, and then looked studyingly at me. How did I know about this, he wondered.



I walked on, and chose a booth near the fire, but not right next to the fire like my waitress wanted to give me. I ignored her huffiness.



Eating my clam chowder and drinking my black coffee, I considered. I really needed to get my stuff back, but the authorities were going to want proof, and what proof I had I did not want to share. Besides, I did not want to attract attention. That might be a lost cause, I decided as I looked around the room of people obviously related to each other, and with a preponderance of dark, lanky hair to contrast with my blonde-brown, but I could choose to be the Stranger rather than the Stranger with Really Odd and Frightening yet Valuable Stuff. I might have to just leave it until I versed out of here, and then hope it came with me.



The charlatan, the sketcher, came over, and seated himself with some trepidation across from me.



“This is an Important Moment in my Studies of the Unexplained and the Inexplicable. I have finally placed my hands on items that prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Alien Creatures reside Here and Now.”



I made some polite noise, and the waitress came to refill my bowl. The sudden quiet of my companion made me aware of how thin he was, and that he did not seem to have a seat other than across from me. Probably, being a researcher into Things Unknown (drat, he had me doing it now) did not pay too well.



“Some for my friend as well.”



“You got money?” She asked harshly, and I again noted to myself the severe need to replenish my monetary resources. My pirate treasure was gone, except for the pearls which were sitting on the table in front of the sherriff. I pulled a string on the inside of my cloak, and extracted an ounce stick of gold. I had one more there, and some other bits of currency and silver, and a few other hide-outs, but I was heading toward practically broke. I doubted my twenty-five hundred in Union of Yukonia plastic bills would get me far here and now.



The gold stick I produced, and waved it in front of her too eager hands. She hoped to take the whole thing for the meal.



The banker was brought over, and he was quite willing to give me, at a discount as he acknowledged, a hundred gold redeemable bills backed by the full faith and credit of the United States of America and redeemable for three-fourths of an ounce of gold anywhere in the world. He said this all in a rolling and fruity voice that extolled the virtues of money and the holder of the money. In the banker’s eyes, I had been upgraded from Unimportant Stranger to Rich Man. And everybody knows how close the Rich are to God’s throne, or at least, so the banker thought.



I gave the waitress more than she deserved, and with shining eyes she whispered in Sketcher’s ear about going out for a date later in the week. There was more to the surly waitress than I thought if she dated someone her father probably disaproved of. We had more than enough food and service for the rest of the night.



I let the Sketcher entertain me with his wild tales which always happened to a friend of a friend who broke a vow of silence on his deathbed, or were recounted in a book destroyed in a fire, or were the reports of a raving madman.



Finally, full of chowder and hot bread and jam, and sugared coffee(I’d finally rated sugar), he looked disapointed at me.



“You don’t believe me. I thought you were more open-minded than the rest. You don’t see that there is magic in the world.”



“I’m sorry friend. At one time, yes there probably was magic.” I thought back to stories of people who had lived in a world for centuries and seen the amount of magic possible go down as the technological possibilities went up. I’d taken a class on this, in part, at an alternate Menlo Park run as a college by versers, extradimensionals.



“But not now. You’d be better off writing stories, or researching archeology.”



Hurt and sad he looked at me for a long moment.



“Okay, I’ve seen things. I’ve told no one else this, not even my girlfriend.” He whispered, and I felt sorry for him. He was not a charlatan, but a deluded flake. Magic did not work in this world. And here, I was, a near-complete stranger who had offered him a polite hearing and some food, and he was telling me his greatest secret.



“Seen things with the help of some pharmaceutical aids?” I inquired in a soft voice with the gentleness of a scalpel. He paled as if I had slapped him, and then looked indignant.



“Fine. Goodnight, Mr. Tadeusz.” He stood up, and nodded with stiff courtesy as I wished for some word to take the pain away, but still bring him back to reality. He walked out. I did not see the waitress after that.



After a while, it began to occur to me that I might have been too rough on the kid. If I closed off his last hope, then he might do something horrible. Hurriedly, I scraped up the last of my chowder, and arranged for a room in a nearby boarding house.



A scream from far away and outside jolted me, and to a lesser extent nearly everyone in the room. Heading to the door, I was intercepted by the sherriff.



“It’s just the Nixie, the wind and the water have carved some really intricate holes in the rocks out by Harbor Point. Purely natural, and its not human although it sure sounds like it.” The sherrif’s hand and his mass blocked my path, and his explanation relaxed my urgency a bit. Still I needed to go out into the dark.



“I’m still a bit worried.” I said and the people nearby chuckled at my confession of cowardice, or so they saw it. Tilting my head back toward my table, I tried to signal my fears about the kid.



“Alright, we can take a walk outside. Look around. Ease your worries.” The sherriff said, and we walked outside where he asked me what was the matter.



“I was a little hard on the kid with the notebook. Trying to bring him back to Earth. I’m afraid he might do something unthinkable.”



“I heard you, and believe me, many others have tried, and been far harsher, but sure let’s take a look.”



We walked and the sherrif gave me the usual “this is a small town, and strangers need to get accustomed to its ways” speech. We passed a shrieking bedlam, a small house at the north edge of town, from which the most awful cries were heard. I shuddered remembering my time in a more humane mental asylum which had still been a horror.



Beyond, and up a muddy track in between dense pines, we came to a lighted house of clapboard, and knocked on the door. The sherrif kept his hand on his gun as we stood on the porch.



“The city folk don’t believe it, but I think there’s wolves, and I know there’s bears in the Darkwood.”



The Darkwood, curious name for it, I thought, and then the door opened to show a welcoming Sketcher. He brought us in and showed us his astrological studies. Evidently, he had forgiven me, even if I was now down-rated from Open-minded Searcher to Nice Guy.



“I’ve just discovered something new. Look.” He showed us his proof that something he called the Hero of the Thousand Masks would come and fight/transform Pisces. But his new theory smacked strongly of making it up to fit the facts, and it explained nothing except after being interpreted through the use of dozens of books in a highly obscure fashion.



We left, and the sherriff chuckled.



“Smarter than a whip, no doubt, and not fit to be tossed in bedlam either, but not quite right in the head is he? But a nice kid for all that, and he sure can talk your ear off which is a nice change from all my fishermen who think ‘Ayup’ is an explanation.”



We walked past bedlam again and I heard shrieks about the pieces of the world being broken and shattered. End of the world stuff. I’d been at the end of a couple of worlds, and usually its either a quietly awesome thing, or pure chaos. These guys seemed to expect pure chaos and the triumph of evil.



My bed in the boarding house was filled with bugs, and so I slept in the unheated room on my cloak on the tongue and groove floor. I went downstairs to the communal table, and felt like being monosylabbic myself.



But the hostess bustled in, all excited, and told us bachelors, her boarders, the latest news.



“Did you hear? The waitress whose fond of that kid with the notebook was found near dead this morning near the Nixies. The sherriff is arresting the kid for taking her out there which is against town law because its not safe. If she dies, it may be manslaughter.”



She served the rest with bubbly enthusiasm over the fate of “that worthless boy”, and I forced myself to eat the lumpy porridge, needing the strength.



Tadeusz