“That's a good girl,” I said, stepping forward and making reassuring clucking noises. She quivered a bit but held her
ground. Turning her head to follow me as I approached. A drop of saliva formed on a protruding, sharp tusk, then dripped to the ground.
“There, there,” I murmured. “Little Jimmy doesn't hurt porcuswine. Little Jimmy
loves
porcuswine.”
Reaching down I brushed a handful of quills slowly aside between her ears, reached out and prodded with the end of the branch, then rubbed it strongly through the thick bristles.
Her eyes were half-closed as she burbled contentedly.
“Porcuswine just love to be scratched behind the earsâthey can't reach the spot themselves.”
“How do you know about these terrible creatures?”
“Terrible? Never! Companions to mankind in his quest to the stars. You should read your galactic history more closely. Read about the strange beasts and deadly creatures that were waiting for the first settlers. Monsters that could eat a cow in a single bite. They learned fear from the faithful porcuswine, let me tell you. An artificial genetic mutation between giant pigs and deadly porcupine. Tusks and hooves to attack, spines to defend. Loyal, faithful and destructive when needs be.”
“Good pork chops too?”
“Indeedâbut we don't speak about that in their presence. I was raised on a farm and let me tell you, my only friends were our herd of porcuswine. Ahh, here's the boar now!”
I shouted joyous greeting to the immense and deadly form that lumbered out of the forest. He glared at me with red and swiney eyes. Grunted aloud with pleasure as the end of my stick scratched and scratched at his hide. I grunted with the effortâand pleasure as well.
“Where did they come from?” Sybil asked.
“The forest,” I said scratching away.
“That's not what I mean. What kind of a place is this with volcanoes, lava flows, gravity wavesâand these creatures?”
“A planet that had to have been settled by mankind. We'll find out soon enough. But first let us follow the pigpaths into the forest and find some water. Drink first, cogitate later.”
“Agreed,” she said leading the way. I followed her and our
newfound porcine friends followed me. Grunting expectantly for more delicious scratching attention. We lost them only when the path led through a clearing surrounded by storoak trees. The boar slammed his tusks into the trunk of one heavy-laden tree and shook it mercilessly. Acorns as big as my head rained down and the little family munched on them happily.
We emerged from the forest into a water meadow that had been stirred up muddily by sharp hooves. It bordered a small lake. The far side was shielded in mist that obscured any details. We left the muddy path and found a shelf of rock that led to the water. Sat at the water's edge and drank cupped handfuls of the clear and cool water until we had drunk our fill.
“Find a few dry sticks, rub them together and it could be pork for dinner,” Sybil said, smacking her lips.
“Never! They're friends.” My stomach rumbled enticingly. “Well maybe later, much later. And only if we can't find another source of food. I think a little exploring is in order. This isâor wasâa settled world. Mankind took the mutated porcuswine and storoak to the stars. There should be farms here.”
“I wouldn't even know what one looked like. I was a city girl, or rather a small-town girl. Food was something that you bought in the shop. My mother and fatherâeveryone thereâworked at teleconferencing or programming or computing or whatever. No factories, no pollution, that sort of thing was confined to the distant robot construction sites. Our town was just low and ordinary, just a lot of landscaped buildings and green parks. Utterly and totally boring.”
I squinted across the lake where the mist appeared to be clearing. I pointed.
“Like that place over there?”
“WHAT PLACE?” SHE ASKED, STANDING and shielding her eyes with her hand. I pointed in silence.
“Seen one, you've seen them all,” she muttered, frowning. “They must be factory-produced, stamped out like cereal packages. Fold the thing and glue it and plop it down, hook up the electricity and it starts to work. I couldn't even bear to go to school in Hometownâthat is really what it was really called, would you believe it? I graduated first place in my kiddy class, got a scholarship, went away to school and never came back. Knocked around a bit, got involved with police work, liked it. Then I was recruited by the Special Corps and the rest is history.”
“Do you want to take a look at this hometown?”
“No, I do not.”
“It might be funâand there should be food there. Unless you want a pork roast so badly that you want to kill a porcuswine with your bare hands?”
“No jokes, please. We'll take a look.”
It was not a large lake and the walk was a short one. Sybil, who had started out in good spirits, grew quieter and quieter as we approached the low buildings. She finally stopped.
“No,” she said firmly.
“No, what?”
“No it's not a place I really want to visit. They all look exactly alike, I told you, central design, central manufacture. Plug the thing in and watch it go to work. I hated my childhood.”
“Didn't we all? But the porcuswine, they were the best part of it. Probably the only part that I remember with any feeling. Now let's go see if we can find a McSwineys and get a sandwich in this bijou townlet.”
There was nothing moving in the streets or the buildings ahead. A single road came out of the hamlet and ended abruptly in the grass. There was a billboard sign of some kind beside it, but it was end on and we couldn't read it until we got closer. We walked at an angle as we approached so we could see what it said. Sybil stopped suddenly and clasped her hands so tightly together that her knuckles turned white. Her eyes were closed.
“Read it,” she said.
“I did.”
“What does it say?”
“Just a coincidence ⦔
Her eyes snapped open and she bit out the words. “Do you believe that? What does it say?”
“It reads, in serifed uppercase red letters on a white foreground, it reads ⦔
“âWelcome to Hometown.' Are we mad or is this whole planet mad?”
“Neither.” I sat down and pulled a blade of grass free, chewed on it. “Something is happening here. Just what we have yet to discover.”
“And we are going to discover what by sitting on our chunks and chewing grass.”
She was angry nowâwhich was much better than being frightened or depressed. I smiled sweetly and patted the grass beside me. “To action, then. You sit and chew the grass while I scout out the scene. Sit!”
She sat. Because of the force of my personalityâor because
she was still tired. I climbed to my feet creakily and wearily and strolled forward into Hometown.
Found out everything I needed to know in a very short time and went back to join her sitting and chewing.
“Strangest thing I have ever seen,” I said.
“Jimâdon't torture me!”
“Sorry. Didn't mean toâjust trying to come to grips with this particular reality. Firstly, the town is empty. No people, dogs, cars, kids. Anything. One of the reasons that it is empty is that everything seems to be in one lump. As though it was made that way. The doorhandles don't turn and the doors themselves appear to be part of the wall. The same with the windows. And you can't look in. Or rather it looks like you're looking in but what is inside is really in the glass of the window. And nothing really seems right or complete. It is more like an idea of Hometown instead of being Hometown itself.”
She shook her head. “I have no idea of what you are talking about.”
“Don't worry! I'm not so sure myself. I'm just trying to pick my way through a number of very strange occurrences. We arrived here in a sort of a cave. With volcanoes and lava streams and no grass or anything else.” I glanced up at the bloated red sun and pointed. “At least the sun is the same. So we went for a walk and found green grass and porcuswine, the porcuswine of my youth.”
“And the Hometown of mine. It has to mean something ⦔
“It does!” I jumped to my feet and paced back and forth in a brain-cudgeling pace. “Slakey knew where he was sending us and it wasn't to Heaven he said. So he must have been here before. Not quite Heaven, that's what he said. Maybe he thought he was sending us to Hell. And the spot where we arrived was very Hellish what with the red creature, the volcanoes and lava and everything. Could it have been Hellish because he expected it to be? Because this Hell is his idea of Hell?”
“You lead, Jimâbut I just can't follow you.”
“I don't blame you, because the idea is too preposterous. We know that someplace named Heaven exists someplace, somewhere. If there is one place there could be others. This is one of the others. With certain unusual properties.”
“Like what?”
“Like you see what you expect to see. Let us say this planet or whatever it is was a place that was just a possibility of a placeâuntil Slakey arrived. Then it became the place he was expecting to find. Maybe the red sun got him thinking about Hell. And the more he thought the more Hellish it became. Makes good sense.”
“It certainly does not! That's about the most flakey theory I have ever heard.”
“You bet it isâand more than that. Absolutely impossible. But we are here, aren't we?”
“Living in another man's Hell?”
“Yes. We did that when we first came here. But we didn't like it and wanted to leave it. I remember thinking that the barren, volcanic world was just about the opposite of the one where I grew up ⦠.”
It was my turn to wonder if this whole thing wasn't just institutionalized madness. But Sybil was more practical.
“All right thenâlet us say that was what happened. We arrived in this Hellish place because Slakey had come here first and everythingâwhat can we sayâlived up to his devilish expectations. We didn't like it and you wished very strongly we weren't there but in a place with a better climate. You got very angry about that, which may have helped shaped what we wanted to see. Then we walked on and came to it. We drank, but we were still hungry. Rather I was, so much so I must have thought of my earliest gustatory delights. Which just happened to be in Hometown. Given that all this is trueâwhat do we do next?”
“The only thing that we can do. Go back to Hell.”
“Why?”
“Because that is where we came inâand where we must be if we want to get out. Slakey is the only one that knows how to
pass between these places. And another thing ⦔ My voice was suddenly grim.
“What, Jim? What is it?”
“Just the sobering thought that Angelina may have been sent to this place before we were dispatched. If so, we won't find her in my youth or your youth. She would have to be in Slakey's particular Hell.”
“Right,” she said, standing and brushing the grass from her dress. “If we are thirsty we can always find our way back here. If we are hungryâ”
“Please save that thought for awhile. One step at a time.”
“Of course. Shall we go?”
We retraced our steps back through the field and into the forest. A distant, happy grunting cheered me up a good deal. As long as there were porcuswine in existence this galaxy would not be that bad a place. Out of the trees and across the field of grass. That grew sparser and shorter until it disappeared. Volcanic soil again and more than a whiff of sulfur about. The mounds were getting higher as we walked and we labored to climb an even higher one. When we reached the summit we had a clear view of a smoking volcano. It appeared to be the first of very many. And behind it the red sun, which was hovering just above the horizon.
The dunes ended in foothills of cracked and crumbled stone. Red of course. The cleft of a small canyon cut into them and we went that way. A lot easier than climbing another hill. We both heard the scratching sound at the same time; we stopped.
“Wait here,” I whispered. “I'll see what it is.”
“I go with you, diGriz. We are in this togetherâall the way.”
She was right of course. I nodded and touched my finger to my lips. We went on, as slowly and silently as we could. The scratching grew louderâthen stopped. We stopped as well. There was a slurping wet sound from close by, then the scratching started again. We crept forward and looked.
A man was standing on tiptoes, reaching above his head with a shard of rock, scratching at something gray on the cliff
face. A piece of it came away and he jammed it into his mouth and began chewing noisily.
This was most interesting. Even more interesting was the fact that he was bright red. His only garment a pair of ancient faded trousers with most of the legs torn off. There was obviously a hole in the seat of these ragged shorts because his red tail emerged from them.
That was when he saw us. Turned in an instant and gaped open a damp mouth with broken black teethâthen hurled the piece of rock in our direction. We ducked as the stone clattered into the stone wall close by. In that instant he was gone, swarming up the sloping cliff face with amazing agility, vanishing over the rim above.
“Red ⦔ Sybil said.
“Very red. Did you notice the little red horns on his forehead?”
“Hard to miss. Shall we go see what he was doing?”
“Doingâand eating.”
I picked up a sharp fragment of stone and went over to the spot where he had been working. There was a gray and rubbery looking growth protruding from a crevice in the canyon wall. I was taller than our rosy friend and could easily reach it; sliced and chopped at it until a piece fell free.
“What is it?” Sybil asked.
“No idea. Vegetable not animal I imagine. And we did see him chewing it. Want a bite?”
“I wouldn't think of depriving you.”
It tasted very gray and slimy, and was very, very chewy. With all the taste and texture of a plastic bag. But it was wet. I swallowed and a piece went down. And stayed down. My stomach rumbled a long complaint.
“Try some,” I said. “It's pretty foul but it has water in it and maybe some food value.” I tore off a chunk and held it out. Very suspiciously she put it into her mouth. I looked upâjumped and grabbed her and pushed her aside.
A boulder thudded into the spot where we had been standing.
“Angry at losing his dinner,” I said. “Let's move out away from the rocks, where we can see what's happening.”
We had a quick glimpse of him climbing higher still and finally moving out of sight.
“You stay here,” I said. “Keep an eye out for Big Red. I'll get more of this gunge.”
The sun did not seem to be appreciably higher in the sky when we had finished our meal. Stomachs full enough, and thirst slaked for the moment, we rested in the shade because the day was growing measurably warmer.
“Not good, but filling,” Sybil said, working with her fingernail to dislodge a gristly bit that had lodged between her teeth. When it came free she looked at it disparagingly, then dropped it to the ground. “Any idea what we do next?”
“Put our brains into gear for starters. Since we woke up in this place we have been stumbling from one near-disaster to another. Let's check off what we know.”
“Firstly,” she said, “we've gone to Slakey's version of Hell. We'll call it that until we learn better. We are in another placeâon another planetâor we have gone mad.”
“I can't accept that last. We
are
someplace else. We know that machines are involved in thisâbecause they were carefully destroyed in the building on Lussuoso. Angelina was sent someplace from that temple. We were sent someplace from the one on Vulkann. We know that for certainâand we know something even more important. A return trip is possible. You went to Heaven and came back. And we must consider the possibility that Angelina could have come here before us.”
“Which means that we need some intelligenceâin the military use of the word.”
“You bet. Which in turn means we have to find Big Red with the horns and tail and find out all that he knows. About Angelina, about this place, how heâand weâgot here. And how we are going to leave ⦔
A sound intruded, a soft, shuffling sound that grew slowly louder. Coming up the canyon floor towards us. Then we could hear the susurration of muttered voices.
“Peopleâ” I said as our recently departed devilish friend walked into view. He was followed by a small group of companions, at least twelve of them. Men and women. All bright red. All carrying sharp rocks. I had never seen any of them beforeâand one glance told me that Angelina was not in this motley crowd. They stopped when they saw usâthen started forward when their leader waved them on.