A BARNSTORMER IN OZ by Philip José Farmer Read online

  “Only?”

  Her blue eyes were wide; her mouth open.

  “I mean that it’s not from policy. It...”

  He stopped. He did not want to be sidetracked into this kind of conversation.

  “What happens to the male?”

  “He’s sterilized.”

  “What if he commits rape?”

  The case was thoroughly investigated to make sure of the circumstances in which the crime occurred. Whatever the situation, even if the woman was partly at fault, the male was sterilized. But a man who’d been seduced suffered no other judicial punishment. Where the man had no excuse at all, he was killed.

  “How?”

  “His head is chopped off.”

  “What’s the punishment for other crimes?”

  If what she said was true, crime was much less frequent here. Maybe that was because of the smallness and closeness of most communities.

  Murder and rape and illegal fatherhood were capital crimes. So was the attempted assassination of the ruler. Other offenses seemed to bring light sentences—from his viewpoint, anyway.

  Hank was impressed by the comparatively small number of insane and by the therapy they got. But then these people could afford to treat the insane well because of their rareness. However, it said much for their mental health that insanity was so rare.

  “But if an unexpected pregnancy occurs, does that mean that someone who might have been allowed a baby has to do without?”

  “No. The unscheduled baby is given to the woman who would have been scheduled to have one of her own.”

  “That seems cruel to both the mother who has to give up her child and to the woman who can’t then bear her own.”

  “Life is a compromise,” Lamblo said. “Give and take. What hurts one blesses another—perhaps. In any case, the laws try to make sure that there’s not too much hurt for some and too many blessings for others. The system isn’t perfect. Is yours nearly as good? Better?”

  Hank did not reply.

  He decided he wanted to return to his suite, take a shower, drink some booze, do some thinking. Lamblo had purchased a bottle of this world’s equivalent of Scotch. It had been imported from Gillikinland because Quadlingland did not have the environmental requirements for making it. Since trade between these countries was very limited, the price was very high.

  “The Queen is paying for it,” Lamblo said. “But I imagine that she’ll get from you what you owe her for it. In one way or another.”

  Much of the business was done by barter, but there were coins of various denominations. Gold and silver, being so common, were not the bases of the money system. Instead, copper and nickel were used.

  They started walking toward Lamblo’s parked chariot. On the way, Hank wondered what means were used to keep the domestic nonhuman population down. Lamblo said that they, too, used the contraceptive liquids.

  Hank said, “But what about the wild animals?”

  “They eat each other,” she said, shuddering.

  Hank dropped behind to look at some tobacco on a stand. But he forgot about that because of the entrancing swing of Lamblo’s hips. Holy smoke! Now there was something that was the same on both worlds. And it had been so long, far too long...

  Lamblo turned when she became aware he was no longer with her. She must have read his expression. She smiled knowingly, and she walked back to him.

  “Well, Handsome Giant?”

  He cleared his throat.

  “Well, ah, I was just thinking. Why haven’t I been given this sterilizing drink?”

  “Because you’ve been a prisoner until today. However, the queen has ordered me to put in a supply for you and to make sure that you drink it daily.”

  “Yes?” he said, studying her.

  “You’ll get it as soon as you return to your rooms.”

  “Why would I need it?” he said. He waved a hand to indicate the tiny people around them. “I’m so big. It seems impossible.”

  She burst out laughing.

  “Just how much experience have you had with women?”

  His face warmed.

  “Plenty.”

  “I don’t really doubt that, magla. But they must all have been giantesses. I assure you that little women have no trouble with big men.”

  How would you know? He did not voice the thought; it would have been indiscreet.

  She touched the back of his hand with a finger, an exquisite finger, a child’s. The contact made tiny lightning balls roll over him and through him. “Come,” she said in a suddenly husky voice.

  She turned and walked to the chariot. He followed her and got into the vehicle. After making sure that he was holding the front rail, she told the two moose to return to the castle as quickly as possible. They started trotting, but one of them turned his head and said, “You promised we could have the rest of the day off.”

  Lamblo laughed and said, “Very well. But you talk too much.”

  Hank raised his eyebrows. Had she planned this? Well, what if she had?

  He scarcely noticed anything during the trip back. When they were in his apartment, Lamblo at once went to a table on which was a bottle of red-purple fluid, the spermatocide. She opened it, saying, “The other bottles will be in the chest of drawers by your bed.”

  She poured out about six ounces into a stone cup carved into a gargoyle face. Hank took it by the big flaring ears and gulped the stuff down. It tasted like a mixture of walnuts and cranberry juice, and something unidentifiable, sharp yet pleasant.

  “It’ll take full effect in fifteen minutes,” Lamblo said.

  He belched but did not excuse himself. Quadling custom did not require that. Neither did flatulence unless it occurred in the presence of the queen.

  Lamblo sat down in the chair used by the instructors. She started to take off a calf-length boot. “I’ll take a bath.”

  “Must you?”

  She removed the other boot and then her socks.

  “Himin! (Heavens!) My feet are so dirty!”

  “It’s good clean dirt,” he said thickly.

  She rose and unbuttoned her jacket. “Very well.”

  “It’s been so long that it won’t take long,” he said. “The first time.”

  She smiled. “Your conference with Little Mother isn’t until after breakfast.”

  Hank hated himself at that moment, though not overly much. He wished that it was Glinda, not Lamblo, standing before him.

  That’s not fair to her, he thought. But when had anybody anywhere ever been fair in this situation?

  Lamblo’s eyes widened.

  “You are indeed a giant, magla.”

  Hank had always had to have several cups of coffee before breakfast. It was the only way to start the day. He was out of luck here. He could not, however, be grumpy with Lamblo. After their long night, he’d have been a real heel to treat her churlishly. So he forced himself to smile and to chat away lightly, though he seldom spoke a word until coffee had humanized him.

  He drank the apple juice instead of the warm milk—he couldn’t down that so early—and he ate his egg omelette mixed with walnuts, his delicious brown bread and butter and jam, and slices of a melon. The latter must be indigenous; it tasted different from any he’d ever had.

  Oh, God, for coffee and orange juice and bacon in the morning! And for roast beef and ham and chicken and turkey and mashed potatoes, and tomatoes in his salad, and bananas and peanut butter! At least, he had apples. The ancient Goths had been introduced to the apple tree by the Romans, and seedlings had been brought into this world by the ancestors of the Amariikians. They had also brought in lettuce. Which meant that the ancestors were probably Ostrogoths, East European or maybe even Asia Minor tribes. Lettuce had not been grown in Western Europe until the Middle Ages.

  After eating, they shared a pipe, and then she said that she had to report for duty.

  She indicated the bottle of afseth. “Don’t forget to take it. You should get in the habit of drinking it
as soon as you get out of bed. If you should forget it, the previous dosage will keep you sterile for from three to four days. But you shouldn’t take a chance.”

  “Yes, dear.”

  She laughed and kissed him warmly for a long time.

  “Will I see you soon?” he said after she had pushed herself away.

  “Tonight. I’ll be here—unless the queen has something for me to do. She might. There’s the Gillikin crisis, and...”

  “Crisis?”

  “The queen will tell you all about it. So long, lover.”

  She was delightful. Fun. Passionate. He was very fond of her, but he was not in love with her. From her attitude, he judged that he was not supposed to be. She was on a sexual lark, and she was not thinking about marrying him. Or, if she was, she was wise enough not to mention it.

  The use of the afseth drink had had an effect on mores similar to the introduction of the automobile and the cheap condom in the United States. Actually, its effect had been much greater because it had been a part of this society for a thousand years. It had freed men and women in many respects, though Hank wasn’t sure that he approved of some of these. The young adults were expected to have as many sexual partners as they wanted. But, once they were married, they were to be faithful to their spouses. Whether the expectations were more lived up to here than on Earth, Hank didn’t know.

  These people, though pygmies, were not the simplified childlike characters of Baum’s Oz book. That was essentially a moral fable cast in a fairy land. His Dorothy had been looking for a way to get home, his Cowardly Lion had wanted courage, his Tin Woodman had desired a heart, his Scarecrow had wished for brains. They had gone through many adventures to get to the man who was supposed to be able to give them what they wished for. But the Wizard of Oz, though a humbug, had seen that three of them already had what they sought. Unable to convince them of that, he gave the Lion a drink which he said was liquid courage, gave the Tin Woodman a velvet heart stuffed with sawdust, and gave the Scarecrow brains of bran mixed with pins. These material tokens were not magical, but they gave the three the assurance that they had what they thought they had lacked. The Wizard’s magic was based on psychology only, but the shrewd old circus showman knew what he was doing.

  Dorothy had been wearing something which could have gotten her home shortly after she had arrived in Munchkinland. This was the pair of silver shoes she had taken from the dead and dried-away Witch of the East. The Wizard had not known that. It was Glinda who, at the end of Dorothy’s odyssey, had told her that.

  The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was a children’s classic. And it could also delight and inform adults whose imagination had not been slain by the dragons of maturity.

  Dorothy had outlined her story to Baum. It had been simple and swift enough then, but Baum had reduced and speeded it up even more. He was a story-teller artist who left out what he did not think suitable for a young child’s tale, and he had added touches here and there that were not in Dorothy’s narrative. He was not reporting or writing history even if he did later adopt the title of “Royal Historian of Oz” while writing the series.

  Nevertheless, there were things in it which children would skate over while reading the fascinating adventures. There was death in Oz, though there were no gory details, and Baum was right in being sparing of them. The Tin Woodman chopped off the head of a wildcat chasing the Queen of the Mice. Two bear-bodied, tiger-headed Kalidahs were smashed to death when they fell off a log bridge chopped off by the Tin Woodman. The Woodman also killed forty wolves with an axe. The Cowardly Lion sneaked off at night to get something to eat, and Dorothy did not ask him what his food had been. She did tremble for the deer.

  Dorothy saw a tiny baby, which meant that there was birth and, therefore, copulation and conception. And all that these implied.

  There was, even in Baum’s Oz, hate and lust for power and hunger and terror and oppression and birth and death.

  Baum had intended to write no more of Oz than the first book. His great ambition was to be the creator of the truly American fairy tale. His fairies and brownies and sentient animals would be indigenous, owing little to the European.

  But his readers, the American children, wanted more of Oz. And, since the demand was high and he needed the money, he wrote a sequel, The Marvelous Land of Oz. This was almost entirely fictional, though he did use some names and persons Dorothy had mentioned. And he created those wonderful characters, Jack Pumpkinhead. the Gump, the Wooden Sawhorse, the Wogglebug, and Ozma, the long hidden and true queen of Oz.

  His readers were delighted and asked for more.

  Though Baum tried to ignore them, he could not. Like A. Conan Doyle, he found that what he regarded as hackwork was really the jewel in the crown—as far as his readers were concerned. Doyle made his fortune and his reputation from Sherlock Holmes, though he tried, unsuccessfully, to kill him off so he could get back to his beloved historical novels. Baum worked at the genuine American fairy tale as long as he could, but then he did what he must. He ended up writing fourteen in the series.

  During the course of this, he decided to make Oz as Utopian as possible. Thus, in his later books, no one could die in Oz nor would anyone grow old. Babies would remain babies forever; people who were old when the great fairy queen Lurline cast her spell on Oz would grow no older.

  Even if a person were cut into little pieces, the pieces would still live.

  Baum forgot about this from time to time, and his later Oz books contained passing references indicating that there was a possibility of death in that land.

  Hank had not noticed the many discrepancies in the series when he was very young. He had liked the idea that no one could die, but, when he got older, he saw that this took much of the tension from the adventures. And, when he became a young man, he realized that a world in which babies remained babies and there was no death, and, by implication, no birth either, was a horrible world.

  Still, he could turn off his critical faculties and enjoy the books as he had when a child. Become, during the reading, a child again.

  Here, though, he was in the nonfictional world. He could not close a page when he was tired of reading it and walk off. Reality was a novel that kept batting its pages hard against you. You had to read on and on until you died. Even sleep was no refuge; your mind presented other books, even more plotless and footnoted and nonsensical and filled with misprints and dropped sentences than what you read while awake.

  Hank put on his barnstormer outfit and then studied the sheet of paper on which he had printed the twenty-eight letters of the Quadling alphabet and the symbols he’d made up to indicate their pronunciation.

  He spent an hour reading a child’s primer. Then he went to the bathroom, coming out just as a servant came for him. He was led this time into a large room near the throne room. Glinda, clad in a pure white robe but uncrowned, sat in a chair before an oak table. The table legs were carved like sphinx-faces.

  There was a long line before her, petitioners of various sorts, he supposed. But he did not have to wait. The servant conducted him by the people and animals. If they resented his being passed by them, they did not show it. They stared at him openly, as the natives did everywhere. But many smiled, and some even said, “Goth morn!”

  They were noisy, too, not silent in the queen’s presence as he had expected. Sometimes, a short phrase or a complete sentence sounded as if it was English. Double-talk English.

  Glinda smiled at him, said something to the captain by her side, and waited while the soldier announced that the audiences were over for a while. The petitioners could wait in the hall.

  A folding chair was brought in built for him, and Hank was told to sit down across the table. He waved away the glass goblet of fruit juice offered him.

  Glinda leaned back in the high-backed, ornately carved oaken chair. “Have you anything to ask me? Is there anything I can do for you?”

  Hank was sure that he was not here just so she could find out if his needs
were being taken care of. He said, “No complaints. As for asking, well, I have a hundred questions.”

  “Some of which we may have time for,” she said. “You’re here primarily so that I can acquaint you with certain situations. And I have a request to make of you.”

  “I’m all yours, Little Mother.”

  He thought, I sure would like to be. “The man who was killed yesterday in the flying machine will be buried this afternoon,” she said. “I don’t know what religion he was, but if you care to say prayers over him, you may do so during the ceremony.”

  “My father’s an Anglican; my mother, a Methodist. I’m a hardshelled agnostic.” Glinda looked puzzled.