“So you agreed?” Maureen said, inching on.
“Life is sweet,” Joe said. Maureen, as she crept, spared an exasperated little thought for the way Joe always had to speak in cliches, even when he was sincere. Go on, go on talking, she thought. Nearly there. Then sleep. “Yes,” he said. “I agreed. They put me through the transmutation ritual and I arrived here. And I did my best to be obedient. It was better than being executed, even working in that music shop. But if you ask me — Hey! What are you doing?”
But Maureen was there. Her mind sprang and leaped on his and twined with his and dragged him down with hers like a nixie, wrapped tight together. Sleep, sleep, sleep. On the sofa, both their bodies lapsed slightly and remained utterly still, barely breathing. After a while, the burning cigarette end smothered in the rest of the ash and went out.
2
Gladys had sensed that things had gone wrong. Next day, when she attempted to trace Zillah, she realized how badly.
She withdrew her mind from Arth and considered. The deaths of some of the party, she and Maureen had agreed, were probably inevitable. It had seemed likely that there would be analogues of one or two of the strike force in the pirate universe, and most theories held that two versions of the same person could not exist in the same space.
“Though I did hope it would turn out to be like twins,” Gladys remarked to Jimbo, as usual, crouched by her feet. “No reason why not, on the face of it.”
What shook her was the evident number of the dead. She had simply not been prepared for two-thirds of them to die. The virus-magic — well, she had no hopes for that really. It stood to reason that those wizards up in Laputa-Blish had ways of protecting themselves from outside magics. She had made them as a psychological device mostly, so that the strike team would not think it was being sent without a weapon. And now, not only were they without a weapon, but both boys and eleven girls were dead. Thirteen analogues.
“I never bargained for that number,” she told Jimbo.
“It means that the place must be more like here than we’d realized. But thirteen, Jimbo. I feel so responsible.”
Most dreadfully did she wish that there had been some way of telling who had an analogue in the pirate world and who had not. But when they were selecting the team, neither she nor Maureen could think of any way of finding out. And now what could six girls do in a worldlet full of mages? Except there were not six. When she looked for Zillah, Zillah was — gone. Not dead. Just not there — though there were traces enough to show Gladys that Amanda had been right. Zillah had gone with the strike force, even if she was not with them now.
“It’s too bad!” she said to Jimbo. “She took that child, and that child’s not safe at all. Silly, irresponsible girl. What do I do about that, Jimbo?”
There was no response from Jimbo. She got the impression he was rather carefully keeping quiet. She considered some more.
“It’s like this,” she said. “Am I, or am I not, making allowance for it being what I want to do? Come on, Jimbo. You know me. Shall we take a hand ourselves?” She found she was grinning as she spoke. The same grin was resonating off Jimbo too, purring and fibrilating through her. Jimbo liked a joke and a bit of excitement as much as she did. “And why not, Jimbo? Someone has to take a bit of thought for that poor child — but the truth is, I’ve been so envying those girls. What did you say? Yes. Well. If there turns out to be another Auntie Gladys over there, it’s just too bad, isn’t it?”
She heaved out of her chair and shuffled among the jungle for the phone, where she dialed a number in Scotland.
“Aline?” she said, when it was answered. “It’s me. It’s that emergency at last. I’m going to have to ask you to have the cats for me.”
While she spoke, the cats began gathering in a circle around her, staring accusingly.
“Well, cancel it then,” she said. “I’m not having you go off and leave them. They’ll feel strange. And they know. They’re all here now — except that Jellaby. She knows too, but she’s hiding. Just a moment.” Gladys broke off to make a brief mental search around the house. Ah. Under the spare bed. After a struggling moment, tortoiseshell Jellaby landed in the midst of the other cats, glaring, distended, and angry. “Stupid,” Gladys said to her. “Aline’s nothing like the vet’s.” To the phone she said, “That’s all of them now, and you’ll find they’re no trouble. They all look after themselves, except they can’t open tins. I’ll send the cat food up with them. And you know what to do about the message, don’t you? Thanks. ’Bye.”
This important matter being settled, Gladys shuffled to the strangely empty kitchen to pick up her fat black handbag. “There’s no point in traveling anything but light,” she told Jimbo, who still scuttled at her heels, “but I still don’t trust that place to make a proper cup of tea.” She took up her box of tea bags and emptied two-thirds of them into the bag. “Amanda’s going to need the rest when she comes,” she murmured, snapping the handbag closed. It was one of those that shut by twisting together two knobs the size of marbles. She stood considering what else she needed. “Nothing for Maureen — she’s not coming here at all,” she muttered. Then the grin spread on her face again. “And why not?” she said. “It’ll be far more fun if I dress up in style.”
She shuffled out of the kitchen and upstairs to her dark and cluttered bedroom, where she opened cupboards and chests and proceeded to array herself. She put on first a wondrous cocktail dress dating from the twenties (which had belonged to her great-aunt: Gladys was by no means as old as she liked people to think), an extraordinary creation of limp blue chiffon covered with swags and dangles of glass beads all over. The beads clacked gently with her every movement. To this, after some thought, she added a white feather boa and a flame pink scarf for warmth. To her head, with some puffing and critical grunting, she attached the crownlike headdress that reputedly went with the dress. Apart from further blue beads, its chief feature was a curling blue feather — somewhat crimped with age — which rose from the center of the creation in the middle of her forehead. With this nodding over her face, she bent to consider her feet.
Her normal tennis shoes did not seem to conform with the rest of her. “Got to be comfortable, though,” she observed, “and warm. And look expensive.”
Bearing these criteria in mind, she fetched out and laboriously trod into her most treasured footgear — a pair of large white yeti boots. She had never worn them much because she had always feared that someone had killed and skinned at least four persian cats to make those boots. But there was a time and a place for everything. She looked at herself critically in the mirror.
“Yes, I know, I know,” she said to Jimbo, who appeared to be crouched on her bed, probably surveying her finery with considerable astonishment, “but I don’t want anyone to take me too seriously, do I? You should know all about that. Besides, you may be all right, but I need to take my mind off that other Auntie Gladys over there.”