Joseph looked at him. “You were right,” he said. “That is the product of a disturbed mind.”
Harris beamed at him. “Just the effect I was looking for.”
Gaby scowled at Doc’s face in the mirror of Gabrielle’s room. “Are you ready?”
“A moment.” She saw him pull on a pair of aviator-style goggles. “Now I am. Are you angry?”
“No, but I’ll force it.” She put all the heat and anger she could into her words: “I think you suck!”
Doc winked out. Gaby looked at her own, or rather Gabrielle’s, surprised expression.
She relaxed and came to in her own body, seated beside the talk-box. The device’s electronic guts, smashed and smoking, lay all over the lounge floor. “Cool.”
Doc pulled his goggles off. “Headache?”
“A little one. Not as bad as last time. But then, I wasn’t in as long.” She rubbed her temples. “How was it?”
“More violent than before. I think you’re improving. What is it that I suck?”
“Uhhh . . . ”
In the hours it took to make the toy, Harris took the occasional trip to the galley for food, to the water closet forward, and to the lounge to take a look out the windows.
The terrain graduated to low, mist-covered mountains, dramatic and beautiful as the Appalachians of his own world; much later, the land grew flatter and covered with the lush springtime growth of the southeastern United States.
He saw cities, but the land wasn’t crowded with them, and the infrequent roads looked like roads rather than a tight webwork of scars. There was wilderness down there, not crowded out by farmlands, and Harris abruptly wished he were in the heart of it, sitting with his back to an aromatic evergreen and wondering what sort of fair folk lived among the trees.
Well after dark, they landed at the airstrip serving the city of Lackderry on what would have been the Gulf of Mexico. “A good city for soirées,” Alastair said, beaming. “One of Jean-Pierre’s favorite places. On our way back perhaps I’ll go on the town and drink my own weight in his honor.”
They were flying again by midnight, south over the water, Noriko and Doc back at the controls.
Shortly after dawn, they crossed over the northernmost coastline of Aluxia and put down in an airfield—just a flat field with no pavement, no lights, and a tower that deserved to be called such only because it was two stories instead of one and featured a wind sock on a pole. Doc and Gaby went out to deal with the field officials—he because he’d been here before and knew the drill, she because her Spanish was recognizably the same as the Castilian spoken by half the people of Aluxia. Noriko, Ladislas, and Welthy went over the engines.
Hot, wet, heavy air flooded the Frog Prince and Harris decided that he didn’t feel like taking a walk outside. He stayed in the lounge.
“You’re looking haggard,” Alastair told him.
“Speak for yourself.” Alastair could have; he had dark rings under his eyes.
“Too much air travel. Trains are much better for the constitution. And for lovemaking.”
Half a bell later, with Welthy and Ladislas back at the controls, they were flying south over forest-covered flatland, the darkest living green Harris had ever seen, almost never broken by the path of a river.
Harris climbed the stairs to the upper deck.
One of the cargo holds was mostly empty. Harris dragged what cargo was there against the forward bulkhead and used the rest of the compartment for training. After an hour, he got pretty good at tying the new toy securely and was sure that he’d be able to move naturally while wearing the thing. Of course, he’d have to switch back to baggy fair world clothes for a while.
The aroma of meat and onions drew him back down. Alastair, singing to himself, cooked steaks with onions and mushrooms in the little galley. The doctor brought a huge platter of meat into the lounge and carried a smaller platter up to the cockpit. The others swooped down on the plate he’d left behind.
Harris briefly considered being mad at himself for enjoying the meal. Maybe, after the events in Cretanis, nobody should ever have an appetite again.
Nah.
Not long after noon, he heard a call floating down from the cockpit, Welthy’s voice: “She’s in sight, prepare to land.” But it was Gaby’s cry of “Oh, how beautiful!” that brought him forward to Jean-Pierre’s cabin.
It was standing room only; the sofas and chairs were already full. The view through the bubble-window showed him why.
The Frog Prince angled down toward a great sheet of blue water, a miles-long lake surrounded by green mountain peaks. To port, Harris saw three great mountains on the south side of the lake; to starboard, there was some sort of community built on the north slopes. Every moment of travel presented Harris with a new, glorious, picture-postcard view.
The lake grew larger and larger. The pilots obviously meant to land there.
The Frog Prince set down with a noise like a washing machine set on overdrive. Water sheeted up over the bubble-window and the plane shuddered with the friction of landing. Harris gripped the doorframe for balance.
Then the water drained away from the window and the Frog Prince heeled very slightly starboard, swinging slowly around to face the village on the slope. Harris could see terraces where small houses were built from wooden poles and thatch. As more of the village came into view, he gaped at the blood-red pyramid that dominated the other buildings. Below it, at water’s edge, was a dock protruding into the water; people, tiny forms barely visible at this distance, stood on it.
As the plane completed its turn, the castle came into view to the extreme right, set above and well back from the village. It was a ruin of some antiquity, its stones dark with more than age—it looked like it had been burned, much of the course of its walls toppled. But frameworks of metal and wood surrounded the old structure, some unfinished project of repair.
Welthy and Ladislas brought the Frog Prince alongside the dock as delicately as though they were returning a borrowed Rolls-Royce to its owner’s garage. The plane’s port wing hung over the dock. The men and women gathered there retreated until the propellers stopped spinning.
Doc stepped out onto the port landing wing. Through the window, Harris saw a flash of movement outside, a brown-and-yellow blur hurling itself at Doc . . . and then the man staggered back inside, his attacker wrapped around him.
She was a woman with milk-and-coffee skin and hair that was a lustrous black. She wore what Harris thought of as Hollywood safari gear—shorts and short-sleeved shirt with many pockets, knee-high socks and sturdy shoes—but instead of khaki or tan, her clothes were a fading yellow. The scarf tied around her neck was gold with jaguar spots. She had her legs wrapped around Doc’s waist and was kissing him with such enthusiasm that Harris found himself impressed and envious.
Finally she broke the clinch. “Welcome to Aluxia,” she said.
“With welcomes like that, I must leave many times.”
She smiled and released him, dropping to her feet. Harris saw she was tiny, not more than four and a half feet tall. Her eyes matched her hair and her mouth was a handsome curve just a little too wide for her face. She was both beautiful and built, and Harris thought she made quite a reception committee.
She finally turned to look at the others. “Alastair, a thousand blessings.” Her smile faded. “Noriko, I heard about Jean-Pierre. I am so sorry.” The smile returned, no less luminous than before. “Doc, introduce me to my new friends.”
“Ish, this is Joseph, who builds things of steel. Gaby Donohue, who may someday be remembered as the discoverer and first priestess of the talk-box god. Harris Greene, who knows how to box with his feet. And Caster Roundcap, arcanologist. Everyone, I present you Ixyail del Valle, princess and rebel—called Ish by her friends.”