SIR HAROLD AND THE MONKEY KING
Christopher Stasheff
Harold Shea loved to have friends drop in, but he did like a little warning first, especially if he was going to have to catch them.
He was working late at night in his study, taking a break from his usual toil—that of transcribing interviews with delusional patients into symbolic logic, looking for keys to the universes they were perceiving. For variety, he had started trying to transcribe the Tao Te Ching, The Book of the Way, by the legendary sage Lao Tzu. The book was the foundation of the Chinese religion of Taoism, and Taoist priests had the reputation of being magicians, so Shea was looking for clues to their magical principles—when he heard a sigh behind him.
He glanced up, thinking that perhaps Belphebe had wakened and come out, needing talk the demands of a newborn left her craving adult conversation—but all he saw was an amorphous, translucent white mass writhing in the dark of the study.
His hair tried to stand on end; he froze for an instant, then reached into the desk drawer and touched his dirk. Then he looked over his shoulder, hoping he wouldn't have to trust his safety to its two-hundred year-old design.
The amorphous mass became more and more opaque as it churned, pulling itself into a human form—and Dr. Reed Chalmers stood there, drawn and pale, in a medieval robe.
"Doc!" Shea cried, leaping out of his chair—and virtually caught Chalmers as he sagged. Shea turned, stepped, and lowered him into the desk chair. "Hold on just a minute—I'll get some brandy." He stepped out into the dining room, took a glass and a bottle from the liquor cabinet, poured, and took the snifter back to Chalmers.
Chalmers accepted it with both hands, drinking it off in a single swallow. His color began to return even as he lowered it. "Yes. Much better now. Thank you, Harold."
"Don't mention it," Shea said. "Travel by syllogismobile does have that effect, sometimes." Actually, it never had with him, but it sounded like a good face-saver.
"No, it wasn't really that." Chalmers frowned. "But how did you guess, Harold?"
"Something to do with the medieval robe, probably—and the fact that you didn't bother with the front door. What happened, Doc? Thought you talked us into a ban on inter-universe travel."
"Yes, but that was only for those who already know how. I never thought it would be necessary to tell someone who had never made a journey before."
"Florimel?" Harold stared. "Don't tell me your wife decided to try it on her own!" But his sinking stomach told him the truth; he remembered how Chalmers' wife had seemed relieved to have Reed take a "vacation" to his native universe.
"Well, of course, there was no good reason to deny teaching her how," Chalmers protested. "Unfortunately, she didn't bother learning symbolic logic completely before she tried ..."
"And with only a medieval education to back it up, she wouldn't be able to figure out the right referents anyway!" Shea stared in honor. "My lord, Doc! How can you tell where she went?"
"By this." Chalmers drew a parchment out of his robe. "Apparently she didn't keep too tight a hold on it when she travelled—I found it on the living room floor."
"But that means she doesn't know how to get home, either!" Shea snatched the sheet and frowned down at the symbols. "Nothing I can recognize, Doc—oh, a chain here and there, and a paradox-loop or two, but nothing coherent."
"So I feared," Chalmers sighed. "I tried it myself, but the terrain was so unusual, I thought ..." His voice trailed off.
"That you'd better come back for reinforcements?" Shea nodded and turned away. "Help yourself to the brandy, Doc. I'll just be a few minutes getting into my travelling outfit—and telling Belphebe. "
The travelling outfit was quick and easy—Shea always kept a general, all-purpose tunic and tights handy, along with his sword and quarterstaff—and his revolver, and a wallet filled with hardtack and pemmican. Saving goodbye to Belphebe, though, took a bit longer, especially since he didn't really want to.
He waked her with a feather-light kiss, but she came awake on the instant anyway, like the huntress she was. She smiled up at him with pleasure, then saw his outfit, and her eyes went wide. "Harold! What alarm calls you out?"
A surge of affection moved him, gratitude that she had seen the nature of the situation so quickly, and knew him well enough to know that only an emergency could take him from her and their six-month-old baby. "It's Florimel, dear. She has disappeared, leaving only a sheet full of equations behind."
"Florimel? Attempted the syllogismobile by herself? But Reed must be distraught!"
"Very much so, especially since he just got back from the universe she went to. It was so odd that he decided lie needed somebody to back him up."
"Of course you must!" She caught his hand, knowing his misgivings. "Fear not for the babe and myself—we shall be quite well in your absence. Only return safe and sound!"
"I'll do my best," Shea promised, and took her in his arms for a kiss that was the best pledge he could make.
A few minutes later, he came back into the study. "Okay, Doc. Let's go." He opened the desk drawer and took out a box of cartridges, slipping it into his wallet.
"But why the revolver, Harold?" Chalmers frowned. "It won't work, in an alien universe where magic is physics."
"Maybe not—but if we don't know where we're going, we might wind up in a universe where the rules are hybrid, and gunpowder does explode. I brought matches, too. If they don't work, I can always throw them away—-but if they do, I'm going to be son as hell that I didn't bring them. Shall we, Doer""
"By all means." Chalmers took his hand and held up the sheet of equations. They began to chant the symbolic logic statements in unison, as the study began to grow dim about them.
Suddenly, there was light.
Light all about them, and grass of an amazingly rich green, covering the slope beneath their feet—-a steep hillside that broke out into rocky shelves here and there, and that was adorned with trees and shrubs everywhere.
Everywhere, and every tree bore fruit, every shrub was burdened with blossoms. The air was perfumed, and all the colors were bright.
"Doc," Harold said slowly, "I don't think we're in any universe I've ever seen before."
"Nor I," Chalmers said evenly—but his hands trembled.
Shea knelt to run a hand over the grass. "It's real. It looked so perfect, I thought it might have been a carpet."
Chalmers nodded. "And isn't that a pagoda, over there? Though it's very tiny with distance."
Shea stood up, looked, and nodded. "All the colors are so bright! It's as though the air were super-clear!"
"Perhaps it's just that we've come to a place where the internal combustion engine hasn't been invented," Chalmers offered half-heartedly, "or that we're in the mountains. But do you notice, Harold!—no chiaroscuro?"
"Shading?" Shea looked about, realizing that everything was either full-color, or shadow, with nothing in between. "You're right, Doc. In fact, it looks almost ... like a ..."
"Chinese scroll," Chalmers finished for him. "I think we can assume we've left the Western hemisphere behind—especially since I see we're about to be visited by a band of local fauna."
Shea looked where he pointed, startled, and saw small brown and gray shapes flitting through the trees. Then he heard a whirling, racheting, burbling sound— the noise of a whole tribe of monkeys, shooting toward them.
In an instant, the animals were all about them, hooting and chattering. One large, grizzled old animal called down, "Who are you, strangers, and what do you here, on our Mountain of Flowers and Fruit?"
Shea did a double take—he wasn't used to having the local wildlife speak English. Then he remembered that he probably was not speaking English at all, but the language of this universe, instead. That helped— but not much. He still was not used to talking monkeys.