Shea stood still, trying to orient himself. Wherever he was, he did not think that this was the land of Oz—at least, not any section of it in the books by Baum and Thompson. Of course it had been years since ...
He began to sort out the pedestrians. Some were of normal human stature and aspect, in hooded gowns of various colors, running strongly to somber purple, Others, inhumanly tall and lean, wore black; these had a single horn emerging from each hood. A closer view showed that those in black walked on hooves instead of human feet.
Looking around. Shea saw, rearing against the surrounding cliffs, a single lofty spire. Overhead the sky was overcast and so dark as to imply a dawn or a sunset. Flames of cressets and torcheres mitigated the gloom. The orange light flickered, making it hard to be sure of anything.
Pedestrians walked past Shea without evincing interest. The hooves of the homed ones went clop-clop on the sable flagstones. Some of the walkers passed in pairs, conversing in quiet tones.
A shriek from the direction of the slender tower brought Shea about, he turned in time to see a gown-clad figure falling, doubtless from high in the tower. The garment fluttered with the body's rising speed, and the arms and legs thrashed the air. The figure landed with a sound that reminded Shea of hitting a melon with a mallet.
The hooded pedestrians continued their ways without even looking around. Soon a pair of homed, black-gowned beings picked up the corpse and bore it off.
Unable longer to stand the suspense. Shea touched a passerby on the arm. "Excuse me, sir."
The passerby, in a purple gown and holding a walking stick, turned and threw back his hood. "Eh? What is it?" He was a tall, handsome, swarthy, black-haired young man.
At least, thought Shea, the sorites had worked to give him fluency in the local language, whatever that was. From its wealth of gutturals, Shea suspected Arabic. He said:
"Could you please tell me where I am?
The tall youth stared. "Do you mean you don't know?"
"No, I don't. A magical journey just dropped me here, but I don't think it's where I wanted to go. Could you set me right?"
"All right. You are on the campus of the University of the Unholy Names, in Death Valley."
"But what world?"
"You mean you don't even know that? You must be a little touched here ..." The youth tapped his forehead.
"Maybe so, but I really must know. Please!"
"Well," said the tall youth, "this is the world called sometimes Dej, an acronym of Dal Ay Jim—or, as the infidels say, Delta Epsilon Gamma."
"And you, sir?"
The youth ducked a little bow. "Bilsa at-Talib, an undergraduate at good old UUN, at your service. And you? You must be a pretty good magician, to go flitting from world to world."
Shea smiled warily. "Oh, I know a trick or two. My name's Shea, Harold Shea."
Shea almost put out a hand before realizing where he was. Recovering, he touched his fingertips to his heart, lips, and forehead. Bilsa, he was relieved to see, did likewise.
"What about that fellow who just fell from the tower?"
"Failed his exams and was dropped." Bilsa shrugged, then continued with an eager rush of words: "Sav, you see this stick? I was on my way to show it to the dean. When I throw it down, it turns into a snake, which gets bigger and bigger until I hit it with this little wand, and it shrinks back into a walking stick again. I've got a swell idea! I'll turn this stick into a snake, see, and you conjure up your own monster; and we'll see which one of 'em wins!"
The youth was evidently of the kind that, in a college chemistry laboratory, starts mixing chemicals at random to see which mixture will go boom. Before Shea could protest, Bilsa threw down the stick, which instantly turned into a snake of the python kind. It grew and grew, soon reaching a size beyond that of any earthly serpent. It reared up and swung its tapering head, now as big as that of a horse, toward Shea. It opened fangsome jaws and hissed like the safety valve of a steam boiler.
Shea had no monster-conjuring spell to hand and did not wish any such contest. lie must, he thought, have substituted a Q for a not-Q in the sorites. Against such a foe, his sword was of little avail. Frantically he again began the series:
"If P equals not-Q, then Q implies ..."
The monstrous head, now of tyrannosauric size, swooped. The jaws came down upon his head and snapped shut like the door of a bank vault, cutting off the meager light. Shea felt himself snatched off his feet as the jaws clamped on his midriff. The mailshirt kept the teeth, now spikes the size of fence palings, from piercing his body, but the pressure of the jaws blew the wind out of him. By a mighty feat of concentration, he continued the spelclass="underline"
"... which sets down Harold Shea near the abode of Dorothy Gale in the Land of Oz!"
The agonizing pressure on Shea's midsection let up. Again he seemed to be suspended in nothing and surrounded by a galaxy of whirling colored dots.
Then he landed on solid earth, rolling over and over as if he had fallen at a slant from a height. The scab-barded saber banged and poked him.
He sat up, wincing at the pain of the places bruised by the pressure of the reptile's jaws. Every movement of his trunk was painful. Around him rose a forest of green-leaved cornstalks, several of which he had broken in his fall. They were just coming into ear.
Battered, bruised, and sore, Shea gathered his legs and rose. His head and the upper part of his torso were covered with gooey serpent saliva, to which the brown dirt clung in patches. He must, he thought, look like nothing on Earth. He was bareheaded; his hat must have gone down the sorcerous serpent's gullet. Had he not finished the correct sorites, he would surely have followed the hat. He was thankful that, more by luck than by management, the spell had translocated him alone and not both him and the super-snake.
He had begun to thread his way out from the cornfield when a man shouted: "Hey, you there! What are you doing in my field?"
"Trying to get out without damaging anything," said Shea, picking his way among the cornstalks.
"The blazes you ain't! You mean without doing any more damage. You've knocked over a dozen stalks already!"
"I'm very sorry. In going from world to world, one can't always count on a soft landing."
"Jeepers Cripus, what world do you claim to come from?"
The speaker was a man of medium size, with work-roughened hands and a sun-wrinkled neck. He wore yellow knee breeches and a yellow shirt, both faded and patched, and a broad-brimmed straw hat. He gripped a cultivator like a weapon.
"From Ohio, in the United States of America," said Shea.
"Oh, the mundane world," said the man. "Well, now, that's interesting ..."
"Is Dorothy Gale's house near here?" asked Shea.
"Huh? Oh, you must mean my wife! She was Dorothy Gale before she became Mrs. Stidoth. Well, now ..."
"Stidoth!" came a woman's voice.
"Yeah, honey? Hey, come on over here! We got a visitor from your world!"
A woman approached—a blonde of middle years, well-featured and a little plump.
"Says he's lookin' for Miss Dorothy Gale," said Stidoth.
"Okay, mister, you found her," said the woman. "Where in my world did you come from?"
"Ohio. Shea's the name."
"Back east, eh? Well, another real American's always welcome. We don't see 'em around all that often, since we moved out from the Emerald City. Come on in the house. You look like you could do with a bit of a cleanup."
"If you'd been half swallowed by a giant snake— well, you know what I mean. Lucky for all of us I didn't bring the super-serpent with me. A magician conjured it up and sicked it on me."
"Come along; you can wash up in the house and tell us all about it. We got running water and everything."