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.
Chalmers recovered first. "We are travellers ..." Then he ran out of gas, and Shea snapped out of his stupefaction in time to take up where he'd left off.
"We're looking for a friend of ours," Shea called back. "Have you seen her, maybe? A pretty, slender woman—no, Doc, let me do the describing, you can't be objective! She would have appeared all of a sudden, the way we did!"
"Aye, such a one did appear yesterday, and we told her what we will tell you—that you trespass in the land of the Monkey King, and he will be wroth if he finds you here! She, at least, had the good sense to turn her footsteps down the slope. You had best do likewise, before our king comes!"
"Foolish, foolish people!" a younger monkey chattered. "You dare to trespass on his lands, believing that he has been imprisoned by Buddha!"
"Be still!" the older monkey snapped.
"Wherefore? Since our lord has just been released from his jail, after five hundred years of waiting! Surely the foolish mortals should flee, and not trouble us to beat them away."
"Beat?" Chalmers cried, dismayed, but Shea assured him, "They said Florimel had the good sense to go on her own, Doc. But we need a little background information, and we're in a good situation to get it." Then, back to the monkeys, "You mentioned Buddha. Is this China?"
"China? What is that? You are on the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit, behind the great Water Curtain, in Zhung-Guo—the Middle Kingdom!"
"Middle Earth? The center of all the universes?"
"What is a universe? Foolish mortal, Zhung-Guo is the Land Between the Four Seas, the country at the center of the world, which must therefore be an example and a source of governance to all other countries!"
Yes, that was China—at least, as seen by the Chinese. "Why was your king imprisoned?"
"Buddha clapped him in jail for five hundred years, to punish him for his mischief!" The monkey bared his teeth. "How unjust is this! As well punish a bird for flying, or a dog for barking!"
"I suspect it depends on the magnitude of the mischief ..."
A loud chattering went up at the fringe of the monkey band, and several of the little apes turned, then pointed to the sky.
"Yonder he comes!" The grizzled monkey pointed, too. "Flee, foolish barbarians! Or you will suffer greatly, for trespassing in the domain of the Monkey King!"
"What do you think, Doc?" Shea muttered.
"They may speak wisely," Chalmers answered, "but I confess my curiosity has the better of me. Besides, we couldn't be off this hillside by the time he arrived."
That was true enough. The monkeys were pointing at a little cloud that was growing larger and larger. As it came closer, they could see a speck on top of it, a speck that rapidly grew into the form of a gray monkey, a little larger than most, holding a two-foot stick.
Shea stared. "It's just mist! How does he keep from falling through?"
"Magic," Chalmers said tersely. "I think I'd better work up a few spells."
The cloud slanted downwards, diving toward them. As it touched down, the monkeys set up a glad chattering: "Monkey! Monkey! Our Monkey King!"
Monkey jumped off his cloud with a grin, flourishing his staff in triumph—until he saw the two humans. Then the grin disappeared, and the staff was flourishing for an entirely different reason.
He ran at Shea and Chalmers with a howl. Shea did not want to hurt the little guy, so he did not pull out his sword, just held out his staff to block ...
Monkey's two-foot cudgel cracked through Shea's staff as though it had been a spaghetti noodle.
Shea leaped back, staring at the two half-staves in his hands, then lifted them to block. Monkey howled and swung, and his staff grew even as it whirled, extending to six feet, with a dull sheen. Shea saw it coming and tried to roll with it, but it cracked into his shoulder anyway. He fell, pain flaring through his joint—but rolled up right next to Monkey and, still not wanting to really hurt him, slapped at the little creature's head as he stood up.
Pain shot through his whole hand.
"Yeow!" he yelled, leaping back. "What're you made of—granite?"
"Exactly!" Monkey snapped, and swung again.
This time Shea just dodged. With his left shoulder throbbing and his right hand a web of agony, he could not do much of anything else. But he did notice that behind Monkey, Chalmers was on his knees, frantically jabbing short sticks into the ground. That gave Shea hope—if he could just stay away from Small and Deadly long enough, maybe Doc could get him out of this.
But staying away from Monkey was easier said than done. leaping, swinging from tree branches, bounding down at Shea, bounding up, and always howling, howling, the little monster swung again and again with that lethal staff. Shea dodged and dodged, but he was beginning to tire, and the staff tagged him on the shin, on the hip, and left burning pain wherever it touched.