Shea took a bite of the bread and cheese, washed it down with the wine, and sighed. The bread was slightly bitter, the cheese strong and rich, and the wine some of the best he had ever tasted. "Delicious, friend squire," he said. "My thanks to you and your master."
The fat squire spread his hands palms up and shrugged. Through a mouthful of food, he said: "It is nothing, Geraldo de Shea. All that we have is yours." He said that in a flat tone that told Shea it was a formula response, and not one to be taken literally. "Sir Chalmero," the squire added, "do you need anything?"
"Only to know the identity of our host, that I may thank him adequately."
Sancho puffed himself up, threw back his shoulders, pointed at the kneeling knight, and declared, "That is the famous and wonderful knight, Don Quixote de la Mancha. the greatest knight who ever lived."
Chalmers threw Shea a gleeful look. He smiled broadly around a mouthful of dry bread and cheese, and after a swig of wine, he remarked, "I told you so."
Shea did not envy the knight his tin-can suit; he was amazed by the man's resilience. Quixote took the broiling sun without complaint, and responded to his squire's ceaseless diatribe against the weather with tolerant amusement. The two famous Spaniards rode ahead, while the psychologists plodded along on foot behind them. The foursome travelled away from the hills and toward the field of windmills. Reed Chalmers, sweat-soaked and dusty, had rolled up the sleeves of his ankle-length tunic and pulled the garment up through its belt until it ended. Shea thought the rotund psychologist looked ridiculous. In spite of the heat, he left his own garb alone.
Chalmers had been regaling Shea with a running commentary on Don Quixote and the world in which they found themselves—Shea had tuned the monologue out several miles back. Suddenly his ears picked up an interesting comment, however, and he began to pay attention again.
"It is extraordinary," Chalmers was saving, "how Cervantes got the small details right, yet completely missed (he bigger picture here." He Happed the bottom of his tunic up and down while he walked, apparently trying to cool off.
Shea spat out another mouthful of the dust that gritted between his teeth and tried flapping his own garment to see if it helped. It did not. "What did he get right?" he asked.
"Quixote was given to the grand oath," the older psychologist said, "and to the grand gesture. We have seen that today. I recall a point in Cervantes' narrative where Quixote told Sancho Panza it was a point of honor with knights errant not to eat once in a month."
Sancho Panza must have been listening to their conversation, for he dropped back to ride beside them. "Even so," he agreed. He tipped his head to one side, studying the psychologist. "His worship told me that except for banquets and such, knights lived off the flowers of the field. And so his worship does. When we're short on daisies, as we are hereabouts, he'll take some sup of mine—but now he's made this oath to help you find your lady, so there'll be no more of that for a while."
Chalmers rubbed his hands together. "Yes, that is it exactly. Quixote was convinced that since his books never mentioned knights eating and sleeping, such things weren't important. I recall places in the tale where the old knight ate nothing, and made a point of staying awake all night, lying on the ground and thinking of his mistress Dulcinea."
Sancho Panza's brows furrowed in worry. "There's not a word of what you say that isn't so," he said, "but send me to the Devil if I can see how you knew it you who never saw us before today. I'd say you were more enchanters sent to plague the master, but you don't look it." He cast a dark scowl at the two of them. "Still, what things look like don't much matter." He kicked his mare once sharply and caught back up with the knight.
Shea bit his lip and, "Nice move. Doc. Now they're bound to think we're evil enchanters and the next thing you know, we'll be speared like shish kebab on the good knight's lance."
But Chalmers was suddenly beaming. He shook his head and grinned at his associate. "Sancho Panza was wrong," he said, ignoring Shea's prophecy. "What things look like do matter—to us, anyway. Think, Harold—when your delusional patients describe themselves to you, what do they describe?"
Shea was watching the squire in earnest conversation with his master. Something about their attitudes made him nervous. When he answered Chalmers at last, his reply was abrupt. "Gods, mostly. And great heroes. Fiction. What's your point?"
Chalmers appeared oblivious to the little drama up ahead. His round, ruddy face glowed with internal delight. "When Don Quixote described himself, did he describe himself as a crazy old man astride a pitiful swaybacked hack? No. Of course not. He described himself as the greatest knight who had ever lived."
Shea did not see Chalmers' point. He said, "And—?"
Chalmers spread his hands in front of him, palms up. "And what do you see up there? A crazy old man or the greatest knight who ever lived?"
The duo on horseback had finished talking, and were looking over their shoulders at Shea and Chalmers. Harold Shea did not like their expressions. "Unfortunately," he said, carefully loosing his saber in its scabbard, "I see the greatest knight who ever lived."
"Precisely," Chalmers gloated. "We're not in Cervantes' Spain. We're in Don Quixote's delusion. This world is the old Spaniard's psychosis."
"Does that mean we won't die if we get killed here?" Shea asked. Watching the knight on the road ahead, his Adam's apple suddenly felt like a baseball lodged in his throat, and his stomach squirmed and flipped as if it had ridden a roller coaster without him.
"I don't see how we could," Reed Chalmers said, still not noticing the impending doom ahead.
"I hope you're right," Shea muttered, as Quixote, in the echoing magical voice Shea had heard earlier, demanded, "I shall have truth. Are you foul and evil wizards and enchanters, come to ensnare me? Speak, cravens!"
"Fabulous. Perfect paranoia, Chalmers whispered. "Fits beautifully with the delusions."
Harold Shea's thoughts regarding Chalmers' delight were unprintable, but he was unable to share them with his boss. Instead, words were coming from his mouth that he had no control over. "We are enchanters," he heard himself saying in a voice that boomed as loudly and weirdly as the knight's, "but neither foul nor evil. We have come to rescue Reed Chalmers' kidnaped lady, and we mean you no harm.''
The Don's sound effects switched off, and Shea found he could control his vocal cords again.
"You are enchanters, yet not evil?" Quixote asked. His eyes were as round and puzzled as a confused spaniel's. "I would have thought all enchanters were evil—that it were the very nature of the beast, so to speak."
"Master!" Sancho interrupted, rapping on Quixote's armor. "Sir Knight, we need to be going!" He was bouncing a bit in his saddle, and his eyes darted nervously—Shea had seen the same body language displayed by patients who were trying to hide important information. "We need to head back to the village; we forgot something," the fat squire added.
He's lying, Shea thought, and at the same moment noticed that the windmills seemed to be closer than they had been a moment before. In the next instant, he realized that they did not look as much like windmills as they had. And in the next instant, he realized that about thirty giants, some with four arms, some with six or even eight, were marching across the plain towards him, waving clubs the size of telephone poles.
"Doc, let's get out of here," Shea said, grabbing Chalmers by the sleeve and pulling him back down the road they had just covered.