Out of This World. Lawrence Watt-Evans

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СКАЧАТЬ black velvet cloak thrown over one shoulder. The hat he held was a wide-brimmed, flat-crowned black felt, with a curling white ostrich plume in the band.

      It didn’t look like a stage costume, though—the materials were too heavy, the detailing too fine, without any of the glitzy look of theatrical attire. The clothes had a solid reality to them.

      So did the man who wore them. He had a long nose, dark eyes, and lines at the corners of a thin-lipped mouth; Pel estimated him to be in his late thirties or early forties. He looked more like a Mafioso than an actor.

      He was waiting for an answer.

      “Pel Brown,” Pel said at last.

      The stranger straightened up a little more and said, “Your servant, sir. Are you the master here?”

      “It’s my house, if that’s what you mean.” Pel considered it odd that the man’s speech was rather flowery, in accord with his garb, but his accent was faint and seemed somewhere between Australia and the Bronx, not at all in the traditional British upper-class manner.

      “Indeed,” Raven said. He moved his eyes.

      Pel took the hint and stepped aside. “Come on up out of there,” he said.

      The man who had introduced himself as Raven obliged, and for the first time Pel realized that the stranger’s tunic was belted with a wide band of black leather, and that a sword hung from that belt. Not a dueling foil, as his outfit might have led one to expect, but a sheathed broadsword.

      “Come on over here,” Pel said.

      Raven’s eyes darted about, taking in the passageway, the kitchen that was visible through the doorway, the family room, the bookcases, the etageres, the couch, the recliner, the video set-up, the Maxfield Parrish print on the wall.

      Pel stepped back and closed the basement door, making sure that it latched and that the lock was set. Then he followed his guest into the family room.

      Upon spotting the stranger the household cat, Silly Cat by name, leapt up from his place on the back of the couch and made a dash for the stairs. He was a timid beast, much given to hiding under the bed, and would hardly ever stay in the same room with an unfamiliar human being.

      “Have a seat,” Pel said, gesturing at the couch.

      “Thank you,” Raven said. He sank onto the sofa and seemed startled by how soft the cushions were. His sword got in the way; he swung it to the side, and had to unbuckle the belt to get comfortable. He pulled the leather band out, wrapped it around the scabbard, and then laid the whole package gently on the coffee table, carefully not disturbing the two issues of TV Guide or the beer-stained coaster. His velvet cloak he draped over the back of the couch, where, Pel was sure, the velvet would pick up cat hairs.

      Pel settled back into his recliner, his hand reaching automatically for his book. He stopped himself, leaned forward, and asked, “So, Raven, you said?”

      The stranger nodded.

      “Okay,” Pel said. “So what were you doing in my basement? You have anything to do with the elf who turned up down there night before last?”

      “Elf?” Raven’s face expressed polite puzzlement.

      “Something like that—little guy, about this high.” Pel held out his hands to show his tiny visitor’s height. “Said he was from Hrumph.”

      “Oh.” Raven nodded. “Aye, that would be Grummetty.”

      “Grummetty, huh?”

      “Aye,” Raven said. “A little person. He’s no elf; the elven are another sort entirely. Of a time, we called Grummetty’s people gnomes, but ‘twould seem they find the term offensive now, so we... well, most of us try to oblige them. Particularly now, in their days of exile.”

      “I asked him if he was a fairy,” Pel said.

      “Alack for that!” Raven exclaimed. A wry grin flickered quickly across his face, then vanished. “He made no mention on that. I’ll hope he took not too great an offense at it.”

      “No, he accepted it as an honest misunderstanding, I think. So, he’s a friend of yours?”

      “An ally, more than a friend, I would say,” Raven replied judiciously.

      “Oh,” Pel said, accepting the distinction without comprehension. “Well, so you got into my basement the same way he did?”

      Raven nodded. “Exactly. It pleases me well to see that you’re a man of such quick intelligence.”

      Pel gave a self-deprecating smile. “Sure. So now that we’ve got that straight—who the hell are you people, and how are you getting into my basement, and why?”

      “Well...” Raven’s eyes roamed the room again, the green wall-to-wall carpeting, the textured ceiling, the green drapes and the sliding glass door to the patio, the books and records and CDs and videotapes, the throw pillows that Rachel had stacked on the floor as a fort for her Barbie dolls.

      Pel waited.

      Raven sighed. “’Tis a long story,” he said, “and I scarce know where to start.”

      “Begin at the beginning,” Pel said, without thinking. “And go on till you come to the end; then stop.” The quote from Lewis Carroll was an old favorite.

      “Indeed, that’s the wisest course for most tales,” Raven agreed. “But I think I’d do best to start by asking you a question. What know you, sir, of other worlds than your own?”

      “It depends how you mean that,” Pel replied cautiously. He did not intend to set himself up for anything.

      “What I mean, good sir,” Raven replied, “is that I am not of your world. In truth, I know nothing of it save what Grummetty told me, and what I have seen for myself. Your pardon, but your world seems to me passing strange; your chamber here reminds of nothing so much as a wizard’s secret chamber, yet the door—it is a door?—aye, the door yonder is sheerest glass, is it not? Not some mage’s trickery?”

      “It’s glass,” Pel agreed. “Go on.”

      “Doors of glass,” Raven said, shaking his head in amazement.

      “Get on with it!” Pel snapped. His patience was wearing thin. If this was all some elaborate stunt he was getting tired of it, he wanted the punchline. If it was real—well, that was another matter entirely. That was frightening.

      It was downright terrifying, in fact.

      “Your pardon, sir,” Raven said, ducking his head. “As I was saying, your world is not my own, nor from what I see here does it much resemble my own, though men are yet men, and the trees and grass I see through the pane seem familiar, and we speak the same tongue.”

      That fact had already struck Pel. It seemed very unlikely that people from another world would speak English.

      “It seems to me that you speak it as the little people do, rather than as my own, yet ‘tis certainly the same tongue,” Raven continued.

      Pel СКАЧАТЬ