A Sudden Wild Magic

Maureen’s dancers grumbled too. Maureen, it seemed, had strained a shoulder and was forced to make frequent visits to the only osteopath she trusted, who, it appeared, lived in Ludlow. But as her absences went on, little Flan Burke began to prove such a good deputy that most of the troupe foresaw that Maureen would lose her place to Flan and end up simply teaching the younger dancers. Maureen’s boyfriend took the view that Maureen was doing it to spite him.

Somewhat the same opinion was held by Professor Amanda Fenstone’s teenage children. They grumbled to their aunt that Mum’s career seemed to mean more to her than they did. Why else was she always away giving lectures?

Only Gladys was spared human grumbling, and she often came back from another place to find herself in an accusing ring of cats long past their feeding time. For she took to sitting, hour after hour, on the Normandy beach forest borders of the pirate world, watching through notional spyglasses for any activity in Laputa-Blish (as it came to be called). Her skin grew flabbier and more blotched. Her feet were often numb, despite tartan socks and furry slippers, and she was tired. The other three worried about her. But Gladys was firm. This was the part of the task that she had set herself. As she said, she was the only one among them who was canny enough to watch without letting Laputa- Blish suspect it was being watched.

And her work bore fruit. One of the first things she was able to report was that there was always at least one observer in Laputa-Blish watching Earth. Often there were many more. They seemed to sit regular watches, and whenever the time came around for a group to be watching Earth, she became fairly sure that at least one was always focused upon the activities of the Ring.

“Let’s give them something to watch then,” Maureen said. “I’ll start having everyone power up on the ecology from now on, something cruel.”

“They’ll be expecting us to,” Gladys agreed, and went back to watching. As she moved away in her mind, she chuckled. Maureen was into ecology anyway. On the rare occasions Gladys had visited Maureen, she had found the flat full of tasteful green packages labeled ozone friendly and ecologically sound. The toilet roll had had recycled toilet paper printed on every sheet. Could one recycle toilet paper? she wondered, grinning as she drifted away, and if so, how?

During this stint of watching, she saw Laputa-Blish put out tenuous threads and translate them down to an earthly plane. Before she could trace them, they were gone. But she was ready for them next time they happened. She made one of her rare linkages with Jimbo and let him take her down, right down to his disquieting native ether. There she lurked, watching like a fox in a hole, and found that, as she suspected, the threads connected with the pirate world itself. She was lucky. It was a big joining that went both ways in all the planes of matter, and it lasted until her strength was almost gone.

“I think people were going back and forth, or supplies, or both maybe,” she told Amanda, who came to put a rug around her shoulders and a mug of tea into her shaking hands.

“That stands to reason,” Amanda said, going back to her careful checking of Mark’s printouts. “It would be hard to make a pocket universe an entirely closed ecology. And I suppose the crew has to go on leave sometimes. Now, if only we could find out what sort of supplies they need regularly, we’d be home and dry. We could send our team in disguised as provisions.”

“I’ll see what I can get you on that,” said Gladys. Lord! Amanda made a lousy cup of tea! Too intellectual, that was her trouble. Mind above tea. “You really think we’re going to have to send people across?”

“Can you see any other way to get close enough to blast them and cope with all the surprises they’re going to heave at us?” Amanda asked. “The Trojan horse idea still seems the best bet to me.”

“You’re probably right,” Gladys agreed mournfully. Probably because she was so recently out of linkage with Jimbo, she found her mind full of earthy sadness, playing over all the brightest and best and most beautiful of the young folk associated with the Ring — feisty little Flan Burke, that lovely boy Tam, the nice-looking blond fellow who was Paulie Lister’s lover, bossy Roz Collasso, and many, many more. Any of these could be chosen as storm troopers bound for Laputa-Blish. Such a waste. Such a shame. But no point mentioning that to Amanda.

“I’ll have a look at the supplies they’re getting,” she promised. Disguise the kids as corned beef? Unless the citizens of Laputa-Blish turned out to be vegetarians. That would cause problems.

She was out of luck the next few watches, however. Laputa-Blish neither received nor sent anything concrete. All it did was move.

“Move?” Mark asked, startled.