A Barnstormer in Oz Read online

  A Barnstormer in Oz

  Philip Jose Farmer

  Philip Jose Farmer

  A Barnstormer in Oz

  To L. Frank Baum, to Fred M. Meyer, to the International Wizard of Oz flub, to Lester and Judy-Lynn del Rey, to Judy Garland, to all the Scarecrows, Tin Woodmans, Cowardly Lions, and Dorothys this side of the Yellow Brick Road, and to John Steinbeck, who said that, more than anything else, he would rather be "the ambassador to Oz."

  Kansas winked.

  That was the second unexpected and disconcerting phenomenon. The first had been a few seconds before when a green cloud had ballooned from emptiness about two hundred feet in front of him. He was flying at one thousand feet altitude in his Jenny, a Curtiss JN-4H biplane, when the emeraldish haze had spurted from an almost cloudless sky like a genie from a bottle. It had grown in two eyeblinks to a thick mist about eighty feet wide and thirty deep. It was a transparent light-green at the edges and the front and an opaque dark-green elsewhere.

  He had been so astonished that his trained reflexes had deserted him. His left hand did not move the huge wooden control stick, and his feet did not move the wooden rudder bars. The Jenny shot into the outer limits of the cloud. It was then that the state of Kansas winked at him, disappeared, reappeared, then was gone.

  Fort Leavenworth, the Missouri River, and the fields and trees vanished.

  This was no cloud formed of tiny drops of moisture. He felt no wetness on his face.

  The sun was in the same position as when he had plunged into the cloud. The sky, however, which had been partly cloudy on this April Fool's Day, Easter Sunday, and first day of Passover of A.D. 1923, was now pure blue.

  He glanced at his wristwatch. Eleven A.M. He knew what time it was, but he did not know where he was.

  Below was a tawny desert with big outcroppings of dark rock. Ahead, two miles away, was the edge of a green land that extended to right and left as far as he could see. The desert ended abruptly at the borders of the land as if it were an ocean breaking against an island. The land sloped up gradually for a mile, then it became high cliffs supporting a plateau.

  He glimpsed twinkling towers, houses, and fields beyond the trees on the edge of the plateau.

  He twisted his neck to look behind him. The cloud was dwindling, and then it was gone as if it had been sucked into an invisible vacuum cleaner.

  Hank had been heading north by northwest towards Muscotah, Kansas, to deliver the personal effects of John "Rube" Schultz, his late flying partner in Doobie's Flying Circus. Hank had dreaded telling the widow how Rube had died in the accident, why the funeral would have to be a closed-casket ceremony, and his probably inadequate attempts to console Mrs. Schultz. It seemed now that he would not be landing on a meadow near the widow's home. Not within the time he had planned anyhow.

  The compass needle on the instrument panel had swung crazily. Now it had steadied. He was still going north by northwest.

  Hank Stover said, "Sacre bleu!" Then, "Holy smoke!"

  His heart beat as fast and as hard as a woodpecker's bill against oak. His palms were wet. He felt slightly disoriented and number than he had been when drinking brandy while on leave in Paris. He was as frightened as when that black-and-scarlet banded Pfalz had been on the tail of his Spad.

  He stiffened. To his right, what looked like lightning—it was hard to be sure in this bright sunlight—had spurted between two tall and sharp spires of dark rock. And then what seemed to be a flaming ball had rolled from the tip of one spire and exploded.

  "I drank a lot last night," he muttered. "I've got a drophammer of a hangover. But I'm a long way from delirium tremens."

  A ball of something shimmering and transparent rolled up from a ravine, shot ahead of the plane, got to a few feet from the vegetation-lined border, and disappeared in a bright expanding gout.

  Small figures, birds, surely, rose in clouds from the trees near the desert.

  He was over the greening land and approaching the cliffs. The plateau would be five hundred feet below him, but he pulled back on the joystick to climb. There would probably be an updraft from the cliff-face, but he was not taking any chances. Even though the JN-4H had an engine almost twice as powerful as the JN-4D, she was not as responsive to the controls as an Army pursuit. Besides, he wanted to get a wider view of the country. Which was what and where?

  Even then, the truth was like a finger on the pulse of his mind. It felt a slight throb, but he could not believe that he was not deceived.

  During his twenty-two years, Hank had had many surprises and shocks. The worst had been when his proposal of marriage had been rejected and when a Pfalz flown by one of the Kaiser's knights of the air had gotten on the tail of Hank's Spad and when he had slipped while transferring from the wing of a Jenny to the back seat of an automobile during a show outside Nashville, Tennessee. There was also the shock when his mother had removed the make-up from her forehead and taken her eight-year-old child into a dark room and showed him the very faint glimmer of a round mark on her forehead. That, however, had been delightful.

  This was the worst because it was so unexpected and because it could not happen.

  Yet, contradictorily, he now was not as shocked and surprised as he should have been. He thought he knew where he was though he just could not believe it. And if he was where he unbelievingly believed he was, where, as far as he knew, only two persons from Earth had preceded him... no, it could not be.

  Two miles to his right was a thin cataract falling down the face of the cliff. It would have been much larger if it had not been for a dam north of which was a lake. On both sides of it were trees, meadows, and farms. Many irrigation ditches limbed it. Most of the trees looked like those in Illinois, oaks, sycamores, walnuts, Osage oranges, pines, and others. But there were also palm trees here and there.

  The farmhouses were rectangular and had high-pitched roofs. His mother had told him about these and commented on the difference of their structure from that of the country to the northwest.

  Though the houses and barns were painted with many colors, red seemed most popular.

  All had thick lightning rods.

  The fences, made of split logs or stone, seemed to be property markers. They were not high enough to keep the sheep, goats, and cows from jumping over them.

  Below was a road running more or less parallel to the edge of the cliff. It was of red brick and the only paved road for as far as he could see.

  He turned the Jenny to the left and flew above the road. A farmer driving a loaded wagon stood up, opened his mouth, and pointed at the plane though there was no one else around. Yes, there was. The two cows pulling it were looking up.

  As he passed the wagon, Hank saw that there were no reins attached to the harness.

  Ahead, almost on the edge of the plateau, was a castle and west of it a village. It was of some white stone, about three hundred feet high, and surrounded by a wall one hundred feet high. No castle on Earth, though, had a huge watertower on its top or walls set with huge red precious stones, rubies. Of course, he could not be sure that the stones were not glass, but he didn't think they were. This building was also equipped with lightning rods.

  Zooming over the top of the castle at an altitude of two hundred feet, he saw that the walls did not completely enclose the castle. They were shaped like a U with ends that curled back, horseshoe-shaped, and the opening faced the desert. The castle was X-shaped.

  Hank flew over the village, noting the many people running about and gesturing excitedly at him and to others. He turned and came back along the road. Now men and women were pouring out of the great open gates of the outer wall of the castle. He left them behind, turned, headed into the southwesterly wind, and began descending
. He made a three-point landing on a meadow, the wheels and the tail skid touching at the same time, taxied to near the fence, and turned off the engine. The cattle and sheep on the meadow had run to a far corner and were huddled together facing him. The people from the farmhouse were standing in front of the porch and probably arguing about whether or not they should approach him.

  They could think that the Jenny was a winged monster. And Jenny must appear especially fearsome. Her fuselage was yellow, and her wings were scarlet. Two big blue eyes were painted on each side below the exposed engine, the propeller hub and part of the area around it was painted to look like a nose, and below it was a mouth with a red Cupid's-bow mouth and white pointed teeth.

  It was warmer here. The temperature when he had left Kansas City was about 24 degrees Fahrenheit. It seemed to him that it was close to 39 degrees here.

  Twelve bald eagles flying in V-formation flew over him at a height of twenty feet. Squadrons of goshawks, chicken hawks, and peregrine falcons followed them. Bringing up the rear were twelve golden eagles. All the birds were about one-third smaller than the species he knew on Earth. They wheeled and landed on the branches of some trees at the edge of the meadow. There, silent, scarcely moving, they eyed him steadily. But a lone peregrine circled above him, then sped toward the castle.

  The engine was hot enough that he could start it again without having someone spin the propeller. Perhaps he should do that and taxi to the northeast corner to face the wind and so be ready for a quick takeoff.

  "What the hell," he said, and he climbed out of the rear cockpit and got down to the ground.

  He was conscious that he was flamboyant and handsome in his barnstormer's garb: black leather helmet with green-rimmed goggles shoved up on it, a long white scarf, black leather jacket, black-leather fur-trimmed gloves, yellow puttees, and black shoes. However, instead of the conventional rabbit's foot attached to the jacket to ensure good luck, he wore a housekey on a gold chain.

  There were by then many people along the road, all staring at him. The eyes of most of them were on a level with his bellybutton. He was not surprised.

  The men and women jabbering in an unknown language—yet it sometimes sounded like English—wore tall conical hats with tiny bells hanging from the wide brims. The women wore dresses with low-cut necklines and hems just below the knees. Their boots were really wooden shoes to which were attached leggings of wool. The men wore sleeved shirts, vests, pants, and boots like the women's except that they had a fat roll at the tops. The older men were full-bearded; the younger, clean-shaved or moustached.

  Only the women wore make-up, and that was just rouge.

  All were Caucasians, though deeply tanned. The faces looked like those he had seen when in occupied north Germany.

  After a while, the animals in the corner of the meadow approached him, their number swelled by those from adjoining farms. These were, like the people, about one-third smaller than their Terrestrial counterparts.

  Hank was shocked when a sheep spoke to another. The language was undoubtedly that of the humans, but the voice was unhuman. Its Victrola-record quality sent chills over him.

  Yet, he should have been prepared for it.

  Deciding that he would probably be leaving the meadow soon, he took out his anchoring equipment from a recess in the rear turtle deck. Just as he finished staking the Jenny down, he saw a train of chariots bearing armed women stop by the fence. Chariots! Pulling them were diminutive moose. These, like the cows he had seen, lacked reins. And the charioteers carried no whips.

  He should have expected that.

  The female soldiers got down from their vehicles, and assembled in formation at the directions of an officer. Their steel helmets were conical and had gold arabesques and bore on the front a horseshoe shape enclosing an X. Long scarlet feathers stuck from the peaks, and red cloth chinstraps secured the helmets. They wore stiff red shirts over which were hip-length woolen jackets, scarlet with gold braid. Their knee-length scarlet skirts bore yellow, blue, and green designs: the horseshoe and X, hackenkreuzes, ankhs, and owls' eyes. Their boots were like the farmers' but were scarlet with golden clockwork.

  Stover looked at the blonde, blue-eyed commander and said, "A real doll! A peach!"

  There was nothing peachy about the sword she held in one hand or her troop's long spears. She gestured that Stover should leave the plane. He did so, and he suddenly found himself surrounded by sharp steel spearheads.

  Smiling, he gestured that he came in peace. If the commander understood Indian sign language, she did not indicate so. He was marched to the road and then down it towards the castle. The chariots, with the rest of the soldiers, followed them, and behind them came the crowd of civilians. The bodyguard and he walked a mile before coming to the castle. Here a large crowd of people, animals, and birds, waited to see the giant who had flown in a huge bird from somewhere. It was kept from pressing close to him by soldiers, males who also wore skirts.

  Hank went across a drawbridge over a fifty-foot-wide moat, passed through the outer walls, across a courtyard with marble paving, and up twelve marble steps forty feet or so wide. These were flanked by ramps for the animals. He had no chance to examine the rubies, large as his head, set in the walls by the entrance.

  He was seeing much but noting little in detail. He went through high-ceilinged and wide halls furnished with statuary, paintings, and other artifacts of various kinds. The floors were marble set with colored mosaics. At the end of a hall, he was conducted up a broad winding staircase and arrived, out of breath, at a door on the ninth floor.

  He walked stooping through the doorway into an anteroom. The next room had a steel door with a small barred, window. He was urged through that, and the captain and two soldiers who had accompanied him into the room left it. The door was closed, and a big steel bar clanged shut on the outside. He was in a very large room with furniture too small for him except for the enormous canopied bed. A door led to a bathroom. It did have running water, however, though the toilet was too small for him to sit comfortably on—his testicles would fall into the water—and he would have to bend far over to wash his face. The only light he'd have at night would be lamps burning oil of some kind.

  All Mr. H. G. Wells, Mr. Roy Rockwood, and Mr. Dante Alighieri had overlooked in their journeys to other worlds was how shocked their heroes would be. To leave Earth was to suffer a physical and emotional blow similar to that which the newborn baby felt on being ejected from the womb. However, the baby had no idea of what had happened, whereas the adult journeying to the moon or Mars or Hell had some notion of what he was to encounter and had willingly launched himself into the unknown. Also, Mr. Wells' characters in The First Men in the Moon, and Mr. Rockwood's in Through Space to Mars, and Mr. Alighieri's in The Inferno had voyaged within the relatively narrow limits of the solar system and their destinations were not unmapped. Mr. Alighieri's hero, Dante himself, had a clear image of what Hell would be like, though the reality must have shaken him to the center of his being. Surely, the heroes of all three fantasists must have been numb and disoriented for a while. Lesser men might have died from the shock.

  Well, maybe not. After all, they had had some sort of conditioning for their voyages, some degree of preparation.

  But to be suddenly propelled into another universe—that was something that Hank Stover had not read about or even heard of. Well, yes, he had. Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven were other worlds in the sense that they were in another universe. Or were they? Weren't they in the solar system also?

  And, in a sense, he had been conditioned, prepared, for this universe by his mother's stories and Mr. Baum's books. So, he had not been completely shocked.

  Also, though he was in another universe, he was still, somehow, in the solar system of Earth.

  There was a big ornately carved pendulum clock in the room. Its face bore twenty-three single characters or bi-characters. These were numerals, many of which looked like they had been derived from the Greek alph
abet, some from the Latin, and a few from what he thought was the Runic. He was not sure, but they seemed to be like those he had seen in a book on the Gothic language.

  The clock was obviously a twenty-four-hour chronometer. The day, indicated by the zero mark, started at noon. The zero mark at the top of the face was not the zero he was accustomed to. It was a short horizontal line with a large dot in the middle. These people, if they or their ancestors had come from Earth, would have come before Arabic numerals had been introduced. But one of their geniuses had invented a symbol for zero.

  When the clock struck noon, Hank's wristwatch indicated 12:04:08 P.M. The moon was full, as on this date on Earth, and, though it was pale in the daylight, its markings seemed to be like Earth' s moon. There was a morning star, which would have been Venus on Earth. Sunset was at 6:25 by his watch, just as it was supposed to. Also, the constellations were what he could have expected on this date as seen from the Midwest.

  What was not on Earth was the sudden appearance and rolling charge across the desert floor of huge glowing balls and their silent explosions as they neared the fertile borderland. Something at the edge of the desert was discharging them.

  On April 2, the moon, now beginning to wane, rose at 8:00 A.M.

  He was sure that this desert and the green land were not on Earth somewhere. Even though there were in A.D. 1923 unexplored territories, this could not be one of them. Wherever the green haze, some sort of entrance, had sent him, it had not transported him to a remote spot of his native planet. He had passed into another universe.

  The two universes formed a split-level continuum. Earth and this planet shared the same extra-atmospheric space but yet were walled off from each other. Or they were two different floors in the same planetary building, as it were. When he had gone through the green haze, he had ascended from the first floor, Earth, to the second floor, Ertha.

  Ertha. That that was so similar to the English word was no coincidence. Not when the language used lamb for lamb, fotuz for foot, manna for man, kald for cold, arm for arm, and herto for heart. The people of this desert-surrounded land, called Amariiki, "Spirit-Kingdom," spoke a tongue descended from some Germanic language. He suspected that it was Gothic, but he did not know enough to be sure.