Philip Jose Farmer - A Barnstormer in Oz

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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."
A limited first edition of this book was published by Phantasia Press. A BARNSTORMER IN OZ
A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with the author
PRINTING HISTORY
Berkley trade paperback edition / September 1982 Berkley edition / October 1983
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1982 by Philip Jose Farmer.
Cover illustration by Don Ivan Punchatz.
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part,
by mimeograph or any other means, without permission.
For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group,
200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.
ISBN: 0-425-06274-0
A BERKLEY BOOK,® TM 757,375
The name "BERKLEY" and the stylized "B" with design are trademarks
belonging to Berkley Publishing Corporation.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
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.
2 Philip Jos6 Farmer
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
A BARNSTORMER IN OZ 3
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
Philip Jos£ Farmer
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
A BARNSTORMER IN OZ 5
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
6
Philip Jos6 Farmer
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.
A BARNSTORMER IN OZ 7
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.
at 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 Modn, 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?
8
A BARNSTORMER IN OZ 9
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
alphabet, 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
10
Philip Jos6 Farmer
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.
There was also a nation to the north which was called Oz. This was not a word which these people had
brought in from Earth.
Hank Stover had had many questions, still did, but he could not ask them until he learned his captors'
speech. Since they started his language lessons an hour after he was in his luxurious cell, they were eager to
communicate. Most of his daylight hours were spent bent over by the window in the door. His instructors,
all wearing gauze masks for the first two weeks, stood on the other side. Hank learned much, but he got a
hell of a backache and, sometimes, a headache.
"What am I?" he yelled now and then. "A skunk? A pariah? Something unspeakably filthy and degraded? A
leper? A Socialist?"
Four men, four women, and a child taught him, each for about an hour and fifteen minutes. One was the
blonde pipperoo, Captain Lamblo, "Little Lamb." Like the others, she had no surname but had a nickname
or cognomen. Hers was "The Swift."
They started out by pointing to and naming parts of their bodies. He repeated their words until his
pronunciation was perfect or, at this stage, acceptable. If he could have seen their lips, he would have
learned faster.
They brought in objects and named these. After five days, he was taught simple sentences.
"Sa-her'z ain sko." "This is a shoe."
"Sa-thar'z ain hilm." "That's a helmet."
"// sai thuk." "I see you."
"Sai thu mik?" "See you me?"
A BARNSTORMER IN OZ
11
"Ain, twai, thriiz..." "One, two, three..."
He was able to relate many words to three branches of the Teutonic language. His Swedish
governess had taught him some of her language, and he had learned German in prep school,
during the Occupation, and at Yale. This enabled him to relate some of the words to English.
But how had the Teutonics gotten into this world? And why had they become pygmies?
In the meantime, he had managed to get a building erected around the Jenny to protect her from the weather
and wind. He could not see the plane because his windows, the augdor, literally, eye-doors, faced the south.
He had also gotten his captors to deliver his luggage, which was kept in the recess under the rear turtle
deck. This had been brought to him wrapped in sheets and carried by men with gloves. The sheets were
removed, and the cases were pushed through the door at the ends of long sticks. He supposed that the sheets
and gloves would be burned later.
He was happy about this. He had had to wash his underwear, shirt, and socks in cold water and with the
strong soap. Then he had had to go without them until they had dried. Now he had a change. He also had a
carton of Camel cigarettes and a quart of bootleg booze, Glenfiddich scotch, smuggled in from Canada.
He'd had to smoke the local tobacco, a strong burley, in a pipe. He did not like to smoke a pipe. They'd
given him beer, which was tastier than any he'd ever had, but he preferred hard liquor. The stuff they'd
given him was grain alcohol mixed with water and the juice of berries.
Also in the luggage was a Colt .45 New Service revolver and two boxes of ammunition. These people had
no idea what they were, but he did not intend to use them.
There were also copies of a farmer's almanac, Sinclair Lewis's Babbitt, Civilization In the United States,
edited by Harold Stearns, and two Current Opinion magazines. The latter had been taken from a Kansas
City boardinghouse, and, though they were the April, 1920 and April, 1921 issues, Hank had started
reading them. They had many interesting articles. Besides, he would read anything, even the labels on a can
of Campbell's soup, if he had nothing else.
He also exercised vigorously for an hour, and he spent some time observing the celestial phenomena and
the hun-
12
Philip Jos6 Farmer
A BARNSTORMER IN OZ
13
dreds of fireballs that went up in flashes like shells from Big Bertha.
He asked Lamblo what they were called.
"Fizhanam." "Enemy-ghosts."
When he asked her to explain their nature, he got no answer.
At the end of the third week, his captors must have concluded that he was rain, clean. The inner door was
unlocked, and Wulfla (Little Wolf), a teacher, entered. But two guards stood at the door.
"Why did you treat me as if I had the..." he said. What was the word for plague?
"Unhaili. Zha, sa Aithlo (Yes, the Little Mother) had you locked up until we could find out if you were
carrying some evil thing which might make us sick."
"What diseases do you have? After all, if I can give mine to you, you can give yours to me."
"You'll have to ask Little Mother. She commanded that you be kept here untouched. But I think that you
giants have some sort of loathsome illnesses which might make us sick and die."
"You don't have those kinds of diseases?"
"Ne. We die of gund (cancer), heart failure, stroke, and other self-diseases, but, except for some skin
diseases, we have little that one person transmits to another."
More questioning told him that these people did not even have the common cold, though they could get
pneumonia. And the childbirth fatality rate was low, one in ten thousand. Some of his questions were
readily, if not fully, answered. Others were referred to his scheduled meeting with Sa Hauist (The Highest),
another of the many titles of the female ruler.
He was puzzled by the tobacco. If these natives were descendants of Dark-Age Goths, how had they
encountered tobacco? That was indigenous to America; the Goths were Europeans. Also, there were many
other North American plants: canned squash, pumpkin, and Indian corn or maize. Potatoes and tomatoes
were jacking, but the former had come from South America and the latter from Central America to Europe
and then to North America.
There were many illustrated books on the shelves, and these showed animals that were a mixture of
European and
American. They included the lion and tiger that Baum had written of and his mother had told him about.
The lion looked much like the African counterpart, but the cub spots had not entirely faded away in the
adult. It was much larger in proportion than the African lion would have been if it had diminished in size. It
seemed to him that it must be descended from the ' 'Atrocious Lion'' that had once roamed the southwest
U.S. but had become extinct about 14,000 years ago.
The tiger, which his mother had never seen but had heard of, was not the Asiatic cat. It was what was called
the sabertooth tiger or smilodon, and its fur was tawny and unstriped. It, too, had perished on the North
American continent about the.same time as the American lion.
Apparently, the giant ground sloth and the short-faced grizzly also dwelt in the forests and plains along
with the humpless camel, the mammoth, and the mastodon.
Where were the dog and the horse? The ancient Goths would have had these when they came into this
universe. What had, boojumlike, snatched them all away?
And what had caused both animals and humans to shrink in size?
And what... ?
He tried to keep from thinking of the questions that crowded at the windows of his mind like ghostly
peeping toms.
Sometimes, he stared out the huge French windows or from the balcony. His apartment was in the southeast
arm of the X-shaped castle. He could see part of the southern land, the farms, the forest, and the desert
beyond. He could also look into many windows on the lower levels of the arm. There was one vast room
which aroused his curiosity, though he had never seen anyone enter it, not even to dust.
Its windows were huge, and its curtains were always open. The floor was of wood, and the walls had many
various designs including pentacles and nonacles. There were many tables, large and small, bearing what
looked like laboratory equipment. When the sun shone into it, he could see much of the room clearly. At
night, only one light burned, a giant torch set in the middle of the room on top of a sphinx of highly
polished black stone which was pointed southward. The head had four female faces. At least, he thought it
did
14
Philip Jos6 Farmer
since he could see the profiles of those in front and behind j and the full face of the one looking to the
south. Its seven- j pointed crown was set with jewels. The couchant body was i not a lioness's but a
bear's.
On the 28th day of his imprisonment, the late afternoon sun was shrouded by thick black clouds. The
wind slowly strengthened until it had a voice and then was howling. The branches of the trees flailed,
and their tops bent. Thunder snapped out lightning as if it were a whip on fire. Rain came at nightfall
and spread over the windows of his apartment. Out in the desert, the white arcs increased their number
and the distance they spat from point to point. The gigantic fireballs seemed to pop out from
everywhere. They rolled like a charging army, like thundering surf, toward the edge of the sands,
where they blew up.
"The devil's laying down his artillery barrage," Stover muttered.
Cold skated over his skin. After the barrage, then what? Zero hour? The onslaught?
Also, his theory that the spurts and balls were some kind of St. Elmo's fire was untenable. That could
not exist in this wet atmosphere.
He went to a table and poured out a tall glass of the local liquor which had long ago replaced his
scotch. This was different from the first bottle he'd been given. It was some sort of barley vodka,
strong eye-watering stuff. He drank down two or three ounces and turned, full of Dutch courage, to
face the fury from the south. He had not been afraid of lightning storms before; in fact, he had flown
through them,
15
16
Philip Jos6 Farmer
A BARNSTORMER IN OZ
17
and, though nervous, had not been frightened. But there was something about this fury that made him far
more uneasy. Perhaps it was those arcs and fireballs. His instructors had not been able to explain them.
They had said that they had always been out there, but they did not know how they originated.
Stover had almost gotten used to them. Now... they seemed determined to get over whatever hidden barrier
it was that kept them in the desert.
"I'm anthropomorphizing," he said. "But what else can an anthropos do? It's his nature to commit the
pathetic fallacy. Commit?"
The wind seemed to get even stronger, rattling the windows and hurling solid slices of the rain against the
glass. The tall grandfather clock in the living room, the case of which was carved with grotesque goblinish
faces, gonged twelve times. Midnight. And before the final note sounded, the rain and the wind stopped. It
was as if a switch had cut off the power that was driving the elements.
He opened the French windows and stepped outside. There was silence except for the drip of water. The
fireballs, the "enemy ghosts," exploded as they hurled themselves against the desert boundary. Their flashes
reminded him of artillery barrages at night on the distant front. The farmhouses were not illuminated, and
the clouds covered the sky. But the intense glare of gouting fireballs as they went up punctuated the
darkness as if God were a crazy writer whose finger was stuck on the asterisk key.
Far off, thunder rumbled sullenly. It sounded like an angry bear whose attack had been beaten off and who
had decided to go elsewhere.
The glowing spheres became more numerous. The desert was suddenly alive with them. Where there had
been an estimated four or five per acre, there now seemed to be a hundred. They wheeled towards the forest
across the sandy marsh in ragged phalanxes; the rumble of their advance was like the wheels of an ancient
British chariot army.
Suddenly, to his left, a glaring sphere slipped through whatever it was that had prevented its mates from
penetrating. He saw it in its full splendor, then could see only flashes now and then as it sped through the
heavy forest.
He jumped. The room holding the sphinx, previously lit only by the single torch, had flared with a great
light. It
j blinded him when he turned to look into it, but, as the i illumination died down, he saw that someone had
come into j the room. At first, he could not make the figure out distinctly.
The bright light had faded, leaving the torch to push back the
darkness, a task it could not handle. Then, a hundred lights I sprang out, making the vast room bright but
not dazzlingly ; so. They came from many hemispheres set in the walls. ; Stover swore. How could
all those lamps have been lit at
once when there was only one person in the room?
He forgot about that. The person was a woman, nude : except for high-heeled shoes of some glittering
silverish metal
and a tall conical white hat with outspread bird-wings. Her
long hair hung down almost to the back of her knees, and its
dark auburn seemed to catch the light, compress it, and shed t it as if it had become jewels. Her face was
beautiful but with « just enough irregularity, a nose a trifle too long, lips a trifle ; too full, eyes a trifle too
far apart, to make them nonclassical ! but highly individual. Her body was perfect, long, slim but ]
wellrounded legs, hips narrow but not too narrow, a slim j waist, a big ribcage, full upstanding breasts with
tiny aureoles
but big nipples. Her skin was very white. ; Hank despised peeping toms, but he could not force him->.
self to go back into his room. Surely, if she did not want to be ; observed, she would have closed the
curtains. Moreover,
what she was doing had made him curious. He forgot about
decency and gentleman's behavior.
She had taken the torch from the hole in top of the
four-faced sphinx's head and had stuck it in a wall-holder. : Then she went to a table and put her arms
around a glass or \ crystal sphere twice as large as a basketball. She carried it to I the sphinx and placed it
on the top of the crown, where it fit j snugly. ; Stover glanced southwards, the corner of his eye having
detected another breakthrough. Two more flaming balls had
rolled through, leaving their exploding companions behind.
The first was halfway through the forest, flitting phantomlike | among the trees and bushes, and it would
soon be out of view ; below the plateau edge. | He looked back at the red-haired woman. She was
dancing
counterclockwise around the sphinx. In her left hand was a
shepherd's staff, the shaft of which was carved with a spiral.
She raised and lowered and stabbed it in and out as she spun,
IS
Philip Jos6 Farmer
leaped, shuffled, whirled, sidestepped, bent, raised, and moved her lips. Now and then she seemed to
be catching the neck of an invisible enemy in the hook at the end of her staff.
Lightning challenged the earth to a duel by slapping it in its face. He jumped, and his heart hammered.
The bolt was unexpected; he had thought that the electrical fury was over. Also, the discharge had
seemed to come so close to him that a cat's whisker could have measured the distance. Following the
bolt, thunder rumbled as if the sky were trying to digest the spirit of anger. Lightning bridged cloud
and ground again, though farther away this time.
The clearness of the sphere was gone. Something dark roiled inside it.
At the same time, the corners of the vast room darkened as if shadows were breeding in it. The
blacknesses expanded like a cloud of ink shot out by an escaping octopus. It floated to the nearest
lamps and passed over, but he could see the burning wicks faintly through the darkness.
A chill passed over him. His hairs felt as if they were rising.
"Jesus!" he muttered. He went back into his room and got his binoculars. Returning to the balcony, he
directed the glasses towards the sphere, focussed them, and saw that there was within the sphere what
looked like a miniature of the scene outside the castle. There were little black clouds and tiny threads
of lightning shooting- among them and down from them.
Suddenly, six little glowing rolling balls formed on the lower part of the sphere.
The blackness filled half the room now and was sweeping towards the center where the redhead still
danced like a maniac around the sphinx.
He could not keep the binoculars on her face; she moved too swiftly and erratically, though he had the
impression that her movements were not erratic for her but were rigidly patterned.
He put down the binoculars and looked out over the forest. Seven fireballs gleamed now and then in
the trees.
No. Eight. Another had burst through.
He looked back at the room and put the binoculars up. The sphere now held eight fireballs.
A BARNSTORMER IN OZ
19
The redhead stopped before the sphere, arched her back, which was towards him, her left arm raised,
and the corkscrew-shafted staff pointing upwards. Then the staff came down, and it was pointed at the
sphere.
For some seconds, thirty perhaps, she held the staff steady. Then it stabbed at the sphere but stopped a
few inches from it. The blackness, which had been a few feet from her, closed in. He swore. Now he
could see her only dimly. But he saw clearly the dazzling light that spurted from the end of the staff
and struck the sphere.
The darkness oozed back a few feet. He used the binoculars again. There were only seven fireballs. He
looked out at the forest and counted seven.
Again the staff jabbed. A twisting bolt of light shot from the tip of the staff and struck one of the balls
inside the sphere. It vanished in a gout of flame. He looked out at the woods. Six were left. The one
that had been in the lead was gone.
Again and again, the red-haired woman threw light from the staff. Each time that a tiny ball in the
sphere was discharged, a giant ball among the trees disappeared. The darkness shrank back towards
the comers. When the final minute ball was gone, the shadows had also gone to wherever they had
come from.
The rolling spheres on the border burst as if they were signals sent up for a retreat, and the spheres
behind them rolled away. The thunder also moved away. Silence except for his heavy breathing
enclosed him. He was cold and sweating; his pajamas were soaked. The odor of his fear was heavy
around him.
As swiftly as they had been lit, the flames in the hundred lamps went out. The red-haired woman took
the sphere from the top of the sphinx's head and put it on the table. She placed the tip of the single
torch into the socket hidden on the sphinx's head. Stover used his binoculars to zero in on her face.
Her expression was so forceful, so triumphant, and so savage that it scared him. He went into his
room, closed the French windows, and drank more of the barley vodka. Even it did not make him go
to sleep quickly, however.
The morning of April 30th, he showered and shaved and, after some consideration, put on his
barnstorming outfit
20
Philip Jos6 Fanner
instead of his civilian go-to-Sunday-meeting clothes. He felt that a uniform of some sort would be
best. This was a state occasion.
His breakfast was not brought in as usual. Shortly after the clock had struck nineteen—7:00 A.M. by
his watch—Captain Lamblo and six women soldiers entered. He was marched down the hall and
descended the winding staircase to the ground floor. Here he was conducted into the central part, the
axis of the castle, and along a high-ceilinged, very broad, red marble hall with gold statuettes on silver
pedestals by the walls and thence through an arch set with rubies as large as cabbage heads into an
enormous room. Its domed ceiling was at least one hundred feet high at the apex, and it was one
hundred feet wide. The floor and walls were of white marble, and gigantic tapestries bearing what
seemed to be historical scenes hung from the walls. There was also much gold filigree on the walls.
A crowd, perhaps three hundred people, animals, and birds, was lined up to form two sides of an aisle.
The humans were dressed in uniforms or splendid formal clothes, the women wearing long
anklelength gofwns and the men colorful kilts. As he was to find out later, though males wore trousers
for work or everyday dress, they donned kilts for formal occasions.
At the end of the aisle, near the far wall, was a platform of marble white with seven marble steps
leading up to it. Its edges were set with rubies even larger than those in the hallway. In the center was
a throne carved from a giant ruby. A woman sat on a cushion on it.
This was the queen, the highest, the wise-woman, the witch-ruler, Herself, Little Mother.
The soldiers lifted their spears in salute but did not accompany Stover and Captain Lamblo toward the
throne. The little blonde led him to the foot of the platform, gave the queen a sword-salute, and
stepped to one side.
No one had spoken while he had walked down the aisle; no one had even coughed or sneezed or
cleared his or her throat.
Hank recognized the tiny, exquisitely beautiful, auburn-haired woman on the throne. He had seen her
dancing naked in the enormous room during the storm. Now she was covered from ankle to throat in a
loose white gown, and, instead of a conical hat, she wore a gold crown with nine points. Inset in
A BARNSTORMER IN OZ
21
its front were small rubies which formed the outline of an X inside a horseshoe-shape. Her hair was
now coiled around her head. Her very dark blue eyes were fixed on "him. The corners of her lips were
slightly dimpled as if she were thinking, "You saw me that night."
Of course, she would have known that he had witnessed that strange frightening ritual or whatever it
was. She could have drawn the curtains if she had not wished anyone to see her.
Stover felt awkward bowing to her, but he thought that he should.
She inclined her head slightly in acknowledgement.
He said, "Glinda the Good, I presume?"
"Goodness is a relative quality," the queen said.
They were breakfasting on the balcony of her apartment. She sat on a chair and ate from dishes on a
small table before her. He was in a chair and at a table which had been specially constructed for his
size. Even the plates and the spoon, two-lined fork, and knife, had been made for him.
"Goodness is relative to what?" Hank said.
"Not to evil but to other goodnesses," she said. "However, I shouldn't be speaking in abstract terms.
There is no such thing as goodness or evil in themselves. There are only good and evil persons. And in
reality there are not even those. There are what humans have agreed among themselves to define as
other good and evil persons. But the definition of good and evil by one person does not match, though
it may touch or intersect, the definition of these by another person." Stover was silent for a moment. In
the first place, he was not fluent enough to be sure that he understood everything she was saying. In
the second place, he was wondering if she was trying to tell him something without being specific
about it. He ate a slice of hard-boiled egg and a chunk of buttered bread. Since he'd come here, he'd
had plenty of vegetables and fruit, wheat and barley, cheese, eggs, nuts, and milk. But no meat, fowl,
or fish. Though he craved steak and bacon, he'd not complained. If he voiced his desires, he'd be
22
A BARNSTORMER IN OZ
23
regarded as kin to cannibals. His hosts would be disgusted and horrified.
He glanced at the male moose standing by the side of her chair and the female bald eagle roosting on a
wooden beam sticking out of a wall. They had said nothing so far, but it was obvious that her
bodyguards understood what their mistress and her guest were saying.
"In any event," he said, "Your Witchness must be highly respected by your people. Otherwise, they
would not call you the Good."
"I'm a very good witch," she said, smiling. "In fact, I'm so good that I should be called the Best."
He started to say that she must be pulling his leg, but he restrained himself. That phrase, literally
摘要：

ToL.FrankBaum,toFredM.Meyer,totheInternationalWizardofOzflub,toLesterandJudy-LynndelRey,toJudyGarland,toalltheScarecrows,TinWoodmans,CowardlyLions,andDorothysthissideoftheYellowBrickRoad,andtoJohnSteinbeck,whosaidthat,morethananythingelse,hewouldratherbe"theambassadortoOz."Alimitedfirsteditionofthi...

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