A Barnstormer in Oz

"Look at this."

Sharts pointed at a five-foot-high silvery dome sunk into the earth. At the base where it faced the precipice was an arched hole about ten inches high.

"Interesting," Hank said.

"Wait a minute. I've been timing them."

Fifty seconds passed. Then Hank was startled. A tiny figure, a simulacrum of the bipeds portrayed on the block, walked out. It paid them no attention but marched like a wooden soldier to the edge of the plateau and toppled over it.

"My God, what's that?" Hank said.

"Wait."

Sixty seconds later, a duplicate of the first walked out and, like it, fell into the canyon.

"I think it's a toy-making machine of the Long-Gones," Sharts said. "It's still operating."

"After two thousand years or more?"

"I know it's incredible, but how else explain it?"

When, sixty seconds later, the next figure walked out, Sharts picked the tiny thing up. It still moved its legs and swung its arms as if it were walking on the ground.

"They must have had some control mechanism so that the child could direct it to turn and so on," Sharts said.

Hank thought that he was assuming a lot, but he had no basis for argument.

"There must be thousands on the slope at the base of this cliff," Sharts said. "The others, and there must have been millions, must have been carried off by the river."

The body of the toy was human, and the face would have been human if it had had a nose. Where that should have been was a hole with many fine strands. These may have represented a network of hairs. On closer inspection, Hank saw that the ears were smaller in proportion than a human's and the convolutions in it were different.

The joints of the legs and arms and the fingers and toes could be articulated.

Hank told him what he had found.

"I'd like to try to read whatever story is on that obelisk," he said. "But we'd have to turn it over. The story is a serial one, and it spirals up from the base to the apex."

Sharts went with him to the fallen monument. He felt the red metal, which was unrusted, and looked at some of the hieroglyphics.

"It must weigh from three to five hundred tons," he said. "We could never turn it over to read the other side. We'll have to be satisfied with what we can see. But look at this."

He pointed at a representation of a dome which had an arched hole at its base. Out of it were proceeding figures like Blogo and the Winged Monkeys and other seemingly u

"That adds weight to my theory that the Rare Beasts and the Monkeys are descendants of synthetic vivants," Hank said.

The exposed sides of the obelisk had the begi

"Nevertheless," Hank said, "we have enough to know some of the history of the Long-Gones. Including the fact, I suppose it's a fact, that they did not just die out. They left for another world, went through a gate they'd opened between this world and another. If I interpret the pictures correctly, their experiments in trying to open a way to another world is what made weak places in the walls between your universe and mine.

"Maybe I shouldn't say walls. As I see it, the process is more like going up or down from one level of energy or configuration of energy to another. Anyway, the Long-Gones either could not get to Earth or, after a look at it, decided to go someplace else."

He did not have to explain to Sharts why the noseless beings had abandoned this world. Sharts had also comprehended that the Long-Gones had decided not to fight any more. They had been pushed into this area, which was about the size of Alaska, and there seemed no way to expand it. They were repelling the forces that had devastated this planet and could do so for a long time. But it was not worthwhile. Not when they could go to a new green world and leave the attackers behind.

The energy configuration of the universe they went to would not permit their enemy to exist there.

"I suppose that they also can't exist on Earth," Hank said, thinking aloud. "But I'm not sure. I wouldn't think that the energy entities which possess animals could exist there either. But Glinda told me that she sent a hawk through the opening to Earth, and it came back still possessed."

"Did she ask you to pass that information on to your people?" Sharts said.

"Yes. Why? Oh, I see. She may have been lying so that my people would be frightened. I thought of that. However, I won't tell my people... those people... that I think she's not telling the truth. I wouldn't want them to take a chance that she was."

It seemed from what he'd read on the obelisk that there were two types of energy beings. One was composed of the giant rolling balls that hurled themselves against the edge of the green land. Most of them perished there because the Long-Gones had buried defenses along the border between desert and oasis. These were pictured as huge poles, subterranean lightning rods, as it were.

A long time before the ancient aborigines had left this universe, they had experimented at making gates to other universes. Their first success had resulted in what was to be disaster. The great balls of electrical fire had poured through before the gate could be closed. Thousands must have entered. And these had propagated their kind by using the earth and atmospheric electricity. They had sucked the electrical energy from all creatures, vegetable or animal.

"They're not demons or souls loosed from hell to ravage on the living," Hank said. "Your priests are wrong. They're electrical Draculas. And they exist because the physical structure of this universe is not quite like that of mine. In my world they... no. I overlooked something. Why is it that the energy-things originated in another world and can live in this one but not in the world the Long-Gones went to?"

"Perhaps the physical laws of the world they went to are just dissimilar enough so the things can't exist there."

Sharts might be a near-psychotic, but he was not unintelligent.

"You could be right. No!" Hank said hastily when he saw Sharts's face tighten and turn red. "You're right! Absolutely right. It couldn't be anything else but!

"However, how do I know that the physical laws of my universe won't permit those things to exist there? I don't. I'll make sure that I put that in the report."

Sharts's face loosened and regained its normal color.

"The defenses erected by the Long-Gones must be weakening in at least one place," Hank said. "Otherwise, some wouldn't be able to roll onto the green land. I saw some do that one night while I was in Glinda's castle. They were blown up, but I'm sure that it was through Glinda's doing. She was using her own forces to destroy them. What you call magic."

"Perhaps that is why Glinda established her capital at that point," Sharts said. "There is a weak or weakening spot there, and she wanted to be there to guard it."

Sharts looked gloomy and said, "What if Glinda dies or the weak spot becomes larger?"

"I hate to think about that," Hank said.

Maybe he would be better off if he went back to Earth.

"Anyway," he said, waving his arm to indicate the whole oasis, "I can't believe that this is the only alive area and that the rest of the world is a desert."

"Why not? Isn't that made clear on the obelisk?"

"It was true when the obelisk was made. Or maybe it wasn't true even then. My point is the air."

"The air?"

Sharts looked puzzled, and he did not like to be puzzled.

"Yes, the air. The planetary atmosphere. Its oxygen is continually being renewed by plants on the earth and in the sea. But, if the energy-things have destroyed all the plants, where is the new air coming from? This land isn't big enough to keep its inhabitants from asphyxiating. There's air blowing in all the time from the desert, and it would sweep away the oxygen generated here."