Aces Abroad

"Where are we?" said Cordelia. The sky was dotted with small cumulus, but none of the cloud-shadows ever seemed to shade her. She wished mightily that they did.

"The world," said Warreen. "It's not my world."

"The desert, then."

" I know it's the desert," said Cordelia. "I can see it's the desert. I can feel it. The heat's a dead giveaway. But what desert is it?"

"It is the land of Baiame," said Warreen. "This is the great Nullarbor Plain."

"Are you sure?" Cordelia scrubbed sweat from her forehead with the strip of fabric she had carefully torn away from the hem of her Banana Republic skirt. " I looked at the map on the plane all the way up from Melbourne. The distances don't make sense. Shouldn't this be the Simpson Desert?"

"Distances are different in the Dreamtime," Warreen said simply.

"The Dreamtime?" What am I in, a Peter Weir movie? she thought. "As in the myth?"

"No myth," said her companion. "We are now where reality was, is, and will be. We are in the origin of all things."

"Right." I am dreaming, Cordelia thought. I'm dreamingor I'm dead and this is the last thing my brain cells are creating before everything flares and goes black.

": All things in the shadow world were created here first," said Warreen. "Birds, creatures, grass, the ways of doing things, the taboos that must be observed."

Cordelia looked around her. There was little to see. "These are the originals?" she said. "I've only seen the copies before?"

He nodded vigorously.

" I don't see any dune buggies," she said a bit petulantly, feeling the heat. " I don't see any airliners or vending machines full of ice-cold Diet Pepsi."

He answered her seriously. "Those are only variations. Here is where everything begins."

I'm dead, she thought glumly. "I'm hot," she said. "I'm tired. How far do we have to walk?"

"A distance." Warreen kept striding along effortlessly. Cordelia stopped and set hands to hips. "Why should I go along?"

"If you don't," Warreen said back over his shoulder, "then you shall die."

"Oh." Cordelia started walking again, having to run a few steps in order to catch up with the man. The image she couldn't get out of her head was that of cold cans of soda, the moisture beading on the aluminum outsides. She ached to hear the click and hiss as the tabs peeled back. And the bubbles, the taste…

"Keep walking," said Warreen.

"How long have we been walking?" said Cordelia. She glanced up and shaded her eyes. The sun was measurably closer to the horizon. Shadows stretched in back of Warreen and her.

"Are you tired?" said her companion. "I'm exhausted."

"Do you need to test?"

She thought about that. Her own conclusion surprised her. "No. No, I don't think I do. Not yet, anyway." Where was the energy coming from? She was exhausted-and yet strength seemed to rise up into her, as though she were a plant taking nourishment from the earth. "This place is magical."

Warreen nodded matter-of-factly. "Yes, it is."

"However," she said, " I am hungry"

"You don't need food, but I'll see to it."

Cordelia heard a sound apart from the wind and the padding of her own feet on the dusty soil. She turned and saw a brownish-gray kangaroo hopping along, easily pacing them. "I'm hungry enough to eat one of those," she said.

The kangaroo stared at her from huge chocolate eyes. "I should hope not," it said.

Cordelia closed her mouth with a click. She stared back. Warreen smiled at the kangaroo and said courteously,

"Good afternoon, Mirram. Will we shortly find shade and water?"

"Yes," said the kangaroo. "Sadly, the hospitality is being hoarded by a cousin of the Gurangatch."

"At least," said Warreen, "it is not a bunyip."

"That is true," agreed the kangaroo.

"Will I find weapons?"

"Beneath the tree," said the kangaroo.

"Good," Warreen said with relief. " I wouldn't relish wrestling a monster with only my hands and teeth."

" I wish you well," said the kangaroo. "And you," it said to Cordelia, "be at peace." The creature turned at right angles to their path and bounded into the desert where it soon was lost to sight.

"Talking kangaroos?" said Cordelia. "Bunyips? Gurnagatches?"

"Gurangatch," Warreen corrected her. "Something of both lizard and fish. It is, of course, a monster."

She was mentally fitting pieces together. "And it's hogging an oasis."

"Spot on."

"Couldn't we avoid it?"

"No matter what trail we follow," Warreen said, " I think it will encounter us." He shrugged. "It's just a monster."

"Right." Cordelia was glad she still had tight hold of the H and K mini. The steel was hot and slippery in her hand. "Just a monster," she mumbled through dry lips.

Cordelia had no idea how Warreen found the pond and the tree. So far as she could tell, they followed a perfectly straight path. A dot appeared in the sunset distance. It grew as they approached it. Cordelia saw a tough-looking desert oak streaked with charcoal stripes. It seemed to have been struck by lightning more than once and looked as if it had occupied this patch of hardscrabble soil for centuries. A belt of grass surrounded the tree. A gentle slope led down to reeds and then the edge of a pool about thirty feet across. "Where's the monster?" said Cordelia.

"Hush." Warreen strode up to the tree and began to strip. His muscles were lean and beautifully defined. His skin shimmered with sweat, glowing almost a dark blue in the dusk. When he ski

God, she thought. He's gorgeous. Depending on gender, her kin would have been either scandalized or triggered to a lynching impulse. Even though she had been reared to abhor such a thought, she wanted to reach and lightly touch him. This, she abruptly realized, was not like her at all. Although she was surrounded in New York by people of other colors, they still made her nervous. Warreen was engendering that reaction, yet it was vastly different in nature and intensity. She did want to touch him.

Naked, Warreen neatly folded his clothes and set them in a pile beneath the tree. In turn, he picked up a variety of objects from the grass. He inspected a long club, then set it back down. Finally he straightened with a spear in one hand, a boomerang in the other. He looked fiercely at Cordelia. " I can be no more ready."

She felt a chill like ice water run through her. It was a sensation both of fear and of excitement. "Now what?" She tried to keep her voice low and steady, but it squeaked slightly. God, she hated that.

Warreen didn't have a chance to answer. He gestured toward the dark pool. Ripples had appeared on the far side. The center of those ripples seemed to be moving toward them. A few bubbles burst on the surface.

The water was shrugged aside. What surveyed the couple on the bank was a figure out of a nightmare. Looks meaner than any joker I've ever seen, Cordelia thought. As it lifted more of its body from the water, she decided the creature must possess at least the mass of Bruce the Shark. The froglike mouth gaped, revealing a multitude of rustcolored teeth. It regarded the humans with slitted, bulging lizard eyes.

"It is equally sired of fish and lizard," said Warreen conversationally, as though guiding a European tourist through a wild-game park. He stepped forward and raised his spear.

"Cousin Gurangatch!" he called out. "We would drink from the spring and rest beneath the tree. We would do this in peace. If we ca

Gurangatch hissed like a freight train bleeding its brakes. Without hesitation it lunged forward, slamming down on the wet bank with the slap of a ten-ton eel. Warreen lightly leapt back, and the stained teeth clashed together just in front of his face. He poked Gurangatch's snout with the spear. The fish-lizard hissed even louder.