Forever the Road (A Rucksack Universe Fantasy Novel) (14 page)

The one called Pim filled their glasses from the fresh pitcher. “No, Mim. They pass! First Class. Highest Muster. Grade A. Prime Premium Select!”

“If you’re wanting to put one of those fancy stickers on the door,” Jade said, “I hope it’s a bit shorter than all that.”

“Fear not Ms. Jade, we would never want to cover up your ‘As Seen in Guru Deep’s Third Eye’ sticker,” Mim said. “That itself is most more select than what we humble officers of the Office of World Light and Foreign Visitors can offer.”

“Since we have passed such muster with you lads,” Jade said, “may I ask a favor?”

“What might that be, Jade of the Finest Pour?”

“I don’t know how you’re doing it, but stop tripping my customers.”

Pim shrugged and pointed to a patch of floor. “Slippery floor is unkind to feet. People come to find themselves, only to find themselves on their backsides if not for us to steady them once more.”

Jade’s gaze hardened. “I don’t know who you are, but I didn’t pour my first beer yesterday. No one has ever tripped around this pub like anyone near your table tonight. Whoever you are, whatever your deal is, leave my customers alone. Anyone else stumbles, and I won’t care if you work for Shiva. I’ll personally boot you out into the middle of the nearest steaming pile of divinity.”

Mim and Pim raised their beer glasses. “Of course, Miss Jade,” they said in unison.

Oy,
she thought.
It’s like Rucksack and The Management had a lovechild.

The men sipped their beer, and she started toward the bar.

At least they’ll calm down.

“Oh no,” said a flat, unaccented voice.

Jade turned to see Pim, shaking his head. He poured his beer back into the pitcher.

Mim’s head bobbed. “Oh no indeed, my dear Pim.” His accent had also disappeared, and he emptied his glass into the pitcher too.

“Is there a problem, gentlemen?”

“Oh Jade oh Jade,” Mim said. “We thought you knew.”

“That’s a fresh keg of Deep’s Special Lager. Knew what?”

“Oh yes,” Pim said. “The beer is fresh as can be. But something is off.” His gaze tightened on Jade’s. “Something that should not be there.”

“I’ll be happy to get you a fresh pitcher.”

“Thank you for on-the-house, Miss Jade.”

“Who said anything about on-the-house?”

“Thanking you now for in-advance,” Mim said. “The Office of World Light and Foreign Visitors does not require anything, shall we say, additional. Nor would it do you any good to exhaust your precious stores.”

Jade stared at the two men.
I could tell them to leave, and never come back,
she thought.
I could tell The Management I need help. I could chance adding—

“Please pass our compliments to your Management,” Pim said. “The service is unparalleled, the servers are attentive, and the served are content.”

“We know that you do not know, and that is okay. We of the Office of World Light and Foreign Visitors need none of the additional services provided by the noble Jakes and Jades,” Mim said.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Jade replied.

“You don’t know much of late, we know,” Pim said. “Even when you don’t know what is under your feet, you have a path.”

“Who are you?”

“Who are you?”

Jade stared hard. The men’s helixes waved like snakes, but not in any way that she could construe as menacing. If anything, it was as if their helixes were… laughing. Laughing at her and at everyone around them. Laughing as if they were telling the punchline to the greatest joke of the universe—and knew that no one else got it.

Then Mim and Pim began laughing out loud. “We will make sure that no one else loses their feet tonight, Jade Agamuskara Bluegold,” Mim said. “In return, we request only that our beer be… itself.”

They know my full name,
Jade thought. She took a step back.
There’s nothing I can do about this. Could The Management even do anything?

Resigned, she said, “Your terms are acceptable.”

Mim and Pim smiled.

“I’ll even give you the free pitcher. I’m just that nice a Jade.” She returned to the bar with the influenced pitcher and soon set down a fresh one. After she had taken care of some waiting customers, Jade tried to work out what had happened.
These men know about me, the Jakes and Jades, and even The Management. What could that mean? Why are they here? What is their real purpose?

A soft
pthump
made her turn.

Two in one day?
she thought.
You’d think it was my birthday. Have The Management been observing? Will they explain who these guys really are?

But when she opened the directive, all she got was four words:

The tricksters are allowed.

Jade looked up. Mim and Pim saluted with raised glasses. People walked by, but if they were unsteady, Jade knew it was due only to a good night’s drinking. The Management said the men were okay. Jade didn’t like it, but customers were waiting.

She got back to work.

Jade opened her eyes and was back in her room. The pub shared her questions and her concerns, as well as her begrudging acceptance. The pub also confirmed what Rucksack had said earlier: Mim and Pim had caused the tap to break so that she and Rucksack wouldn’t see them vanish. But the pub saw.

And the pub saw more.

The men weren’t human. At least not in the way that Jade both was and was not human anymore. Like the woman Kailash, the men seemed to be what could only be described as ancient, though their faces were like an older brother’s. But what brought them to the pub—and again, like Kailash, on the same day that Jay arrived?

Not just Jay
, Jade thought, her weary mind trying hard to focus on him.
Jay and whatever is in his backpack.

The pub felt its presence but did not know what it was. She only knew that it was both new and ancient. Over and over, the pub called to her. It said the same thing, but she did not understand.

I’m too tired,
she thought.
Maybe it will make sense once I’ve had a chance to rest.

She undressed and lay down. Weariness washed over her. Tomorrow, she would not have to work in the pub, but this would be no day off in the sit-and-relax sense. There was Rucksack to counsel with. There were tricksters to allow. There were mysteries to understand.

As Jade faded into sleep, the pub continued repeating itself. For a moment, her barely conscious mind understood.

Usually, she could perceive only faint feelings from objects and places, even one as powerful and soaked in humanity as the Everest Base Camp. But now, just as she fell fully into sleep, she understood what the pub was trying to tell her.

The pub seemed to be saying, “He carries dangerous, he carries doom. He carries dangerous, he carries doom.”

But sleep claimed her, and Jade stopped listening. The pub cried on.

I
N THE DREAM
the full moon rose over the slope of the world’s tallest mountain. As he talked with the moon, he rose high over the camp, over the Himalayas, and up the slopes of Everest itself, which was called “Qomolangma” in the Tibetan: mother of the universe, mother of the earth.

Wind whipped at the rocks and flags, but somehow its cutting chill did not reach him. The moon seemed so close he could almost touch its face. Instead of the wind blowing, he heard a soft mellifluous voice. Then cold, gray, pale air hung in the frosty morning.

He stood on a little hill looking toward the mountain. His hand was out, palm up, as if waiting for something.

A voice, a familiar voice, someone from his tent, said, “What happened to your clothes?”

shr-shr-shr-Shr-Shr-Shr-SHR-SHR-SHR—

The rustling was louder than an alarm clock. It pulled Jay out of the dream and into his hangover. The fog in his mind had broken into a pounding storm, though when he looked out the window, a soft dawn waited.

Rucksack said stout helps people see clearly,
Jay thought as he staggered toward the loo. The strange night at the mountain made sense now, at least. It must have been an onset of altitude sickness.

The only cure was to get to lower elevation as quickly as possible.
That’s why I fled to the dorm tent, packed up, and hopped a ride down the mountain,
he thought.
I just needed to get to lower elevation so I didn’t die. That’s all. Nothing on the mountain told me to go to India, to the city with the white alley. I needed a change of scene anyway, and India’s heat and franticness seemed like just the thing after the high-altitude chill and quiet of Tibet.

Jay turned on the light in the toilet. In the harsh light from the bare bulb, no roaches menaced. The booze had done its work well, though the air still reeked of yesterday’s spicy meals, the sharp tang of Indian rotgut, and a distinct metallic undercurrent that must be the scent of molten roach legs. The combined odor sent a quake through his innards and bent Jay over the hole in the floor, stout and more threatening to come rushing up.

But at least no roaches were glaring at him eye to eyes.

After a few minutes, Jay’s stomach decided to stay in place. Shaking, he stood up and saw the tap on the wall to the right. A hot shower was just the thing.

But I guess I’ll settle for lukewarm,
he thought as the tepid-cool trickle drizzled over him. Still, the dust and grit of the last few days sloughed off. His stout-choked pores opened. His clumsy movements became less floppy. Soon, the water didn’t feel like a hammer smacking his forehead.

Back in the dorm room, the other beds were full of lumps. If anyone had heard the racket of the thing in his backpack, they didn’t wake up. Fellow travelers snored and farted. A boozy fugue hovered over the room like smog. Jay envied them a little. There’d be no more sleep for him, hangover be damned.

Then again, there was a city to see.

Besides,
Jay thought,
this isn’t the worst hangover I’ve had. It’s up there. But it’s no reason to spend the day in bed.

For a moment, his mind flashed back to Austria. He and his dorm mates had staggered back to the room after a night of Vienna lager, boasting grand plans to wander the city the next day. They’d read
Austria Through The Third Eye.
They would walk long circuits and sup in inns, the way the great composer Ludwig van Beethoven had done. However, the guidebook said nothing about how to wander while suffering a skull-rupturing hangover.

Only Jay had gotten up at the appointed dawn hour. As he finished getting ready, head pounding hard but feet itching more urgently, one of the other travelers snorted himself awake. He stared at Jay.

“I’m still drunk and you drank more than I did,” the traveler said. “But you’re going out there. You… You are the world’s greatest traveler.”

“I’m just going where I go,” Jay replied, but the other traveler had already fallen back to sleep.

Jay wondered where Agamuskara would take him today. Jigme’s white alley floated in his mind. “Go to India, to the city with the white alley,” he remembered the moon saying that night at Everest.

Lots of cities have white alleys,
he thought.
Doesn’t mean anything. I am where I am, and that’s where I am.

The clothes he expected to dig for were in fact waiting for him when he opened the backpack. Things like that had been happening more and more lately.

The first night with the truck drivers, when they’d stopped in Nepal, Jay was going to rummage for some snacks to share. The food had all but jumped into his hands.

He’d expected a harsh scent to smack him in the face too, from a bottle of whiskey that must have broken after the jostling truck ride down the mountains. But the bottle was intact and waiting. He hadn’t remembered wrapping it up, but there it was, wrapped safe as a baby in a couple of t-shirts—one, a favorite since Ireland, said “I Can See Clearly Now” beneath a pair of eyeglasses with silhouettes of Imperial pints for lenses.

Money belt secure around his waist, Jay tucked some cash into the zipped pocket of his more or less green cargo pants. He couldn’t resist the russet brown t-shirt he’d found in Austria, with the letters “ID” centered inside the outline of a potato that looked vaguely like his home state.

The fresh clothes made Jay feel more or less human.
What I need now is a hot drink and some breakfast
, he thought,
and I know just where to go.

As he slipped out of the Everest Base Camp, he saw no sign of Jade or Rucksack, and he smiled. It’d be good to have a day all on his own, just him and his pack and the world.
The way things are supposed to be,
he thought. From his daypack, the thing’s noise had settled back down to its usual soft rustle-whisper. As Jay settled the pack on his back, the blunt pain of his hangover lessened.

The young day brightened, not yet blazing and over-bustling but already beyond night’s cool and quiet. Men drank hot chai from small cups, wisps of steam rising over faces wrinkled or smooth. From front stoop after front stoop came the
thck-thck
of brooms as women in brightly colored saris swept. No one looked at Jay. There would be time in all the day to sell something to yet another tourist; for now, these few quiet moments were for them and only them.