SMEDLEY TOSSED HIS SHIRT INTO THE CHEST. THERE WAS A STRANGE assortment of clothes in there already, male and female both, plus a couple of small drums. He sat on a chair to remove his shoes and socks. The floor was icy.
Damn it all! No matter what she had said, he would not remove his pants! Not yet.
He limped out into the nave. He could hear the rattle of the vicar's lawn mower outside, very faint and distant. With a drum slung around her neck, Miss Pimm was poised on one foot, left arm raised and head thrown back. "Ogtha!" she proclaimed, and brought her hand down to the drum, and raising the other. "Ispal!" She was teaching Exeter the gestures for the key that would take him to New Zealand. He was watching intently, showing no sign of discomfort at being stark naked.
Writhing with embarrassment, Smedley slipped by them. He wandered along the aisle, studying the pictures in the stained glass windows and the nosegays of color they shed. The arches at the east end were rounded, then they became pointed, Gothic. Either the original church had been extended, or a new generation of builders had taken over at that point. The oaken pews displayed prayer books and hymnals, laid out at even spacing, ready for the next day's service. The pulpit was modern and grandiose, perhaps a result of the Service's generous contributions, and too big for the church.
This was a very little church.
But it was a church, a recognizable C. of E. place of worship, and its like could be found all over the world. The sun never set on the Anglican Communion. It was all the things he had been brought up to revere, had taken for granted and respected all his life. His family went to church every Sunday. They almost never discussed religion. It was just there, part of a man, like breathing. Dancing around in the nude was not in the cards. It was uncivilized. Gentlemen did not do such things anywhere, least of all in a church.
"Umbathon!" said Miss Pimm in the background.
This was not going to work. This was a gigantic confidence trick. This was insanity.
Ombay fala, inkuthin . . .
He had not wept in days. Was he past that, now? Had he sunk to a whole new level of madness, with delusions of flying to other worlds and people leaping from bicycles into cars without actually moving through space? Was he, despite all the evidence of his senses, bound up in a straitjacket inside some padded cell?
He could feel his right hand again. It didn't exactly hurt, but he could feel it. He looked down at the bandage disbelievingly and tried to flex invisible fingers. He was in front of the altar rail already. This was the center of virtuality, she had said. Bunkum!
He shivered.
He turned away from the altar. Fresh yellow roses and chrysanthemums in brass vases. A fellow should not go mucking around in a church in a state of undress. Not proper! What in heaven would the guv'nor say? Or the mater, if she were alive—she would be truly shocked. Or the aunts, the monstrous regiment of aunts?
The other two were coming up the aisle. "Captain Smedley!" Miss Pimm's harsh voice took on a notable resonance in this old stone cave. "I asked you to remove your clothes."
"After the dress rehearsal."
"No, Captain—now! You will not achieve the correct state of mind if you are distracted by trivia. It will take you time to adjust. Off with them!"
He glared at her, then turned his back on her, pulling off his braces. But when he had everything off, he did not know what to do next. He could hardly leave bags and underwear for the congregation to find in the morning. He glanced over his shoulder. Miss Pimm was watching him with her arms folded. He could imagine her toe tapping.
"Give them to me," she said impatiently. "I'll put them in the chest as I leave. Oh, Captain! I saw my first naked man several hundred years ago, and none of the equipment has changed since then."
He gave her the bundle.
"Thank you. And your bandages. Then we can begin."
The governess instructed her pupils in the proper ritual movements for Ombay fala. They took it in slow motion, gesture by gesture, and Smedley felt worse and worse as the farce progressed. His nerves were not going to take much more of this. Exeter, he was glad to notice, was starting to shiver. At least when they began to dance in earnest, they both should feel warmer. He was shivering too, and he did not think that temperature had very much to do with it in his case. It was funk.
Oddly, Miss Pimm seemed colder than either of them, and she was fully dressed. She was snappier than a vixen in heat, shouting at them when they got it wrong. She kept glancing at her watch.
For once, Smedley realized, he was picking up something faster than Edward Exeter. Exeter was distracted, thoroughly miserable. Pining for Cousin Alice? Had he just realized that he could never see her again? He could not even send her a postcard. The Blighters would never stop hunting him until he fulfilled the prophecy or died. Or was he just unwilling to cross over?
Miss Pimm made herself comfortable in the front pew and adjusted the drum on her lap.
"Now we'll try it with music. First verse. Ready? One, two—"
"Ombay fala," Smedley chanted, lifting his left foot and raising his stump overhead, "inkuthin." Exeter followed him around the circle. Surprisingly, they went right through the first verse without an error—at least it felt as if they got it right, and Sergeant Major Pimm did not interrupt.
"Not bad!" she admitted as they bellowed out the closing, Hosagil! "Edward, you forgot the words a time or two, didn't you? Captain, your timing is erratic. Is that leg going to be a problem?"
The scar on his wrist was blood red, but a neat piece of sewing. The trivial scratches on his leg looked much worse, ugly and swollen. He compared his two arms, wondering if the right one was already wasting away.
"Let's try again." Miss Pimm stole another glance at her watch. "Smartly! I certainly don't want to have to fight my way out of here. Take it right through, now. Keep on going until something happens. Ready? Oh, I almost forgot . . . bon voyage!"
It was the first real smile Smedley had seen on her face. It made her seem almost pretty, in a way he would never have guessed, but he was not in a mood to return smiles. He was expecting her to break into howls of laughter any minute, and start shouting April fool! "Thank you in anticipation," he said coldly.
Exeter said, "Thank you for everything." But he did not smile either, and Miss Pimm responded with a rolling tattoo of fingers on the drum.
Smedley shivered and waited for the rhythm to begin. This was all wrong! He had taken religion seriously as a child, because his parents had. Here it came . . . . Dum-de dum-de dum-dum-dum . . . At Fallow he had done what all the others had done. "Ombay fala, inkuthin," he chanted. In the senior forms he had joined the conventional rebellion into Buddhism, atheism, agnosticism, Unitarianism, or any esoteric -ism that had turned up. Right leg, left arm. Smedley himself had never been quite sure which of the -isms he favored. When he enlisted he had given his religion as C. of E. without thinking about it. "Indu maka, sasa du." He had attended church parade on Sundays. In Flanders he had prayed his heart out a few times, screaming and sobbing to a merciful god, any god, any god at all. No atheists in foxholes . . . Hop, bow, hop, bow. When the danger had passed, he had always felt ashamed of his cowardice, and less of a believer in consequence. What sort of merciful god would have allowed the war to start in the first place—and why? Just so some terrified sods would repent of their sins? "Aiba aiba nopa du." What sins had he ever had a chance to commit?
But even so, a chap ought not to profane a holy place. Even a heathen temple deserved respect. Even if it was a mud hut, even if only one single curly-haired darkie thought it was sacred, then a fellow ought to have the grace not to mock it. Head back, elbows out. St. Gall's was a Christian church, the sort of place his ancestors had worshipped in for hundreds of years. It deserved better than this obscene posturing, these primitive antics. Echoes rolling back from the ancient stones. It was holy. He could almost smell the sanctity. Normans had worshipped here, maybe Angles and Saxons. "Aiba reeba mona kin." That meant nine centuries of humble people bowing down and glorifying their God. Their worship alone made it sacred. The thought was suddenly terrifying. Light blazed. He screamed and stumbled and fell facedown in the grass. Hosagil!
Bewildered, not understanding, he raised his head and blinked at the painful brightness. He lay in the exact center of a circular lawn, about the size of his parents' dining room, and the surrounding hedge was the color of a blue spruce, with the sheen of holly. He heard sounds of chirping, whistling, and hooting. He blinked harder to clear away tears. Beyond the hedge soared the most incredible snow-capped peak he had ever seen, blushing orange against a pale blue-gold sky. The air was tangy with a scent of wood smoke. It was evening or early morning.
He had done it! He had done it! He had done it! Yes! It was true. He had crossed over to another world. Grass. Odd, mint-scented grass. Day-light. The war, England, the guv'nor, the aunts, medals, the dead, the maimed—all gone. He had really done it. He wouldn't have to go to the Palace for his bloody gong after all. He had done it, really done it.
He laid his face on the back of his hand and started to sob.