Land Beyond the Map

When he reached the huge and impressive antechamber to hell he stepped inside, an ant in a cathedral. The roof soared into corbelling high above; groined columns fluted into distance; under his feet the marble extended, vast and shining; and clustered thickly before him, waiting, hung a group of Loti, the living lozenges of light.

He looked about, faintly puzzled, not expecting this, ready to walk steadily on, into and through their lambent barrier. From, a hidden source a bright actinic light stabbed out, lanced into his eyes. Blinking, eyes watering, he flung up a hand, shading, trying to see into multicolored whorls of color and shadow beyond the light.

A voice cracked suddenly and shockingly from the great chamber, a woman’s voice, Polly’s voice.

“It’s Rolley! It’s Crane! It’s all right!”

The light went out. When he could see again Polly was walking across the marble floor towards him. Her feet went tac-tac-tac across the floor. Then they speeded up and she flung herself into his arms, grasping him, clasping him, laughing and crying.

“Hold up, Polly,” Crane said. “What’s this all about?”

“Oh, Rolley! I never expected to see you again alive! We all thought it was Trangor.”

“Trangor? You mean McArdle?”

“That’s right. One and the same. The Loti said he was in the Map Country, with an accomplice, and we’ve been waiting — it hasn’t been nice, Rolley…”

“We’ve been waiting, Polly? Who’s we?”

“Why, who do you think? Allan and Sharon, Colla, poor Barney — all the others who’ve been waiting here—”

“You’ve found Allan?”

“Of course! Do be sensible, Rolley. The Loti have been very patient with us, and they’re sweet — but I don’t want to have to ask them to spell it all out again.”

“The Loti — sweet!”

She pushed back from him and brushed a hand over her hair. She still wore her leather coat; but underneath she’d put on a white clinging dress, ending just above the knee, so that she looked like a Nymph from a Greek play. It was very becoming. Crane became bemusedly aware of other people moving up — and recognized Allan Gould. The girl with a dress like Polly’s and a calm, serene face that contained no hint of her quirks of personal taste must be Sharon. Barney, too, he recognized; but the parking lot attendant, like Colla, tough and wiry and darkly Irish, and like Allan Gould, wore a short white tunic and sandals.

Crane put the rifle butt on the floor and leaned on the muzzle. He opened his mouth, shut it, opened it again, and said: “Tell me, Polly. Tell me what it’s all about.”

Off to the side the clustered Loti swayed and nodded and the weird notion hit Crane that they looked like a congregation of old men, bearded and near senile, nodding in muted approval. Allan Gould thrust up to Crane, smiling, holding out his hand.

“Polly told me you were with her, skipper, but we never expected to see you! You’re looking fit… . It’s been a long time… .”

“Check, Allan. And now that the pleasantries are out of the way, let’s get down to cases. I want to know!”

“The first mistake we made,” Polly said, still holding on to Crane’s arm, “was to imagine the Loti were evil. They’re not. McArdle was — is! — but he’s a Loti, a renegade Loti, and the others here have outlawed him and feel sorry for him — but they’re scared to death of him…”

“So that’s why he wanted to get into the Map Country — to return to his kinfolk.”

“Yes and no. The story goes something like this — We’ve found out that there are other worlds in parallel with the Earth we know, other dimensions, by proving it coming through into the Map Country. The old idea was to liken the dimensions to a book, each leaf being a world — but the fact is many worlds impinge on each other, so that the last pages and the middle pages of the book really lie next to one another. It takes mathematics of an order I don’t have to work it out fully; but formulas exist to explain it, and also to act as portals through the dimensions, just as the map McArdle made was just such a portal diagram—”

“Diagram?”

“There was no magic inherent in the map, Rolley. When McArdle left he wanted to get back again, and so he took the key…”

“The key! Of course… But he lost it—”

“True. He had a double chance but he lost both sections of the map. The Loti don’t know how and I’m only repeating what they told me.”