Doorways in the Sand by Roger Zelazny Read Free Book Online

me feel warmer when I practiced it in my yoga class. I commenced the exercise, but my breath escaped me in a rattling wheeze. I choked and began to cough.
    The wombat turned and sprang onto my chest. I began to scream, but he stuffed his paw into my mouth, gagging me. With my left hand I reached for the scruff of his neck and had hold of it before I recalled that my left hand was supposedly bound.
    He clamped down with his other three limbs, thrust his face up close to mine and whispered hoarsely, "You are complicating matters dangerously. Mister Cassidy. Release my neck immediately and keep still afterwards."
    Obviously, then, I was delirious. Comfort within the framework of my delirium seemed a desirable end, however, so I let go his neck and attempted to nod. He withdrew his paw.
    "Very good," he said. "Your feet are already free. I just have to finish undoing your right hand and we will be ready to go."
    "Go?" I said.
    "Shsh!" he said, moving off to the right once more.
    So I shshed while he worked on the strap. It was the most interesting hallucination I had had in a long while. I sought among my various neuroses after the reason for its taking this form. Nothing suggested itself immediately. But then neuroses are tricky little devils, according to Doctor Marko, and one must give them their due when it comes to subtlety and sneakiness.
    "There!" he whispered moments later. "You are free. Follow me!"
    He began to move away.
    "Wait!"
    He paused, turned back.
    "What is the matter?" he asked.
    "I can't move yet. Give my circulation a chance, will you? My hands and feet are numb."
    He snorted and returned.
    "Then movement is the best therapy," he said, seizing my arm and drawing me forward into a sitting position.
    He was amazingly strong for a hallucination, and he continued dragging on my arm until I fell forward onto all fours. I was shaky, but I held the pose.
    "Good," he said, patting my shoulder. "Come on."
    "Wait! I'm dying of thirst."
    "Sorry. I am traveling light. If you will follow me, however, I can promise you a drink."
    "When?"
    "Never," he snarled, "if you just sit there. In fact, I think I hear some noises back at the camp now. Come on!"
    I began crawling toward him. He said, "Keep low," which was rather unnecessary, as I was unable to get to my feet. He moved away from the camp then, heading in a generally easterly direction, roughly parallel to the ridge beside which I had been working. My progress was slow, and he paused periodically to allow me to catch up.
    I followed for several minutes, and then a throbbing began in my extremities, accompanied by flashes of feeling. This collapsed me, and I croaked some obscenity as I fell. He bounded toward me, but I bit off my outburst before he could repeat the paw-in-mouth trick.
    "You are a very difficult creature to rescue," he stated. "Along with your circulatory system, your judgment and self-control seem to be of a primitive order."
    I found another obscenity, but I whispered this one.
    "Which you continue to demonstrate," he added. "You need do only two things-follow and keep silent. You are not very good at either. It causes one to wonder-"
    "Get moving!" I said. "I'll follow!"
    "And your emotions-"
    I lunged at him, but he darted back and away.
    I followed, ignoring everything but the desire to throttle the little beast. It did not matter that the situation was patently absurd. I had both Merimee and Marko to draw upon for theory, an opposing pair of fun-house mirrors with me in the middle, hot on the trail of the wombat. I followed, muttering, burning adrenalin, spitting out the dust he raised. I lost track of time.
    The ridge grew lower, broke up. We moved inward, upward, then downward, passing through rocky corridors into a deeper darkness, moving over a way that was now all stone and gravel. I slipped once, and he was beside me in an instant.
    "Are you all right?" he asked.
    I started to laugh, controlled it.
    "Sure, I'm fine."
    He was careful to stay out