The Dark Side by Damon Knight (ed.) Read Free Book Online

I’m more or less sane. Thanks for the lodging offer. Right now I’d like to go hunt up—ulp—a magician.”
    Bell smiled. “All right,” he said, “if you get lost in the city, just ask around. They’re friendly folk, and more of “em than you think have been in your spot. Most of the shopkeepers know Bell’s place. After you’ve wandered about a bit you’ll get the layout better. Then we can discuss further plans.”
    Hugh wondered what kind of plans they were supposed to discuss, but he was too anxious to discover the nature of the place into which he had fallen to discuss the question further.
    Bell led him down a rather smelly hallway to another door, and in a moment he found himself surveying the street.
    It was all incredibly confusing. The language the two had spoken was certainly modern English, yet the busy, narrow thoroughfare was just as certainly Elizabethan in design. The houses all had overhanging second stories. Through the very center of the cobbled street ran a shallow gutter in which a thin stream of swill-like liquid trickled. The bright light flooding the scene left no doubt as to its reality, and yet there was still the faint aura of question about it. The feeling was intensified when he discovered that there was no sun; the whole dome or sky was an even dazzle. It was all like a movie set, and it was a surprise to find that the houses had backs to them.
    Across the street, perched comfortably in the cool shadows of a doorway, an old man slept, a tasselled nightcap hanging down over his forehead. Over his head a sign swayed: COPPERSMITH.
    Not ten feet away from him a sallow young man was leaning against the wall absorbed in the contents of a very modern-looking newspaper, which bore the headlines: DOWSER CONFESSES FAIRY GOLD PLANT. Lower down on the page Hugh could make out a boxed item: STILETTO KILLER FEIGNS INSANITY. In a moment, he was sure, he wouldn’t have to feign it. The paper was as jarring an anachronism in the Shakespearean street scene as a six-cylinder coupe would have been.
    At least he was spared having to account for any cars, though. The conventional mode of transportation was horses, it seemed. Every so often one would canter past recklessly. Their riders paid little regard to the people under their horses’ hoofs and the people in their turn scattered with good-natured oaths, like any group of twentieth century pedestrians before a taxi.
    As Hugh stepped off the low stone lintel he heard a breathy whistle, and turning, beheld a small red-headed urchin coming jerkily toward him. The boy was alternately whistling and calling “Here, Fleet, Fleet, Fleet! Nice doggy! Here, Fleet!” His mode of locomotion was very peculiar; he lunged mechanically from side to side or forward as if he were a machine partly out of control.
    As he came closer Hugh saw that he was holding a forked stick in his hands, the foot of the Y pointing straight ahead, preceding the lad no matter where he went. On the boy’s head was a conical blue cap lettered with astrological and alchemical symbols, which had sagged so as to completely cover one eye, but he seemed loath to let go of the stick to adjust it.
    In a moment the boy had staggered to a stop directly before Hugh, while the rigid and quivering end of the stick went down to Hugh’s shoes and began slowly to ascend. He was conscious of a regular sniffing sound.
    “Better tend to that cold, son,” he suggested.
    “That isn’t me, it’s the rod,” the boy said desperately. “Please, sir, have you seen a brown puppy—” At this point the stick finished its olfactory inspection of Hugh and jerked sidewise, yanking the boy after it. As the urchin disappeared still calling “Here, Fleet!” Hugh felt a faint shiver. Here was the first evidence of a working magic before his eyes, and his sober astronomer’s soul recoiled from it.
    A window squealed open over his head, and he jumped just in time to avoid a gush of garbage which was flung