Lost Among the Stars Page 22

  “I—I will do all I can.”

  Daeira kissed Rupert quickly but passionately on his lips, then drew him onward.

  “Let me show you something.”

  Partway down the street they came to the cave church that had given the street its name. Now a public attraction, the rupestrian chapel hosted only a few visitors today. The young male ticket seller jumped a bit when Daeira appeared, then bowed and waved them in without charge. Daeira spoke of the significance of the crumbling frescoes, but Rupert hardly heard a word, so enraptured was he to be again in her presence.

  An inner set of stairs led upward to the former monastery of San Nicola dei Greci. Here more frescoes shone their antique holy colors down. Daeira was saying something about Saint Barbara and her lightnings … But Rupert’s attention was drawn to a curious feature of the cave, somehow unnaturally portentous in his eyes.

  A big deep alcove was partially fronted by a low decorated stone wall pierced with several outlets, forming a kind of vented trough or crypt without a lid. A sign disclosed the purpose of the monks’ old construction: a grape-stomping pit, from which the raw sweet primal juice would gutter out.

  Daeira noted Rupert’s fascination with the trough. “Ah, you have an eye for the portal here. Wonderful! I thought I might have to show you, that you would not comprehend.”

  “Portal?”

  “Of course. And now we go.”

  Against all curatorial rules of civilized museum attendance, Daeira climbed into the pit and extended her hand toward Rupert. “Swiftly now, or we will become separated.”

  Rupert suddenly acknowledged a scratching noise that had been occurring in the background of his consciousness for some minutes. Daeira caught it too. “Quickly, Rupert!”

  The scrabbled tufaceous back wall of the cave exploded into a cascade of shards, and the Cucibocca leaped out.

  His black cloak seemed not fabric but a stolen swath of empty interstellar darkness. The obscurations around his eyes were not jolly fruit rinds but rings of keloid scarring, as if from hot metal rings impressed into his countenance. His long hair and beard were matted with filth and a latticework of briars. The briars descended from the wickerwork that seemed bonded to his scalp. His grimy feet were bare and the chain around one ankle had produced a gangrenous ring of mortified flesh. He lacked his staff and lantern, but carried his long indestructible bone needle that had brought down the wall. A stench blew off him, as from an opened mass grave.

  When the Cucibocca spoke, his sharp carious teeth flashed and his voice gritted like sand blasted across a tin roof.

  “My woman! Mine, not yours! Go away, or I stick you deadly.”

  Frozen in place from the moment the Cucibocca had manifested, Rupert now felt an influx of mad energy boil out of his loins and race up his spine. The Cucibocca’s threat had roused his protective anger. He could not let this monster near Daeira.

  Rupert’s hand dove into a pocket and withdrew his cuccu whistle. He blew a shrill note, and the Cucibocca clutched his ears and roared.

  Rupert turned to clamber into the trough with Daeira, who still beckoned.

  But then the Cucibocca fell upon him.

  Rupert smashed to the floor and banged his head on a corner of the trough. The terracotta cuccu whistle flew out of his hand and shattered. He felt the Cucibocca use his back as a stepping-stone.

  Once more painfully standing, Rupert saw Daeira struggling strongly but disproportionately against the Cucibocca’s embrace.

  The two opponents vanished.

  Rupert hurled himself over the low wall, and tumbled into the trough. But no bottom awaited. He fell and fell and fell—

  Water, black water everywhere! He was drowning—

  One direction felt like up. He stroked through the infinity of dark water and his head finally broke the surface. A narrow shaft of light arrowed down through a hole. Just a meter or so above his head arched the smooth laminated roof of a cavern. Daeira and the Cucibocca were nowhere to be seen. He had gotten separated!

  A floating thing bobbed against Rupert, and he grabbed it. A loose wooden pail.

  Now another pail dropped down on a rope through the daylight hole, plopping into the water.

  The Palombaro Lungo. He had been transported across space and time into the functional vastness of Matera’s reservoirs.

  “Help! Help me!”

  Useless. No one could hear him above, or if they did, would probably consider him some ill-omened spirit voice.

  But if there was a magical way in, there had to be a way out!

  Treading water, Rupert closed his eyes. He seemed to distinguish a glowing square far below his feet. The living chthonic water’s ingress …

  Rupert filled his lungs as efficiently as he could. Then he dove.

  He had always been a strong swimmer. But still he struggled with thrusting arms and scissoring legs, his lungs bursting, to encompass five stories of hard descent. Millions of liters of water weighed on him like a black hole’s gravity.

  Through open eyes that seemed ready to pop, he saw the luminous portal. One last push, and he could graze its edges with his fingertips—

  On his back, Rupert lay drenched on a mattress of snow. Every particle of him ached. He tried to sit up.

  Rough hands under his armpits snatched him to his feet.

  He stood atop the wintry barrow in the Murgia where Daeira had first materialized. But there was no sign of park structures, no contrails in the sky, no smell of car exhaust, no sound of highway traffic. Instead, the walled and trench-encircled Neolithic village reared intact and flourishing, fresh as the current day’s newspaper. An assemblage of branch-walled thatched huts and firepits, corralled goats and pigs and cows, piles of firewood beside pottery wheels.

  And people. What seemed like the whole tribe had come to gaze at this stranger suddenly transplanted into their midst. One woman bared her teeth. A child picked up a stone as if to hurl it.

  Rupert realized he was being upheld by two men, short and wiry, bearded, clad in craftily pieced animal skins and furred moccasins. They reeked of smoke and sweat and slathered-on animal grease.

  One of the men spoke, and, to his amazement, Rupert understood him: a gift of his hieros gamos with Daeira perhaps.

  “What tribe do you hail from? How did you breach our walls without being seen?”

  Would Daeira’s twentieth-century name be known to these folks? Unlikely. Rupert tried, “I—I come from the goddess.”

  This declaration caused some consternation. “Bring the seeress, and let her examine him.”

  The crowd parted to allow a statuesque woman to step forward.

  Daeira Bruno, arrayed in skins and furs and seashell necklaces.

  “Daeira! Please, help me. I came in your footsteps as quickly as I could!”

  The seeress showed no signs of recognition. With sinking spirits, Rupert was forced to admit that this incarnation of Daeira, from an earlier point on her long spacetime continuum, had never yet met him. Now she said, “Strip those strange rags from him, that I may examine him for signs.”

  Plucking hands hardly baffled at all by buttons and zippers removed his wet clothes, exposing his bare skin to the frigid air. Daeira came right up to Rupert, and fingered his Pythagorean medallion.

  “I will take this, and meditate on its meaning. Meanwhile give him some warm clothes and put him in the headman’s shelter with a guard at the door.”

  Dressed in secondhand skins full of friendly bugs, huddling by a small fire in the clay oven inside the headman’s hut, Rupert pondered his options. If he could get back to the barrow, whose portal potential he could sense even from this remove (was his portal sense growing stronger the more he used it?), he could escape to some other era. But out of the frying pan into the fire?

  He resolved to wait at least until the headman returned.

  But when Rupert was dragged out into the center of the village, arms pinioned by his guards, he saw he had made a bad choice.

&
nbsp; The headman was the Cucibocca, or his slightly more human avatar, right down to an ulcerated ankle, scarred face, matted twig-tangled hair and beard, and rasping voice.

  “Why did you fools delay?” roared the chief. “Am I the only real man here? All strangers who penetrate our defenses without invitation must die!”

  The mightily muscled Cucibocca raised a heavy stone axe and prepared to bring it down on Rupert’s skull.

  “Wait!”

  The seeress intervened between Rupert and the headman. “He must die, yes. But let us not waste his life. The river needs feeding.”

  The headman relented, lowering his axe. “This is a good plan. We will spare one of our own this way. Bind him.”

  The march to the high edge of the Gravina’s canyon took only half an hour or so. Carried over the shoulder of the headman, Rupert saw only the bouncing ground.

  At a high jutting ledge Rupert was deposited roughly on the stone. The headman turned to nominate the two best men for the throwing of the victim. There ensued some boasting and arguing.

  The seeress took that moment to bend close to Rupert and whisper.

  “You will pass through the door to elsewhere before you ever hit the ground. Trust me, I have done it myself. I will make sure the men aim accurately.” She pulled out Rupert’s medallion from where it now hung around her neck. “This I will keep, though you might see it again someday. Farewell.”

  Almost faster than he could internalize, Rupert was hoisted, swung, and catapulted into the abyss. A blue rock thrush eyed him sympathetically in mid-air—

  The fish peddler’s wooden display crates collapsed under the impact of Rupert’s splayed landing. The fish inside, a wealth of types, cushioned his fall in their slimy scaly fashion. Shouts and curses quickly followed his arrival. Once more he was yanked to his feet, a small squid caught behind one ear, and moderately pummeled, until the guardia intervened. But they were no modern police, instead wearing partial armor and bearing halberds and swords.

  “Come, come, what is this chaos?”

  “This crazy man threw himself atop my wares! Look, look how he is dressed! Like some mad hermit!”

  The matter of Rupert’s bonds on ankles and wrists caused some puzzlement. It was obvious he could only shuffle, and how he had managed to fling himself out of nowhere so violently atop the fishes baffled every bystander with an opinion. Eventually, the guardia freed him from the ropes and shoved him off.

  “Don’t cause any more trouble, you hear! Go back to your cave!”

  Rupert staggered into the byways of the Sassi, heading no place in particular, eventually recognizing many landmarks. But a stream bridged at intervals flowed where he expected the Via Fiorentini. What year was it? Where was the best place to look for Daeira? Was the Cucibocca present also?

  It was a mild spring day, but Rupert felt chilled. He filched a crust of bread from a trash heap and drank some water from a small fountain meant for animals. The meager nourishment hardly relieved his dizziness.

  Eavesdropping eventually revealed that the main topic of conversation was the perfidy of Matera’s ruler, Count Giovanni Carlo Tramontano, and Rupert knew then that the year was 1514 or thereabouts, and that the unlucky Count had not long to live. He suddenly recalled how Daeira had asked to be dropped at the ruins of Castello Tramontano, and he felt certain she would be present during the riot and execution of the Count. Now he had only to hang in until that time.…

  Rupert awoke on the pavement in the doorway where he had huddled for the night, shaking and delirious. If only he could get back to his room at the Locanda San Martino, surely Flavia would bring him a cappuccino and tuck him into bed. He forced himself upright and began to stagger toward the Via San Rocco and the stairs to his hotel.

  He awoke again, this time in a bed, with clean cool bedding and a damp cloth laid across his forehead. A candle disseminated its gentle radiance. He made some feeble noises and a nun appeared.

  “Where am I?”

  “This is the convent of San Rocco. You collapsed on our doorstep and we took you in. But you must hush and rest now, you are very sick.”

  An interval of fever dreams passed, and Rupert feebly opened his eyes once more.

  Manchester was staring down at him. There could be no mistake. But the old hippie was dressed as a monk.

  “My son, you are in sad shape. But perhaps I can help.” Manchester’s familiar dog jumped onto Rupert’s bed and licked his face. “Down, Pythagoras, down!”

  “Manchester, how—”

  “My name is Brother Rochus, son. Now, be still.”

  Manchester concocted a potion on a table by the bedside and trickled its herbal bitterness down Rupert’s burning throat. Then he began to chant and massage Rupert’s limbs. A bliss stole over Rupert, and he drifted off to sleep.

  Several days later, Rupert bade the nuns goodbye. Brother Rochus had moved on, and could not be quizzed or thanked.

  Rupert emerged into a city in turmoil, and he sensed that the Count’s execution was imminent. Following the surge of angry citizens, he eventually came to the square where the Count stood humbled on public display.

  He saw Daeira in the crowd! She seemed to spot him and recognize him as well. Pushing and shoving through the masses, Rupert was nearly beside her when the Cucibocca swooped in from nowhere like a knife through soft cheese, clamped a hand on Daeira’s arm and savagely hustled her off.

  Rupert followed as fast as he could move, and caught up with the pair on the bank of the Via Fiorentini stream. With all attention elsewhere, the trio had the scene to themselves.

  The Cucibocca roared wordlessly. “Mortal! You cannot play with gods. Go cower in your own sad limited era!”

  Daeira said, “Rupert, please—” But the Cucibocca shook any further instructions from her to senseless flinders of speech.

  The Cucibocca turned and leaped into the dirty culvert, pulling Daeira with him through the portal beneath the waters.

  Rupert followed.

  The women were tearful, children wailing, and fathers stoic. A man with a loud-hailer barked orders. The officials ushered the families into the waiting trucks filled with their pitiful furniture, trucks bringing them to the new housing projects outside the empty Sassi, sad substitutes that could never replace the ancestral communal ways of living. Daeira and her captor dashed through the crowds of refugees toward the portal glowing across the way—

  Armed men fought noisily with myriad edged weapons in the streets of Matera, a grim melee. From his museum time and researches, Rupert recognized an impossible motley mix of Saracens, Byzantines, Longobards, Templars, Greeks, and Germans, all the conquerors of the ages contesting the bloody streets. Narrowly avoiding the swordplay, Rupert leaped directly on the heels of Daeira through the invisible door—

  “Cut! Cut! Off the set! Get off the set!” Was that … Mel Gibson … behind a big movie camera? And some actor dressed as Christ? Rupert had only a few seconds to ponder the presence of the filmmakers when he jumped again—

  The Canadian soldiers in the Piazza Vittorio Veneto, mobbed by the jubilant Italians, hoisted beers and skins of wine and kissed willing women and played the bagpipes and sang patriotic songs denouncing Hitler and Mussolini and Tojo. Rupert muscled his way toward the fountain, nearly grasping Daeira’s hand this time, but just falling short before he jumped—

  And jumped—

  And jumped—

  And jumped—

  Until the exotic heady times and climes and faces and architecture and events blended into one kaleidoscopic whirl of history.

  And then, without warning, Matera and the Sassi were completely gone.

  Rupert collapsed atop a sharp brief coral reef standing barely a meter or so above an endless green sea spreading under a hot cloudless sky, lacerating his palms and knees. The Cucibocca and Daeira had fallen down a few feet away. Daeira appeared stunned and helpless.

  Offshore from the reef, a giant reptilian head on an impossibly long neck broke the
surface, snatched a small flying pterosaur from the air, then plunged down again. Something that resembled a woodlouse big as a footstool crawled up onto the coral near Rupert’s feet.

  Here was the era when Matera’s many fossils had been born, her modern geology and topography all embryonic.

  With infinite tiredness Rupert pushed himself up to a standing pose. The Cucibocca, seemingly as vigorous as ever, left Daeira sprawled and approached Rupert. He patted his long bone needle where it was safely lanced through the fabric of his cloak.

  “Little man, this is as far as you go.”

  Rupert had had enough. With a roar of his own he launched himself through the air and tackled the Cucibocca, sending them both into the shallow sea where the reef sloped away underwater.

  He landed one solid punch on the Cucibocca’s iron jaw before the monster had him two-handedly by the neck and was driving his head underwater.

  As Rupert Geier fought valiantly for his life, seeking to stave off his death at the hands of a malign, jealous and brutal creature from legend, who sought to throttle and drown Rupert in the warm seas of the Mesozoic, some two hundred million years before Rupert’s birth, he wondered blindly, not for the first time, if falling in love with Daeira Bruno, the Queen of Sassi, had not been a most dangerous and wayward venture of his heart, however ineluctable and fated their time-tossed romance still appeared, even in the throes of his personal extinction.

  The Cucibocca raised Rupert up gasping out of the water as if to savor his victory.

  “I end you now, just like my cousin killed your wife.”

  Rupert’s consciousness whited out in a flare of madness at the mention of Jessica, before returning with an adamantine pointedness.

  “Yes, my cousin, the Invunche of the Atacama. A worse devil than me! Three legs, the horny foot that comes from the back of his neck, all that stinking hair and gnashing teeth. He gave up his diet of black cat’s milk and goat’s flesh to feast on your wife. All as destiny decreed, to drive you here into my power this minute, and end your threat!”