Romancing the Clown
2
Tears of a Clown
PERSEPHONE SLAMMED THE LID shut on the chamber and it silently went about its task. She monitored a screen.
“She was barely alive. Ruptured kidney, broken ribs, concussion, reproductive damage, bruised heart, punctured lung. What happened, Hero Lincoln?”
“I don’t understand everything. It was her husband and now I’m going back to kill him.” I went back into the antechamber and headed to the portal. Nothing happened. “Fuck!” I yelled. “Computer, let me through the portal.”
“Lincoln. Lincoln, my darling. You can’t go back through the portal until you’ve been to Chaos. You know the rules. Computer can’t just override them,” Persephone said softly as she stroked my back.
“But he could get hold of Cadence!” I yelled. “I need to go back and stop him.”
“It makes no difference, Lincoln. No matter how much or how little time you spend here, you will re-enter your world exactly fifteen minutes from when you left. It is always that way. Come, my love. We must get Lisa Caretaker healed and get you pulled together. We need a strategy and direction for how to approach your enemy. Then we need to select a mission, get you trained for it, and execute it. When you have given the damsel her reward, you and Lisa will return to Earth to right the wrongs there.”
I sighed. She was right of course. Time on Crossroads and Time on Chaos were unpredictable. I could be gone weeks on Earth and spend weeks with Persephone then arrive on Chaos the day after I last left. On the other hand, we’d rushed back after our first mission and nearly two years had passed on Chaos. Only the time that would pass on Earth was fixed. I’d tried to comprehend how other heroes compared to my timeline, but became hopelessly lost in the process. It had to do with the prohibition of heroes working together. That had once been bent when a number of heroes needed to be in one place in order to fight the slavers, but then those heroes seemed to part and rejoin their own timelines again. The only ones constant were the hero and his companion. Since the companions traveled on the same ticket as the hero, their time was the same.
I’d begun to believe that Crossroads itself was suspended in time— or perhaps outside of time. It was the only way it seemed to make sense to have it act as a central clearinghouse for the three planets. I’d have to see if I could get Computer to test my theory somehow.
It gave me a headache.
“Of course. I’m sorry, Sephie. It’s just that the past day has been strange. And now I am worried about Cadence. Lisa and I didn’t plan to come back until Cadence could come with us. Last night two men came to our door to tell us that a man I’d only ever heard of had died and handed Lisa a letter. This morning, Lisa sent Cadence on a quest she said you helped design and told me she was divorcing her husband and her vows were completed. When I got home this evening, her husband and two goons were beating the crap out of her and demanding to know where Cadence was and where the will was,” I complained.
“We’ll figure it out.” Seph kissed me on the cheek. For the first time, I realized she was still naked and a bit damp.
“Did I interrupt your shower?” I asked as I gently stroked her soft skin.
“When you were here last, Lisa introduced me to the idea of a hot soaking bath. Why did I never think of getting in water unless it was to swim? Would you care to join me? Lisa will not be out of the chamber for four more hours.”
“Won’t the water be cold by now?”
“Computer, restore water temperature to one hundred degrees Fahrenheit in the tub.”
“Yes, Caretaker Persephone.” I followed Seph to the tub and we sank into its depths. She distracted me from my funk, and long before the chamber chimed, I sank into Seph’s depths as well.
Physically, Lisa was healed. Emotionally, she was a wreck. Mentally, I just wasn’t sure she was all there. She’d just been beaten on Earth more violently than we’d seen on Chaos. And by someone she knew—been intimate with—even if she didn’t trust him
Seph and I took turns feeding her, bathing her, and grooming her, before finally giving up and sandwiching her between us in bed. Lisa lay there, motionless. I think she slept.
In the morning, I slipped out of bed and left Lisa with Seph. I figured a woman’s touch might be more positive than mine. When I had finished in the bathroom and went into the main area, a table was set with breakfast for me. Apparently Seph had left instructions.
I ate, silently, and alone. I didn’t really taste the food, though I’m sure Computer did a great job. At home, I’d listen to Cadence and Lisa as they prepared for their day. I’d read the newspaper and get ready to train in one or more of my disciplines. In the afternoon, I’d go to my job at the game store.
Home.
My life had changed in the past year. From being confined to wheelchair with no feeling from my chest down, I’d become fit and capable. I had both Cadence and Persephone as lovers. Lisa and I were intimate on Crossroads and Chaos, even though we didn’t have intercourse. And I’d fathered four children. I should say I sired them. Bred their mothers. I’d never be a father to them. I didn’t even know if any had actually been born yet. I’d spent much more time on Chaos and Crossroads than I had on Earth.
And now, on Earth, a goon squad was between me and finding Cadence to protect her. I would have to take Lisa back with me into their ambush. We could both be killed as we stepped out of the wardrobe into my bedroom.
Not that we could get back to Earth. We couldn’t return to Earth until we’d been to Chaos, rescued a damsel, and got her pregnant. Then we had to move fast.
I sighed.
“Hero Lincoln, would you care to train? Persephone Caretaker has left instructions that you should have access to the gym, the archery range, and the weapons room. Alternatively, I have your cards and associated magic paraphernalia. Should Persephone Caretaker be unavailable when you are hungry, simply say so and a meal will be served.”
“Thank you, Computer. I suppose I should do something. I’ll start in the gym and get a workout.”
I went through the open door and spent the next hour lifting and running. After that, I headed for the archery range. I alternated between activities that required steadiness and control with those that required action and speed. Back to tumbling mats. On to knife throwing. Then to martial arts katas, a good combination of both control and action. I headed to the shower and then to lunch. The bedroom was empty, but I didn’t see Seph and Lisa in any of the rooms I walked through. When I got to the table, Sephie joined me.
“Lisa is asleep. Oh, Lincoln, it’s all caught up with her. She has deprived herself all these years for the sake of her daughter and then her husband tried to kill her. It wasn’t a case of just beating her. He actually wanted her dead. I don’t understand it, but he stands to gain something if she is out of the way,” Sephie said. “She loves you, Lincoln. She just needs to get through this rough patch.”
“I love her, Sephie. I always have. But you know I love you, too, don’t you?”
“Oh yes, my hero. And when we have eaten, I will show you how much I love you.”
We made love the rest of the day. Lisa joined us for dinner. She was quiet, but some life showed in her eyes. At night, Seph and I held her between us.
“Exercise is a powerful antidepressant, Lisa,” Seph said as we went into the gym. “Let’s start with something you don’t have to focus too hard on. We’ll run.” And run we did. The treadmill in the gym was much different than what I’d encountered in other health clubs. For one thing, it had no side bars or rails to hold onto. It was just the platform. Even that was different. It was curved and slightly sloped up in front. The device was not electric, but worked strictly on the basis of gravity. We started walking, but as soon as we were used to the motion of the treadmill, we picked up speed to a jog and eventually to a gentle run. It was a great machine.
Crossroads has slightly lower gravity than Earth, but within the heroes’ quarters—including the gym—the gravity was Earth-norm. Computer would gradually increase our workout level over the next few weeks as we built ourselves up to go to Chaos.
And Seph was right. Exercise helped work Lisa out of her depression, though she refused to reveal any details of her vows or what set Wilson off. Lisa threw herself into the aerobic workouts and was fast becoming a dangerous woman when we started weapons practice. We each took turns in the healing chamber before the end of the first week.
“We need a mission,” Lisa said firmly. “I need to go kill someone.”
“Lisa Caretaker,” Seph said softly. “Our job is to take care of Hero Lincoln. You travel with him as his caretaker, not as an adventurer. The portal won’t even let you through if you go with that intent.”
“I know!” Lisa barked. She looked at me and there was such longing in her eyes that I reached out to her. Lisa came to me and I held her. “I just need to be doing something worthwhile. There are times when I feel so worthless.”
“I love you, Lisa. Cadence loves you. Persephone loves you. I know that isn’t a balm that soothes away all those feelings of worthlessness. But it’s a place to start building. God knows, I felt helpless and worthless for enough years. I felt like I was a burden to everyone around me. But you got me through that. We’ll get you through this.”
“I would make love to you right now if we’d had a chance to talk to Cadence,” Lisa said. “You know I can’t have sex with you before we’ve talked to her.”
“Yes. It’s one thing to agree theoretically to a situation when you know it is unlikely to ever occur. It is another to face the reality that it will happen. But Lisa, let Seph and me love you like we can.”
Lisa yielded to us and Seph gave me a brilliant smile over Lisa’s shoulder. We took her to the shower and lavished our love upon her. Lisa responded with a kind of intensity that bordered on desperation. She clutched me to her and kissed me while Seph dove between her legs. Her orgasms were almost as fast and intense as a Cassandran damsel’s. She ate Seph as Seph sucked me. When I fucked Seph, Lisa rode her face. When we were beyond even the stage of contemplating another restorative, Lisa scooted down toward our waists and held my cock in her mouth, softly nursing as she went to sleep.
Our afternoon and night of sex—let’s face it, plus the next day—seemed to get Lisa over the hump of her depression, though she was still prone to space out a little as she contemplated Earth and our future. Before we began looking at missions, we worked on plans for our return to Earth. Our one advantage was that we knew we would re-enter the room fifteen minutes after I had rushed out with Lisa in my arms. They didn’t know if or when we would return.
Our disadvantage was that we had no idea what they would be doing when we got there. Wilson’s goons might well be recovered enough to help him again, if they ever got up. Neighbors might have become suspicious and called the police. Reinforcements might have arrived. Everyone might have left. Wilson could be standing in the door of the wardrobe looking for us. They might all be waiting with guns trained on the portal. We simply had no idea what to expect. Only that it would be bad and could be fatal.
Persephone was just as ruthless in pushing our training as Lisa had been in getting trained. I was concerned about the bulk I’d put on. It was going to be harder to play the crippled minstrel. It was never a problem for me to act crippled. I’d been that way for too long. But now it was all too easy to jump, dance, and tumble. I felt great and was actually looking forward to some acrobatics. But my canes might not fool anyone. That meant we needed a strategy for our new act. Being a crippled minstrel had given me almost a free ride through Chaos. It was obvious that I didn’t have anything worth stealing or killing me for.
Partially as a result of my act, I had not amassed much wealth on my previous four trips to Chaos. I didn’t attract a lot of fights and had stolen my damsels most of the time. On the last trip, my damsel had not given me time to collect any spoils. I was seriously considering tying up the next damsel and carrying her across the back of a mule. I think Lisa would help with that.
I did have some money, as did Lisa. We each had our own safe deposit boxes with various weapons, saddles, and clothes. We each had a modest amount of money in the bank. I was surprised to find that my account had grown the last time I was there, due to the success of the one piece of property I owned, an inn managed by the brothers Raphe and Gabe. While the two had inherited their father’s wealth upon his unfortunate demise, they had no interest in the society and politics in which he had engaged. They loved the inn and were jovial innkeepers. They gladly deposited my percentage in my account each day.
I also had two good horses. That could be an advantage or a disadvantage. A cripple and his mute assistant could walk down a road virtually unmolested—especially when people saw the cithara slung across my back. But two armed men on good horses would be a target to anyone hoping to improve their fortune with ease.
“If we can’t disappear in anonymity, then we need to be bold in our presence,” I finally stated. “We need a show cart.”
“What are you talking about?” Persephone asked.
“Back on Earth, there is a tradition of traveling actors,” I said. “The troupe would go from court to court and sometimes in the town squares to perform plays. Sometimes they were no more than mummers, but occasionally there arose a troupe who drew some attention and performed some classics of the Greek and Roman theater.”
“Dost thou hear me, old friend? Can you play the Murder of Gonzago?” Lisa quoted. My college compatriots had performed Hamlet my senior year, but since I was in a wheelchair, I’d never gotten a chance to play it. Nonetheless, Lisa had patiently rehearsed the part with me and we read it repeatedly until we both knew most of the lines.
“Aye, my lord,” I responded. I grinned at Lisa and real life showed in her eyes. “We’ll need a two-person script,” I said as we sat at the table to begin a serious plan for approaching Chaos.
“A dumb show,” she added, making a zipping motion across her lips. “If we have a couple of short skits and the magic act, a little song and dance, we can simply travel and set up in each town as we go.”
“We’ll dress the horses in motley and pull a cart that doubles as a stage. No one looks past the drapery when they see a ridiculous costume on a horse,” I said.
“I’ll work on a playbill,” Lisa said. “You work on the design of the cart and what you need for magic tricks.”
“Is there something I can do?” Persephone asked. She was a little bewildered. Lisa and I caught her up in our arms and had a regular kiss fest all over her. Seph started giggling, but before we let her go, she was naked and in orgasmic spasms.
“My dear, sweet caretaker,” I said as she sagged against us. “Do your job! Find us a mission!”
There is a reason the caretaker preselects missions and provides them to her hero. Our nature is such that we would want to save all the damsels and would automatically choose the mission in which the damsel is in the most distress, even if it was an impossible mission for our skills. Or we’d take the first mission we saw. We would never be able to pass one up. Persephone seldom spoke of missions she eliminated before she presented the selection to us. I think Lisa’s sense of justice and fairness would equally drive us to foolishness. A damsel captured by a dragon faced certain death. It was almost impossible to even reach a dragon’s lair before the damsel was dead, not to mention the fact that a hero could not pass the portal if he held the intent to harm one of the protected species.
Lisa and I would have tried anyway.
“I think I have the right mission,” Persephone announced after we had all been working on our various plans for a week. “The damsel is not in imminent distress, but her peril is on an upward arc. You should have time to get your equipment ready when you reach Rock Canyon City and locate her by the time she is in real distress.”
“Who, what, and where?” I asked.
“Her name is Cathy Temp. She is smart enough, but her profile shows that she has never been able to hold a steady job. Before entering the damsel program, she was going from job to job as a temporary worker,” Persephone said as we sat around the table at dinner. Next to us, Computer was projecting the information on a holographic screen. With all Computer’s capabilities, I wondered why new heroes were presented with paper files on their prospective caretakers.
Persephone advanced the screen to Cathy’s adventures on Chaos. She had followed much the same pattern there as she had on Cassandra. She had been a scullery maid, a lady’s attendant, a cook, a dancer, a groom. The list went on. For the first few weeks she was on Chaos, her fortune had seemed to improve with each new job. She became a nanny, a tutor, and a lady-in-waiting. But fortune had seemed to desert her over the past few weeks. She had fallen from grace when the lady of the manor found her husband with his cock in Cathy’s mouth and took exception to the act. Cathy found herself on the street with no references and even less than she had taken with her from Cassandra. She was still finding her way, but her way was leading into the seamier side of life on Chaos. She had become a teller for a merchant. Amazingly, she didn’t seem to be attracting the kind of attention that most Cassandran women did. Aside from the occasional blowjob and getting felt up a lot, men weren’t falling over each other to fuck her. I wondered if there was something screwed up with her pheromones. She was certainly pretty enough.
We agreed that she was simply going to fall into a bad situation before long and her distress level would mount. But we should have time to get our gear together and find her before it was too late. We decided to set out the next morning.
First, however, both Lisa and I wanted as much loving with our beautiful Persephone as we could get in one night.
At breakfast, we went over our plan again, both for when we were on Chaos and for when we got back to earth. Earth was trickier. Chaos was neat and ordered by comparison. We didn’t have a bank vault as a buffer zone on Earth.
“We’ll have time to work out more of the details when we get back with our damsel,” I said. “I can’t screw her non-stop the entire time.”
“Already you sound like making love to a beautiful woman is a burden you have to endure,” Lisa laughed.
“I have all the beautiful women I ever want in my arms and waiting for me on Earth,” I said, kissing her tenderly. “If it were not for Persephone, I wouldn’t return to Crossroads.”
“Keep that in mind, Linc. The time might come when it is better that you not return. We’ll all survive.” That sounded ominous. She laughed at me. “I don’t have to go kill villains on Chaos.” We finished getting dressed in our player’s clothes and headed toward the portal. Persephone stood there in a diaphanous gown looking good enough to eat—again. She always tried to look her best when she sent us through the portal, either to Chaos or to Earth. It was like one of those ’50s TV shows where the wife is all made up, dressed neatly, and wearing pearls to send her husband off to work in the morning.
“There’s a problem,” Seph said as we approached. “The damsel’s distress level has risen.”
“Oh, no. We need to get her, so we have time to get ready for Earth. What’s the status?” I asked.
“Her life is not in immediate danger, but it seems that she has had an accident and is injured. Chaos medicine is not very good at handling this. She needs to get back here to be healed,” Seph said. “If you get your wagon outfitted quickly, you should be able to pick her up at Mule’s Crossing where she was working in the house of the merchant as a teller when she had her accident. She was taking a deposit to the bank and walked into the wheels of a wagon. The merchant is unhappy because she lost his deposit.”
“He should be concerned about her welfare,” Lisa snarled.
“We’re talking Chaos, love,” I said. “Her welfare is the last thing he would be concerned about.”
“We’d better get going, then.” Lisa turned to Persephone and pulled the girl to her. They kissed for so long that I thought I might not get an opportunity. Of course, Lisa eventually yielded Seph’s lips to me and I enjoyed a hero’s send-off.
I took Lisa’s hand and stepped through the portal.
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