The shadows were deep in the cavernous underground. Only a few lights had been lit, for only a few people were there. Billie Joe was a one-man show, a show with no more scenery than a plain lectern and a simple setting of platform and flowers. It was theater-in-the-round for the Crusade for Change. ’Round the world.
They heard the murmur of the crowd above them, then a squeak as some stagehands began moving some of the rock group’s bizarre scenery. A castle wall was trundled across and set down, blocking their view of the dressing room. Annoyed, Stephen Strange and Clea started to step around the flat, but a second group of stagehands brought in the massive prize ring, set on edge, the canvas covering a tawny wall. Clea gestured at the “castle” gate just in front of them and stepped forward to open it. The painted oak panel swung easily into the blackness; Clea stepped through. At the very last instant Strange sensed something and cried out.
“No, Clea!”
It was too late. The door swung closed and although it was but a moment before Strange shoved it open, everything had changed. No longer was there blackness beyond, but simply the other side of the underground staging area: the dressing rooms, the scenery, a forklift truck, some television people swapping stories.
Strange spun and closed the door after he had passed back through. Quickly, he put his fingers to the Eye of Agamotto hanging at his chest. “O great Eye, pierce the veils of mystery, reveal my student and love to me!”
A light sprang out from the Eye, projecting a beam onto the fake castle door. He saw Clea, not in color, but in black and white, reversed like a negative, floating in the purest white space. He saw her hands gesturing, saw her lips moving but heard no sound.
“In the name of the dread Dormammu! Open the way to the region of wonders!”
The Eye blinked out. It seemed very quiet. The painted stone castle no longer looked painted. Strange reached out; the castle door was heavy now, creaking as it swung heavily open. Beyond was neither blackness, nor the dressing rooms, nor the pure white sea in which his beloved Clea was drowning. Beyond was a medieval-looking corridor of shaped stone, gray and cold. The corridor was lined with archways and each archway contained a thick wooden door; on the face of each door was burned a cryptic symbol.
Strange entered the corridor without hesitation. The incantation had not taken him directly to where Clea was imprisoned and there must be a reason. He was alert, strong spells of protection ready on his tongue.
The first door opened easily at his touch, swinging away to reveal an emerald glade beyond. A well-trod path led from the archway through sunlit grass to a nearby forest of ancient gnarled trees. At the edge of the forest, just beyond a dusting of yellow flowers, a golden-haired woman, young and slim, held out her palm to a white horse with a long twisted spike growing from its forehead. The unicorn snorted and raised its head to look at Strange with a wild eye. The young woman shaded her eyes and frowned. Strange shut the door.
The second door opened into another forest, but this one was dark. Black-trunked trees with somber foliage, shadowed passages between, a lightning-struck tree burned and twisted, rough gray rock, no flowers, only a little grass. Beyond the treetops Strange saw the broken tower of some castle. It was burning. He closed that door.
Crossing the passage he opened a third door. Howling wind sent a flurry of snow into the passage. The cold froze his face as he peered into the wild whiteness. Something huge and dark rose out of the snowdrift and made a lunge toward the door, snarling, hairy hands extended. Strange yanked the door shut but the clawed paws grasped it and wrenched it open again. It bellowed and started through but met a burst from Strange’s outstretched hand. The creature was blasted back, its chest on fire, and threw itself into the snow. Strange slammed the door shut.
He approached the fourth door with even more caution. It was well he did, for the moment the door opened, something wet and splotched heaved itself against the oak. Stephen Strange shoved back with all his strength, but pseudopods of blotched protoplasm flung themselves through the crack and attached themselves to the stone floor. These tentacles split and some curled toward Strange while others extended themselves and stretched toward the farther walls. The door sagged inward. A massive blob of the stained protoplasm bulged through the door.
“By the supreme Satanish!” exclaimed Strange, his fingers moving. Flames suddenly enveloped the tentacles, which jerked, then contracted swiftly. Other tendrils of protoplasm came through the door, but they, too, started to burn. The blood flowed back out, followed by the extended tentacles. There was a thin high whine which wavered and disappeared when Strange slammed the door closed.
The fifth door Strange eyed with apprehension. He looked down the long corridor. It seemed to go on forever. There were hundreds of archways with their recessed doors, each an opening into some odd dimension. It might take him forever—but there was no other way to do it. He opened the fifth door.
Blue sky. Nothing but blue sky and a few faint, distant clouds. Strange looked down. The door opened into the side of an incredibly high cliff. The mountainside dropped for thousands of feet, a fluted granite wall without vegetation, ledge, or sign of human habitation. The origins of the cliff were lost in a thick white mist far below. Strange started to close the door when there was a horrendous screech. A pterodactyl came slanting out of the sun, its long beak open, its long leathery wings flapping. Strange swung the heavy door shut but it shook with the assault of the prehistoric beast as he closed it.
The sixth door opened into desert. Nothing moved; there was the trail of a snake wiggling across the slope of tawny sand.
The seventh door exploded with tons of water the moment Strange lifted the metal latch. He was slammed back into the opposite wall and the water poured in with a deafening roar, spreading out, filling up the corridor swiftly, pinning Strange against the wall.
“Crimson bands of Cyttorak!” he shouted, his mouth filling with foul-tasting water. A green tentacle, one side covered with pulsating suckers, came in and reached for him. “Banish this flood!”
There was a sizzling as scarlet bands arced across the stone archway. Water squirted through the slits, but the bands closed upon themselves, severing the massive tentacle, which lay twisting and writhing on the wet stone as the rest of the water swept on down into the drains and scuppers. The bands sealed themselves across the arch and no more water entered. Strange stood up, weak from the physical assault of tons of water, and closed the door. The corridor was a mess. Strange spiny fish twisted and gasped. Purple seaweed lay in long sinuous lines. The watermark on the walls was almost above Strange’s head.
“Flames of the Faltine!” he exclaimed. There was a searing flash and the long corridor was dry. The bits and pieces of flotsam and jetsam were seared and fell into powder, including the big severed tentacle. Strange’s clothes were dry. He stepped wearily toward the eighth door.
“Clea, Clea,” he muttered.
The oaken door swung open and Strange looked into a treasure chamber in a natural cavern. Ancient rectangular chests had round golden coins spilling from them. Fistfuls of pearl necklaces and armloads of golden bracelets clogged other caskets. A strange six-sided box was open, revealing thousands of tiny glowing octagons of blue metal. A crown studded with emeralds, far too large for any human head, lay atop a shattered crate that held an Aztec statue of solid gold. A spear of transparent crystal was topped with a long metal point carved from a ruby. A cask of silver globes was next to a rotted bag of 1888 U.S. silver dollars. A Wells-Fargo strongbox was next to a studded bronze chest with the graven symbol of King Sumuabi who had ruled Babylonia in its first dynasty more than 4,000 years before.
Three skeletons lay disintegrating among the treasure. Only one was human.
Strange shut the door, took a breath and crossed the passage to open the ninth door.
Stars—but none he knew. A gas cloud loomed red and awesome before him, lit by the light of a million suns. Not far off was a red giant. Just before the door floated a pure-white cube. Strange looked at the cube thoughtfully.
White. Clea had been in a white world, a negative world. The box was small, no bigger than might hold a hat; purest white, featureless, reflecting no starlight. Antimatter? Would that explain the negative whiteness?
“By the seven rings of Raggador,” he said softly, watching the box carefully. “Fetch me that box.” He gestured and seven glowing rings flew from his fingertip, each no bigger than a finger ring, but they expanded to be large enough to contain the box. They wove themselves around the box in an intricate web and slowly tugged the white box closer.
The rings set the box upon the floor and Strange expanded the rings to mansize, a cage of glowing filaments. “Open,” he commanded.
The box opened, but not in the way he thought. The square lid did not swing up, but instead the sides contracted into themselves, until there was but a skeleton of white lines in the shape and size of the box. Within the box, floating in the exact center, was a white ball, smaller than a tennis ball, and featureless.
“By the dread Dormammu, I command you to reveal your secrets!”
The white ball pulsed and turned transparent. Within the ball was a universe of stars; pinpoint dots of light, millions of them, making the ball glow. Peering closer, Strange could see that the dots were not stars but tiny pinwheels of galaxies. It would take him a million lifetimes to search even a portion of it.
“Return,” he said. The ball turned white. The sides of the box rolled down. The crimson bands returned the box to the unknown region of space, and Strange closed the door. He hesitated, and almost reopened the door. Clea could be somewhere in that pocket universe, he thought—but no; her prison was a negative universe.
He stood before the tenth door. He opened it carefully. Beyond was a red-lit sky and a stony path leading over a hill toward distant spires. The road was lined with hundreds of human skulls. On the hilltop a dead woman hung naked, upside down, from an inverted cross. He closed the thick oak door.
Eleven. A burned and ravaged landscape, blackened and savaged by terrible rays which had cut deep gashes in solid rock. The ruins of a domed city still burned. A tall skeletal machine with six jointed legs turned glistening lenses toward him. One of its legs was bent and twisted. There was dust on its black metal carapace and rust at the joints. A turret on its rounded back swung a wide-snouted weapon toward him. Strange slammed the door shut just as the weapon spurted out a stream of liquid fire.
Twelve. The air was a muted dirty orange. Thousands of people in shapeless gray clothing stood apathetically in endless lines. Featureless walls rose above them and Strange could see the bars of light that denoted buildings beyond, barely glimpsed through the thick murk. No one looked at him; no one cared. An old woman gasped and fell. No one paid any attention. Strange closed the hatch.
Thirteen. A mystic number.
Kong was atop the Empire State Building. The blonde woman screamed. The biwinged planes swooped and banked, their machine guns chattering. The great ape roared and swung out a hand, snatching one of the flying machines from the air, crushing it in his monstrous hairy hands. Spots of blood dotted his body. Red gore oozed down his black fur. The great creature reached down and lovingly gathered up the screaming blonde woman. She fought ineffectually against his immense strength. The ape swayed, bellowing. If he fell, he would take her with him.
Doctor Strange was about to utter an incantation when out of the sky came a solitary figure dressed in checked tweed, his Inverness cloak flowing behind him like a cape. “Holmes!” the woman gasped. The hawk-nosed man rocketed around the giant ape, who turned in bufuddlement.
A dark figure ran out onto the observation platform from the elevator, his slouch hat and black cape flapping in the wind. Two .45 automatics appeared in his hands. He began firing upward in thunderous blasts.
The flying man in the deerstalker cap banked sharply and flew in close, pulling the screaming woman from the puzzled gorilla’s grasp. The extra weight pulled him off balance and they fell out of sight, the woman screaming hoarsely. The giant ape stepped down to the observation platform, squashing the shadowy figure with the blazing guns under his foot.
The top of the gorilla’s head opened and a plump young man with a thick droopy mustache started climbing out. He looked over at Strange, his dark eyes gleaming, and made a leap straight toward him. Strange managed to get the heavy door shut just in time.
“Madness,” he muttered, “a realm of madness.”
The fourteenth door.
A forest wilderness, thick-topped trees as far as he could see. A butterfly flopped by and the scale suddenly changed. The butterfly was not a butterfly but a humanoid figure with wings three meters long and rainbowed with color. The trees were not just trees, but towering growths as large as office buildings. Vast thick limbs held out whole villages hundreds of feet over the mossy green floor of a vast forest. The villages were mud and wattle, much like hornet nests, but the edges of the arched doorways and oval windows were intricately carved with designs. Winged figures fluttered from opening to opening. One flopped in, bearing a huge flower. Another rose up, carrying long green grass, which it took to a nest in progress.
Strange closed the door reluctantly. It was a lovely fragile world, but not the one he sought. Neither were those worlds beyond the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth doors—barren worlds, shattered rock, melted ruins. The eighteenth door opened into an enormous hall with high colorful walls. All across the blue-marble floor were copulating couples, their human bodies glistening with sweat. On a dais opposite the door was a wide throne, flanked by voluptuous women who wore no clothes, but much jewelry. They watched the orgy with impassive faces. Sitting atop the throne was a lounging insect as large as an elephant, six-legged and black-brown. Each long hairy leg was ringed with golden bracelets and a golden band circled its bulging head just in back of its protruding eyes.
The insect king twitched and its limbs went rigid. There was a thin undulating whistle and from arches came muscular warriors in chain mail. Their arms went back as one, and they hurtled black spears straight at Strange.
“Calthor, protect me!” The spears flipped over in midair and arrowed straight at the insect king. The huge creature scrambled to get out of the way, its long legs sending the flanking beauties flying; but it was not swift enough. The spears plunged into its nightmarish body, and the creature screamed. Yellowish fluid oozed forth and the monster flopped over, crashing back onto its carved throne. It twitched and kicked out; then it was motionless. Slowly, the copulating couples stopped. They lay atop one another, motionless, then they began to rapidly decompose.
With a feeling of revulsion Strange closed the door. The corridor was endless. It was infinity itself.
Dr. Strange stood before the nineteenth portal. He had to go on. Whoever—or whatever—had abducted Clea into the white universe might destroy her. Her powers were not those of her mentor. Perhaps she might be able to hold off the abductors, but not win freedom. He had to continue. He could not give up.
Behind the nineteenth door was a tropical island, serene and lovely. Brown-skinned maidens in low-slung sarongs laughed and called out to him from the clear waters of the lagoon. He wanted desperately to go and lie there in the sun and not think, not fight, not struggle against the infinite varieties of evil. But the very thing that gave him his awesome powers was the thing that forced him to close the thick oak door and go on.
Twenty: an emerald city in the distance, a path twisting through flowers, music in the air.
Twenty-one: jungle, fetid and hot. A planet of incredible size loomed over the horizon. Here and there from the thick green jungle a ruined temple or pyramid protruded.
Twenty-two: blackness—and the fetid stench of rotting flesh.
Twenty-three: a blue room with shiny walls, a humanoid male with shaven skull and fiery eyes wearing a lavender jumpsuit. His hand grabbed for a chromed weapon as he snarled defiance.
Twenty-four: a boarded and battened town, weathered and quaint; the Silver Dollar Saloon next to the Apex Hotel. Down the dusty street two horses stood with drooped heads. One horse had a hoof lifted, as if the street were too hot. Nothing moved; a fly buzzed; someone in the saloon laughed.
Twenty-five: a wide-beamed ship with crimson sails emblazoned with an intricate cryptic symbol moved at a slant over swelling waters. The carved and painted woman at the prowl had naked breasts of unexplained fullness and pointed nipples. Her head was that of a feathered bird.
Twenty-six: Strange looked into a cluttered room where a number of people sat on folding chairs. Many were bearded and wore army-surplus clothing. A woman crocheting was the only one that saw him and she blinked in surprise. The others were busy auctioning off parking places in front of the building.
Twenty-seven: Strange stood wearily in the arch. The sun was red, giving everything an odd rusty cast. A fortress was nearby, sturdy and unimaginative, made of red stone and its walls topped with pink points. There were bloody heads on almost every point. At the foot of the walls were skeletons in rusting armor. Black birds flapped near the heads, pecking at shreds of rotting flesh.
Twenty-eight: glistening city, all chrome and crystal and smooth surfaces. Delicate bridges linked domes and pyramids and ziggurats. There were gardens where natives strolled, but the natives were gray-green reptiles in silken robes.
Twenty-nine: moonscape, dead and undisturbed. A planet rose above the horizon and seemed oddly familiar. It stopped Strange long enough for him to recognize the world. It was Earth, a billion years before, when all the continents were one, with cracks just beginning to show. Man had not yet been created, and immense reptiles roamed the volcanic plains.
Thirty: a featureless checkerboard plain that ran to the horizon. Nearby, directly before the gate, was a wide blob of pale jelly. The spots within the jelly stirred and Clea rose from the blob, naked and lovely, her legs and hands attached to the flowing blob. Strange uttered a curse and the blob exploded, sending Clea splashing across the checkerboard.
Thirty-one: a hundred tiny large-headed robots scampered past, each bearing a load of some sort. Buzz. Beep. Brak. Bonk. Beep-beep. A myriad of walkways threaded the city that lay before Dr. Strange. The towers loomed up above the maintenance levels where the robots scurried. He caught glimpses of sky-cars and thin bridges and curly-headed figures strolling slowly, dressed in pastel fabrics.
Thirty-two: a courtroom of some sort. An ancient and wrinkled man in black robes and a tall crimson hat sat above the other six old and wrinkled men in black, who wore blue hats. Above them, on the wall, was a portrait four times the size of a human, only the portrait was of a dog. Before the judges, in chains, was a slender young girl.
“Death!” the judge said and the others nodded. A muscular man in black, masked and wearing a silver chain around his neck, approached carrying a long curved sword. Others in black forced the girl to her knees. One took her hair and yanked on it, stretching out her neck. The swordsman raised high his weapon.
“By the stones of Sarradani! Freeze these men!”
The sword stayed high. The slender girl wrenched her hair free and stared at Strange. “Run, girl!” he said. She leaped to her feet and ran to him. He slammed the door when she got through and turned toward her.
She was cringing against the opposite wall, staring at him with wide eyes. She was blonde and pale, not pretty, but with a certain grace and obviously intelligent. “It is true! They said the Say-tan would rescue me! It means I am a witch!”
“No, no,” Strange said. She cringed as he approached and would have bolted if he moved closer. Strange cursed to himself. He had no time to spend on her. Clea was in mortal danger. “They think you a witch?” he said and she nodded, looking around. He suspected that in a moment she would bolt for one of the doors. Dormammu only knew what might lie beyond. He made a subtle gesture and murmured a few archaic words.
Her manner changed. All fear vanished from her face and she looked around her brightly. “Where is this?” she asked. “It doesn’t look like Radzi or even Quade.”
“No, it isn’t,” Strange said. He put out his hand and she took it. He walked with her back along the corridor a ways and thought: she would like the tropical paradise, but would confuse those who lived there. The same with the door leading to the American West of yesteryear. He stopped. So many were hostile or lonely. The emerald city beyond the twentieth portal, perhaps, only he did not know for certain what might lie there. He shrugged and turned back. “Come with me,” he said.
“All right,” she said brightly. “Where are we going?”
“To where you will like it.”
She screamed when the thirty-third door opened. Beyond was hell, with a clawed, winged creature sitting on a throne of flame.
Strange calmed her with difficulty. The thirty-fourth door was before them and she was trembling, looking across the hall at the closed portal. She took a deep breath and clung tightly to Strange’s hand. He opened the door.
It was like a mirror. They saw themselves, sorcerer and accused witch—only they changed at once. They aged with incredible swiftness. The bloom of youth faded in seconds. Her body thickened and sagged, her eyes grew rheumy, her hair scraggly, and she became putrefaction. Strange saw his own image swiftly age, die, and rot.
“It’s just a . . . a dream,” he said to her as he closed the door.
“But . . . but . . .”
“Yes, I know, it looks real. Well, it is real, but it isn’t this reality. Look, we’ll try another door.”
“What are you looking for?” she asked breathlessly.
“My love.”
The girl looked up at him, sadly, seemed about to speak, but didn’t.
“All right,” she said, squaring her shoulders.
The thirty-fifth door was much better. A kind of Macy’s parade was going by. The street was full of cheering people dressed in bright colors, all wearing some kind of symbol, either in jewelry or woven into their clothes, or embroidered upon them. It was a circle with a slash through it, something like a side view of Saturn. The buildings across the street soared up out of sight, shiny and smooth. Over the heads of the crowd Strange saw windows heaped with strange products: crimson balloonlike things, blue shafts that tapered, green chalky sticks, purple cloth, yellow cubes, white crystals.
But it was the parade that caught the girl’s attention. She cheered along with the others as the entries in the bizarre parade went by. A dragon made of transparent material, floated, bobbing, with a beautiful nude woman swimming in blue liquid within it. A spiny thing like a blowfish, only two stories high, walked on longer spines. A robot, all orange-metal legs and attachments, squirted out rose-colored liquid that hardened in the air and became candy. A tall, dark-haired man floated on a silver disk, dispensing wafers of chocolate-colored something. A troop of Napoleon’s artillery . . . a balloonist in a top hat and burgundy suit . . . a long-nosed green creature who looked solemn and profound and rode in a carriage drawn by enthusiastic human volunteers . . .
When a tall float came by, blaring music, squirting candies, dripping flowers, the girl could not contain herself. She released Strange’s hand and ran through the portal before he could stop her.
Everything slowed and stopped. The light dimmed down through the spectrum until everything was bathed in a sullen red light. The solidifying candies hung in the air, dropping with infinite slowness. The girl herself moved as though in very slow motion.
Time slowed and all but stopped.
Stephen Strange didn’t bother to take the time to figure out why. He brought his hands together and meshed his fingers before him, arms out. “Father Time, ultimate goal of all things, release this child! By the thirteen bells of Bellok!”
The girl moved backward, step by step, until she was again next to Strange. The parade, too, moved backward. The candies became liquid and slowly reentered the spouts. Then the girl’s fingers interlocked with Strange’s and the parade continued forward.
She looked up at him, smiling brightly. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
“Yes, but we must search on.”
“By the way,” she asked as the door clicked shut, “I don’t know your name, kind sir. Mine is Ramma-delforadarra, daughter of Delfor-carra-tumathador and the Cavar of Alcala, Gillum-yeh-jarra.”
“Mine is Stephen Strange.”
“May your yamma always be clear and your hulta dry.”
Strange smiled. “May yours, too.”
She laughed. “Don’t be silly. Girls don’t have yammas!”
“Oh. Well, I’ll call you Ramma, all right?”
“Of course, Stephen,” she frowned. “What else could you call me?”
“Door thirty-six,” he said.
Her eyes widened. “Thirty-six is a sacred number.”
“All numbers have significance,” Strange murmured.
A sunbaked plain, cracked and parched, stretched from the door to the horizon. Horned skeletons that were not cattle dotted the ground. Much further toward the sun was something that looked like a shipwrecked sailing vessel of thin metal.
Thirty-seven: lightning was the only illumination. Blue-black rocks stood up from a motionless lake or sea. Something flopped and disturbed the mirrorlike surface.
Thirty-eight: a small, dark-haired girl in a blue dress was sitting under an immense pink mushroom talking earnestly to an impatient goat. The girl looked up, gestured toward the pink and blue and ocher mushrooms behind her and said, “You can have any of them.” To the goat she said, “You’ve got to try harder, Crollin.”
Thirty-nine: a tall skinny man wearing shabby lavender clothes rode what looked like an Easter egg with hairy legs. He stared at Strange and the girl, then ducked his head shyly. “I’m sorry, don’t hit me, I didn’t mean to stare.” The Easter egg slowly turned its hairy head and neck and looked balefully at Strange.
“Grot,” the Easter egg said.
“Shush, Tremlin,” the tall man said.
“Excuse me for bothering you,” Strange said.
“That’s all right. Oh, wait!” Strange stopped closing the door and looked back. “Would you mind telling me how you know the language? You don’t look like you’re from around here.”
“We’re not,” Strange said.
“We pick up things fast,” the girl said and she closed the door. “He’s an odd one,” she said, and skipped across to the fortieth door.
Beyond was a dry grassy plain. A chipped monolith was standing very close in front of the door. On top was a sphere of weathered stone. On the side facing the arched doorway was an inscription. It looked like Arabic but wasn’t, nor did it seem to be any language Strange knew. Something seemed to be burning; it was in the air. What was burning stank.
Forty-one: an asteroid, hollowed out for living quarters; stars beyond; a couple of good-sized rocks nearby, a small blue-white sun. An airlock opened and out came a wormlike creature in a clear spacesuit. “Ugh,” Ramma said and closed the door.
“How many are we going to open?” she asked.
“As many as we must,” Strange said.
Ramma sighed and looked down the long corridor. “What about something to eat?”
“Soon,” Strange said, reaching for the latch of number forty-two.
It was a lovely world, grassy and graceful. Slender trees rose up in small groves, with larger ones beyond. They had limbs that spread out into a many-fingered support for what looked like uneven ovals of thick moss. Broad-leafed bushes were giving birth to bright-colored flowers. The green grass sloped down to a small bay, an inlet of a wide lake. Purple mountains were on the other side. A dock of shaped stone stuck out into the bay and there lay a wooden ship of closely fitted timber. The bright red sails were furled and on the decks were broad-shouldered humanoids loading bales of pressed flowers and baskets of seeds and nuts.
A Strange and Ramma watched, a number of humanoids came out of the forest and toward the ship, singing and dancing. They played stringed instruments, had no clothes except thick striped socks and were bald except for elaborately arranged topknots.
“They’ll have something to eat,” Ramma said. She started forward, then stopped and looked at Dr. Strange. “May I?”
Strange searched the landscape before him. On a headland across the lake was a round-topped tower of rose-colored stone. There seemed to be no weapons. The singers and dancers had sighted them and were staring, not in fear or surprise, but as if they thought they should recognize Strange and his companion, and didn’t.
“All right,” Strange said. “You’ll be all right here, go on.”
She gave him a dazzling smile and ran out happily. Strange watched her join the throng of singers and they seemed to accept her without reservation, though a few plucked curiously at her clothing. Strange shut the door slowly and took a step away. He stopped, feeling just a touch apprehensive, and stepped back to pull it open again. Everything had changed.
The young saplings were now tall, thick-bodied trees. The tower of rose rock was now three towers, with walls between. The stone dock was still there, but much mossier. There was no ship, nor singers or dancers. There was only one very old woman, in a dark-blue robe, sitting on a wooden seat in a circle of paving that had not been there seconds before. She seemed to be asleep.
She trembled, then awoke with a start, looking around until she saw Dr. Strange. “Stephen!” she said. “I knew you’d come back some day!”
Strange blinked. “Ra-Ramma?”
“Yes, of course.” She peered at him carefully. Her hair was gray, shaved into a topknot and bound with blue ribbons. “Why, Stephen, I don’t think you’ve changed a bit! I knew you were a magician!”
“Ramma, I . . .” There were so many questions.
“Oh, I wanted to thank you for bringing me here. It’s been so nice. I have forty-nine grandchildren, would you believe that? My first son was named Stephen, you see. He died, of course, fighting the screamer.” She gestured toward the tranquil lake. “We’re all very proud of him.”
“Ramma, you’re . . . you’ve had a good life?”
“Oh, the best, Stephen, the very best. No one here hates anyone . . . unless, of course, they’ve made a perfect yakka of themselves and then you’d expect that, wouldn’t you?”
Strange smiled. “Ramma, I’ve got to be going. I’m still searching for my love.”
“Oh, you’ll find her, Stephen. I just hope she’s not an old yulla like me, though.” She sighed deeply. “I do wish I could go shell finding again, out by the silver rocks. Well, I had my share.” She looked at Strange and her toothless mouth bent in a smile. “Good yallooning, Stephen.”
“Good yallooning, Ramma.”
“Oh, you silly person. I can’t yalloo.”
Strange closed the door and sighed. The forty-third portal was before him. He was reluctant to open it. There seemed to be an endless number of dread fates just beyond the mysterious oaken panels. He reached out, opened the door and slammed it shut before it was open more than a few inches.
The entire opening was a mouth, pink and wet, with a long snakelike tongue that darted toward him, slapping the closing door with a great flapping sound.
Stephen Strange took a deep breath and stepped to the next door. He glanced down the hall. It diminished in perspective until the walls seemed to merge. There were an infinite number of arched doorways set in stone walls.
Forty-fourth. He was on a balcony, looking down into a small town. There was some sort of bazaar on the street that passed below. Striped awnings alternated with others sewn or dyed in bright artistic blotches which shaded the sauntering natives from the harsh yellow sun. A tanklike machine rumbled past, raising a little dust. A dragon the size of a large horse limped along wearily, pulling a two-wheeled cart in which lounged a fat man in a purple robe and a conical blue hat. The cart was filled with long, slender blue fish. Fat-domed pots held fires and brown-skinned women sold black sausages to passersby. A tall man in leather armor led a coffle of slaves along the street, their necks linked by a chain. The slaves looked hungrily at the sausages. An unusually tall woman with balloonlike breasts and a towering crimson headdress strode by and was deferred to. An artisan hawked pots in the shape of a multibreasted woman. A helmeted soldier with a long sword casually slapped a child out of his way. The child tumbled, but did not cry, and quickly scurried into the crowd.
Strange closed the door. The universe was indeed a varied one. The forty-fifth door showed a large brown-orange desert seen from a high angle. Thick towers were all around, but most were in a state of advanced decay, cracked and crumbling. A muddy stream, not much more than a trickle, wandered through broken walls. A red-robed priest knelt on a prayer rug, disemboweling a cat.
No Clea. Strange leaned against the wall and thought. Would Clea’s odd origin have any bearing on where she might be?
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