No matter. If I couldn’t think here… I began running … to the left. Something about this place was messing with my head, and it seemed impossible to consider the process while I was a part of it. I had to get away in order to think straight, to determine what was going on.
I was across the bar and into that interface area where the painted rocks and trees became three-dimensional. I pumped my arms as I dug in. I head the wind without feeling it.
Nothing that lay before me seemed any nearer. I was moving, but Luke began singing again.
I halted. I turned, slowly, because it sounded as if he were standing practically beside me. He was. I was only a few paces removed from the bar. Luke smiled and kept singing.
“What’s going on?” I asked the Caterpillar. “You’re looped in Luke’s loop,” it replied. “Come again?” I said.
It blew a blue smoke ring, sighed softly, and said, “Luke’s locked in a loop and you’re lost in the lyrics. ‘That’s all.”
“How’d it happen?” I asked.
“I have no idea,” it replied.
“Uh, how does one get unlooped?”
“Couldn’t tell you that either.”
I turned to the Cat, who was coalescing about his grin once again.
“I don’t suppose you’d know-“ I began.
“I saw him come in and I saw you come in later,” said the Cat, smirking. “And even for this place your arrivals were somewhat … unusual-leading me to conclude that at least one of you is associated with magic.”
I nodded.
“Your own comings and goings might give one pause,” I observed.
“I keep my paws to myself,” he replied. “Which is more than Luke can say.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s caught in a contagious trap.”
“How does it work?” I asked.
But he was gone again, and this time the grin went too.
Contagious trap? That seemed to indicate that the problem was Luke’s, and that I had been sucked into it in some fashion. This felt right, though it still gave me no idea as to what the problem was or what I might do about it.
I reached for my tankard. If I couldn’t solve my problem, I might as well enjoy it. As I took a slow sip I became aware of a strange pair of pale, burning eyes gazing into my own. I hadn’t noticed them before, and the thing that made them strange was that they occupied a shadowy comer of the mural across the room from me; that, and the fact that they were moving, drifting slowly to my left. It was kind of fascinating, when I lost sight of the eyes but was still able to follow whatever it was from the swaying of grasses as it passed into the area toward which I had been headed earlier. And far, far off to my right beyond Luke-I now detected a slim gentleman in a dark jacket, palette and brush in hand, who was slowly extending the mural. I took another sip and returned my attention to the progress of whatever it was that had moved from flat reality to 3-D. A gunmetal snout protruded from between a rock and a shrub; the pale eyes blazed above it; blue saliva dripped from the dark muzzle and steamed upon the ground. It was either quite short or very crouched, and I couldn’t make up my mind whether it was the entire crowd of us that it was studying or me in particular. I leaned to one side and caught Humpty by the belt or the necktie, whichever it was, just as he was about to slump to the side..
“Excuse me,” I said. “Could you tell me what sort of creature that is?”
I pointed just as it emerged-many-legged, long-tailed, dark-scaled, undulating, and fast. Its claws were red, and it raised its tail as it raced toward us.
Humpty’s bleary eyes moved toward my own, drifted past.
“I am not here, sir,” he began, “to remedy your zoological ignor- My God! It’s-“
It flashed across the distance, approaching rapidly. Would it reach a spot shortly where its cunning would become a treadmill operation-or had that effect only applied to me on trying to get away from this place?