THE SEA HAG(16)

And as the sea hag finally disappeared, the velvet drapes and the darkened palace closed Dennis in the embrace of reality.

Dennis flexed his arms, then offered a smile to his companion. "It's hard to do that," he said. "Hard to—to be there and not be able to, to really be there."

"Shall we go then, Dennis?" Chester replied, shifting his body doorward on the four of his limbs that now supported him.

"No, I—" He stopped and put on a calm expression, as if the robot's featureless case had eyes which a man could catch and hold. "Chester, will the machine show the future?"

"It will not show the future, Dennis," Chester said. Then, tartly, he added, "Fate does not look forward—and its blows do not fall wrongfully."

Dennis hugged his shoulders to remind himself that he had a body now... and to make sure that memory was fresh in a few moments, when he re-entered the past through magic.

"I want to see what happened next," he said. "When... wh-when I was four years old."

Chester's tentacles did not move on the pedestal at once. He twisted to face the door as if he heard someone coming.

"Parol!" Dennis shouted, resting his knuckles on his hips so that he stood arms akimbo. "Are you there?"

"He is not here yet, Dennis," Chester said, easing back on his limbs at his master's unexpected reaction to his hint.

"It doesn't matter where he is," Dennis said. "I want to know what happened on my fourth birthday—if this won't tell me what's going to happen on my sixteenth."

"The fool builds a fire and burns himself on it, Dennis."

"Chester, I am your master!" Dennis said, letting fear and uncertainty come out in his voice as anger. "I have the right to order you to do this thing!"

The little robot must have made allowances for the emotions that ruled Dennis at this moment. Instead of the silent insolence that Dennis expected even as the words left his mouth, Chester said, "I will do this thing, Dennis..."

His tentacles played on the controls, three of them touching the surface of what seemed metal until it lighted in its interior and the fourth poised, waiting for some stimulus that did not come before Dennis again sank into a dream of storm and darkness.

Hale's face was a younger version of the one Dennis had seen the evening before, ruddy with good living—and frightened gray beneath that patina of success. He was daubing at his palms as he waited within the circuit of the protective storm.

Hale's hands had grown soft and he'd lost his calluses in the three years since his son's image had watched him. The oar-looms had raised blisters and then torn them open as the king—no longer a fisherman—stroked his way out of Emath Harbor.

To bargain with the creature who had given that harbor to him—for a price.

When the sea hag rose, its mouth was already open. Water streamed back through hidden gills. There was no hint of humanity in the creature, and little enough of hope.

The fishing boat didn't pitch, because the sea hag's mass already gripped its keel and held it steady; but water thrown by the creature's upward rush slapped the wooden sides and filled the air with mist.

Hale very deliberately reached over the gunwales and skimmed his hands through the water, cleaning his blisters in its salty bitterness. "I have come, sea hag," he said formally.

"You have come alone, little man-thing," said the sea hag.

A lightning bolt wove its instant sinuosities across the storm wheel. The blade of blue-white light threw the boat into harsh relief and momentarily illuminated the monster beneath the water's gray surface. Dennis, looking down from standing height, saw not one mouth but a score of mouths gaping and grinning from a globe even huger than his nightmares.

The sea hag was nothing that had been born on a world that bore men.

The thunderclap pounded the ship and Dennis' father. The shattering cascade of sound provided the scream that Dennis had no mouth to utter.

He was not present in this past; his body could not be harmed here. But memory of the blue-lit sea hag would never leave his dreams...

"I have not brought my Dennis," said Hale, forcing the truth as he knew it out in a voice that threatened to break.

"Goodlady—" Hale hadn't looked down into the water as his son did when the lightning illuminated it. No one who'd seen the sea hag's full reality could have used the polite human greeting, even now when the beautiful woman-face smiled out of the waves again.

"—I beg you, ask for something else. Anything I can give you. My—my ships, they bring cargoes from every port the sea bounds."

"Salt water is my kingdom," rumbled the creature in its great stinking voice. "Every shore the sea bounds is mine to travel more swiftly than you or your ships can dream, King Hale."