A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to Valhalla
By A. R. Yngve
A funny thing would happen to you on your way there, too.
Steve Regbek chattered his teeth. He should have brought more clothes, or a tent like the other fans. But he mustn't give up his spot in the queue; there were just eleven people waiting ahead of him.
In just one minute, he would get his ticket to The Hobbit !
Steve felt, more than the cold, a strong sense of brotherhood with the others who had spent the night outside the multiplex. Journalists had interviewed them, pedestrians had stared, the occasional heckler had shouted "Get a life!" But Steve had never wavered, even though he worried about the increasing numbness in his toes. He was one of many - the army of true believers. The Fellowship of the Ring.
The doors to the multiplex opened!
There was a frantic forward push in the queue, and some were knocked over. But the faithful showed remarkable discipline; no one tried to sneak ahead of the others. They were as one. Before the eyes of onlookers, reporters and concerned relatives, the line marched into the multiplex lobby. Some were dressed as hobbits, warriors, elves - but only Steve Regbek was dedicated enough to walk in barefoot, as a true Hobbit would. The chill of bare feet against cold concrete was brief; now Steve was inside the comforting warmth of the building, the soft carpet like a balm on his toes.
Someone in the queue struck up a song from the book. Others joined in. Steve was in heaven. Nothing could keep him from the moment he had looked forward to since he first heard about the Hobbit movie. He would be so happy .
From his cell phone came music: Howard Shore's Lord of the Rings theme. He picked up the phone, and a deep dread filled his soul.
"Regbek."
"Steve," his boss said at the other end, "why are you not at work? And don't tell me you're sick, I can see you on the local news!"
"Hi, Mr. Baktin. I'll be there in just ten minutes, promise. I'll just buy my ticket and -"
"You're coming to work NOW, or you're fired! Jesus, Steve, why can't you buy tickets later like everybody else? Is nothing more important to you than that stupid movie?"
Steve looked past the people ahead of him, to the ticket booth. Only seven people left...
"I can see you on TV now, Steve! This is the last warning - I'll see you walk out of that cineplex right now, or you won't have to come to work at all."
A deep sigh escaped him. The forces of Mordor were strong today. He stepped out of the queue. Other fans looked on with shock and surprise. "I'm on my way, Mr. Baktin." Steve picked up his shoes from the bag and put them on. It was only a short walk to the research lab.
***
"Stop moping, Steve," his boss said, "and help me check the sensors are in place."
Baktin was a stern employer. On other days Steve put up with it, but today he felt especially abused. He had really looked forward to getting his ticket together with the other ticket-line campers.
Baktin and Steve were left alone most of the time in this particular lab. The set-up of perfectly smooth metal sheets, lined up on racks in a dust-free test chamber, dominated the hall. The position of each sheet was calibrated by computer-controlled motors. When Baktin sent massive currents through the sheets, the thin slices of spacetime between them were affected.
He had tried to explain the purpose of these experiments to Steve, and his attempts had left Steve dumbfounded. A drawback of working with Baktin was that the Russian-born scientist was a lousy mathematician and inept at explaining theory; he worked on intuition. But he had already produced enough interesting results that the company kept funding him.
They put on transparent plastic suits and walked through the airlock into the protected environment of the test chamber.
"We had another power loss yesterday and the sensors couldn't account for where the lost energy went."
"Maybe it got stuck up your rear end," Steve muttered.
"What?"
"I said, maybe the machine opened a gate into one of the other cosmic branes, and the energy went there."
"Maybe..." Baktin said hopefully. He looked at the edges of the motorized frames, checking for loose cables. "What's that?"
He pointed to the millimeter-wide niche between two sheets. Steve peered inside, and saw a vague blue blur.
"Dunno. Could be light from the ceiling. Switch off the lights and I'll check again."
"Okay."
Baktin went out through the airlock and over to the control panel. The light strips flickered out and only the computer screens glowed in the gloom. Steve peered into the niche again. The blur was still there, and so was the blue light. He picked up his cell phone and called Baktin on the other side of the glass wall. "It's still there! Are you sure there's no current in the sheets?"
"It's all turned off."
"It could be some of the old ceiling paint peeled off and got stuck inside. I'll try to blow it off."
Steve took off his transparent hood and drew in air to blow into the niche.
"No, wait!" Baktin shouted over the phone. "There could be a static charge, don't -"
Steve was not in the mood for taking orders from one of the cohorts of Mordor today. He ignored the doctor and blew in air at the blue blur.
There was a sharp bang, a blinding flash - and Steve Regbek vanished from this universe.
***
Steve went temporarily blind, tumbled helplessly, and landed in something wet and cold. He swallowed water, coughed, and kicked his way to the brighter blur of the surface.
He came up, like a cork, in a small lake. Pine trees lined the smooth cliffs of the shore. A bloated orange sun was slowly setting beyond distant snow-capped peaks. Steve swam to the nearest cliffs and crawled up, shivering with cold. Water had leaked into his isolation suit, and he wrung himself out of it.
Panic and confusion filled his mind, but he knew that he wasn't dead. Somehow the machine had zapped him out of the lab and into the wilderness... was it the northwest? He checked his cell phone; the water had ruined it. He muttered an expletive.
He had to find a road quickly, or a house, or he'd freeze to death in his sweater and blue jeans. The temperature in the air was rapidly dropping toward the freezing-point. He turned slowly around and scanned the terrain. Trees as far as the eye could see... but wait... black columns of smoke, from what must be several small fires, was visible in the distance. He thought he could glimpse one or two wavering lights there.
Steve ran in the direction of the points of light. His heartbeat quickened as he heard living things rustle and move in the dark of the forest.
***
The smoke came from the dozen indoor fires of a village. Steve wondered why grass grew on the sloping roofs of the houses, and why he couldn't see a single brick chimney. A palisade surrounded the perimeter.
From the edge of the forest, overlooking the moonlit plain, Steve could see two guards standing outside the village gate, some two hundred meters away. What country was this? Or could he be in the past? Dr. Baktin had mentioned something about time distortion. If this was the past, he'd have serious trouble communicating with the natives.
Wolves howled somewhere in the vicinity. No cars or engines could be heard anywhere. Maybe he was in some poor corner of Siberia or Mongolia. The moon in the sky looked weird, though: bigger than it should be, or closer, and there were no craters - only dark areas.
Steve hurried down the grassy slope toward the palisade. Things were coming after him from the forest; he dared not stop and look, but the howling continued. Before he knew it, he was sprinting downhill, just barely dodging the rocks in his path, and then he reached a dirt track.
Several wolves were hunting him, but scattered away when he arrived by the gate. The two guards, dimly lit by torches on poles, pointed their spears at him.
"Standa!" cried one of them, a bearded man in coarse clothing and a cloak; he wore a simple conic helmet on his head, with a an extension that protected his nose. "Hvem er du?"
Steve stopped and held up his hands. They spoke some sort of Old Norse; he recognized it from TV.
In a shivering voice he said, "Uh... hi! My name is Steve."
"Hva er du, ei stiga-mathr? Hvilken by kjemder du fra, fremmed?"
The words were nonsense to him, but he could hear the fear in their voices. Maybe he should pretend to be a magician. It always worked on TV...
While the nervous guards held their spears ready, Steve picked up the cigarette-lighter from his pockets (praying that the water hadn't ruined it) and flicked it. Nothing happened. He flicked another three times, and the flame came.
The guards gasped - just like on TV - and stepped away from him. Steve pointed to the closed gate and held up the lighter flame. He raised his arm high, moved the flame down from the sky, then toward the gate, and hoped they'd get the message "I come from another world." The guards called the alarm and blew a horn.
Steve turned off the lighter to save fluid, and gestured that he was cold. One guard offered him his cloak. Vikings? He would have to communicate through signs and stick drawings. A small door opened next to the gate, and a torch-bearing group of men came out to greet him. Abruptly, Steve became aware of how the men reeked.
They were roughly his own height, and did resemble Vikings; all were armed with spears, swords and round shields. Their stares were fearful and suspicious. A taller man, with a prominent belly and a thick dark beard, stepped forward and pointed at Steve. He wore a golden chain around his neck, and appeared to be the chieftain.
"Hvem er du, fremmed? Svar!"
Steve was out of options, and he needed to get indoors quickly. He did the cigarette-lighter trick again. This time the effect was profound. The chieftain bowed and talked very rapidly in the Old Norse tongue; all the men retreated; then he had the big gate opened and let Steve into the village.
Steve could not quite relax yet - these villagers might just change their minds and kill him if he lost his nerve - and walked in as calmly as he could. If only his legs would stop shaking...
They escorted him to the Bighouse.
It was comfortably warm inside the Bighouse - but it smelled even worse. The dirt floor was covered with straw; dogs and cats wandered about people's feet; sick children complained while mothers nursed them. An old man played on a flute. There were two fireplaces in the center aisle, built from stone, from which glowing fires sent smoke into the two holes in the ceiling. A bubbling kettle hung suspended over one fireplace. Only the constant draft through the holes prevented the smoke from suffocating everyone inside. Someone offered Steve a bench to sit on.
"Kald nojden til meg!" shouted the chieftain.
The people in the Bighouse whispered and murmured - about Steve, no doubt about it - and stared at him. Several men nervously fingered their knives and short swords. A woman served him a steaming bowl of something that might be porridge. He tried some, and almost gagged, but he was hungry and forced himself to spoon it down.
The chieftain took the high seat at the end of the Bighouse, and studied the newcomer intensely. He, too, held one hand on the sword hanging from his belt. Steve thought frantically of what he should try to say, even if they could only understood simple drawings. He would have to draw on the table or a cloth with a piece of coal. On the thick beams and crossbeams, he saw engravings of men, serpentine dragons -- and runes. Was this the Viking age of his own past, or of some parallel universe? He hoped it was just a vivid dream, that he was lying knocked out on the lab floor, while Dr Baktin tried to wake him up before the Vikings decided to kill him.
The chieftain shouted, "Nojden er her! Kanjolf, skaade! En fremmet fra stjernene!"
An elderly man with a long gray beard entered; he came toward Steve so fast that he feared for his life and held up his wooden spoon in a futile gesture of defence. The old man was dressed in a strange tattered dress, and wore a cap with deer antlers on his shaggy head. In one hand he carried a sort of large tambourine, decorated with runes and arcane symbols; in the other he held a long staff from which hung amber beads on strings. The man struck a short, sharp drum solo on his tambourine, and rattled the amber beads in Steve's direction.
Then he intoned: "Oooodinnn... Oooodinn..."
A shaman, thought Steve; better do the cigarette-lighter trick again.
And he did. The shaman shrieked and retreated to the seat of the chieftain. They talked in hushed voices for a few minutes, and then the shaman cautiously returned to Steve's bench. Steve was not impressed. Senile old idiot, he thought, you can't help me get back...
The shaman made a polite bow, and said in a distinctly effeminate voice, "Vaer hilset, stjernemann. Eg er Kanjolf Nojd." He pointed at his own chest, and repeated. "Kanjolf. En mektig nojd og venn av Odin!"
"You Kanjolf," Steve said, nodding. "Me Steve. Steve ."
Kanjolf grinned with all of his four teeth and rattled his beads again. "Tal, Stiv Stjernemann! Tal!"
Steve dug in his pockets and found a ballpoint pen that still worked. He tried the best he could, with words and gestures and pictures drawn on the tablecloth, to explain that he came from another world and didn't speak their language.
Somehow he got through to the shaman, who seemed to brighten up, and produced a small pouch from his dress. With teeth that seemed too weak for the task, Kanjolf bit into the palm of his own hand and squeezed out a few drops of blood. He emptied the contents of the pouch into his palm - a dark powder - rubbed it in the blood, and blew the powder into Steve's face.
Steve coughed and sputtered; his ears and eyes ached; someone spoke to him in a strange tongue. It was the shaman, Kanjolf, who spoke as he drummed his tambourine.
And Steve understood the words.
"Can you hear me now, Steve Starman?"
"Holy... I understand what you're saying!"
"And I can understand you, stranger. Mighty is my magic! Great is my power in Odin, god of all gods!"
"I don't believe it. I was in my own world, and I sort of fell into a lake, and I got here..."
The shaman grinned; there was something rather greedy about the way he looked at Steve's clothes and pale skin.
"The gods sent you here. For a great purpose!"
It started to dawn on Steve what a miraculous coincidence this was. While he had been dreaming of watching the movie version of THE HOBBIT - his mind had been completely preoccupied with it - the machine in Dr. Baktin's lab had suffered a power surge, and thrown him into another universe where magic worked... a world like in his favorite books, but real!
"Thank you, Kanjolf!" He shook the shaman's skinny, leathery hand. "Thank you so much. I can make you an even more powerful shaman. I was sent here for a great purpose... yes, it has to be so."
Kanjolf nodded energetically. "To save us from evil, by giving us the power of the gods?"
Steve almost danced where he stood. He had knowledge that could transform this simple society, eradicate disease, improve the lot of women and children... he had at last found his real Middle-Earth ... where he could be the hero he had always wanted to be.
"Yes, Kanjolf! I am the one you have waited for!"
The shaman drummed his tambourine, and wailed to the astonished crowd of the Bighouse: "The gods have sent us the sacrificial child we prayed for!"
The men swiftly formed a circle around Steve and pointed their spears at his belly. He wondered, How can this be? How could this happen to me? What did I do wrong? It's unfair! Unfair!
"Listen to me," he told the warriors as they dragged him out of the Bighouse. "You've got it all wrong. I was sent here to save your world... I am the chosen one..."
But the effect of Kanjolf's spell must have faltered, for no one seemed to understand what he was saying.
***
Steve hung from the great Blot Tree, rocking slowly in the wind. Kanjolf let the young man's blood pour into a large bowl underneath his dangling sneakers. The fresh blood was steaming in the chill morning air. The crowd, led by the chieftain, sang the praise of Odin and their other gods. Kanjolf dipped his staff and beads into the bowl, then sprinkled drops of the blood onto the ground, at the crowd, into the air.
"We thank you..." he said with great and sincere solemnity, "Steve Starman... for saving our clan from the great evil. Your name shall live forever in our songs."
A small flock of ravens - Odin's messengers - were gathering in the branches of the great tree. And they croaked their chorus; the gods were pleased. Odin and Frey had indeed sent their blessing. The harvest would be saved.
For Kanjolf's people, there was no greater evil to fight than a failed crop.