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bright yellow and orange-trimmed letters was a title along the front and the sides of the bus: THE
GNOME KING AND HIS BAD EGGS. Above the title were painted glowing red and yellow quarter
notes, bars, small guitars and drums.
For a moment, looking at the faces against the windows, he thought that the bus had picked up
Lucifer's Louts. There were long hairs, fuzzy hairs, moustaches, beards, and the heavy makeup and long
straight lank hair of the girls.
But the faces were different; they did look wild but not brutish or savage.
The bus slowed down with a squealing of brakes. It stopped, a door swung open, and a youth
with a beard and enormous spectacles leaned out and waved at them. They ran to the bus and boarded
with the accompaniment of much laughter and the strumming of guitars.
The bus, driven by a youth who looked like Buffalo Bill, started up. Kickaha looked around into
the grinning faces of six boys and three girls. Three older men sat at the rear of the bus and played cards
on a small collapsible table. They looked up and nodded and then went back to their game. Part of the
bus was enclosed; there were, he later found out, a toilet and washroom and two small dressing rooms.
Guitars, drums, xylophone, saxophone, flute, and harp, were stored on seats or on the racks above the
seats.
Two girls wore skirts that just barely covered their buttocks and dark gray stockings, bright frilly
blouses, many varicolored beads, and heavy makeup: green or silver eyelids, artificial eyelashes,
panda-like rings around the eyes, and green (!) and pale mauve (!) lips. The third girl had no makeup at
all. Long straight black hair fell to her waist and she wore a tight sleeveless green and red striped sweater
with a deep cleavage, tight Levi's, and sandals. Several of the boys wore bellbottom trousers, very frilly
shirts, and all had long hair.
The Gnome King was a very tall, tubercular looking youth with very curly hair, handlebar
moustaches, and enormous spectacles perched on the end of his big nose. He also wore an earring. He
introduced himself as Lou Baum (born Goldbaum).
Kickaha gave his name as Paul Finnegan and Anana's as Ann Finnegan. She was his wife, he told
Baum, and had only recently come from Finnish Lapland. He gave this pedigree because he did not think
that it was likely they would run into anyone who could speak Laplander.
"From the Land of the Reindeer?" Baum said. "She's a dear, all right." He whistled and kissed his
fingertips and flicked them at Anana. "Groovy, me boy! Too much! Say, either of you play an
instrument?" He looked at the case Kickaha was carrying.
Kickaha said that they did not. He did not care to explain that he had once played the flute but
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not since 1945 or that he had played an instrument like a panpipe when he lived with the Bear Folk on
the Amerindian level of . Nor did he think it wise to explain that Anana played a host of instruments,
some of which were similar to Earth instruments and some of which were definitely not.
"I'm using this instrument case as a suitcase," Kickaha said. "We've been on the road for some
time since leaving Europe. We just spent a month in the mountains, and now we've decided to visit L.A.
We've never been there."
"Then you got no place to stay," Baum said. He talked to Kickaha but stared at Anana. His eyes
glistened, and his hands kept moving with gestures that seemed to be reshaping Anana out of the air.
"Can she sing?" he said suddenly.
"Not in English," Kickaha replied.
The girl in Levi's stood up and said, "Come on, Lou. You aren't going to get anywhere with that
chick. Her boy friend'll kill you if you lay a hand on her. Or else she will. That chick can do it, you
know."
Lou seemed to be shaken. He came very close and peered into Kickaha's eyes as if he were
looking through a microscope. Kickaha smelled a strange acrid odor on his breath. A moment later, he
thought he knew what it was. The citizens of the city of Talanac on the Amerind level, carved out of a
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