Article: 240641 of rec.arts.books.tolkien Path: news.uchicago.edu!newsfeed.cs.wisc.edu!loops.cs.wisc.edu!newshub.sdsu.edu!news-hog.berkeley.edu!ucberkeley!newsfeed.stanford.edu!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail From: <<>> (gimlet) Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: etext the eagle part 1 Date: 1 Jul 2001 07:03:23 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Lines: 317 Message-ID: <86a92f0d.0107010603.601de26a@posting.google.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.244.182.229 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 993996203 19826 127.0.0.1 (1 Jul 2001 14:03:23 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-support -aaatt- google -daht- com NNTP-Posting-Date: 1 Jul 2001 14:03:23 GMT Xref: news.uchicago.edu rec.arts.books.tolkien:240641 here it is. with big letters and commas too. had to post in 2 parts cause of google. book 4 chapter 10 the eagle by gimlet part 1 Twilight began to fall like a really slow boulder. Sam sat on the cobblestones outside the Siege Weapons Of The Future display smoking his pipe and idly looking in the windows at a greasy obsolete prototype of the Trebuchet of Tomorrow. Spiegel leaned against the wall nearby, staring blankly at the red of the setting sun. Maglor who had been mistuning his guitar for a horrifying quarter hour, was trying to unbend a fret he had bent in a particulry unsuccessful Gb7 chord. When they had run down to the riverbanks the mermaid, who upon closer inspection turned out to be a suckerfish with two prominent gills, had squeaked in terror and swam off to have another go at evolution elsewhere. No sign of Frodo could be found. Sam did succeed in recovering Frodo's waterlogged pack. It still held their provisions, their beer-money, some grotesque silicone-rubber toys which Sam dared not identify, and a small assortment of stolen cutlery from Dr Faramir's caves. Yet no sign of the Ring or of the waterproof packet which held the Deed to Nurnenshire could be found. No sign of the Shiny Thing of Galdriel could be found either. "That bastard!" Maglor had shouted at the water hitting the river angrily with his guitar. "That drooler! That cat-loving thief!" After an hour or so he calmed down somewhat and dealt with his grief by writing a song. To the horror of the hobbits he insisted on singing it all afternoon over and over: Are you going to drown under there Pervert thief hairfooted and short I don't see how I'll find the slipca-ast Hobbit was my final resort Late in the day Maglor finally stopped to eat though he hummed a medley of old Morris dance tunes during dinner which put Sam and Spiegel right off their food. Now it was early evening. Sam stretched. "Well, guess that's the end of the ol' Quest then" he said simply. "If Frodo's dead and the Ring gone, I guess there's nothing to do but go back to the Shire and light a few rich people's mansions on fire, as me Gaffer always said we ought to have done. What about you Spiegel?" Spiegel looked at Sam. Her thumb was deep in her mouth and her eyes were glazed in thought. "Now that Baggins is dead" she replied slowly "my lifetime of seeking terrible revenge and living in horrible self-loathing has reached its fruition. So I guess I'll go find a good therapist." "I think," said Maglor, though nobody had asked him, "I think I'll wander by the shores of Lower Middle Earth for the rest of time, singing plaintively about my loss." "Good idea" said Sam, who lived inland. "At least until a profitable music recording industry is invented" Maglor added. "Perhaps you should get started, then" Sam said flatly, gesturing down the River. "The Sea's down that way." "Don't let us keep you" Spiegel added quickly. "Uh, okay" Maglor replied. Then he added "But you've both been so nice and we've been through a lot together. I thought maybe before I go I could make a ballad about you. The Ballad Of Sam And Spiegel-" "No, that's okay" Sam said hastily. "We don't need one" Spiegel jumped. "No room in our packs for a ballad anyway-" Sam shouted. But it was too late. Maglor began to sing: Gamgee had come down from the Shire To light up Frodo's funeral pyre You knew his old head was Just full of revenge So he took his Master off to the East - Christ!" he finished suddenly as Sam threw a cobblestone at his head. "Shut it and be off with you!" "you know it ain't easy" Maglor continued, trying to stay on the beat. "You know how hard it can be." "One more note and I stick my finger down my own throat" Spiegel added with the horrible tone of one who has successfully done it before. Maglor turned away hoisting his guitar over his shoulder. "The way that we're goin'" he said "I'd better leave for the Sea." And with two more codas he wandered away towards the South grumbling about how much easier it was to get gigs during the Kin-strife. Sam slept soundly. He dreamed of Frodo flailing about in the river. In the dream Frodo kept yelling to Sam for help. Sam, standing on a pier five feet away holding a life-preserver, just laughed and laughed. The life-preserver was marked LUSITANIA after the Elvenqueen of old. Frodo's pack was fill of cement blocks which Sam had tossed in at the beginning of their adventures. Rosie appeared on the next dock along with a cheering crowd. She took off her dress and began waving it at him seductively. Sam waded past the screaming Frodo to touch her. She casually threw aside her flimsy garment. In that gesture she seemed to be throwing aside all the bourgeois capitalist society norms. It was all she was wearing. Sam's blood grew hotter. The dress made a raspy zzzrrrmpphhh noise as it fell to the quayside, and a distracting plonk, plonk as it landed... Suddenly Sam awoke. It was night in Disgiliath. There was another zzzrrrmpphhh noise and Sam realized with annoyance that it was Spiegel snoring. She lay just down the road with her head tipped back over a dislodged cobblestone. zzzrrrmpphhh she went again. Sam grumbled and rolled over hoping to get back to his dream, when from afar he heard another distant plonk. Sam lay quiet and lsitened. zzzrrrmpphhh zzzrrrmpphhh zzzrrrmpphhh. plonk. Sam closed his ears. Rosie! Sweet Rosie! Let me get back to my erotically-charged passionate horny dreams about Rosie. zzzrrrmpphhh zzzrrrmpphhh. A long silence. The snores had stopped. Spiegel had rolled a different way and now lay on the cobbles with her hands in her lap and her legs spread, moaning quietly in some desperately erotic dream of her own. plonk. Sam looked in the direction of the sound. It came from somewhere near the Leonard of Quirm exhibit. Or maybe further east around the Future Of Agriculture: Screw Archimedes! pavilion. Or maybe... There was a flap. Sam's eyes looked up. Some blocks away the Sky Scraping Building loomed over their heads. In the days of Insultir, grandson of Isildur and Andrea Doria the Sea-queen, was Disgiliath the City of Tomorrow founded. And many wonders were produced by the Atlanteans in those their glory days though most of their achievements failed just as the warrantys were running out. And chief among their wonders were the great spires which reached towards the stars: Orthanc the Eyesore of Isengard they built, and Emyn Bereave of the North famed in legend before it fell over, and the Barad-dur which was built as a birthday-present before being corrupted to evil. Yet these were as assays in the craft before the building of Tol Ist, the Needle of Heaven which legend says scraped the very sky itself and rent holes in the ozone. Legend has it the stars had to detour around the top. High over Disgiliath it loomed. Even as it was being built Insultir said that all buildings would be like it in the future: tall and imposing and devoid of personality. Yet Insultir's dream was to fail him. With the lack of elevators and adequate ventilation most people died before they reached the top, and those who did survive the climb died because there was no indoor plumbing to provide water. Even when one brave team of adventurers made it to the top in later years bearing flagons of water and the long-needed truss supports to complete the roof, their attempt at using the ganderobe resulted in the deaths of three of the party and nine civilians on the ground. As time passed Disgiliath was abandoned and the narrow tower stood unfinished, a silent testament to the worthiness of building codes. Sam's eyes took in the Tower. At the very top he saw a giant wing stick out of the roof for a moment before retreating. It could just be seen against the night sky. Then far below he saw another movement, somewhere deep within the glass of the tower. A tiny figure could be seen on the stairway. It tripped over some unseen obstacle which fell away below it with a plonk. Even from here there was something familiar about the figure: a certain clumsiness, some shamed and shaking lust that drove the little shadow onward. Sam moved quickly to wake the dreaming Spiegel. He grabbed her and shook her thigh. "Oh, no, no more, Sir Peter" Spiegel moaned. "I simply couldn't stand another sausage.." "Wake up, ye wee bint" Sam growled, though the cries of Rosie were still hot in his own mind as well. He tried not to let his hand linger on her shaking leg. "Wake up. We're in trouble." "Oh, very well, just five more before dinner..." Spiegel continued, then wakefulness took her and she jumped, startled. She stared at Sam and turned aside quickly crossing her legs. "I'm fine" she snapped. "Just dreaming. Perfectly healthy. Perfectly normal." After a moment she looked again at Sam. "Why are you waking me up? It's the middle of the night." "Master Frodo's still alive" Sam whispered urgently. "He's climbing the Tower. I don't know what mischief he's up to." It was short work to pack their provisions and walk the streets to the base of the Tower. Soon they reached the giant doors of the great edifice. Long ago had they been smashed by Orcs and vandals. The lobby was filled with debris and the skeletons of corpses some of which had dropped from a great height. In the corner stood the beginning steps of a great stair, which wound up the sides of the tower and was lost to sight. There were also many pieces of broken rock. "What are these from?" Spiegel wondered aloud. "I think they're stairs that fell" Sam replied. And indeed the chunks of broken stone were very much the same shade and shape as the stairs, which Sam and Spiegel now noticed were often cracked where they joined the wall. Both looked at the stairs suspiciously. "If I had my druthers" Sam said to himself "I'd just stay here at the bottom and kill Frodo as he came back down. But I saw some sort of giant bird at the top of the Tower and there's no telling whether Mr Frodo might try to make a getaway on it. That bloody bastard Bilbo did something similar once." "Damn it" Spiegel answered. "I was really hoping he'd drowned." Someone had already pushed a path in the debris between the door and the stairs. They followed the path and found a wet piece of card at a tight turning of the path. Spiegel picked it up. It was a soaked waterlogged subscription card for Playtark. "It's Frodo all right" she said sullenly. Without speaking further they started up the stairs. At first the steps were grimy and covered with dust, debris and the occasional body. As they progressed upwards the steps gradually became less worn, and the dust and debris lessened. The two quietly continued upward. The view out the windows gradually rose over the rooves of Disgiliath. Sam and Spiegel were able to see further and further into the night as they slowly gained altitude. Curiously as they climbed higher the air became increasingly stifling. "It's this damn glass" Spiegel gasped. "None of the windows open. Who would design a building this way?" "Some twit" Sam gasped in return. They continued upward. Spiegel walked just in front of Sam, stepping rhythmically up the long stairs. Sam followed. Being a couple of stairs behind Sam's view consisted mainly of Spiegel's ass. It continued bouncing just in front of him, flexing on one side, then the other, then one side, then the other... Sam was already exhausted. The stairs and the lack of air were torching his already overheated blood. The curvature of Spiegel tempted him, tormented his hormone-crazed mind, yet it gave him the strength to continue. Yet in another way it also made it harder for him to walk. "Rosie" he said to Spiegel absently. "How can you keep going like that?" "Stairmaster" Spiegel replied. "Used it for months. It didn't help." They continued. After another half-mile had passed the air had become stifling as a glass-walled tomb. Sam's hormones alone were giving him the energy and will to go on, following that ass, those thighs... The horny dreams of Rosie continued to play in his mind and in his blood. Spiegel too seemed somehow distracted as though her own dreams still kept a hold on her. Then there was a sound like a gunshot! The stone beneath Spiegel's feet broke from the wall and gave way! "Sam!" she screamed and Sam threw himself at her shoving her down onto the unbroken step nearer the wall. He landed full on top of her. She felt him against her. "Sam" she gasped. "Rosie" Sam said. Spiegel's nipples were hard through her vest. One of her thighs felt warm and wet against his leg. Her eyes were pleading. "I," Spiegel gasped. "I - can't breathe..." Without looking Sam reached over and grabbed a piece of stone from the broken stair. He flailed over and smashed the nearest window. Broken glass rained around them. A rush of cool air and a dusting of rain rushed over their hot bodies. Air! Cool and invigorating it whipped against them, coursed through their lungs, over their overheated flesh. Both felt suddenly alive, suddenly safe. They laughed for a brief moment, then suddenly became aware of each other again. "Sam," Spiegel said again. Her eyes gazed into his. "I - but Rosie - Spiegel, I..." Sam stuttered. Her lithe, eager body lay in his hands. For a moment he was too overwhelmed to think. "I, I" he began, looking into Spiegel's questioning eyes. He truly wanted his Rosie. Spiegel was just a traveling companion... yet so close, so willing. Her arms were already reaching around him. He found his hands reaching for her vest of their own volition. Should he? After all, he and Rosie weren't formally engaged. He looked again at Spiegel's face. She gazed back at him with a hunger, for him, for acceptance... After a breath one of her hands reached slowly for his belt. Her hips rose off the stair so that he could slide her dress up more easily. Should he take her and the release she offered? Would Rosie feel it was a betrayal? Would the author of a good versus evil fantasy novel actually write such a morally ambiguous action? "Oh, the hell with it" Sam mumbled to himself. "Oh Sam!" Her cries reverberated through the Tower. "Oh Saaaaaaam!" Now Sam walked in front, Spiegel following behind, their pace more leisurely. They stopped every twenty floors or so to smash another window for ventilation. Both were calmer. A rain began to fall outside and Spiegel managed to refill a canteen from the water running off a broken windowpane before they continued. "I still feel a little odd all the same" Sam told her. "I've told you about Rosie. She's still my girl. But... but you're quite a woman. And sexy. Very sexy." "So are you" Spiegel smiled. "Rosie's lucky." There was a change coming over Spiegel. Even Sam had noticed it. Before now she had always thought of herself as unsexy and unlovable. Yet the passion that had consumed them had also made her view herself differently. Before she had been certain she was loathsome. Now she was no longer sure what she was. They continued for a moment in silence. "Why did you come on this quest Sam?" Spiegel asked. Sam spat. "At first because I was Frodo's servant" he growled. "And then because I thought I could blackmail him. And then later because I wanted to see him die in th' hands o' the Dark Lord. But now... now an' I'll be honest I don't know why the hell I'm doin' it. An' that's a fact." Spiegel looked thoughtful. "Then maybe we should just kill him" she volunteered. Sam walked in silence for a moment. When he spoke he was angrier and his brogue was thicker. "I'd love nothin' more than t'see the wee pig bleed" he answered. "It'd give me the the joyfuls, 'twould. But... either the Deed is good, or 'tisn't. If 'tis, then he's trapped in Nurnenshire an' I get Bag End an' the resources I need t'start th' war ag'inst the bourgeoisie. If 'tisn't, then I get Mr Frodo Baggins back t' the Shire alive an' people'll lynch him and start the Revolt sure as spades." "Just like that?" Spiegel asked. "Aye." Sam smiled grimly. "Most o' the ecognomic troubles i' the Shire started when his nuncle Bilbo returned from foreign parts. About ruined the economy, he did, an' made the class divisions acute an' hard. If Master Frodo so much as shows his face in the Shire again after seein' foreign parts people'll roise up wi' torches and pitchforks rather than risk seein' that trouble agin, you mark my words. A Baggins returnin' from foreign parts is bad news, an' everyone knows it." "But is all that necessary?" Spiegel asked. "After all, you can just kill him here. End of Frodo Baggins." "But there's others back in the Shire" Sam replied. "Other wealthy bastards there are almost as bad as Mr Frodo. I can't kill them all on my own, now can I? No Spiegel, I need to start a fire among the people, that'll kill 'em all. An' to light that fire one way or th' other I need Mr Frodo alive. Damn him." Spiegel understood. She said nothing. "But once the fire's lit I'll have th' satisfaction o' killing him later" Sam added quietly. part 2 in a minute gimlet