Nimby turned to face him.
Could Nimby read his mind? Suddenly David wasn't bored at all. This could get really truly superinteresting.
Can you? he thought.
Nimby nodded.
Gee. But he'd better test it. What am I thinking of now?
He imagined a really ugly cartoon face.
Nimby brought out his pad and pencil—they just appeared from nowhere—and drew the ugly face.
Gee, again. So they didn't have to speak to Nimby; they could just think their questions to him. But maybe it wouldn't be smart to announce that.
Nimby looked questioningly at him.
Because people like to keep secrets, David thought loudly. Like Sean's looking up under Chorine's skirt, getting a real charge from her legs, but he doesn't want anyone else to know. And she's letting him do it, and SHE doesn't want him to know. So I guess you can pick up on that… He paused, and Nimby nodded. But you better not let them know, because they'd both be embarrassed to death. Because they're both adults, or close to it. I guess it's like that Adult Conspiracy that stops us kids from saying words like “bleep.” Nobody's supposed to know anything. I guess if you peek into their minds, you'll see I'm right.
Nimby paused, then nodded, looking surprised. David was pleased; he had taught the man who knew everything something.
And Nimby nodded again.
David realized that he didn't have to work to project his thoughts; Nimby could pick them up at conversational level. But if he could read everybody's mind so well, why did he seem so, well, innocent?
Nimby wrote a note and handed it to him.
David read it. I am aware of what is happening around me, but there is so much that I don't think to do it unless guided. There are so many thoughts that I usually pay no attention. I also have trouble comprehending human motivations and emotions.
David couldn't resist giving some more advice. If Nimby wanted to seek mature human perspectives and motives, he should peek into Dad's and Mom's minds. If he wanted hot adolescent thoughts, Sean was the one. For naive childish attitudes, Karen would do. But for a central, sensible viewpoint, David himself was the best source.
Nimby nodded, accepting it.
But David was really curious about one thing, and maybe Nimby would give him the answer. He could appreciate why Sean wanted to see under Chlorine's skirt, as David himself found that intriguing. He really did want to see someone's panties. But why was Chlorine letting him see?
Nimby wrote a note. She has not been beautiful long, and wishes to ascertain exactly how beauty works and what its limits are. So she is practicing on Sean, who is the closest approach to an ordinary man to which she has current access. She believes that what works on him should work somewhat similarly on other men.
Yes, it should. So it was really a scientific experiment on her part; she didn't really care for Sean.
Nimby wrote a note. Scientific?
He didn't know about science? Okay, David would tell Nimby all about Mundane science, if Nimby would tell David exactly what he and Chlorine did overnight in their room at the imp hotel.
She slept. I sat up and watched Xanth.
What, no mush? No Adult Conspiracy stuff? David wasn't sure he believed that.
Chlorine has little romantic interest in a dragon ass.
A what?
My natural form. She seeks human interaction.
Nimby didn't have to sleep?
My type doesn't sleep.
But Nimby was in human form now. Wasn't he as least a little interested in what Chlorine looked like with her clothing off? David was only twelve years old, but he'd just love to see Chlorine bare naked nude.
I fashioned her present form, and mine. I can in any event see her natural body at all times, as I can those of everyone else. This has no novelty for me.
Evidently not. But with such powers, why did Nimby hang around a dull family like them, and never speak?
There is a geis on me to be silent until I have accomplished my mission.
Oh, like a knightly oath. David could see that. Still, keeping constant company with a beautiful creature like Chlorine, didn't Nimby get even a little curious about what human love and bleep was all about?
I would like to learn about human emotion, yes. It does intrigue me. So far it does not seem very logical.
Well, that was because he was analyzing it instead of feeling it. He was being like a teacher in school, who could make anything deadly dull in an instant. Kids fell asleep in Sex Ed class, after all. In real life people had emotions.
They cared. They got all heated up about some stupid ball game, and they really got excited about boy-girl business.
Maybe Nimby should try that, sort of really get into the feel of it.
I lack the emotion of the human kind. How can I experience the feelings humans do?
Well, he might try tracking David's own emotion for a while. David would do his best to feel things strongly, so Nimby could get the idea.
Thank you. I shall do that.
Now I'll think through science, David thought. The way I see it, it's the Mundane way of doing what you folk in Xanth do by magic. Maybe they're the same, in the end, just different ways. Do you know what a lever is?
And so they communed, as the RV zoomed on, and Karen played her cards, and Sean and Chlorine played their little games of show and look.
Somewhere along there it began to rain. At first David thought he was imagining it, but then he was sure: the rain was colored. Red, green, blue, and yellow drops struck the windows. Was this normal?
Yes, for Xanth.- This storm is raining heavily ahead, so that by the time we reach the next river, it will be flooded.
The Trolls are about to shut down the trollway as unsafe.
But we have to get to Imp Erial today, to help them move their stuff.
I will be able to guide you safely there, if you ask me.
“We'll sure do that,” David said aloud, forgetting himself.
Karen looked up from her cards. “Do what?”
“Nimby says we're headed into a bad storm, and the river will flood, and the trolls will shut down the highway.”
“We can't afford to get detoured now,” Dad said. “We have to go on through.”
“Nimby can show us how,” David said.
“If this is a magic storm, he may have to,” Dad replied grimly.
The rain intensified, exactly as Nimby had written. Dad slowed; he had to.
Nimby wrote a note. Stop here.
The road was not flooded, but Dad obeyed. Nimby got out, assumed his dragon form, and trundled into the rain.
“He will return, I'm sure,” Chlorine said.
And in a moment Nimby did. Clenched in his donkey jaws was a branch with leaves and several fat bright cherries.
“Cherries!” Karen exclaimed happily, reaching for them. But Nimby held them away, shaking his head.
“Those look like cherry bombs,” Chlorine said. “Only they're bigger and fresher and clearer than any I've seen before. I'd better hold them.” She took the branch and held it carefully, while Nimby reverted to his human form and got back into the RV. He was, of course, soaking wet, so Mom came back and bustled him into the lavatory for another change of clothing. Mom just couldn't help mothering folk.
“Cherry bombs grow on trees?” David asked, as the vehicle started moving again.
“Everything grows on trees,” Chlorine said. “Except people, and sometimes they do too.” She sat down, and her extreme care with the cherries caused her to forget how her clothing was positioned. Twigs of the branch snagged on both blouse and skirt. David saw Sean swallow. “But these must be a special variety.”
“Why can't I eat a cherry?” Karen asked rebelliously.
She got that way when balked.
“Because they're cherry bombs, stupid,” David informed her. “They go boom.” He felt enormously superior.
“Boom?”
“Yes, they explode when dro
pped or thrown,” Chlorine said. She managed to unsnag her skirt and then her blouse, the material fell back into place, covering what it was supposed to. David heard Sean resume breathing. That exposure had really been by accident.
Actually, it had been a pretty good view. David had begun to get interested in such things only in the last few months, and suspected he would be more interested in the next few months. Chlorine's body was fascinating. But so was the notion of cherry bombs growing on trees. “Does anything else do that?” he asked. “I mean, explode?”
“Certainly. Pineapples, for instance. They're more dangerous than cherries, because they're larger.”
Nimby emerged, dressed in more of Sean's clothes. But it seemed Sean didn't care; he was too busy watching to see if any more twigs snagged anything.
“Exactly what variety of cherry bombs are these?”
Chlorine asked him.
Nimby wrote a note. No one else seemed to notice how his pad and pencil appeared from nothing when he needed them, and disappeared similarly when he didn't. He handed the note to David.
“ 'These are new, clear cherry bombs,' “ he read aloud.
“ 'Much more powerful than the regular kind. We will need them for the river.' “
“Nuclear cherry bombs!” Sean exclaimed. “I'll bet they're powerful!”
Then David noticed a PS to the note: When you saw inside Chlorine's blouse—was that emotion?
David smiled. Yes it was, of a sort. But to fathom the full effect of it. Nimby should have peeked into Sean's mind. Because if David got slightly warm, Sean would be a furnace. And considering Nimby's apparent age, he should be reacting like Sean.
Nimby sat in a vacant seat. David was pleased to see that he was now looking at Chlorine in much the way Sean was: surreptitiously but persistently. He was learning.
“Uh-oh,” Dad muttered in an ominous tone.
David peered ahead. There was a barricade with a sign DETOUR. A troll stood by it, wearing a glowing helmet.
Dad drew up to the troll. “Where does the detour go?”
he asked.
“Back to the tall hassle grove, which is safer during the storm.”
“But we have to get to Imp Erial before nightfall,” Dad protested.
“The trollway may be impassable. There is flooding, making it unsafe.”
“Suppose we are willing to risk it?”
The troll stared dourly at him. “You may proceed at your own risk. We will not be responsible for your safety.”
“But the road remains enchanted? We can't be attacked on it?”
“The path remains enchanted. But water goes where it will. The flood could cause you mischief regardless of the enchantment.”
“Understood. We'll proceed.”
“Fool,” the troll muttered, and stood aside.
“You're probably right,” Dad agreed, driving forward.
David looked out. “What's that building, shaped like a huge bottle?”
Chlorine looked. “Oh, that's a whinery.”
Sean laughed. “A winery shaped like a bottle! It figures.”
Meanwhile the RV was forging through increasingly tempestuous rain. Colored fluid streamed across the windows and splashed up in fleeting rainbow patterns. Mist from it drifted in the open slits of the almost-closed windows.
Then some of that water seemed to get into David's eyes, for they were flowing. He was crying—and he didn't know why. He looked blearily around, and saw tears in the eyes of all of them except Nimby. Even Dad was blowing his nose. What was going on?
“Did we just drive through an onion field?” Karen asked tearfully.
“I see a sign,” Mom said. “It says we are coming to the Crimea River.”
“Cry me a river,” Chlorine repeated. “That explains it.
The whinery must use that water for its whine. But we must have crossed it on the way up. Why didn't we cry then?”
“It wasn't flooding then,” Dad replied. “I saw the water passing low under the bridge. We were past it before we got a whiff of it.”
The vehicle slowed again. David saw why: they had reached the flood. Tear-colored water surged across the road. It looked too deep and swift to drive through.
“I don't understand how this flooded so deeply, so quickly,” Dad said. “There was ample clearance below the bridge. It has been raining, but there has not been time to raise the water level twenty feet.”
Nimby wrote a note. He gave it to David, who read it to the others. “Nimby says the goblins have dammed the river just off the enchanted right-of-way. That's why it backed up so fast.”
“Goblins! I should have known. Do we have any way to handle this?”
Nimby wrote another note. “ “This's why I fetched the new, clear cherry bombs,' “ David read. “ “They will destroy the dam, so the water will newly clear the road.' “
“But won't the goblins attack us when we go there?”
Mom asked worriedly.
“ 'Not if we remain within the enchanted path, and float the cherries down to the dam,' “ David read.
“But the cherries might go right over the dam before they explode,” Sean said. “We'll have to use a rope to put them in place.”
“Let's get to it,” Dad said. At that point the rain eased, becoming only a light, windy drizzle. Dad, Mom, Nimby, Chlorine, and Sean got out. “You kids stay put,” Sean called back insultingly.
They sat in the open doorway in the side of the RV and watched the adults depart. Colored mists were rising from the landscape, making a pretty vertical pattern.
There was the cheerful clangor of a bell. “Hey, I want to see that,” Karen exclaimed, jumping out of the RV. “It sounds like a cowbell.”
“Hey, we're not supposed to go anywhere,” David reminded her. “It's dangerous.”
“On the enchanted path? Pooh.” She ran on back along the road, following the music of the bell. She liked bells, and just had to see any that she heard. Tweeter was perched on her hair, chirping warningly, but she ignored him.
David was torn between running after her and staying put. He compromised. “Go after her. Woofer, and make sure she's safe.”
“Woof!” the dog agreed, and bounded out.
Then David heard the beat of a drum. It was a powerful, throbbing sound that seemed to penetrate to the very center of his head. What kind of drum was making it? David liked drums, because they made a lot of noise with little effort.
Before he knew it, David was walking toward the sound.
But Midrange ran after him. “Meow!” the cat screeched warningly.
That jolted David back into responsibility. He was doing the same thing Karen was, running after the first intriguing sound. That was dangerous, because it was coming from the side, off the enchanted path. So he stopped. But he did pause long enough to peer in the direction of the sound, hoping to see the drum from here.
He was successful: it was in the shape of a huge ear. It was an ear drum! No wonder it had such power over his own ears.
He picked Midrange up and walked slowly back to the RV. He hoped Karen wouldn't go off the enchanted path.
But she was a child; her judgment wasn't good.
The bell rang again. Surely she had seen it by now, and should have returned. Where was she?
Finally he could stand it no longer. “I gotta find her,” he said. “Midrange, you stay here and tell the folks where I am, if they come back before we do.” The cat nodded and stretched out on the floor by the door.
David ran in the direction of the bell. Soon he found it, a cow with a clapper, ringing as it walked. A cow bell.
What else? But Karen wasn't there. She must have gone on beyond. Foolish girl!
He spied a big orange apelike creature wearing a placard saying UTAN. Was it dangerous? This thing looked so comical that maybe it was harmless. “Hey, Utan—have you seen my stupid little sister?” he asked it.
The thing paused, then pointed the way David was going. So David ran on. O
nly after he was well beyond the creature did he realize what it must be: an orange utan.
He saw a cat. “Hey, I told you to stay in the RV!” he cried, advancing on it. The cat turned its face toward him.
Then David realized that it wasn't Midrange. It was a strange cat—very strange. It wore a flat-brimmed hat and a vest with the word ION on front. “Oh—sorry,” David said, embarrassed. “I thought you were my cat.”
The cat stared witheringly at him and stalked off. Then David realized its nature: it was a cat-ion, probably headed for a catamount or catboat. “He must be going to get positively charged, before he lynx up with friends,” David muttered as he went on. This business of punning was infectious.
There was still no sign of Karen. He was very much afraid she had wandered off the enchanted path. Should he go and tell Mom? That would surely get him in trouble for ever letting Karen get in trouble, though.
Something came flying though the air. David ducked, afraid it was going to hit him, but it sailed on by. He got a good glimpse of it as it passed. It looked like a painting.
Then another flew by, and a third. What was going on?
But a moment's thought brought the answer: “Artillery,” he said. “Someone's hurling art at me.”
“Kaa-ren!” he called. “KAA-RENN!” There was no answer. Not even a woof. This was not a good sign.
He continued searching, but Karen was nowhere he could see. That meant she must have gone off the enchanted path. Which meant in turn that he couldn't wait any longer; he had to get help in a hurry.
He turned and ran back to the RV, half-afraid he would discover it gone. But it remained, as solid and reassuring as ever. Midrange remained on guard. “Anyone come back?” he asked the cat, and received a shake of the head.
Well, at least that meant he would be able to report his disaster himself, instead of seeming to be caught like a fleeing rat. For whatever slight good that might do him.
“Where are the others?” he asked.
Midrange got up and came to him. David picked him up and set him on his shoulder, his normal riding position.