Okay?”
Midrange nodded. This was a challenge worthy of his feline mettle.
“Okay, here's the tonic,” David said, giving him a capsule with awful-colored ick sloshing inside it. “Each time you make a sudden move, another copy will spin off and look and act just like you, but it's really illusion. It'll go seek one of the dog or bird illusions, and when they meet, the two will go poof, canceling each other out. Understand?”
Midrange nodded. He took the ugly capsule in his mouth and swallowed it. The thing was weird, but not incapacitating. Then he bounded off, sniffing the air for Woofer's canine doggy scent. He couldn't sniff out a trail as well as Woofer could, but he could do well enough. There was also Tweeter's smell, good enough to eat; that would help.
It might take him a few minutes to orient, but he would get them.
He bounded in the direction he had last seen Woofer.
That trail was still fresh, as it had been only an hour or so. He could see the dog's claw marks in the ground, and smell the canine odor. Not only was it doggy, it was specifically Woofer. No problem there.
But what about Tweeter? The bird had been riding on Karen's head, so the scent was very faint, and overridden by Karen's much stronger human traces. But that should improve when Tweeter left his associate and went with Woofer. Each of them had a pet human child; they had settled on that long ago, to make sure no child felt neglected. Because children were generally more fun than adult humans; they were more active, got into more mischief, and spent more time in the dirt. So Tweeter's pet was Karen, the smallest going to the smallest. Midrange had David in the middle, and Woofer tried to keep Sean out of trouble. If Woofer had been with Sean, Sean probably wouldn't have gotten swept away by the dam burst.
Then he had muffed the rescue of Karen. Woofer just wasn't the most competent dog extant. But of course, no dog was really smart. That was why cats existed: there needed to be a gifted animal in every family, to keep it functional. But when a family scattered to different locales, it was hard to keep up with all its parts. That was why there was so much trouble now. Humans were dense about the need to remain close enough together for proper supervision.
It was time to test the phantom cat phenomenon. Midrange jerked to the side—and an image of himself fissioned off and bounded straight ahead. It made no sound and had no odor, but it did look solid, and it ran well. It even maneuvered around a tree. It would do to fool the dull senses of a human observer. Maybe even an animal observer, from a distance.
He jerked again, and another nondescript cat peeled off, running in the direction he had been going. So he could steer them in any direction. Good enough.
Suddenly he saw a dog. Woofer! He bounded toward the canine—then realized there was no smell. This was a clone, one of the phantom dogs put out to confuse the issue.
So Midrange jerked aside, sending a clone cat ahead to intercept the thing. He hid behind a rock, to watch the encounter. This just might be interesting.
The clone cat leaped right into the phantom dog—and both vanished in a puff of nothing. The two illusions had destroyed each other. Exactly as they were supposed to.
Very well. He would send more cats after more dogs.
The more phantom dogs he eliminated, the easier it would be to locate the real one. He jerked and dodged frantically, sending clones bounding off in all directions, a veritable horde. Then he resumed the sniffing of Woofer's trail.
He saw a bird. Tweeter! But even as he spied it, so did a clone. The phantom cat leaped, catching the bird in his mouth—and disappeared. Two more images had canceled each other out.
It served the cat clone right, Midrange thought. The point was to rescue Tweeter, not to consume him. Birds were fair prey, but Tweeter was a friend. Friends did not eat friends.
He came to a large tree with funny leaves. The smells of animal, bird, and child were strong here. So this was where Karen had fled the phantoms. So it should be possible to follow her trail back to the cave she had not entered. But would that be the one where Woofer was?
Surely the dog couldn't be that stupid, to enter the same cave they had avoided before. So that was probably not the one. There just wasn't time to check every prospect, five minutes were already gone.
So Midrange sniffed out Woofer's fresher scent, going in another direction. Now Tweeter's smell joined it, still faint, but clearer than before, because he had been flying beside the dog, low to the ground. Every so often he perched on a stalk or twig, and the scent became complete at those places. This was a much easier trail to follow.
But Midrange did not forget caution. The hound and bird had walked blithely into some kind of trap, and the cat was not eager to walk into the same trap. So once he was sure of the trail, he left it, looping around, slinking behind rocks and brush and trees as if stalking prey. Every so often he let fly another clone, to further confuse any possible watcher. Then he would sneak up on the trail and verify it in passing, as if not noticing it. It would be hard for any observer to tell exactly what he was up to.
He came to a deep crevice. The trail came to the brink and followed along it. Presumably the dog had found a place to cross it. The thing was too wide to jump. So how was Midrange to cross it, without slavishly following the exact route of the hound? Which he didn't want to do, because that might be right where the trap had sprung.
He sniffed around, and found some flowers. What good were flowers? So he went on. Then something snarled at him from the brush. Midrange leaped onto the nearest tree trunk.
He looked down, and saw that it was only a little doglike creature. “What are you?” he demanded, annoyed because he had been affrighted while off-guard.
“I'm a snarl,” the little canine growled. “Can't you tell, pussy?”
This creature was not endearing himself. For reasons he didn't care to go into, Midrange did not like to be called pussy, especially in that tone. “No, I can't tell; you look more like a yelp to me,” he retorted. “Where did you come from—a sick tangle tree?”
“Not quite. I was brushed out of a girl's hair. But she dropped me and left before I could adopt her as a pet. I'm not pleased. That's why I remain in a snarl.” He glanced at Midrange. “I don't suppose you're looking for a proprietor?”
Midrange opened his mouth to say something truly catty, but caught himself. This creature just might be useful. It obviously wasn't a phantom. “I may be looking for a companion,” he said carefully. “If he's useful.”
“Useful?”
“I'm looking for a big dog and a small bird. Have you seen any such?”
“Actually I did, about two barks ago. They were following a wraith bleep.”
“A wraith what?”
“The humans have this stupid Adult Conspiracy that forbids them to say the name of a female dog in the presence of a child. Since I derive from the snarled hair of a child, I, too, am bound by it. Idiotic, I know, but there it is.”
Oh. “You did see them? Which, way did they go?”
“That way.” The snarl pointed his pug nose. “The wraith was one extremely fetching bleep, I must say; if she'd been of my species, I would have followed her too.
She even smelled right. The bird protested, but couldn't stop him.”
Which seemed to be one difference between a wraith and a phantom. The wraiths could emulate creatures completely, except for their solidity. So Woofer, the big male idiot, had followed her, and Tweeter had had to go along lest they be separated.
Midrange decided to trust Snarl a bit, mainly because it might help him get on with his mission. “I need to cross this cleft, but I can't see a way. Do you know a way?”
“Certainly. Just use one of those daisies there.” The nose pointed at the flowers.
“What good are they?”
“They're upsy-daisies. They grow into ladders to help you up, if you pick them and invoke them by saying their name.”
Well, now. Midrange went to the flowers and picked one. He carried it to the edge o
f the crack and set it down.
“Upsy-daisy,” he said.
The flower expanded. Its petals became spokes. They formed into a growing ladder. It was just long enough to bridge the chasm.
“Help me put this across, “Midrange said.
“I shall.” Snarl took part of the ladder in his teeth, and Midrange pawed at the end, and they managed to swing it awkwardly around until it fell across the gap. Then they walked somewhat gingerly across the rungs. Midrange, of course, had excellent feline balance, but Snarl didn't. He almost fell, but fortunately his legs poked through inside the ladder, and he was able to scramble back up.
They started walking along the far side, in the direction Woofer had gone. “Let me know if you pick up the trail,” Midrange said. He could pick it up himself, but wanted to see whether the animal was playing straight with him. One of the smarter qualities of cats, of the multitude of good ones, was not to trust anyone too readily.
Every so often Midrange flung off another clone cat, though nobody seemed to be spying on them. “That's a nice magic talent you have,” Snarl said admiringly. Midrange didn't bother to clarify how he had come by it; the little canine had no need to know.
Soon they came to a narrowing of the chasm, and sure enough, the trail resumed there. “Got it!” Snarl said.
Good enough; the canine was playing it straight. “Let's loop around and intercept it farther along,” Midrange said, not explaining why. Snarl agreed; he seemed to be quite companionable, now that he had a companion. He probably would have made that little girl a good associate.
Then Midrange thought of something. “I'm new to Xanth,” he confessed. “From Mundania, actually. How is it that we animals learned to talk?”
“Everyone talks, in Xanth,” Snarl explained. “Because of the magic. And the magic's getting much stronger now, for some reason.”
“Because of the storm blowing magic dust in,” Midrange said. “But soon it will be too strong, and there will be madness.”
“You have learned a lot,” Snarl said admiringly.
“Not enough. We animals always could understand most of what the human beings were saying, and we understood each other, in a general way. But since coming into Xanth, we have all grown much smarter, and now we can talk fluently with each other and with other creatures. We couldn't do that before.”
“It's because of the Xanth common languages,” Snarl said. “I have heard, though it surely isn't true, that in Mundania humans speak all different languages, and can't understand each other at all. The same must be true for animals and plants. In Xanth, all humans speak the human language, and all animals of a certain type speak their own language. That is, all mammals have one language, and all reptiles have one, and all insects have one, and so on.
There, are dialects, so that the way I speak isn't quite the same as you, and we'd both have trouble with a unicorn, and centaurs don't even bother with mammalian; they prefer to speak human. It has nuances that others don't, because humans are always talking. You surely had trouble understanding the bird.”
“I did,” Midrange agreed. “If I hadn't known him well, he would have been unintelligible. So it was because he spoke avian.”
“Yes. Insects are harder yet, and plants—it's not worth bothering. Dragons aren't too bad, though they have a barbarous accent. But it's not safe to get close to a dragon anyway.”
This was very interesting; it clarified what had been happening to them. But this business about dragons—”Are there many dragons around?”
“They're all over. Fire-breathers, smokers, and steamers; winged, land, and water; big, larger, and huge. They're always hungry. They're sort of the top of the food chain.
Best thing is to stay away from them.”
So Midrange had already gathered. But now they had to stop talking, because they were coming to a cave. The trail entered it. He even caught the faint perfume of the bleep who had lured Woofer in. Thanks to Snarl's help, it had taken him only another five minutes. Now he had five more minutes to assess the situation and summon Nimby.
“Is there another way into this cave?” he asked the dog.
“Probably. I'll sniff out one.” The little canine circled to the right, sniffing.
So Midrange circled to the left. Soon he found a winding aperture just about right for slinking through. So he slunk through it. It was dark inside, but he was comfortable with that. It was another of the myriad ways in which cats were superior to other creatures.
He sniffed, and smelled Woofer. That helped him navigate the various side crevices, coming ever closer without going directly there. Because there still could be more trouble than he wanted, if He got discovered.
Then he heard a yip. That was Snarl! The dog must have entered by another passage. Why had he given himself away?
Midrange slunk closer, until he could see into the central chamber. There were Woofer and Tweeter, just lying and perching there. They weren't even trying to escape, though nothing held them.
Snarl slunk in to join them, his tail between his legs.
He was definitely unhappy, but he was obeying someone.
Yet there was no one there. Just a pile of metallic junk in the center of the cave, faintly glowing.
Then Snarl spoke. “I did not come alone. There is a cat who is coming to rescue the other dog and bird.”
Why, the little traitor! He was blabbing the mission!
Had Midrange trusted a spy?
“The cat is coming in another way,” Snarl said. “In fact, he is crouching behind you.”
That did it. Midrange leaped up, tiger fashion. “Woofer! Tweeter! Get out of here!” he cried. “I'll pounce on it.”
Something swiveled around to face him. It was a TV screen, with icons on it. One picture expanded: a cat going splat against an invisible wall in midair.
SPLAT! Midrange suited action to picture, and fell to the floor in a heap.
Outraged, he gathered himself together for another pounce. But a picture appeared on the screen, showing a cat wading through supersticky dense glue, and he found he could move only excruciatingly slowly.
A picture of a dog talking appeared. With that. Woofer began to speak. “This is a machine called Sending, who was originally a program animating Magician Grey Murphy's Mundane computer. He helped Grey and Princess Ivy go to Xanth, provided they took him along. Now he is scheming to conquer Xanth. This will take time—a few thousand years—but he is patient. He is in the process of assembling a group of creatures and things to do his bidding. The recent influx of magic dust has enabled him to act more strongly. Thus he was able to lure me into his cave, though he failed with Karen. That's all right; he'll get her and the other humans when the magic intensifies enough.”
“But how does he do it?” Midrange asked.
“Sending has the power to change reality in his immediate vicinity,” Woofer said. “Just as his sire. Com-Pewter, does. Pewter prints whatever he wishes reality to be, and it is then true, near him. Only Sending works better with icons, which he expands into pictures when he wants to invoke them. So he has made us captive by luring us into his ambiance, then invoking magic icons to control us. It is not possible to oppose his will, because he defines will here.”
“That's why I had to blab about your mission,” Snarl said. “The icon made me. I'm sorry.”
Now that Midrange had been snared by Sending, he understood how it was. “You had no choice,” he said. But he realized that he, Midrange, had better exert some choice, because otherwise the wicked machine could force him to blab about Nimby coming to the rescue. He had to distract Sending a few more minutes. Maybe the machine was subject to flattery. “I thought I would find Woofer and Tweeter and rescue them. I guess I was pretty foolish.”
An icon expanded into a picture of a clown laughing.
Sending thought it was very funny. “But instead I just got caught myself,” he continued. “But I'm curious about one thing: how did you get those wraiths to help you, by lurin
g folk into your cave? They were running far beyond your ambiance.” Midrange was sure of that, because otherwise Sending would simply have changed reality for miles around, and made all creatures and people serve him.
The talking dog picture appeared again. “He explained that to us while we waited for others to try to rescue you, and thus to fall into his power,” Woofer said. “He made a deal with the wraiths, that if they helped him achieve power, he would enable them to achieve solid form again.
They are eager to gain some substance, so they cooperate.”
“Substance?” Midrange asked. “How is that possible?”
“It is our substance they will be given,” Woofer said sadly. “The wraiths will inhabit us and take over our bodies and minds.”
“But this is barbaric!” Midrange protested.
The laughing clown appeared on the screen.
Then there was a sound outside. A wraith hurried in.
“A damsel and a dragon!” it cried silently. “She's lovely, but it has a donkey head. It forged right to this cave.
They're coming in!”
The screen faced Midrange. A picture of a cat talking appeared.
Suddenly Midrange was compelled to tell all he knew.
“It is Chlorine and the dragon ass called Nimby,” he blabbed. “They are coming to nullify you and rescue us.
I have been stalling, to give them time to get here unobserved. They have two pieces of reverse wood.”
The screen flickered violently. Evidently the mention of reverse wood bothered the machine. Then the image of a door slamming closed appeared.
Too late. A wooden ball rolled into the cave and came to rest before the screen.
A picture showed dogs, cat, and bird hastily shoving the ball out of the cave. But before they could act, the ball fell into two parts. And Sending's screen went dim.