Something was nudging him. It was Sesame, again, bringing him out of his freak-out. The demoness was back upright, her legs decorously covered.
Umlaut realized that the glimpse of her panties had not been accidental on her part. She, as a demoness, formed clothing out of her own substance. She had flashed him on purpose. Having part of a soul did not stop her from being mischievous. But now, satisfied that she could do it at any time, she was covering up and focusing on business.
"So let's go deliver this letter to My Dear Demon Professor," Metria said when she saw that he had resumed consciousness. "I believe he is about to conduct Freshman Nature 101, a class used to wash out any demons who aren't totally serious about improving themselves. I have flunked it many times, of course, and am number one on the Ineligibility List. That's the perfect one to crash."
"But why would you want to?"
"Why else? To annoy His Pomposity, of course."
Umlaut decided to let this pass, like so much else about her. He put the letter in his shirt pocket. "How do we get there?"
"Well, you can't get there from here, of course."
He knew she was setting him up for another put-down, but he had to ask. "Then what—?"
"But I can get there, if I have suitable cover so he won't recognize me. Take off your pants."
Despite his caution, he was caught off guard. "My what?"
"Trousers, nether apparel, slacks, jeans, shorts—"
"I knew that! I mean, why take them off?"
"Whatever," she agreed crossly. "Hey, you didn't follow the form. It's a good thing I'm tolerant, or I'd show you my pants." Her dress faded, to reveal full, tight polka-dotted panties, with each dot spinning in place like a little whirlpool.
After a moment he heard her talking again. "Oh, all right. But he should have followed the form. It's expected."
Umlaut realized that all he was seeing was serpent hide. Sesame had interposed her body to block his view of the demoness, and the rotating dots were slowly fading. He blinked and turned his gaze away, and the eyeballs creaked as they cracked off the glaze. He had gotten a dangerous dose that time.
He remembered how Surprise Golem had kissed him but never shown him anything awkward. No declining décolletage, and definitely no panties. That was part of what he liked about her. She was a nice girl, easy to be with. He might never see her again, but he treasured the brief time they had had together.
Sesame lowered her coil and he saw Metria again. She was now wearing slacks, so there was no danger of exposure. Unless she got annoyed again and dissolved them.
"Why do you want me to take off my whatevers?"
"So I can emulate them and hide from Grossclout. He'll zap me if he catches me in the class, but he'll take you for a gawky freshman student. He won't know I'm there because I'll just be dull clothing."
Umlaut thought about her being wrapped around his crotch and surely tickling him in extremely awkward places. "Wouldn't a shirt do as well?"
"Oh, pooh, he thought of it," she muttered. "If you insist on being dull about it." She fuzzed and formed into a floating long-sleeved shirt.
Umlaut hastily removed his own shirt, so as not to give her time to change her mind. She drifted up to him and held out one armhole for him to put his arm into, then the other. It was actually a silky and comfortable shirt, and it fitted him perfectly. It even had buttonable buttons down the front.
"Tuck me in," the shirt said.
Oh. He loosened his belt, then hesitated. The shirt tail extended a fair way down. She was going to get to stroke his behind anyway. But what choice did he have? So he resigned himself and tucked in the shirt.
"That's better," it said, patting his bottom.
"Let's just go deliver the letter," he gritted. Then he remembered a complication. "Para! How can he go there without giving it away?"
"He can visit ParaDice while he waits."
"Visit what?"
"Heaven, Nirvana, Arcadia, Elysium, Eternal Bliss—"
"Paradise?"
"Close enough," the shirt agreed crossly. "Hang on."
As if he could do anything else, with her surrounding his torso. There was a wrench, and suddenly they were at the verge of what seemed to be two more fading islands. Each was cubical, with black dots decorating the faces, connected by a pair of docks guarded by paratroopers. Para was in the water paddling toward them, but there was something odd about it.
"This is the Celebes Sea," the shirt explained. "Folk here are unable to summon the stork, so their number is dwindling, but they feel great, because ParaDice has that quality. Para will love it here; it's his real home."
So it seemed; the boat was propelling himself eagerly toward the islands.
"Hang on again," the shirt said, and helped by whipping its tail around his posterior from both sides.
There was another wrench, and the four of them were part of a group of really odd characters following a floating demon in a professorial cape. One vaguely resembled a mundane giraffe with only three legs; another was mostly head with tiny arms and legs; another seemed to be a tangle of black lines. Several were variants of humanoid, ranging from ogre to imp. Most were animalistic in some devious manner.
The demoness was right: Two cats, a large serpent, and a regular man fit right in.
"You come here with heads full of mush," the professor was saying. "But if you survive, you may come to deserve the title of demons, instead of remaining like half a passel of zombies with PHSD." He spun on a frog-faced student. "Elucidate the initials."
"The what?" Frogface croaked.
Grossclout frowned, and the frog demon jumped and dissipated into smoke. "You," he said, fixing on a coconut head.
"Pull Her Slip Down?" Coconut asked timorously.
Small sparks radiated from Grossclout's eyes. "Anyone?"
Half a spate of mush faces looked blankly back.
A curl of smoke rose from the professor's left ear. "PHSD: post-hypnotic stress disorder," he said with savage calm. "Occurring after some sad excuse for a creature has spent too much time trapped in the hypno-gourd. That may be on the final exam, if you are fortunate enough to achieve it." He drew up at a garden alcove. "Who can tell me what kind of bug this is?" He gestured, and a buzzing bug flew up.
"Ooo, eeek!" a lady demon cried, her arms windmilling to ineffectively repel the bug that flew at her. In a moment it went on to sit on the head of another female. "Ugh!" she cried, outraged. "It crapped on me!" It moved on to a third demoness, hovering threateningly before her face. "Go away, you nasty fly!"
"None of those answers is correct," the professor said. "The bug will continue until it is correctly identified."
Indeed, the bug flew to another demoness, mussing her hair, and another, making a rude noise in her ear. Then it approached Sesame. She snapped at it, but it dodged clear.
Umlaut was afraid its attention would attract notice and give away the serpent's identity. "A ladybug!" he cried. "Because it bugs only ladies." '
Instantly the bug flew back to its alcove. "Correct," the professor said. "There's a head without an undue content of mush." He moved on.
Umlaut was thrilled to have found such faint favor. But he still had to deliver the letter and wasn't sure now was the time. It would be better to catch the professor alone.
The professor came to a niche. A nondescript, somewhat servile-looking man stood there. "Who can identify this man?" he demanded.
No one answered; much was the order of the moment.
"We shall question him," the professor said. He faced the man. "Are you well?"
"Yes," the man answered.
"Excellent. Do you like it here?"
"Yes."
"And do you believe the price of has-beans in Beanovia is fair?"
"Yes."
The professor turned to the class. "You," he said, fixing his inordinate glare on a cowering bug-eyed elf. "Ask him a question."
"But I'm just a lowly mush-minded frosh student," the elf
protested.
"Yes," the man agreed.
"You," the professor said, indicating a fainting flower of a demoness.
"Do you wear shorts or briefs?" she asked faintly.
"Yes."
The professor's mush-vanquishing gaze struck Umlaut. "You."
"He's a yes-man," Umlaut said desperately. "He says yes to everything."
The professor's fixed grimace ameliorated almost imperceptibly. "Exactly."
More eyes turned on him, some with awe, others with disdain. He had answered two questions and found faint favor. Did that make him a class pariah?
They moved on to a clothes rack. "Who can identify the nature of this coat?"
They gathered around it. The coat was somewhat drab, with a dull ruff of fur and old-fashioned fasteners down the front.
"Vintage nineteen hundred Mundania?" a student demon asked, and quailed before the professor's glare of negation.
"Oh, who cares?" a demoness with a troll face asked. "It's wa-a-ay out of fashion."
"Then put it on, D. Base," the professor snapped.
Demoness Base tried to balk but was helpless in the face of the mush-destroying gaze that fixed on her. Gingerly she put the coat on over her shoulders. Then she smiled, and her entire disposition became sunnier. Her face became almost human. "I like it."
"What kind of coat?"
"Who cares? It's very comfortable."
"Pass it on," the professor said.
Reluctantly the demoness did, her expression souring as she parted with it. A frog-faced demon tried it on next. "Extremely nice," he said, brightening.
"What kind?"
"I really can't say, but there is something pleasing about it."
"Pass it on."
Obviously disinclined, he did so. He set it on the shoulders of a ferret-faced demon who was about to squish a butterfly under his foot. But when the coat landed on him, he stooped to pick the insect up and guide it to a nice flower.
"Anyone!" the professor said, exasperated by the sheer volume of mush. When no one answered, he speared Umlaut with another glance.
"Uh, a sugarcoat," Umlaut said. "It makes people sweet."
"Precisely." The professor glared at Umlaut with a tinge of curiosity. "Have you taken this class before?"
"Oh, no sir!" Umlaut exclaimed, terrified.
The professor did not seem quite satisfied, but he let it be. He stopped by a group of stone gargoyles. "Where is the beauty?" he demanded of the class.
They considered the figures. Each gargoyle was uglier than its neighbors. Each had huge glistening eyes set in great long faces, and an open mouth from which driblets of water flowed. They all seemed to be looking at something, but there was nothing but a blank wall in that direction. None of them could by any stretch of fevered imagination be called beautiful.
"Look closely," the professor said. "Find the beauty."
They looked closely, but the ugliness of the gargoyles seemed only to get worse.
"Ceit," Grossclout said, glaring at a halfway pretty demoness. Her top half was pretty; her bottom half was gross.
"I am only auditing this class," D. Ceit said evasively.
"Chickenlips!" the professor rapped.
The demon student with chickenlike lips quailed. "Maybe to another gargoyle they are beautiful," he quavered.
"But you are not a gargoyle."
"I am not," the demon admitted, abashed.
"Hophead!"
A demon with a weird-shaped head tried to answer. "She must be hiding behind the gargoyles—or somewhere," he assayed.
"But you have not found her?"
"No, sir," Hophead said, hunching down as if being beaten over the head.
Meanwhile Umlaut was looking closely at the gargoyles. He saw that their eyes reflected a picture of a lovely young human woman, but when he looked there, there was still only the blank wall.
"Umlaut!" the professor said.
Galvanized, Umlaut responded. "In the eyes! Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."
"To be sure." The professor walked on. The class murmured with mixed awe and envy.
Only after a long moment and a short instant did Umlaut realize that the professor had called him by name. They hadn't fooled Grossclout at all. "Oh, no," he murmured.
There did not seem to be any transition, but suddenly they weren't in the class anymore. They were at the edge of a huge volcanic caldera. Red lava boiled in the base of it, and smoke rose toward them.
"Now before I drop you into this, what is your puny pretext for a lame excuse for disrupting my class?" the professor demanded.
Umlaut was terrified. "I didn't mean to do that. I just came to deliver a—"
"Not you, Umlaut. Her.”
Umlaut felt his shirt twitch. "Curses, I think he's on to us," it murmured.
"You know you're not supposed to come near my classes."
"Oh, pooh! You can't keep me out."
Umlaut floated off the rim of the caldera and sailed down toward the fiery lava. He tried to take a breath to scream, but the smoke got in his face and choked him.
He dropped down until his feet almost touched the red lava. He felt the heat coming through his shoes.
"Oh, all right," his shirt said. "My quarter conscience won't let you hurt him for his little bit of guilt. Let him go."
Umlaut hoped the demon professor would accede. Maybe the volcano didn't scare Demoness Metria, but it appalled mortal Umlaut.
Then the four of them were in an austere office, facing the demon professor's large desk. "Was your head so full of mush that you thought you could get away with this intrusion, D. Metria?" the professor demanded.
Umlaut's shirt turned to smoke. Metria formed. "Well, it was fun trying."
"What is your mischief this time?"
"Umlaut has a letter for you." A smirk was pushing itself through her mouth, trying to reach her lips. "From Mundania."
"Then let's have it." The letter sailed from Umlaut's pocket to the hand of the professor. Only after half an interval did he remember that it had been in his regular shirt pocket, and then he had removed that shirt. Yet flow his shirt was back on him, and the letter had been there to be delivered. They really had not fooled Grossclout.
The professor glanced at the letter. Tiny jets of steam issued from his ears, and a faint halo of fire outlined his head, but he did not react overtly. "This seems somewhat misinformed. The acquisition of a soul was intended to bring you under control. It succeeded only partially, unfortunately."
"What do you expect of half a soul?" Metria asked disdainfully. Her skirt shortened until it was at the very verge of showing a polka dot. Was she actually trying to beguile the professor? "Even a whole soul would not make me behave. When I passed a quarter of it on to my son Ted six years ago, what was left had even less effect." The fringe of the skirt retreated, showing the edge of a dot.
"True, unfortunately." The professor clapped his hands with a report like that of a dry tree cracking asunder. "Begone, vamp."
Metria vanished. Only the lone polka dot remained. It spun to the floor, bounced, and dissipated. Umlaut was impressed by the way Grossclout had handled her.
The professor looked at him. "What is your impression of the demoness?"
"Oh, I, uh, wouldn't presume to judge."
A small crackle of glaze appeared on an eyeball, but the demon's voice remained calm. "Answer the question."
He had to do it. "I, uh, don't quite trust her. She has been trying to stop me from delivering the letters. I suppose it's just her natural mischief, but—"
"But what?"
"Well, my opinion is ignorant, of course. But sometimes it seems as if there is something else, so I can't blame it all on her."
"Example."
"When I went to Zombie World, a girl tried to distract me, and I think that was really Metria emulating her, but also there were the Dire Straits and Scylla and Charybdis, which I don't think Metria could have managed, and then Charybdis showed u
p here in Xanth too. It's as if something wants to stop me, and maybe Metria is helping it."
"Why would anyone or anything wish to prevent delivery of ignorant letters?"
"Because somewhere in the course of these deliveries I'm supposed to find the answer to the problem of the Red Spot Demon Jupiter hurled at Earth and Xanth. Good Magician Humfrey suggested that. Something may not want that answer to be found. Maybe the author of the letter that so angered Demon Jupiter."
"We shall verify," the professor said. The wall behind his desk became a great window onto what looked like the night sky, with myriad stars. Looming in the foreground was a great swirl of reddish light. It expanded visibly as they watched, coming ominously closer.
"That looks bigger than all Xanth!" Umlaut said, impressed and horrified.
"Correct. Its impact will not be kind to our worlds. It will be necessary to halt its progress soon."
"Yes! But how can we do that?"
Grossclout glanced at him. "Are you aware of the nature of the Demons, capitalized?"
"Like the Demon Xanth? They have more power than all the rest of us combined."
"Exactly. Only a Demon can halt the thrust of a Demon, and that can get messy. We need to ascertain why the Demon Jupiter did this and then try to ameliorate his ire. That is the most likely solution hidden in your letters."
"Yes, sir."
"You seem to be a curious choice to handle so important a task."
"Yes, sir. I don't even seem to be a full person. I can't remember my past life, and others tell me I don't exist. I hate that."
"Why?"
"Because I have made some fine friends and maybe fallen in love. Where would any of them be if I don't exist? I mean, maybe I don't deserve anything special, but it's not right to mess up the lives of others."
Grossclout looked at Umlaut without any glare at all; it seemed he was capable of nonglaring when he put his mind to it. "You are indeed innocent." He glanced back over his shoulder, and the window became the wall. "One moment while I investigate." He faded out.
Umlaut shook his head, which was threatening to spin. "Do you make any sense of this?" he asked the others.
Serpent and both cats shook their heads. Claire knew much, but demon business was beyond her.