The fine lines shimmered. Then the center of the web depressed as if a giant hand were pushing it. The spiders, alarmed, retreated. It came down until it almost touched the boat. Umlaut put an arm up to shield himself and found the web like steel wire but much more ponderous; he couldn't budge it. It was indeed hard and heavy.
But by similar token, he could not part it to make a hole for them. The stuff was impervious.
"Benzine," Brusque said.
The girl walked down the web slope to the base just above the boat. Now that Umlaut got a good look at her, he saw that she had fair hair and eyes the same color. She squatted and touched the web.
Suddenly it softened, in that region only. Umlaut was able to stretch a hole in it so that Para could get through. But Para couldn't walk on it because it was too soft; it stretched down to the ground wherever a duck foot pressed.
"Epoxy," Brusque said.
They boy came down the web slope. He had dark hair and eyes. He put his finger to the bottom of the web, and it became iron hard again.
Para walked on up and out. Then Brusque touched the web, and it sprang back the way it had been before, no longer hard and heavy. It rippled and waved. The spiders, relieved, resumed their surfing.
"Uh, thank you," Umlaut said. "I'm Umlaut, and I have a letter to deliver to Tandy Nymph."
"Grandma Tandy!" the twins said together.
Their grandmother? But these were ogres and brassies.
"Take them to Dad and Mom," Brusque told the twins. "They'll decide."
"This way," Epoxy said, starting off. Sammy, not needed for this, jumped back into the boat.
But Benzine lingered behind. "Can we ride in your nice boat?" she asked shyly.
"Welcome," Umlaut agreed.
"And stroke your nice cats?" Benzine asked as they climbed into the boat.
Umlaut looked at the cats. Sammy approved. Claire, after a suitable pause, acquiesced. The boy stroked Sammy and the girl stroked Claire.
"That way," Epoxy said, pointing. Para started moving.
"May I ask some questions?" Umlaut asked cautiously.
"Sure!" Epoxy said.
"We love questions," Benzine agreed.
"How did you come to be—"
"That's easy," Epoxy said. "When the stork brought us, our parents Esk and Bria needed two names in a hurry, so they read the label on the diaper."
"How to clean it," Benzine explained. "And it fits our talents."
That did answer one question. "How can you be—"
"When they signaled the stork—" Epoxy began.
"Twice," Benzine added.
"They specified identical twins."
"But they also specified a boy and a girl."
"I am Mother's boy," Epoxy said proudly.
"And I am Daddy's girl."
"So we were almost identical. When we grow up we will be less so. But we're both ogrets."
“Ogrets?”
"Meanwhile they couldn't tell us apart, so they dyed our hair and eyes to make us different," Benzine concluded. "For now."
That answered another question. "How is it that you—"
"Because Grandpa Smash is half ogre, so his son and grandsons are part ogre," Epoxy said.
"And Grandma Tandy is a nymph," Benzine said. "So I'm part nymph. It makes me cute and empty minded. And when their son Esk Ogre married Bria Brassie, we became part brassie too. So he's Epoxy Ogre and I'm Benzine Brassie. That's with the ie to show I'm a girlie; Brusque is y to show he's a boy."
"I'm y too," Epoxy said. "I've got a y chrom—chrom—"
"Chrome O some," Benzine said. "Girls have x's, so we can kiss." She kissed the air, and sure enough, little x's flew out. "Ask a boy for a kiss, and he asks, 'Y?' " She giggled while her brother glared.
"But you seem to be mostly human," Umlaut said.
"Well, it's a common element," Epoxy said. "But we don't brag about it. Would you?"
"Maybe not," Umlaut agreed, laughing.
"So we just prefer to be ogrets."
There was that word again, "What—?"
"Ogrets," Epoxy repeated. "Little ogres. The same way a young nymph is a nymphet, and a young brassy is—" He broke off. "What is it, Benzine?"
"A brassiere? No, that's not it."
"Brazier? No, still not it. Anyway, there's a word."
"I'm sure there is," Umlaut said.
"We had a real scary dream about our origin, I mean where the stork got us," Benzine confided. "Something to do with Mundania. But we don't believe it."
"I don't think anybody knows where the storks get the babies they deliver," Umlaut said diplomatically. But it made him wonder whether any stork had brought him. If not, where had he come from?
They arrived at a den in the jungle. An ordinary-looking man was working in the backyard. If he was part ogre, it didn't show. "This is ours," Epoxy said.
As they approached, a woman came out. She seemed to be made entirely of brass but was rather pretty for all that. "Mommee, com-panee!" Benzine called.
There were more introductions, while Umlaut remained bemused. How could a living woman be all metal? How could a living man ever relate to her, especially when it came to romance?
Bria Brassie seemed to catch his thought. "We can be quite soft when we want to be," she said.
He felt himself blushing. Again. He tried to cover by repeating his mission. "I have a letter for Tandy Nymph."
Bria nodded. "She'll like that. She doesn't get much mail." She focused on the children. "Very well, you may ride in the duck boat to show them where your grandmother lives. But stay clear of the madness."
"We will, over hill!" the twins chorused.
Bria smiled tolerantly. "They take such pride in being ogrets," she explained. "When they think of it."
Para moved on. Suddenly he stopped. There was a brutish looking creature. "Oopsy," Epoxy said. "A peccadillo."
"What's that?" Umlaut asked.
"A crossbreed between a pig and an armadillo," Benzine explained. "They can be mean."
"They're always at fault," Epoxy said.
"We heard they are popular with lady pigs," Benzine said. "And lady armadillos. But we can't think why."
Because that came under the heading of Adult Conspiracy, Umlaut suspected. "I think we can handle that." He glanced at Sesame. She nodded and slithered out of the boat, forming her emulation as she went.
The peccadillo pawed the ground, getting ready to charge them. But then Sesame got there. She was impressive; she seemed to snort smoke, and her teeth glinted hugely. She looked a lot like a hungry dragon.
"Wow!" Epoxy said. "I didn't know she was a weredragon."
"She's not," Umlaut said, satisfied.
The peccadillo was taken aback. He had thought he had a defenseless duck-footed boat to gore, and suddenly he was confronted with a dragon. But he wasn't ready to quit. He tried to sneak around the dragon. Sesame cut him off, lunging for him. He retreated so fast he skidded. He crashed into a pie tree, and pies were jarred loose. But there was something funny about them; they were small and seemed to be in the shape of letters of the alphabet, all jumbled. "That's not a regular pie tree."
"It's a pi tree," Benzine said. "See, it's printing on the pig."
Sure enough, the irate tree was stabbing hot letters at the peccadillo's hide, leaving tiny brand marks. The creature had had enough; he scooted out from under and fled the scene.
Sesame let her dragon emulation fade and returned to the boat. "That's great!" Epoxy said as she slithered back onto the bottom of the craft. "May I pet you?"
The serpent was taken aback; evidently no one had wanted to pet her before. But she agreed, and the ogret petted her head.
"He's a dragon fan," Benzine explained.
They moved on. Evidently news of the seeming dragon spread, because no other creatures threatened the boat. Soon they came to a section of the forest where a number of medium-sized trees had their trunks twisted into pretzels, and stones were lying on th
e ground in rather squashed condition. "What's this?"
"Oh, they're just from Grandpa Smash when he's in ogre mode," Epoxy said. "He twists up trees and squeezes juice from stones one-handed."
"And teaches young dragons the meaning of fear," Benzine added. "It's what ogres do."
So it seemed.
They heard a crashing in the forest. This turned out to be an ogre chopping wood. He was huge and hairy, and he didn't use an ax: he simply sliced his ham-hands through the trunks of trees, sundering them, then put the fragments to his mouth and chewed them into small billets, spitting out splinters.
"Grandpa!" Epoxy called, and the ogre paused, turning to face them.
"Go human!" Benzine called.
The ogre pondered two moments, evidently not being smart enough to manage a full thought in one moment. Ogres were justifiably proud of their stupidity. "What hash? Me bash!" He made a ham-fist.
"Give him the peace pipe," Benzine said.
Epoxy produced a pipe. "Smoke this, Grandpa," he said, giving it to the ogre. But when the ham-hand closed on it, the pipe shattered.
"Oopsy," Benzine said. "It fell to pieces."
"It's a piece pipe," Epoxy agreed. "He held it wrong."
But then the ogre managed to catch on. He shrank into mere human size and form. "Hi, grandkids!"
The two ogrets ran into his embrace. Then they introduced the travelers. "Grandpa Smash, this is a nice boat," Epoxy said.
"With a big snake and two cats," Benzine added.
Umlaut cleared his throat. "And a man," Epoxy added belatedly.
"They use him to talk for them," Benzine explained.
"I, uh, have a letter for Tandy Nymph."
"This way," Smash-human said cheerfully.
Tandy turned out to be an old nymph, something Umlaut hadn't realized existed. She accepted the letter graciously. She looked at it. "Hover birds!" she exclaimed.
Several flying creatures came to hover near her. Their wings extended upward from their small bodies and rotated in a circle above. They did make humming sounds.
They had a nice meal of mashed wood pulp and freshly squeezed rock juice, then were ready to deliver the next letter. Umlaut thanked Smash and Tandy and the ogrets, and they got back into the boat. The delivery hadn't been nearly as bad as he had feared.
Chapter 14
Com Pewter
Umlaut took the next letter from the pile. It was addressed to Com Pewter. "Who is that?" he asked.
Sammy, Claire, and Sesame all looked at him. He didn't know that?
"There's something funny about my memory," he reminded them. "There's a lot I don't know."
Sammy set off, leading Para, while Claire and Sesame clarified this basic education. Com Pewter, it turned out, was an ornery machine that had supposedly been turned to good but, like Fracto Cloud, still could be pretty difficult about it. He could change reality in his immediate vicinity by printing a correction on his screen, making it very hard for a person to get away from him if he didn't want it to happen. He had a lady machine friend called Com Passion who resided near a love spring and was far more friendly. Almost too friendly. The two of them liked to play card games on their screens. Each had a mouse that could change into human or other form to help out.
Umlaut shrugged. "It doesn't seem too complicated. I'll deliver the letter and depart before Pewter thinks to have me stay."
Sammy Cat changed course. Umlaut was about to ask why, since the way straight ahead was relatively open. But then Para almost collided with a nondescript girl standing in the path. His twenty duck feet skidded as he halted.
"Hey, what are you doing there?" Umlaut called, annoyed.
"Ifmmp," the girl said.
"I don't understand."
"J dbo'u tqfbl Ybouijbo."
This did not help. Umlaut looked at Claire and soon had the answer: The girl did not speak Xanthian. That seemed to be her magic talent: Somehow her words came out hopelessly mundane. That in turn was odd, because she was not from Mundania. Her name was Tacy. She had said hello, then explained, but of course he hadn't understood. It was her curse, and she wished she could be rid of it.
"Maybe if you went to the Good Magician," he suggested. But she shook her head in incomprehension. She couldn't understand him any better than he understood her.
Para was traveling again, and Tacy was riding with them in the boat. Umlaut wasn't sure when she had gotten in; that had been lost somewhere in the session of feline clarifications. He wanted to translate his suggestion for her, but the animals couldn't voice any words, and Tacy didn't know how to play nineteen questions. So they were stuck.
"Maybe we should just take you to Com Pewter and see if he can change your reality so you can talk," he said. She looked at him blankly, but he still thought it was a moderately good idea.
Then Tacy's expression changed. "What are you doing with another woman?" she demanded.
"What other woman?" Umlaut asked. Then he did two-thirds of a triple-take. "You spoke intelligibly!"
"Well, I should hope so. What did you expect?"
"More Mundanian. How did you manage to change so suddenly?"
She smiled, then tried to stifle a giggle.
A dim bulb glowed. "Surprise?" he asked.
"Who else? I said I'd look in on you, but I can't use astral projection again. This time I used spirit overlapping. That is, it's my spirit borrowing her body. I'll have to use something else next time."
"Surprise," he repeated gratefully. "I wish I could have stayed with you."
She shrugged. "Maybe you can, sometime. So what have you been up to, aside from riding with strange women?"
"I was just trying to help her—"
"Oh, you were, were you?"
"It was innocent!" he exclaimed. Then he saw her laughing and realized that she had been teasing him again. She was a great tease.
He caught her up on the ogre visit and explained that they were now heading to Com Pewter. But she had little interest. "Let's kiss," she said.
"But you're not in your own body."
"I'm still me." She pursed her lips.
Still he hesitated. "I'm not sure this is proper."
"What's miscalculated about it?"
"What's what?"
"Error, mistake, inaccurate, blunder, boner—"
"Wrong?"
"Whatever," she agreed crossly. "A kiss is a kiss." She put her arms around him and drew him close.
"What's wrong," he said carefully, "is that not only is it the wrong body, it's the wrong spirit, Metria."
"Oh, you guessed," she said, dismayed. "Bleep!"
"Don't you have a little boy to take care of?"
"Oh, Ted's with DeMonica. They get along great."
"So what do you want with me?"
"Only to pass a little time."
"Why are you trying to distract me from delivering the letters?"
She gazed at him. Her face was placid but there were little flames in her eyes. "I love my son."
"Of course you do! What does that have to do with—"
But she had faded out.
"Something is weird here," Umlaut muttered. "Claire, do you know what's going on?"
But this time the cat had no answer. Which was another oddity. Why should the motive of a demoness turn off her voyance? It was all part of the strangeness of his situation. For it seemed to be Umlaut himself who had some mysterious wrongness. If only he could figure it out!
Para slowed, seeming uncertain. That was because Sammy had stopped leading the way. "What's the matter?" Umlaut asked. And, by dint of a few questions, he had the answer: Sammy was lost.
"Lost?" Umlaut repeated blankly. "But you were on the way to find Com Pewter. How could you be lost?"
Claire clarified that. Something had changed, causing Sammy to go the wrong direction, and now they were in the Realm of Lost Objects. In fact they had become several of those objects.
"But that isn't where we were going," Umlaut protested. "What
happened?"
Claire didn't know. Her talent operated at close range, so she knew where they were but not what distant thing had caused Sammy to lose track. It seemed that first Com Pewter's cave had changed its location, then that location turned out to be here. Which of course didn't make sense, as this was definitely not Pewter's cave.
Umlaut made a vague connection. "I wonder whether Metria's interference is related to our getting lost? I saw Sammy change course and was about to inquire, but then Metria came, pretending to be Tacy, and then Surprise. That held my attention until we were here."
Claire nodded. That did seem to be the case.
But the mystery of why remained. He had asked the demoness why she was trying to stop him from delivering the letters, and she had said she loved her son, then faded out. She had, he thought, been troubled. There had to be a reason, if only he could figure it out.
But first he had to focus on how to get to Com Pewter's cave when Sammy Cat couldn't find it. "Can you find a way out of here?" he asked Para.
The boat tried but soon ran afoul of a labyrinth of piled socks. This much Claire understood: Each sock was different, no longer one of a pair, making them all useless. They had been lost in the course of time and space and finally landed here, and formed into a maze. It just went on and on. However, there was a way out of this much: Para merely plowed across the maze walls until he was clear of the labyrinth.
"Hey, what are you doing?" someone demanded.
Umlaut looked and saw twin imps. "We're trying to get unlost. Who are you?"
"I am Finders," the left imp said. "We collect things from all over everywhere."
"And I am Keepers," the right one said. "And we save them all here."
Claire shot Umlaut a glance. He understood. "You're stealing them!"
"We're kleptomaniacs," Finders agreed smugly.
"And all the people, all over everywhere, think they're just carelessly losing them. You're getting away with a monstrous crime."
"We sure are," Keepers agreed just as smugly.
Disgusted, Umlaut urged Para to head on out, anywhere. Then he had another notion. "Maybe Metria told Com Pewter to reverse his magic, to make it seem he's not there. So Sammy went in the opposite direction. If he goes opposite to what his talent tells him, maybe we'll get there after all."