They hurried, but so did the monsters. By the time they reached the spot in the motes where they had arrived, they were being pursued by a dozen head-sized monsters. By six double-head sized monsters. By three quadruple-heads.
There was no sign of the women. “They can’t transport instantly, I think,” Hugo said. “They have to follow the trail of worlds, and I don’t know how many there are between Cone and Motes.”
“We shall simply have to wait,” the Factor said. “And guard our site.”
They waited and guarded, summoning cherries, pineapples, and edible fruits as required for defense or food. They took turns sleeping, because though the approaching monsters were fewer, they were larger. Cherries, then pineapples blew them up, but that was obviously a temporary reprieve, because the fragments were quickly gobbled by other little monsters. There were now little monsters scattered all through the Motes, all merging in their fashion, and soon enough the last and worst of them would be coming hungrily here. The Factor hoped they would not have to expend another mushroom; he agreed with Hugo that those fruits were dangerous.
They were both awake and alert when a mountain-sized monster loomed, orienting on them. This was probably too big for a pineapple, but too small for a mushroom. “We need a small, new, clear, mushroom,” the Factor said. “A tactical weapon.”
“Conjure the smallest one you can,” Hugo suggested.
The Factor did, producing a fungus hardly thicker than a furry hair. He blew on it, wafting it toward the monster, but it drifted to the side ineffectively.
“Put it in another fruit,” Hugo said. “One you can throw.”
The Factor conjured an apple. He cut a hole in it and set the mushroom there. Then he hurled the apple at the monster.
The monster didn’t wait for the apple to arrive. It surged forward and gulped it down.
They held their breaths.
There was a submerged rumble. Then the monster split in two, with mushroom-colored smoke puffing out. The two halves were pushed apart by the force of the mushroom cloud, disappearing to either side.
“But they’ll be ba-a-ack,” Hugo muttered.
Meanwhile other, smaller fragments were still coming in. Sooner or later one was bound to catch one of the men by surprise, and gobble down a finger, hand, or foot before it could be stopped. The situation was desperate.
Suddenly a party of six appeared: a woman, a girl, two children, a centaur, and a big beautiful bird.
“Wira!” Hugo cried, running to embrace her.
“Debra!” The Factor ran to do the same with the centaur. But even as he did, he was conscious of where her bra should be. The curse remained, stifled by his change of bodies, but lurking.
Debra put her arms around him and hauled him up to reach her face. They kissed. It was the most glorious sensation he could imagine. “This time you waited for us!”
“What is that?” the girl asked, staring at the mote.
“I believe that is the fabled Mote Monster,” the bird said. “Mother has spoken of it, but I have not seen it.”
“That is only part of the Mote Monster,” the Factor said, reluctantly releasing Debra’s delightful mouth. “We have to get out of here.”
“You can’t leave us now,” Wira protested.
“There’s no time to explain. We can’t remain here.”
“No explanation is necessary,” the bird said. “And no separation. We must form a cluster, and you can transfer us all together.”
Whoever that bird was, he seemed pretty smart. The others heeded him, and they quickly formed a cluster. “I’ll need to be in touch-contact with each of you,” Hugo said. “Maybe you had better hold on to my hands and feet. We don’t want anyone left behind.”
They all took hold of Hugo’s limbs, with Wira hanging on to his head, as the Mote Monster loomed. Then, abruptly, they were elsewhere.
16
LOOP
Oooo, nickelpedes!” Nimbus exclaimed, delighted. “Stay away from them!” Ilene snapped, hauling him clear.
“Aww, you’re acting just like an adult,” he complained.
“We must have exchanged with several of them,” Wira said. “That’s why we’re at their nest, and they are disturbed. They don’t know what happened to their associates.”
“You sympathize with anything,” Hugo told her fondly. “Even nickelpedes.”
“Of course.” She kneeled and communed with the fearsome bugs, and they seemed reassured. They retreated into their burrows.
Sim Bird was finding this to be an educational excursion, which was of course the point of his attendance. But he hadn’t counted on the additional curse the two men had incurred: being able to travel only upworld. That did not apply to their own party of women, children, and a bird, except in one significant respect: Wira and Debra were not about to return to Xanth proper without their men. Since Ilene—such a nice girl!—and Sim were committed to help the women, that ethically locked them into that limitation too, as well as the children Fray Cloud and Nimbus Human/Demon. So they really needed to find a way to free the men of that upworld curse.
But how was that to be accomplished? Only an experienced counter-cursor could do it, and how was one to be found? They couldn’t be certain that one was aboard any particular world.
Meanwhile, here they were on—where? Sim had an encyclopedic memory of all the Worlds of Ida that had been discovered by Xanthians who had visited them are returned to make their reports. Trapezoid, Shoe, Implosion, Puzzle, Octopus, Tesseract, Fractal, Green Goo, Plane, Spiral, Pincushion—their names were legion, and each was fascinating in its own right and left. But this was none of these. It had a halfway shiny silvery surface, and was extremely convoluted. Like Dragon World, except that this wasn’t that.
“I believe I’ll fly up and survey the landscape from above,” Sim said. It was fortunate he had taken the trouble to learn to talk human, because humans tended not to understand squawks, however superior they might be.
“Just so long as we’re safe,” Wira said. “This world seems rather barren.”
“Nothing seems barren, as long as I’m with you,” Hugo told her. They kissed.
They were still so much in love, after years of marriage and their recent separation. Sim wished he could have a relationship like that.
“May I go with you?” Ilene asked. “Debra could make me light enough to carry.”
This was of course sheer foolishness. “Certainly,” he agreed, more pleased than seemed sensible.
“Who’s going to watch me?” Nimbus demanded rebelliously.
“I will,” Fray said. “I can handle it for five minutes. Maybe even ten.”
He pushed out his lower lip. “Aw—”
But he never got the remaining www’s out, because she kissed him. “Now don’t fuss, or I’ll kiss you again.”
He shut up immediately, looking cowed, perhaps even horsed.
Sim saw Wira and Debra exchange a knowing glance. He had learned to decipher such glances reasonably well. This one indicated that they thought Fray had female potential. She was in the process of becoming ready to be a babysitter. She was already learning how to handle males of any age. This was impressive, considering that she was merely a condensed cloud: visible air.
Soon he was carrying Ilene as he spiraled upward. It was awkward for his talons to hold her comfortably, so she was holding on to him, clinging to his back between his wings as if riding a centaur. He was aware of the gentle pressure of her thighs; she was on the verge of becoming a woman. Of course it wasn’t appropriate to think of that, considering her age. The Adult Conspiracy applied to all humans and most crossbreed humans.
“I’m only one year younger than you,” she said, as if reading his mind.
“Birds mature faster,” he said, feeling awkward.
“Not necessarily. Nimbus sees me as adult. That’s illusion, of course.”
And her talent was making illusions real. Suddenly she felt remarkably mature. “I think you ar
e teasing me,” he said wishing he could look directly at her to see how mature she looked.
“Not necessarily,” she repeated. “Even the smartest males can be stupid about women. I think you are the smartest, so you may be quite stupid in this respect.”
Of course that logic was fallacious. Nevertheless he felt the tips of his feathers blushing. She was definitely flirting with him. He tried to remain fully rational, but he loved it. If nine-year-old Fray Cloud was learning how to handle males, Ilene was that much further along, and evidently knew it.
So, being stupid in exactly the way she defined, he changed the subject. “I believe we are high enough now. We need to survey this world to determine its nature.”
“Yes. Meanwhile there is something else I wanted to talk to you about. You should have superior insight.”
“Having established that I’m stupid.”
She laughed and ignored it. “I am trying to help Nimbus perfect his talent. As I see it, making mixed metaphors real is potentially far more than an ordinary talent.”
“That would not be surprising. Nimby surely wants his son to have the best. But since Chlorine doesn’t want more than an ordinary boy, the power has to be subtle.”
“Yes. When Princess Ida agrees to something, it becomes true—provided it is suggested by someone who doesn’t know her talent. That is a formidable limitation. But Nimbus lacks that limit. He can’t make up mixed metaphors himself, but others can make them for him, even if they know his talent. That makes his companions quite powerful, limited only by their ability to shape their notions into mixed metaphors. Do you agree?”
She had worked it out well. “Yes. Therefore his companions should be cautious about their metaphors.”
“I am his chief companion. Should I explain to him the way I see his talent?”
“I think not. It would place a considerable burden on you, as he would demand ever more potent metaphors to exploit. He is after all a child in a way that you and I are not.”
“That’s what I thought. Thank you, Sim.” She kissed the feathers of the back of his neck.
Sim was electrified, but tried to mask it. “We were about to examine this world.”
“Of course.”
They looked. All he saw was a complicated array of surfaces and angles, with two very large projections almost like deadly pincers. This was a highly irregular world.
Ilene screamed.
Startled, Sim almost lost his altitude. “What’s wrong?”
“This world!” she cried. “It’s a nickelpede!”
Now suddenly he saw it. He had been looking at details, and overlooked the larger nature of it. Ilene had viewed the whole. Nickelpedes were perhaps Xanth’s most ferocious small monsters, gouging out nickel-sized discs from any tender flesh they found. This had to be the source of the idea of them. It explained why they had landed in a nest of nickelpedes; that was no coincidence.
“Nickelpede World,” he said. “We don’t want to stay here.”
“We must tell the others,” she said. “Before this world strikes.”
They spiraled down. As they approached the group they saw a series of flashes and heard pops. Hugo—or Hugo’s body—was conjuring cherries and throwing them. Perhaps for the entertainment of the children.
Then his sharp eyes spied better detail. They were throwing cherries at charging nickelpedes. They were not small ones, but large and ferocious. The world was already striking.
They landed. Ilene jumped off his back and ran to warn them. “This is Nickelpede World! We have to get off it now!”
No one argued. This was obviously no place to stay. Nickelpedes were voracious, and they would have no chance.
They grabbed on to Hugo in the Factor’s body, as before. There was a wrench, and they were somewhere else. They seemed to be on a massive leg of an eight-legged world.
Nobody moved. Standing right before them was a monstrous slavering spider. Her ferocious mandibles clicked. Sim had studied assorted animal languages, so understood what she was saying: “What did you do with my children?”
He clicked his beak in mandible language as well as he could. “We are travelers. We must have exchanged places with them.”
“Well, bring them back, tidbit,” she clicked.
“I’m afraid we can’t do that,” he replied.
She made a clicking sigh. “Then I suppose I’ll have to adopt you. You will learn to feast on fly juice.”
Sim translated that for the others. They reacted with horror. “This must be Spider World,” Hugo said. “We don’t want to stay here.”
But the spider mother was already forming a lasso of sticky silk. “Or maybe I’ll eat some of you instead,” she clicked. “There should be a fair amount of nutritious juice in some of you.” She flung the loop around them and jerked it expertly tight. They were securely caught.
“I’m going home!” Nimbus said. “I’m dissolving.”
“Not without me,” Ilene said, casting a regretful look at Sim. “I’m your babysitter.”
There was a pause during which nothing happened.
“It doesn’t work,” Nimbus said, starting to cry.
Ilene put her arms around him comfortingly. “It’s true,” she said to the others. “We can’t vacate.”
“The curse must have extended to the rest of us, when we traveled with the men,” Sim said, horrified. “Now we’re all caught.”
“Hang on!” Hugo cried. Actually they were all being squeezed against him as the loop tightened.
There was the wrench, and they were elsewhere, standing among huge ants. Sim noted peripherally that this world seemed to be shaped like a giant ant. A gi-ant.
“We must have exchanged with some ants,” the Factor said. “Maybe the spider mom will find them adoptable.”
“Let’s move on,” Debra said tightly. “Now.”
They moved on. Sim hoped they would get out of the bug realm and find some more compatible planet.
And they stood on a feathery surface. Could it be? “Let me check,” Sim said.
“Me too,” Ilene said.
In three quarters of a moment they were airborne, and in another moment and a quarter they confirmed it: “It’s shaped exactly like a bird!” Ilene said.
“Bird World,” Sim agreed. “This interests me. We must have exchanged with some feathers.”
“There would be others of your kind here,” she said thoughtfully. “Including females.” She was mature again, though the others had not seemed to notice it. Evidently she had made the illusion of greater age real mainly for him.
For some reason he suspected she might be against remaining on this world. “Yes.”
“We could put it to a vote.”
“That seems fair.” But he knew she was hoping the others would vote to move on.
And actually, did he really want to remain here, where he would be just one bird among many? The average bird was not particularly smart.
They glided down to rejoin the others. “It’s Bird World,” Ilene called. “Do we want to stay?”
They discussed it, and concluded that no, they did not want to remain on a world limited to birds. “Of course, if you really prefer it . . .” Wira said to Sim. She was always sensitive to the perspectives of others.
“I think not,” he said with mixed feelings. “For assorted reasons.”
“OoOoo!” Ilene said, kissing him on the beak.
That reason too.
The next was Centaur World. Now it was Debra’s turn to take stock. “But I’m not really a centaur,” she concluded. “I just want to return to my own form and fail to dazzle someone with my bra.” She kissed the Factor.
They passed assorted obscure worlds, none of which seemed satisfactory for long-term residence. Then they landed on one that most resembled a fluffy cloud.
“Cloud World!” Fray exclaimed, delighted. But then she thought it further through. “Mother’s not here. Daddy’s not here. I want to be shooting the breeze with them,
not strangers.”
The next world was like a giant building. “Oh, no,” the Factor said. “It’s the Factory! Move on before it captures us!”
They didn’t argue. In 1.3 moments they were on their way again.
The next was not exactly a landbound realm, and not exactly a cloudbound one. It was in between, with a formidable pearly gate rising from cloudstuff. A plaque on the golden bars said WELCOME TO HEAVEN.
Five of them tried to exchange three and a half glances. At least half a glance got lost in the shuffle. “Heaven?” Debra asked.
“Or a representation of it,” Wira said. “Does it matter? It should be a perfect place to stay.”
Sim wondered, but kept his beak shut. This was for the humans to sort out among themselves.
Wira knocked on a bar. “Is anyone home?” she called.
An angel appeared, flying over the gate. “Yes?”
Wira turned to Sim. “Maybe you should speak for us, as you may be more objective about this particular world.”
Sim nodded. “We are world-hopping, looking for a world where we can settle down. Is this one open?”
“That depends,” the angel said. “We have rather stringent requirements for residents. However, those who don’t make our standards will surely qualify for our companion realm, whose entrance is behind you.”
They turned and saw what they had missed before: a dark river and another gate. The sign on that one said WELCOME TO HELL.
“Oh, my,” Wira murmured.
“What are your requirements?” Sim asked.
“These relate to the condition of your souls. We assess them in the course of the tours, and decide.”
“Tours?” Sim asked.
“All prospective residents are provided with tours of each realm, so they understand exactly what they are getting into before they commit. It seems only fair.”
“Then let us take those tours,” Sim said.
“Excellent. Let me fetch my companion tour guide.” She flew across to the other gate. “Beau! We have a tour group.”
“The angel associates with a demon?” Ilene asked, amazed.
Already the angel was returning with a demon. This one had vestigial horns and a softly tufted tailtip, and wore spectacles. He was not a very ferocious example of his species. But of course demons could assume whatever form they preferred. “It is time to introduce ourselves,” she said brightly. “I am Angela Angel. This is Demon Beauregard. We met at a love spring.” She blushed prettily. “It was accidental. We both thought it was regular water.”