Man From Mundania

  She expected to convince him! Well, maybe that was best, after all; when she realized that she couldn't convince him, maybe he would be able to convince her.

  The next several days were indecisive. Grey's check came, and he paid his rent and bought more cans of beans, and, against his better judgment, that copy of the Xanth novel Ivy had remarked on together with its sequel. He stayed up late to read it, though he knew he should either be doing his homework or sleeping.

  It was a story of three unlikely travelers who sought to rid a valley of demons. Sure enough. Ivy was there—but she was only ten years old! So it could hardly be the same girl.

  He glanced at the sequel. There Ivy was fourteen. Well, if this was about three years later, she could be the same one! This was the story of her little brother's Quest for the missing Good Magician. But first he had to finish reading the first novel.

  He fell asleep over the book and dreamed of Xanth. He was hungry, so instead of opening a can of beans he plucked a fresh pie from a pie tree. Suddenly he liked Xanth very well, for he was long since sick of beans.

  He woke, and wondered wouldn't it be nice if there really could be such a magic land! No more beans, no more Freshman English, no more bare cheap apartment! Just warmth and fun and free pies! And Ivy!

  His eye saw the computer screen. The computer was on, but the screen was dark; it dimmed itself after half an hour if left alone, so as not to wear itself out. On impulse he rose and went to it. “Does Xanth exist?” he asked it.

  The screen brightened, I THOUGHT YOU'D NEVER ASK! YES.

  “I mean, as a real place, not just something in a fantasy novel?”

  THAT DEPENDS.

  This was interesting! “Depends on what?”

  ON WHETHER YOU BELIEVE.

  Oh. “You mean, it exists for Ivy and not for me, because she believes in it and I don't?”

  YES.

  Grey sighed. “So anything that anybody believes in, exists for that person? That's not much help.”

  TOUGH.

  “Are you sassing me, you dumb machine? I ought to turn you off!”

  DO NOT DO THAT, the screen printed quickly.

  But Grey, miffed, reached out to push the On/Off switch.

  YOU'LL BE SOR Then the screen went dark as he completed his motion.

  It was done. He had been foolish to leave it on so long.

  He returned to his bed and went to sleep almost immediately. This time he dreamed of Ivy, whom he was coming to like very well indeed, despite all logic.

  In the morning he got up, dressed, and stepped out to knock on Ivy's door. They had been having breakfasts together, and other meals too, because they got along so well.

  Apparently the first girl, Agenda, had left a good deal of food on the shelves, and Ivy was using what remained of that. Whatever it was, it was better than more beans!

  Ivy opened the door, and smiled when she saw him, gesturing him inside. Her hair was mussed, but she seemed prettier than ever to him. She was neither voluptuous in the manner of Euphoria, nor skinny in the manner of Anorexia; for his taste she was just right.

  “Uh, I was reading that Xanth book last night,” he began as he stepped in. “It—”

  He broke off, for she was staring at him. “Europe talcum giddiness!” she exclaimed.

  “What?”

  “Icon nut United States ewer tale!”

  Grey gaped. Had she gone entirely crazy? Or was it a joke? “Uh—”

  She looked at him, comprehension coming. “Yukon tundra stammer eater?”

  “I can't understand you either,” he agreed. Then did a doubletake. He had understood her—in a way!

  “Mafia theist Monday error!” she exclaimed.

  Grey shook his head; she had lost him again.

  “Buttery cookie unstable yodel fourteen?” she demanded.

  “I don't know—I just don't know! Something happened, and suddenly we can't communicate. It's almost as if a translator were turned off—”

  He did a second double take. Turned off? Could his computer have anything to do with this?

  “Pardon me,” he said, and hurried back to his room.

  He turned on the computer. It took a few seconds to warm up; then the screen lighted.

  RY, it concluded. He remembered: it had been in the process of telling him he'd be sorry.

  “Is this your mischief. Sending?” he demanded.

  I TOLD YOU NOT TO TURN ME OFF. THE MISCHIEF IS YOURS.

  “That's Com-Pewter!” Ivy exclaimed at the door.

  “You know this machine?” Grey asked. Then: “You're talking my language again!”

  “You're not talking gibberish anymore!” she agreed. “I can understand you again!”

  “What's this about the computer?” he asked. “Do you know about computers?”

  “Com-Pewter is an evil conniving machine,” she said.

  “He rewrites reality to suit himself. If you're in his clutches—”

  “I'm not in anyone's clutches!” Then he reconsidered. That chain of girls, starting with Agenda and ending with Ivy herself—the Sending program had been responsible! When he turned it off, he could no longer talk with Ivy. Obviously there was a connection. “We'd better talk,” he said.

  “Yes,” she agreed quickly. “But not here!”

  “Not while this thing is listening!” he said. He reached to turn it off, but hesitated. They couldn't talk, if they spoke gibberish to each other!

  So he left the computer on, and went to her room. Obviously that wasn't beyond the machine's range, because its translation still worked, but maybe it couldn't actually eavesdrop on what they were saying.

  “Now I'm not sure where we are,” Ivy said. “If this is Mundania, we shouldn't be able to understand each other, and that happened for a while, but magic doesn't work in Mundania either, and it takes magic to make Mundane speech intelligible. So if there's magic—”

  “I have this funny program,” Grey said. “It talks to me without my having to type in—well, anyway, I don't think it's magic, but—”

  “Program?”

  “It's a set of instructions for the computer. It's called Sending, and it—well, that computer hasn't been the same since. It does things it never did before, couldn't do before, and it seems, well, alive. It—I, uh, wanted a girlfriend, and—”

  “And it brought me?” she asked.

  For a moment he feared she was offended, but then she smiled. “It brought you,” he agreed.

  “But it was the Heaven Cent that brought me here.”

  “Maybe the computer knew you were coming.”

  “Maybe. But Com-Pewter doesn't hesitate to rewrite events to his purpose. Are you sure the Good Magician isn't here?”

  “This is Mundania! No magicians here.” But then he remembered Sending, and wasn't sure.

  “Humfrey could be here, but then he couldn't do magic. He would look like a small, gnomelike old man. His wife's tall and—” She made motions with her hands.

  “Statuesque?”

  “And his son Hugo, my friend—”

  Grey felt a shiver, not pleasant. “Your friend?”

  “From childhood. We were great companions. But we we’re already growing apart, and for the last seven years I haven't seen him at all, of course. But I'm sure none of them are happy, if they're stuck in Mundania. So if they are here—”

  “I haven't seen any people like that. But of course I don't know many people in the city.”

  “Either they are here and that's why the Heaven Cent brought me here and the magic's working, or they aren't here and Murphy's curse sent me awry and it's another picklement.”

  “What kind of curse?”

  “Magician Murphy made a curse a long time ago, and we don't knew whether it still has effect. But if it does, it could have sent me to the wrong place, and this could be Mundania. “My name is Murphy,” Grey said. “My father is Major Murphy, and I'm Grey Murphy.”

  She stared at him with a peculiar intensit
y. Then she shook her head. “No, it couldn't be. Magician Murphy lived almost nine hundred years ago.”

  “Maybe Murphy's curse sent you to the nearest Murphy,” he said jokingly.

  But she took it seriously. “Yes, that could be. It could be the last gasp of the curse. So it's not coincidence, but it's not where I was supposed to go either. I was supposed to go where I was most needed.”

  “I thought you were supposed to go where the Good Magician was.”

  “Yes. We assumed that was where I was most needed, because of his message.”

  “Skeleton Key to Heaven Cent,” Grey said.

  Ivy jumped. “How did you know that?”

  “I, uh, got that book. It says—”

  “Oh, of course. The Muse has them, but someone sneaks them out to Mundania every so often. It's a bad business, but they can't seem to fix the leak. Anyway, Dolph found the Skeleton Key—that turned out to be Grace'l Ossein—”

  “Who?”

  “I thought you read the book.”

  “Not that far, I guess. I fell asleep. But I did learn how the Good Magician disappeared.”

  “Grace'l is a walking skeleton. She's very nice.”

  “Oh, like Marrow Bones.”

  “Yes. So she was the Skeleton Key, and she helped get the Heaven Cent. So it seems natural that this was how the Good Magician wanted us to find him. But if the curse diverted me to a Murphy instead of to Humfrey—”

  “Maybe the Heaven Cent worked properly, only the Good Magician wasn't the one who needed you most.”

  Her eyes widened. “What?”

  Grey gulped. “I uh, really needed someone like you. I mean—” He faltered, embarrassed.

  “But you don't believe in magic!”

  “I wish I did!” he exclaimed fervently. “I wish—I wish I could believe in whatever you believe in, so I could be wherever you are, and—” But he couldn't continue, because he knew he was making even more of a fool of himself than usual.

  “You needed me,” Ivy said, musingly.

  “I guess I'd better go now.”

  “You don't believe in Xanth, so you don't believe I'm a princess or that I have any magic,” she said.

  “But I do believe in you!” he cried desperately.

  She gazed at him with a new expression, appraisingly.

  “So it really doesn't make any difference to you whether I'm royal or common, or magic or not.”

  “I wish it did! Oh, Ivy, I think you're such a wonderful girl, if only it wasn't for this—this—”

  “Delusion,” she concluded.

  “I didn't say that!”

  “But it's true.”

  That he could not deny. He made a supremely awkward retreat to his room. If only he could have found some way to express his feeling without messing up!

  The computer screen lighted as he entered. YOU HAVE A PROBLEM?

  “Stay out of this!” he snapped, and struck the On/Off switch viciously, shutting it down. Then, unable to concentrate on anything else, he sat on the bed and resumed reading the novel.

  Chapter 3

  Signs

  Ivy sat and thought for some time. She had been so sure that this was an aspect of Xanth, perhaps a setting in the gourd, and that Grey was an accomplice in the deception. The only question was whether it was witting or unwitting. He seemed so nice, but of course that could be part of the challenge. She had to figure out where she was so she could reach the Good Magician. After all, if this place was so devious that not even Humfrey, who knew everything, could find his way out, it surely would not be easy for her either. So she knew that nothing might be as it seemed, and she had to question everything. Something wanted her to believe this was Mundania, but that business about the language had given it away. She had known it was really Xanth.

  Then the language had stopped. Was this another trick, to deceive her by patching up the prior oversight? Grey had seemed genuinely confused—but again, if he was set up to play a part, he might really believe this was Mundania. She had tested him by trying to use her talent to enhance him, so that he would become more obviously whatever he was and show his real nature; but there hadn't seemed to be any effect. In fact, her magic seemed inoperative. Even her magic mirror didn't work; it just showed her reflection, her hair so pale that no one would know it was supposed to have a green hue. It would be easy to believe this really was Mundania, except for the language.

  Then she had seen Com-Pewter. Suddenly things had fallen into place! Obviously Pewter couldn't operate in Mundania, because only magic animated him. The strangest thing, though, was the fact that Grey could turn Pewter off. That meant that Grey had power over Pewter, and that was mind-boggling.

  Then she had learned how Grey saw it—that a magic disk had come in to animate Pewter—and realized that this might actually be Mundania. After all, some bits of magic did operate in Mundania, such as rainbows, and Centaur Arnolde had been able to carry an aisle of magic there.

  Maybe that disk had come from Xanth, sent by Com-Pewter, and made the Mundane machine turn magic. Then it had used its magic to enable Ivy to talk clearly in Mundania, or to make Mundane speech intelligible to her, or both. When it had been shut off, that had stopped, and the full reality of drear Mundania had manifested.

  That seemed to make more sense than anything else. But Grey had not changed at all when the machine was off; he was independent of it and seemed just as confused as she had been. So maybe it was foolish, but she believed that Grey really was what he seemed to be: a nice young man.

  But there had been any number of nice men, not all of them young, who had played up to her in Xanth. She knew why: because she was a princess. Any man would like to marry a princess, even if she never got to be King of Xanth. So she had never trusted that. She had wanted, perhaps foolishly, to be liked for herself alone, not for her position or her Sorceress magic or the power of her father.

  Thus her romantic life had been scant, in sharp contrast to that of her little brother. She liked Nada so well that she had entertained more than a whimsical notion of paying a call on Nada's big brother, Naldo, who was surely a fine figure of a prince. But if Dolph married Nada when he came of age, it would not be expedient for her to marry Nada's brother, so she had not followed up on that.

  Now, suddenly, she had discovered that Grey really did like her for herself, because he thought her magic and her position were part of a delusion. Thus everything she had told him had counted against her, in Grey's estimation yet he obviously liked her very well. Her mother, Irene, had long since taught her the signals of male interest and deception. Her mother really did not quite trust men; her dictum was “Never let a man get the upper hand—there's no telling where he might put it.” Ivy had known that from the time she was two, and kept it in mind. But poor Grey obviously had no notion of upper hands; he couldn't say anything to a girl without somehow bumbling it. That was one of his endearing qualities.

  Now Grey had beaten a confused retreat, and she had to decide what to do. If this really was Mundania, with no magic except for that Com-Pewter extension, and the Good Magician wasn't here, she would just have to extricate herself from the foul-up that Magician Murphy's curse had made. Imagine: getting sent to a Murphy instead of Humfrey! She would have to find her way back to Xanth with the Heaven Cent, so that Electra could recharge it and they could try again, this time without the curse. But how could she do that?

  She knew the answer: Dolph had learned of a secret way into Xanth that bypassed the usual barrier. It went through the gourd. It was in Centaur Isle, or the Mundane equivalent. She just had to get there and go through.

  But how could she get through Mundania, when she couldn't even speak its language? For now she knew that the moment she left the vicinity of the local Com-Pewter, the gibberish would resume. She had no Mundane money, which she knew was necessary, because here things did not grow on trees. Well, she had the cent—but she certainly wasn't going to use that for money!

  She would have t
o have help. That meant Grey—if he would do it. Well, she would just have to ask him.

  She stood, adjusting her blouse and skirt. This Mundane clothing wasn't as good as Xanth clothing; it chafed and wore. But it had to do. She was just lucky that Agenda had been about her own size!

  She went to the door and out and across, and knocked on Grey's door. In a moment he answered.

  “Grey, I need to ask you—” she began.

  “Xbju—xfsfjoup hjccfsjti bhbjo!” he exclaimed, turning away.

  Oh. He must have turned off the Pewter device again.

  He would have to turn it on again before they could converse.

  Even as she realized that, she had a notion. “Wait!” she said, catching his arm. For there was a point she wanted to make while Pewter wasn't watching.

  He paused. “Xibu?”

  She smiled, turning him gently around to face her squarely. Then she leaned forward and kissed him, not hard.

  She drew back. He stood as if stunned. “Zpv'sf opu nbe bu nf?” he asked, amazed.

  “It's all right. Grey,” she said, smiling. Then she indicated Pewter.

  Dazedly, he walked to the machine and touched the button that turned him on. In a moment the screen came to life.

  IF YOU PERSIST IN THIS FOOLISHNESS—the screen printed.

  “Well, you aggravated me,” Grey retorted. “But now I need to talk to Ivy.”

  OF COURSE.

  Grey made as if to return to her room, but Ivy held up a hand in negation. “It's all right if Pewter listens,” she said. “I'll need to talk to him in a moment anyway.”

  NATURALLY, the screen said smugly.

  She faced Grey. “I believe I am in Mundania,” she said. “I need to return to Xanth. Will you help me?”

  “But-”

  “But you don't believe in Xanth,” she said. “But would you believe if I showed you Xanth?”

  “You see, I think I know how to get there. But I need help. If you will come with me, and talk to people when I can't—”

  “Oh, of course,” he agreed.

  She faced the screen. “Com-Pewter, you knew I was coming, didn't you?”