"Scrubbing crucibles," the bat muttered under his breath. Clothahump had picked up his wand and was waving it through the air, mumbling cryptically. "Dat's all I ever do around here; wash da dishes, fetch da books, clean da dirt."
"If you're so disgusted, why stick around?" Jon-Tom regarded the bat sympathetically. He'd almost grown used to its hideousness. "Do you want to be a wizard so badly?"
"Shit, no!" Pog's gruffness gave way to agitation. "Wizarding's mighty dangerous stuff." He fluttered nearer. "I've indentured myself to da old wreck in return for a major, permanent transmogrification. I only got ta stick it out another few years... I tink... before I can demand payment."
"What kind o' change you got in mind, mate?"
Pog turned to face the otter. "Y'know da section o' town at da end of da Avenue o' da Pacers? Da big old building dere dat's built above da stables?"
"Cor, wot be you doin' thereabouts? You don't rate that kind o' trade. That's a high-rent district, that is." The otter was grinning hugely under his whiskers.
"I know, I know," confessed the disconsolate Pog. "I've a friend who made a killing on da races who took me dere one night ta celebrate. He knows Madam Scorianza, who runs da house for arboreals. Dere's a girl who works up dere, not much more dan a fledgling, a full flagon o' falcon if ever dere one was. Her name's Uleimee and she is," he fairly danced in the air as he reminisced, "da most exquisite creature on wings. Such grace, such color and power, Mudge! I thought I'd die of ecstasy." The excitement of the memory trembled in the air.
"But she won't have a thing ta do wid me unless I pay like everyone else. She dotes on a wealthy old osprey who runs a law practice over in Knotsmidge Hollow. Me she won't do much more dan loop da loop wid, but whenever dis guy flicks a feather at her she's ready ta fly round da world wid him."
"Forget 'er then, mate," Mudge advised him. "There be other birds and some of 'em are pretty good-lookin' bats. One flyin' fox I've seen around town can wrap 'er wings 'round me any time."
"Mudge, you've never been in love, have ya?"
"Sure I 'ave... lots o' times."
"I thought dat much. Den I can't expeet ya ta understand."
"I do." Jon-Tom nodded knowingly. "You want Clothahump to transform you into the biggest, fastest falcon around, right?"
"Wid da biggest beak," Pog added. "Dat's da only reason why I hang around dis hole waitin' wing and foot on da doddering old curmudgeon. I could never afford ta pay for a permanent transmogrification. I got ta slave it out."
Jon-Tom's gaze returned to the center of the room. Having miraculously cured the stab wound, the doddering old curmudgeon was beckoning for them to rejoin him. The windows were dimming rapidly.
"Come close, my friends." Mudge and Jon-Tom did so. Pog hung himself from the upper rim of a nearby bookcase.
"A great crisis threatens to burst upon us," the wizard said solemnly. It continued to darken inside the tree. "I can feel it in the movement of worms in the earth, in the way the breezes whisper among themselves when they think no one else is listening. I sense it in the pattern formed by raindrops, in the early flight of leaves this past autumn, in the call of reluctant winter seedlings and in the nervous belly crawl of the snake. The clouds collide overhead, so intent are they on the events shaping themselves below, and the earth itself sometimes skips a heartbeat.
"It is a crisis of our world, but its crux, its center, comes from another... from yours," and he stabbed a stubby finger at a shocked Jon-Tom.
"Be calm, boy. You yourself have naught to do with it." It was dark as night inside the tree now. Jon-Tom thought he could feel the darkness as a perceptible weight on his neck. Or were the other things crowding invisibly near, fighting to hear through the protective cloak the sorcerer had drawn tight about the tree?
"A vast malevolence has succeeded in turning the laws of magic and reason inside out, to bring spells of terrible power from your world into ours, to threaten our peaceful land.
"It lies beyond my meager skills to determine what this power is, or to cope with it. Only a great en'geeneer-magician from your own world might supply the key to this menace. Woeful difficult it be to open the portal between dimensions, yet I had to cast out for such a person. It can be done only once or twice in a year's tune, so great is the strain on parts of the mind. That is why you are come among us now, my young friend."
"But I've been trying to tell you. I'm not an engineer."
Clothahump looked shaken. "That is not possible. The portals would open only to permit the entrance of an en'geeneer."
"I'm truly sorry," Jon-Tom spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. "I'm only a prelaw student and would-be musician."
"It can't be... at least, I don't think it can." Clothahump abruptly looked very old indeed.
"Wot's the nature o' this 'ere bloomin' crisis?" the irrepressible Mudge demanded to know.
"I don't precisely know. I know for certain only that it is centered around some powerful magic drawn from this lad's world-time." A horny hand slammed a counter, rocking jars and cannisters. Thunder flooded the room.
"The conjuration could not have worked save for an en'geeneer. I was casting blind and was tired, but I cannot be wrong in this." He took a deep breath. "Lad, you say you are a student?"
"That's right."
"A student en'geeneer, perhaps?"
"Sorry. Prelaw. And I don't think amateur electric guitar qualifies me, either. I also work part time as a janitor at... wait a minute, now." He looked worried. "My official title is sanitation engineer."
Clothahump let out a groan of despair, sank back on the couch. "So ends civilization."
Pog let loose of the bookcase shelf and flew high above them, growling delightedly. "Wonderful, wonderful! A wizard of garbage!" He dove sharply, braked to hover in front of Jon. "Welcome oh welcome, wizard most high! Stay and help me make all da dirt in dis dump disappear!"
"BEGONE!" Clothahump thundered in a tone more suited to the throat of a mountain than a turtle. Jon-Tom and Mudge shook as that unnatural roar filled the room, while Pog was slammed up against the far side of the tree. He tumbled halfway to the floor before he could right himself and get shaky wings working again. He whipped out through a side passage.
"Blasphemer of truth." The turtle's normal voice had returned. "I don't know why I retain him...." He sighed, adjusted his spectacles, and looked sadly at Jon-Tom.
"Tis clear enough now what happened, lad. I was not precise enough in defining the parameters of the spell. I am an old turtle, and very tired. Sloppy work has earned its just reward.
"Months it took me to prepare the conjuration. Four months' careful rune reading, compiling the requisite materials and injunctives, a full cauldron of boiled subatomic particles and such--and I end up with you."
Jon-Tom felt guilty despite his innocence.
"Not to trouble yourself with it, lad. There's nothing you can do now. I'll simply have to begin again."
"What happens if you don't succeed in time, sir? If you don't get the help you think you'll need?"
"We'll probably all die. But it's a small matter in the universal scheme of things.
"That's all?" asked Jon-Tom sarcastically. "Well, I do have work to get back to. I'm really sorry I'm not what you expected, and I do thank you for fixing my side, but I'd really appreciate it if you could send me back home."
"I don't think that's possible, lad."
Jon-Tom tried not to sound panicked. "If you open this portal orwhatever for me, maybe I could find you the engineer you want. Any kind of engineer. My university's full of them."
"I am sure of that," said Clothahump benignly. "Otherwise the portal would not have impinged on the fabric of your world at the place and time it did. I was in the proper fishing ground. I simply hooked the wrong subject.
"Sending you back is not a question of choice, but of tune and preparation. Remember that I told you it takes months to prepare such a conjuration, and I must rest as near to a year as possible be
fore I risk the effort once more. And when I do so, I fear it must be for more important things than sending you back. I hope you understand, but it will not matter if you do not."
"What about another wizard?" Jon-Tom asked hopefully.
Clothahump sounded proud. "I venture to say no other in all the world could manipulate the necessary incantations and physical distortings. Rest assured I will send you back as soon as I am able." He patted Jon-Tom paternally with one hand and wagged a cautionary finger at him with the other.
"Never fear. We will send you back. I only hope," he added regretfully, "I am able to do so before the crisis breaks and we are all slaughtered." He whispered some words, absently waved his wand.
"Dissemination vanish, Solar execration banish. Wormwood high, cone-form low, Molecules resume thy flow."
Light returned, rich and welcome, to the dimensionally distorted interior of the tree. With the darkness went the feeling of unclean things crawling about Jon-Tom's back. Lizard songs sounded again from the branches outside.
"If you don't mind my saying so, your magic isn't at all what I expected," Jon-Tom ventured.
"What did you expect, lad?"
"Where I come from, magic formulae are always done up with potions made from things like spiders' legs and rabbits' feet and... oh, I don't know. Mystic verbs from Latin and other old languages."
Mudge snorted derisively while Pog, peering out from a doorway, allowed himself a squeaky chuckle. Clothahump merely eyed the pair disapprovingly.
"As for spiders' legs, lad, the little ones underfoot are no good for much of anything. The greater ones, on the other hand... but I've never been to Gossameringue, and never expect to." Clothahump gestured, indicating spiders as long as his arm, and Jon-Tom held off inquiring about Gossameringue, not to mention the whereabouts of spiders of such magnitude.
"As for the rabbits' feet, I'd expect any self-respecting rabbit to cut me up and use me for a washbasin if I so much as broached the idea. Words are time-proven by experimentation, and agreed upon during meetings of the sorcerers' grand council."
"But what do you use then to open a passage from another dimension?"
Clothahump edged conspiratorially close. "I'm not supposed to give away any Society secrets, you understand, but I don't think you'd even remember. You need some germanium crystals, a pinch of molybdenum, a teaspoon of californium... and working with those short-lived superheavies is a royal pain, I'll tell you. Some regular radioactives and one or two transuranics, the acquisition of which is a task in itself."
"How can you locate...?"
"That's other formulae. There are other ingredients, which I definitely can't mention to a noninitiate. You put the whole concatenation into the largest cauldron you've got, stir well, dance three times moonwise around the nearest deposit of nickel-zinc and... but enough secrets, lad."
"Funny sort of magic. Almost sounds like real science."
Clothahump looked disappointed in him. "Didn't I already explain that to you? Magic's pretty much the same no matter what world or dimension you exist in. Only the incantations and the formulae are different."
"You said that a rabbit would resist giving up a foot. Are rabbits intelligent also?"
"Lad, lad." Clothahump settled tiredly into the couch, which creaked beneath him. "All the warm-blooded are intelligent. That is as it should be. Has been as far back as history goes. All except the four-foot herbivores: cattle, horses, antelopes, and the like." He shook his head sadly. "Poor creatures never developed useful hands from those hooves, and the development of intelligenee is concurrent with digital dexterity.
"The rest have it, though. Along with the birds. None of the reptiles save us turtles, for some reason. And the inhabitants of Gossameringue and the Greendowns, of course. The less spoken about them, the better." He studied Jon-Tom.
"Now since we can't send you home, lad, what are we going to do with you...?"
III
Clothahump considered several moments longer. "We can't just abandon you in a strange world, I suppose. I do feel somewhat responsible. You'll need some money and a guide to explain things to you. You, otter, Mudge!"
The otter was intent on a huge tome Pog was avidly displaying. "Both of you get away from the sex incantations. You wouldn't have the patience to invoke the proper spirits anyhow. Serve you both right if I let you make off with a formula or two and you messed it up right clever and turned yourselves neuter."
Mudge shut the book while Pog busied himself dusting second-story windows.
"What d'you want o' me, your wizardness?" an unhappy Mudge asked worriedly, cursing himself for becoming involved.
"That deferential tone doesn't fool me, Mudge." Clothahump eyed him warningly. "I know your opinion of me. No matter, though." Turning back to Jon-Tom he examined the young man's attire: the poorly engraved leather belt, the scuffed sandals, the T-shirt with the picture of a hirsute human wielding a smoking instrument, the faded blue jeans.
"Obviously you can't go tramping around Lynchbany Towne or anywhere else looking like that. Someone is likely to challenge you. It could be dangerous."
"Aye. They might die alaughin'," suggested Mudge.
"We can do without your miserable witticisms, offspring of a spastic muskrat. What is amusing to you is a serious matter to this boy."
"Begging your pardon, sir," Jon-Tom put in firmly, "but I'm twenty-four. Hardly a boy."
"I'm two hundred and thirty-six, lad. It's all relative. Now, we must do something about those clothes. And a guide." He stared meaningfully at Mudge.
"Now wait a minim, guv'nor. It were your bloomin' portal 'e stumbled through. I can't 'elp it if you pinched the wrong chap."
"Nevertheless, you are familiar with him. You will therefore assume charge of him and see that he comes to no harm until such time as I can make other arrangements for him."
Mudge jerked a furry thumb at the watching youth. "Not that I don't feel sorry for 'im, your wizardship. I'd feel the same way toward any 'alf mad creature... let alone a poor, furless human. But t' make me responsible for seein' after 'im, sor? I'm a 'unter by trade, not a bloody fairy godmother."
"You're a roustabout by trade, and a drunkard and lecher by avocation," countered Clothahump with considerable certitude. "You're far from the ideal guardian for the lad, but I know of no scholars to substitute, feeble intellectual community that Lynchbany is. So... you're elected."
"And if I refuse?"
Clothahump rolled up nonexistent sleeves. "I'll turn you into a human. I'll shrink your whiskers and whiten your nose, I'll thin your legs and squash your face. Your fur will fall out and you'll run around the rest of your life with bare flesh showing."
Poor Mudge appeared genuinely frightened, his bravado completely gone. "No, no, your sorcererness! If it's destined I take the lad in care, I ain't the one t' challenge destiny."
"A wise and prosaic decision." Clothahump settled down. "I do not like to threaten. Now that the matter of a guide is settled, the need of money remains."
"That's so." Mudge brightened. "Can't send an innocent stranger out into a cruel world penniless as well as ignorant."
"Mind you, Mudge, what I give the lad is not to be squandered in wining and wenching."
"Oh, no, no, no, sor. I'll see the lad properly dressed and put up at a comfortable inn in Lynchbany that accepts humans."
Jon-Tom sounded excited and pleased. "There are people like me in this town, then?"
Mudge eyed him narrowly. "Of course there are people in Lynchbany Towne, mate. There are also a few humans. None your size, though."
Clothahump was rummaging through a stack of scrolls. "Now then, where is that incantation for gold?"
" 'Ere, guv'nor," said Mudge brightly. "Let me 'elp you look."
The wizard nudged him aside. "I can manage by myself." He squinted at the mound of paper.
"Geese... gibbering... gifts... gneechees... gold, there we are."
Potions and powders were once more brou
ght into use, placed in a shallow pan instead of a bowl. They were heaped atop a single gold coin that Clothahump had removed from a drawer in his plastron. He noticed Mudge avidly following the procedure.
"Forget it, otter. You'd never get the inflection right. And this coin is old and special. If I could make gold all the time, I wouldn't need to charge for my services. This is a special occasion, though. Think what would happen if just any animal could wander about making gold."
"It would ruin your monetary system," said Jon-Tom.
"Bless my shell, lad, that's so. You have some learning after all."
"Economics are more in my line."
The wizard waved the wand over the pan.
"Postulate, postulate, postulate.
Heavy metal integrate.
Emulate a goldecule,
Pile it high, shape it round,
I call you from the ground.
Metal weary, metal sound, formulate thy wondrous round!"
There was a flash, a brief smell of ozone. The powders vanished from the pan. In their place was a pile of shining coins.
"Now, that's a right proper trick," Mudge whispered to Jon-Tom, "that I'd give a lot to know."
"Come help yourself, lad." Clothahump wiped a hand across his forehead. "That's a short spell, but a rough one."
Jon-Tom scooped up a handful of coins. He was about to slip them into a pocket when their unusual lightness struck him. He juggled them experimentally.
"They seem awfully light to be gold, sir. Meaning no disrespect, but..."
Mudge reached out, grabbed a coin. "Light's not the word, mate. It looks like gold, but 'tis not."
A frowning Clothahump chose a golden disk. "Um. Seems to be a fine edge running the circumference of the coin."
"On these also, sir." Jon-Tom picked at the edge. A thick gold foil peeled away, to reveal a darker material underneath. High above, Pog was swimming air circles and cackling hysterically.
"I don't understand." Clothahump finished peeling the foil from his own specimen. He recognized it at the same time as Jon-Tom took an experimental bite.