“we were desperate.” Quiquell’s crying consisted of terse little sniffs, her incredible tongue flicking in and out with each diminutive sob.
By way of contrast Umagi bawled thunderously, shedding copious tears. “We were unable to resist his offerings. Foolishness and pride! He played to our weaknesses, inveigled us with magic words like rouge and eye shadow.”
Ansibette wiped streaks from her face as Jon-Tom fought the urge to take her in his arms and reassure her. Clothahump had once told him that tears were a female’s emotional warpaint. He was wary of sacrificing common sense on behalf of sympathy. The flat taste of dried fish in his mouth helped to steady him.
“Yes.” Aleaukauna picked up the sorrowful refrain. “When we were presented with those damnable IOUs to sign, a part of me sensed what he was about. Then he smiled and said ‘Buy one, get one free’ and I was lost.”
Seshenshe blew her nose, nodding knowingly. “And he ussed the most potent, most evil word of all.” For just an instant, a hint of white glaze seemed to spread over her corneas, clouding not only vision but reason and common sense. “Ssale.”
Mudge clucked his tongue sardonically. “An obscenity of a four-letter word if ever there were one.”
“I don’t understand.” Jon-Tom was honestly bemused. “You’re all royalty. I’d wouldn’t think you’d be affected by such terms.”
Turning to face one another, the princesses exchanged a glance. It was Ansibette who spoke. “Poor spellsinger. You really don’t understand.”
“No, he doesn’t.” Resting her chin on one set of knuckles, a wistful Umagi gazed aft. “You know, I think if we had shown a little reticence, he would have gone for two for one.”
A concerned Jon-Tom made a conscious effort to steer the conversation away from the incomprehensible. “Don’t worry about the boat. I’ll think of something to get us running again.”
“Oi, that ’e will!” Mudge clapped his friend on the back. “’E always thinks o’ somethin’. That’s usually the trouble.”
Neither rest nor food nor sleep provided the inspiration Jon-Tom had hoped for. Morning brought light but not illumination. Nothing for it, he decided resignedly, but to try what little he’d been able to come up with.
Climbing up into the pilot’s chair, he took a moment to make sure everything was ready: ignition key, throttle, control stick, duar. The few notes he drew from the venerable instrument floated out clear and pure on the humid morning air, pursued curiously by the cloud of lost chords. Then the luminescent mass of notes darted southwestward, returned to the buggy, and raced off again.
“Don’t bother me now,” he snapped at the cloud. “We have to see off these ladies. First we go to Mashupro, and only then to wherever you’ve been trying to lead us.”
Unable to work “aviation fuel” into a proper lyric and unwilling to risk the possible consequences of referring simply to “gas,” he instead sang a song of speed and propulsion, of rapid travel and calm voyage. Perhaps, he mused even as he improvised words and music, if he’d had any kind of background in country-western, coming up with a song about gasoline wouldn’t have required such a musical stretch.
Below, the soldiers and princesses waited and watched. Mudge clung to his seat’s struts with particular determination.
It was a most peculiar mist that emerged this time from the duar’s nexus. Not that they weren’t all outlandish to some degree, he knew as he sang. The billowing vapor was smaller in volume than he’d hoped for, and in hue an unpromising pale blue. Certainly it didn’t look like any kind of fuel, nor did it boast the promising cylindrical silhouette of a fifty-five-gallon drum.
So startled was he by what finally coalesced out of the haze that he halted in midsong, something he rarely did. The cloud of chords went suddenly silent and darted forward to hide itself beneath the sharply angled prow of the swamp buggy.
“What is that?” Like her sister princesses, Ansibette gaped unashamedly at the manifestation.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” exclaimed a wide-eyed Umagi.
“Well, I have!” Naike’s words were as unexpected as his reaction. Drawing his sword, he leaped forward.
“Wait a minim there, guv!” Mudge jumped in front of the determined Lieutenant.
The other soldiers had also drawn their weapons and stood poised to attack. “But it’s one of the Plated Folk!” Heke insisted. “The loathsome, the ruthless, the dreaded Plated Folk.”
Unimpressed, Mudge was studying the apparition carefully. “Nope, I don’t ’appen to think it ’tis.”
“Well, then, what is it?” While allowing himself to be restrained, Naike continued to eye the creature nervously. For its part it ignored them all as it calmly examined its surroundings.
“Look ’ere, guv. ’Ave you actually seen one o’ the Plated Folk? ’Ave any o’ you?”
The soldiers looked uncertainly at one another. It was left to Naike to respond.
“Well, no, not actually. Not in person. But we have all of us heard the tales and seen drawings.”
“That so? As it ’appens, Jon-Tommy an’ I ’ad the occasion many years ago to deal with more Plated Folk than you can think exist, an’ dealt with ’em we did!” He indicated the creature standing before them. “This one’s attired an’ postured all wrong.”
“So it’s a fashion-conscious Plated One.” Heke’s eyes never left the visitor.
“Mudge is right,” Jon-Tom avowed. “This being has one set of limbs too many. All Plated Folk have six, and this has eight. Nor is it one of the Weaver People.”*
Cocking its head to peer up at him, the creature declared coolly, “You are observant. I am not one of these plated creatures, whatever they may be.”
“Don’t talk like ’em, neither.” Mudge looked vindicated.
In lieu of further comment the visitor turned its attention to the device it held in two of its four hands, scrutinizing with great compound eyes the readouts plainly visible on one perfectly machined surface.
“What are you?” Utterly baffled, Jon-Tom stared at the visitation. Surely his spellsinging hadn’t called it up! “What are you doing here?”
“You think I like doing this?” It spoke without looking up at him. “Popping in and out of alternate realities like a blind nursemaid looking for the right brood tunnel? It’s difficult, dangerous, time-consuming, and frustrating.”
“Sounds like it.” Mudge agreed without having the faintest idea what the creature was talking about. Behind him, Naike and the other soldiers were starting to relax. Their visitor sounded much less threatening than it looked.
“You may call me Cazpowarex. In deference to your simple minds I will answer to Caz.”
Mudge bristled. “Who you callin’ simple-minded, ya bleedin’ oversized—”
“Mudge,” Jon-Tom said warningly, “where’s your sense of hospitality?”
“In the bloody ’ospital, in intensive care, mate.” But the otter did not move to attack. How fortunate he was, he could not have imagined.
The one who called himself Caz considered the four mongoose soldiers, the covey of princesses, and in the forefront of the group, a single fuming otter. But his attention focused on Jon-Tom.
“You I know. You are human. These others are alien to me. As is this entire plenum.” A raspy, cluttering sound emerged from the breathing spicules which lined his thorax. “This is what happens when one goes mucking about with space-time.”
“I was trying to conjure some aviation fuel.” Jon-Tom couldn’t think of anything else to say. “And instead, you showed up.”
“Coincidence.” The creature had a voice no less mellifluous than Ansibette’s. Feathery antennae bobbed. “Aviation fuel? I wonder at your time-frame. Ah! Now I have it. Petroleum distillates which are burned to provide motive power?”
“That’s it!” exclaimed Jon-Tom excitedly.
“Afraid I can’t help you there. My kind did away with such wasteful practices centuries ago. As will your own.”
Jon-Tom’s fascinated gaze fixed on the complex backpack and side pouches the visitor wore. Wherever, whenever it came from, it was a place technologically more advanced than his own. He wished Clothahump were present, though he suspected that this was one confluence conflicted enough to baffle even that wise old turtle.
“You’d better be more respectful o’ who you’re talkin’ to, guv.”
The creature’s head swiveled to face the otter. “Why?”
“Uh”—Mudge moved to slide slightly behind Naike—“me friend an’ boon companion there just appens to be the greatest spellsinger who ever was.”
Returning his attention to Jon-Tom, Caz inquired with open curiosity, “What, precisely, is a spellsinger?”
“I’ll tell you wot ’e is.” Mudge barked a reply before Jon-Tom could answer. “’E’s a bloomin’ sorcerer! ’E makes magic, ’e does.”
“There is no such thing as magic,” the one called Caz declared conclusively.
“No such things as—” Ignoring Jon-Tom’s frantic shushing motions the otter raced on. “Why, ’e can make things appear where none were afore! ’E can turn rocks to metal, an’ alter the shape o’ reality, and bring into existence anythin’ you can dream of!” The otter’s voice fell slightly. “That is, ’e can most o’ the time. Sometimes,” he concluded with an apologetic glance in his exasperated friend’s direction, “’e screws up.”
“I believe I understand.” The creature was less than impressed. “He is an engineer.”
“No, no.” Jon-Tom was finally able to get a word in. “I’m not an engineer, I’m a—” Mouth agape, he froze in midsentence.
An engineer had been what the wizard Clothahump had been seeking when he’d reached into Jon-Tom’s world all those many years ago. Instead, he’d reeled in Jonathan Thomas Meriweather—amateur rock guitarist, law student, and part-time “sanitation engineer.”
Now this. Where did reality end and coincidence begin? The same place, he decided, where science became magic and magic become science. I live, he decided, in an interesting cosmos.
Better just to play along.
“I, too, am searching for something.” Demonstrating a double-jointedness not even the otters could match, Caz reached back with a lower arm to adjust several contact switches on his complex burden of electronics. “That I am here at all is thanks only to a project still in the experimental stage. If I were to suddenly explode in a million fragments before your eyes, I would not be surprised.”
“I would be,” commented Mudge. “Not necessarily disappointed, but surprised.”
“For my initial experiment I have chosen to track something specific across space-time,” the visitor went on. “It is proving more difficult than I envisioned, no doubt due to the largely insubstantial nature of my quarry. I had believed wave forms simpler to trail than particles. It seems that I may have been mistaken.”
“What are you looking for?” Jon-Tom inquired, interested in spite of his own difficulties.
“That’s the trouble: I’m pupaed if I can remember.” Delicate antennae switched and bobbed in frustration. “Traveling between realities seems to affect the memory. The only thing I am certain of—and he turned so sharply that Jon-Tom jerked back in his seat—“is that it has to do with you.”
“Righty-ho,” barked Mudge. “Actually, we’re just casual friends, him an’ I. Not close a’tall. Nothin’ much to do with one another, really.” He stepped completely behind Naike.
“There is an energetic aura surrounding you,” Caz went on. “Such auras attract.”
“Is that what ’tis called?” Mudge pinched his nose. “Always tended to put me off, it did.”
Imitating an all-too-human gesture, the creature shook its head from side to side. “Try as I will, I cannot recall the particulars of my quest. It is most frustrating. So I have resorted to tracking your very specific and bright aura in the hopes that it will lead me to that which I seek. Memory is a most pernicious thing.”
“How long have you, um, been following us?” Jon-Tom asked.
“Too long. Until now you have always been a stride or two ahead of me. Speaking nonlinearly, of course. One rattles around the continuum like a larvae in a maturation chamber. And now that I have finally caught up with you, I cannot recall why it was necessary.”
“Because ’e’s a spellsinger an’ maybe can ’elp you with ’is magickin’?” Mudge ventured cautiously.
“I tell you there is no such thing as magic! There is only physics, immutable regardless of how it is labeled.”
Clothahump would understand that, Jon-Tom thought.
As Caz’s tone turned doleful, Jon-Tom, having been on a quest or two himself in his time, felt suddenly sympathetic.
“This insertion has been a waste,” the visitor was muttering aloud. “I am forced to return home to try and determine what it was I traveled here to find.”
“Sounds like a good idea to me.” Mudge was more than ready to be rid of their eccentric, not to mention incomprehensible, visitor.
“I really should make a note to carry with me. That would solve the problem. But the memory distortion which seems an unavoidable consequence of the transposition causes me to forget to do even that. I must find a way out of this conundrum!”
So saying, he fingered the controls on the backpack. The blue vapor reappeared and enveloped him. It was not unlike the mists which emerged from Jon-Tom’s duar: slightly different in intensity, more structured in appearance.
When it dissipated, there was no sign that Caz had ever been there. Only his body odor lingered awhile, a faint scent of roses and lilac that stood out sharply amid the turgid stink of the marsh.
Though it looked no different from any other part of their craft, no one cared to step through the space formerly occupied by their visitor. Only Mudge went near, his black nose working overtime as it sampled the faintly singed air.
“Quaint little bugger. Polite enough, though.”
“Where did it come from?” asked Seshenshe.
“Where did it go?” inquired Pivver.
“And what did it want?” wondered Aleaukauna.
“That thing on its back,” Jon-Tom murmured. “Advanced science. Or magic. As the creature said, it’s all in how you choose to define it. It certainly wasn’t the product of Plated Folk technology. Wherever it came from lies far, far from this world. Probably in time as well as space.”
Prosaic as always, Naike interrupted. “Speaking of time, we are not making any while we sit here gabbing. We are no longer in the main channel and the current here is slack. This craft is equipped with neither oars nor sail.” As if to emphasize his impatience, the cloud of chords chimed away at the prow of the boat, a musical bowsprit.
Jon-Tom considered his duar. “I’m not sure I should try this again. I don’t know if I called up that creature or if it simply materialized on its own, and I’d hate to conjure something worse. But if you’re all against drifting awhile …”
The response was loud and earnest. Shrugging, he reprised the same melody and rhythm as best as he could recall it, not forgetting to modify the lyrics in what he hoped would be a more efficacious manner.
Encouragingly, the duar responded this time with light that was charcoal gray instead of blue, dull instead of intense. On the other hand, nothing much coalesced out of the consequent vapor. The engine gurgled thirstily a couple of times and then was silent.
As time wore on, so did Jon-Tom’s voice. Not the most salubrious of singers when at his best, his increasingly haggard vocalizing was beginning to grate even on the most tolerant of the princesses. They began to whisper among themselves. Even Naike was prompted to inquire aloud if there was anything he could do to facilitate the process.
Jon-Tom took a break, to rest his larynx and fingers as well as the ears of his captive audience. “The magic doesn’t work every time,” he grumbled.
“’Ere now, mate. Far be it from me to be overly encouragin’, based on certain past experien
ces which shall remain unrecalled in this company, but maybe you’re puttin’ too much pressure on yourself. Instead o’ strugglin’ to come up with somethin’ new, ’ow about tryin’ the old method?” Mudge smiled encouragingly. “Use one o’ the songs you know from your home world, like you used to.”
“I can’t think of any hard rock songs that deal with gasoline. Cars, sure, but not gas. And if I were to try ‘Born to be Wild’ or ‘Turbo Lover’ or even ‘Little Deuce Coupe’ and conjure up a car, it wouldn’t do us much good out here.”
“That’s for sure,” the otter agreed readily. “Wot’s a car?”
Jon-Tom sighed wearily. “Never mind. There’s got to be another way.” He brightened. “Sure! That’s it!”
“Righty-ho, mate, that’s it. Wotever it is.” Climbing down from the first step on the driver’s chair and seeking what cover he could find, he retreated from his friend. Meanwhile, Jon-Tom raised his hands to the duar’s strings and began to play. And to sing an old familiar song.
Whether it would be of any help to them remained to be seen.
A pale, silvery fog billowed from the duar. It curled around the silent engine like a great, ghostly anaconda, its tendrils probing the interior. The scarred, oil-stained metal sucked up the mist like a sponge. Encouraged, Jon-Tom played on. It was a relief to be able to fall back on well-known lyrics instead of having to concoct his own.
When the song reached its end and the last of the argent vapor had vanished into the machine, he swung his duar onto his back, took a deep breath, and tried the ignition.
A throaty snarl rose from the depths of the P&W as it sprang instantly to life. Soldiers and princesses cheered.
“See there?” Mudge gestured proudly at his companion. “Nothin’ to it. Works every time, it does.” He lowered his voice as he leaned toward Pivver. “’Course, every once in a while I ’ave to tell ’im ’ow to go about it. ’E really would be lost without me.”
The otter princess’s expression was carefully neutral. “I have no doubt of that.”
Mudge’s whiskers twitched upward as he looked back at his friend. “Interestin’ spellsong. Don’t recall ’earin’ ’im mention the magic word gas, though.”