Around them the forest stood silent sentinel, seemingly unchanged. Before him he saw their campsite and supplies.
Clothahump lay on his back, kicking violently and attempting to right himself. Mudge sat on a rock, grasping at various parts of his body as if to reassure himself of his restored solidity. Dormas lay prone on the far side of the fire. She quickly rolled onto her knees and stood. Once more capable of flight, a relieved Sorbl took to the air to scan the woods surrounding them, darting in tight, happy circles overhead, whistling the defiant cry of his clan.
Clothahump barked an order at Jon-Tom, snapping him out of his rapidly fading chordal reverie. “Don’t just stand there gaping, my boy! Give me a hand. I’d turn myself, but I fear the transformation has weakened me more than I first thought.”
Lazy, Jon-Tom thought. The turtle was perfectly capable of standing by himself. But he put his duar aside and, together, he and Mudge stood the wizard back on his feet.
“A bad one, that,” Clothahump commented. “I should not have enjoyed continuing through life without a skeleton.
Mudge settled himself back on his tree. “You’re right. There’s worse things than goin’ through a change o’ sex. At least you look like somethin’. Me, I could use a good stiff one.”
“Under the circumstances, I believe we could all do with a drink.” He waddled toward their packs. “Will you join us, Dormas?”
“Under the circumstances, you bet your shell-shocked ass I will.”
The bottle was passed around, and when each of them had sipped from the same opening, shared the same liquor, the feeling of a real bond between them was stronger than ever.
“I’ll just repack it for you, Master.” Sorbl tried hard but failed to completely mask the eagerness in his voice.
“I will manage.” The wizard fumbled with the carton from which he’d extracted the bottle. “Otherwise we will not have the advantage of your excellent eyesight for very long. We may need it the next time this happens.”
“You’re sure there’ll be a next time soon?” Jon-Tom inquired.
“I did not mention a frequency. There is no way of predicting the perambulator’s perturbations. We could suffer three or four in a single day and then go for weeks without incurring anything more upsetting than momentarily blurred vision. One of the few certainties about a perambulator is its uncertainty. One can no more predict the frequency of occurrence than one can the severity. Truly it is most unsettling.”
“Tis freakin’ weird is wot it is, guv’nor!” Mudge slid down atop his bedroll and put a paw to his forehead. “All of a sudden I feel like I ate somethin’ with little green things growin’ out of it.”
Jon-Tom would have grinned, except for the discovery that his own stomach was doing flip-flops. Sure enough, all of his companions were suffering similar dysenteric effects. Dormas was trembling on her feet.
Looking none too healthy himself, Clothahump was studying each of them in turn. “Yes, I, too, am experiencing the symptoms of an unpleasant internal disorder.” He winced, closing his eyes briefly. “It appears to be developing with extraordinary rapidity, for which we may find reason to be grateful.”
“Another—perturbation already?” Jon-Tom groaned.
“No, I think not. Rather, the aftereffects. The minuscule creatures we became, it seems, were not entirely harmless. As you may recall, each was slightly different in size and appearance from the other.”
“You think they’re causing the pains we’re feeling now? That they were disease-causing organisms?” Jon-Tom wondered aloud.
The wizard sat down very carefully. “We did not notice this at the time because a disease is most unlikely to generate its own symptoms within itself. Now it is different. We have each of us become the disease that we were.”
Jon-Tom’s stomach settled even as he felt beads of sweat start from his forehead. First upset, then fever. At least whatever it was they had contracted was moving through their bodies with unnatural speed. He glanced over at Mudge.
“How about you? My stomach’s okay now, but I’m bum-ing up.”
“No fever in me, I thinks, mate,” replied the otter. “Trouble is, I’ve developed this bloody itch.”
“That’s too bad. Where?”
“I’d rather not get too specific, mate.” He looked to his left, to where Sorbl was landing unceremoniously in the bushes. Unpleasant bodily noises soon reached them.
Emulating Clothahump, Jon-Tom took a seat. Since this wasn’t a perturbation but merely the aftereffects of one, it should pass soon enough. He might have tried to spellsing them back to health, but he didn’t want to push his luck. Besides which, he didn’t feel very much like singing just then.
From what little he could tell, Dormas appeared to be suffering from an unbelievably accelerated case of hoof-in-mouth. Clothahump was now blowing his nose nonstop and giving every indication of trying to ride out a severe cold. He stared across at Jon-Tom through suddenly swollen eyes.
“How interesting. Red blotches are beginning to appear on your—on your—achoo!—face.”
“Measles.” Jon-Tom swallowed, wiping sweat from his brow. “I never had the measles. This isn’t so bad after all. I’ll have them and be done with them permanently in a day or so instead of a couple of weeks. How about that? We finally get something beneficial out of a perturbation.”
“Don’t try to tell that to Sorbl.” The wizard nodded toward the trees behind Jon-Tom. From within the brush pitiful retching sounds alternated with less pleasant ones.
“Too bad.” Of them all, Mudge appeared the least affected by his personal infection. “Needs to lead a ‘ealthier life, the poor sod.”
“I have not had a cold in some time,” observed Clothahump. “And you say you have never had these measles before?” Jon-Tom nodded. “It appears then that each of us has contracted something new to our systems, or at the very least something which we have have not experienced in some time.”
“Blimey, you’d think you were all dyin’, wot with all this sneezin’ and sweatin’ and pukin’ an’ all. Wot you chaps need is—” He halted in mid-sentence and his eyes got very wide. Abruptly he bent over and grabbed his crotch with both paws. The reason for his earlier reluctance to identify the location of his itch was now apparent.
Clothahump studied the bent-over otter studiously as he blew his nostrils for the fortieth time. “A new and particularly virulent strain, I should say.”
“Of what?” Jon-Tom touched his cheek with one hand, felt the heat.
“Difficult to say. Gonorrhea, perhaps, or something even less comfiting.” The otter was rolling around on the ground and moaning while he clutched at his privates. Since the diseases they had contracted were moving with exceptional rapidity through their bodies, each of them was suffering the cumulative effects of his or her respective infection. None was more discomforting than the otter’s.
“It ain’t fair,” he was shouting at a vicious fate, “it ain’t fair!”
“Nothing the perambulator does is fair, Mudge.”
“It can’t be. I mean, everyone’s been clean wot I’ve been with the ‘ole bloomin’ year.”
“Doesn’t mean anything to a perturbation,” Jon-Tom told him sympathetically.
Breathing hard, the otter at last rolled to a stop. Sitting up, he pulled down his shorts and commenced to examine himself in detail. “Blimey, you don’t think there’ll be any permanent effects, do you, mate?”
“Mudge, I have no idea. I hope that I’m going to be immune to measles from now on, but I’ve no way of knowing for sure. None of us do.”
Clothahump adjusted his glasses, blew his nose yet again, and murmured, “Poetic justice.”
Mudge’s head snapped around, and he glared at the turtle, barely suppressing the frustration and fury he felt. “If we didn’t absolutely need you to straighten out this rotten mess the world ‘as got itself into, Your Wizardshit, it would give me the greatest pleasure to knock your bloody smug face down into your
bloody arse.”
“I did not make the comment out of a casual desire to provoke.” Clothahump was not in the least concerned with the otter’s threat. “I have had occasion to notice, water rat, that you are a great one for laughing at the misfortunes of others. But when it is your own person that is involved in disquieting circumstances, your sense of humor absents itself.”
“Don’t be too hard on him,” Jon-Tom requested. “Really, sir. There’s nothing funny about venereal disease. Why, it could cause shriveling and complete ruination of his—”
Mudge let out a cry of despair and fell over on his side.
VII
They recovered from their assorted infections by the following midday. Jon-Tom had suffered and been done with a severe case of measles in less than twenty-four hours. Clothahump’s cold had left him, and Sorbl no longer had to vanish into the bushes every five minutes. Having contracted the most serious disease of all, Dormas was the last to recover. None of them had any permanent damage to show for their respective bouts.
Mudge was as fit as any of them, having been fully restored to health. That didn’t keep him from taking occasional peeks at himself when he thought no one was looking.
“Relax, Mudge,” Jon-Tom told him. “It’s all over. Pretend it never happened. We’re as healthy as we were the day before last. There are no aftereffects.”
“Bloody well better not be.” He was helping Dormas adjust her load. “If that blasted perambulator baiter’s ‘urt me love life, I’ll dice Mm for a stew.”
“I’m sure you’re none the worse for wear, Mudge. Everyone else is healthy again. You must be too.”
“Well—on close inspection she all appears to be in workin’ order, but I ain’t really in a position to find out for sure. One thing’s certain: I’m goin’ to take ‘er slow an’ easy at first.”
Jon-Tom nodded approvingly. “Thataboy. It wouldn’t hurt you to rein in your profligate life-style a little, anyway.”
“You may be right, mate.” Mudge slipped his longbow over his shoulders. Then he raised one paw, put the other one over his heart, and solemnly intoned, “No more orgies. No more a different lady every night. By the digger of dens, I swear this. I’m goin’ to cut down.”
“It was worth the trouble if it made a new otter out of you. There’s nothing wrong with seeking pleasure in moderation for a change, you know.”
“Aye, mate. It made me see the light, that bloomin’ infection did. I’ve done wot I pleased lo these many years without ‘avin’ a care to wot I might be doin’ to me body. Tis time for a bit more maturity. If I start watchin’ meself, maybe I’ll never ‘ave to suffer with that kind o’ sickness for real.” He shouldered his own small backpack and started briskly up the narrow game trail they’d been following.
“Much as it’s goin’ to ‘urt,” he muttered. “I guess I’ll ‘ave to restrict meself to a different lady every other night.”
Clothahump was shaking his head as he waddled off in the otter’s wake. “Incorrigible, as are most of his kind. You can try your best, my boy, but water rats are unreformable.”
Jon-Tom fell into step alongside him, keeping his strides short to match the wizard’s. “You can’t expect him to turn into a church mouse overnight, sir.”
“I expect him to turn into a desiccated corpse one night is what I expect. But keep trying. Far be it from me to dampen your enthusiasm.”
“You may be right, sir, but keep trying I will.” He let his eyes shift forward. Mudge was leading the way, those bright black eyes darting left and right, missing nothing. He was whistling cheerfully.
At least he’ll die happy, Jon-Tom mused. And who was he, unwilling visitor from another place and time, to criticize? This world had already forced him to relinquish many long-held moral precepts. He would never degenerate to the otter’s level, of course, but neither was he the same person he’d been when Clothahump had mistakenly brought him over. Nor could he exactly be called pure, having enjoyed a joint on occasion and spent more than his fair share of study time trying to focus his roommate’s binoculars on the girls’ dormitory across the way from their apartment.
So who was he to judge Mudge? At least the otter knew how to have fun. Jon-Tom had to work at it. It was the lawyer in him. He was too restrained, too much in control of himself. Maybe one day Mudge would be able to show him how to really let go.
You worry too much, that’s one of your problems, he told himself. Like right now, you’re worrying about worrying too much.
Angrily he kicked at a rock (making certain it was not a pinecone) and tried to think of something else. Nothing was more frustrating than arguing with yourself and losing.
As if doing penance for all the trouble it had caused recently, the perambulator did not trouble them for some time. They marched on, climbing steadily across the plateau, unaffected by discombobulating dislocations, save for a few minor ones. Jon-Tom spent one morning trying to adjust to being suddenly left-handed, while one evening Mudge’s fur turned pure silver. Not silver-colored, but solid strands of metallic silver. He was bitterly disappointed when he changed back before he could give himself a shave.
At the same time Dormas was transformed into a gloriously hued palomino, Jon-Tom acquired the skin tone of a Polynesian, and Sorbl’s brown-and-gray feathers all turned to gold. It was a reminder, Clothahump declared, that not all the perambulator’s perturbations need necessarily have harmful consequences. Jon-Tom was disappointed when his artificial tan vanished along with the rest of the changes. It would have stood him in good stead at the beach.
He’d managed to use his spellsinging to help relieve the discomforts of certain perturbations. What he needed now was a song that would enable him to make the effects of selected perturbations permanent. Like his briefly acquired tan, for example. It would be nice if he could figure out how to freeze a perturbation that added forty pounds of muscle to his upper body or raised his IQ a hundred points.
It gave him something to concentrate on as they continued their climb. Eventually he broached the idea to Clothahump.
“A dangerous proposition, my boy. Particularly when one takes into account the notorious inaccuracy of your spellsinging.”
“You’ll have to come up with something besides that if you’re going to stop me from trying, sir.”
The wizard sighed. “I do not doubt it. Consider this, then: Instead of perpetuating a benign perturbation—you could not merely alter its effect with your spellsinging—you could transform it into something terrible and uncontrolled.”
“But think of the possibilities, sir, if it could be done right! For example, suppose we were to be struck by a perturbation that took a hundred years off your life? You could be young again, physically as well as mentally vigorous.”
“To be granted another hundred years of activity, that is tempting, my boy. Yes, tempting. To a certain extent we can prolong life, but we cannot restore what has already been used. But a perturbation—yes, a perturbation could possibly accomplish that.” It appeared to Jon-Tom as if the wizard was growing slightly misty-eyed behind his six-sided spectacles.
“Certainly it would be worth considering. Sadly, you youngsters tend not to take the time to balance possible gains with probable risks. Think about it, though, if it pleases you.”
Jon-Tom did so, enthusiastically at first and then with more and more caution. There was only one problem with a perturbation that would take a hundred years off the wizard’s life. It would also make Jon-Tom seventy-four years less than being born, a difficult position from which to rescue oneself. Maybe trying to make the effects of a perturbation permanent wasn’t such a good idea after all. It wasn’t long before he dropped the once-promising idea completely. The perambulator was dangerous because it monkeyed with reality. Monkeying with the monkey, he decided, could be more dangerous still.
Thoughts of freezing the perambulator’s effects were soon replaced by thoughts of freezing things closer to home. They were well to the north of ev
en Ospenspri by now. The nights had become very cold, but the sunlit days were still quite tolerable. Winter was still several weeks away from wrapping the northern portions of the warmlands in a blanket of white.
The chill did not trouble the thickly furred Mudge or the heavily feathered (and well-lubricated) Sorbl. Nor did it appear to bother Dormas. But both Jon-Tom and Clothahump were warm-weather types. They could cope with the late fall weather but not with snow and ice.
The extent of Clothahump’s concern for the weather was indicated by the fact that he alluded to it at least once a day. “We must find and release the perambulator soon, or winter will trap us here on the plateau. I am not anxious to save the world, only to freeze to death as a result of doing so.”
“We’ll make it,” Jon-Tom assured him confidently. “If we run into any serious weather on the way out, Dormas can carry us. Remember, her contract stipulates that her ban against riders doesn’t include the injured or incapacitated.”
“She would still require assistance in finding her way back down the plateau.”
“Sorbl can guide her.”
The wizard let out a snort of derision. “I would not trust my famulus to guide me to the bathroom.”
“All right, then, Mudge could do it.”
Clothahump glanced at Mudge, who was blissfully whistling away, cracking nuts on a flat boulder with a fist-sized chunk of granite. Then he looked back at Jon-Tom.
“I am glad that after all you have been through these past months, you still retain your unique sense of humor.”
“I know that sometimes Mudge acts like less than the ideal companion, but if it came down to a real life-or-death situation, I’m sure he’d be there to help me. He’s demonstrated that he’s prepared to do that on several previous occasions.”
“Which is no indication that he hasn’t experienced a change of heart,” the wizard argued. “I think your confidence is badly misplaced, my boy.”