Instead of tall, graceful buildings with fluted walls, the valley that lay beneath the black cloud was occupied by a succession of mud and adobe huts. Dirty water flowed down a few central canals. These joined together below the city to form a single river. What beggared comprehension was not the fact that the water above the city flowed clear and pure, but that it appeared to become fresh again the instant it left behind the city limits. It was as though the pollution it acquired within the city was unable to depart with the current.
Yet there was no sign of any kind of filtering or treatment system where the canals became river.
There were plenty of trees among the houses, as Clothahump had predicted. Every one of them was dead, and not from the onset of winter. They had been blighted by something far worse than inclement weather. On the slopes north of the city where grew the famed apple and tokla orchards there was nothing but twisted, spiny lumps of brown bark huddled together against the wind. No neatly tended rows of healthy trees with busy citizens working among them.
And hovering over it all, that single, ominous, unmoving black cloud.
Sorbl fluttered down to resume his perch on the frame of the backseat. “Are you sure we didn’t take a wrong turn somewhere, Master?”
“No, we did not take a wrong turn, you feathered twit.” But there was little venom in the wizard’s retort. He was staring in disbelief at the city spread out before them. “This is Ospenspri. There’s the Acomarry Hill, and there the three springs, each winding its own way into town.” He rose, leaning on the windshield for support. It groaned.
Behind them stood the autumnal forest of the Bell woods, shedding its leaves to the accompaniment of mournful but hardly malign notes. Ahead was once-beautiful Ospenspri, with its polluted waterways, devastated architecture, and clear air, dominated by that unnatural mass of cumulonimbus. When he spoke again, his tone was subdued.
“Drive on, lad. Something dreadful has overtaken this place and the people who make their home here. Perhaps we can do something to help. We are honor-bound to try.”
Jon-Tom nodded, took the jeep out of neutral. The tenuous transmission made gargling noises, and they lurched forward.
“What’s a tokla?”
“You never had a tokla, my boy?”
“I don’t think so.” He kept his eyes on the road as he spoke. “It doesn’t sound like anything that grows where I come from.”
“That is your loss, then, for it is a most delightful fruit. You can eat all you want because it shrinks inside your stomach.”
“You mean it shrivels up?”
“No. It shrinks before it is digested. In shape it is like this.” His hands described an outline in the air that reminded Jon-Tom of two pears joined together at their tops. “Each bite starts shrinking on its way down. By the time it hits your belly, it’s barely as big as a fingernail, but you’re sure you’ve eaten something as big as a loaf of bread.”
“Would that ever be a hit on the shelves back home,” Jon-Tom murmured. “The tokla fruit diet.”
“Diet? What’s a diet?” Sorbl asked.
“You don’t know what a diet is?”
“You always repeat questions, Jon-Tom. I don’t know why humans waste so much of their talking time. If I knew what a diet was, I wouldn’t have to ask you what a diet was, would I?”
“I think I like you better when you’re drunk, Sorbl.”
The owl shrugged. “I’m not surprised. I like me better when I’m drunk too.”
“A diet is when people intentionally restrict their intake of food in order to lose weight.”
The famulus twitched his beak. He was a little shaky on his unsteady backseat perch, but not so shaky that he couldn’t recognize an absurdity when he heard one.
“Why would anyone want to lose weight, when nearly everyone is working hard to put it on? Are you saying that among your people there are those who intentionally starve themselves?”
“To a certain degree, yes. They do so in order to make themselves look better. See, among the humans where I come from, the thinner you are, the more attractive you’re considered to be.”
Sorbl wiped at his mouth with a flexible wingtip. “Weird.”
“The multiplicity of peculiar notions your world is infected with never ceases to amaze me,” Clothahump put in. “I am glad 1 am exposed to them only through you. I do not think I could cope in person.”
Sorbl interrupted long enough to point. “Look. It’s not deserted.”
They were passing through the first buildings now, though the mud and wattle structures were hardly worthy of the term. Staggering listlessly through the filthy alleys were the citizens of Ospenspri. It was evident that whatever catastrophe had blasted their community had affected them personally.
As with all large cities, the population was a mixture of species, and all had been equally devastated. Felines and lupines, quadrupeds and bipeds, all wore the same dazed expressions. They shared something else besides a communal aura of hopelessness, a singular physical deformity that owed its presence to something other than defective genetics. Difficult to accept at first, the evidence overwhelmed the visitors as they drove on toward the main square.
Every inhabitant of Ospenspri, every citizen irrespective of age or species or sex, from the youngest cub to the eldest patriarch, had become a hunchback.
Clothahump adjusted his glasses, his expression solemn. “Whatever has happened here has crippled the people as well as their land. Turn right at this corner, my boy.”
Jon-Tom complied, and the jeep slowed as it entered an open circular courtyard. In its center stood a thirty-foot-high pile of mud and gravel. Water trickled forlornly down its flanks. It was surrounded by a fence fashioned of rotted wood and a few lumps of granite.
“Stop here.” Jon-Tom brought the jeep to a halt, watched as Clothahump climbed out to stare at the pitiful structure.
“What is it, sir?”
“The Peridot Fountain. Three years in the designing, twenty years in the construction. Fashioned by the Master Artisan’s Guild of Ospenspri. I’ve read of it all my life. This is where it should be, and this patently is not it. It is built of marble and copper tubing, of sculptured alabaster and peridots the size of my shell. Whatever has infected this place breaks beauty as well as backs.”
Many dispirited citizens had seen the strangers drive into the square, but only one retained enough curiosity and spirit to seek them out. The fox was old and bent like the rest of the populace. He had to lean hard on the cane he carried to support himself. The fur of his face was white with age and he was missing all the whiskers on the right side of his muzzle. A few of the others tried to hold him back, but he shook them off and advanced. The thought of death no longer frightened him. There are some older folks who are never touched by that particular fear, and the fox was one of them.
“Strangers, where do you come from? By your posture as well as your faces I know you are not from the city or its immediate environs.”
“We’re up from the south,” Jon-Tom told him. “From just south of Lynchbany.”
“A long way.” The fox was nodding to himself. He turned his attention to the jeep, walked slowly around it, felt of the metal with an unsteady hand. “A most peculiar method of transportation. I have never seen the like. I should like to compliment the blacksmith who fashioned it.”
“We make do with what we have.” Clothahump waddled around to confront him. “I am more concerned with what has happened here. I have never visited your city, but I feel as though I know it from all that I have read about it and been told by other travelers. The last description I was given was not so very long ago. Surely Ospenspri cannot have changed so much in such a short time.” He gestured at the sagging edifices surrounding the square, the dead or dying vegetation. “This has all the hallmarks of a sudden disaster, not one long in the making.”
The fox was eyeing him with interest. “You are perceptive, hard-shell. In truth, we lost everything in an instant.
There was no warning. One moment all was well with our city and selves. The next—there was the cloud.” He jabbed skyward with his cane.
“See the evil thing hanging there? It does not drop rain and move on. It does not thunder or hail. No wind blows out of it save an ill one. It is as motionless as stone.”
“You have been unable to influence it?” Clothahump had his head tilted back and was studying the black mass.
“All the efforts of our best magicians have failed. Their spells either have no effect on it at all or else they pass right through it. It is only vapor, after all. How does one threaten vapor? We have invoked every agent in the meteorological pantheon, all to no avail.”
“It is not a climatic phenomenon that hangs over your city and your lives but a pall of supernature. Weather spells will have no effect on something like this.”
“The perambulator,” said Jon-Tom, with a sudden realization of what the wizard was getting at.
“Quite so, my boy.”
“But we’re inside the city now, and we haven’t changed.” He found himself straightening his back reflexively. “And the forest beyond the city limits wasn’t affected.”
“Not all the effects of the perambulator are global in scope, lad. Many perturbations, of varying degree, are highly localized. It is shifting and spinning and throwing off, upsetting energy all the time. Sometimes nothing larger than a plot of land a foot square is affected. Sometimes a grove of trees. Or, in this case, an entire community.
“But this is the severest perturbation we have yet encountered. Remember what I told you, that unless it is freed, the perambulator’s perturbations will grow steadily more intense, until we run the risk of being locked in permanent change. That is what has happened here in Ospenspri. The perturbation, of which I believe that cloud to be an indication, has settled in permanently. This part of the world has been damaged for good. Unless . . .”
“Unless you can do something about it—Master,” Jon-Tom finished respectfully.
The wizard nodded. “We must certainly give it our best effort.”
“ ‘Our’ best effort.” Jon-Tom moved to the back of the jeep and began unpacking his duar. Clothahump moved over to put a hand on the young man’s wrist.
“No, my boy. Leave this one to me. The citizens of this poor community have suffered enough.”
Jon-Tom swallowed his hurt. He knew nothing of the mechanism that had devastated Ospenspri, and he’d had many occasions on which to learn the error of false pride. It was time to abide by the turtle’s wish.
The fox watched them intently as Sorbl aided Clothahump in his preparations. A second distorted figure came hobbling over the dirt to join them. It made for Jon-Tom.
He turned to the newcomer as the bent shape drew close. “We’re friends. We’re going to try to help you. But my mentor there needs plenty of room to work his magic and— He stopped in mid-sentence, staring. Despite the hunchback, there was something almost familiar about the oncoming figure. That was absurd, of course, but still, that outline, those eyes, those whiskers . . .
“Don’t tell me to get lost, you ‘airy son of an ape!”
“Mudge?” Jon-Tom couldn’t take his eyes off the figure. It was nearer now, and he could see the speaker more clearly. Bent, duty, undistinguished—and unmistakable. “Mudge, it is you!”
“O’ course it’s me, you bloody oversized naked monkey! ‘Ave you gone blind? Me ‘ead ‘appens to be a mite nearer the ground at the moment, but it ain’t by choice, wot? Me face is still the same, though. So’s yours, I see. As ugly as ever.”
A warm feeling spread throughout Jon-Tom’s body. “Mudge, it’s good to see you again. Even under these circumstances.”
“Circumstances ain’t the ‘alf of it, mate.” The otter nodded toward the jeep. “There’s ‘is sorcerership, senile as ever, and ‘is sot of an apprentice. Would ‘e ‘ave any booze with ‘im, do you know? I could use a good stiff one, if ‘e ain’t drunk all the liquor betwixt ‘ere an’ the southern ocean. I never could understand those people wot drinks to excess.”
“That sounds pretty funny coming from you, Mudge.”
“Why? I never drink to excess, mate. Me body don’t know the meanin’ of the word. I just drink till I’m full. Then I piss it out and start over. So I never reach excess, wot? Tell me, wot are you and ‘is nibs doin’ so far from ‘is tree? I’d think you’d be hunkered down south, warm an’ cozy an’ waiting for winter.”
“Perhaps you’ve noticed something a bit out of the ordinary in the world these past few weeks?”
The otter chuckled, shook his head. “You always did ‘ave the gift of understatement, mate. Aye, you could say that, if you’d call the world goin’ totally mad a bit out o’ the ordinary.”
“How’d you get all the way up here, Mudge? Why are you in the same sorry state as the Ospensprites? Not that your usual state isn’t sorry, but this is different.”
“Just lucky, I guess, mate. Well, I ‘appened to be doin’ some work down in Malderpot—it ain’t such a bad place anymore since they ‘ad that recent change o’ government— and I ‘ad occasion to depart the vicinity in a bit of a ‘urry.”
“Who’d you cheat this time?”
“Wot, me cheat someone, mate? You sting me to the quick, you does.”
“Forget it,” Jon-Tom said dryly. They were both watching the jeep. Clothahump was assembling something out of pieces of wood salvaged from the crude fence enclosing the mud fountain, adding unrecognizable devices from his pack and what looked like a few kitchen utensils.
“ ‘Tis been an interestin’ month for old Mudge,” the otter went on. “Ever since this out-o’-the-ordinary’s took hold of us. You never know wot you’re goin’ to wake up facin’ in the mirror, much less wot you’re liable to find yourself in bed with. Why, there was the night in Okot I was dallyin’ with the most luscious capybara lady you ever set eyes on—you know I like ‘em big, mate.”
“You like anything that walks, talks, and is a member of the opposite sex, Mudge.”
“So I’m enthusiastic instead o’ discriminatin’. Anyways, there we were, just about to consummate the evenin’, when suddenly, right before me very eyes, not to mention beneath me chest, she turns into somethin’ with ‘alf a dozen extra see-alls, two ‘eads, and all the rest o’ the critical body parts badly out o’ place as well. O’ course I looked just about the same, but 1 tell you, mate, the damage to our respective libidos was nothin’ short o’ devastating.”
“I can imagine. Spare me the sordid aftermath.”
“That was the trouble, mate. Weren’t no sordid aftermath. Weren’t much foremath, either.” He sighed with the remembrance. “Anyways, was after that that I ‘ad me little difficulty in Malderpot and decided that wot with winter comin’ on an’ all, it was time for me to ‘ead south again. Fast. But I thought to take some time to linger up ‘ere in be-ooti-ful Ospenspri— and it were beautiful, you can take me word on that, mate.”
“So Clothahump has told me.”
“Right. So I’m doin’ a little sight-seein’, takin’ in the air and the good food and an occasional compliant an’ ‘opefully drunk lady or two, when all of a sudden another one o’ those bleedin’ suddenlike changes comes over me. An’ the ‘hole bloomin’ city and everyone in it as well. Only this time, a couple o’ minutes go by, and then a couple o’ ‘ours, and suddenly we’re realizin’ that the change is ‘ere to stay. First off everyone goes a little crazy, not that I blames ‘em. I went a mite bonkers meself. Then the panic goes away and this permanent depression kind o’ takes ‘old of you. Like wakin’ up one mornin’ to find someone’s stolen your balls while you were asleep.” He jabbed a thumb skyward.
“An” over it all, that bloody stinkin’ black cloud, sneerin’ down at us an’ mockin’ the memories o’ our former lives. Pretty pitiful, mate. So that’s ‘ow I come to be ‘ere talkin’ to you like this, all bent over and stove up like everyone else. I ‘ope ‘is wizardness can do somethin’ about i
t, because most o’ these folks are just about at the end o’ their rope.”
“If anyone can do anything, Clothahump can,” Jon-Tom replied with pride.
“Aye, if ‘e ‘asn’t forgotten ‘alf o’ wotever spell ‘e’s a mind to try. Two ‘undred years ago I wouldn’t worry, but ‘e ain’t the wizard ‘e used to be, you know.”
“None of us are what we used to be, Mudge.”
The otter spat sideways. “If you’re goin’ to go an’ get profound on me, lad, I’m goin’ to leave. I’ve ‘ad about enough solemn pronouncements this past week to last me a lifetime. Say”—he squinted sharply up at his old friend— “wot brings you up from the wizard’s cozy ‘ome to this cold part o’ the world, anyways?”
“The very thing that’s ruined this town. The same thing that’s causing similar changes all over the world. Unless something’s done to stop it, these perturbations, as Clothahump calls them, will keep getting worse.”
“I see. An’ you and mister Clothyrump aim to try and do something about ‘em? Wot’s behind it, lad? Some kind o’ runaway natural condition?”
“Yes and no. These kinds of changes happen all the time but usually on a much smaller scale and always with far less frequency. The problem is that someone or something is making sure that the cause of all the changes sticks around. Clothahump thinks whoever’s doing it is completely mad.” He nodded in the direction of the mountainous slope with its blighted orchards. “Whoever’s responsible is holed up with the perambulator, the change-inducer, somewhere north of here. That’s where we’re headed.”
Mudge eyed him in disbelief. “North of here? You can’t mean that, mate. You know wot the Plateau country can be like this time o’ year, wot with winter fixin’ to settle in? ‘Tis not a comfortin’ place to be, especially for a poor ‘uman like yourself wot ‘as no fur of ‘is own to protect ‘im from the cold winds and snows.”
“My comfort matters little when considered in the greater context. If this perambulator isn’t freed and its captor challenged, then the world risks permanent perturbation. A little cold will be a trivial danger by comparison. You know how serious it is, because Clothahump’s come all this way.”