Five Portraits (4 page)

Not that the printed names were very helpful. They were things like CONJU, ABRO, ARRO, CONGRE, DERO, FRI, FUMI, MITI, and SEGRE. These words had not been in the boy's lexicon, and she was not sure they made any sense. Of course gates could be named anything, sensible or nonsensical, but what was the point of having them in a Challenge if they were meaningless? So she pondered, and cogitated, and considered, and just plain thought. She was not about to try any of them until she understood their nature.

So she walked on, and came to a woman putting together mechanical men from a pile of metal rods, wires, and silly putty. Was she here for a reason?

The woman spied her. “Why, hello, basilisk,” she said cheerily. “Have you lost your way?”

Astrid shook her head no, but then changed her mind. Maybe she
was
lost.

“Well, maybe I can help,” the woman said. “I am Ann Droid. I assemble and control assorted robots. This one will be RX, a doctor machine. Another will be RNA, a geneticist. Every robot is R-something or other. They can be very useful in specialized situations.”

Astrid did not know what a doctor or geneticist was, so stood mute.

“Oh, I forgot!” Ann said. “You're an animal you can't speak. Let me fix that for the moment.” She rummaged in her pile and came up with a small panel. “Hold this and think your words, and it will speak them for you.”

Astrid accepted the panel, holding it awkwardly in her mouth. “Like this?” it asked. She was so surprised that she dropped it on the ground.

“Yes, like that, of course,” Ann said. “It's a translator. I'm sure you could speak on your own if you had the mouth for it. This merely facilitates communication.”

Astrid picked up the device again. “So it seems,” it said. “I am Astrid.”

Ann eyed her thoroughly. “I must say, you are a remarkably fetching example of your species, Astrid. The cockatrices must be constantly after you.”

“They're a nuisance,” Astrid agreed via the machine. “I have had to glare several of them off.”

Ann laughed. “Human women do much the same thing, though our glares are more figurative than literal. The typical man wants only one thing, whereas we prefer an acquaintance that endures for more than one minute.”

Astrid was coming to like this friendly woman. “We do,” she agreed.

“So what can I do for you, Astrid?”

This might be awkward. “Are you a Challenge?”

Ann laughed. “By no means! I am merely part of the setting, as it were.”

“I am having trouble figuring out what the Challenge is. All I see are mysteriously labeled gates.”

Ann shrugged. “Doubtless it will come to you in due course.”

So she was not going to help. Possibly she was merely a distraction. “Thank you,” Astrid said, and set down the translator.

“You're welcome, Astrid. I hope you figure it out soon.”

There were no more gates beyond this section, just the blank wall. Astrid walked back by them, rereading each label. There had to be some clue to their meaning. An array of ten gates with odd names. What was the clue?

She came to the first gate in the row, labeled INVESTI. Investi-gate.

A bright bulb flashed above her head. Investigate! It made a word after all.

She walked back, adding the gate's name to each one. Conjugate, Abrogate, Arrogate, Congregate, Derogate, Frigate, Fumigate, Mitigate, Segregate. They all made sense on their own terms.

Good enough. Now which was the proper one to take? Probably Investigate, as that was what she was doing. She walked to that one and started through.

And it slammed closed, just missing her snoot. No access here. So she must have guess wrong.

She tried the next, Congregate. It slammed shut also.

She tried the others. Each shut her unkindly out.

It seemed she had not, after all, solved the Challenge, merely one part of it.

She returned to Ann, who remained busy with her robots. The translator remained where she could take it. She picked it up in her mouth. “I figured out the gates. Each of their names is a prelude to Gate. But they still won't let me pass.”

“Perhaps the naming scheme is only part of the Challenge.”

“Yes. But I have yet to figure out the rest of it. Are you sure you're not part of it?”

“I am merely part of the setting.”

Then a second bulb flashed. The answer would be part of the setting.

“I saw that flash,” Ann said.

“You're not the Challenge, you're the solution,” Astrid said. “You're here for a reason.”

Ann shrugged. “Perhaps.”

“Those gates are obviously self-willed. That means they are machines. Robots. And you make robots. You must have made the gates.”

“Possibly.”

“And you can control them. You can let me through.”

“Why should I do that?”

“Because I have figured it out, and you are a nice person, the kind I would like to be, and I am asking.”

Ann laughed. “There is something about your phrasing that appeals to me. Select a gate.”

“No, please, you select one. I want the one you choose for me.”

Ann nodded. “You know, you're smarter than the average basilisk, and a good deal nicer. Take the Mitigate.”

“Thank you.” Astrid set down the translator and went to the Mitigate. This time it did not slam on her snoot. She entered the castle.

A woman met her inside. “Welcome, Astrid. I am Wira, the Good Magician's daughter-in-law. He will see you now.”

Just like that, Astrid was in the Magician's cramped study. He was there, poring over a huge tome. “Basilisk, I can change your form but not your nature. I can make your form human, but you will still be a deadly creature whose very nearness is death to most others. Are you sure this is what you want?”

Astrid was not at all sure, but neither did she want to return to her natural haunts. So she nodded. She wanted the change.

“There is another thing. Has it occurred to you to wonder why I am bothering with you, considering that you are a deadly animal most folk seek to exterminate?”

That had not occurred to her, but now that he mentioned it, she did wonder.

“It is because you are no ordinary animal. You have a soul.”

That had never even attempted to occur to her. How was this possible? Everyone knew that only human beings or those deviously related to them had souls. She was sure she had absolutely no human lineage.

“A night mare was transporting a lost soul to the dream realm when she got distracted by an idea for a truly horrendous bad dream and dropped it. It rolled into a hole and landed on you, were you were sleeping in your burrow. That put it beyond her recovery and she had to move on, chastened. Souls are immeasurably precious, at least to those who have them. Thereafter you were a souled creature, though you did not know it. That is why you became dissatisfied with your normal life. That is why you finally concluded that you would rather be human than lizard. You already had the essence of humanity. Your soul would not let you rest in peace.”

Astrid gazed at him with hooded eyes so as not to hurt him. What he said explained so much! She was indeed too gentle to be a good basilisk. “But souls don't accept just anybody,” she protested. “That soul should have bounced off me and waited for a better host. I'm a basilisk!”

“You are correct. Souls can be quite choosy. But evidently this one saw in you the potential for it to achieve its full flowering, so it accepted you. It may even have sought you out.”

“Sought a basilisk?”

“A dubious business, to be sure. Let's hope it didn't make a mistake.”

“I will try to live up to its expectation,” she said humbly.

“So I must facilitate your conversion to humanity,” the Good Magician concluded. “Now you know why.”

She did indeed. What a revelation!

“MareAnn will give you a potion,” he said. “You will still owe me a Service.”

She nodded again, accepting the terms.

“This way,” Wira said, leading her back down the dusky spiral stairway to the ground floor.

They came to a comfortable family room. A woman vaguely reminiscent of a pony met them there. “I am MareAnn, Designated Wife of the Month. Are you sure you want that potion? It will enable you to speak, if you know our language, and Ann Droid says you do, but—”

Astrid nodded without looking directly at her. MareAnn presented her with a sealed vial. Astrid took it between her front paws, nipped off the cap, and gulped it down.

The change was immediate. Her proportions shifted, with her limbs stretching out and her torso condensing, becoming distinctly lumpy. Her tail shrank until it no longer seemed to exist. Her snoot shrank into her face. Her scales faded out. What a disaster!

“Now your form is human,” MareAnn said. “You should be able to stand on your hind feet if you try. But first put this hood on over your head.”

Astrid understood why. She took the hood, which was translucent so she could see out but would distort her gaze so that she would not accidentally kill someone with her stare. Then she slowly and awkwardly climbed to her feet. Her balance was precarious, but she was able to maintain it.

“You are a remarkably pretty semblance of a woman,” MareAnn said. “The potion changes forms, but keeps the peripheral aspects. You were a very pretty basilisk.”

“Thank you,” Astrid said. And she paused, realizing that she had just spoken her first human words aloud.

“You see, you can do it,” MareAnn said encouragingly. “However, there will still be a lot more for you to learn before you can safely go out among humans. We'll give you a room to yourself and I will help you all I can.”

And so it was. MareAnn had a thing for animals, especially equines, but also for others, and she made sure that Astrid was comfortable and well treated. She spent many hours and days talking with Astrid, acquainting her with human conventions and foibles. One of these was clothing. Basilisks didn't use it, but humans did, so she had to wear a loose robe when she remembered to. It hardly mattered here, because no one entered this castle casually.

Most importantly, MareAnn became Astrid's first human friend. Astrid had never had one before, and found that she liked it very well.

“The Good Magician says that you will need three best friends to fulfill your mission in life,” MareAnn said. “I am the first, but I am not enough.”

“You seem like enough to me,” Astrid said. “I am only newly acquainted with friendship, and don't know what a best friend would be. Also, I have no idea of a mission in life.”

“With luck you will learn.”

Then one night MareAnn came to her with a mission. “You have an opportunity to perform your Service for the Good Magician in what I hope is a compatible manner. A man has come who will be going out on a perhaps dangerous mission. He will need a bodyguard: someone who can readily dispatch a monster or attacking human when that is necessary.”

“I can do that,” Astrid agreed. “But a human man—I would not know how to comport myself in his presence.”

“True. Fortunately he has a female companion, though he doesn't know it. She will guide you.”

“That would help. But why doesn't he know it?”

“Because she is a wooden board by day. It's a curse put on her by a wishing well. Well, not actually a curse; rather it's a devious way of granting her wish. But it seems much like a curse. So she animates mostly at night, when he is asleep.”

“I'm not sure I would be adept at handling a situation like this.”

“Please, Astrid. This is your chance to go out among the human kind with some appropriate guidance. Kandy is the one who can best help you. She can be your friend. At least come to meet her.”

Astrid couldn't refuse, so she went to meet the board woman. Who turned out to be quite nice, once she got over the shock of meeting a basilisk. She agreed to have Astrid join their mission, but insisted on much more formal clothing such as a bra, panties, and a dress. Astrid didn't know about such superfluous things but had to trust the woman's human judgment. She chose a dress with lovely reptilian sequins that reminded her of scales; it was the only one she could really be comfortable in. MareAnn was not easy with it, because the sequins were magic, but let it be.

Thus it was that Astrid joined the Quest to eliminate the anti-pun virus. The dress turned out to be a devious asset, because whenever a sequin fell off it turned translucent, which for some reason made the man, Ease, freak out, and when the sequin was restored, it jumped them to a new location that might or might not be convenient. So it became quite an adventure. Along the way they added others to the Quest, including the machine Com Pewter, the girl in the tower Tiara, the long-haired man Mitch, and Art, an artist who was immune to poison. He promptly became Astrid's boyfriend, because he could kiss her and be with her without suffering, though he was careful not to meet her gaze; there were limits. His ambition was to paint portraits of beautiful women, especially her.

But most important of all, Kandy became Astrid's second and best friend. That truly sustained her. They managed to complete their mission with the help of Merge, a remarkable five-part woman, but still had some mopping up to do.

“And that is how I came to associate with these wonderful people,” Astrid concluded. “I am indeed a basilisk, and my direct gaze is instant death, but I am comfortable in this group, and we accept each other as we are.”

“That's so romantic,” Ginger Goblin said.

“And remarkable,” Truman Troll added. “I am glad to have heard it. But who is your third best friend?”

“I have no idea,” Astrid confessed. “Nor what my mission in life is. I'm just trying to help these good folk accomplish their mission to exterminate the pun virus and restore Xanth to its natural state.”

“I am not quite finished here,” Pewter said. “Your narrative has not quite filled out the chapter. You must have left something out.”