Currant Events (8 page)

 “That's three guesses; I lost.
What is it?”

 “Eileen.”

 There was a moment of silence. Then the
sounding dragons laughed, blowing water and steam into the air. “I
Lean!” the dragoness said. “Very nice.” A Scoreboard appeared,
with one water ball in the column marked MORSELS. She was certainly a good
sport.

 It was the dragon's turn. A field of
vines appeared, with large yellow blossoms. They looked innocent, but then a
small dragon swam in a canal and reached out to sniff a flower. It closed on
the dragon's snout, and compressed it to a tiny portion of its former size. The
dragon fled with its miniature snout. Then a flying dragon came to land in the
field, and several blossoms closed on it, squeezing its feet so hard that they
became mere stubs. “What are they?” the dragon asked.

 This was new to Clio. She had
encountered carnivorous plants, but not carnivorous flowers. Though these
flowers weren't actually eating creatures, just squeezing them awfully.
Regardless, there did not seem to be anything funny about it. Where was the
pun?

 The flowers resembled those of the
dreaded gourds. Was this a gourd reference? But gourds used their fruits to
trap people, not their flowers.

 “I'm afraid I don't get it,”
she confessed.

 “Squash blossoms.” A water
ball appeared on the dragon's side of the Scoreboard.

 Clio knocked her head with the heel of
her hand. That was obvious! How could she have missed it? But that was the
nature of puns: they were obvious in retrospect, seldom in foresight.

 Her turn. She remembered a thoroughly
nasty teacher she had once encountered. The picture showed a human man of ugly
middle age, standing before a class. “Now this is an ass,” he said,
and showed a picture of the midsection of a human female as seen from the rear.
The girls in the class looked shocked. The man laughed. “Haven't you dolls
seen one of these before? Look in the mirror, you &&&&s!”

 That was too much. Three girls fainted,
and the rest walked out of the class. Even the boys looked dismayed.
“You'll never pass this %%%% course!” he yelled after them.

 The class continued, with the teacher
presenting crude subjects and cussing out anyone who tried to object. “Who
is the teacher?” Clio asked at last.

 The dragoness considered. “I'm not
sure what was considered indecent about such a fresh meaty rump,” she
remarked. “I would have snapped it up in half an instant.” She pondered.
“But I suppose the point is he was abusing the sensitivities of his
students. I could see they didn't like him. No dragon would do that; it's much
better just to chomp them, sparing them humiliation.”

 Clio realized that this dragon was not
a bad person; she merely had a dragon perspective. “Yes, he's an abusive
instructor who swears at his students. That is the point, not the, uh,
rump.”

 “Bad teacher,” the dragon
said. “Abusive instructor. Profane professor.” Then a lightbulb
flashed over their heads. “Professor Profanity! Prof. Anity.
Profanity.”

 Clio realized she should have kept her
mouth shut. “That's it. Another for you.” The board showed 2 to 1 in
favor of the dragon.

 Now the dragon made a picture. It was
of an aerial view of a section of the planet. These were not flying dragons,
but with telepathy they surely had garnered such images from their cousins the
flying dragons. The land was thickly forested, interspersed by clearings. Then
an odd thing happened: the clearings started moving. That was technically
unlikely, because a clearing was a region where trees did not grow. How could
trees ungrow like that, and suddenly regrow as the clearing moved on?

 Yet it seemed to be so. The clearings
converged on one region until they were thickly clustered. The day brightened,
then faded, and the fields moved back toward their original places. They had
gathered for just one day.

 And she had it: “Field day! The
fields made a field trip for it.”

 The board showed 2 to 2. She was even
again.

 She cast about for another pun to use,
but her mind was stubbornly blank. All she could think of was a dirty one, and
she didn't want that. But since she couldn't remember a clean one, she had to
use it.

 The picture formed, this time showing
the sea around them, complete with swimming dragons. A ship sailed into view,
causing the dragons in the picture to stare because they had never seen one
before. She rather liked that touch. But they surely knew of ships from other
travelers. That was important.

 The ship expanded to take up the whole
scene. The view focused on the highest deck at the stern. There were small
flying dragons coming in and depositing their digestive wastes on it, splattering
the clean wood. They were dropping their turds and flying on. That was all.

 The dragoness peered at the image.
“Why would any dragon do a thing like that to such a rare vessel? It's
disgusting?”

 “It's a disgusting pun,” Clio
said. “What's going on?”

 “I don't even care to guess! Get
rid of it.”

 The scene faded. “You are giving
up?”

 “On this one.”

 “It's the poop deck.”

 There was a mental shout of laughter
from a number of the younger male dragons. Their mothers hastily shushed them.
The score went to 3 to 1 in favor of the morsels.

 The dragon formed a picture of a tree.
It looked like a fig tree, but instead of figs its fruits were little globes of
air. A dragon came by and ate several, and licked its lips as if they were
tasty, but they didn't seem to be very filling. That was all.

 Clio gazed at it, but didn't get it. It
was amazing how many puns were new to her; apparently they flowed from some
inexhaustible font of base humor, so that no matter how many she remembered,
there were always more she hadn't encountered. Eating globes of air instead of
figs? In fact they seemed on closer inspection to be entirely imaginary. So
what was the point?

 “I give up,” she said.
“It makes no sense to me.”

 “Figments.” The score went
to3 to 2, still her favor.

 Fig mints. Imaginary figs, unfilling
because they had no substance. How could she have missed that? She was
disgusted with herself.

 Her turn again. Her picture showed an
old human woman walking with difficulty, evidently lame. Then a huge yellow
citrus fruit walked up on little legs, and used little arms to help the woman
make progress. She thanked the fruit as she reached her home. That was all.

 “A grapefruit,” the dragon
said.

 “Actually it's a smaller
variant.”

 “A lemon. But that's a bad
thing.”

 “Oh, the fruit is sour, but not
bad in that sense.”

 Then the dragon got it. “Lemonade!
Lemon aide.”

 She had it. The score was 3 to 3.

 The dragon formed a picture of a very
nice looking little plant. A human person walked past, and it reached out a
vine to stroke the person's leg. The person burst out laughing and skittered
away. Then a dragon walked by, and the plant touched it similarly, making it
puff smoke and depart in good humor. The plant treated several passersby that
way, between times folding its foliage about it in a most aesthetic form. That
was it.

 Clio pondered. This was yet another new
one. These pun contests were more formidable than she had anticipated. A
planted joy? That didn't work. Sweet revenge? No, the plant wasn't hurting
anyone; in fact they seemed to like being touched. They were tickled to be
touched. But tickle-touch wasn't a pun. Tickled pink? But they weren't changing
color. Was it that it was a nice plant? Nice tickle? No pun there.

 She couldn't get it, and had to give
up. “Cuticle,” the dragon said. “We call it the Kew-Tickle flower.”

 Clio groaned. Cute tickle! She had been
so close. Now the score was4 to 3in the dragon's favor. She couldn't afford to
lose another.

 At least her memory was returning. She
remembered a credulous bovine that might do. She formed her picture: A bull was
grazing in a field when a fox approached. “Hey, there's much better
pasture behind that tree,” the fox said. “There is? Thanks!” The
bull hurried around the tree.

 But instead of pasture there was a
snoozing ogre. The bull banged into the ogre before he could halt. The ogre
woke, annoyed, took hold of him, and twisted him into the form of a pretzel
before throwing him back where he came from. It was a most uncomfortable
occasion, and it took the poor bull an hour to untangle his legs and get back to
his feet.

 Then the fox came again. “Say,
there's a really sexy cow behind that other tree.” “There is?
Thanks!” The bull went around the tree, but instead of a cow there was a
snoozing fire dragon. The bull stumbled into the dragon, who woke and toasted his
rear so hotly the bull had to leap into the nearest pond to douse his
smoldering fur.

 Then the fox came again. “There's
a bare icade behind that third tree.”

 “There is? What's an icade?”

 “Go there and see. She's quite a
sight.”

 So the bull charged around the tree-and
ran straight into a temporary wooden wall made of planks that surrounded a
sleeping bear. He crashed to the ground, getting splinters in his hide, and the
bear woke and angrily swiped at him. “What's this?” he demanded of
the fox, who was smirking. “It doesn't look like a bare icade.”

 “Oh, you must have misheard,”
the fox said. “I said it's a bear icade.”

 The scene faded. The dragon pondered.
“That's a stupid bull.”

 “Extremely. He never learns. The
fox keeps fooling him.”

 “A fox and bull story?”

 “You're thinking of cock and
bull.”

 The dragon sighed. “So I am. I get
fables confused.” She was unable to fathom the pun.

 “He's Gulli Bull,” Clio said.

 “Gullible!” the dragon cried.
“I should have had that!”

 Clio knew exactly how she felt. Now
they were tied4 to 4. She still had to win another pun.

 A picture formed. It was set in the
fabledlandofMundania, where folk were pretty dull because they lacked magic. It
showed a building where all manner of ugly things were available for those who
had the funny stuff they called money. A woman came to buy a flattened snake
that was clenching its tail in its mouth, like Dragon World only much smaller.
She put it around her upper torso to hold her bosom up. It was a co-bra. A man
bought a big cucumber labeled Dill-and turned into a pickle. Another man bought
a machine with a screen whose brand name was Post-and started decaying into
dirt. It was a corn-post. In short, everything there was dirty or unpleasant.

 Clio had written about Mundanes often
enough; they stumbled into Xanth fairly regularly. She didn't remember any
shopping place of quite this nature, but it seemed possible, because one never
could tell about Mundanes. What was the pun? “Dirty money?” she
asked.

 “Nice guess,” the dragon said
smugly.

 The point did seem to be the people or
the store rather than the money. Then suddenly she had it: “Gross-ery
store!”

 “Ah, well,” the dragon said,
not unduly dismayed. “We shall draw lots to determine which of us have the
privilege of becoming real in Xanth. You said five couples of each type?”

 Clio hadn't said, but didn't argue.
“Correct.”

 “We will have them ready this time
tomorrow.”

 It was time to move on. Becka changed
form, and they took off. “You handled that well,” Drew remarked.
“Making them think you didn't know they knew.”

 “I really wasn't sure they knew.
Those were some tough puns.”

 “Only three more contests to
go.”

 They flew to the tip of a wing, where
the air dragons ran her through another barrage of puns, then agreed to
assemble their volunteers on the morrow. After that it was the inside of a
front claw, theoretically used by the Dragon World for digging, for the
tunneling dragons. They all had stout forelimbs and dull colors, but were smart
enough. Finally it was the jumping dragons, on the top of the head.

 These were especially interesting,
because they had an ability no Xanth dragon had: they did not jump physically,
but magically. They moved by teleporting short distances. So if a dragon wanted
to take one step forward, it vanished where it was, and reappeared almost
instantly one pace ahead. The fact that most of its bulk was occupying the same
space as before did not seem to matter; it had made its move. If it had farther
to go, it teleported in a series of jumps, looking like a staccato picture.
This meant that these dragons could not be barred from any place by physical
barriers; they teleported right through them, sometimes pausing part way
through without apparent discomfort. Clio was hard put not to stare as the big
leader dragon approached her in several rapid little jumps.

 “They are good hunters,” Drew
remarked. “And good guards. But bad enemies.”

 Clio was sure that was the case.
Fortunately she had not come here as any enemy, and her dealing with these
dragons was similar to the others. Soon they too had agreed to assemble a
suitable number for transport the following day.