Jumper Cable (22 page)

“He went away,” Maeve agreed ruefully. “Leaving me to deal with the stork alone.”

“That’s the risk the girl takes,” Olive said. “My friends are mostly disgusted. They thought he liked them for themselves, and it turned out that once he sent the signal he hardly cared about anything else.”

They glanced at Jumper. “I guess I did that,” he confessed, embarrassed. “I was interested in just the one thing. She didn’t complain. But she was teaching me.”

“She liked interacting with a man who didn’t drop dead at the sight of her,” Olive said. “Your spider heart didn’t pain you the way a human heart would have.”

“Still, I was being a typical thoughtless man. You girls encountered much better men.”

“Knot better, just different,” Wenda said. “Yew wood listen to us, and beecome a satisfactory lover, woodn’t yew?”

“I would try,” Jumper said humbly. “Knot that— I mean, not that I wood ever, would ever—”

“We know,” she said, squeezing a foreleg.

He hoped they didn’t know how attractive he found them, regardless of his form. He had never known human beings before, and was increasingly impressed. Sharon was compelling, and he truly enjoyed his time with her, but he also enjoyed his time with the girls, in a different way. One huge difference was that he trusted them in a way he did not trust Sharon. They were his honest friends, not his deceptive enemy. But it wasn’t entirely platonic, as Dawn and Eve demonstrated when they teasingly flashed him. And that hint Dawn had dropped about going beyond teasing . . .

“So we’re experiencing idealized relationships,” Eve said. “With men who have an agenda: to corrupt us.”

“Scripted,” Jumper agreed.

“Those are not to be trusted,” Dawn said. “We should not allow those men to seduce us.”

“How fortunate that you now have the chance to show the way,” Eve said sweetly. “When that handsome, sweet-talking man comes at you, you just tell him to disappear.”

“Exactly as you told that centaur king,” Dawn shot back.

“Listen, you bra-brained, morning-air-headed—”

“Look who’s talking, you panty-pooping, night-stalking—”

“I think it’s time for us to get moving,” Jumper said hastily, gulping down the vial he had been holding.

And of course both girls flashed him simultaneously, only worse: Dawn’s bra and Eve’s pan ties were missing. And he reacted, causing the others to laugh appreciatively before Wenda could cover him up. He had fallen for their little trap, and embarrassed himself. Again. Dawn, fully clothed, addressed the cat. “Sammy, this time let’s try the scenic route, so that our approach is not so obvious. Maybe we can surprise them.”

Sammy was off in his usual manner. Did he understand? They would just have to follow and hope for the best.

This time their route led to a Playing Card bicycle stand. It seemed these existed in the dream realm too. So Jumper and Dawn mounted and rode after Sammy as he bounded along the path. It wound through field and forest, o’er hill and dale, and past appealing lakes. He did indeed seem to be taking the scenic route. Jumper glanced down at the front of his cycle, and saw a little sign he hadn’t noticed before: pa chine. What did that mean? He glanced across at Dawn’s cycle, and saw that its sign said ma chine. Oh— they were male and female machines, for male and female riders. The path darkened; a storm seemed to be brewing. Jumper hoped it wasn’t another sadistic tantrum by Fracto, the nasty cloud. Just the darkening was a nuisance, as they were passing through a forest, so that the shade of the trees intensified. These human eyes did not see as well as spider eyes; there were too few of them, and they tended to focus straight ahead, instead of all around. He was afraid he would steer into stone or pit.

Dawn picked up on his concern, her talent seeming to work without her actually needing to touch him. “Try these,” she said, passing him something from her backpack as she cycled beside him. Which surprised him; he hadn’t noticed the pack before. Had it even been there? He looked at the object. It was some sort of small folded framework, with circles of glass in the middle. He could not make tail or head of it; in fact, it seemed to have neither.

“Oh, I forget,” she said. “You don’t know much about human things. Halt, and I’ll show you.”

He brought the bike to a halt. She stopped beside him, then laid down her machine and stood before him. She took the object from his hand, held it aloft, leaned forward, and kissed him. Then, as he stood slightly stunned, she set the contraption on his face. “What?” he asked, uncertain whether he was questioning her about the kiss or the object.

“They’re sun glasses,” she said. “You’ll see.”

He looked through the lenses, which were now in front of his eyes.

The dark shadows were gone; it was now bright as full noonday. In fact, a patch of sunlight seemed to be hovering before him, illuminating the region and Dawn. “What?” he repeated, feeling even less certain.

“Sun glasses,” she explained. “They can be useful when the view is gloomy. Let me adjust them.” She leaned forward, and he saw right down inside her shirt and bra. That slightly stunned him again. He wasn’t freaking out, but the impact did shake him. When he recovered, she was back on her cycle. “Now we can move at speed,” she said. “You can see everything.” She pedaled her pedals and rode ahead of him.

She was wrong: he didn’t see everything, only a portion of her white panty where her shirt did not quite tuck in to her skirt. That set him back yet again, but he focused with determination and managed to get his cycle moving, following hers. Was she doing it on purpose?

“Of course,” she said with satisfaction. “It’s called flirting.”

“But you know I’m really a spider!”

“That’s what makes it a challenge. Eve and I can freak out any normal man without effort, but it’s much harder to do it to you. So we rise to the occasion.”

But then something went wrong. Dawn veered off the path and had to stop, looking faint.

“What’s the matter?” Jumper asked, concerned, though part of him suspected it was another flirting ploy.

“I don’t know. Suddenly I’m out of energy.”

Then Jumper felt it too. Something was draining him. He looked around, trying to figure it out, and saw a sign: para site. He put the words together, as he had with the bicycles, and made sense of it: parasite. Something that leeched energy from a person. “We must get away from here,” he said urgently.

But Dawn was already sinking to the ground. She couldn’t walk, let alone ride. She was barely conscious. The same fate might soon overtake him. Desperate, Jumper did something he feared he might later regret: he took the transformation antidote, returning to his natural form. Then, as a big spider, he picked up the two bicycles with two legs, Dawn with a

third, and hobbled five-legged on along the path, away from the awful site.

As he went, his weakness diminished and he made better progress. He was escaping the site. But Dawn was still largely out of it, so he continued carry ing her. He saw a shelter ahead, perched by a lake. He went to it, and set the bikes and Dawn down before it. Then he put a leg in the lake and splashed water on Dawn. He meant to catch her face, but it soaked the rest of her body. He was messing up his rescue effort.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, waking. “You naughty boy!”

“I’m sorry. I just wanted to wake you.”

She put out a hand to touch his leg, immediately fathoming everything. “Now I understand. You rescued me from the para site. Thank you, Jumper.”

“That’s all right. Why did you call me naughty?”

She glanced down at herself. “You soaked me, so that my clothing is glued to my body. A man would have done that so he could see everything without actually undressing me.”

“Oh. I should have been more careful.”

“You were tired too. That’s why you missed my face. We had better stay here the night and recover.”

“But Sammy has gone on ahead.”

“He’ll surely find us.” She smiled. “This is the scenic route. Now you will see some real scenery. I must wash myself, and dry my clothes. Fortunately you have reverted to spider form, so you won’t get any ideas.”

“I wouldn’t—” But he couldn’t finish, because he had a notion what she meant, and was already guilty.

She touched his leg again. “I know, Jumper. But stay in that form for the night, and we’ll pretend that you are completely indifferent. Sometimes these little white lies are necessary for social purposes.”

Lies had sizes and colors? Jumper was still learning things about human culture. A white lie, it seemed, was a good, or at least necessary one. That suggested that a black lie would be bad or unnecessary. He wondered what green, yellow, blue, red, or striped lies would be.

“Oh, I like you, Jumper!” she said, still fathoming his thoughts. “But

to answer your question, no lie is good, and there are no colors. A white lie is one made to make a person feel better. So when I flash you, and we pretend it has no effect, we are making ourselves feel more comfortable about spending the night together without clothing. I am supposed to be innocent, and you are supposed to be indifferent, so it’s all right. The lie protects our reputations.”

“Reputations are important,” he said, getting it straight.

“Especially for princesses and heroes.”

“Heroes?”

“You’re the hero of this tale, Jumper. Didn’t you know?”

“No.”

“Well, the protagonist, or viewpoint character, which is much the same thing. The rest of us are merely supporting characters.”

“But I’m not special!”

She brought his foot to her face and kissed it. “Yes, you are, Jumper.”

Then she efficiently stripped off her clothing, stood gloriously bare, and jumped into the lake. Rather than continue being slightly stunned, Jumper turned away. There would be food to gather, assuming they could eat it in the dream state. If not, he would find some other chore to take up his attention. Rather than live a white lie. He saw Dawn’s wet clothing lying in a pile on the ground. It occurred to him that it would dry better if he hung it up, so he spread it across some nearby bushes. But it was now shady eve ning, with no sunlight to speed the drying. Then he got an idea. He fetched his sun glasses, which were dangling by a loop of his silk, and put them on. The glare of their sun bathed the clothes, heating them so that they steamed and dried.

“Beautiful, Jumper,” Dawn said from the water. “Maybe I won’t have to sleep nude after all. I’m disappointed.”

“I did wrong?” he asked, dismayed.

“By no means. It’s humor, with a tinge of truth.” Then she glanced down at herself and screamed.

Jumper was alarmed. “Is there a water predator?”

“No! Look at me! I’m fat!”

He looked. So she was. How had this happened?

Then he saw the sign they had missed before. fat farm. He went to read the fine print: “Beside the Fat River, growing Trans Fats. Beware. Just looking at them puts ten pounds on a girl.” And Dawn had done more than look; she had plunged in. She had become one bulging blubber of a girl.

“What’s that?” Dawn called from the water.

“You’re in the Fat River, not a lake,” he called back.

“Eeeeeeek!” she screamed, putting seven E’s into it. That was surely a scream for the record books. “Do something!”

Jumper read the finer print. “Antidote: visit Bare Lake, adjacent.”

He looked, and on the other side of the path was another lake. “You have to skinny dip in the other lake,” he called, gesturing. Dawn didn’t argue. She hauled her massive body out and lumbered across the path to cannonball into the other lake. The splash was so great it soaked everything around it, including Jumper. Fortunately he wasn’t a girl, so it didn’t affect him.

The skinny dip worked. In half a moment Dawn was her original self again, slender everywhere except here and there. She hauled herself out immediately and grabbed a towel from a towel bush and swiftly dried herself off. “Thank you, Jumper. You saved me, again.” Now that she was herself, physically, she was calm once more.

“But why didn’t it affect you when I splashed you?”

“I think it did. But it wasn’t enough water to put on more than a few pounds, so I didn’t notice.”

He realized that was possible. The sign’s warning about just looking at a trans fat making a girl gain ten pounds was an exaggeration. It took full immersion to have full effect.

She lifted the white pan ties and held them closer to the glasses. They had no freak power, oddly, in this state. Dawn smiled. “Here’s a secret, Jumper. Bras and pan ties have no freak power by themselves. It is only when they are in contact with warm flesh that the magic manifests. I’ll show you.”

She lifted one bare leg, and then the other, putting the pan ties on. As she did, there was a powerful burst of freak power. Then she pulled the pan ties tight on her and turned around, showing her backside, and the

freak almost knocked him over. He was not as immune as he had supposed, despite Angie’s lessons. “Just be thankful for two things, Jumper,”

she said. “First, that I’m not my sister, so lack the panty power she has; I’m more of a bra’ bonnie girl. And second, that you are a spider, so have considerable natural immunity.”

“I’m thankful,” he said. But secretly he almost wished he could have been a real man, and that she was not teasing. And again, his thoughts were not secret from her, embarrassingly. She gazed at him, her own thoughts masked. “Actually, a girl could do worse,” she murmured.

“I don’t understand.”

She changed the subject. “Oh, there’s Sammy!”

Indeed, the cat had returned, and was now snoozing in the shelter. He must have discovered that they were no longer following.

“I think my bra is dry now,” Dawn said. “Watch if you dare.” She brought it to her front.

Jumper didn’t dare, knowing better than to try to defy her area of strength. He turned away.

“But the rest of my clothing will take longer to dry,” she said. “So let’s eat something and turn in.”

He had located a pie plant that included a shoe-fly pie, so he had the fly from that while Dawn ate a cherry pie. She seemed to find both pies funny, for some reason, but did not explain. Sammy woke long enough to lap up a milkweed pod. Then they settled down together under the shelter, Jumper folding his legs under him, Dawn lying on a pile of straw. “I don’t think this is a fully enchanted path,” she said. “So there could be danger. But you should be able to handle it, especially if it’s anything living that I can identify.” Then she closed her eyes and went to sleep. This, too, bothered him. How could a person sleep when already in the dream realm? But in two and a half moments he closed six of his eyes, leaving only two alert, and slept.