Roc And A Hard Place (17 page)

But I can't get into Xanth, except when I play the game, and I've been too busy even to do that.”

“What, even during summer vacation?” Ichabod asked.

“Well, there's Dug,” she said, blushing.

Then Metria understood how summers could disappear.

Two of her own years had disappeared similarly.  “Dug's coming too,” she said.  “I have a summons for him.”

Suddenly Kim's objections faded away.  “I'll tell my roommate to cover for me,” she said, and dashed off.

Meanwhile the messenger girl had returned.  “About that horse…” she said.

“Come in and see,” Arnolde said.

“Is that wise?” Ichabod asked.

“We made a deal,” Arnolde said.  “Let her in.”

So Ichabod opened the back just enough to let the girl scramble in, then closed it behind her.

There was a breathless pause.  Then a faint scream.  “Oh, my!  Are you really—?”

“I am really,” Arnolde said.  “But please don't tell anyone else, because it would make things rather awkward for me, and I'm rather too old to handle awkwardness gracefully.”

“Not so you'd notice,” Ichabod muttered.  “He's a con artist.  There's no counting how many specimens he talked into posing for us, in the madness.”

“And who—what are you?” the girl asked after a bit.

“Jenny Elf.  I'm too young to handle awkwardness.”

Kim emerged from the building, carrying a bag.  “My research paper homework,” she said.  “Maybe I'll squeeze it in, somehow.”

The other girl emerged from the truck, looking dazed.

“Thanks, Jo,” Kim said.

“Any time, Kim.” Jo walked unsteadily away.

“Suppose she talks?” Metria asked.

“Who would believe her?” Kim asked.  “Come on, let's go get Dug!”

This time Kim got in the front of the truck, because she knew exactly where to find Dug, and since her legs were just as visible as Metria's, Ichabod didn't object.  Metria climbed in back with Arnolde and Jenny Elf.

“That girl's face must have been something,” Metria remarked as the truck lurched into motion.  “She thought she would see a horse, and man, and she saw a centaur.”

“She did see a horse and man,” Arnolde said primly. “There are both in my ancestry.”

“But she did seem about to faint, at first,” Jenny said.  “I know how it is.  I was amazed when I first saw Chex.  Fortunately I couldn't see very well, so I didn't realize just how strange she was.  Until she got me a pair of spectacles.”

“Yes, wings on a centaur would seem extremely strange,” Arnolde agreed.  “Until the species gets established.  Which, of course, may be a problem for the alicentaurs.”

“For the what?” Jenny asked.

“Winged centaurs,” he said.  “If they are to be established as a species, they need a species name.  Since a winged unicorn is an alicorn, it is reasonable to call a winged centaur an alicentaur.”

“Alia for short,” Metria agreed, glad that for once it hadn't been her in the middle of a confusion of words.  “But what's the problem?”

“A winged centaur is not the easiest crossbreed to achieve,” Arnolde said.  “Chex was the result of a liaison between a normal centaur and a hippogryph, and Cheiron's origin has not yet been deciphered.  Presumably a strategically placed love spring could result in others, but centaurs are generally too intelligent to be deceived, and are opposed to crossbreeding anyway.  Since new blood from outside the present alia family is required to make a lasting species viable, prospects for the continuation seem remote.”

“No they aren't,” Metria said.

Both Jenny and Arnolde looked at her.  “I presume you have some insight we lack?” the centaur said in a tone that indicated that she probably didn't.

“Certainly.  Magician Trent has been rejuvenated, and his powers of transformation are as good as they ever were.  He transformed Cynthia Human to Cynthia Centaur seventy four years ago, and she has now had a bit of rejuvenation herself and is hot for Che Centaur.  So Trent can do it again.  He can transform humans to alia, or centaurs to alia, or anything else.  Probably it would be best to start with centaurs, because they're already smart and know the form; they'd just have to learn to fly, and since the magic of all winged centaurs is similar, making them light enough to fly, that's no problem.

They wouldn't have to soil their hands on any other obscenity of magic talents.”

Arnolde and Jenny were staring at her.  “Out of the mouths of fools and babes …” the centaur said, trailing off into some private thought.

“I think she's got it!” Jenny said.  “Transformation.”

“Who's a fool or a baby?” Metria demanded.

“He said 'babe,' not 'baby,'“ Jenny said.

“Oh.  Very proficiently.”

“Very what?” Jenny asked.

“Suitable, proper, appropriate, felicitous, germane, healthy—“

“Well?”

“Whatever,” Arnolde said before Metria could answer, making a cross expression.  Jenny laughed, and Metria had to too.

Then the truck clunked to a halt.  They looked out, and saw another dormitory just like the first, but with boys mostly surrounding it.  Kim got out and walked up to the side until she stood under a particular window.  Then she put two fingers in her mouth and make a piercing whistle.

In a moment a head appeared in the window, and a hand waved.  “Be right down!” Dug called.

“I thought there was no magic in Mundania,” Metria said.

“The magic power women have over men is everywhere,” Arnolde explained.

Soon Dug emerged from the building and Kim brought him over to the truck.  He had fleshed out somewhat since Metria had last seen him, and looked stronger and handsomer.  “The Demoness Metria has something for you,” she told him.

“I don't need it, as long as I've got you,” he replied gallantly.

Kim smiled, looking rather pretty in that moment.  “It's a summons for Jury duty.”

His jaw dropped.  “What?”

“Obligation, onus, burden, charge, litigation, trial—” Metria offered helpfully.

“Court case?” Arnolde suggested.

“Whatever!” Jenny, Kim, and Metria chorused, looking mirthfully cross.

“But they don't have that stuff in Xanth!” Dug protested.

“Oh, indeed they do,” Arnolde reassured him.  “The trial of Gracile Ossein was notorious.”

Dug looked at Kim, who nodded affirmatively.  She was better versed on Xanth history than he was.  “Grace'l is a female walking skeleton.  Marrow Bones' wife.  She was tried for messing up a bad dream sent to Tristan Troll for not eating an innocent human little girl.”

“But that's backwards!” he said.  “Trolls shouldn't eat children, and bad dreams should be sent for—”

Kim shut him up by pulling his head down and kissing him.

“Always nice to see proper control,” Metria murmured appreciatively.  “She has certainly learned how to handle him.”

“Girls do,” Arnolde agreed.

Metria reached down and presented Dug with his token.

“But I can't go to Xanth now,” he said.  “I have homework, papers to write—”

“I'm going,” Kim said.

“Let me check out.” He hurried back into the building.

“Classes were getting tiresome anyway,” Kim remarked.

“Though our grades are bound to suffer because of our absence and missed work.”

Soon Dug reappeared.  Metria was glad that the toughest part of her search was done; all the rest of the summonsees were in Xanth.

Kim and Dug rode in the back, discussing old times with Jenny Elf, so Metria was once again in the front.

They were driving first to Kim's home, because she absolutely refused to go to Xanth without her dog.  Bubbles.

For a time they rode in silence.  'He's looking at your knees,’ Mentia remarked.

'So?  They're good knees; I shaped them that way.’

'But I showed them to him first.’

'Well, you didn't show him your panties,' Metria retorted, annoyed.

'Not only would that have freaked him out, it would have violated the Adult Conspiracy.’

'He's a hundred years old!' Metria thought.

'And in his second childhood.’ She had a point.

'Good thing I had no panties when I forgot my clothing.’

“Penny for your thoughts,” Ichabod said.

“Mundane coins aren't worth much in Xanth.”

“I mean that I am curious about what is going on in your mind that has you focusing so intently, if you care to tell me.”

There seemed to be no harm in it, so she told him.  “I was talking with my worser half, D. Mentia.  She said you were looking at my knees.”

“Well, I was.  I have been a connoisseur of distaff limbs since adolescence.”

“Of what limbs?”

“The distaff is a long staff for holding wool, flax, or other fibrous material, from which the thread is drawn out when spinning by hand.  Since this was almost invariably the work of women, the distaff came to be a generalized symbol of womanhood.  Thus I was speaking metaphorically.”

“Speaking how?”

“Using a parallel, analogy, correspondence, likeness, affinity, kinship, similarity—”

“Synecdoche?”

“Or more properly, metonymy,” he said crossly.  Then he did a double take.  “How did you come up with that term?”

“I have no idea.  Words are strictly accidental with me.”

“You are an interesting creature,” Ichabod remarked as he drove on toward Xanth.  “That is to say, all supernatural entities are intriguing in their separate fashions, but you seem remarkable even for a demoness.  What accounts for your, er, unusual way with words?”

“I think a sphinx stepped on part of my demon substance when I was new, and squished it flat.  Ever since, some words have been riddles, and my character has been subject to fissioning.”

“Oh, is that how you change from Metria to Mentia?”

“And to Woe Betide,” she agreed, assuming the form of the sweet, sad child.

“Do other demons have multiple personalities?”

She switched back to Metria, because the question was too complicated for the tyke to answer.  “No.  Others assume any aspect they wish, but inside they are always the same evil spirits.  I'm the only one who takes those personalities seriously.  When I'm the child, I mustn't violate the Adult Conspiracy.  When I'm Mentia, I'm slightly crazy, except when in the Region of Madness, when I reverse and become slightly sane.  When I'm Metria, I have a problem of vocabulary.”

“Fascinating!  In Mundania, multiple personality disorder—MPD—usually stems from some difficult event in childhood, such as sexual abuse.”

“Well, getting stepped on by a sphinx distracted by a riddle isn't exactly easy to take.”

He laughed.  “Surely so!  So you did have a traumatic early experience.  As a mature individual you could have handled that stepping on, but as a nascent one you couldn't, so you suffered some subtle psychological damage.”

This was a revelation.  “This is true?  I mean, do other people really suffer conditions like mine, because of early whatevers?”

”Early traumas.  Yes, this does seem to be the case, though psychological opinion is by no means unified.  We believe it is the human—and perhaps demon—mind's way of dealing with what cannot otherwise be handled.  Or perhaps it is merely the shock of the abuse itself, striking the forming personality like a hammer and cracking it into several fragments.  Each fragment then tries to heal itself, forming individual personalities, but never with complete success.

Because something broken is simply not as strong as something whole.” He glanced at her face for a moment.

“As is perhaps the case with your vocabulary.  You obviously possess a full repertoire of words, but your mechanism for recollecting the particular one you need at a given moment is imperfect.”

“Yes!  That's exactly what I have languished!”

“What you have suffered,” he agreed.

“Oh, Ichy, I could smack you!”

He was taken aback.  “What?”

“Osculate, buss, peck, smooch—”

“Kiss?”

“Whatever!” she said, and kissed him firmly on the right ear.  “Now at last I know why I am as I am.  I have MPD.”

The truck slewed for a moment and a half before going straight again.  “I am glad to have been of help,” Ichabod said. “But if you ever kiss me again, please do it when I'm not driving.”

“Sorry about that.”

“Oh, don't be!  Just be careful in future.  It is dangerous for a man my age to suffer such distraction while behind the wheel.”

“I'll try,” she said contritely,

“This alternate personality, Mentia—you actually have dialogues with her?”

“Shouldn't I?”

“Usually one personality dominates, or the other; they don't hold direct discourses.”

“Well, I am usually in charge.  But she fissioned off when I did the disgusting thing of getting half souled and falling in love.  She's the half without the soul, so she retains the old demonly values.  Woe Betide is satisfied to share half my half soul when she's in charge, so she's quarter-souled.  But Mentia's curious about just what I get from my soul, in much the way I was curious about the matter before I got it.  So she rejoined me, and she takes over when she needs to.  Do you want to talk with her?”

“Not exactly.  I am merely curious about what the two of you have to have a dialogue about, since both of you must have had much the same experiences in your existence.”

“We have.  But we place different interpretations on them.”

“What would one of your dialogues concern?”

“Love, mainly.  She just doesn't understand it.”

“Few do, who haven't experienced it!  Would it be possible to—to listen to such a dialogue?”

 “For sure!” Mentia said.  “What kind of idiocy can make a once sensible demoness suddenly become caring, selfsacrificing, and dedicated to making her indifferent husband deliriously happy several times a day?  She calls it love, but I don't see anything compelling her except perversity.  Who cares whether the man is happy or miserable?  He's just a stupid mortal.  He doesn't deserve all that attention.”

“I don't consider it idiocy,” Metria responded.  “I get real pleasure myself from making him happy.  It's a mutual thing, my desires are defined in terms of his desires.  Before I fell in love, my life was empty in a way I never realized; now it is full in a way I never anticipated.  Love gives me fulfillment—”

“Fulfillment!  Why not chain yourself to a dungeon while you're at it?  You delight in your misery.”

“It is only your ignorance that makes it look like misery to you.  It is sheer joy to me.”

“You revel in your humiliation!”

“If your values weren't inverted, you'd know it's exaltation.”

“Yours are inverted!  I'm true to demonly nature.”

“I think I get the picture,” Ichabod said.  “A person without a soul simply can't grasp its nature, and a person without love thinks it's pointless.”

“That's right,” Metria said.  “I was governed mainly by curiosity and mischief, before I got half souled.  But my curiosity was in the end greater than my mischief, so I took the plunge and got married.”

“I seem to recall Arnolde saying something about a demoness with a soul who married a King, in the past.  But when her baby was delivered, the soul went with the baby, and the demoness took off with a rude noise.  Will that happen to you?”

“Yes, that was my friend Dara Demoness, who married King Humfrey.  Her son Dafrey got the soul.  But later she returned to Humfrey, because she discovered that she liked existence with a soul better than existence without a soul.

Now she emulates a soul she doesn't have.  So I won't give up my half soul when my baby is delivered; I'll share half of it, and hope that a quarter soul sustains me.  My child won't have that problem; souls grow to full size when a creature is part mortal.”

“You have a generous nature.”

“Yes, now.”

“When I first saw you, or Mentia, there in the madness, I took you for a variant of a nymph, a creature without much intellectual content.  I was mistaken.”

She shrugged.  “It's understandable.  I never cared about intellect before I married.”

They reached Kim's home.  Her parents were evidently out.  Kim dashed in, and emerged leading her old dog.  “I left a message on the kitchen table, so they won't think Bubbles was stolen,” she announced.  Then she lifted the dog into the back, and scrambled in herself.  Metria knew that Bubbles would be reassured to find Jenny Elf and Sammy Cat there, because they had been Companions during the game.  Metria wondered how it was that the dog could survive in Mundania, as she was very old, but thought that the magic of Xanth could have charged her when she visited there, in effect rejuvenating her somewhat.  This excursion should have similar effect, in that case.

They drove for a while in silence.  Then Ichabod remarked:

“Once we return to Xanth, Arnolde and I will resume our researches in the Region of Madness.  But I am curious as to the identity of your next summonsee.”

“I hadn't thought about it.  I have to guide Kim and Dug to the Nameless Castle, of course, but that will take time, as they can't just pop over there, and we won't have the assistance of a giant.  So I suppose I had better travel a meandering course and pick up the remaining summonsees on the way.  Beginning with the most difficult.”

“And who would that be?”

She opened her bag and checked through the tokens.

“Chena Centaur, because I never heard of her.”

“Perhaps Arnolde has.  He has a centaur's encyclopedic knowledge.”

“I'll check.” Metria turned smoky and slid through the metal of the vehicle.  She emerged in the back.  The four folk there were resting comfortably, Arnolde lying down.  Jenny Elf leaning against his side, and Kim and Dug snugly ensconced in a comer.  “Arnolde, do you know Chena Centaur?”

The old scholar shook his head.  “She must be since my time.  The name makes no connection.”

“Thank you.” She slid back to the front seat and solidified.  “He doesn't know her either.”

“Then I agree:  She may be your most challenging remaining summonsee.” He shook his head.  “I am growing tired; it has been too long since I drove any distance.  In fact, I should probably turn in my driver's license after this is done; I have little remaining use for Mundania.”

“I can do it,” Metria said.  “I have learned all the commands.”

He laughed.  Then he sobered.  “Do you know, I believe you could.  You have been a most apt student of this art.

Perhaps it would be safer trusting your alertness, rather than my failing powers.”

“Then let me,” she said eagerly.

“Oh, I really wasn't serious.  I—”

He lost his voice, for she had fogged out her skirt almost to the panty line.  “I'll sit in your lap,” she said.

Stunned by the notion, he offered no further resistance.

She sat in his lap, so she could comfortably reach the controls, and operated them.  She fogged herself out enough to reduce her weight so as not to be a burden on him, but he showed no sign of complaining.  She drove, at first unsteadily, but soon with confidence.  The machine responded marvelously to her slightest nudge on the steering wheel or go-pedal.  It was like riding a responsive unicorn, except that no self-respecting unicorn would suffer itself to- be ridden.

This truck didn't seem to mind at all.

Darkness was closing, in its dull Mundane way, as they reached Ichabod's house.  “I think we shall be obliged to stay the night here, as it would not be safe for us to drive by night,” he opined.  “But we should be all right, if Arnolde is properly positioned.  So far I am aware of no diminution of his ambience.”

“No less magic around him, either,” she said.  She used the steer-wheel and slow-pedal and got the truck beside the house.

Then it coughed, jerked, and died.  “Oh, I killed it!” she said, chagrined.

“My fault.  I forgot to remind you to use the clutch.  The motor stalled.”

“Oh.” She had learned about the clutch, but not thought of it in her effort to steer the vehicle just right.

“Have no concern, Metria.  It has been a real pleasure.”

“Having me drive?” she asked, pleased.

“That, too,” he said as she lifted her bottom off his lap.

Arnolde settled down in the center room of the house, so that the aisle reached the length of it and just about to the sides of it.  Sammy and Bubbles curled up beside him, evidently thinking of him as more animal than human being, which made him acceptable company.  Kim and Jenny checked supplies and found no suitable food; he had been too long away from here.  “No problem,” Kim said cheerfully.  “I'll order pizza.”

“Piece of what?” Metria asked.

Dug laughed.  “You'll like this.  She's going to do some Mundane magic.”

Kim did.  She picked up a banana shaped item with a curlytailed line attached, punched some buttons in its belly, and spoke into it.  “Falling Blocks Pizza?  Two jumbo giant cheesers to this address.” She seemed to be requesting something.  Then she put the banana back on its stand.

 Not long thereafter a vehicle charged up to the house so rapidly, it looked as if it was about to crash.  But it squealed to a stop just in time, and a young man scrambled out with two wide, flat boxes.  Dug gave him some folding green paper, and in a moment he zoomed away.

Dug brought the boxes inside and opened them.  There were two huge flat pies, with surfaces like that of the moon in heavy sunlight:  blistering cheese.  The five mortals took pie-wedges from them and began eating.  “Now, this is what I call responsive mozzarella,” Dug remarked, dangling his slice by a stretching string of cheese and bouncing it like a yo-yo.