The Dastard (23 page)

“The cloud bank,” Sim agreed. He was becoming temporarily visible, because of a coating of money.

“Yes. I suppose I will have to make it go away.”

“You can do that? Who are you?”

“I am Lacky, daughter of Lacuna and Vernon. My talent is to write things true, briefly.” She brought out a pencil and a pad of notepaper.

“Briefly?” he asked as she scribbled. He remembered that Lacuna's talent was to change the print in books, or make print appear elsewhere.

Children didn't often have talents similar to those of their parents, but sometimes it happened.

“It doesn't last very long. That's why I had hoped the plane would pass on its own.” She finished her written sentence. “There.” She held up the pad.

The plane abruptly banked off one more cloud and flew away. The way was clear. “Thank you,” Sim squawked.

“We had better hurry,” Lacky said. “But I have lost my bearings. Which way is the other side?”

“I'm not sure,” Sim squawked, for the money was now swirling into fog, confusing the scene.

“That way,” a big ant said, pointing with an antenna.

“Thank you,” Lacky said. She and Sim plowed on in that direction.

And promptly emerged--on the side they had just left.

“That ant deceived us!” Sim squawked, annoyed.

“Oh, now I recognize its type,” Lacky said. “It's an onym. It says the opposite of what it means.”

“Ant Onym at your service,” the ant agreed from inside the comic strip. “Suckers!”

They plunged back into the strip. But the plane was already returning. Lacky was right about the brevity of her writing. It was not for the ages. They were soon plowing through a blizzard of flying money.

Lacky stumbled into a bush with small round flat berries. She stared at it. “Maybe our luck has turned. Is this what it looks like?”

“It looks like a mint plant,” Sim squawked.

“Yes--a manage mint. If we eat its fruit, we'll have authority.”

“Authority?”

“Over whatever is near. Better than my writing, because it lasts longer. So we can tell the awful puns to get stifled--”

“And can get on across,” Sim finished gladly.

They each took hold of a mint and pulled. But instead of coming loose, the mints clung to their branches. In a moment the bush changed shape and assumed the form of a little man. “What are you cretins doing?” he demanded angrily.

Oops. “We thought you were a mint,” Lacky said.

“Well I'm not. I'm an Imp. My name is Each, and I mean what I say. Now get you gone before I put you on trial.”

Sim assembled the terms. “Imp Each Ment,” he squawked.

“Meant?”

“He meant what he said.”

Lacky groaned. “I've got to get out of here!”

“So do I.” They plowed on.

They found two paths going in the right direction. Neat signboards identified them, but the words had been smeared out except for the first letters: P and S. They paused, uncertain which one to take.

“Maybe we should each try one path,” Lacky suggested. “And see which one is better. They seem to be parallel, so we can compare notes as we walk,”

“I agree. My name begins with S, so I'll take the S Path.” He set off along it, while she took the other.

Sim felt suddenly lighter as he stepped on the path, as though he had shed a burden. He looked across, and saw that Lacky's path was leading her into a tangle tree. Too bad for her; he was just glad that the tree wasn't along his path.

Then he almost ran into the needle cactus that was along his path. He halted just barely in time, with a squawk. The only reason it hadn't fired a barrage of needles at him was that it hadn't seen him. Yet.

“Almost got you, bird brain, didn't it!” Lacky called, laughing.

She had seen the cactus, and not warned him? She didn't care if he got hurt? This was psychopathic behavior.

Then something clicked in his mind. His own behavior was sociopathic. He was being extremely antisocial by not warning her of the danger he saw along her path. The S sign might be for Socio-Path, and the P sign could be for Psycho-Path. The paths were destroying their consciences!

“Get off the path!” he squawked, jumping off his own. Immediately the burden returned: the burden of conscience.

“Why should I?” Lacky asked, obviously indifferent to his fate.

“Because there's a tangle tree ahead.”

She looked, and saw that it was so. She leaped off just as the first tentacle was reaching for her.

Then, recovering her own conscience, she was horrified. “I was acting like a jerk!” she said.

“It's the path--the Psycho--Path,” he squawked. “Not your fault. Mine was similar.”

“The path! I should have known that the comic strip wouldn't give us any easy ways out. How awful.”

“We had better stay off any other paths we find here.”

“Yes! The puns here aren't necessarily funny.”

“We'll be more careful now,” Sim squawked.

There was a fierce buzzing. “That sounds like bees,” Lacky said nervously.

“I'm a bird. I can snap bees out of the air.”

“Not if they're wood-bees or could-bees or worse.”

The buzzing things came into sight. They were little horns. “Worse, I fear,” Sim squawked. “Those look like hornets.”

“Yes--and maybe that's good.” She grabbed one from the air, put its small end to her mouth, and blew. A net flew out.

“That may help,” Sim squawked, gratified. “The nets may clear a path ahead of us.”

“Yes.” She grabbed another, and blew its net ahead. All manner of dire puns cringed back, not wanting to get netted. They followed, and soon emerged on the other side.

“Thank you,” Sim squawked. “I don't think I could have made it through alone.”

“Me neither,” Lacky agreed. “I was going to visit a friend, but lost my way, and had to risk the comic strip. But I had forgotten how awful they can be.”

“When I return, I'll fly across,” Sim squawked. “It's always worse than you think possible.”

She nodded. “Well, I think this is farewell, invisible bird. May you succeed in your mission.”

“Thank you,” Sim squawked. “I hope your visit goes well.”

“I hope so too. I don't even know my friend.”

Sim paused. “How can you have a friend you don't know?”

She looked embarrassed. “I--am lonely. So I wrote that I would find my best friend soon, hoping that though my writing comes true only briefly, the message would remain, and it would happen. But I got lost in the comic strip, and that may have cost me too much time, and my friend may no longer be there.”

Sim's fine mind clicked over some coincidental thoughts. “Is it possible that you would meet a temporary friend--in the comic strip?”

“Yes, that's another interpretation. I--” She paused, astonished. “I met you! You helped me get through. And now we're separating.”

“We don't have to separate right away,” Sim said. “I am about to go to another realm. But perhaps I can help you find a more permanent friend.”

“That would be nice. Maybe I can help you in return, so that we can exchange services, as is the custom. What are you looking for?”

“Prince Dolin, who should be somewhere in this area. Do you happen to know him?”

“Yes I do; I can take you right to him. The poor boy is limited to a range of nine years.” She led the way across the new terrain.

“So I understand. But I don't know what shortened his life.” He followed.

“He doesn't like to speak of it. I think it was traumatic.”

“I hope he will speak of it to me. We have a serious crisis back on Xanth that he may be able to alleviate.”

“Xanth? I had the impression that you were native to Ptero.”

“I am, in the sense that we all are. But I have a temporary mission on Xanth.”

“Oh, you are one of the real-be's instead of the might-be's.”

“Yes.” But Sim did not care to discuss this further, lest he betray the secret, though theoretically it didn't matter here on Ptero. So he changed the subject. “This friend you seek--is it of a particular gender?”

“No, either will do.”

“Is it of a particular species?”

“No, any will do.”

“Then perhaps I have a candidate. How do you feel about Mundane dogs?”

“Mundane?” Her tone suggested that this wasn't good.

“They really can't be faulted for their origin.”

“I suppose that's right. I understand some Mundanes are reasonably good folk. We don't see many here.”

“I have encountered a good-natured dog who is looking for a home. I think he would remain longer than briefly, because he has nowhere else to go. He seems to be hopelessly lost in Xanth.”

“I suppose I could consider him,” she said doubtfully.

“And I think very lonely.”

“Lonely,” she echoed, relating.

“Try writing three words: BOSS BLACK LABRADOR.”

She wrote them. In a moment the dog appeared, with his sign. He approached and gazed wistfully at her as she read the message.

She melted. “Oh, you poor thing!” she said, getting down to hug him. “You are welcome in my home!”

Boss wagged his tail and licked her face. It seemed she had found her friend.

They walked on, now a threesome. But there was a problem: Sim arrived at his blanked year. “I can't go there,” he squawked.

“Oh, that's right--you real-be's have your missing time. The time in your lives when you are in Xanth.”

“Yes. If the prince died there, then I will be unable to interview him about it.”

“Where is your line?”

“Right here,” Sim squawked. For there before him was the line that marked the missing section of his existence on Ptero, extending six months before and after his life on Xanth.

“There's no line for me. But Prince Dolin lives a little farther on. Maybe he's on the other side.”

“I hope so. I believe his end was masked by my missing year, but that was a year ago, so maybe I can reach it now.” Things could be tricky around a person's missing year, in part because the missing section wasn't constant; it kept moving To. “We'll have to cross together, or we'll lose our association.”

“Yes.” Lacky extended an arm. “Give me something to hold onto.”

Sim extended an invisible wing. When she felt the feathers of its tip, she took gentle hold. Then they stepped across. To Sim it was just like taking a single step over a painted line. But suddenly he felt a size smaller: he was now four years old.

“Wheee!” Lacky exclaimed. “You zoomed me right across your year. I'm younger without seeming to have traveled the distance.” She checked herself. “I was twenty-one; now I'm twenty.”

“And I am four,” Sim squawked. “I hope I can cope.”

“Boss and I will help you. After all, you brought us together.” Then she looked around. “Boss! I lost him!”

“He wasn't touching us,” Sim squawked. “He must be a year To.”

“Oh, I must find him before he thinks he's been deserted again.”

“We can step back.”

Sim extended a wing, and Lacky took it, and they stepped back downtime. There was the dog, looking around, sniffing the air, confused. “Here!” Lacky cried, joining him. He wagged his tail, relieved.

They crossed From again, this time with the dog, and resumed their trek. Boss was interested in the terrain, now that he had company.

They came to a child-sized castle, with toys scattered around it and floating in its little moat. “His parents, Prince Dolph and Princess Taplin, live in a larger castle farther along,” Lacky explained. “I understand they are rather upset by the brevity of their son's territory.”

“Just how did they get together?” Sim inquired. “In Xanth they did not.”

“Well, as I understand it, Prince Dolph was nine years old and on his own adventure, when he came across this sleeping princess. So he kissed her, and then later when he grew up he married her, and it worked out okay. She was Princess Taplin, daughter of King Merlin and Sorceress Tapis, but there wasn't much there for her, so her mother made her a coverlet and she bit into an apple or something and slept for most of a thousand years until Prince Dolph came. That seemed to be the right decision. How is it that it didn't work out in your reality?”

“Magician Murphy came and messed it up, and an ordinary girl ate the apple by accident, and slept, and married Prince Dolph, and they had two daughters, Dawn & Eve.”

“Oh, I know them! They're the same territory as Prince Dolin, at least at this end. I didn't realize that they had the same father.”

“Things can get confusing, with alternate lines of history,” Sim squawked. “I have trouble keeping them straight myself. I hadn't known Prince Dolin's derivation. Do Dolin and Dawn & Eve know each other?”

But her answer was cut off by the appearance of Prince Dolin. “Oh, a big Mundane dog!” he cried, delighted. He was about seven years old.

“Yes, we have come to visit. You know Sim, I think.”

“Who?” the lad asked, looking around.

Oops, there were two problems. First, he was invisible, and second, he had actually met the prince a little later than this, so might not be remembered. Still, time was not the same here as in Xanth, so maybe it was just the invisibility.

“I am a big bird with iridescent feathers,” Sim squawked.

“Oh, yes, now I remember. But I don't see you.”

“I'm invisible at the moment. The three princesses did it.”

“Oh, those little brats. They do stuff like that.”

The princesses were five years younger than Dolin, so he would know them as two or three years old. He had never had a chance to see them as responsible adults. Sim decided not to try to correct the confusion about their motives. “Feel my wing, so you know it's me,” he squawked. He extended the same wing Lacky had held.

The boy touched the feathers. “Yeah, that's great. I remember you were real pretty. But you didn't stay long.”

“Well, I'm only four years old myself, here. My attention span is brief.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” The prince turned to the dog. “Who's this dog?”

“This is Boss,” Lacky said. “My new friend. He likes to be petted.”

“That's great!” The two were getting along well, though the dog was actually larger than the boy.

“Sim needs to talk to you,” Lacky said with adult diplomacy.