Roc and a Hard Place

by Piers Anthony

  “That must make sense, for dreams,” Metria said. “But I think I see one of a different species.” She floated out and picked up a bug. “I'll bug his ear,” she said to Dolph. Then she put the bug in the cyborg's ear and whispered something.

  “Why, of course!” the cyborg said. “Right that way.” He pointed.

  Dolph set the submarine in motion. “What did you do?”

  “I dropped a hint,” she explained. “That was a hint bug I found. Once I bugged his ear, he had to tell me the truth.”

  They moved on. The landscape faded into a sort of fuzzy nothingness with colored ribbons curling through. The tug of the token got stronger.

  At last they came to a man sitting on a loop of ribbon, surrounded by music. He had a huge shock of hair swept back from his forehead, and wore a suit that trailed almost to the ground behind him. He had no instrument, and his mouth was closed, yet the music was clearly governed by his will, because he was nodding to its beat and moving his hands as if to accent some aspects while smoothing down others. When Metria approached him, he looked up, and it faded. “Yes?”

  “Are you MPD?” she asked.

  “I am No One.” Somewhat wary violin music sounded.

  “I think you are MPD, because this summons token is nudging right toward you. You must appear as a Witness at the trial of Roxanne Roc.”

  The music rumbled, with drums ascendant. “Where is this trial?” No One asked.

  “In the Nameless Castle, in Xanth proper. We're here to take you there.”

  A bassoon made a dirty noise. “I can't leave the dream realm. I can't go.”

  “But this summons says you have to,” she said, holding out the token.

  No One brushed it away. “Forget it, Demoness.” The woodwinds whistled as he dropped off his loop of ribbon and fell into the depths below.

  She dived down after him, but the bands of ribbon became numerous and convoluted, obscuring her view and her way.

  MPD had disappeared.

  “So it's going to be that type of a serving,” she muttered.

  “Well, I won't be balked.” She held up the token and heeded its tug.

  She threaded her way through the ribbons, and they became thin bands of candy, then thickened into flavored, colored cotton. The cotton formed into threads, and then into fabrics, and the fabrics wound their way into items of clothing. And there, amidst the hanging suits and dresses, sat a young woman with fair hair, pressing sections of cloth to each other. They adhered where they touched, and she twisted the free sections around and pressed them together again, and they stuck together again, forming the configurations of clothing.

  “Yes?” she inquired as Metria floated up.

  “I'm looking for MPD. Have you seen him?”

  “Who?”

  “His name is MPD. He has a big shock of wild hair, and he makes music just by thinking of the instruments.”

  “Oh, that's Maestro No One. Maybe Me Two can tell you. He's that way.”

  “Thank you.” Metria floated hurriedly in the direction indicated. The racks of clothing became blobs of goo. She weaved around them, and soon they became blocks of charred wood. She lifted the token again, and it tugged her in a new direction. She followed it.

  She came across a short, stout man with fiery red hair standing in a smoking pit. A blob of goo appeared before him. He stared at it, and it burst into flame. It burned vigorously for half a moment, then settled into a moderate glow for another moment, and finally became another charred lump.

  He looked up as she floated close. “Yes?”

  “Me Two? I'm looking for MPD.”

  “Who?”

  She described the maestro. The man frowned. “Who told you that was the one you wanted?”

  “I know, because my token indicated him. But a fairhaired young woman told me to come this way, because Me Two would know.”

  “That was She Three. She shouldn't have told you that.”

  “Why not? Don't you know where MPD is?”

  “I know where Maestro No One is but she shouldn't have told you.”

  Metria was beginning to be annoyed. “I think you folk are giving me a runaround. Now, tell me what you know.”

  “No. Go away, Demoness; we don't want your kind here.”

  “Listen, burn brain—” she started angrily, then realized that he was baiting her. Since she really didn't need him, she refused to let him waste more of her time. She lifted the token—and it tugged right toward him.

  “What's that?” Me Two asked.

  “It's a summons token for the trial of Roxanne Roc, in mainland Xanth. And it seems to be tugging toward you,” she said, perplexed.

  He squinted at her—and suddenly she was a mass of flames. He had spontaneously combusted her!

  “You dirty noise!” she swore, becoming water. The flames hissed out. But the distraction had been effective: Me Two was gone.

  She lifted the token and zoomed along the path it indicated. The charred blobs became polished blocks of wood, and then polished metal, and then polished glass. Reflections were everywhere. And there among the reflections were a host of little old whiskery men with collections of small objects.

  Metria knew the difference between a real figure and a reflected one. She zeroed in on the original. “Where is MPD?” she demanded.

  The man lookedup. “Who?”

  “The maestro! Did he pass this way?”

  The little man lifted a glistening red bottle. He put his two hands around it, and drew them apart, and lo! there were two glistening red bottles. “No.”

  She was getting about as fed up as a noneating demoness could be. “No you won't tell me, or no he didn't pass this way?”

  “No neither.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I am Who Four. I duplicate inanimate objects, as you can see. I am busy at the moment, as you can also see. Now, go away, Demoness.”

  Metria was getting more crafty. She lifted the token—and it tugged right toward Who Four. “Are you MPD?”

  “I don't know what you're talking about.” He lifted a small puzzle box, put his hands around it, and separated them, holding two small puzzle boxes.

  “Well, I'm going to serve this summons on you. Who Four,” she decided. She floated toward him.

  Who Four jumped. The action was so sudden that it caught her by surprise. He sailed right up past a mirror-beam and disappeared. She followed, but all she found were dozens of reflections of herself. So she faded into invisibility, and then there were dozens of reflections of nothing. But Who Four was gone.

  Now she was getting good and irritated. “There is something very odd about this,” she muttered. She lifted the token and followed its tug once more.

  This time it led her away from glass column and beams, and past a forest of upside trees, to the blank wall of a massive rock cliff. There was a door set in it, marked GOURD STORAGE DEPT.: NO ADMITTANCE.

  “Fooey on that foul noise,” she muttered, and floated through it.

  For a moment she wished she hadn't, because something fearsome rose up before her. She screamed and retreated halfway back into the wall. Then she got hold of herself, putting one hand on a shoulder and the other on a knee, and hung on tight. “You're a demoness, Metria!” she reminded herself. “You aren't afraid of anything, because nothing can hurt a demoness.”

  Then there was a small swirl of leaves and dust before her. She screamed again and popped right out of there.

  But in two thirds of a moment she took stock. “That is the storage place of fears,” she realized. “No wonder it's scary.” And her worst fear was of stepping beyond the magic in Mundania and dissolving into a mindless swirl of dust.

  But this was the gourd, the dream realm, one of the more magic aspects of Xanth; she would not fade out here. All she had to do was conquer her unreasonable fear and follow the token. This time she would not let whoever or whatever it was she found escape. Because a remarkable suspicion was lifting its pointed head pa
rtway into her consciousness.

  So she nerved herself, and walked back through the cliff wall. The dust swirled up again, but this time she addressed it with what boldness she could muster: “You are merely a fear from my memory of Mundania. I am not dreaming. You have no power over me.”

  “Aw, shucks,” the swirl muttered, subsiding.

  Metria smiled. Dust did not normally speak in human fashion, unless King Dor was around, but this was the dream realm, where the rules were as the Night Stallion made them.

  She had won a small victory.

  Now, where was that person hiding? She lifted the token and followed its tug. The Simurgh had good magic, because these disks worked in Xanth, Mundania, and the dream realm. Which stood to reason, because Metria wasn't sure that any entity had more power than the Simurgh, except perhaps the Demon X(A/N)th himself. That reminded her of the root of this endeavor: Whatever could Roxanne Roc have done to warrant such a prominent trial, with the threat of enormous punishment? The Simurgh must be really annoyed!

  Well, she would find out when the trial came. Meanwhile, she merely had to serve the last three summonses, then report back to serve the Simurgh herself. Of course, her job wouldn't be quite finished, because she still had to make sure that every last summonsee arrived at the Nameless Castle.

  But she was confident she could handle that, because once served, no summonsee could really decline.

  She walked onward through the Storage Dept. of Fears, seeing things that were surely fearsome to normal folk. Slavering dragons, hissing snakes, quivering tentacles, things going bump in the night, hairy-legged spiders, rent collectors, and a long hollow stick.

  She paused. “What's so fearful about you?” she asked the stick.

  “I am from the stem of a plant known as rye,” the stick answered. “I am full of my seeds, which are very solid.”

  “And that terrifies dreamers?” she asked with a hint of a suggestion of a sneer she knew would annoy it.

  “Yes—when someone points me at such folk, and threatens to shoot out my seeds,” the rye full replied. “I think it's the loud bang I make as they go, because I don't like losing my seeds.”

  Metria shrugged and moved on. Mortal folk chose funny things to fear. Soon she came to an eye land. It was shaped like a giant eyeball gazing up at the sky. She remembered that big eyes in the night frightened some folk. The token tugged toward it. But it was surrounded by water, as most eye lands were, for some reason; maybe the water cooled their chafing orbs as they shifted in their sockets. She could float across to it, but preferred to walk, so she wouldn't miss anything low. That made the water a problem.

  Well, she would just have to wade. She put a foot to the water—and discovered it was solid. She could walk on it!

  “What kind of water are you?” she asked it.

  “I am hard water, of course,” it said.

  “Oh, of course,” she agreed, feeling stupid. “What's fearful about you?”

  “Folk fear drowning in me, especially when my surfs are revolting. They can get pretty violent, especially during a storm.”

  All of which she should have realized on her own. She walked on across to the eye land. There she saw an eyeglass bush, which was, of course, made of glass, with glass eyes in lieu of flowers. The eyes glared at her in frightening fashion, so she could appreciate why this plant was stored here.

  There certainly seemed to be a good many props; no wonder the dream crews had no trouble Grafting bad dreams for all occasions, every night. It amazed her to realize how many bad dreams were needed; since they went only to those who deserved them, there had to be a great many imperfect people. If it was like this in Xanth, how much worse must it be in Mundania!

  The token tugged her on. She came to a rocky section of the eye land. She paused at a big rock. “What's so scary about you, rock?”

  It opened an eye. “That's roc, Demoness, not rock.

  Haven't you learned the difference?” It shook out a wing, which she now saw was folded around it, making it as featureless as a boulder.

  “Sorry about that,” she said, amused. “But you still don't seem very petrifying to me.”

  “Very what?” the stone-hard bird asked.

  “Appalling, dismaying, horrifying, alarming, consternationing—”

  “Frightening?”

  “Whatever,” she agreed crossly. “Why should any dreamer fear you?”

  “Because of what I do,” the roc said. “Like thus.”

  Suddenly Metria was rock hard. She had become a statue!

  She puffed into smoke, nullifying the effect. “Why, you putrescent excrescence!” she swore. “You turned me into a rock!”

  “That's what I do,” the rock agreed. “Folk are terrified of being petrified.”

  She gazed at the sharp tip of its beak as it spoke. “You have a point,” she agreed cuttingly, and went on.

  She came to an ugly tree with uglier fruit. It was a bag tree, growing every kind of bag. She touched one, and found it was full of trash: a trash bag. Another contained a sandwich and bottle of juice: a lunch bag. One almost put her to sleep: a sleeping bag. A fourth one grabbed at her: a grab bag. So she made like a punching bag, and punched it in the mouth. “Get out of here, you old bag!” it told her.

  The token led her to a bookshelf, and stopped. When she tried to walk on, the token tugged back. When she went to the side, the token tugged toward the shelf. But there was no one there. So she considered it more carefully.

  On it were several books, scattered and tumbled. There were parts of pictures on their spines. “Someone didn't put these away properly,” she said, disgusted. So she stood the books up and set them together. But the picture segments on their spines formed a jumbled mess. “This won't do,” she said. So she rearranged the books, with an eye to the picture segments, and they began forming a proper picture.

  When it was complete, the picture was of a comfortable chamber, wherein a man snoozed on a couch. He was a fairly handsome human male, obviously just resting between stints of work; an open book was on the table beside him. The picture, now properly assembled, was surprisingly realistic.

  And the token tugged right toward it. Toward the snoozing man.

  “This is weird,” she muttered. But she reminded herself yet again that she was in the dream realm, where weirdness was routine, and in a private section of it, where fears were stored for future use. There seemed to be nothing fearsome about this scene, but she didn't yet understand all its implications.

  So she turned smoky, then shrank into the scale of the scene, and entered it. She found herself in the room, beside the couch. “Are you—” she began.

  But she stopped, because the man wasn't there. He must have gotten up as she was phasing in. He was standing to the side, near the door. “Who are you?” he asked.

  “I am D. Metria, here with a summons for MPD,” she said. “And I think you must be him.” She stepped toward him with the token extended. “You have to report to the Nameless Castle as a Witness.”

  But he had already moved away. “I have no reason to accept such a summons,” he said.

  She whirled on him. “Then tell me who you think you are.”

  “I am Take Five,” he said. “And I was doing that, as is. my wont, when you intruded into my home.”

  “What is your talent?”

  “I can see five seconds into the future. That is why you will not be able to serve me with that summons. I will be five seconds elsewhere.”

  “I am a demoness,” she said evenly. “I can float or fly at any speed. Suppose I take out after you and simply pursue you unremittingly, no matter how fast you flee? You may see it coming, but you will not be able to prevent my serving you with this summons eventually. You won't even be able to sleep, unless you can do so in naps less than five seconds each.”

  He pondered, evidently realizing that she was not bluffing.

  There was a limit to his talent. “How much do you know?” he asked.


  “I don't know anything for sure, but I think that you are a person with multiple personalities—and each personality has a different magic talent.”

  He nodded. “How did you catch on?”

  “In part because I have the same complaint myself. I am Metria, and Mentia, and Woe Betide.” She shifted briefly into the two other forms as she spoke. “It's a nuisance, but it has its points. So I'm not condemning you. I just have a job to do.”

  His attitude softened. “I see. You do have a similar complaint. I took you for an impersonation.”

  “A what?”

  “Counterfeit, bogus, fraudulent, pretense, semblance, substitute—”

  “Fake?”

  “Whatever,” he said, smiling. “I couldn't see why anyone would summons an entity who exists only in the fear storage of the dream realm. I have many personalities and forms and talents because I am a general-purpose substitute.

  When they don't have the proper character for a dream sequence, I fill in as well as I can. My mind is deemed irrelevant. So I assumed you were another joker sent to disturb my equilibrium.”

  “They play jokes on you?”

  “Sometimes. It seems it gets boring between scenes.” He shrugged. “Nevertheless, I can't go outside the dream realm, because I have no reality in the real world. So I think that however sincere you may be, your summons is not.”

  “It's from the Simurgh.”

  “That may be. But unless she is prepared to lend me a soul, I may not leave here. I lack the solidity of the walking skeletons or brassy folk; I would simply fade into oblivion, like any other figment.”

  “Maybe the token can handle it,” she said doubtfully.

  “Very well. Let's test it. I will know if it provides support for the external realm.”

  She handed him the token. He took it and paused. “No, this has no animation for me. It's dead. In fact, it seems to be blank.”

  She looked. Indeed, the disk was blank on both sides. “I don't understand. It said 'MPD—WITNESS' before, and it led me right to you. To all of you.”

  “Something is amiss. Try it again.” He handed it back.

  She lifted it—and now the words were back. It tugged toward him. “It's working again. See—there are the words.”