Air Apparent

by Piers Anthony

  They paused in place, awed by the magnificence of the great bird. Then Wira spoke. “Oh Simurgh, I am—”

  I KNOW WHO YOU ARE, GOOD WOMAN. The thought was almost mind-blowingly powerful.

  “And this is—”

  The bird’s gaze oriented on Debra, as potent as that of the Python, but different. She realized that the bird was plumbing the depths of her mind. A CONSTRUCT FROM THE FACTORY. The eyes blinked with surprise. MADE REAL BY THE DEMON XANTH, AND FALLEN IN LOVE WITH THE ENEMY MAN.

  Debra fought to speak, and managed it. “Random is not my enemy!”

  There was a freighted pause. NOT ANY MORE, the Simurgh agreed. BUT YOU MAY STILL BE HIS ENEMY.

  “I won’t wear a bra!” Debra said.

  Wira spoke. “We came to ask—”

  MY CHICK NEEDS TO KNOW EVERYTHING. HE IS INDEED MY HEIR APPARENT. THE TOUR OF WORLDS WILL BE GOOD EXPERIENCE. HE WILL JOIN YOU AT CASTLE ROOGNA.

  That was it. They found themselves at the base of the mountain without quite remembering how they had gotten there. There was one more person to enlist.

  They set off for the Nameless Castle. “Do you think Chlorine will let Nimbus go?” Debra asked.

  “I suspect Nimby will. He wants his son to get worldly experience.”

  “Worldly,” Debra echoed, appreciating the pun.

  They arrived at the Nameless Castle in the early afternoon. Debra landed on the edge of the cloudbank—and there were two children.

  “Mother is having half a fit,” Nimbus reported brightly. “But she’s letting me go, provided Ilene comes along too, to babysit.”

  “I reminded her I’m only eleven,” the girl said. “But she says I have the illusion of being older. I don’t think I quite understand that.”

  “You can make illusions real,” Debra said. “If you had the illusion of greater age, you might make it real, at least for a while.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” the girl said, surprised.

  “I was part illusion, until Nimby made me real,” Debra reminded her. “He also made me older. So I appreciate the concept. When you need to be older, maybe you’ll be able to make the pretense, then make it real.”

  “That seems far-fetched.”

  “Chlorine surely knew. Sometimes things you believe do come true. We just this morning talked with Princess Ida.”

  “Oh, yes, she’s very nice.”

  “It seems we have our complement,” Wira said. “If you are ready to go—”

  “We are,” Nimbus said, reaching up to her. She lifted him up to sit in front of her. Ilene got on behind her. Debra flicked them both light and took off.

  “We’re so glad they let you come with us, Nimbus,” Wira said.

  “Aw, they just wanted to relax a while.”

  “Relax?”

  “They can’t talk much when I’m around.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Mom said the Nameless Castle is a palace. Dad said then let’s put wheels on it.”

  “Those are metaphors,” Wira said. “She meant that it’s a very fancy castle. He meant that it was time to move it elsewhere.”

  “That’s a mixed metaphor!” Debra said. “Wheels on the palace.”

  “Yeah. So next thing the castle was rolling almost off the cloud. Dad barely caught it in time.”

  “You made it literal,” Wira said. “That’s your talent.”

  “To make mixed metaphors real,” Ilene said. “They were pretty upset.”

  “I can imagine,” Wira said. “Maybe you had better stifle it while we’re on this mission.”

  “Why should I? I want to have fun.”

  “Nimbus!” Ilene snapped.

  “Aww, okay.”

  Debra nodded to herself. The boy knew to mind Ilene.

  “Will you tell us what your mission is, this time?” Ilene asked, changing the subject.

  Wira explained how they had found and lost their two men. “So now we have to go to the World of Ida,” she concluded. “With the heirs or air apparent.”

  “But don’t you have to leave your body behind to go there?” the girl asked.

  “Yes, of course. But Princess Ida will see that our bodies are safe.”

  “What about the men’s bodies?”

  Debra felt Wira stiffen, and Debra did too. “The men—they had to leave their bodies behind,” Debra said.

  “In the burning tree,” Wira said.

  “But they exchanged with some fancy pennies.”

  “If those pennies came from a World of Ida, their bodies couldn’t have gone.”

  “That what I wondered,” Ilene said. “I didn’t mean to make trouble.”

  “You didn’t,” Wira assured her. “We missed something we should have understood right away. If the men remained mostly in that tree—”

  “There must be a confusion,” Debra said quickly. She couldn’t bear the thought of the men’s bodies burning.

  “We’ll have to go check that tree,” Wira said grimly.

  Debra veered to fly to the tree they had visited in the dream. No more was said; neither of them dared.

  They landed near the tree and walked to its site, dread threatening. Dread confirmed: there was nothing but a pile of ashes there.

  Ilene dismounted. “Let’s take a walk, Nimbus,” she said.

  “But I want to see—” he began, before her warning glare cut him off. “Walk it is,” he agreed.

  “That girl does show signs of maturity,” Debra murmured.

  “We have to look,” Wira said, contemplating the ashes.

  “We have to,” Debra agreed.

  They found a nearby fan tree and picked large fans. They waved these, blowing the ashes away. Soon the ground showed, with the scorched cents lying on it.

  “Those are talking cents,” Wira said. “I wonder—?”

  “Do you have common cents?” Debra asked the coins.

  “We’re not common,” a penny replied.

  “I can see that. Did you happen to see any—any bodies here?”

  “No, but we know where they are. In the beer cellar.”

  “Do you mean wine cellar?” Wira asked.

  “This was a beerbarrel tree, not a winebarrel tree. It has a beer cellar.”

  The woman and centaur exchanged a look of burgeoning hope. “A cellar!” Debra said.

  They inspected the ground, and discovered a square panel embedded in the center. It had a heavy ring set in its metal. They hauled on the ring together, and slowly the panel came up. There was a dark hole below, with steps leading down.

  “Time for some help,” Wira said. “Ilene! Nimbus! We need the illusion of light here.”

  In less than a moment the two were there. “I can’t make illusions,” Ilene said. “They have to exist first.”

  “Isn’t my glow an illusion?” Nimbus asked, gazing eagerly into the hole.

  “Maybe it is,” Ilene agreed. She focused, and the boy’s faint glow became bright.

  “Still, I had better go first,” Wira said. “I don’t need light, and I don’t want to put the children at risk.” She closed her eyes and started down the steps.

  “This is fun,” Nimbus said. “Maybe there’s hidden treasure.”

  “It seems safe,” Wira called from below.

  Nimbus and Ilene went down, his glow illuminating everything. That helped, because Debra was far too large to join them. “What’s down there?” she called.

  “Ninety-nine bottles of beer,” Ilene called back.

  “And some orange cones,” the boy added. “Dodging around.”

  This hardly made sense. “Cones?”

  “There are words printed on them,” Ilene said. “Nundrum.”

  Debra groaned. “Cone-nundrum. A pun.”

  “I found the bodies,” Wira called. “They’re alive!”

  Debra was so relieved she sank to her knees. “Thank you, fate,” she breathed.

  After some discussion they figured it out. The men had randomly exch
anged with the collection of coins, which had been in the cellar with the beer, left over from some game beer drinkers had played. Then they had exchanged again, with the cones, which had come from one of the worlds of Ida. They probably hadn’t realized that they were going to that world; they just hadn’t wanted to be stuck in the cellar of the burning tree. But as it turned out, they were safe there; the massed beer bottles insulated the chamber against the heat, and the cellar was undamaged. The men could have waited, and been rescued by now, had they realized.

  “But at least they are safe,” Wira said. “I think we should just leave their bodies here until we catch up to their souls and somehow bring them back. However, we should take the little cones, as an indication of where the men went.”

  Debra agreed. They exited the cellar, closed its door, and carefully piled the ashes back over it so that no one would know the cellar existed. Then they set off for Castle Roogna, greatly encouraged.

  “I just thought,” Debra said. “Do we have more of that communal dream potion?”

  “Yes, I packed a vial. But we’ll have to be cautious about using it, as we may not be able to return for more when that runs out.”

  Fray Cloud and Sim Bird were already at the castle, being entertained by the three princesses. Then the group of six of them went up to see Princess Ida.

  “Cones,” Ida said. “The fourth world is Cone; that might be where they came from.”

  “The fourth world?” Debra asked.

  “There is what seems to be an endless chain of worlds,” Ida explained. “The first is Ptero, where time is geography.”

  “Geography?” Debra asked.

  “Folk age as they go west, and youthen as they go east, so they can be any age they want, but they can’t travel beyond their assigned lifespans. They call it To and From.”

  “Couldn’t they travel to the north or south pole and return on another meridian, without suffering aging or youthening?”

  Ida considered, surprised. “I suppose they could. That might greatly increase their freedom to travel.”

  “But we aren’t going there,” Wira said.

  “Yes,” Ida agreed. “On the word of Ptero is another Princess Ida, with another world orbiting her head. That is Pyramid, with four triangular faces, blue, red, green, and gray. On the blue face is another Ida, with a donut-shaped world orbiting her head. That is Torus. The Ida on that world has a cone-shaped world orbiting her head. That is Cone, where I think these cones came from. Is that correct, cones?”

  The two cones dodged back and forth as if avoiding a speeding object. That was their confirmation.

  “I hope my sense of direction works once we’re on that world,” Debra said. “Because even a very small world is a very big place.”

  “I hope so too,” Ida said. Debra realized that the princess could no longer make her conjectures come true, because now she knew Ida’s talent.

  “If it works on Xanth, shouldn’t it work on Cone?” Fray asked.

  “Yes, it should,” Ida agreed. “In fact, I’m sure it does.”

  Because Fray, only nine years old, didn’t know about Ida’s talent. Debra breathed a silent sigh of relief. The child was already proving her usefulness.

  “You will have to leave your bodies here,” Ida said. “But your souls will condense to form similar bodies with similar abilities. Cone is the fourth derivative, extremely small, but it will seem full size to you. I hope you are able to persuade your men to return.”

  “How do we return?” Debra asked.

  “You merely release your bodies, which are made of soul stuff. Your souls will puff into full size and return here, and to your sleeping bodies. The men should be able to do the same.”

  Debra didn’t like the sound of that. “Should?”

  “They did not arrive there by any normal route. That might complicate their return.”

  “There has to be a way,” Wira said.

  Princess Ida did not comment. That did not ease Debra’s misgivings.

  They lay on assorted couches, and Debra settled on the floor. Then Ida brought each a small vial to sniff as she opened it. Each person settled down, unconscious. So far this seemed to be mostly imagination.

  Then it was Debra’s turn to sniff. She did—and found herself rising out of her body. This was weird! But soon she formed into her centaur shape, albeit diffuse, and saw the others resuming their shapes, only on a miniature scale. Princess Ida was the size of a mountain.

  Wira beckoned, then set off flying toward the little moon orbiting Ida’s head. The others followed. The closer they got to it, the larger the world became. Debra realized that they were getting smaller, reducing to the scale of the world. As they approached it, it seemed as if they were coming toward a full-sized world.

  They accelerated, until it seemed they were going to crash into the ground. But then they swerved to zoom along just above the surface, the six of them flying in a line with Debra at the end, going to—

  Castle Roogna! And into it, like spirits flying through matter, and up to the room of Princess Ida. And there she was, with her tiny pyramidal moon with its colored faces. They oriented on that, and soon it was expanding the same way Ptero had, becoming the world it was.

  There was the Ida on its blue face, on an isle in a lake, with her donut moon. They oriented on that, and found that Ida, and there was her moon, shaped like a cone. That was the one!

  They zoomed in on the cone world, and came to rest at last on its outside surface. This was girt by fields and jungles and other routine features.

  But where were the men?

  Debra focused. “That way,” she said, pointing toward the distant rim of the cone. “I think. My sense is a bit fuzzy, but that may be because we’re on a different world.”

  “Are you sure?” Wira asked. “Has the Factor transferred recently?”

  “No, I’m not sure at all. He hasn’t transferred. So I must be imagining it. My feeling is gone now.”

  “I may have an idea,” Sim said.

  “Aren’t you Xanth’s smartest young bird?” Ilene asked admiringly. “Your idea is surely great.”

  Sim paused, evidently taken aback by this compliment. A few feathers turned pinkish. “That is irrelevant.”

  “I doubt it,” Wira said. “Let’s hear your idea.”

  “It occurred to me that we might craft a device to indicate the proper direction. Nimbus’s talent is to make mixed metaphors real. Suppose we mixed some for him?”

  “That might be entertaining,” Wira said. “But what we need is a direction.”

  “Precisely. One metaphor is Time’s Arrow. Another is factoring a human equation. Time isn’t really an arrow, and factoring is a mathematical process, but as metaphors they can facilitate understanding.”

  Where was he going on this? But Debra kept her mouth shut.

  “True,” Wira said. “The key would be in the mix, if that’s not metaphorical itself.”

  “Suppose we mixed them and came up with the Factor’s Arrow?”

  Wira frowned. “I’m not sure I—”

  “There,” Nimbus said, glowing more brightly.

  There was an arrow in the air, pointing toward the narrow tip of the cone. A literal mixed metaphor.

  “That’s where Random is!” Debra exclaimed jubilantly.

  A glance circulated somewhat haphazardly. Could this really make sense?

  Wira shrugged. “Let’s try it.”

  Debra fixed the direction in her mind, and they started off. They couldn’t go in a straight line, because there was a hill and forest in the way, and the forest looked rather ominous. So they allowed the terrain to guide them, and followed the curve of the hill beside the forest.

  And came to a smoldering ruin. It looked as if someone had piled up a mountain of cardboard and set it afire. People were working around it, using insulated hooks to catch and pull the pieces clear of the main mound. This would be the start of the rebuilding effort.

  The people spott
ed them. Three forged toward them.

  All of them stared in astonishment. Instead of heads, the people had name tags! The tags said JAMES, MARY, and ROBERT. They were, respectively, sturdy, shapely, and neutral. “Who are you?” James demanded, the tag vibrating.

  “We are visitors from Xanth, just passing through,” Wira said.

  “From Xanth!” Mary said.

  “Yes. We’re looking for two men, also from Xanth. Have you seen them?”

  “Oh, yes,” James said grimly. “They burned down our castle.”

  Oops. Debra glanced nervously around. These angry people might have a grudge.

  Wira had evidently come to a similar apprehension. “Thank you,” she said. “We’ll be moving on now.”

  “I think not,” Robert said grimly. Then, to the others: “Tag them!”

  Mary stepped forward and tagged Wira. Robert tagged Sim. Robert tagged Ilene. The three who were tagged went still, standing without speaking.

  Debra acted immediately. She leaped with all four feet to the side, avoiding getting tagged. Nimbus and Fray, the youngest members of the party, were on her back; they had the sense to hang on. She was able to outrun the two-footed folk.

  “Something has happened to them,” Debra said tersely. “Do either of you have any idea what?”

  “Maybe,” Nimbus said. “I think they’re nametaggers. I heard about them once. Whatever they tag is null until it finds a new name. But I think it just stuns outsiders.”

  “We have to rescue them,” Debra said.

  “You can’t escape us, centaur,” James called angrily. “We’re sending the flamma-bull after you. You can’t outrun him!”

  That sounded bad. They needed to get well away—but if they did, what would happen to the three who had been tagged?

  The bull appeared. He was a fine-looking bull the color of intense flame. In fact, flames were rising from him. Now she got it: flamma-bull, the flaming bull.

  “I can help!” Fray cried. “In a little time.”

  “Then do it,” Debra said grimly. “I’ll try to distract him meanwhile.” She drew her bra from her pack, glad she had forgotten to leave it behind. She wasn’t sure the curse would work on a bull, but it was worth trying. After all, it seemed to have affected the Python.