Centaur Aisle

by Piers Anthony

"You know which direction most of them come from, and where they return."

  "Oh, that. They mostly go north."

  "North it is," Dor agreed.

  They marched north, and in due course encountered a Mundane path that debouched into a road that became a paved highway. No such highway existed in Xanth, and Dor had to question this one closely to ascertain its nature. It seemed it served to facilitate the travel of metal and rubber vehicles that propelled themselves with some sort of magic or whatever it was that Mundanes used to accomplish such wonders. These wagons were called "cars," and they moved very rapidly.

  "I saw something like that below ground," Grundy said. "The demons rode in them."

  Soon the party saw a car. The thing zoomed along like a racing dragon, belching faint smoke from its posterior. They stared after it, amazed. "Fire it send from wrong end," Smash said.

  "Are you sure there's no magic in Mundania?" Grundy asked.

  "Even the demons didn't have firebreathers."

  "I am not at all certain," Arnolde admitted. "Perhaps they merely have a different name and application for their magic. I doubt it would operate for us. Perhaps this is the reason we believe there is no magic in Mundania--it is not applicable to our needs."

  "I don't want any part of that car," Irene said. "Any dragon shooting out smoke from its rear is either crazy or has one awful case of indigestion! How could it fight? Let's find our archives and get out of here."

  The others agreed. This aspect of Mundania was certainly inverted. They avoided the highway, making their way along assorted paths that paralleled it. Dor continued to query the ground, and by nightfall they were approaching a city. It was a strange sort of settlement, with roads that crisscrossed to form large squares, and buildings all lined up with their fronts right on the edges of the roads, so that there was hardly room for any forest there, jammed in close together. Some were so tall it was a wonder they didn't fall over when the wind blew.

  Dor's party camped at the edge of the city, under a large umbrella tree Irene grew to shelter them. The tree's canopy dipped almost to the ground, concealing them, and this seemed just as well. They were not sure how the Mundanes would react to the sight of an ogre, golem, or centaur.

  "We have gone as far as we can as a group," Dor said. "There are many people here, and few trees; we can't avoid being seen any more. I think Irene and I had better go in and find a museum--"

  "A library," Arnolde corrected him. "I would love to delve eternally in a Mundane museum, but the information is probably most readily accessible in a library."

  "A library," Dor agreed. He knew what that was, because King Trent had many books in his library-office in Castle Roogna.

  "However, that is academic, no pun intended," the centaur continued. "You cannot go there without me."

  "I know I'll step out of magic," Dor said. "But I won't need to do anything special. Nothing magical. Once I find the library for you--"

  "You have no certainty you can even speak their language," Arnolde said curtly. "In the magic ambience, you can; beyond it, this is problematical."

  "I'm not sure we speak the same language in our own group, sometimes," Irene said with a smile. "Words like 'ambience, and 'problematical!--"

  "I can speak their language," Grundy said. "That's my talent. I was made to translate."

  "A magical talent," Arnolde said.

  "oooops," Grundy said, chagrined. "Won't work outside the aisle."

  "But you can't just walk in to the city!" Dor said. "I'm sure they aren't used to centaurs."

  "I would have to walk in to use the library," Arnolde pointed out.

  "Fortunately, I anticipated such an impediment, so obtained a few helpful spells from our repository. We centaurs do not normally practice inherent magic, but we do utilize particular enchantments on an ad hoc basis. I have found them invaluable when on field trips to the wilder regions of Xanth." He checked through his bag of spells, much the way Irene checked through her seeds. "I have with me assorted spells for invisibility, inaudibility, untouchability, and so forth. The golem and I can traverse the city unperceived."

  "What about the ogre?" Dor asked. "He can't exactly merge with the local population either."

  Arnolde frowned. "Him, too, I suppose," he agreed distastefully.

  "However, there is one attendant glitch inherent in this process--"

  "I won't be able to detect you either," Dor finished.

  "Precisely. Some one of our number must exist openly, for these spells make the handling of books awkward; our hands would pass right through the pages. My ambience of magic should be unimpaired, of course, and we could remain with you--but you would have to do all the research unassisted."

  "He'll never make it," Irene said.

  "She's right," Dor said. "I'm just not much of a scholar. I'd mess it up."

  "Allow me to cogitate," Arnolde said. He closed his eyes and stroked his chin reflectively. For a worried moment Dor thought the centaur was going to be sick, then realized that he had the wrong word in mind. Cogitate actually referred to thinking.

  "Perhaps I have an alternative," Arnolde said. "You could obtain the assistance of a Mundane scholar, a qualified researcher, perhaps an archivist. You could pay him one of the gold coins you have hoarded, or perhaps a diamond; I believe either would have value in any frame of Mundania."

  "Uh, I guess so," Dor said doubtfully.

  "I tell you, even with help, he'll foul it up," Irene said. She seemed to have forgotten her earlier compliments on Dor's performance. That was one of the little things about her selective memory.

  "You're the one who should do the research, Arnolde."

  "I can only, as it were, look over his shoulder," the centaur said.

  "It would certainly help If I could direct the manner he selects references and turns the pages, as I am a gifted reader with a fine memory. He would not have to comprehend the material. But unless I were to abort the imperceptibility spells, which I doubt very much would be wise since I have no duplicates--"

  "There's a way, maybe," Grundy said. "I could step outside the magic aisle. Then he could see me and hear me, and I could tell him to turn the page, or whatever."

  "And any Mundanes in the area would pop their eyeballs, looking at the living doll," Irene said. "If anyone does it, I'm the one."

  "So they can pop their eyes looking up your skirt," the golem retorted, miffed.

  "That may indeed be the solution," Arnolde said.

  "Now wait a minute" Irene cried.

  "He means the messenger service," Dor told her gently.

  "Of course," the centaur said. "Since we have ascertained that the aisle is narrow, it would be feasible to stand quite close while Dor remains well within the forward extension."

  Dor considered, and it did seem to be the best course. He had somehow thought he could just go into Mundania, follow King Trent's trail by querying the terrain, and reach the King without much trouble. This temporal discontinuity, as the centaur put it, was hard to understand and harder to deal with, and the vicarious research the centaur proposed seemed fraught with hang-ups. But what other way was there? "We'll try it," he agreed. "In the morning."

  They settled down for the night, their second in Mundania. Smash and Grundy slept instantly; Dor and Irene had more trouble, and Arnolde seemed uncomfortably wide awake. "We are approaching direct contact with Mundane civilization," the centaur said. "In a certain sense this represents the culmination of an impossible dream for me, almost justifying the personal damnation my magic talent represents. Yet I have had so many confusing intimations, I hardly know what to expect. This city could be too primitive to have a proper library. The denizens could for all we know practice cannibalism. There are so many imponderabilities."

  "I don't care what they practice," Irene said. "Just so long as I find my father."

  "Perhaps we should query the surroundings in the morning," Arnolde said thoughtfully, "to ascertain whether suitable facilities exist here, befo
re we venture any farther. Certainly we do not wish to chance discovery by the Mundanes unless we have excellent reason."

  "And we should ask where the best Mundane archivist is," Irene agreed.

  Dor drew a word in the dirt with one finger: ONESTI. He contemplated it morosely.

  "This is relevant?" the centaur inquired, glancing at the word.

  "It's what King Trent told me,' Dor said. "If ever I was in doubt, to proceed with honesty."

  "Honesty?" Arnolde asked, his brow at the dirt.

  "I think about that a lot when I'm in doubt," Dor said. "I don't like deceiving people, even Mundanes."

  Irene smiled tiredly. "Arnolde, it's the way Dor spells the word. He is the world's champion poor speller. 0 N E S T I: Honesty."

  "ONESTI," the centaur repeated, removing his spectacles to rub his eyes. "I believe I perceive it now. A fitting signature for a King."

  "King Trent's a great King," Dor agreed. "I know his advice will pull us through somehow."

  Arnolde seemed almost to smile, as if finding Dor's attitude peculiar. "I will sleep on that," the centaur said. And he did, lying down on the dirt-scratched word.

  In the morning, after some problems with food and natural functions in this semipublic locale, they set it up. The centaur dug out his collection of spells, each one sealed in a glassy little globe, and Dor stepped outside the aisle of magic while the spells were invoked. First the party became inaudible, then invisible; it looked as if the spot were empty. Dor gave them time to get through the unfeeling spell, then walked back onto the lot. He heard, saw, and felt nothing.

  "But I can smell you," he remarked. "Arnolde has a slight equine odor, and Smash smells like a monster, and Irene is wearing perfume. Better clean yourselves up before we get into a building."

  Soon the smells faded, and after a moment Irene appeared, a short distance away. "Can you see me now?"

  "I see you and hear you," Dor said.

  "Oh, good. I didn't know how far out the magic went. I'm still the same to me." She stepped toward him and vanished.

  "You've gone again," Dor said, hastening to the spot where she had been. "Can you perceive me?"

  "Hey, you're overlapping me!" she protested, appearing right up against him, so that he almost stumbled.

  "Well, I can't perceive you," he said. "I mean, now I can, but I couldn't before. Can you see the others when you're outside the aisle?"

  She looked. "They're gone! We can see and hear you all the time, but now--"

  "So, you'll know when I can see you by when you can't see them."

  She leaned forward, and her face disappeared, reminding him of the Gorgon. Then she drew back. "I could see them then. I'm really in the enchantment, aren't I?"

  "You're enchanting," he agreed.

  She smiled and leaned forward to kiss him--but her face disappeared and he felt nothing.

  "Now I have to go find a library and a good archivist," he said, disgruntled, as she reappeared. "If you're with me, stay away from me."

  She laughed. "I'm with you. Just don't try to catch me outside the aisle." And of course that was what he should have done, if he really wanted to kiss her. And he did want to--but he didn't want to admit it.

  She walked well to the side of him, staying clear of the enchantment. "No sense you getting lost."

  They walked on into the city. There were many cars in the streets, all zooming rapidly to the intersections, where they screeched to stops, waited a minute with irate growls and constant ejection's of smoke from their posteriors, then zoomed in packs to the next intersections. They seemed to have only two speeds: zoom and stop.

  There were people inside the cars, exactly the way Grundy had described with the demon vehicles, but they never got out. It was as if the people had been swallowed whole and were now being digested.

  Because the cars were as large as centaurs and moved at a constant gallop when not stopped, Dor was wary of them and tried to avoid them. But it was impossible; he had to cross the road sometime. He remembered how the nefarious Gap Dragon of Xanth lurked for those foolish enough to cross the bottom of the Gap; these cars seemed all too similar. Maybe there were some that had not yet consumed people and were traveling hungry, waiting to catch someone like Dor. He saw one car stopped by the side of the street with its mouth wide open like that of a dragon; he avoided it nervously.

  The strangest thing about it was that its guts seemed to be all in that huge mouth--steaming tubes and tendons and a disk-shaped tongue.

  Oddest of all, it had no teeth. Maybe that was why it took so long to digest the people.

  He went to a corner. "How do I get across?" he asked.

  "You wait for a light to stop the traffic," the street informed him with a contemptuous air of dust and car fumes. "Then you run--don't walk across before they clip you, If you're lucky. Where have you been all your life?"

  "In another realm"' Dor said. He saw one of the lights the street described. It hung above the intersection and wore several little visors pointing each way. All sorts of colors flashed malevolently from it, in all sorts of directions. Dor couldn't understand how it made the car stop. Maybe the lights had some kind of stun-spell, or whatever it was called here. He played it safe by asking the light to tell him when it was proper to cross.

  "Now," the light said, flashing green from one face and red from another.

  Dor started across. A car honked like a sea monster and squealed like a sea-monster victim, almost running over Dor's leading foot.

  "Not that way, idiot!" the light exclaimed, flashing an angry red.

  "The other way! With the green, not the red! Haven't you ever crossed a street before?"

  "Never," Dor admitted. Irene had disappeared; she must have reentered the magic aisle to consult with the others. Maybe she found it safer within the spell zone; apparently the cars were unable to threaten her there.

  "Wait till I tell you, then cross the way I tell you," the light said, blinking erratically. "I don't want any blood in my intersection!"

  Dor waited humbly. "Now," the light said. "Walk straight ahead, keeping an even pace. Fast. You don't have all day, only fifteen seconds."

  "But there's a car charging me!" Dor protested.

  "It will stop," the light assured him. "I shall change to red at the last possible moment and force it to scorch rubber. I get a deep pleasure from that sort of thing."

  Nervously, Dor stepped out onto the street again. The car zoomed terrifyingly close, then squealed to a stop a handspan's distance from Dor's shaking body. "Shook you up that time, you damned pedestrian," the car gloated through its cloud of scorched rubber. "If it hadn't been for that blinking light, I'd a had you. You creeps shouldn't be allowed on the road."

  "But how can I cross the street if I'm not allowed on the road?" Dor asked.

  "That's your problem," the car huffed.

  "See, I can time them perfectly," the light said with satisfaction. "I get hundreds of them each day. No one gets through my intersection without paying his tax in gas and rubber."

  "Go blow a bulb!" the car growled at the light.

  "Go soak your horn!" the light flashed back.

  "Some day we cars will have a revolution and establish a new axle," the car said darkly. "We'll smash all you restrictive lights and have a genuine free-enterprise system."

  "You really crack me up," the light said disdainfully. "Without me, you'd have no discipline at all."

  Dor walked on. Another car zoomed up, and Dor lost his nerve and leaped out of the way. "Missed him!" the car complained. "I haven't scored in a week!"

  "Get out of my intersection!" the light screamed. "You never stopped! You never burned rubber! You're supposed to waste gas for the full pause before you go thorough! How do you expect me to maintain a decent level of pollution here If you don't cooperate?"

  "Oh, go jam your circuits!" the car roared, moving on through.

  "Police! Police!" the light flashed. "That criminal car just ran the light! Rogue
car! Rogue car!"

  But now the other cars, perceiving that one was getting away with open defiance, hastened to do likewise. The intersection filled with snarling vehicles that crashed merrily into each other. There was the crackle of beginning fire.

  Then the magic aisle moved out of the light's range, and it was silent. Dor was relieved; he didn't want to attract attention.

  Irene reappeared. "You almost did it that time, Dor! Why don't you quit fooling with lights and get on to the library?"

  "I'm trying to!" Dor snapped. "Where is the library?" he asked the sidewalk.

  "You don't need a library, you clumsy oaf," the walk said. "You need a bodyguard."

  "Just answer my question." The perversity of the inanimate seemed worse than ever, here in Mundania. Perhaps it was because the objects here had never been tamed by magic.

  "Three blocks south, two east," the walk said grudgingly.

  "What's a block?"

  "Is this twerp real?" the walk asked rhetorically.

  "Answer!" Dor snapped. And in due course he obtained the necessary definition. A block was one of the big squares formed by the crisscrossing roads. "Is there an archivist there?"

  "A what?"

  "A researcher, someone who knows a lot."

  "Oh, sure. The best in the state. He walks here all the time. Strange old coot."

  "That sidewalk sure understands you," Irene remarked smugly.

  Dor was silent. Irene was safe from any remarks the sidewalk might make about her legs because she was outside the magic aisle.

  Dor knew Arnolde was keeping up with him, because his magic was operating. If Irene stepped within that region of magic, she would vanish. So she had the advantage and could snipe with impunity, for now.

  A small group of Mundanes walked toward them, three men and two women. Their attire was strange. The men wore knots of something about their necks, almost choking them, and their shoes shone like mirrors. The women seemed to be walking on stilts. Irene continued blithely along, passing them. Dor hung back, curious about Mundane reactions to a citizen of Xanth.

  The two females seemed to pay no attention, but all three males paused to look back at Irene. "Look at that creature!" one murmured. "What world is she from?"