Board Stiff

by Piers Anthony

  “You mean they summoned the stork together?” Tiara asked. “I didn’t think that was possible.”

  “Virtually anything is possible, with sufficient magic. Their son was Cyrus Cyborg, who will marry Princess Rhythm in due course, having romanced her when she was twelve.”

  “She did say she was the naughtiest,” Tiara said appreciatively.

  “She did use a spell that aged her a decade for the occasion. But yes, she was phenomenally naughty. At any rate, I see this robot, or more correctly row-bot, is fully equipped for the transit, with seating for our party. But it is not clear why it is inanimate. I see that it has a supply of wood for fuel, and its parts look operative.”

  “Maybe I can ask it,” Tiara said. She seemed to have a certain sensitivity for people and things, especially those in trouble. She got into the boat and faced the face of the robot head. “Can you see me? Can you hear me? Can you understand me?”

  There was no response, but she didn’t give up. “I’m going to kiss you. If you are aware of me, kiss me back.”

  Kandy found herself admiring the young woman’s technique. If anything could melt the metal heart of a machine, that would be it. She must have had a good deal of recent practice in kissing.

  Tiara kissed the robot’s faceplate where its mouth should be. Then she drew back a bit. “You did!” she said. “You kissed me back!”

  Kandy realized that only a stone could have been unmoved by the pretty girl’s kiss. But was she imagining that the metal had responded?

  Now the robot made a sound. “Sssss.”

  “Yes,” she translated. “Can you tell us why you’re not moving?”

  “Ddddd.”

  “Dry,” she said. “But you’re floating on water.”

  “Oooooo.”

  “Oil!” she exclaimed. “You’re out of oil!”

  “And so froze up,” Pewter said. “Of course. I’m a machine. I should have thought of that.” He considered half a moment. “But I’m not the same sort of machine. I’m electronic, while you’re mechanical. I don’t have your kind of oil.”

  “There is our challenge,” Mitch said. “To find oil for the row-bot, so it can propel us safely across the moat.”

  “There’s our challenge,” Ease agreed. “There must be oil somewhere close by. Maybe some oilcloth, oil paint, or cooking oil.”

  They looked around. There was nothing nearby but a barrel of monkeys. No oil.

  “Still, there may be some devious connection,” Pewter said.

  Ease went to the barrel. The monkeys decamped, leaving it empty. No help there.

  Then Kandy saw something squished in the very bottom of the barrel. WHAT IS THAT?

  Ease picked up her thought. He reached down inside with the board and pulled up—a mass of gray grease. In a moment it animated and jumped to the rim. It was alive, or at least sentient. What was it?

  ITS A GREASE MONKEY! Kandy thought with sudden revelation.

  “A grease monkey,” Ease echoed.

  “Marginalized by her companions,” Tiara said. Somehow she knew the gender. “No friends.” She of course understood that sort of experience. “We need to find her a friend.”

  “A friend,” Astrid echoed. She too understood.

  “Who would want the company of a blob of grease?” Ease asked.

  “A dry robot,” Pewter answered.

  And there it was. Tiara did the honors. “Grease Monkey, there is someone who desperately needs you,” she told her. “Because grease is similar to oil, and he’s out of oil. Let me take you to him.” She put out her arm.

  The monkey considered briefly, then jumped to her arm. She carried her to the row-bot. “Row-bot, I have brought you a friend. A grease monkey.”

  “Ooooo.”

  “Yes, similar to oil. Stay close together and both of you should do well.” She set the monkey down before the robot form. “Climb all over him,” she told the monkey. “He will love being close to you.”

  The monkey did, embracing the metalwork. Soon the row-bot began to move, at first creakily, then with greater authority. “Thank you, human friend,” he said. “You have brought me the girl of my dreams.”

  Kandy felt Ease start at that. He knew about dream girls.

  “Now we’d like to ask a favor,” Tiara said.

  “Yes, I will take your party across the moat,” the row-bot said with increasingly smooth enunciation. “I overheard your prior dialog. By all means board.”

  They boarded, taking the five available seats. The robot grasped the oars and rowed out into the moat. The moat monsters didn’t even try to block it; the challenge had been handled.

  In no more than four long moments they were at the inner bank. They disembarked. “Thank you, Row-bot,” Tiara said.

  “You are more than welcome,” the robot answered. Then he and his new friend rowed back across the moat.

  They stood before the main gate of the castle. It was open, and a gray woman stood there. Kandy recognized her from before: Wira, the Good Magician’s daughter in law, with her baby. “Hello a third time,” Ease said.

  “That’s right, we met in Xanth,” Wira agreed. “But this is not quite the same. Please come this way, all of you.”

  They followed her into the castle. “Not the same?” Ease asked. “Apart from being gray?”

  “Apart from that, yes. Here some of the rules are different, such as those for marriage. Magician Humfrey has all five and a half wives attendant.”

  “All five or six!” Astrid exclaimed. “Doesn’t that become quarrelsome?”

  “Not at all. They are all old friends, and support each other. It is Humfrey they can get annoyed at.”

  “Annoyed?” Tiara asked. “Why?”

  Wira paused in the hall. “I suppose it is better that you know. MareAnn signaled the stork for a baby, and Humfrey, caught by surprise, made the stork handle three Challenges. It was unable to get through, so the baby has not been delivered. MareAnn is distraught.”

  “Well of course she is!” Tiara said. “We helped with a similar case in Xanth.”

  “You did? Oh, maybe you will be able to help us here. Except--”

  “Except that such assistance would represent a gift,” Pewter said. “And gifts cause changes in size.”

  “Yes. That is why nobody else has been able to help. It would be invaluable, and MareAnn can’t afford to gain that much size.”

  “Gain?” Tiara asked. “Don’t you mean lose?”

  “No. MareAnn is the most generous of the Wives. She has done favors for all the others, and given freely of herself throughout. That’s why she can’t come out herself to get her baby: in the castle we are protected from the give/size equation, but the moment any of us step outside it, those equations will take effect. MareAnn would become a giantess, unable to get back inside.”

  “The poor woman,” Astrid said. “Her own generosity is depriving her of what she wants most. She’s that way in Xanth, too: she enabled me to assume this form and join the Quest. Had she done that here, she would grow and I would shrink.”

  “That is true,” Wira said. “Pyramid is a very nice planet, but there are some disadvantages.”

  “We have to help her, somehow,” Astrid said.

  “But if we are constrained by the magic of this planet,” Mitch said, “we can’t.”

  But Pewter had the logical answer. “We have come to ask the Good Magician a Question. That baby is his too, isn’t it? We can exchange this service for our Answer. It should be about even.”

  “Why yes, it should be,” Wira agreed, surprised.

  “Which suggests that our arrival here at this time is not entirely random,” Mitch said. “The Sequins of Events know what they are doing. We have had relevant experience on a prior Event, so are competent to handle this one.”

  “Not entirely random,” Tiara agreed. “I know how to do it now.”

  “Let’s get on with it,” Pewter said.

  They resumed their walk down the hall. S
oon they came to the main room. There was a strange veiled woman awaiting them. “Hello, Quest members,” she said. “I am the Gorgon, Wife of the Hour.”

  “The Gorgon?” Tiara asked. “We expected MareAnn.”

  “I see you do not appreciate our system,” the Gorgon said. “We prefer not to get in each other’s way, so we designate one Wife for each hour of the day while the others relax. The Designated Wife handles whatever business occurs in her hour.”

  “Oh, I have admired you for so long!” Astrid said. “You have the death stare.”

  The veil oriented on her. “Do I know you?”

  “No. I’m not a person. I’m a transformed basilisk. But we all esteem your qualities.”

  “A basilisk!” the Gorgon said. “Then your appreciation is genuine.”

  “Oh, yes. We basilisks can only kill with our looks. You transform folk to stone. That’s superior magic.”

  “We must get better acquainted,” the Gorgon said. “Seldom do I encounter a cousin of the trade.”

  “Oh yes! But may we go see MareAnn now?” Astrid asked. “At least Tiara and I, to see about assisting her with her difficult delivery?”

  “Why yes, I suppose that would be in order,” the Gordon said. “Meanwhile I will feed you males some refreshments. I just curdled some milk; it’s my specialty.”

  “You curdle milk?” Ease asked.

  “By staring at it through my veil,” the Gorgon explained. “My filtered stare has diluted effect. Even so I have to be careful; if I overdo it, it can crystallize into monster cheese.”

  “Wira told us how the Good Magician made the stork go through the Challenges,” Mitch said. “That’s an outrage.”

  “No, it’s one of his Senior Moments. He last track, and didn’t realize the stork was on business. But it is true that he can be annoying in his application of the rules. Long ago I came to ask him if he would marry me, and not only did I have to handle the Challenges, he made me perform a year’s service before he gave me his answer.”

  “He did that?” Mitch asked amazed. “What a lout!”

  “No, as it turned out it gave me a year working closely with him before the commitment. In that time I learned how grouchy he tends to be, but also how thoughtful.”

  “Thoughtful?”

  “I had the opportunity to change my mind before marrying him. I knew exactly what I was getting into. That was thoughtful of him.”

  “He has a mechanical kind of thoughtfulness,” Pewter said.

  “Which, from you, is a compliment,” the Gorgon said. Evidently she knew Pewter as of old.

  “What about the four or five other wives?” Ease asked.

  “That wasn’t his fault. A lot can happen in the course of a century or so. They had married him, in due course left him or faded out, and then wound up in Hell for safekeeping. He came there in a hand-basket to rescue me after I died, and wound up getting more than he had expected. So we worked it out. Actually it’s better this way; no one of us could stand him continuously, and the others are all nice people. We get along.”

  Another woman appeared. “Your hour is done,” she said.

  The Gorgon glanced at her watch, whose crystal Kandy saw was cracked; being constantly looked at by her, even through a veil, must be hard on it. “So it is! I got distracted. I haven’t even served those refreshments I promised.” She gestured to the newcomer. “This is Sofia, Wife of the next hour.”

  “I will take care of it,” Sofia said as the Gorgon departed. Then she introduced herself more fully. “I am Sofia Socksorter, Humfrey’s fourth wife, from Mundania.” She fetched a plate of cookies and two mugs of boot rear. Kandy knew the men would get a kick out of that, having endured pun-free meals for a while.

  “Socksorter?” Mitch asked. “That’s an odd name.”

  “Not at all. It’s an accurate description of my talent, which I developed after a few years in Xanth. Humfrey uses many socks, but has no sense about caring for them. They wind up in crannies, nooks, and lost. He never had a matching pair of clean ones. So he married me to handle his socks.”

  “To handle his socks?” Mitch asked, seeming to have difficulty assimilating that.

  “It was his biggest problem. But they are in proper order now, as is the rest of the household.” Sofia was obviously proud of her accomplishment.

  Astrid and Tiara returned, escorted by Wira, who had evidently acquainted them with the change in Wives. “It’s arranged,” Tiara said. “I have MareAnn’s written authorization for the baby. I’ll go out now, before the stork gets tired of waiting.”

  “We’ll help,” Astrid said. “That means all of us.” She sent the men a look that crackled even through her dark glasses. “Because we’re making a deal to exchange services, our group with the Good Magician, and we’re all included even if we play different roles.”

  The others nodded. It was a valid point.

  “We’ll help too,” Sofia said. Sure enough, the remaining Wives showed up and were duly introduced: The Gorgon, Rose of Roogna, the Maiden Taiwan, Dara Demoness, and of course MareAnn. Astrid hugged MareAnn briefly; they were friends.

  The Wives led them along a path that wended its way safely around assorted Challenges in the making, across the lowered drawbridge, under the nose of the moat monster who knew better than to threaten them, and to the verge of the castle environs. There was the stork, standing with its bundle just outside that limit, looking frustrated. In fact a wisp of steam was rising from its beak. “This is an outrage!” it said. “I will file a complaint.”

  Tiara stepped up to it. “We are so sorry,” she said. “It was a misunderstanding. I will take the baby and give it to MareAnn.”

  The stork did a double-take. “Haven’t I seen you before? You’re colored! You stand out like a sick finger in this shades-of-gray environment.”

  “Yes, we are from Xanth proper,” Tiara said. “Just visiting Pyramid, so we retain our original colors. We met you at the Centaur demesnes, where there was a similar problem of delivery.”

  “Indeed there was,” the stork agreed hotly. Its feathers were ruffled. “I’m just trying to do my job, but do I get any cooperation? Nooo, folk find every idiotic pretext to interfere with a normal delivery.”

  “We apologize,” Tiara said.

  “It takes more than an apology to fix such an irregular interference! This puts me behind my schedule.”

  “A gourd style apology,” she clarified. Then she kissed the stork on the beak.

  “Oh for wailing loudly!” the stork exclaimed. “Not that. We can’t stand the gourd. I accept your apology, confound it. Take the ever-loving baby and be done with it. I have to move on anyway.”

  “Thank you,” Tiara said sweetly. She had clearly figured out how to use what she had learned about the gourd, knowing the stork would not want any such demonstration. She had lived a sheltered life, but she had potential and was a quick study. She carefully picked up the bundle and carried it across to MareAnn, who hugged it joyfully.

  “An outrage,” the stork repeated as it spread its wings and took off. It had accepted the apology under duress and was hardly mollified.

  There was a smattering of applause from the assembled Wives. They understood perfectly what Tiara had done. Then they led the way back into the castle.

  “The Good Magician will see you now,” Wira said, and showed them up the cramped winding stairway to the cramped office. Somehow the five of them plus Wira managed to fit into it.

  “The members of the Quest are here for their Answer, Magician,” Wira said. “Per the deal.”

  The Good Magician looked exactly as he had before, except he was in shades of gray. “Ask,” he grumped.

  “Where is the pun virus antidote?” Ease asked.

  “That’s the wrong question.”

  “Well, answer it anyway,” Ease said.

  “It’s on another world of Ida, impossibly far away, where the sea is made of it. It even has tides. Puns flourish there. Princess Ida can di
rect you to it. But it is pointless to go there, because the radiation of space between planets, and the differing magic of other worlds, denatures it and it won’t work on Xanth.”

  They digested that. “So what’s the right question?” Mitch asked.

  “Where in Xanth is the portal that accesses Planet Antidote directly?”

  And of course he wouldn’t answer that, because his Answer had been expended. Even though they were on a Quest he had sent them on.

  “Thank you,” Ease said tightly.

  They turned around and squeezed out of the study, disgruntled. “There is a reason,” Humfrey muttered after them.

  “There’s always a reason,” Pewter muttered back.

  Had the situation not been so perversely serious, Kandy would have been amused to see the largely emotionless Pewter reacting exactly like a living person. They all knew how grumpy and perverse the Good Magician could be. But it was true: usually in the end there turned out to be good reason for the way he did things.

  “I’m sorry,” Wira murmured as they reached the ground floor. “At least now you know the right Question. Maybe you can visit another Humfrey on another world and get the Answer.”

  “And serve a year for it?” Astrid asked. “We don’t have the time. The puns of Xanth are being decimated even as we search.”

  “We’re all sorry,” Sofia said. “We truly appreciate what you did for MareAnn, and would help you if we could, but--”

  “But you can’t do us a favor that will impact our size when we depart,” Astrid said. “We understand. But tell me: is advice a favor?”

  “That depends on its usefulness,” Sofia said. “Useless advice is free.”

  “Then maybe you could offer us some useless advice.”

  The Wives nodded, appreciating the logic. “Here’s some useless advice,” Dara Demoness said. “Go see Princess Ida on the Blue Face. She may be able to show you the Antidote planet. That won’t do you any good, but might help you orient.”

  “But wouldn’t any favor Princess Ida does us affect our stature?” Tiara asked.

  “No, she’s necessarily immune, because it is her job to facilitate travel between the worlds. As long as you keep it to that business, there’s no problem.”