Skeleton Key

by Piers Anthony

  Yes! Squid thought strongly.

  “Oh, so we did meet,” Ruby thought. “Somewhere, somehow. I’m so glad.”

  Me too.

  Then they both returned to sleep.

  Chapter 10

  Worse Coming

  Squid woke, feeling a malaise. She wasn’t sure what it was, as she was generally immune to human ailments.

  Larry was still holding her hand. “Squid! Your hand is like ice!”

  “I’m not human,” she reminded him. “When humans get sick they tend to run a fever; my kind tends to run a chill. It’s our way of freezing out bad bugs.”

  “Is it serious?”

  “I’m not sure. A chill is a reaction, not a cause.”

  “I don’t want you sick.”

  She looked at him. “We’re a couple of convenience. You shouldn’t be concerned.”

  “We may not be a true couple,” he said. “But we’ve already been through a fair amount together, and understand each other well. I do care about you, more than incidentally. What can I do to help you?”

  She was touched. “Maybe Tata can classify it.”

  “Tata!” he said immediately, and in a moment and a half the dogfish was there, screen flashing, the peeve perched on his shoulder.

  “It is a tentacular virus,” the peeve translated. “It tends to get in when her kind is over-stressed.”

  Squid had been under plenty of stress recently.

  “Do you have a treatment?” Larry asked, his worry evident.

  “Not aboard this vessel. It’s a specialty order. By the time we get it in, she will likely have recovered on her own. She will have to suffer through a siege.”

  “Is it serious?”

  The screen flashed again.

  “That depends. Usually hallucinations are impressive but harmless.”

  “Hallucinations!”

  “It’s all right’” Squid said. “I have had them before. They normally fade when the chill does.”

  “We should warm her!”

  “No,” the peeve said. “The chill is her nature’s way of dealing with the infection. We don’t want to interfere.”

  “We just have to let her suffer?”

  “In the absence of proper medication, yes.”

  “Bleep!”

  Squid smiled wanly. “Thank you for caring, Larry. I should get by.”

  Then a panel opened in the wall of the cabin. Beyond it she saw a lovely garden path.

  The others in the cabin faded out. She was alone with her vision.

  Well, almost. Larry squeezed her hand. She didn’t see him, but she felt him, her contact with reality. “I’m going with you.”

  She laughed. “On a hallucination? Let it be.”

  “We were together on the simulation. We can do it on the hallucination.”

  “You’re crazy!”

  “Do I have to kiss you to make you listen?”

  She laughed again. “Don’t do that. Tata and the peeve would not understand.”

  “We’ll bring them along too.”

  He was determined. “As you wish. But it may be a pretty dull excursion.”

  He maintained his hold on her hand so she could not tune him out. “Just tell us what you see.”

  “I see a panel in the wall, opening to a lovely garden path. I’m going there.”

  “Right with you.”

  She moved up to the open panel and stepped through to the path. “Now I am in the garden. I am breathing its myriad intriguing scents.”

  “Continue.”

  “A cluster of red berries is catching my attention. I am picking one and eating it. I like it, so am eating a second, then a third.”

  “Good appetite.”

  “And I feel myself rapidly changing, my clothing emulation shredding, leaving me nude.”

  “Oops, Tata says those must be elderberries, aging you,” the peeve said. “You are progressing from age eleven to twelve, thirteen, and fourteen. Better to stop there; three are more than enough.”

  “Good point,” she agreed. “I remain in human form, but now with a thin waist, swelling hips, and lumps of fat on my chest. I have become nubile! It’s a good thing that there are no village louts here to goggle at my nudity.”

  “I’m goggling,” Larry said.

  “You don’t count. You’re not a lout. Anyway, you can’t see my change.”

  “Still, when this is over, maybe I’ll take you with me on a three year aging so I can properly admire that bare figure.”

  “It’s not as good as Laurelai’s when she ages.”

  Something skittered through the grass. She focused on it, but found herself already losing interest. Why? Now she was interested not in the thing, but in why she had lost interest, because that was suspicious.

  “Speak,” Larry said.

  “Something skittered, but it’s not interesting.”

  “Describe it anyway, so Tata can verify it.”

  “It seems to be a garden-variety mouse, that seemed interesting only when I didn’t know what it was.”

  “That’s an Anony Mouse,” the peeve said. “It protects itself from predators by making itself uninteresting to them.”

  “And I fell for it! Some predator I am.”

  “Nice girls don’t make good predators,” Larry said.

  She walked on along the path. Then her body started itching. “Bleep! I think I have caught some lice.” She scratched desperately, contorting her body to try to get at obscure places, but the itching continued.

  “That’s a funny kind of Terpsichore.”

  “A what?” Squid asked.

  “Saltation, exertion, endeavor, effort, contortion, movement—”

  “Dance?” Larry asked.

  “Whatever,” the voice agreed crossly.

  “Metria!” Squid exclaimed. “What are you doing here in my hallucination?”

  “I smelled something interesting, so of course I messed in. It’s what I do.”

  “Well, go do it somewhere else,” the peeve said. “This is a private session.”

  “Never! I hate dullness.” The demoness took form, eyeing Larry. “I don’t believe I recognize you, young man. Is the alien female cuttlefish trying to seduce you? Your eyeballs are bulging as she distorts her humanoid torso.”

  “She ate some elderberries, which caused her to age a few years, becoming nubile,” Larry said. “This makes her bare gyrations interesting.”

  “Exactly,” the demoness agreed, inhaling in a manner that was more than provocative. “Girls become intriguing when they gyrate, especially when without clothing. Note how portions of her chest project when she bends backwards, and how her bottom tightens when she bends forward.”

  “I’ve got an itch!” Squid snapped, horribly embarrassed by this analysis. “I must have blundered through a nest of lice.” She was still attempting to reach a frustratingly obscure itch. “I’m not trying to seduce anybody!”

  “Just as well. Seduction is best left to more experienced bodies. For example—” The demoness’ own torso projected and tightened in a manner that was heating Larry’s eyeballs.

  “Agreed!” Squid said, not wanting to evince open jealously. “I just want to get rid of the lice.” One was now itching her posterior unbearably, but it would have required a worse contortion to scratch it.

  “Well, what you need is D Louse, the demon who delouses people.”

  “Whatever!” Squid said. “Is he close by?”

  “He’s not here.”

  Naturally Metria was not being very helpful. “Thanks for nothing.”

  “But I will emulate him, if you tell me what’s going on.”

  Squid was too miserable at the moment to argue. “Deal.”

  The demoness dissolved into a small bl
ack cloud. The cloud floated across to surround Squid.

  Suddenly the itching got much worse. Then it ceased. Squid saw that the lice were desperately leaping off her body.

  “What made them go?” Squid asked, hugely relieved.

  The cloud separated from her and reformed into the demoness. “Typo,” Metria explained.

  “Type O?”

  “Typo. Lice can’t stand that blood type; it makes them all fouled up. They can’t even find the right places to bite. So they depart in deep disgust.”

  “Thank you!” Squid said.

  “Now just tell me what’s happening here. It’s hard to see someone else’s delusion directly. I have to key it in.”

  The demoness had actually come through. Now it was Squid’s turn. “I am ill with a chill, and suffering hallucinations. My friend Larry is trying to share them with me, and Tata and the Peeve are interpreting them. At the moment we’re on a garden path that leads through the cabin wall.” Squid took a breath. “But I thought the fire boat shield was proof against your intrusion. How did you get in, Metria?”

  “I am not in the fire boat,” the demoness explained. “I am in your hallucination. I came in through the same hole in the wall, which is also a hole in reality.”

  Squid nodded. “I suppose that makes sense.”

  “As much as anything of mine does.” Metria eyed Larry again. “So Squid has got a human boyfriend now?”

  “In a manner,” Larry said. “It’s a relationship of convenience, because I know she’s not actually human.”

  “I wondered. You, as a typical young human male, don’t much care what is inside the form, as long as its external presentation is salacious.”

  “To a degree, yes,” Larry agreed, smiling. He was actually teasing Metria.

  Who was starting to catch on. “This is getting dull, so I’m off.” She faded out.

  Squid relaxed somewhat. She was relieved that the demoness had been satisfied with the immediate situation, and had not caught on to their larger mission, or the secrets about Larry. But she knew that Metria was not necessarily gone when she faded out, so they still had to watch what they said. “Now you have been introduced to a genuine if slightly peculiar demoness.” As if he were not already familiar with far more than that.

  “I will remember the experience,” Larry said.

  She looked on down the path. There were two large cans, filled with something. She picked one up, and discovered the ear of a male cow. Evidently the rest of the animal was jammed inside the can. “What is this?” she asked, describing it and its companion can for the others.

  “Can A Bull,” the peeve reported. “It eats its own kind. And Can’t a Bull, which doesn’t.”

  Squid dropped the can. “I don’t want any of this!”

  She walked on, discovering what looked like two beanie caps with little spinning blades in the top. She tried putting one on, and the blades spun faster, causing the cap to fly, hauling her up along with it.

  “A flying cap?” she asked.

  “A Propel Her,” the peeve clarified. “And its companion, a Propel Him.”

  “What is this, a junkyard for puns?” she asked, irritated.

  “Whatever it is, it is in your mind,” Larry said.

  “My mind’s a junkyard,” she said.

  “But maybe what you need is in here somewhere,” Larry said. “Maybe you’ll know it when you find it.”

  Squid realized that it just might possibly maybe make a modicum of partial sense if she viewed it from sideways and kept her mind mostly closed to a crack. She did have a problem, apart from the one they all faced, trying to rescue Caprice Castle and its trapped adults. She was, theoretically, the most important person in the universe. Probably that just meant she had a grandiose dream of her own self worth, maybe her suppressed wish to really be something rather than nothing. But suppose, for the sake of foolish argument, it was true? What would that mean?

  “You’re thinking,” Larry said. “I can tell, because you aren’t talking.”

  “I am,” she confessed.

  “Two-and-a half cents for your thoughts.”

  “You can have them cheaper than that. I fear I have a hard drive ahead of me.”

  “A hard drive,” Larry agreed. “That of course is a trip you don’t want to take.”

  “Ha, ha, ha. I mean a mental one. I am having serious trouble believing something.”

  “Believing what? That you’re a pretty girl?”

  She fought against a flush of foolish pleasure. He was trying to lighten her mood, and was succeeding. “I have been told I am the most important person in the universe. Probably that’s nonsense, in which case who cares? But just suppose it isn’t? What could possibly explain such a ludicrous thing?”

  He stroked his chin. She was seeing him now, even if he did not really see her in her vision. “You’re right. If it’s nonsense, we don’t need to worry about it. But if it actually makes sense, we can’t afford to ignore it. Since we don’t know the truth of it, it is safer to assume it is true and find out what it means.”

  She stared at him. “You want to take it seriously?”

  “That is the safest course. If we dismiss it, and it’s correct, we may somehow be wiping out the universe. If we take it seriously, and it’s wrong, all we suffer is embarrassment, and the only other ones to know would be Tata and the peeve. Your hallucination protects us.”

  “But I thought you’d laugh your head off, like Jess’s boyfriend, way back when.”

  “Squid, I may laugh with you, but never at you.”

  She found herself suddenly overwhelmed by emotion. He was truly supporting her! “Brace yourself. You’ve been fishing for a reaction, and now you’re going to get it. I’m going to kiss you.”

  “Not if I kiss you first.” He grabbed her and kissed her.

  Hearts did not fling out, but some were lurking. They were getting there. “Wow,” she murmured.

  “Ditto.”

  “We’re a fake couple, but we’re starting to feel real.”

  “We’re a couple of convenience. That’s not fake.”

  “But I’m really an alien and you’re really a girl!”

  “True and true. We can still have a genuine and feeling relationship based on mutual respect.”

  She let it go, partly because she doubted it was relevant to the present situation, but mostly because she liked the idea of a genuine and feeling association, and loved basing it on mutual respect. He was still pushing her buttons. “I bet you say that to all the aliens.”

  “Only to the ones I like.”

  “Are you trying to make me kiss you again?”

  “Yes.”

  This time she grabbed him and kissed him. The little hearts struggled to get out.

  “What next?” the peeve asked. “Before you float entirely into the wide blue yonder.”

  “Trust the bird to mess up the mood,” Larry muttered.

  Squid looked around. While they talked, their propel caps had been carrying them upward, and now they were floating above the garden. The peeve was flying, and the robot dogfish was swimming through the air. They evidently knew how to stay with a hallucination.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “That is your decision,” Larry said. “It’s your hallucination.”

  So it was. “I want answers, at least an answer to start with. Am I or am I not the most important person in the universe, and if I am, why?”

  “To get an appropriate answer,” Larry said, “a person needs an appropriate question. Yours are too general and inclusive. You need to get more practical. To break things down into assimilable fragments. What’s your specific starting question?”

  She pondered half a moment. He did have a point. The universe was too big to start with. “My question is: where can I
find the answers?”

  There was silence.

  She refused to let it wash out there. “There has to be a place. Maybe there’s a path to lead us to it.”

  No one else commented. Why should they? This was her vision, not theirs.

  “All right!” she said. “I’ll get more specific. Tata, where is the place of answers?”

  The robot screen flashed. “Maybe the pentagram,” the peeve translated. “Or some other gram, such as any N-gram, with a message for points, such as N-points.”

  “I can’t follow that. Does it make sense?”

  “Yes. You merely need the mind for it.”

  “Big help,” she muttered. But it might be better than nothing. The universe was vast, and her mind was tiny. “I am assuming we are on a path through the sky, and that it leads where we need to go. That is, the place where I can find the key I need.” Then she got a bright idea: she saw the flash. “A keyboard! That holds keys, including the one I need.”

  Still, there was something missing. “The path!” she exclaimed. “It may be here, but we can’t see it. We need to make it visible. To—to outline it.”

  And the outlines appeared, like hand rails on either side, marking a kind of ribbon in the sky. Squid and Larry set feet on the path and hands on the rails, and were secure in the sky. The dogfish came to land on it, and the peeve perched on a rail.

  “Amazing what imagination can do,” Larry said.

  “Now on to the keyboard,” Squid said.

  “It should be hanging on a wall somewhere,” Larry said. “So you need a wall.”

  “I need a wall,” she agreed. “That means a structure of some kind, here in the sky. Maybe a house.”

  “A house? Why be limited? It’s your imagination. Make it a castle.”

  “A castle in air,” she agreed.

  They walked on, the ground now far below. Soon they spied a sign: AIR CASTLE.

  Squid had to smile. Naturally it was literal.

  It was a lovely little castle, with streaming mist flags anchored on turrets, complete with a moat made from a circular rain cloud. When they set foot on the drawbridge, the moat rocked, and some water spilled out and dropped toward the ground below.