Xone of Contention

by Anthony, Piers

  They walked to the exit door, and paused. “See you here tomorrow for check-in!” Breanna called cheerily.

  “Got it,” the Mundane woman Kim called back. Then they turned forward, and walked down the hall to the O-Xone Interface exit. They passed though that—and Chlorine found herself sitting on a chair, with her hands on a funny kind of board with a number of marked little squares, staring at a screen resembling Com Pewter’s. Her hands looked wrong, until she reminded herself that she was no longer in her own body. She was now a Mundane, among Mundanes. She hoped she survived the experience.

  Words appeared on it. “Pia—stay where you are. Dug and I will be there soon. Kim.”

  But Pia was in Xanth. Then Chlorine reoriented. Of course—she was in Pia’s body now, and was to be called Pia, to protect her real identity. And Nimby would be called Edsel. Because the Demon E(A/R)TH surely kept an eye on the Great Global Grid, and would soon know if Nimby and Chlorine appeared on it. They were here anonymously.

  But Nimby was in another room, and she had to be sure he was all right. She got up and found her way out the open door to the adjacent chamber. There was Edsel, sitting somewhat blankly before his own screen. “Nimby,” she murmured. “It’s Chlorine.”

  He turned to look at her, nodding. He almost never spoke to others. He could speak, and elegantly, but this required him to focus on minutia, and he preferred not to bother. That was why she had to speak a lot, for both of them. But that was all right; it made her feel important.

  “Nimby, remember, we have to be anonymous, here in Mundania. So we must answer to the bodies we are in. You are Edsel, and I am Pia. Our Companions arrived in another house, and will join us soon. All right?”

  He nodded. She found it half a smidgen weird to be calling this stranger Nimby, but no weirder that it had been to see him change from dragon to manform the first time.

  She sat in his lap and kissed him. “I love you, Nimby. But from now on I will call you Ed or Edsel. Until we are back in Xanth. And I won’t mention Xanth, because that might give us away. We are Ed and Pia outside, but inside we are ourselves.” He knew all this, of course, but it helped her to express it, making sure there was no misunderstanding.

  They looked around the room, noting the distinctly Mundane look of it. Then they explored the house. There was a staircase leading to a second floor, with two rooms with beds, and one small room with odd ceramic or metallic objects that roughly resembled basins or a chair.

  There was a muted rumble outside, and a funny box on wheels rolled up. They saw it out a window. Then doors in it opened, and Dug and Kim got out on opposite sides. Oh.

  In a moment and a half, Dug and Kim were with them. “Okay,” Kim said. “You are Nimby and Chlorine, right?”

  “Yes,” Chlorine said. “But we will answer to Edsel and Pia.”

  “Yes, of course.” Kim paused, as if organizing her thoughts. “There are some things we need to get straight at the outset, so we don’t get into mischief. For example, both of you can speak and understand our language, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Because usually Xanthians can’t understand Mundanian right away. But you’re actually using Mundane bodies, so they must provide you with the language. But how much else do they provide you with? I mean, do you know where everything is?”

  “We found the bedrooms,” Chlorine said. “But there’s one room with odd objects.”

  “I think you mean the bathroom. You’re going to have to get better acquainted with that, and the kitchen.” Kim paused. “Maybe I’d better take you in, and then Dug can take Nimby in. Only as you said, we’d better not call him that, because—”

  “Yes. Call us Pia and Edsel. We understand.” She knew why Kim was hesitant, despite the prior reassurance: she knew Nimby’s nature, and didn’t want to insult him.

  “Right. Okay, Pia, come with me.” Kim led the way upstairs.

  They re-entered the bathroom, and Kim closed the door. “Now this is the sink. You wash your hands here, or a pair of socks, or whatever. Same as in Xanth. Turn this tap for cold water, and this one for hot.” She demonstrated. Sure enough, soon cold water was streaming from one nozzle, and hot water from the other.

  “I thought you didn’t have magic in Mundania,” Chlorine said, impressed.

  “We don’t. But we have technology. Sometimes it’s almost as good. In Xanth you just use spells to heat the water; here we use electricity.” Kim went to the big metallic depression. “This is the bathtub. Its taps work the same way. You run the water first, and mix it, so you don’t burn or freeze. I’ll help you set it up, the first time.”

  “But why bother?”

  “Because you can’t use a self-cleaning spell in Mundania. You have to take a bath or shower or equivalent.”

  “Thank you.” Chlorine understood the principle of a bath, though she preferred to swim in a magic cleansing pool.

  “This is the tough one,” Kim said, going to the funny ceramic object that looked vaguely like a chair. She lifted the wooden seat, and lo, there was a basin below, half filled with clear water. “This is the toilet. It’s like the hole of an outhouse. You sit on it and urinate or defecate.”

  “Into clean water?” Chlorine asked, horrified.

  “Mundania is barbaric in some respects,” Kim said, smiling. “No illusion to cover the sight or smell. Then when you are done, you turn this handle.” She turned it.

  Water surged into the basin and swirled around, then sucked down and disappeared. Then, slowly, more water came, until the bowl was half full again.

  “What happens to the water?” Chlorine asked, repelled.

  “It flows along a pipe underground, into the sewer. This is a kind of subterranean river that carries wastes away. No need to be concerned about it. Just make sure to use only this for this purpose.”

  They returned downstairs, and Dug took Nimby up for a similar demonstration. Chlorine feared he would be appalled, for normally he simply banished all wastes magically, or transformed them into toads. But he had wanted to find out what Mundania was like. This was part of it.

  Then Kim took the next step. “Are you hungry? I must explain that there are no pie trees here; food is more complicated to obtain.”

  Chlorine decided not to struggle with that learning process just yet. “Nim—Edsel would like to see Mundania. The rest of it.”

  “We can show you. But I think it’s best to start simple. There may be pitfalls, just as there are in Xanth.” Kim paused. “Outside, I’ll just say ‘the other place.’ You understand.”

  “Yes.”

  “We’ll take you window-shopping at the mall, and maybe see a movie. I think that will be enough outside experience for today.”

  “We must purchase windows at a mill?”

  Kim laughed. “Not exactly. I mean we’ll just mostly look at things. And it’s not a mill. A mall is a big enclosed shopping center. You’ll see.”

  They went out to the box on wheels. Dug and Nimby climbed into the front of it, and Kim and Chlorine into the back. There were surprisingly comfortable couches, and they could see out windows all around.

  The box came to life, with a rumble and a quiver. Cool air washed through. Then it rolled backward onto the paved road, paused, and rolled rapidly forward.

  “This is a car,” Kim explained. “Our second-hand Neptune station wagon, just about the safest car we can afford. It carries us where we want to go. No, it’s not magic; it’s an application of science. But we like it.”

  Chlorine stared out in wonder. All around them other cars, small and large, were rolling similarly along the road. Most of the ones in the near side were going in one direction, while most of them on the other side were going the other direction. Every so often most of them stopped and sat still, for no apparent reason. Then they started again. It was almost beyond understanding.

  They came to a plain where many of the boxes sat. They found a spot and sat also. They got out, leaving the car behind. “But w
on’t it wander away?” Chlorine asked,

  “No. It’s a machine, and here in Mundania machines do only what they are told. It will wait here for us.” Kim patted the Neptune on the nose. “It wouldn’t want to leave us anyway; we get along well.”

  They walked into an unbelievably big building. Inside was a wide hall, and a big garden and fountain. Even Nimby was surprised. “Your gardens are inside, while your hard floors are outside?”

  Kim smiled. “Sometimes. This is the mall. It’s closed in so people can shop at the stores without getting rained on.”

  They walked along the hallway, whose sides were filled with doors and big windows. In each window was a display of things. They looked. This was window-shopping, it turned out: looking without taking. The first window had shoes.

  “But why don’t they leave them on the shoe trees until someone needs them?” Chlorine asked.

  “There are no shoe trees here. Not the type you know. Shoes have to be made, just as pies have to be baked, and pillows sewn and stuffed, and just about everything else.’

  “Mundania is stranger than we suspected,” Chlorine murmured.

  They came to a window with pictures of cold confection. “Eye scream!” Chlorine said.

  “Ice cream,” Kim agreed. “Would you like some?”

  Now she was hungry enough. “Yes.”

  They went into the store, and Kim asked the man for four cones. These came with colored balls of eye scream set in the tops. Kim gave the man a greenish piece of paper, and he gave her a few small coins. Oh—money. It had been mentioned somewhere along the way.

  The eye scream was good. Chlorine made a mental note to come here for more, next time they got hungry. But she would have to see about the money, because she didn’t understand the numbers and pictures on it.

  They came to another type of opening. This one had a line of people passing a booth and giving money to a girl locked in the booth. “She is under an enchantment?” Chlorine asked. “Doomed to stay there until a witch lets her out or a handsome dragon-prince rescues her?”

  “Not exactly. This is a theater. This is where they show movies.”

  “They show moves? Like dancing?”

  Dug laughed. “I think we’d better let them see the movie. This one is a returning classic: Stony Scary Painting Tale. I’d love to see it again. We’re just in time to catch the matinee.”

  “But you’ve seen it ten times already,”Kim protested.

  “So this will be the eleventh. It gets better with each repetition.”

  “It moves better with practice?” Chlorine asked.

  “In its fashion,” Dug agreed. He walked to the girl in the booth and gave her money, and she gave him four little pieces of paper. Then the four of them walked into the theater. A young man took Dug’s four papers, tore them in half, and gave him back four halves. Chlorine took it on faith that this wanton destruction of what had been pretty papers made sense on some Mundane level.

  Inside there were hundreds of seats jammed together, about half of them empty. They found four together in the center and sat facing a huge white screen. “Pictures will appear on that,” Kim said. “Sound will come from all around. We will watch and listen, and think about how it would be for us to be those people. That’s how we get into the story. And remember, it is a story. It’s not happening, and it never really happened. But we can pretend.”

  “A story,” Chlorine agreed, not sure she understood.

  “A play,” Dug said. “Done by illusion.”

  That made it comprehensible. The Curse Fiends did plays, and illusion was common in Xanth.

  Then the light around them faded, and a picture formed on the screen. It was much bigger than life. It showed men riding funny machines with two wheels along narrow dirt trails. “Oh, this is a preview,” Kim said. “Ignore it.”

  Then one of the wheeled machines was zooming right at them, filling the screen, roaring with sound. Chlorine cowered down, but it disappeared. It was, as Kim had said, just a picture. A moving picture. An illusion. She held Nimby’s hand. He seemed to be fascinated by the effect, watching the machines zoom across dirt and sail into the air as they rode over hills. Probably he liked the feeling of magic, though Dug and Kim assured them that there was none.

  “Well, maybe there is, in a sense,” Dug said. “They take shots over and over, and over, to get them right, and they have equipment hidden beyond camera range, so as to catch flying men before they crash into the ground. But it’s mostly fakery. Real folk can’t ride cycles that way, and live.”

  Nimby glanced at him. Chlorine wondered what he was thinking of. She hoped it wasn’t of riding zooming loud machines.

  There were other frightening, odd, or incomprehensible “preview” pictures. One featured a villain hauling the hero high with a pulley, so that he dangled over a cauldron of acid. Nimby seemed fascinated by this too. “That’s a geared block and tackle,” Dug said helpfully. “It multiplies the pull. See, the villain can work it with one hand, lifting the hero’s whole weight. Leverage is great stuff.” Nimby nodded, making a mental note. Chlorine thought it was the physics rather than the story that intrigued him. But she wasn’t sure. Nimby was interested in everything, and he had an inhuman capacity for assimilating new information.

  Then print appeared on the screen. “Now the movie is starting,” Kim said. “There are the credits.”

  Then the screen was filled with storm and rain, as a couple rode in their wheeled box—their car—through evidently unfamiliar terrain. They had to take shelter in a private mansion run by a Doctor Sam Sausage. After that things became more conventional, and Chlorine began to enjoy the story. Others in the theater talked to the screen, and helped things happen in response to their urgings. It surely would have been a lesser story if they had not been acting to enhance it. Chlorine liked their attitude. She made a mental note to try one of the dance steps it so carefully diagrammed. It was just a jump to the left, and other stylized motions, such as placing the hands on the hips. Very nice. She was glad they had seen this.

  When the movie ended, they made their way back outside, where the day was unconscionably bright and warm. They got in the car, which was hot, but then it cooled. It rolled back toward the house, somewhat unsteadily. Had it lost the way? Chlorine had understood that Dug was in some way guiding it, as one would a steed. She glanced at him—and was amazed.

  Dug was not guiding it. Nimby was. Nimby was sitting in the “driver’s” seat, with his hands on the “steering” wheel. Dug was giving instructions from the other seat.

  “Red light ahead. Depress brake pedal. Stop. Green light. Depress accelerator pedal.”

  The car leaped ahead. But Nimby did seem to have it under control, and soon the ride steadied. He turned the wheel when Dug said, and the car turned at the same time. In due course they reached the house.

  Chlorine realized that she should not have been surprised. His powers of magic were greatly diminished, but Nimby had enormous powers of comprehension, and he was here to learn about Mundania. So he was learning to travel the Mundane way. He would be learning other things as they went, so as to understand the rules of this land.

  Back inside the house, they tackled the kitchen. Under Kim’s guidance, Chlorine succeeded in opening and heating a can of beans and spreading jam on slices of bread. Kim did much of the rest, but it was a start. Mundanian ways were distinctly strange, but she was catching on to them.

  In the evening Kim showed them what she called the TeeVee. This was a box with a screen on front, and pictures formed on it, and sound came from it. It was like a very small movie. “You can watch news, sports, sitcoms—anything you want,” Dug explained. “Or you can ignore it.”

  Chlorine found herself feeling increasingly vague and awkward. When she tried to stand, she fell back into her chair, unbalanced.

  “Pia!” Kim said, alarmed. “Are you all right?”

  “I don’t know,” Chlorine said. “I’m dizzy, and I don’t feel good.�
��

  “The diabetes!” Dug exclaimed. “We forgot about that. She has to take insulin.”

  “That’s right,” Kim said. “She should have had her shot before she ate.”

  “Can you handle it, Kim?”

  “I’m not sure. I know the principle, but I never saw her do it.”

  “Then I’d better. I used to help her, way back when she first was diagnosed and was learning the dosages and technique.” He grabbed for Pia’s purse and rummaged in it for something. Then he approached Chlorine. “Your body has a problem. A shot will take care of it. I’m going to have to get rather personal, but this is something you need to have, and to know how to do. Lift up your skirt.”

  “Lift?” she asked vaguely. This was not the kind of thing a man often asked a woman to do in company. But Nimby, who understood that she now had the same problem he had given her Xanth body, nodded. He knew she needed immediate help.

  Kim reached across and pulled Chlorine’s skirt up high, revealing her panties. Both Dug and Nimby saw, but neither freaked out. This was Mundania, Chlorine remembered, where things didn’t work as they should.

  “Ed, you need to know this too,” Dug said. “Her medicine is in this ampoule.” He was doing something with a needle. “She takes it in the high thigh, where it doesn’t ordinarily show. This much, injected this way.” He brought the needle down. “Pia, don’t move. I’m sorry I’ll be clumsy, so there will be some pain, but it must be done. You must trust me.”