Jest Right

by Piers Anthony

  Nia nodded. “A trap. Not a nice one. But the alternative is worse.”

  They discussed it, and Nia agreed. “It is ugly. But we’re not playing widdly tinks here. Very well. I will do my part. Meanwhile you had better talk to Santo.”

  “Yes,” Jess agreed grimly. “He will not be pleased.”

  “I will talk to him after you do, if need be. When push comes to shove, he can be tough minded.”

  Jess talked with Santo, after getting him to focus seriously, outlining her suspicion and her proposal for dealing with it. “Damn!” he swore, so passionately that the bleep intercept didn’t catch it. “I love that girl! How can I do this to her?”

  “Two things,” Jess said evenly. “First, it won’t actually be her, but her visiting spirit, the Night Mare Imbri, who may be as old as the Hag and I think can handle it. Second, the alternative of allowing Ragna Roc to be loosed on Xanth again—”

  “I know, I know! It has to be done. But I still hate it.”

  “We all do,” Jess said. “Let’s hope that none of us ever have to get into anything this ugly ever again.”

  Santo paused a moment in thought. “You are right. You thought of this yourself?”

  “Guilty,” Jess agreed. “Then I worked out details with Tata. I’d have been happier remaining relatively innocent. But I can’t afford innocence at the moment.”

  “None of us can,” he agreed. “You know, if you were available, and I could take you seriously without special effort, and I wasn’t too young, and gay, you’re the kind of woman I’d want. You may be as smart as I am.”

  It was a highly qualified statement, but Jess understood and was deeply flattered. “I’m not smart, so much as determined. If I were available, and lacked the curse, and you were not et cetera, I’d surely be interested.” Then she kissed him carefully on the mouth, her curse colliding with his orientation in an almost electric tingle, and departed, leaving him thoughtful. She had treated him like an adult, which was a significant return compliment in itself.

  Meanwhile Nia had assembled the group, and evidently alerted them to the importance of what Jess would have to say. Ula was there again, extending her hand. Jess took it, finding Kadence; the Tunnel was done, and the princesses had returned to their original hosts, where they evidently felt more comfortable. Such was Jess’s distraction with her research that she hadn’t noticed Ula before, though of course she had been there. Now Jess could speak to the full group and be accurately understood.

  But first she addressed Kadence privately. “I need you to make others take me seriously, yes,” she said. “But there is a separate thing. I need you to promise me, on your word of honor as a princess, that after our mission is done and we all go our separate ways, you will travel back at least once more in time to make sure that your prior self does interact with Ragna Roc.”

  “But that’s history,” Kadence protested. “I don’t want to mess with it.”

  “I am thinking that your prior self, younger than you are now, may not be entirely certain of her course. You need to assure her that she is doing the right thing. If there is a conflict involving paradox, you will not be able to talk with her. But it may be that she will need your reassurance, and it is very important that she receive it.”

  Kadence considered. “You know, now that you mention it, I think I do remember that I did receive some encouragement from an older self. It really helped. But paradox is all over the place, so maybe I just imagined it.”

  “And maybe you didn’t,” Jess said. “And maybe there is no paradox. This may simply be part of that prior effort, with two of your future selves collaborating.”

  “I suppose,” Kadence agreed dubiously. “But why do you want me to promise you? And why wait until after the mission is done? Is that relevant?”

  “It is relevant. I propose to use paradox to help us, rather than to block us, and you are the key.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It is a very tricky concept. Here is how it works.” Jess explained carefully.

  Kadence was awed. “That’s the most amazing thing I ever heard! You must be a genius.”

  “No, just a person with a difficult job to do. You are integral to it. Do I have your promise?”

  “Oh, yes!” Kadence breathed.

  “Thank you.” Then Jess oriented on the larger group. It was time for the big show, and not one of Magnus’s.

  “I have two matters to discuss,” she said. “Both are necessarily secret. The first is for all of you, the second for only some of you. I have a plan to deal with Ragna Roc, not in an alternate historical track, but in this one. It was Platina who thought of it, and I believe she is correct. Stopping Ragna on another track is a necessary thing, and we hope we are doing that by going after the Sea Hag and preventing her from freeing Ragna some time in our near future. But what of our own track, the one our two princesses are from? Putting the Hag away can not stop that, by definition. They saw their mothers deleted! That has already happened, in their time. We have to go there and deal with Ragna, and make him undelete their mothers and all others, and accept permanent exile from Xanth. Only then can we consider our mission complete.”

  She paused, gazing at them. They were not taking her seriously, not because of her curse, but because they thought she was advocating something impossible. But there was dawning hope in the eyes of the two princesses.

  “Here is how,” Jess continued. “We will go to the Timeline of Xanth, which is a kind of tower, an obelisk with four sides. Tata and the peeve know where it is. The higher you go on that tower, the further forward time is. You can go into the past or the future, and return the same way. The past is no good for us, because paradox prevents us from affecting our own personal timelines. That’s why the princesses stay well away from their present-day baby selves; they would not want to interfere with their own lives even if they could. But what I propose is different: climbing to our future, to the princesses’ present day time, to tackle Ragna Roc directly. There is no paradox there; we are not affecting our own lives in the interim.”

  Jess paused. “Are you following me here? I know this is difficult.”

  “I do,” Santo said.

  “Brother, is she making sense?” Win asked.

  “Yes. It’s dangerous, because Ragna can delete people with only a look. But we can go there via the Timeline.” He glanced at Tata. “Right, dogfish?”

  The robot’s screen flickered. “Right,” the peeve translated. “He has done it before.”

  “If you buy it, brother, then so do I,” Win said.

  “And I,” Squid agreed.

  “And I,” Myst said.

  Jess glanced at Noe and Ula. “The princesses buy it,” Noe said. “Therefore so do we.”

  Jess looked at Dell and Nia. “We buy it,” Nia said, and Dell nodded. He did not at all mind being in her shadow.

  Finally Jess looked at Magnus. “Me, too,” he said.

  Jess took a breath; one hurdle had been navigated. “Now a correction. Santo said it is dangerous, but gave the wrong reason. Ragna can not delete us. Any of us. Not even the princesses. We’re all immune. That’s what makes this feasible.”

  They all looked at her with surprise. “Are you sure she’s serious?” Aria asked Kadence.

  “Completely.”

  “Persuade us,” Santo said.

  This was the second hurdle: their belief. “Just as we can’t go back in time to change our own personal timelines, because of the paradox effect, neither can Ragna change his own timeline. He could only affect a different timeline, which is not his interest. He hardly cares more about alternate versions of himself than he does about us. He’s an extremely self-centered bird. So he doesn’t even want to go back in time; there’s nothing there for him. He wants simply to delete any current opposition, and rule Xanth as his personal kingdom. Power is his
addiction. But here is the thing: we have been interacting with Ragna all along, indirectly, because it was Kadence who made the undeleted egg that confined him so many years. He can’t touch Kadence because she is part of his history.” Jess took another breath. “And we are part of Kadence’s history, now. Ever since she returned to her past to join the siblings, and since Magnus and I joined them, too. We are all in this together, affecting each other. We thus have become part of her immunity, in a kind of package deal. Ragna can’t delete any of us without affecting her, so the paradox effect protects us all. It is a widening cone of resistance. If Ragna were here now, he might delete some of us, but nine years from now this has become part of Kadence’s past and will be immutable.” Jess paused again to let them assimilate it.

  “Does this make sense?” Win asked Santo again.

  “I believe it does.”

  “Except for one thing,” Aria said. “If we go with you back to the future, we will be in our second loops. Our original selves will be age ten, and our hosted spirits will be age ten also, parallel to our originals. Those originals have not had anything to do with Ragna, so will not be immune. If he takes them out, we’ll be gone, too.”

  “They will not be immune,” Santo agreed. Then he reconsidered. “Wait—Kadence is immune, as Jess reminded us. Especially since she may affect her own past after we deal with Ragna, so her present is part of this loop; that’s about as nice a device as I have seen. But not Aria. Regardless, they will not be present at the showdown. Only you two ghosts, who are immune. He won’t know the difference, and won’t have time to figure it out.”

  They pondered further, and concluded that he must be right. All of them, including the two princesses, could travel to the future to brace Ragna Roc.

  “My head hurts,” Myst said. “These thoughts are too big for it.”

  “Vaporize and encompass them,” Squid suggested, and the others laughed.

  “There is a consideration,” Nia said. “Tata knows where the Timeline is, but it’s not something a person can just go to. If it were easy to find, all manner of careless folk would be trying to use it, and maybe incidentally messing up Xanth history. So there is a challenge.”

  “Like getting into the Good Magician’s Castle?” Myst asked.

  “Perhaps,” Nia agreed with a smile. “For a similar reason, at any rate: to prevent careless or wrongly motivated folk from reaching it.” She glanced at the dogfish. “Tata, what is the nature of the challenge?”

  The screen flickered. “There were multiple paths to reach it, before,” the peeve translated. “Each went there, but by different routes, some of which were more devious than others. Only the correct path would actually work.”

  “How do we know the correct path?” Magnus asked. “In fact, how do we know where any of the paths are?”

  The robot’s screen flickered again. “You must devise several paths yourselves,” the peeve said. “Then choose one of them for the group to use.”

  The others looked at Jess. She was the protagonist, so they thought the decision might be hers. That was not the way she saw it, but she didn’t care to argue. “Do we have any suggestions for paths? Maybe we can animate them as dream scenes from the mares so we can all see them before we choose.”

  “Tata can help with that,” the peeve said. “If a mare works with him, he can show us the location of the Timeline so we can see assorted paths to it.”

  Win laughed. “We’ll know where they go, but not which one works!”

  “Exactly,” Jess agreed. This seemed halfway crazy, but so was the larger situation. “Does anyone have a suggestion?”

  “Sure,” Magnus said. “Sail Fibot up into the sky and down to the Timeline, avoiding all the pitfalls and monsters on the ground.”

  Myst went to stand by Tata, resting her hand on his top fin. Mairzy animated a dreamlet that was visible to them all. It showed the Timeline Obelisk in the distance, and Fibot in the foreground, with a glowing line arcing between them, avoiding the jungle below, replete with assorted glowering monsters. Jess had to admire the proficiency of the dream maker.

  “That’s one,” Jess said. “Any others?”

  “How about one that veers through a nice gulf course?” Dolph asked with a smile.

  The first dream picture faded and a new one formed. This showed the boat and Obelisk as before, but now the glowing route passed though a gulf course carved out of the jungle.

  “Very nice,” Dolph said. “I have missed gulf recently.”

  “Next?” Jess said somewhat dryly.

  “Maybe one with a nice traveler’s inn on the way,” Noe said wistfully. “With hot meals.”

  The scene showed the line passing through an inn with wavy lines above it suggesting the aroma of freshly baked bread.

  “And nice bedrooms,” Noe added. A light came on upstairs, indicating a bedroom. Santo smiled, and the others laughed, as it was a joke.

  Jess looked around, but there were no other volunteers. “My turn, then. There are enchanted paths leading here and there across Xanth, safe from all molestation. I want one that passes near the Timeline, so that we’ll have only a short trek that is unprotected. We can park Fibot, as I doubt the boat can navigate the Obelisk, and make that brief excursion.”

  A new picture appeared, showing a curving path that passed near where they were and wound around close to the Obelisk without coming into sight of it. The line showed the way.

  “You are concerned with safety?” Magnus asked. “The main threat has been the Sea Hag, and she is marooned on a far planet.”

  “We can not be sure of that,” Jess said. “The Hag is devious in the extreme, and could have found a way back here. She will want more than anything else to stop us, because of the danger we represent to Ragna Roc. We need to play it safe.”

  “We do,” Nia agreed. She knew how real the threat was. Also that Jess fully expected the Hag to strike in that brief window of opportunity.

  “I have an idea,” Myst said. “Is it all right for me to suggest it?”

  “Of course it is,” Jess said. “The fact that you are helping Mairzy animate the pictures doesn’t make you a second class citizen.”

  “It’s a route to go pick up Astrid Basilisk and take her with us.” And that circuitous route appeared, twice the length of the others.

  Everyone looked at Myst, surprised. “What is on your mind, little sister?” Win asked.

  “It’s—it’s that I know Uncle Prince Dolph can change into a fiery dragon and toast Ragna Roc where he perches,” Myst said. “But Ragna’s a big bird, and that’s a lot of fire. It might set fire to the whole scene. But Mama Astrid could kill Ragna with only a glance. That’s safer and cleaner.”

  “We don’t really want to kill Ragna,” Jess said. “We want to force him to undelete his victims.”

  “Yes,” Myst said. “If you were Ragna, which would scare you more: a dragon or a basilisk?”

  “Oh, my,” Nia breathed. “She’s got a point. Basilisks practically radiate menace. There’s something about dying from a glance that is more scary than dying from a toast.”

  Several others nodded. It was a psychological thing. The siblings weren’t subject to it, because they regarded this particular basilisk as their group mother, but chances were that Ragna Roc would be terrified. As a threat, it was a great one.

  “Let’s see that path,” Jess said.

  The map picture appeared. Lo, the path passed close by the Void. That was ideal!

  “I like it,” Win breathed.

  “So do I,” Squid agreed.

  “And I,” Santo said. “We all love Astrid, and know we can trust her.”

  “That is the one,” Jess said, making the choice for them all. “But there is one other thing.”

  “Other thing?” Dell asked, surprised.

  “We can sail the boat only so
far. Then we’ll have to get out and walk, leaving Tata and the peeve in charge. If the Hag is near, that’s when she’ll strike. We’re her targets, because she’s unlikely to have time to nab a sleeping stranger. She won’t want a man or a young child. In any event Myst should be safe because she and Mairzy have brushed with the Hag before and know her smell and will be on guard. Nia and Noe have already been taken, and as far as we know, they’re like undeleted folk: they can’t be taken again. Ula hosts Kadence, who as an alert Sorceress can fend off the Hag. That leaves Win, who at age nine is borderline, not that far from becoming a woman. Best not to gamble; she needs protection.”

  “I don’t want to stay behind,” Win protested. “Neither does Imbri.”

  “Yes. We prefer to keep the group together, especially the siblings. You relate to each other in ways others do not. So we need to arrange for protection. That’s why I want Imbri and Aria to switch hosts.”

  Win and Noe looked at each other. “I suppose we could,” Aria said. “I can fight off the Hag; I’ve done it.”

  “And Noe can fight off the Hag on her own,” Jess said. “So you both will have protection. After the mission is done you can switch back to your original hosts, as Aria and Kadence did.”

  Both girls shrugged. “I suppose it does make sense,” Noe said. “Certainly we don’t want to risk Win getting possessed. It’s unbearably ugly.”

  “And I wouldn’t mind meeting Princess Aria up close,” Win said. “If she can stand being in a child.”

  “You’re two years younger than Noe,” Aria said. “And one year younger than I am. That’s not that much. I’m a child.”

  “And I wouldn’t mind being able to turn into a horse,” Noe said.

  “If the four of you are amenable,” Jess said, “do it, and we’ll get traveling.”

  Both girls went blank for perhaps two and a half moments. Then Win spoke. “She’s here.”

  “I am indeed,” Aria said, and sang a bar of music to prove it.

  “Oooo, I love being able to do that!” Win said.