The Time Of The Transferance

by Alan Dean Foster

  “It doesn’t bother you to see yourself like that?” Jon-Tom asked him.

  “Why should it bother me?” He looked around at the trio of concerned faces. “That’s ‘ow I’ve always seen myself. Besides, His a reflection of ‘ow I am now, not ‘ow I’m goin’ to end up. Come on now, cheer up. You’re depressin’ me wot with all these long faces. ‘Tis your turn, Jon-Tom.”

  “I don’t know.” The image of the decrepit otter still lingered on his retinas. What might the mirror tell him about himself?

  “Go on,” said Cautious, displaying unaccustomed asser-tiveness. “We all done it, you got to do it too. You not afraid of what maybe you see, are you?”

  “Yes I am.”

  “Take the plunge, mate. Probably you’ll just see a straight reflection, like Cautious did.”

  Now that all three of his companions had chanced the mirror he could hardly back out. So he settled himself in the chair, lifted his eyes and stared nervously into the glass.

  His lower jaw dropped and he moved his head from side to side, but k didn’t change what he saw in the mirror.

  “You okay, Jon-Tom?” Weegee was eyeing him with concern. He didn’t reply and she looked to Mudge. “What’s the matter? What’s gone wrong?”

  “Maybe nothin’, luv. Maybe ‘tis just somethin’ we ain’t smart enough to understand.” He held her tightly. “Not every answer in life’s an easy one.”

  There was no image in the mirror, no image at all. Cautious leaned forward and saw himself, and you could see the otters standing a little further back, but Jon-Tom might as well have been invisible. The raccoon helped him up from the chair. Still stunned, he leaned against the dressing table, consciously avoiding any contact with the beveled glass that dominated the center.

  “But what does it mean? Does it mean I’m not really here? That I don’t really exist?” He felt of his chest, his legs. “I feel real. I feel like I’m here.”

  Mudge tried to be helpful. “Maybe it means the real you hasn’t made itself known yet. Maybe there’s somethin’ that ‘as to be added to make you complete. Hell, I’ve always thought you weren’t all there.”

  “Mudge, this is no time to be funny. I’m scared.”

  “Then that’s the best time to be funny. ‘Ere, let’s think about somethin’ else for a while. I don’t think you ‘ave to worry about fadin’ away.” He searched the chamber and his gaze fastened on the golden goblet. “Wot you want to bet this ‘ere bit o’ crenulated crockery talks?” He picked it up, as he had once before, but though he held it tightly no glow issued from its hammered sides and no words from its depths.

  “You lose,” Weegee told him.

  “Can’t lose when you bet against yourself, luv.” He sniffed the clear contents. “Smells like rainwater. Must’ve dripped from the ceilin’. Pity it couldn’t be somethin’ a mite stronger.”

  “As dry as my throat is all of a sudden I’m not going to be particular.” Jon-Tom took it from the otter and after a quick look to ensure himself nothing besides water had fallen into it from the ceiling he downed the contents gratefully.

  He was about to put it back on the dressing table when the bowl filled with a pulsating blue smoke.

  “Knoweth all that I am the One True Goblet. Knoweth all who standeth before me that I will provide sustenance for the thirsty of mind as well as throat.”

  “Interesting.” Jon-Tom turned the empty goblet around in his fingers. “I wonder what it means, ‘sustenance for the mind’?” He looked into its depths anew and they heard the voice a second time.

  “Beware the Moqua plants.”

  The blue smoke dissipated. In its wake it left a fresh drink of water.

  “Now ain’t that somethin’,” said Mudge. “‘Beware o’ the Moqua plants.’ “

  “What’s a Moqua?”

  The otter formed a circle with thumb and forefinger. “Got little bells on it about like this that fill up with tiny bugs. Got nasty bites, they do.” There was contempt in his voice. “I didn’t need no talkin’ utensil to tell me that. But I do need a drink. Pass ‘er over.”

  Jon-Tom handed the otter the goblet and Mudge drained it in a single long swallow. “Water’s good even if the advice leaves somethin’ to be desired.”

  It spoke again. “Avoid the lugubrious lescar.”

  Mudge made a face. “That one’s got me stumped. Any you lot know wot a lugubrious lescar is?” Weegee and Cautious shook their heads.

  “Hurry up in there.” Teyva sounded genuinely impatient.

  “Just another minute.” Jon-Tom glanced at his companions. “Nobody knows what a lugubrious lescar is?”

  “Never ‘card o’ it,” confessed Mudge.

  “Well we’d better stay out of its way, whatever it is.” He studied the vessel, peered over the rim at the lady of the troup. “Weegee?”

  “Strange, but I feel a sudden thirst.” She smiled at him as she took the goblet.

  “At least we come out o’ this with somethin’ useful.” Mudge watched her as she sipped. “Melted down, there must be a quarter pound o’ gold in that cousin to a tankard.”

  Jon-Tom was shocked. “Mudge, how can you think of melting something so unique and magical just for its monetary content?”

  “Because I think o’ just about everythin’ in terms o’ its monetary content, that’s ‘ow.”

  “You could be dying of thirst in the desert and that bottomless water supply could keep you alive.”

  “Aye, and I could be fallin” down broke in Polastrindu an* the gold in it would keep me drunk forever.”

  “Jon-Tom’s right,” Weegee chided him. “You don’t melt magic.” She’d finished draining the goblet. As it refilled itself for the third time they heard the voice again.

  “Buy IBM at 124.”

  Jon-Tom blinked. Could it be that the goblet’s range extended to his world as well? He took the goblet from Weegee and stowed it carefully in his pack.

  “We’ll decide what to do with this later, but I think it definitely has its uses. Let’s go before Teyva decides to depart without us.”

  They crawled back beneath the fallen beam. Teyva’s nostrils flared. “I smell water. I could use a drink.”

  Jon-Tom sighed. “Cautious, would you get him the goblet?” The raccoon obliged, held it for the stallion while he drank, and then repacked it. As he was putting it away Jon-Tom thought he heard it again.

  “The solution to the national debt is to...” but the remainder was smothered by the supplies in his pack.

  Easy come, easy go, he thought. Better it should tell them how to get to Strelakat Mews.

  By the morning of the next day Teyva’s wing beats had slowed considerably and the flying horse was beginning to show the strain of carrying four passengers for hundreds of miles. If the stallion were to give out unexpectedly they would land in the ocean. How much farther was it to Chejiji?

  “I’m sorry,” said Teyva, “but all of a sudden I don’t feel so good. Uh, you wouldn’t happen to have any more of that white powder on you, would you?”

  “It wouldn’t matter. What your system needs now is food. You’re coming down, Teyva. At this point another jolt would do real damage. Can you go on?”

  “I don’t know.” The stallion was shaking his head repeatedly. “Real tired all of a sudden. Weak.” He dipped sharply, fought to regain altitude. “Going down.” His voice was slurred.

  “Look!” Cautious was leaning out over nothingness and pointing. “Is that real or am I blind?”

  Just ahead a narrow strip of land protruded into the sea. A wide beach lined the green peninsula like lace on an old lady’s collar. The far side of the peninsula was dotted with irregular brown and red forms. Buildings, Jon-Tom thought excitedly. It could only be fabled Chejiji. It had to be Chejiji.

  “We’ll have to swim for it.” Teyva continued to lose altitude.

  “Like hell. We’ve haven’t come all this way and overcome everything we have to arrive soaking wet. Lock your wings,
Teyva. Just lock them out straight. You don’t have to work to fly. We can glide in.”

  “I’ll try.” The vast multicolored wings slowed and extended fully. They descended in a slow curve, soaring on the hot air rising from the warm bay below.

  For a few minutes Jon-Tom feared they’d land in the shallow water on the near side of the peninsula. Then Teyva struck a thermal rising from an exposed section of reef arid they lifted like a hot-air balloon, barely clearing the tops of the tallest trees. Exhausted, the stallion set down on the edge of the harbor district, causing something of a commotion as the shadow of his great wings passed over startled pedestrians.

  Jon-Tom and his companions dismounted quickly. “How do you feel?” he asked Teyva.

  “Like my wings are about to fall off. In fact, like everything is about to fall off.”

  “You don’t look too good, either. I think we’d better get you to a doctor.”

  “Let Mm find ‘is own doctor.” Mudge was in no mood to coddle. “I’m starvin’, I am.”

  “Mudge,” said Weegee wamingly. He gave her the sour eye.

  “I know you can pronounce me name properly, luv. No need to keep demonstratin’ the fact.”

  She smiled sweetly. “Be nice to Teyva, dear, or I’ll give you a kick.”

  “Well matched, them couple.” Cautious turned to gaze at the tall stone and tile buildings that lined the harbor front. “Never seen a city like this. Come to think of it, I never seen a big city ever.”

  The stucco walls, tiled roofs, turrets and battlements suggested a cross between an old Moorish town on the Costa Brava and a leftover set from the film South Pacific. They intercepted a ferret wearing a broadbrimmed straw hat and short pants. He was carrying half a dozen fishing poles and attendant paraphernalia which he kept shifting from shoulder to shoulder as they inquired about a doctor.

  “For which among you?” Bright sunlight made him squint as Jon-Tom gestured toward Teyva. “A quadruped specialist, then. I recommend Corliss and Marley.” He turned and pointed. “Go along the Terrace to the first brick road and turn left. Their office, as I recall, lies not far up that street.”

  “Great, thanks.” Jon-Tom shook the ferret’s paw and they headed south.

  They found the brick road easily, but Teyva was now so weak he could barely make it up the steep incline, his wings fluttering spasmodically against his sweaty withers. Corliss and Marley’s office was a one-story yellow stucco structure topped by a green tile roof. It had a sweeping view of the bay beyond. A few fishing boats were visible out in the calm waters.

  Corliss was a nimble-fingered gibbon with an empathetic bedside manner. His long arms and delicate fingers probed the length and breadth of Teyva’s body while his partner Marley stood nearby staring through thick glasses and making notations on a pad. One didn’t have to be a member of the profession to figure out that Corliss was the manipulative end of the partnership and Marley the brains. After all, Marley was a goat, and it’s rather difficult to perform surgery without any fingers.

  When Corliss had concluded his inspection the pair consulted. Then the gibbon stepped aside, Marley put down his mouth-stylus, and they voiced their diagnosis simultaneously.

  “Worst case of wing-strain we’ve ever seen.” Marley continued on his own.

  “What did you do, make the poor fellow fly halfway across the Glittergeist?”

  Jon-Tom coughed into his fist. “Something like that. But we didn’t make him do it. He volunteered.”

  The goat consulted his notes. “And his blood pressure, verra strange.” He glanced up at the stallion through those half-inch thick lenses. “Are you on enna kind of medication?”

  “Ah, no.” Teyva looked away. “That is, nothing of a long-term nature.”

  “Long-term nature?” The physician looked at the stallion’s companions. “What does ‘e mean, nothing of a long-term nature?”

  Mudge started to reply but Weegee slapped a paw over his mouth. Jon-Tom took a step forward. “Our lives were at stake. Teyva here suffered from a fear of flying ever since colthood. We had to resort to the use of a stimulant to break him of that fear.”

  “Weel you broke him of it, I’d say, judging from the way those wings look. Severe sprain, both of them.” He shook his head at the stallion. “No flying for you for a while, my friend.”

  “Absolutely verboten.” Corliss was examining Teyva’s right eye, having added drops to dilate the pupil. “Nor would I take any more of that stimulant if I were you. Not if you want to fly anywhere soon except into a shallow grave.”

  Jon-Tom felt uncomfortable. “Like I said, we had no choice. Everything happened pretty fast. I had no time to measure out a dose.”

  This failed to placate the gibbon. “As a doctor I have little sympathy for anyone who employs strong drugs without a prescription.”

  Mudge couldn’t stand it anymore, broke away from Weegee’s restraining paw. “Look ‘ere,.knuckles, we were about to be potted an’ we didn’t ‘ave time for careful consideration o’ the possible consequences.”

  Teyva gazed sorrowfully at Jon-Tom. “I am sorry I will not be able to do as I hoped and fly you all the way to Strelakat Mews, but I think I had best abide by the doctors’ decision.”

  Jon-Tom walked up to pat him on the neck. “That’s all right. You’ve done more than enough by bringing us this far, Teyva. We can walk the rest of the way.”

  Marley looked up from his papers. “Strelakat Mews? What business could you have in Strelakat Mews?”

  Jon-Tom indicated the sack containing the fragments of his duar. “I’m a spellsinger by trade. My instrument is badly broken and my mentor, the wizard Clothahump, insists that the only craftsman in the world capable of repairing it properly is a fellow named Couvier Coulb who lives in the Mews.”

  “That may be, that may be.” Corliss was writing on a pad of his own. “I wouldn’t know, not being a musician myself.”

  “Where might we find someone to guide us to this dump?” Mudge asked.

  “You can’t,” Marley told the otter. “It’s said the inhabitants of Strelakat Mews can do wondrous things, but nobody goes there.”

  “Then how can they know that?” Corliss shrugged expressively, pursing his thick lips. “Who knows how tourists come up with the things they do? Myself, I am not one for the jungle. I much prefer the coast.”

  “Lovely,” growled the otter. “More creepers an’ cannibals.”

  “No cannibals, I’d say.” Marley’s goatee twitched as he shook his head. “Not between here and the Mews, I shouldn’t think.”

  “Other things, though,” said Corliss. “What other things?” Jon-Tom inquired. “Don’t know. Tourist talk. Traveler tales. Me, I stick to me coast.”

  “All right then.” Jon-Tom’s exasperation was beginning to show. “If we can’t find anyone to guide us to this place, can you tell us if there’s at least someone who can point us in the right direction?”

  The physicians exchanged a look. “Try Trancus the outfitter,” Marley suggested. “He’s the one who would know.”

  “He’s also,” Corliss added sagely, “the only one I would trust.”

  XIII

  Trancus the outfitter was a wombat, overweight as were most of his kind. His features seemed to sit loosely in pockets and folds of firm flesh covered by dense black fur. At first he tried to discourage them but when they continued to insist, he agreed to provide them with directions.

  “There’s a trail that runs straight to the Mews. Sometimes, not often, folks come from there to here to buy what they can’t make or grow. I hear it is the most wonderful sort of place, full of talented, kind people. They like to keep to themselves. Seem to find their way to Chejiji lots easier than people from here can find their way there. It doesn’t make me glad telling you this, but I will be glad to sell you supplies.” And he did.

  When they had been appropriately reoutfitted for the hike ahead he closed his shop and waddled to the edge of the city to make sure they didn’
t miss the trail head.

  “You be careful in there.” He waved a stubby paw at the wall of jungle. “Get a few leagues away from good old Chejiji and you never know what you might run into. That’s what Mews means: jungle.”

  “Then what does Strelakat mean?” Jon-Tom asked him.

  “Beats hell out of me. We always wondered about that here in the city. If you find out you can tell me. If you come back.”

  “Now ‘ow did I know you were goin’ to say that?” Mudge sighed, started up the narrow, muddy track that wound its way among the trees.

  “Good luck, friends.” They left the wombat waving to them as they filed into the unknown.

  Some of the flora and fauna was known to Mudge and Cautious, much of it was new and strange, but nothing challenged their progress. They carried no waterbags, for as everyone knew, jungle water is pure and palatable. There was an abundance of wild fruit and while the atmosphere was humid it wasn’t unbearably so. By the second day they were all enjoying the level, easy walk. All except Mudge, who complained incessantly. This was normal for him, however, and everyone ignored him.

  One new variety of lizard in particular interested Jon-Tom. Instead of the familiar webbed or feathered wings, this aerial charmer had thin wafers of skin mounted on small bones that rotated on a gimbel-like mount. Spinning at high speed, these provided sufficient lift to raise the brightly colored reptile straight up. Not only could it hover like Teyva, it could also fly sideways and backward. They seemed to delight in bouncing up and down in the air in front of the marchers’ faces like so many snakes on yo-yos. One exceptionally iridescent six-inch specimen buzzed along in front of Jon-Tom for five minutes before flying off into a nearby calimar tree. “Amazing how they can stay aloft that long.”

  “Not really, when you consider that anything makes more sense in this soggy country than walking.”

  “What was that, Mudge?”

  “I didn’t say anythin’.” And for a change, he hadn’t. Neither had Cautious or Weegee.

  They were walking parallel to a five-foot-high ridge of smooth stone. As they neared the far end the ridge turned its head to block the path. It was large, reptilian, and full of sharp teeth.