by Eric Flint
I'm not sure what's worse—listening to a windbag talk or listening to people talk about a windbag.
Then, of course, once Magrit saw Les Six knocking back their alepots, naturally she suddenly developed an overwhelming thirst. Even Gwendolyn got in on the act. So there I was, racing back and forth all day from the salon to the kitchen fetching alepots, when if it hadn't been for the souses I would have been somewhere else, when Wolfgang ambled into the room.
At first, I was a little relieved. It'd mean more alepots, of course, but I figured Wolfgang's babble would distract the others from babbling. And I'd rather listen to a babbling idiot than to idiots babbling.
Besides, I was hoping Wolfgang would start feeling Magrit up and the next thing you'd know, they'd be off to the sack. Then Gwendolyn'd leave, and I'd only have to fetch alepots for Les Six.
I had every reason to hope, too. She's a proper witch, Magrit, I'd be the last to deny it, but she's also a complete slut. Of course, they're all sluts, human beings—male and female both. Never act rationally about sex, the way amphibians do. Civilized, we are. A clutch of eggs in the water, a quick spray of sperm, and that's it. None of this sloppy disgusting stuff—and they say we're slimy! But, I suppose you can't blame them, handicapped by nature the way they are. Evolution reached its peak in the Age of Amphibians, and it's all been downhill since. Humans are just a stupid accident of history. Hadn't been for that comet—
Well, what's past is past. Anyway, it didn't work out that way, because no sooner did he sit down than Wolfgang started moaning and wailing that the dwarf Shelyid—he's the windbag's apprentice—and the two Kutumoff brats had gone after the windbag into the Realm of Words. (I'd thought better of that little guy. But he's only human, even if he is a dwarf.)
Uproar! Uproar! Uproar!
I could see the disaster coming, and there I was! I started looking for a mousehole but I was handicapped what with the alepots I was carrying. Before I could dump them Magrit snatched me up.
"No you don't, you mangy little lizard!" she hollered, adding insult to injury. "You're coming with me!"
"Where?" I demanded, as if I didn't know.
"We've got to go rescue the poor little tykes!"
Me, I would have let natural selection take its course. And what was the fretting for, anyway? If Shelyid had survived years in the company of the windbag, I didn't see where a little trip to the Realm of Words could hurt him any. And what did I care about the Kutumoff brats? The boy was about as interesting as an encyclopedia, and the girl—well, if Polly Kutumoff had been a proper salamandress, of course, I'd have told all kind of lies about being the most degenerate salamander who ever lived so's I could cash in on the Kutumoff Grand Old Tradition, but the truth is that swaying hips and batting eyelashes don't do a thing for amphibians.
I tried to explain all of this to Magrit, but she wasn't having any of it and Gwendolyn was getting downright peevish with me. So I shut up. I'll take my chances with Magrit, but Gwendolyn's a different story. Woman scares me and every amphibian I know. Even the dumb frogs down at the Old Mill Pond call her The Knife. (Her knife itself they call the Edge of the Known Universe.)
Now everybody was charging around all over the Kutumoff mansion. The Kutumoff elders showed up, demanding to know what all the ruckus was about. When they heard, Madame Kutumoff immediately started wailing and wringing her hands. (Best hand-wringer I've ever seen, by the way. Really world class.) Papa Kutumoff, on the other hand, reacted kind of oddly. He just got this little smile on his face and wandered off muttering something about his boy getting into his first real scrape and his girl being a chip off the old block. Whatever that means.
For a while I started getting my hopes back up, because soon enough it became clear than nobody had any idea exactly how they were supposed to carry out this "rescue." First they charged over to Uncle Manya's mini-mansion and stormed into his library and started ransacking all his papers until they found the windbag Zulkeh's formula lying right there in plain sight on top of the desk where I'd seen it straight off but kept my mouth shut. Then they tried to read the formula and was that ever a laugh! Humans are all windbags at heart, but there's still a whale of a difference between the Genuine Article like the wizard Zulkeh and a bunch of boozy wannabes.
Then they charged back to the Kutumoff macro-mansion and stormed upstairs into Magrit's room and Magrit started consulting her grimoire and brewing up potions and what not and was that ever a laugh! Mind you, the old witch is one of your all-time potioneers. She could whip up something that'd make a scorpion fall in love with a rock and the scorpion would die of heartbreak because she'd whip up something else that'd cause the rock to have a heart attack. But travel to the Realm of words? No, no, no, no, no, no. No such potion. No such spell. No such hex.
That requires Grade A, officially-approved, pedigreed, certified, documented, diploma-ed, Zulkeh-style WINDBAGGERY.
But then, just as I was starting to feel relieved, I also started getting a bad feeling. Some of that came from watching Gwendolyn, who, since she doesn't know zip about magic wasn't trying to figure out a way to travel to the Realm of Words but was just relieving her tension by sharpening her knife which is already as sharp as a razor and I could tell she was getting to the point where she was just going to have to try the edge on something and whenever humans get to that point it seems they always remember that you can cut off an amphibian's tail without doing any "real damage" since the tail will grow back, which is true, but it hurts.
But mostly it was because I had a bad feeling about Wolfgang, on account of the way he was drooling.
Now, your humans always think that since Wolfgang's a drooling maniac and he always drools that it doesn't mean anything. But what'll fool a dumb human won't fool a salamander for a minute. There's drool, and there's drool. Even people who ought to know better don't really listen to the lunatic when he tries to tell them about the twin powers of madness and amnesia. But I know that particular drool that he always starts doing whenever he's going to spring some sly one. It's especially disgusting, even for Wolfgang's drool, which is especially disgusting, even for an amphibian who doesn't have that silly human aversion to slime.
But it was obvious to me. I didn't know the ins and outs of it, of course. After all, I'm as sane as a salamander! But one thing was clear as a bell.
Wolfgang Laebmauntsforscynneweëld was about to spring something. And whatever it was, it was going to be crazy.
Really crazy. I mean—demented.
Sure enough, Wolfgang suddenly started raving about applying his twin powers of madness and amnesia and Magrit blew her stack at him and Wolfgang got insulted and started whining.
"Well, I was going to go with you, but since you're going to be that way about it you'll just have to go without me! And it's just as well! Doctor Wolfgang Laebmauntsforscynneweëld has an upcoming appointment with God's Own Tooth himself, you know, and he insisted that I had to come along. Of course, I escaped from the asylum so I wasn't going to go but now I think I will! So there!"
Magrit started hollering that he was a crazy lunatic and what did he know and Wolfgang started smirking and then—I knew it!—he started babbling in an unknown tongue.
I hate it when he does that. Magrit hates it too, because she can't understand him. That's the only part I like about it. I hate it because past experience has taught me that when Wolfgang starts babbling in an unknown tongue sometimes it's just because he's an idiot and other times it's because he's applying his twin powers of madness and amnesia and humans can laugh at him but not me because—
—everything started getting hazy!
The universe started spinning around!
I heard voices everywhere!
Sure enough. There we were. Not Wolfgang, just like he promised. But there was Magrit, and Les Six, and Gwendolyn—all of whom deserved it—and there was me, who didn't.
In the Realm of Words.
2
Only humans would come up with a name like
that. Sounds majestic, doesn't it—the "realm", no less. And—oh!—so refined!—"of words," no less.
Let a salamander tell you the truth.
The Realm of Words, at first sight, is nothing but a barren desert stretching in every direction as far as the eye can see, and that's very very very far indeed on account of there is no actual horizon in the Realm of Words due to the fact that (as it might fairly be called by a clear-headed amphibian) Blatherland is flat.
You heard me. Flat—as in, not round; as in, not a sphere but a table.
How far does it stretch? Who knows? Who cares?
There is neither day nor night, since there is no sun. Light is provided by the Great Lamp in the Sky, which may either be fifty miles high and five miles wide or fifty miles wide and five hundred miles high or—your guess is as good as mine. No doubt the windbag Zulkeh would have performed experiments, but none of the company I was with was so inclined.
At second glance, the barren desert was not entirely barren. At a great distance, we spotted some mounds. Since they were the only thing visible on the plain, we headed off in that direction.
As we got closer, the mounds resolved themselves into great piles of letters. Great piles of the letter O, to be precise, stacked up in pyramids:
o o o
ooo ooo ooo
ooooo ooooo ooooo
ooooooo ooooooo ooooooo
After we stared at these piles for a bit, trying to figure out what they were, we heard a whimpering noise coming from underneath one of them. We investigated. (Rather: I watched; Magrit bossed; Gwendolyn and Les Six rummaged around.) Soon enough, Gwendolyn crawled out from under the pile holding two little p letters and one big one that looked kind of scarred up, like this: P. The little ones were wailing and the big one was blubbering "don't kill us, don't kill us!"
"I'm not going to kill you," growled Gwendolyn. That set them all wailing even louder, which isn't surprising if you've ever heard Gwendolyn growl.
"And there's no way to kill a letter, anyhow," added Magrit.
"Is too," sniveled a little p.
"You chop 'em wid a knife," sniveled the other, "just like the one the big mean lady has."
"Just like happened to everyP else," sniveled the P.
We stared at the piles of Os.
(Hell with it; looks silly; I hereby declare that the plural of O is Oes.).
"You mean—" exclaimed Magrit.
"It was the Horde what done it!" cried out the P. "Massacred 'em all! Made a pyramid of their heads! Me and the little ones is all that survived, because I hid them under me and the Horde thought I was dead."
A sad tale, a sad tale—but then! Will wonders ever cease? Of a sudden, all the piles of Oes started quivering and jerking around and suddenly collapsed into a great disgusting mass of Oes squirming and squiggling all over the landscape.
"Look! They're not dead!" shrieked one of the little ps.
(Looks silly; I hereby declare that the plural of p is pees.)
(No, looks obscene; I hereby declare that the plural of p is pese.)
"Ghosts!" shrieked the other.
"Oh, stop that!" snapped one of the Oes. "We're not ghosts, we're Oes."
It seemed to examine itself. I think; hard to tell; no eyes.
"Yuck!" it exclaimed. "How are the mighty fallen!" Then, philosophically: "Could have been worse, I suppose. They might have split us lengthwise and made us all into Fs." It shuddered. (And there's a nauseating sight, let me tell you, watching an O shudder.) "A fate worse than death!"
"Look on the bright side!" exclaimed another of the newly-revived Oes. "They always say vowels have more fun!"
In an instant, the cry went up, and before you knew it the whole teeming mass of Oes were—what? Let's just say they seemed to be having an orgy and leave it at that. Hard to tell, really.
"Don't watch, children!" hissed the surviving elder P, shepherding the little ones away.
"Now what?" demanded Gwendolyn. She glared at Magrit.
"What are you glaring at me for?" snarled Magrit.
"Who else is there to glare at so maybe they'll come up with an idea for what to do next?" She glared at Les Six. "The Beerbelly Boys?" (They looked offended.) She glared at me. "The Tail That Talks?" (I'm sure I looked nonchalant.)
Magrit threw up her hands. "I'm a working witch, dammit! I'm not some kind of philosopher! I can't make heads or tails out of this place!"
Gwendolyn got a wild and wicked look in her eyes.
"What the hell, why not?" she mused.
It never fails to amaze me how fast that woman is. I mean, even though she looks sort of normally attractive in a female human way except that she's oversize, Gwendolyn can benchpress six hundred pounds. So you wouldn't think the monster could move like a mongoose but she can. Oh yes she can.
The next thing I know she snatched me off of Magrit's shoulder and tossed me high (way high!) up in the air. Spinning and twirling around! Of course, I landed on my feet (cats have got nothing on salamanders), but even so I was outraged. Incensed!
I made my feelings clear, but Gwendolyn ignored me. Rather, she ignored my words. She was scrutinizing my tail.
"That way!" she announced, pointing along the direction my tail happened to be lying.
The whole idea was idiotic, but nobody saw any point in arguing. Not even me. Actually, after a while I decided to be flattered. After a little while longer, I decided there was a profound lesson here: a salamander's tail is worth more than eight human heads.
On and on we trudged. (They trudged; I rode on Magrit's shoulder). On and on they trudged. On and on they trudged. On and on—you get the idea.
After who knows how long, the landscape started to change. Say better—there started to appear the resemblance of a landscape, since you can't hardly call Pure Flat Flatness a "landscape." Not much, mind you—just the occasional stone here and pebble over there, until finally we came across some ruins.
Ruins of what? Don't ask me. Ruins of ruins, looked like.
Then—a sepulchral voice.
"Save the runes," it moaned. "Save the runes."
A rune came out from the ruins.
"Save the runes," it moaned again. "You can start with me. I'm Γ."
"Who?" demanded Magrit.
"Γ." It seemed to shrug. "If you want to be formal about it. My friends call me Γrank. Or Γran, depending on what sex I am."
"Which sex are you, then?" asked Gwendolyn.
"What are you, stupid or something? If I'm Γrank, I'm male; if I'm Γran, I'm female. Once I had a friend who needed his soul saved, so I was Γra. Which reminds me—" Here it started moaning again: "Save the runes, save the runes."
"Save you from what?" growled Gwendolyn. She was starting to get testy, I could tell.
"From extinction, what else? What are you, a moron or something?"
"How about I call you Γrankfurter," she cooed, fingering her cleaver.
"Nay, lass!" protested the first of Les Six.
" 'Tis low! 'Tis low!" disapproved the second.
"Haute cuisine—that's the ticket!" exclaimed the third.
"Γilet Mignon!" enthused the fourth.
"Γillet of Γish, rather," opined the fifth.
"Properly Γlayed and Γried," qualified the sixth.
Magrit intervened. "Easy there! Γrank doesn't mean any harm, do you now, lad? It's just his way, that's all."
Γ apparently decided to fall back on his stock in trade.
"Save the runes! Save the runes!"
Magrit waddled over and patted the creature. "There now! There now! It's all right—you can tell me all about it. Save you from what, exactly?"
Terminal idiocy, it seemed. Immediately the rune lipped off again.
"What are you, another moron? From—"
It got no further, of course, because Magrit gave it one hefty wallop and knocked it Γlat. (Sorry. I couldn't resist.)
"Don't get Γresh with me, you little Γreak!" she bellowed. "Keep a civil to
ngue or I'll turn you into Γlapjacks!"
"Yes, ma'am!" squeaked the twit.
"Good. Let's try again. Save you from what?"
The rune snuffled. "Extinction, that's what. They're rounding us all up and turning us into"—a shudder—"scrap. And then they're melting down the scrap and turning it into"—a wail of horror—"common ordinary letters!"
"Who's doing this?" demanded Gwendolyn.
"What are you, a—" It paused, found wisdom. "The Captains of Industry, that's who. And their goons."