Myth-ion Improbable m-11

by Robert Asprin

  But the way I figured it, there really wasn't much choice. Tanda couldn't hop us back to any dimension she knew of. It was just too far, and we didn't dare just risk hopping dimen sions trying to get close enough. We would end up lost, or more likely dead from something like those snakes or creepy identical-people on that street.

  We needed Glenda. And besides, I wanted her along. It would be fun getting to know her.

  "So now there's four of us," I said, smiling across the table at Glenda and ignoring the scowls coming from my mentor.

  "Great," Glenda said. "You won't regret it."

  I doubted I would either.

  "We split the treasure four ways," Aahz said, making the deal clear.

  "After the Shifter's part is taken out," I reminded him.

  "Yeah, after the Shifter's twenty-five percent."

  He almost spat the last few words of the sentence as he glared at Tanda.

  "There'll still be more than enough for everyone," Glenda said as she offered everyone some fresh bread. "If we can get to the golden cow and make it ours."

  I took a large piece and them some of the wonderful apple jelly she had on the table. After one bite I knew that fresh bread and jelly was the best-tasting thing I remembered having in a long, long time. It more than melted in my mouth as it turned my taste-buds into a wonderful world of flavors. Man, if Glenda could make all the food she cooked do that, I was never leaving her side.

  After we were all eating-and I noticed that even Tanda and Aahz enjoyed the bread-Glenda looked at me. "Dig out the map and let's figure out where we're headed next."

  I pointed to Aahz. "I'm letting the big guy carry it."

  I thought Aahz would choke on the bread.

  Tanda laughed, and the tension in the room eased a little.

  Aahz took out the map and unfolded it on the table.

  Glenda moved around so that she stood beside Tanda. I scooted over to get a better look as well.

  Again the map had changed.

  No surprise there. We were on Vortex #6, which was now clearly highlighted on the map. There were four lines from our dimension headed to four different places. I didn't like the sounds of the four dimensions at all.

  Febrile was the one on the right, Hostile the next one, Durst the next, and Molder the farthest left.

  Tanda shook her head. "I don't know any of them."

  "Neither do I," Aahz said.

  "No way that you could," Glenda said. "They are even farther removed from Deva than this place."

  She glanced at me to make sure I was listening, then pointed to Febrile.

  "That place's coolest temperature is over one hundred and twenty. We wouldn't last five minutes there."

  "Nice that the map designer put it on the map," I said.

  "Traps," she said. "The Cartograms loved to make these sorts of things."

  "Cartograms?" I asked.

  She gave me another of her wonderful smiles.

  "They are an entire race who explore and map dimensions, and any time they find a treasure, they do one of these trea sure maps to the location of the treasure, and then sell the map."

  "I'd heard about them," Tanda said. "Never bothered to buy a map from one of them, though."

  "They have booths in the Bazaar at Deva," Aahz said. "Never had the need to use their services."

  "Did they do the map on the wall in the Shifter's tent?" I asked.

  Glenda nodded. "I'd bet that any kind of map that shows different dimensions was done by a Cartogram. Every trea sure map they do is magik and often contain puzzles and traps just like this one."

  "Good to know," I said, glancing at Aahz. It was clear he hadn't known about the traps when we started out after this golden cow.

  My mentor just frowned at me.

  Glenda went on. She pointed at the dimension with the name Hostile.

  "We don't even want to think about going there. Makes Febrile look cool."

  Aahz nodded.

  Glenda pointed to the next one. "Durst no longer exists. Something destroyed the entire dimension thousands of years ago."

  "That leaves Molder," I said. "What's it like?"

  "Only been there for a few moments with my father, track ing what happened to this map three buyers ago," Glenda said, shaking her head. "It's a dark, damp place where everything always seems to be changing. Even the ground seems to grow and move under your feet."

  "So tell me," Tanda said to Glenda. "You've gone after this treasure with your father, and seen others do it. You must know the path at least a few steps ahead. Why can't we just jump over this step. Don't you know where the map will lead us?"

  I had to admit that Tanda had a good point there. It would sure be a lot easier.

  Glenda sighed, and even the sigh was a wonderful sound to my ears. She could sigh at me all she wanted.

  "I wish I could," Glenda said.

  "The map is magik," Aahz said. "It's never the same. Right?"

  "Exactly," Glenda said. "Except for going through these Vortex locations at one point or another, the map changes the correct path with every user, and every attempt."

  "Hmmm." Aahz said, staring at the piece of parchment. "Too bad we can't just take the magik out of the map and have it tell us the only true path to the dimension with the golden cow."

  That gave me an idea. It was so simple it was probably stupid, so I didn't say anything aloud. Still, the thought kept rattling around in my head as the others continued their conversation.

  What if I tapped into the magikal energy of the map, just like I did with the energy lines when I was casting a spell? Wouldn't that draw off the magik?

  I made myself relax, then reached out with my mind and touched the map Aahz was holding, working at absorbing energy as I did.

  At first nothing happened. Then the parchment began to tremble and an energy line sprang into being, running from the map to me.

  It was a cool, tingly sensation, but strong, almost too strong, and getting stronger and stronger. I quickly opened up, letting the energy channel through me and into the ground, just as Aahz had taught me in some of our earliest lessons.

  "What the..." Aahz exclaimed, letting go of the map.

  Instead of falling, it hovered in midair.

  "Skeeve!" Tanda shouted, but I ignored her, keeping my attention on what I wanted to happen.

  Finally the energy flow slowed and ebbed until it was merely a trickle. I released my mental contact, and the parchment fluttered to the floor.

  "Try looking at it now," I said.

  All three of them were looking at me as if I had suddenly grown another head.

  "Someone want to explain to me what just happened?" Glenda said, taking her gaze away from me to look back at the map.

  Aahz frowned as he did the same.

  Tanda laughed. "Master Magician Skeeve here just solved a whole bunch of our problems."

  I stared at the map, not believing what I was seeing.

  Now there was only one line from Vortex #6 to Molder, then a line from Molder to Vortex #5, then a line to a dimen sion called Baasss, then a line back to here, Vortex #6, then one final line to our cow dimension.

  And the cow dimension now had a name.

  Kowtow.

  We could jump directly from here to Kowtow.

  Glenda laughed and gave me the best hug I could ever remember. Her entire body pressed into mine, and I tingled in more places than I ever wanted to admit.

  "My father was right," she said as she squeezed me even harder. "You really are special."

  The sound of Aahz snorting didn't take away one bit of my enjoyment of the moment.

  Chapter Five

  "That's wild!"

  J. WEST

  "What kind of name is Kowtow?" I asked, pointing at our destination on the map after Glenda released me from the hug of the century.

  No one answered me.

  "How did you do that?" Glenda asked, staring at me. "I've never heard of anyone taking the magik out of a treas
ure map before."

  Her beautiful brown eyes were huge and there was a look of what I took to be slight worry. Then I realized that what I was seeing wasn't worry. She was in awe of me. And having someone in awe of me was not a circumstance that often happened.

  "Honestly," I said to her, "I'm not sure."

  "Why is that no surprise?" Aahz said, his eyes rolling in disgust.

  "Aahz said something about taking the magik out of the map," I said, going on, explaining to her what had happened while ignoring Aahz, "So I gave it a try. I tapped into its en­ ergy like I would a force line and just let it flow through me and into the ground. That's all I did. Honest."

  Tanda looked as if she understood, but was saying nothing.

  "The vortex dimensions are known to be powerful places for magik," Glenda said. "That's why no one lives here very long."

  "So while we're here," Aahz said, glaring at me, "be careful!"

  I pointed at the map. "What? Didn't I help?"

  "I think you did," Tanda said. "Glenda, do you know this Kowtow dimension? Or do we have to go back to the Shifter to get there?"

  Aahz moaned at the mention of the Shifter.

  "I've been there a number of times," Glenda said. "Never thought of it as a place with a great treasure, though."

  "Are there cattle there?" Aahz asked.

  "More than you could ever imagine," Glenda said.

  "So our next adventure," I said, smiling at Glenda, "is find­ ing a single cow in a proverbial haystack of cows."

  A puzzled frown came over her face, telling me clearly she had no idea what I had just said, and since I had no idea what a cow looked like, I didn't want to try to explain a haystack of them to her.

  "What our young friend there was trying to say," Tanda added, "is that if there are a lot of cows, how are we going to find the one that gives golden milk?"

  Glenda shrugged. "I have no idea. No one has ever got­ ten this far with this map before. It would have never oc­curred to me that the map led to Kowtow."

  Aahz wasn't adding anything, so I figured it was safe to say what I was thinking.

  "Wouldn't a cow that gave golden milk live in a golden palace?"

  Again they just all three stared at me.

  "More than likely," Tanda said, nodding slowly.

  Silence again filled the small cabin. At that point I figured it was better to just eat more bread and leave the thinking up to them.

  After an hour of planning and talking, at Aahz's suggestion, Glenda dimension-hopped us to Kowtow, to a location iso­lated enough that we wouldn't be seen by anyone. He figured that way we would have time for me to get us in disguises so that we looked like the local residents.

  Before we hopped, Aahz made real sure that either Glenda or Tanda could hop back to this cabin. And he had Glenda help him set his D-Hopper so he could as well. It seemed I was the only one who didn't have an emergency getaway. I planned on making sure I was always close to one of them. Preferably Glenda.

  After the hop, we ended up standing near a large rock cliff face. The air was warm and dry, and the sun was high over­head at the moment.

  The area around us looked like desert, but the ground sloped away from us down to a lush, green valley. A road came over the hill beside the cliff, wound past where we were, and down the hill to what looked to be a small town built out of wood. From what I could tell there was no building over two stories tall. The buildings seemed to be centered around the main street.

  "That town is called Evade," Glenda said. "Mostly cow­ boys and bars."

  "Cowboys?" I asked. Since I had no idea what a cow looked like, I couldn't imagine what a boy cow would be, or why they would build a town.

  "Cowboys are men who take care of the cows," Glenda said. "For some reason they're called that in just about every dimension there are cows or cattle."

  I wanted to ask her what a woman who took care of cows was called.

  "In this dimension," Glenda said, "the cowboys are a strange bunch, let me tell you."

  Aahz stood, staring at the town in the valley below them.

  "In what way?"

  Glenda shrugged. "They seem to treat the cattle almost like they were sacred. They never hurt a cow, they never push a cow too hard, and they always talk nice to the cattle. And they protect them against anything."

  "Now that is weird," Tanda said.

  "Why?" I asked.

  Aahz looked at me with one of his looks that said I was asking too many questions. I knew that look well, since I saw it two or three times a day.

  "Because, in most dimensions, cows are nothing but food. Here, killing a cow is a hanging offense."

  "So what do these cowboys look like?" I asked. For once, courtesy of my earlier adventures, I knew what a hanging offense was. In fact, I knew about it intimately enough to not want to dwell on the memory.

  "Actually, in this dimension, they look a lot like the three of us." Glenda laughed. She glanced at Aahz. "We're going to have to do something about you, though, big boy. They don't know about demons here, let alone Pervects."

  Aahz said nothing. I think he was just glad she didn't call him a Pervert, as so many did.

  Suddenly, over the hill behind us, along the road, there was the sound of something coming. Glenda had us move back behind some rocks at the base of the cliff and watch. I made sure I had a pretty good view of the road so that I could disguise us all in the right clothes.

  A minute later, two men appeared at the top of the rise. They were on horses and were headed slowly down the hill toward the town below. They both were dressed pretty much the same. They had on plaid shirts, jeans-like pants, high boots, and wide belts. Their skin was tan from a long time in the sun, and they wore wide-brimmed brown hats on their heads. One was a little older than the other and both had short hair and mustaches. They rode side-by-side in silence. After they got a distance down the hill, Tanda turned to me. "Get what they look like?"

  "Easy," I said.

  Pulling in the energy I needed, I changed all of us into our local disguises. I gave us all black hats, and basically similar plaid shirts. Since I couldn't see beyond the clothes what my magik did when I disguised someone, I glanced at Glenda. "How do we look?"

  "Perfect," she said. "Even Aahz's tan is red instead of green."

  "Are we going to need horses?" I asked. "I can't do them."

  "We might," Glenda said, looking frustrated. "Especially if the golden cow isn't close by. We might have to do some traveling, and, from what I remember, horses are the only means of travel here."

  "Money?" Aahz asked. "We're going to need money as well."

  "I don't think so," Glenda said. "This place doesn't use money."

  I thought Aahz was going to have a heart attack. It was like telling him the sun would never come up again.

  "So what do they use to trade and buy things with?" Tanda asked, also shocked at the very idea.

  "Work," Glenda said. "Work is their capital."

  Now I was just as lost as Aahz and Tanda looked.

  Glenda went on. "You work for someone when you want something from them. They keep everything on IOU's. So if you want a drink or some food, you sign an IOU and then later you have to work off the debt."

  "This is a strange place."

  Glenda agreed and we started off down the hill, four strang­ ers walking into a town full of cowboys. I just hope my dis­ guises worked. Just in case, I stayed real close to Glenda. Not that that was a hardship or anything.

  The town of Evade was active and primitive. The only street was appropriately enough called Main Street. It was dirt and hardened mud and very rough. It split two rows of wooden buildings with covered wooden sidewalks in front of them. Outside the main street were houses scattered through the farmlands, tucked into groves of strange-looking trees.

  Music and laughter were coming from a number of the doors along Main Street. Bright-colored signs were over some of the doors, with names like Battlefield, Wild Horse, and Audry'
s. I had no idea what any of those names meant.

  Horse-drawn wagons and single horses were tied up on rails along the wooden sidewalks, and the entire town smelled like horse droppings, of which there were some pretty good-sized piles spaced along the road.

  A man with a white hat and a big shovel was slowly pick­ ing up fresh horse leavings and tossing them onto the piles. I wanted to ask him what debt he was trying to pay off, or what he was trying to buy, because whatever it was, the price was too high.

  When we reached the main area of town we stepped up on the sidewalk on the left side and into the shade. Sud­denly I realized just how hot our walk from the cliff had been, and how lucky it was these people wore hats. The sun hadn't seemed that hot at first, after coming from Vor­tex #6, but now that we were in the shade, I realized how bad it was.

  We strolled along the wooden sidewalk, trying to look as if we belonged. Of course, in a town that couldn't have more than a few hundred full-time residents, four newcom­ers stood out like a bad blister in new shoes.

  "Howdy," the first man we passed said to us. He tipped his hat and just kept right on moving.

  By the time I tipped my hat back, he was past us.

  A woman in long skirts and a flower-patterned blouse walked past us a few moments later.

  "Howdy," she said.

  I tipped my hat, as did Aahz.

  She smiled at us, showing some pretty strange-looking teeth.

  After she was past us I glanced down at my neck to make sure the Translator Pendant that Tanda had given me was still there. It was, but it couldn't be working, because I had no idea what "howdy" meant.

  I glanced at Tanda who just shrugged.

  About a quarter of the way up the street into the town we stopped and leaned against a wooden wall and tried to look as if we were relaxed. No one was bothering us, or even paying us much attention. Across the street, high-energy music was coming out of the door labeled Audry's. I could see a number of people through the open door sitting at tables. It looked like a bar or restaurant of some sort.

  "Now what?" Glenda asked, studying the man in the street who was picking up horse droppings.

  "We're going to need information," Tanda said.