Board Stiff (Xanth)

by Anthony, Piers

  “Yes,” Astrid said, taken aback. “You said you might be able to help us. What did you mean?”

  “You are here not entirely because you support puns,” Tammi said seriously. “You are here because you represent a perceived threat to four conspirators in the village. The puns were only the pretext.”

  “How can you know this?” Astrid asked. “Terri never got to know the villagers before she was drugged and brought here.”

  “Terri’s a nice girl. That’s her problem. She had no suspicions. But checking her memory, I recognize the pattern. Had I been in control I never would have been deceived. As it is, it’s a bit late.”

  “You never met the villagers,” Astrid said. “Only the Mayor. Yet you say you know of four conspirators. Mayor Giles and who else?”

  “No, Giles is not a conspirator. He honestly believes in what he is doing. In fact he’s an honest man. But he is a figurehead, doing the conspirator’s work. Once they achieve sufficient power, they’ll dispose of him.”

  “How can you know this? You have no basis.”

  “It’s part of my talent, the same way as your death-stare is part of yours. When I enter a situation, I know its nature, if it’s a conspiracy. That’s how I fathomed the Adult Conspiracy; no one told me its details.”

  Astrid looked at the others. “We may be in trouble. How can Pastor and Futura change things if it’s not just innocent belief, but a planned conspiracy?”

  “I doubt they can,” Tammi said. “They may change the villagers’ attitude toward puns, but that won’t address the real problem.”

  “Then it must be up to us,” Mitch said. “We can use the escape tunnel and avoid the whole issue, or we can tackle it directly.”

  “You have a plan?” Astrid asked.

  “Yes, if you’re willing.”

  “I can stun or kill folk, but I can’t change their minds.”

  “I’m thinking of the way you took out the troll.”

  “He was an inhuman beast. I didn’t mind putting him down. But I don’t want to hurt a village full of largely innocent people.”

  “How about just four conspirators?”

  “Now I begin to get your drift. But still, getting to them without setting off a riot could be a challenge.”

  “With Tammi’s help you can do that.”

  “I’m glad to help,” Tammi said. “I can see through conspiracies, but that doesn’t mean I like them.”

  Mitch glanced at Tani. “We can use your help too. In fact it’s critical. Are you in?”

  “Of course I’m in,” Tani said. “I couldn’t save my own Quest, but I’ll be glad to help save yours.”

  “Ours might even be the Quest you were destined to help, by a devious route,” Mitch said.

  Tani looked surprised. “I wonder!”

  “Then let’s work out our Plan. Here’s what I have in mind.”

  He presented it to them, and the others found it worthy. It had key roles for Tammi, Tani, and Astrid. They rehearsed them, getting the details right.

  The disk of light appeared above. “Hey!” a man called. “If you want food, send up the doll with the sequins, only without them.” The pallet started descending.

  “The flies are walking right into the spider’s web,” Mitch murmured. “If you are willing, Astrid.”

  “I’m willing,” she said. “This makes it easy.” She doffed her dress, then her bra and panties. “I don’t want to freak him out, I want to get close to him, long enough.”

  “Understood,” Mitch said. Then he called up “She’s on her way.”

  The pallet descended. Astrid got on it, and it cranked its way upward. In due course it reached the hole, and passed through it.

  “Well, now,” they heard the man say. “You look even better naked.”

  “There’s nothing else quite like me,” Astrid said. “But first send down the food. You promised.

  “No, first you take care of me. You know how.”

  “I do.”

  “Men are such fools,” Tiara murmured. “Present company excepted.”

  “No, we’re fools too,” Mitch said. “But you women have us under control.”

  There was a brief silence. Then Astrid called down. “He’s asleep. I’m winding down the pallet.” They saw the pallet start down.

  “That is some woman,” Mitch said.

  “And if you try to touch her, you’ll be unconscious too,” Tiara warned him.

  “My admiration is limited to her effectiveness for the Quest.”

  “All the same, I’ll go up next.”

  “Of course,” Mitch agreed.

  The pallet arrived and Tiara got on, using Astrid’s dress and underclothing to lie on. After she was up, it descended again, and Mitch got on. The others followed, including Tammi and Tani, with Pewter the last.

  There was the man, naked, unconscious on the stone floor. He was the one who had wanted to have Astrid before, but Mayer Giles had prevented it. Now, thanks to his sneakiness, he had gotten his wish, and been literally intoxicated by her perfume. “He didn’t even get to the point,” Astrid said, seeing them looking. She had dressed while waiting for them, not having to crank the pulley once another person joined her. “He was so busy kissing my body, and I haven’t had a bath recently.” She sounded almost disappointed. Kandy realized that she would have liked to have the experience, even though her purpose had been to do exactly what she did: put him to sleep for the duration. It would not have been romantic, any more than with the troll, but she was unlikely to have that particular experience any other way.

  “Good for you,” Tiara said. But both Tani and Tammi looked thoughtful, perhaps appreciating the frustration that lay in that success. The basilisk could do it only with a man she didn’t mind putting down.

  They ate the food the man had brought and tried to charge them for. It was good enough, considering how little the villagers cared about their welfare.

  “He’s not even one of the conspirators,” Tammi said. “Just a foolish man who’s not much on discipline.”

  “Next stage,” Mitch said briskly. “We will dawdle here while Astrid and Tammi search out the four real conspirators and seduce them similarly. Meanwhile we will question this man when he wakes.”

  “This way,” Tammi said. “I will know them when I see them, but we’ll have to look; my talent does not give direction.”

  “But if other villagers see you, they may spread the alarm,” Ease protested.

  “That should not be a problem,” Astrid said, removing her dress again, to stand in bra and panties. Those were her other weapons: men who saw her would freak out. She gave the dress to Tiara for safekeeping.

  “Good idea,” Tammi said, removing her own outer clothing. Her figure was not as robust as Astrid’s, but she was young and healthy. “But how do we deal with the women?”

  “I am trusting that they won’t recognize us in this state,” Astrid said. “They may not have seen us at all, as we never went around the village, and it was men who hauled us to the oubliette. We’ll be just two somewhat exposed girls.”

  “We can say we lost our clothing,” Tammi agreed. “As we have, though not accidentally.”

  The two departed. Mitch checked the unconscious man. “He’s coming around,” he said. He squatted beside the man. “Quick, where is the dragon?” he asked before the man opened his eyes.

  “Other side of the castle,” the man said. “One side’s the oubliette; other side’s the dragon cave. We lower them down the same way.”

  “Thank you,” Mitch said. Then they departed before the man recovered further. He might wonder what had happened, but he would not talk about it, knowing better than to incriminate himself.

  They posted Pewter by the castle entrance to intercept and guide Astrid and Tammi when they returned, and walked around the castle. Sure enough, there was another chamber, with another hole in the floor, and a pulley apparatus with a pallet. It was a pretty simple operation, really.

  “M
y turn,” Tani said. “Lower me down.”

  “Are you sure you can do this?” Tiara asked, concerned.

  “Oh, yes. I have tamed many creatures, some of them dragons. I will have it eating out of my hand, literally.”

  Tani got on the pallet and Ease cranked her slowly down. They heard a muffled roar as the dragon winded her and charged over to gobble her up. But then there was silence.

  “Safe,” Tani called.

  “My turn,” Mitch said, a trifle grimly. He got on the pallet and Ease cranked him down. Then after two and a half moments, he called back “Safe!”

  The others followed. There was the dragon, a huge fire breather now lying with its head on the floor gazing soulfully at Tani. She had indeed tamed it.

  “Next stage,” Mitch said. “Making sure the dragon knows each of us, so it won’t eat us when we haul the conspirators here. And to explain exactly what we want done with the conspirators.”

  They performed the unusual introductions and explanation. The dragon listened passively. “Do you understand?” Tani asked it at the end.

  “Of course I understand,” the dragon said, startling them all.

  “You talk!” Tiara said.

  “No less surprising, so do you, damsel.”

  “But you look like a monster!”

  “And you look good enough to eat.”

  “Druce is an educated dragon,” Tani explained. “He doesn’t even like the taste of humans. So he herds them down into the catacombs for the cats to deal with. The cats don’t like their taste either, so they generally pass them along to the goblins. We’re not sure what happens to them then; goblins vary.”

  “But Druce will keep the four conspirators with him, cleaning out his stables,” Mitch said. “They will not be harmed unless they try to escape. That way we can draw on their expertise later, if we need to.”

  That made sense, Kandy thought. But it also avoided bloodshed, as they had agreed. Tani had made a worthwhile contribution to the effort.

  They returned to the upper chamber. Soon Astrid and Tammi appeared, dragging the body of a conspirator. Ease worked the winch and lowered the man down into the dragon’s lair.

  In due course they had processed all four conspirators. The last one, to their surprise, was a woman.

  “Now we tackle the Mayor,” Mitch said, satisfied.

  “Do we really need to?” Astrid asked. She was back in her dress, her undercover mission done. “With the conspirators gone, and the pun animus being ameliorated by Pastor and Futura, won’t the village revert to normal soon enough?”

  “You’re right,” Mitch said, surprised. “Our job here is done: we have dealt with a local crisis, and eliminated a bastion of anti-pun sentiment. That was surely the reason for this event. We can be on our way.”

  “And so can we,” Tani said. “Tammi, why don’t you and I walk on to the next village together, and get to know each other, since we almost share a name? Then in the morning I can get to know your alter ego too, without saying more than I need to about our adventure today.”

  “I’d like that,” Tammi agreed. “It will give my existence better continuity.”

  The two bid farewell to the five, and set out for the next village.

  Then Tiara removed a sequin from Astrid’s dress. “I hope we don’t land in another dungeon with a dragon.” Then she replaced it.

  Chapter 12:

  Cloud

  It was not a dungeon. It was a wide open plain with wind gusting across it. Clouds floated low in the sky, scudding rapidly here and there.

  “That’s odd,” Mitch remarked.

  “Odd?” Tiara asked.

  “Those clouds are not going all in the same direction.”

  Now Kandy saw it: the clouds were small, as clouds went, at different levels and colors, and they were scudding different ways. That was odd indeed.

  It got worse. Two clouds collided and fell apart, the red mist mixing with the green vapor to form a weird brownish fog that turned upside down and floated upward like a dead fish. It was as if it had expired and given up the ghost. It did not rise far before other clouds converged, blowing it back and forth, shaking loose vapors that they then sucked in.

  “Cannibalism!” Tiara exclaimed, shocked.

  “And to think I thought Fracto was bad,” Mitch said.

  “Fracto?” Astrid asked.

  “Fracto Cumulo Nimbus, the king of clouds. Remember him? He likes to rain on parades.”

  “But I gather he didn’t eat other clouds,” Astrid said.

  “Not that I know of. But these are obviously a different breed of cloud. How can they move opposite to the wind?”

  “And what does any of this have to do with our Quest?” Ease asked.

  “There must be some relevance,” Astrid said. “There always has been, so far.”

  “What’s happening with that yellow cloud?” Tiara asked.

  They looked. The yellow cloud was floating very low and looked lumpy, as if having some internal complication. Then it rained a shower of yellow drops.

  “I think it’s pooping,” Astrid said.

  “That’s called raining,” Tiara said. “Clouds don’t poop.”

  “Those pellets look solid to me.”

  “Maybe it’s sleet, or hail.”

  “We’ll find out soon,” Ease said. “It’s coming toward us.”

  Indeed it was, with yellow pellets dropping and bouncing on the ground. “Duck!” Mitch said.

  They ducked down, hunching against the threatened hail. It came at them fiercely, bouncing off their backs. Ease put the board up as a shield, and the pellets bounced off it with a loud rapping sound.

  Then the cloud was past. They straightened up cautiously, shedding snagged pellets.

  “That’s the funniest hail I ever saw,” Ease said. “It’s like alphabet soup.”

  “Letters!” Tiara said, picking up a handful. “Different letters of the alphabet. How can they be raining from a cloud?”

  “This is curious,” Pewter said. “There was once a virus in the OuterNet that infected machines like me, causing the letters of a printed page to drop down and pile up on the floor. It was impossible to maintain a complete document.”

  “A virus,” Mitch said. “Can they do other things than melt puns?”

  “Indubitably. There are many different viruses on the OuterNet. That’s why I learned to make a firewall, that is standing me in good stead now. It keeps the viruses out.”

  “Could a virus infect a cloud?”

  “I doubt it could mess up a regular cloud, as they are little more than floating vapor. But there is another kind of cloud that could be devastated.”

  “These are not regular clouds,” Mitch pointed out.

  “True. These just may be animations of OuterNet clouds. That would explain the special effects.”

  “And what is an OuterNet cloud?”

  “It is an electronic database of enormous capacity that stores data for third parties.”

  “Can you repeat that in plain talk?”

  “It’s like a huge storage bin for information for anyone.”

  “Thank you. So there could be letters of the alphabet in one of those?”

  “There would be data files containing records of many types. To assimilate them a person would summon them and read their words.”

  “Which are now falling out of the cloud as loose letters.”

  “Well, after a while the letters would become too heavy for the cloud floor,” Tiara said. “So they would drop to the ground.”

  Mitch nodded. “I’d say that’s the virus Pewter described.”

  “It could be like the pun virus,” Astrid said. “Or another of a host of viruses, none of them doing anyone any good.”

  “So we need to get rid of them,” Tiara said. “That must be why we’re here.”

  “And how to we do that?” Ease asked.

  “That it seems is our challenge,” Pewter said. “But we can’t even get into a cl
oud, let alone clear out a virus.”

  “I am not sure of that,” Astrid said.

  “You think we can get into a cloud?”

  “I fear we can’t avoid it. That gray one is coming for us.”

  So it was. Kandy saw that it was so close to the ground that bits of its fluff were scraping off as it scudded over irregularities on the terrain. They had nowhere to go. They just had to stand and let it smite them.

  It loomed rapidly closer, its surface roiling. Then suddenly it was upon them, and the world was gray.

  Slowly the dense fog thinned, and they were able to see again. They were standing in a cubic gray room with several doors in the walls. The doors were labeled with words like FILE, EDIT, VIEW, FORMAT, TOOLS, and HELP.

  “What is this?” Mitch asked.

  “It is a dialogue box,” Pewter said. “It offers a number of options, as represented by the doors. The user clicks on the option he wants.”

  “Clicks?”

  “Touches.”

  “And what happens when he selects an option?”

  “He normally gets a new series of options.”

  “New?”

  “Like this.” Pewter rapped on the door marked FILE. It opened, and they filed through to another chamber girt by more doors. These had the words NEW, OPEN, CLOSE, RELOAD, PROPERTIES, and PRINT.

  “What good is it?” Mitch asked.

  “Good is irrelevant. This is the Cloud.”

  “Yes, the cloud swallowed us. I meant, what good are all these options?”

  “The Cloud is a huge database, part of the OuterNet. It always offers myriad options.”

  “Is there one that will let us out of here?”

  “Somewhere there should be a QUIT door. But that will accomplish nothing. We must be here for a reason. We need to tackle that reason.”

  “Is there an option that will clarify that reason?”

  “Of course not. Net options never offer you the one you really need.”

  “One door says HELP,” Astrid said. “Could we open that one to find what we need?”

  Pewter seemed amused. “You can try.”

  Astrid went to the HELP door and opened it. It showed a chamber with doors marked MENUS, TOOLBARS, SHORTCUTS, MACROS, SPREADSHEETS, and COMMON HELP TOPICS.