Pandora Park

by Piers Anthony

  “No,” Wizard said.

  “It must be complicated.”

  “Yes.”

  “Something forbids you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Pandora Park!” Mark explained.

  “The park has rules about what you can and can’t do?” Kelsie asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And the girl can’t help the girl, or the boy the boy?”

  “Yes.”

  This continued curious. It seemed more natural for girls to relate to girls. What could account for such a restriction? For the moment Kelsie was stumped for the right question.

  “What do they want with us?” Mark asked.

  What, indeed! A tingle of nervousness hovered somewhere along Kelsie’s spine. “You want something from us.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you can’t tell us what.”

  “Yes, we can’t.”

  “It must be something really bad,” Mark said.

  “No,” Witch answered.

  “Something good?” Kelsie asked.

  There was no answer.

  Kelsie exchanged another glance with Mark. Something neither good nor bad? She didn’t trust this.

  “There must be something we can do, that they can’t,” Mark said.

  “Yes,” Witch answered.

  He looked at her, surprised. “You mean I had a yes or no question?”

  “Yes. A yes-no comment, anyway.”

  “What can’t you do?” he asked.

  Again there was no answer.

  “The park limits you,” Kelsie said.

  “Yes,” Wizard answered.

  “And it says Witch can’t talk to me, just to Mark.”

  “Yes.”

  Kelsie got an idea. “So you made a deal with Witch! You’re helping her, and she’s helping you. That’s how you’re getting around it.”

  “Yes!” the two said together.

  “You want us to take your places!” Mark exclaimed.

  “Yes!”

  “But we’re already here in the park,” Kelsie said. And this time she received no answer.

  “What are they doing here?” Mark asked.

  There was a lead, if only she could phrase it correctly. “Are you trapped here?” Kelsie asked.

  Wizard struggled. “Not exactly. Yes and no.”

  “You can’t leave unless we take your places?”

  “Yes. But you have to want to.”

  “How did you come here?” Mark asked. But of course they couldn’t answer that.

  Still, it gave Kelsie another notion. “You took the places of two other children!”

  “Yes.”

  “And they had taken the places of others before them?”

  “Yes.”

  “How far back does that go?” Mark asked, surprised.

  Kelsie knew she would have to track this down step by step. “The number of children, or couples, who have been here—is it three sets?”

  “No.”

  “Four?”

  “No.”

  “Ten or more?”

  “Yes.”

  “How many years?” Mark asked.

  “More than ten years?” Kelsie asked.

  “Yes.”

  “More than a hundred years?”

  “Yes. We think.”

  Ah. “Since around the year 1900, approximately?”

  “Yes, we think.”

  “But there wasn’t anything, way back then,” Mark said. “No cell phones, no TV, no airplanes. Did they even have cars?”

  “Yes, some,” Witch answered him.

  “The industrial revolution!” Mark exclaimed.

  “Yes.”

  He hadn’t even been asking a question, but he had gotten an answer. It was like his talent: he was not finding exactly what he sought, but he was getting there.

  “But Pandora Park is magic,” Kelsie said.

  Wizard hesitated. “Not exactly.”

  Now this was interesting. What could he mean?

  “I read somewhere that advanced science can’t be told from magic,” Mark said. “Three-D images are just like illusion images. A picture phone is like a magic mirror. If they could stop gravity, it would be like a flying carpet.”

  “Yes,” Witch agreed.

  Kelsie had never heard that, but it made sense. Mark had scored again. “So the park is really advanced science?”

  “Yes,” Wizard said. “It does have antigravity, and a whole lot more.”

  Kelsie concentrated. “So Pandora Park was set up when the industrial revolution came. Humans couldn’t have done it; we weren’t advanced enough.”

  “Yes.”

  “But who else?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “Aliens!” Mark said.

  “We don’t know,” Witch said. “It’s just here. We have never seen anyone except the children we replaced, and the visitors after us.”

  “Visitors?” Kelsie asked. “Before us? Other children?”

  “Yes and yes,” Witch agreed. “Two at a time, always, a boy and a girl. I can talk only with the boy, and Wizard only with the girl. Because the girl might replace me, and the boy would replace him. We don’t know why that’s a rule, but we can’t break it.”

  “Beats me,” Mark said. “Why doesn’t the park make it easy for you to find kids to take your place? Obviously it wants two children here to enjoy it.”

  But Kelsie was able to answer that. “It wants smart, open-minded children; those are the only kind it lets in. And it must be still testing them, to see how well they cooperate or tackle a challenge. So Wizard can’t get his replacement without cooperating with Witch.”

  “That must be it,” Wizard said. “But we’re cooperating to get away from the park, so we won’t matter anyway. It’s the two of you it should be testing.”

  “It surely is,” Kelsie agreed. “But in a way we haven’t yet understood.”

  “But if it’s aliens, why should they care about what we’re like?” Mark asked. “Just so long as we run the park okay.”

  He had come up with another good question. “There must be more to this than we know,” Kelsie said. “Can you tell us what your lives here are like, now that we have learned that you would like us to take over?”

  “This is Heaven,” Wizard said. “We can do anything except leave. We can eat anything and never get full, play all day and night and never get tired, and we never get older. We can do any kind of magic, like flying or conjuring or changing forms. Do you want to see our natural forms?”

  “You can really be any form you want, any time?” Kelsie asked.

  The dragon shrugged, which was a good trick. “Sure.”

  “And do any kind of magic, including what we do?” Mark asked.

  “Yes,” Witch answered. “Of course we each have our own ways of invoking it. I’m better at some things, and Wizard at others. It’s the same for the two of you, as you must have noticed.” She floated a yard off the ground, did a slow somersault in the air, and lay down as if on an invisible sofa. She tapped her front hooves together, and bright sparks flew out. She blew, and a dark purple cloud formed, swirled, and shaped itself into a small unicorn replica. “Anything. What you have is only a sample. You can have it all, if you stay here. All you have to do is discover it, bit by bit, as you have been doing.”

  So much magic! Kelsie found that tempting. But there was a lot more she needed to know about this. “Please do take your natural forms.”

  Suddenly the dragon and unicorn were gone, and in their places stood a tousle-haired boy of about eleven and a pig-tailed girl of about ten. Wizard and Witch, as they called themselves. They looked absolutely ordinary, in shorts and a school dress. Kelsie thought they might be European, but didn’t want to ask lest it be a private matter.

  “Seems like fun to me,” Mark said. “Why do you want to leave? Can you give a straight answer, or do we have to play more twenty questions?”

  “We can answer, now that we have gotten
this far,” Witch said. “We thought we’d never get tired of this park; that’s why we signed up. We thought the children we replaced were somehow defective, because a real child should never tire of candyland, amusement park, and magic all rolled into one. But they had been through it, and knew what we have since learned: fun isn’t fun forever. After a while you get enough of it, and it gets dull. Then you want to move on—and you can’t.”

  “Move on?” Mark asked. Kelsie wondered too. Why weren’t they trying to make the park as inviting as possible, so as to persuade their replacements?

  “We never get older, as Wizard said. That’s more like a curse than a blessing. I want to know what it’s like to become a woman, to fall in love, suffer heartbreak, get married, and maybe have children of my own. That will never happen here. I’ll never have a real life here.”

  Kelsie hadn’t thought of it that way before. She liked being a child, but she didn’t want to stay that way forever. “And you can’t just walk out of the park, and lose the magic?”

  “We can and we can’t,” Wizard said. “We tried it once, and came back.”

  “I don’t understand. Why can’t you leave, and why do you need us to take your places?”

  “Two reasons,” Wizard said. “I’ll give one. When we left, there was a tug at our souls. We hated leaving the park. It was as if we were deserting our best friend, and it was dying. We just couldn’t stay away. That’s when we knew that there had to be replacements. The park needs children to live in it and use it. We’re really caretakers, keeping it alive in its way. We can’t leave until we know there’re two more children to keep it happy. That’s why the children before us didn’t leave.”

  “But you left your families,” Kelsie said. “Didn’t that hurt?”

  Wizard looked at Witch. “It’s not quite the same. We never truly appreciated our families before we came here. We thought they were dull and demanding, and that we were mostly in their way.”

  Now Kelsie looked at Mark. This was eerily similar to the way they felt, though they really knew better. “It wasn’t true.”

  “Yes. But here’s the difference: the other children took our places. They assumed our lives. So we knew our families didn’t miss us. We could stay here and really be doing them a favor.”

  “A favor!” Mark exclaimed. “Running away from home?”

  “Now it’s my turn,” Witch said grimly. “We stayed here two years before we got really fed up with, well, childishness. We had every kind of amusement to distract us, but we spent much of our time arguing with each other. We finally dared each other to leave, and we did leave, each going to our own homes. That was awful.”

  “Awful?” Mark asked. “Your folks should have been glad to see you.”

  “No they weren’t. First you have to understand something. When we visited Pandora Park, time stood still, inside and out, as you must have noticed. That was weird but sort of fun.”

  Both Mark and Kelsie nodded.

  “But when we agreed to take over, to become the park’s residents, and the other children left, time resumed. Time freezes for visitors, so as to give them a chance to find out what’s it’s all about without changing anything. Then it resumes, and the same time passes inside and outside. We don’t know how the park manages that, but it does. The park has its own rules and ways, and we can’t change them. We can only change the way we invoke the magic, not the magic itself. So when we went out, it was two years later.”

  “Still, your folks wouldn’t have forgotten you,” Mark said. “They must have been crazy with worry, thinking you’d been kidnapped or something.”

  “No. Because when the other children took over our lives, they came to look and act exactly like us. No one knew the difference—not even our families. Only they were better. They understood what a waste it is to be forever childish, and were very serious about making the very best of their lives—our lives—they could. They were perfect, never quarreling, always doing their homework and their chores, always being nice and thoughtful. They really had adult pers—per—”

  “Perspectives,” Kelsie said. “Or more properly, adult attitudes. The mature way of looking at things.”

  Witch looked at Wizard. “Tell her thank you.”

  “She thanks you,” Wizard said. “She can’t do it directly. Park rules. She can only talk directly to Mark.”

  “Tell her she’s welcome,” Kelsie said with a smile.

  “Language,” Mark said. “Unless they were from the same parts of the world you are, they would have not been able to speak your language outside. What about that?”

  “There does seem to be some magic outside the park,” Witch said. “They were not from our areas, but when they went there, they spoke our languages. They also recognized our few friends, and treated them well. They were very good at being us. Better than we had been, really.”

  “They must have been changed to fit,” Mark said. “So they were magically given your appearance, language, and memories. That’s scary.”

  “It remains scary,” Witch agreed, smiling at him.

  Kelsie found it unsettling, the way the girl oriented on Mark. But she gave no sign.

  “We saw that,” Wizard continued, “and knew that those perfect children were making our families happy in a way we never had. Or could. We were normal children. We fussed and skipped out on chores and were thoughtless. We might try to be better, but we knew it just wasn’t in us to be perfect. Also, if we came back, the other children would still be there—two years older. That would double the burden on our families. There would be complicated things to explain. It just wouldn’t work.”

  Kelsie nodded. “Now I think I see it. Your families were happy with the children they thought were you. If you joined them, you would just mess things up.”

  “Yes!” Witch said. “Tell, her, Wiz.”

  “I heard,” Kelsie said. “I understand. I think Mark does too.”

  “I sure do,” Mark agreed. “You loved your families. That’s why you couldn’t go back to them, because that would hurt them.”

  “Exactly. So we returned to the park. It needed us, and our families didn’t. We cried. Well, I did.”

  “She’s being kind,” Wizard said. “I did too. It was an awful discovery.”

  “That’s when we knew that the only way we could leave here was to find replacements, and take over their lives,” Witch said. “The same way the children we replaced took over our lives outside. So both the park and the families would be happy.”

  Both Kelsie and Mark froze with horror. “Take over our lives?” Mark said numbly.

  “Your families would not suffer,” Witch said. “We were children when we came, and still children two years later. But now it is ten years later, and we have come to truly appreciate what it means to have normal lives. We would be perfect children, and never give them cause for grief. Believe me; we know how precious normal life is, now.”

  “But you wouldn’t be us,” Mark protested.

  Witch met his gaze evenly. “Would you go home and always take out the garbage, always wash behind your ears, never get behind on school assignments, never keep bad company, welcome visits to the doctor, and never say anything untrue? I would. Believe me. I remain a child only in body and brain; my soul longs for responsibility. I want to grow up. It’s the same for Wizard.”

  Mark looked uncomfortable. Witch had set an impossible standard.

  “And which do you really think your folks would prefer,” she continued grimly. “You—or a “Mark” acting like you, only made perfect?”

  Mark remained stunned. Kelsie understood; she was stunned herself. Their families would be better off with such perfect children.

  “Now you know,” Witch continued. “We can’t take your places without your agreement. It has to be a fair exchange with everything clearly understood. That’s why we’re telling you the truth; it’s not just the handshakes. The park won’t let us lie to you.”

  There was a brief silenc
e. “We have to think about this,” Kelsie said. The very idea of letting others take their places in their families bothered her, yet she could see that it was a fair deal. What would be best for their families?

  “Take all the time you want,” Wizard said. “We have made our case.” Then he and Witch vanished.

  “Let’s get somewhere private,” Mark said tightly.

  She knew what he meant. They could not trust any part of Pandora Park. The two other children had demonstrated enough magic so that they surely had the power to be invisible, or otherwise spy on anything she and Mark might say. “My place or yours?”

  “Yours is closer.”

  They found their scooter and skates, and moved rapidly to her entrance. Then they stepped outside, and just beyond the statue of Pandora. Now they could talk.

  Kelsie was really confused. She had no idea what was best. She hoped Mark was better prepared.

  Chapter 7:

  Challenge

  Marked hated to seem unreasonable, but one thing was clear to him. “I can’t do it.”

  Kelsie gazed blankly at him.

  Oops, he had forgotten: they couldn’t talk outside, because he spoke English and she spoke Chinese. They would have to risk the fringe.

  He guided her back to the end of the path and repeated his statement.

  Kelsie looked oddly relieved. “Can’t make their deal?”

  “Right. I know I’m not the perfect child, but letting a fake take over for me—I just can’t do it, no matter how good he is.”

  She smiled and kissed him. “Neither can I.”

  Mark was half surprised to discover that he didn’t mind her kiss at all. It was her way of showing perfect understanding and acceptance. He was relieved to have her agreement; he had feared she would argue.

  Then he realized that he wasn’t floating. “Say—you kissed me, but—”

  “I stopped it,” she said. “Just to be sure I can. I don’t have to do magic.”

  “Oh. Okay.” He was glad to know it. “So what now?”

  “I think this is beyond us to decide. We need adult understanding.”

  “How can we get that? We’re just kids.”

  “My parents.”

  “But they—” He stalled.

  “They would be the hosts for the new girl. They should have a say in the matter, shouldn’t they?”