by neetha Napew
"But what do you use then to open a passage from another dimension?"
Clothahump edged conspiratorially close. "I'm not supposed to give away any
Society secrets, you understand, but I don't think you'd even remember. You need
some germanium crystals, a pinch of molybdenum, a teaspoon of californium... and
working with those short-lived superheavies is a royal pain, I'll tell you. Some
regular radioactives and one or two transuranics, the acquisition of which is a
task in itself."
"How can you locate...?"
"That's other formulae. There are other ingredients, which I definitely can't
mention to a noninitiate. You put the whole concatenation into the largest
cauldron you've got, stir well, dance three times moonwise around the nearest
deposit of nickel-zinc and... but enough secrets, lad."
"Funny sort of magic. Almost sounds like real science."
Clothahump looked disappointed in him. "Didn't I already explain that to you?
Magic's pretty much the same no matter what world or dimension you exist in.
Only the incantations and the formulae are different."
"You said that a rabbit would resist giving up a foot. Are rabbits intelligent
also?"
"Lad, lad." Clothahump settled tiredly into the couch, which creaked beneath
him. "All the warm-blooded are intelligent. That is as it should be. Has been as
far back as history goes. All except the four-foot herbivores: cattle, horses,
antelopes, and the like." He shook his head sadly. "Poor creatures never
developed useful hands from those hooves, and the development of intelligenee is
concurrent with digital dexterity.
"The rest have it, though. Along with the birds. None of the reptiles save us
turtles, for some reason. And the inhabitants of Gossameringue and the
Greendowns, of course. The less spoken about them, the better." He studied
Jon-Tom.
"Now since we can't send you home, lad, what are we going to do with you...?"
III
Clothahump considered several moments longer. "We can't just abandon you in a
strange world, I suppose. I do feel somewhat responsible. You'll need some money
and a guide to explain things to you. You, otter, Mudge!"
The otter was intent on a huge tome Pog was avidly displaying. "Both of you get
away from the sex incantations. You wouldn't have the patience to invoke the
proper spirits anyhow. Serve you both right if I let you make off with a formula
or two and you messed it up right clever and turned yourselves neuter."
Mudge shut the book while Pog busied himself dusting second-story windows.
"What d'you want o' me, your wizardness?" an unhappy Mudge asked worriedly,
cursing himself for becoming involved.
"That deferential tone doesn't fool me, Mudge." Clothahump eyed him warningly.
"I know your opinion of me. No matter, though." Turning back to Jon-Tom he
examined the young man's attire: the poorly engraved leather belt, the scuffed
sandals, the T-shirt with the picture of a hirsute human wielding a smoking
instrument, the faded blue jeans.
"Obviously you can't go tramping around Lynchbany Towne or anywhere else looking
like that. Someone is likely to challenge you. It could be dangerous."
"Aye. They might die alaughin'," suggested Mudge.
"We can do without your miserable witticisms, offspring of a spastic muskrat.
What is amusing to you is a serious matter to this boy."
"Begging your pardon, sir," Jon-Tom put in firmly, "but I'm twenty-four. Hardly
a boy."
"I'm two hundred and thirty-six, lad. It's all relative. Now, we must do
something about those clothes. And a guide." He stared meaningfully at Mudge.
"Now wait a minim, guv'nor. It were your bloomin' portal 'e stumbled through. I
can't 'elp it if you pinched the wrong chap."
"Nevertheless, you are familiar with him. You will therefore assume charge of
him and see that he comes to no harm until such time as I can make other
arrangements for him."
Mudge jerked a furry thumb at the watching youth. "Not that I don't feel sorry
for 'im, your wizardship. I'd feel the same way toward any 'alf mad creature...
let alone a poor, furless human. But t' make me responsible for seein' after
'im, sor? I'm a 'unter by trade, not a bloody fairy godmother."
"You're a roustabout by trade, and a drunkard and lecher by avocation,"
countered Clothahump with considerable certitude. "You're far from the ideal
guardian for the lad, but I know of no scholars to substitute, feeble
intellectual community that Lynchbany is. So... you're elected."
"And if I refuse?"
Clothahump rolled up nonexistent sleeves. "I'll turn you into a human. I'll
shrink your whiskers and whiten your nose, I'll thin your legs and squash your
face. Your fur will fall out and you'll run around the rest of your life with
bare flesh showing."
Poor Mudge appeared genuinely frightened, his bravado completely gone. "No, no,
your sorcererness! If it's destined I take the lad in care, I ain't the one t'
challenge destiny."
"A wise and prosaic decision." Clothahump settled down. "I do not like to
threaten. Now that the matter of a guide is settled, the need of money remains."
"That's so." Mudge brightened. "Can't send an innocent stranger out into a cruel
world penniless as well as ignorant."
"Mind you, Mudge, what I give the lad is not to be squandered in wining and
wenching."
"Oh, no, no, no, sor. I'll see the lad properly dressed and put up at a
comfortable inn in Lynchbany that accepts humans."
Jon-Tom sounded excited and pleased. "There are people like me in this town,
then?"
Mudge eyed him narrowly. "Of course there are people in Lynchbany Towne, mate.
There are also a few humans. None your size, though."
Clothahump was rummaging through a stack of scrolls. "Now then, where is that
incantation for gold?"
" 'Ere, guv'nor," said Mudge brightly. "Let me 'elp you look."
The wizard nudged him aside. "I can manage by myself." He squinted at the mound
of paper.
"Geese... gibbering... gifts... gneechees... gold, there we are."
Potions and powders were once more brought into use, placed in a shallow pan
instead of a bowl. They were heaped atop a single gold coin that Clothahump had
removed from a drawer in his plastron. He noticed Mudge avidly following the
procedure.
"Forget it, otter. You'd never get the inflection right. And this coin is old
and special. If I could make gold all the time, I wouldn't need to charge for my
services. This is a special occasion, though. Think what would happen if just
any animal could wander about making gold."
"It would ruin your monetary system," said Jon-Tom.
"Bless my shell, lad, that's so. You have some learning after all."
"Economics are more in my line."
The wizard waved the wand over the pan.
"Postulate, postulate, postulate.
Heavy metal integrate.
Emulate a goldecule,
Pile it high, shape it round,
I call you from the ground.
Metal weary, metal sound, formulate thy wondrous round!"
There was a flash, a brief smell of ozone. The powders vanished from the pan
. In
their place was a pile of shining coins.
"Now, that's a right proper trick," Mudge whispered to Jon-Tom, "that I'd give a
lot to know."
"Come help yourself, lad." Clothahump wiped a hand across his forehead. "That's
a short spell, but a rough one."
Jon-Tom scooped up a handful of coins. He was about to slip them into a pocket
when their unusual lightness struck him. He juggled them experimentally.
"They seem awfully light to be gold, sir. Meaning no disrespect, but..."
Mudge reached out, grabbed a coin. "Light's not the word, mate. It looks like
gold, but 'tis not."
A frowning Clothahump chose a golden disk. "Um. Seems to be a fine edge running
the circumference of the coin."
"On these also, sir." Jon-Tom picked at the edge. A thick gold foil peeled away,
to reveal a darker material underneath. High above, Pog was swimming air circles
and cackling hysterically.
"I don't understand." Clothahump finished peeling the foil from his own
specimen. He recognized it at the same time as Jon-Tom took an experimental
bite.
"Chocolate. Not bad chocolate, either."
Clothahump looked downcast. "Damn. I must have mixed my breakfast formula with
the transmuter."
"Well," said the starving youth as he peeled another, "you may make poor gold,
sir, but you make very good chocolate."
"Some wizard!" Pog shouted from a sheltered window recess. "Gets chocolate
instead of gold! Did I mention da time he tried ta conjure a water nymph? Had
his room all laid out like a beaver's lair, he did. Incense and perfume and
mirrors. Got his water nymph all right. Only it was a Cugluch dragonfly nymph
dat nearly tore his arm off before..."
Clothahump jabbed a finger in Pog's direction. A tiny bolt of lightning shot
from it, searing the wood where the bat had been only seconds before.
"His aim's always been lousy," taunted the bat.
Another bolt missed the famulus by a greater margin than the first, shattered a
row of glass containers on a high shelf. They fell crashing, tinkling to the
wood-chip floor as the bat dodged and skittered clear of the fragments.
Clothahump turned away, fiddling with his glasses. "Got to conjure some new
lenses," he grumbled. Reaching into his lower plastron, he drew out a handful of
small silvery coins, and handed them to Jon-Tom. "Here you are, lad."
"Sir... wouldn't it have been simpler to give me these in the first place?"
"I like to keep in practice. One of these days I'll get that gold spell down
pat."
"Why not make the lad a new set of clothes?" asked Mudge.
Clothahump turned from trying to refocus a finger on the jeering famulus and
glanced angrily at the otter. "I'm a wizard, not a tailor. Mundane details such
as that I leave to your care. And remember: no care, no fur."
"Relax, guv'nor. Let's go, Jon-Tom. Tis a long walk if we're to make much
distance before dark."
They left Clothahump blasting jars and vials, pictures and shelving in vain
attempts to incinerate his insulting assistant.
"Interesting character, your sorcerer," said Jon-Tom conversationally as they
turned down a well-trod path into the woods.
"Not my sorcerer, mate." A brightly feathered lizard pecked at some bananalike
fruit dangling from a nearby tree. " 'Ave another chocolate coin?"
"No thanks."
"Speakin* o' coins, that little sack o' silver he gave you might as well be
turned over to me for safe keepin', since you're under me protection."
"That's all right." Jon-Tom patted the pocket in which the coins reposed. "It's
safe enough with me, I think. Besides, my pockets are a lot higher than yours.
Harder to pick."
Instead of being insulted, the otter laughed uproariously. He clapped a furry
paw on Jon-Tom's lower back. "Maybe you're less the fool than you seem, mate.
Frost me if I don't think we'll make a decent animal out o' you yet!"
They waded a brook hauntingly like the one that ran through the botanical
gardens back on campus. Jon-Tom fought to keep his mind from melancholy
reminiscence. "Aren't you the least bit curious about this great crisis
Clothahump was referring to?" he asked.
"Bosh, that's probably just a figment o' 'is sorceral imagination. I've heard
tell plenty about what such chaps drink and smoke when they feels the mood. They
calls it wizardly speculatin'. Me, I calls it gettin' well stoked. Besides, why
dwell on crises real or imagined when one can 'ave so much fun from day t' day?"
"You should learn to study the thread of history."
Mudge shook his head. "You talk like that in Lynchbany and you will 'ave
trouble, mate. Thread o' 'Istory now, is it? Sure you won't trust me with that
silver?" Jon-Tom simply smiled. "Ah well, then."
Any last lingering thoughts that it might all still be a nightmare from which
he'd soon awake were forever dispelled when they'd come within a mile of
Lynchbany, following several days' march. Jon-Tom couldn't see it yet. It lay
over another rise and beyond a dense grove of pines. But he could clearly smell
it. The aroma of hundreds of animal bodies basking in the warmth of mid-morning
could not be mistaken.
"Something wrong, mate?" Mudge stretched away the last of his previous night's
rest. "You look a touch bilious."
"That odor..."
"We're near Lynchbany, like I promised."
"You mean that stench is normal?"
Mudge's black nose frisked the air. "No... I'd call 'er a mite weak today. Wait
until noontime, when the sun's at its 'ighest. Then it'll be normal."
"You have great wizards like Clothahump. Haven't any of them discovered the
formula for deodorant?"
Mudge looked confused. "What's that, mate? Another o' your incomprehensible
otherworldly devices?"
"It keeps you from smelling offensive," said Jon-Tom with becoming dignity.
"Now you do 'ave some queer notions in the other worlds. How are you t' know
your enemies if you can't smell 'em? And no friend can smell offensive. That be
a contradiction, do it not? If 'e was offensive, 'e wouldn't be a friend. O'
course you 'umans," and he sniffed scornfully. " 'ave always been pretty
scent-poor. I suppose you'd think it good if people 'ad no scent a'tall?"
"It wouldn't be such a bad idea."
"Well, don't go propoundin' your bizarre religious beliefs in Lynchbany,
guv'nor, or even with me t' defend you you won't last out the day."
They continued along the path. This near to town it showed the prints of many
feet.
"No scent," Mudge was muttering to himself. "No more sweet perfumes o' friends
and ladies t' enjoy. Cor, I'd rather be blind than unable t' smell, mate. What
senses do they use in your world, anyway?"
"The usual ones. Sight, hearing, touch, taste... and smell."
"And you'd wish away a fifth o' all your perception o' the universe for some
crazed theological theory?"
"It has nothing to do with theology," Jon-Tom countered, beginning to wonder if
his views on the matter weren't sounding silly even to himself. "It's a question
of etiquette."
"Piss on your etiquette. No greetin' smells." The otter sounded t
horoughly
disgusted. "I don't think I'd care t' visit long in your world, Jon-Tom. But
we're almost there. Mind you keep control o' your expressions." He still
couldn't grasp the notion that anyone could find the odor of another friendly
creature offensive.
"You 'old your nose to someone and they'll likely spill your guts for you."
Jon-Tom nodded reluctantly. Take a few deep breaths, he told himself. He'd heard
that somewhere. Just take a few deep breaths and you'll soon be used to it.
They topped the little hill and were suddenly gazing across tree-tops at the
town. At the same time the full ripeness of it struck him. The thick musk was
like a barnyard sweltering in a swamp. He was hard pressed not to heave the
contents of his stomach out the wrong orifice.
" 'Ere now, don't you go be sick all over me!" Mudge took a few hasty steps
backward. "Brace up, lad. You'll soon be enjoyin' it!"
They started down the hill, the otter trotting easily, Jon-Tom staggering and
trying to keep his face blank. Shortly they encountered a sight which
simultaneously shoved all thought of vomiting aside while reminding him this was
a dangerous, barely civilized world he'd been dragged into.
It was a body similar to but different from Mudge's. It had its paws tied behind
its back and its legs strapped together. The head hung at an angle signifying a
neatly snapped neck. It was quite naked. Odd how quickly the idea of clothing on
an animal grew in one's mind, Jon-Tom thought.
Some kind of liquid resin or plastic completely encased the body. The eyes were
mercifully closed and the expression not pleasant to look upon. A sign lettered
in strange script was mounted on a post driven into the ground beneath the
dangling, preserved corpse. He turned questioningly to Mudge.
"That's the founder o' the town," came the reply.
Jon-Tom's eyes clung to the grotesque monument as they strolled around it. "Do
they always hang the founders of towns around here?"
"Not usually. Only under special circumstances. That's the corpse o' old Tilo
Bany. Ought t' be gettin' on a couple 'undred years old now."
"That body's been hanging there like that for hundreds of years?"
"Oh, 'e's well preserved, 'e is. Local wizard embalmed 'im nice and proper."
"That's barbaric."
"Want to hear the details?" asked Mudge. Jon-Tom nodded.
"As it goes, old Tilo there, 'e's a ferret you see--and they come o' no good