Ogre, Ogre (Xanth 5) (21 page)

"Certainly!" he grumped. "Why did you interrupt me? It was just getting interesting."

"The lunatic fringe is tearing," she said worriedly. "The human villagers are in the area and will soon discover the tree."

"Well, bring me back when they do," Smash said. "I have metal men to fight inside."

"Metal men?"

"And women.
Solid brass."

"Oh," she said, uncomprehending. "Remember, you're in there to fight for your soul. I worry about you. Smash."

He guffawed. "You worry about me! You're human; I'm an ogre!"

"Yes," she agreed, but her face remained drawn. "I know what it's like in there. You put your soul in peril for me. I can't forget that. Smash."

"You don't like it in there," he pointed out. "I do. And I agreed to protect you. This is merely another aspect." He took the gourd back and applied his eye to the peephole.

The brass people were converging, exactly where they had been when he left. They seemed not even to be aware of his brief absence. The building was moving, too--but it had not moved in the interim. His Eye Queue-cursed brain found all this interesting, but
Smash
had no time for that nonsense at the moment. The brassies were almost on him.

The first one struck at him. The man was only half Smash's height, but the metal made him solid. Smash hauled him up by the brassard and threw him aside. Smash still lacked the strength to do real damage, but at least he could fight weakly. In his strength he would have hurled the brass man right through the brass wall of the building.

A female grabbed at him. Smash hooked a forefinger into her brassiere and hauled her up to his eye level. "Why are you attacking me?" he asked, curious rather than angry.

"We're only following our program," she said, kicking at him with a pretty brass foot.

"But if you fight me, I shall have to fight you," he pointed out. "And I happen to be a monster."

"Don't try to reason with me, you big hunk of flesh; I'm too brassy for that." She swung at him with a metal fist. But he was holding her at his arm's length, so she could not reach him.

Something was knocking at his knee. Smash looked down. A man was striking at him with his brass knuckles. Smash dropped the brass girl on the brass man's brass hat, and the two crashed to the floor in a shower of brass tacks. They cried out with the sound of brass winds.

Now
a half
-dozen brassies were grabbing at Smash's legs, and he lacked the strength to throw them all off at once. So he reached down to pluck them off one at a time--

He was under the tree again. He saw the problem immediately. Half a dozen brassies--no, these were men and women of the human village--were converging on the tree, bearing wicked-looking axes. The hamadryad was screaming.

Smash had no patience with this. He stood up, towering over the villagers, ogre-fashion. He roared a fine ogre roar.

The villagers turned and fled. They didn't know Smash was short of strength at the moment. Otherwise they could have attacked him and perhaps put him in difficulty, in the same way the brassies were doing in the gourd. He had replaced the illusion of the lunatic fringe with the illusion of his own formidability.

The hamadryad dropped from her tree, her hair glowing like fire, catching him about the neck. She was now a vibrant, healthy creature. "You great big wonderful brute of a creature!" she exclaimed, kissing his furry ear. Smash was oddly moved; as the centaur had noted, ogres were seldom embraced or kissed by nymphs.

He handed the hamadryad back into her tree, then settled down for another session in the gourd. None of them had anywhere to go until the King got the news and acted to protect the tree permanently, and he wanted to wrap up this gourd business.

"Wake me at need," he said, noting that the shimmer of the lunatic fringe was now almost gone. If trees had ogres to protect them instead of cute but helpless hamadryads, very few trees would be destroyed. Of course, ogres themselves were prime destroyers of trees, using them to make toothpicks and such, so he was in no position to criticize. He applied his left eye to the peephole this time, giving his right orb a rest.

He stood in an alley between buildings. What was this? The sequence was supposed to pick up exactly where it had left off. What had gone wrong?

The two buildings slid toward him, forcing him to scoot out of the way. Smash emerged into a new space--and saw his line of string. He was about to cross his own path! But he couldn't retreat; the buildings were clanging behind him.

Still, his cursed Eye Queue wouldn't let him leave well enough alone. It wanted to know why the gourd scene had slipped a notch. Was the gourd getting old, beginning to rot,
breaking
down its system? He didn't want to be trapped in a rotting gourd.

The buildings separated, starting to converge on a new spot. The alley
reopened,
the string he had just set out running down its length--and stopping.

Smash ran to the end of it. The string had been severed cleanly; it ended at the point he had re-entered the vision.

But as the buildings separated.
Smash saw another cut end of string. That must be where he had been before, just a little distance away. He had jumped no farther than he could have bounded by foot. But he hadn't jumped physically; he had left the scene,
then
returned to it slightly displaced. Why?

The buildings reversed course and closed on him again. They certainly wasted no time pondering questions! Smash ran back, his mind working. And suddenly it came to him--he had switched eyes! His left eye was a little apart from his right eye--and though that distance was small in the real world of Xanth, it was larger in the tiny world of the gourd. So there had been a shift, and a break in his string.

Well, that had freed him of the brass folk. But Smash couldn't accept that. He didn't want to escape, he wanted to win, to conquer this setting and go on to the next, knowing he had narrowed the Night Stallion's options. He wanted to do his job right, leaving no possible loophole for the loss of his soul. So he had to go back to the place he had left off, and resume there.

He followed his prior line, dragging his new line behind him. He found the square pit as the building moved off it, and he got down into it. The building swung back, and the interior light came on. Smash climbed out and ran to the end of his string.

The brass folk saw him and came charging in. Smash tied the two ends of string together, making his line complete, then stood as half a dozen people grabbed him. This was where he had left off; now it was all right.

He resumed plucking individual brass folk off. One of them was the girl in the brassiere. "You again?" he inquired, holding her up by one finger, as he had done before. It was really the best place, since she was flailing all her limbs wildly. "Do I have to drop you again?"

"Don't you dare drop me again!" she flashed, her brass surface glinting with ire. She took an angry breath--which almost dislodged her, for she had a full brassiere and his purchase on it was slight. "I have a dent and three scratches from the last time, you monster!" She pointed at her arms. "There's a scratch. There's another. But I won't show you the dent."

"Well, you did kick at me," Smash said reasonably, wondering where the dent was.

"I told you! We have to--"

Then he was back in Xanth again. Smash saw the problem immediately; a cockatrice was approaching the tree. The baby basilisk had evidently been recently hatched and was wandering aimlessly--but remained deadly dangerous.

"Put me down, you lunk!"

Startled,
Smash
looked at the source of the voice. He was still holding the brass girl, dangling by her brassiere hooked on his finger. She had been brought out of the gourd with him!

Hastily
Smash
set her down, carefully so she would not dent. He had a more immediate matter to attend to. How could he get rid of the cockatrice?

"Oh, look," the brass girl said. "What a cute chick!" She stepped over to the terrible infant, reaching down.

"Don't touch it!" the Siren cried. "Don't even look at it!"

Too late.
The brass girl picked up the baby monster. "Oh, aren't you a sweet one," she cooed, turning it in her hand so she could look it in the snoot.

"No!" several voices cried.

Again they were too late. The brass girl stared deeply into the monster's baleful eyes. "Oh, I wish I could keep you for my very own pet, along with my other pets," she said, touching her pert nose to its hideous schnozzle. "I don't have anything like you in my collection."

The chick hissed and bit--but its tiny teeth were ineffective against the brass. "Oh, how nice," the girl said. "You like me, don't you!"

Apparently the little monster's powers were harmless against the metal girl. She was already harder than stone.

"Uh, miss--" the Siren said.

"I'm called Biyght," the brass girl said.
"Of Building Four, in the City of
Brass.
Who are you?"

"I'm called the Siren," the Siren said. "Biythe, we would appreciate it if--"

"Biyght," the girl corrected her brassily.

"Sorry. I misheard.
Biyght.
If you would--"

"But I think I like Biythe better. This place is so much softer than I'm used to. So you can use that, Sirn."

"Siren.
Two syllables."

"That's all right. I prefer one syllable, Sirn."

"You can change names at will?" John asked incredulously.

"Of course.
All brassies can. Can't you?"

"No," the fairy said enviously.

"Biythe, that animal--" the Siren broke in. "It's deadly to us. So if you would--"

Smash had been looking around to see if there were any other dangers. At this point his eye fell on the gourd--and even from a distance his consciousness was drawn into the peephole, and he was back among the brassies. This time he stood within the building, but apart from the crowd, and his string had been interrupted again. He was using his right eye.

The brass folk spied him and charged. This was getting pointless. "Wait!" he bellowed.

They paused, taken aback. "Why?" one inquired. "Because I accidentally took one of your
number
out of the gourd, and if anything happens to me, she'll be forever stranded there."

They were appalled, almost galvanized. "That would be a fate worse than death!" one cried. "That would be--" He paused, balking at the awful concept.

"That would be--life," another brass man whispered. There was a sudden hush of dread.

"Yes," Smash agreed cruelly. "So I have to fetch her back. And I will. But you'll have to help me."

"Anything," the man
said,
his brass face tarnishing. "Tell me how to get out of here, on my own."

"That's easy. Take the ship."

"The ship?
But there's no water here!" Several brassies smiled metallically. "It's not that kind of ship. It's the Luna-fringe-shuttle. You catch it at the Luna triptych building."

"Show me to it," Smash said.

They showed him to a brass door that opened to the outside. "You can't miss it," they assured him. "It's the biggest block in the city."

Smash thanked them and stepped out. The buildings were still moving, but now he had the experience and confidence to travel by their retreating sides, avoiding collisions. He glanced back at the building he had left and saw the number 4 inscribed on the side, but there was no sign of the door he had exited by. Apparently it was a one-way door that didn't exist from this side.

Soon he spied a building twice the size of the others. That had to be the one. He ducked into an anchor hole as the building approached, and in a moment was inside.

There was the fringe-shuttle, like a monstrous arrowhead standing on its tail. It had a porthole in the side big enough to admit him, so he climbed in.

He found himself in a tight cockpit that the cock seemed to have vacated. There was only one place to sit comfortably, a kind of padded chair before a panel full of dinguses. So he sat there, knowing he could bash the dinguses out of the way if they bothered him. There was another brass button on the panel, and he punched it with his thumb.

The porthole clanged closed. A wheel spun itself about. Air hissed. Straps rose up from the chair and wrapped themselves around his body. A magic mirror lit up before his face. An alarm klaxon sounded. The ship shuddered, then launched upward like a shot from a catapult, punching through the roof.

In moments the mirror showed clouds falling away ahead. Then the moon came into view, growing larger and brighter each moment. It was now a half-circle. Of course--that was why the lunatic fringe no longer shrouded the fireoak tree--not enough
moon
left to sustain it. But the half that remained seemed solid enough, except for the round holes in it. Of course, cheese did have holes; that was its nature.

Now it occurred to him that the brassies might have misconstrued his request. They had shown him the way out of the City of
Brass--but not out of the gourd. Well, nothing to do now but carry this through. Maybe the ship could get him back to the fireoak tree.

He didn't really want to go to the moon, though the view of all that fresh cheese made him hungry. After all, it had been at least an hour since he had eaten that bushel of fruit. So he checked the panel before him and found a couple of projecting brass sticks. He grabbed them, wiggling them about.

The moon veered out of the mirror-picture, and Smash was flung about in his chair as if tossed by a storm. Fortunately, the straps held him pretty much in place. He let go of the sticks--and after a moment the moon swung back into view. Evidently he had messed up the ship's program. His Eye Queue curse caused him to ponder this, and he concluded that the sticks controlled the ship. When they were not in use, the ship sailed where it wanted, which was evidently a hole in the cheese of the moon. Maybe this Luna shuttle was the mechanism by which the moon's cheese was brought to Xanth, though he wasn't sure what use metal people would have for cheese.