Knot Gneiss (28 page)

“Let’s rest here,” Jumper said. “We can discuss our situation in the morning.”

Wenda was happy to agree.

In the morning, refreshed, they assembled for a discussion. “You surely have relevant further thoughts, Ida,” Hilarion said.

“I do,” Ida said. “They are not as comfortable as our present lodging. It occurs to me that we may have blundered onto a reserved boulevard similar to the trollway, but with different proprietors. Those squids were like nothing seen on Xanth. I fear we don’t belong here.”

“This parallels my own concern,” Hilarion said. “We discovered a very special boat that the goblins seem not to know of. Why should it have been there, and to whom does it belong? I fear we have unknowingly absconded with some other party’s property.”

“If there were a tourist boulevard for alien creatures,” Ida said, “it might resemble this. In which case the island in the hate lake would be a tourist stop, where they could go safely to land and see the local sights. I conjecture that they—being not of this world—would, in the manner of Angela Angel, be insubstantial in Xanth, so could walk about freely without being harassed by the goblins or other local creatures. The boat would be an interim stage, invisible but with enough substance so that it could float on physical water.”

“Exactly,” Hilarion agreed. “They floated their boat across the lake, then left it as they went to explore the goblin mound, never thinking that anyone else would be aware of it, let alone take it. I daresay there are sights of interest there as the goblins go about their normal business.”

“Working, eating, torturing prisoners,” Meryl said with a grimace.

“We do not know the tastes of the aliens,” Hilarion said, “but it seems not beyond the bounds of possibility that they might enjoy snooping on locals summoning storks.”

“That’s disgusting!” Angela said.

Meryl smiled indulgently. “Normal folk have secret desires that are beneath the notice of angels. They like not only to summon storks, but to watch others doing so, especially when the others do not know they are being observed. You have now had some experience with mortal desire. Can you say you would not look if you could secretly see two other people signaling the stork?”

Angela blushed furiously. That seemed to be answer enough.

“So perhaps we understand the motive of the alien tourists,” Ida said. “There remain questions. Why didn’t the dissuasion spell affect us as it did the goblins? That is, why limit it to the goblins? Creatures with the power to make such a highway should readily have been able to make it apply to all creatures. We should have avoided both the boat and the island.”

“We’re not goblins,” Jumper said. “The spell must not be on the island or boat, because that would drive away the tourists too. It must be limited to the goblins, the only menace in the area, as a practical matter. The goblins would dissuade all other creatures. If the aversion spell had wider compass, the tourists would not be able to find their way back to the boulevard, once they left it.”

“That does seem to make sense,” Hilarion said.

“And by sheer chance we got deposited right there,” Jumper said. “If you believe in chance.”

Ida smiled. “The Muse of History once told me of a rule in telling a story: You can use chance to put a person into trouble, but not to get him out of it. So chance put us into trouble. We found our own way out of it.”

“Still, it was a remarkably mixed site,” Hilarion said. “Very bad because of the goblins. Then perhaps good because of the boat and the boulevard. The chance of our landing right there, in all of Xanth, seems remote. A story writer would have to be really bad at his trade to write that.”

“That boat was using chance to get us out of trouble,” Jumper agreed. “That’s against the rule.”

“So it is,” Ida agreed. “Perhaps we need another explanation.”

“Or two,” Meryl said. “The Knot is malign and wants to mess us up. So if it had any influence, it would choose the worst of Doors. That accounts for the bad. And the Doors may not open perfectly randomly on Xanth. They are magical, and may tend to orient on spots of high magic or significance. The boat, the dissuasion spell, the hate elixir—magic galore.”

“This is a genius idea, surely viable,” Hilarion said. “I’m so sorry you are not my One.”

“Well, you’re not a winged merman,” Meryl said, blushing moderately.

“But the prior time we used the Doors,” Wenda said. “What accounted for our arrival at the home of the otterbees?”

“That may have been a nexus of magic too,” Jumper said. “The otterbees are magical creatures, near the Faun & Nymph Retreat, and Princess Ida had lived there for years, and Prince Hilarion was there. So there were significant crosscurrents.”

“Lo, I am answered,” Hilarion said. “Encountering Wenda’s Quest seems to be changing my life.”

“Except that it hasn’t helped you find your betrothee,” Ida said.

“True. But my association with this Quest is not yet done. There is time yet.”

“At any rate, if we took someone’s boat we should return it,” Ida said. “They may need it.”

“We don’t know that someone was using it,” Meryl said. “Maybe it was there to be used by whoever needed it. As we did.”

Hilarion was troubled. “I’m not sure. It should have been on the island, waiting for a tourist party.”

“And we may have stranded just such a party by the goblin mound,” Ida said morosely.

“Yet I am not eager to return there,” Meryl said, shuddering. “The things they were going to do to me—”

Ida put her hand on Meryl’s. “We understand. We must not go back.”

“But we should settle this matter of the boat,” Hilarion said. “I wonder whether it has a distress signal?”

They looked at the small control panel. “What’s that button?” Wenda asked.

“Let’s find out.” Hilarion pushed on it with his thumb.

The boat made a steady bee-beep sound, and a light flashed.

“I think that’s it,” Ida said with half a smile.

“But who answers the signal?” Jumper asked.

“We are about to find out,” Angela said. “Something is approaching us, flashing.”

They waited nervously. It was another boat, cruising swiftly along the ribbon, colored lights blinking. It zoomed up to the rest stop and came to a halt. Two tentacled bug-eyed monsters got out.

“Mxtplkty sctkzzt?” one asked.

“We don’t understand,” Wenda said.

The monster used a tentacle to twiddle with a dial on its belt. “We are the Bem Patrol. Why did you summon us?” he asked.

They had a translator! “Sir, we—we found this boat,” Wenda said with proper humility. “We needed it to escape the goblins. But we fear we may have stranded the owner there.”

“Check the boat registry,” Bem #1 said out of the side of its head.

Bem #2 twiddled with his belt. “It is registered to a tourist party of snails from Beta Slime.”

“Do these look like snails to you?” Bem #1 asked.

“Not much,” Bem #2 said. “These look more like ignorant locals.”

“Then their story checks out. Send a boat to the goblin station to pick up the snails.”

The other monster twiddled some more. “On its way.”

Bem #1 eyed Wenda with several facets. If she hadn’t known better she might have suspected that it was mentally undressing her. After all, what would a bug-eyed monster want with a nymph? Yet this made her conclude that it was male. “How did you access the boat and boulevard?”

Wenda explained what had happened, including about the Knot, which was starting to radiate hostility. “We really did knot mean to cause any trouble, sir,” she concluded.

“But you did generate mischief,” Bem #1 said. “You stole a boat and stranded a tourist party. That’s a No. You have no pass to tour the Boulevard. That’s a No-No. You will have to answer to the full extent of interplanetary law.”

Before Wenda could protest further, Bem #2 spoke again. “The snails are declining to press charges. They appreciate that the intruders sent help.”

Wenda was getting to like alien snails. “Then it’s all right?”

“By no means,” Bem #1 snapped, irritated. Evidently he liked to enforce the law to its full extent, and now he couldn’t. “The No-No remains. You will have to pay.”

“How can we pay?” Wenda asked meekly.

The Bem considered. “You are locals.”

“Yes.”

“You have local substance.”

“Yes.”

“As it happens, we need to set up another tourist site on this world. But local labor is unreliable.”

“We’re reliable!” Wenda said quickly.

The Bem might have smiled; it was hard to tell with his corrugated slit of a mouth. “We will program your craft to travel to that site. Your job will be to level the access so that tourists can debouch there and appreciate the sights. Accomplish that and you may exit the Boulevard at an access of your choice.”

“Thank yew, sir,” Wenda said. She had learned how to be as humble as she had to be.

Bem #2 touched the boat controls. Then the two of them returned to their own boat and departed.

“You handled that very well,” Hilarion said. “I suspect we got off easy.”

“Thank yew. I did knot want to antagonize them.”

Wenda replaced the reverse wood seeds in the Knot net, and they got in. The boat started moving without Hilarion’s direction, and proceeded confidently through the flower formation of ribbons. It zoomed past several rest stops, and came to a lake in a mountain.

“Lake Wails!” Ida exclaimed. “It may be the filled caldera of an extinct volcano. This will be awful to set up.”

“Why?” Hilarion asked. “Are there dangerous monsters?”

“Not exactly. The Wailing Monster doesn’t go beyond the lake. But it’s so steep we’ll have trouble making a proper landing.”

The boat drifted to a stop where the Boulevard touched the edge of the lake. There was almost no room; the mountain slope outside was steep, and inside was filled with water. It was indeed a challenge.

Hilarion considered the situation. “We might make a landing by dredging gravel from the interior of the lake. The question is how deep it is, and whether there is enough to make a sufficient landing.”

“I can check,” Meryl said. She removed her clothing, flew up over the water, and dived in.

“I hope it is safe,” Ida said. “We really don’t know what is below. It is an ancient lake and very deep.”

But before long, though well after short, Meryl reappeared. “There are all manner of fish,” she reported. “Ted wants to talk to you, Wenda.”

“Who?” Wenda asked, startled.

“Theodore Sturgeon. He’s a consummate stylist, very sharp on details. He does not want the lake desecrated by hacks.”

“A fish,” Wenda said.

“But not just any fish. He’s the leader of the local school. He can help us if he chooses to. You must talk to him.”

“I can’t go down there,” Wenda protested.

“Sure you can. Just put rocks in your feet to weight you down.”

“But I’d drown!”

“I don’t think so. You’re made of wood now.”

Wenda remembered it was true. As a woodwife she could talk, but without breathing. She was a magical creature. She had become accustomed to the state of being a real woman. Real women needed to breathe to better show off their bosoms. “Why does Theodore want to talk to me?”

“I told him of our Quest, and how we need to make a landing here. I said you are our leader. He’s interested, but he must protect the lake.”

“Doesn’t the Wailing Monster do that?” Angela asked.

“It protects the surface,” Meryl said. “But the landing will be built up from below.”

“Then I will talk to him,” Wenda agreed. “Except I dew knot know water talk.”

“We anticipated that problem. Ted gave me a sea biscuit.” She held it forth.

“A biscuit?”

“It’s a linguistic accommodation spell. Like the gift of tongues you gave Jumper. This does it for the sea.”

Oh. Wenda took it and chewed it up. “Is it working?”

“Yes.”

“How dew yew know?”

“Because now we are talking sea talk.”

“It seems just the same.”

“The translation makes you hear it in your own tongue. Now weight your feet.”

They foraged for suitable rocks, and fitted two into the hollow fronts of her feet. Then Wenda stepped off the edge into the water.

She sank swiftly. She saw fish all around: a hammerhead chasing after several nailheads, a sawfish sawing a boardfish, piggish hogfish, a pole-like pike, a dangerously sharp swordfish, a little birdlike perch on a strand of seaweed, a crowned kingfish, several gold- and silverfish, a colorful banded rainbow trout, a sailfish sailing blithely along, a pair of skates sliding along a ledge, and a shining ray coming from a bright sunfish that illuminated the whole region.

“The sea horse even let me ride him,” Meryl said, having no trouble speaking under water; she was after all a mermaid. She was flying, her wings propelling her smoothly through the liquid. “Ah, here we are.”

They were at the bottom, before a large sleeping shell. A sign said
WAKE SHELL
. Meryl grasped it by two edges and shook. It woke and opened wide, repealing a dark tunnel.

Oh. It was a pun on Shake Well.

“This way,” Meryl said, swimming into the hole.

Bemused, Wenda followed, walking carefully so that her feet did not lose their stones.

They came to a chamber that looked like the aftermath of a bad battle. It was piled high with arms and legs.

“What is this?” Wenda asked uncomfortably.

“A loan shark’s den. He takes all the arms and legs people let him get, and stores them here.”

Oh. She should have known.

“Halt,” a deep voice said.

“This is the bass,” Meryl murmured. Then, to the fish: “We have come to see Ted.”

“Very well,” the bass boomed.

Then they were before Theodore Sturgeon, a large beautiful fish. “I am Wenda Woodwife,” Wenda said. “I wood like to ask a favor of yew.”

“You
are
a woodwife,” Ted said. “Not just an empty head.”

“I am,” she agreed, realizing that her dialect came through in sea talk.

“You care about nature.”

“Yes, I dew.”

“So why do you want to build a landing in our pristine lake?”