Golem in the Gears Page 4

  “Hey!” he cried. “Watch where you’re going!”

  Still they ignored him, pressing heedlessly closer. Each creature had a shaggy coat and two stout horns on its head. One of them pressed in close to the bed, almost brushing it.

  “What’s up, anyway?” Grundy demanded, standing on the bed.

  “Up?” Several nearby creatures swung their heads, for the first time taking note of him. They crowded in closer.

  “Or down,” Grundy cried. “What are you—”

  “Down!” several creatures cried, horrified. A kind of stampede developed, momentarily abating the press of bodies about the bed.

  But this turned out to be no improvement, for now a new kind of creature showed up. This was a hairy, muscular entity who lacked horns but had large teeth. Several of these surged toward the bed.

  “Who are you?” Grundy cried, newly alarmed.

  “We are the Bulls,” the horned creatures lowed.

  “We are the Bears,” the toothed ones growled.

  Now Grundy remembered: the creatures the tails belonged to, who always went up or down. He didn’t like either—but he was stuck in their midst.

  A Bear scraped by the bed, shoving it to one side. Grundy tumbled, almost falling off. “Hey, watch it!” he yelled, grabbing on to the bar at the foot of it.

  But the Bears ignored him as determinedly as the Bulls had. “Down! Down!” they growled, and indeed they seemed to be traveling downward, for the field was tilted.

  Grundy realized that this situation was beyond him. Where were Bink and Chester? He had to get the bed out of the field before these animals overturned it, and he couldn’t do that by himself. But there was no sign of his friends.

  More Bears surged down, gaining momentum. The Bulls were almost out of sight. Grundy knew he couldn’t affect these blindly charging creatures physically, but remembered that he had made a slight impression with his words. They seemed to be very sensitive to references about direction. “Up! Down!” he yelled.

  The nearest Bears hesitated, falling back for a moment. But then they resumed their charge, and the bed bumped across the field as their heedless imperative jostled it. It started to tip over, then plumped back. He heard a whimper from Snortimer, underneath; naturally the monster was terrified.

  “East! West!” Grundy yelled, but this had no discernable impression. “North! South!”

  The charge continued. The bed moved some more, and a leg hung up in a hole. Again it started to tilt. “We’re in trouble!” Grundy cried.

  A passing Bear paused. “Who’s in trouble?” it demanded.

  “This bed’s in trouble!” Grundy replied. “If you’d just stop shoving—”

  “Oh,” the Bear said, disappointed. It lost interest and resumed its downward charge.

  “Thanks a lot, hairsnout!” Grundy screamed after it. “May a green hornet buzz up your—”

  “Up?” another Bear asked, dismayed. “What’s going up?”

  “My blood pressure!” Grundy retorted. “What’s with you beasts?”

  But this Bear, like the other, had lost interest and resumed its charge.

  So words had some effect, but not a reliable one. Maybe he would do better yelling randomly. “Pink moons in the lake!” he called.

  It seemed to work. “What stock?” the nearest passing Bear asked.

  “Purple comets in the soup!” Grundy responded.

  More Bears paused. “That sounds bad,” another said.

  “It’s terrible!” Grundy agreed, pleased with his progress.

  But at that they all took off running, faster than before, threatening to sweep the bed right down out of the field, threatening to flip it over several times on the way.

  “Red planets taking a bath!” he screamed.

  The charge slowed. “Sell Red Planet!” a Bear growled. Then the motion resumed.

  “Consolidated Nonesuch is going nowhere!” Grundy cried.

  “Yes! Yes!” the Bears agreed, and accelerated.

  “You stupes!” Grundy raged. “Just where do you think nowhere is?”

  “Bad news, bad news!” the Bears cried, and pressed on.

  Grundy tried again. “Amalgamated Parrot-Ox is buying out Con-Pewter!” That nonsense should make them take notice.

  It did. “That’s bullish for Con-Pewter!” a Bear groaned.

  “Buy Pewter!” a Bull lowed. And now there was a resurgence among the Bulls.

  “It’s a crock!” a Bear protested, but the tide had turned. The Bulls surged back on the strength of the Pewter con. The Bulls retreated in confusion. The Con-Pewter age had arrived!

  This was too much success! The charge of the Bulls was just as dangerous as that of the Bears. The bed was getting rocked.

  “Kissimmee River is telling!” Grundy screamed.

  “Telling?” a Bull snorted, dismayed. “That’s not supposed to happen!”

  “Well, it is!” Grundy said.

  Evidently the notion of anything telling dismayed the Bulls. They milled about uncertainly, and the Bears began to reform their formation. This did little good for the bed, though; it got nudged right up against a tree.

  “Yo!” a voice came faintly. “Grundy!”

  Grundy looked. There was Bink, riding Chester! They were back! “Over here!” he cried. “By the tree!”

  But the field was filled with milling Bulls and Bears, and it was obvious that Chester would have difficulty getting through.

  A Bull crashed against the bed, and the bed slammed into the trunk of the tree, and a fruit plopped into the center of the bed, just missing Grundy. The fruit was as big as he was, and shaped like a giant light bulb; it would have flattened him had it caught him. “Watch what you’re dropping!” Grundy yelled at the tree.

  “It’s your fault!” the tree retorted in plant language. “You stirred up the stockyard!”

  “Who are you to blame anything on me?” Grundy demanded belligerently.

  “I am a power plant,” the tree replied proudly.

  Suddenly Grundy saw a solution to his problem. “Give me a bite of that!” he said, pouncing on the fruit. It had split slightly from the impact of the fall; had it not landed on the bed, it would have broken right apart. Grundy snatched out a juicy seed and chewed on it.

  In a moment he felt its effect. Power rippled through him. He did not become larger or more muscular; he merely developed a lot more strength in what he had. That was of course the nature of the fruit of the power plant: it made the eater strong. For a little while.

  Grundy took advantage of the moment. He jumped down to the ground and took hold of a leg of the bed. “We’re getting out of here!” he told Snortimer, who was huddled under the center, shaking with fear. “Just stay centered, so the light doesn’t touch you.”

  Then he hauled on the leg. The bed moved. He strode forward, hauling the bed along. He moved it around the tree and on into the forest, out of the press of Bulls and Bears. By the time the strength lent by the power plant abated, he had brought the bed to safety in a thicker part of the forest.

  Bink and Chester rejoined him. “We feasted on loquats, middlequats and highquats,” Bink explained. “When we started back, we encountered traveling nickeipedes and had to skirt widely around them. Then we heard a commotion in the field, but we couldn’t get to it quickly.”

  “We were trapped amid rampaging Bulls and Bears!” Grundy exclaimed. “Those are the craziest animals I ever saw! All they do is charge up and down, up and down! Luckily I found a power plant at the last minute.”

  “Yes, a fortunate coincidence,” Bink agreed, smiling obscurely. Grundy wondered what he was thinking of, but wasn’t in a mood to inquire.

  “Let’s get some sleep,” Chester said gruffly. He lay down, letting his head and shoulders rest on a hummock. It was strange to see a centaur in that position, but of course Chester was no longer as young as he once had been and had to rest in whatever fashion was best for him.

  Bink settled down against a tree. �
�Shouldn’t we post a guard?” Grundy asked.

  “Not necessary,” Bink said, and closed his eyes.

  How could the man be so sure of that? They weren’t that far from the stockyard where the animals ranged, after all; suppose a stray Bull or Bear crashed through here? But Grundy was quite tired in the aftermath of his exercise with the power plant strength; one problem with that sort of thing was that there was a corresponding period of weakness to make up for the temporary power. He flopped on the bed and slept.

  Bink’s optimism seemed valid, for they rested undisturbed until nightfall. Then they roused, ate some quats that Chester had saved from breakfast, and resumed their travel.

  As they wended along the path, which still bore determinedly east, they found themselves entering a more equine region. There were horseflies sleeping on the trunks of horse chestnuts, and night mares seemed to prowl.

  They came to a fork in the path. They paused, uncertain which one to take, as neither went north. While they hesitated, two actual horses showed up. Horses were very rare in Xanth, being mainly mundane in their original form, but of course if Bulls and Bears could stray here, so could horses.

  “Say, you horses,” Grundy called. “We want to get back to the magic path going north. Which trail should we take?”

  The horses paused, one in each fork. “Gee!” neighed the one at the right. “Haw!” neighed the one on the left. Then they galloped on down their respective paths.

  “They’re just horsing around,” Bink said philosophically. “I suppose we’d better gamble on the more northerly path.”

  That was a decision Grundy himself should have made, the Golem thought, troubled. But who paid attention to him, even on his own Quest? They took the more northerly trail.

  In due course they came upon a woman and a small equine creature. The woman had a little notebook, in which she was busily making notes by the light of the moon. She looked up, startled, as they approached. “And who are you?” she inquired, her pencil poised.

  “I am Grundy Golem, on a Quest,” Grundy said importantly from just outside the beam of moonlight “These are Chester Centaur, Bink, and Snortimer. Who are you?”

  “Snortimer?” she asked. “I don’t see that one.”

  “He’s the Monster Under the Bed. Most adults can’t see him. It’s your turn to answer, toots.”

  “How interesting,” she said. “The Monster Under the Bed. I thought those were just fantasies.”

  “Look, cutie-pie,” Grundy said sneeringly. “Are you going to answer a simple question, or have you forgotten your name?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said, finishing her note. “I’m EmJay, and this is my Ass.”

  “I can see where—oh, you mean that animal?”

  “He’s no common animal!” she said indignantly. “He’s MiKe, my right-hand Ass, and he helps me a lot.”

  Grundy studied the shaggy beast. “Helps you with what?”

  “Helps me make my notes. I couldn’t get the job done without him.”

  “What are you making notes about?”

  “About everything in Xanth, for my Lexicon.”

  “What good is that?”

  “Well, I hope it will be useful for those who want to know about anything in a hurry.”

  “Like who?”

  That seemed to stump her. “Well, somebody must be interested in Xanth!”

  “The only one I can think of is Good Magician Humfrey, and he already knows everything he wants to.”

  “Maybe the Mundanes—” she said uncertainly.

  “Mundanes! What do they know?”

  “Very little,” she said. “That’s why they need a Lexicon.”

  “Female logic,” Grundy said disparagingly. “Now get out of our way so we can get where we’re going.”

  EmJay looked a little annoyed for some reason, but she rallied. “You said you were going on a Quest. What Quest?”

  “What business is it of yours?”

  “I want to list it in the Lexicon, of course.”

  Grundy considered. Probably there was no harm in telling her. “I’m going to the Ivory Tower to rescue Stanley Steamer.”

  “Oh, the little dragon!” she exclaimed, checking the entry in her notes. “May I come along?”

  “Listen, sister,” Grundy said angrily. “This is my Quest, not yours! I don’t need any strange woman and her Ass messing it up!”

  “You are a diplomatic one, aren’t you!” she exclaimed. “What makes you think I would mess up your precious Quest?”

  “You’re a woman!” Grundy reminded her. “Of course you’d mess it up!”

  She looked as if she wanted to argue, but thought the better of it. “Well, suppose we tag along a little way, and if we mess anything up, then we’ll leave you alone?”

  Grudgingly, Grundy agreed. Bink and Chester, both married to women, had maintained a remarkable silence.

  They resumed their trek, with EmJay and Ass falling in behind. They made respectable progress for a couple of hours—until they encountered another woman.

  This one was young and sultry. “Well, now!” she breathed. “What have we here?”

  “We don’t need another woman!” Grundy snapped.

  “I am not exactly a woman,” the new one murmured.

  “You sure look like a woman! What are you, then—a monster?”

  “In my fashion,” she agreed. “I am a succubus, on the prowl for business.”

  “Uh-oh,” Chester said.

  “We aren’t your business,” Bink said firmly.

  “Are you sure?” she asked archly. She shimmered, and suddenly she looked exactly like Bink’s wife Chameleon, in her prettiest phase.

  “We’re sure,” Chester said.

  The succubus shimmered again, and there stood Chester’s mate, Cherie, in her most fetching pose. “I do a lot of business with married males,” she said.

  “Not with these ones,” Grundy said. “Go away, you slut.”

  “Maybe I’ll just tag along a while,” the succubus said. “In case someone changes his mind.”

  She was magical; they couldn’t do anything about her. But Grundy had another irritation. The succubus had tried to tempt both Bink and Chester, but hadn’t even bothered with Grundy himself. That showed how he rated. Of course he would have told her to go away—but he felt insulted that she hadn’t tried. Not even the most corrupt creature thought him worth noticing.

  “Succubus,” EmJay murmured, making a note.

  Chester nudged Bink. “We’re okay for now—but what about when we sleep? That’s when a creature like that gets you.”

  “There won’t be any problem,” Bink said.

  No problem? There would be an awful row when the wives heard about it, Grundy knew.

  But as dawn loomed, and they set about making camp for the day, the solution to the problem of the succubus appeared. “Oh, I can’t face the light!” she exclaimed, and hurried away.

  The fact that they were now sleeping by day gave them security from this threat. Had Bink known, or was it just a lucky break?

  3

  Con-Pewter

  In the evening the succubus was gone, but EmJay and her Ass remained. Grundy muttered something about half a loaf being better than none, and mounted Snortimer. Maybe if they moved along rapidly, they’d leave the Lexicographers behind.

  The path wended its idle way along, teasing them, now north, now east. They paused in alarm as a huge shape passed overhead, but it was no dragon, only a big house fly. The thing has disproportionately small wings, and an unstreamlined roof, so that its flight was erratic; it seemed about to crash at any moment, but somehow it bumbled on. They paused to pluck some succulent fruit to eat, until EmJay’s Ass brayed.

  “What’re you talking about, you asinine creature?” Grundy asked it.

  “Well, if you want to eat passion fruit …” the Ass replied in bray-talk.

  “Passion fruit?” Grundy asked, dismayed.

  “Sure,” the Ass brayed. �
��We Lexed that yesterday. That’s why the succubus hangs out here. Once a man chomps into that fruit—”

  They decided to pass the fruit by. Grundy heard a muffled curse from the side, and realized that the succubus had been watching from hiding. He was tempted to make an obscene gesture in her direction, but knew she’d take it as a compliment.

  They found some innocent breadfruits and a fresh babbling brook further along, so were able to eat and drink safely. The brook talked incessantly, of course, but that was the nature of its kind. Actually, it had quite a bit of gossip to babble, about the nefarious doings of the local creatures, that Grundy found interesting.

  Then, abruptly, the brook went silent. Grundy looked at it in surprise. “What’s the matter, wetback?”

  “The—the giant!” the brook babbled briefly, then froze up. A thin film of ice formed on its surface. It was stiff with fright.

  Grundy looked around. “Giant? I don’t see any giant.”

  Bink and Chester and the Ass all peered about. Nothing was visible. “That brook’s got water on the brain,” the centaur muttered. “There’s no giant around here!”

  Then they heard a distant crash, as of a boulder smashing through brush, and felt the ground shudder. Stray fruits and nuts were jostled from trees. After a pause, there was another crash, slightly louder, with more insistent shuddering.

  “That’s either a remarkable coincidence—two boulders falling out of nowhere—” Bink began.

  There was a third crash and shudder, louder yet.

  “Or the footfalls of a giant,” Chester finished.

  Another crash. “And the brook saw it first, because it flows in that direction,” Grundy added.

  “It’s coming this way,” EmJay said, alarmed.

  Chester shaded his eyes with his hand, peering in that direction. “I may be getting older, but my eyesight shouldn’t be that bad. I don’t see any giant.”