Odd Exam Page 5

  And the thing did not react. He stood there with a literal hole in his head, his phallus still growing. Felony was almost there.

  Ike got smart. His second stab was through the phallus.

  Now the satyr reacted. He folded in on himself, mortally wounded. He shrank, becoming a quivering mound of flesh. In moments he was a pile of goo on the ground.

  Felony snapped alert. “You got him!”

  “Before he got you,” Ike agreed. “I didn't think you really wanted to make it with him.”

  “Never!” she said, shuddering. “I was horrified, but his gaze locked me in and I had to obey. I knew he would rape me, and I wouldn't be able to resist, and I might get my innards pulped, and I'd want to die of disgust yet still get a guilty pleasure from it. It was awful!”

  “That's the way of it,” Demeanor said. “He got me too. No female can resist a satyr once he makes eye contact. I should have looked away.”

  “Fortunately Blue and I are males,” Ike said.

  “I was a fool,” Felony said. “You must be disgusted.”

  “You didn't know,” Ike said. “I would have been caught by that nymph, if Blue hadn't warned me.”

  “But I was warned, and walked into it anyway.”

  Ike did not argue with her. He simply drew her into him and kissed her.

  “Thanks,” she said. “I needed that.” She glanced at the parrot perched on her shoulder. “And next time you warn me, I'll heed it.”

  “That's the object lesson,” Demeanor said, satisfied.

  “Let's get out of here,” Ike said. “We've had enough for one day.”

  “No, I want to continue, at least until I succeed in not making a fool of myself today. Does that make sense?”

  “Yes,” Demeanor said, and Blue hissed.

  “Then we continue,” Ike agreed, bemused. Felony was tough, emotionally, when push came to shove. He liked that about her, too.

  They walked on. Blue hissed, but Ike didn't see anything. “I appreciate that there's a threat,” he murmured. “But I don't see it. Can you show me where it lurks?”

  Blue hissed and slithered out of his pocket and into the air. He moved quietly to a pile of debris from some erstwhile flood and hovered there a moment, then returned to Ike. So there was something in there.

  “Okay, act innocent,” Ike murmured to Felony. “While I set off this bomb.” She nodded.

  Ike took his shield stub and held it ready. Then he walked nonchalantly to the pile. As he approached it, something stirred. A cute little pig emerged.

  “Oh, how sweet,” Felony said.

  Demeanor made a sound as of stifling laughter. They both knew that this was likely to be anything but sweet.

  “Well, hello there, piglet,” Ike said. “May I pet you?”

  The pig pointed his snout at Ike and inhaled. Blue hissed.

  Ike snapped on his shield just as the pig shot out a jet of fire. It was a blow torch! The fire bounced off the shield and blasted back at the pig, scorching its whiskers. It squealed angrily and ran away.

  “Well done, hero,” Demeanor called, chuckling, and Blue hissed approvingly.

  They walked on. Felony saw a pretty green and gold flower and reached out to pick it. “Nu-uh!” Demeanor warned. “That's poison. One touch and you're dead.”

  Felony hastily backed off. “Thank you.”

  “That's what I'm here for.”

  The land sloped down. Soon they came to a river. It coursed curvaceously around the landscape before meandering elsewhere. Part of it broadened out oddly, with squared off gaps in the bed. “What's this?” Ike asked.

  “A mini-quarry,” Demeanor explained. “The river bed is formed of tuff, a nicely workable and pretty stone made of compacted volcanic ash. They mined it for the foundations of the college buildings. The river doesn't mind.”

  “I see that it is much prettier where the water covers it,” Felony said. “The fragments they chipped away to make the blocks look like soggy old cereal.”

  “They must have weathered down,” Ike said. “It seems to be relatively soft rock.”

  “In just a few years?”

  He shrugged. “It's workable, which is why they used it.” But he wondered. If it weathered rapidly, why use it for foundations? That could be mischief.

  They forded the river and walked on. But then Blue hissed and Demeanor sounded off almost together. “Something wicked this way comes,” the parrot said.

  Ike and Felony drew their laser sword stubs, but Blue hissed again. “Those won't work,” Demeanor said.

  “What will work?” Ike asked.

  “Just get out of their way, or hide.”

  Now they saw a pack of dogs charging toward them. They were in open country just beyond the river. There was no place to hide.

  Blue launched himself from Ike's pocket and slithered rapidly toward the river. “Good idea,” Demeanor said.

  They ran back to the river just as the dogs were closing in. Now Ike saw that their noses were circular snouts, and they were firing out little darts. Those were surely poison-tipped. Their shields might have stopped the darts, but Ike's shield was set on reflect and probably would not be able to handle a dozen darts simultaneously.

  They didn't hesitate. They jumped into the river. The dogs surged up to the bank, looking for targets to fire on. Ike held his breath and ducked under the surface, and Felony did the same. When he ran out of air he surfaced briefly, saw the dogs still there, took a breath, and ducked back down even as darts splatted into the water around him. Felony matched him.

  Fortunately the attention span of the dart dogs was brief, and after several breaths they were gone. Ike and Felony emerged from the water. Blue had gotten along nicely in the pocket, not needing to breathe often, while Demeanor had flown up high, out of the darts’ reach.

  But now Ike and Felony were sopping wet, their clothing plastered to their bodies, and it was uncomfortable. “We'd better get home,” he said. “Where we'll be dry.”

  “We can dry here,” she pointed out. “The sun is shining.”

  “And we'll get sunburned.”

  “You just don't want to get naked with me!”

  “Wrong. I do want to. That's why we'd better get home to dry.”

  She eyed him cannily. “Did you just pay me a buried compliment?”

  “I think I did.”

  “But I'm not luscious.”

  “Nor do you need to be. I can see enough of your body now to know that I'd better not see any more of it. I might lose control.”

  “Even though this is all virtual? Anything we do here is all perception and no reality. Completely safe.”

  “Completely unsafe. I want to get our relationship straight before we do anything that serious, even in virtual. Please stop wickedly tempting me.”

  She shook her head, bemused. “I think you just turned me down for the right reason.”

  “I hope so. I'd hate to pass up a chance like this for the wrong reason.”

  “So would I.”

  “Do you want my comment?” Miss Demeanor inquired.

  “No!” they said almost together. Then laughed.

  They sloshed their way back to campus and to their stalls. Soon Ike was home, completely dry. Had he done the right thing?

  Chapter 5:

  Awful Tower

  Next day they met as usual. Their familiars were waiting there at the rendezvous point. They went to Professor Howell's classroom to report, and she agreed that they had bonded will with their familiars and were ready to use them in the field.

  “It's past time for us to start looking for our passes,” Felony said. “I wonder how many are left?”

  “Five,” Demeanor said.

  “You know the count?” Felony asked, astonished. “Why didn't you say?”

  “You didn't ask.”

  “And you're not supposed to volunteer,” Ike said before Felony could explode. “So it's not meanness.”

  “You do understand,” Demeanor sa
id.

  Felony was back in control. “And do you know where the remaining ones are?”

  “No. Only the count, which is updated whenever another is found.”

  Ike wondered again whether the passes were truly necessary, but knew they would be foolish to gamble that they weren't. The scissors game did require the scissors, if only as a distraction. Their best bet was to find two passes, then ponder whether they really wanted to apply for admission. They still had no idea what the college taught. Only that it was bound to be important, to warrant this elaborate admissions setup. This supremely odd exam.

  “To what extent can you advise us on our search for passes?” Ike asked Demeanor.

  “All we can do is warn you of danger, and facilitate your magic,” the parrot said. “We can't tell you where any pass might be.”

  Ike pounced on that. “You say your count is updated whenever one is found. Do you know where each is found? Can you tell us where?”

  “Yes.”

  “That's what I thought. You aren't allowed to--”Ike paused, doing a double-take. “You said yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe we should check out where the other passes have been found,” Felony said. “That may provide a pattern we can use to zero in on the remaining ones.”

  “That works for me,” Ike agreed. “It might even enable us to make up for lost time.”

  “But maybe we need to put them in order,” Felony said. “Or better yet, to plot them on a map of the environs. Can you provide such a map?”

  “No,” Demeanor said.

  Blue hissed twice.

  “Oh, shut up, serpent tooth! I was getting to it. I can't provide the map, but I can lead you to where it is posted and plot the points for you.”

  “That will do,” Felony agreed.

  They went to the main annex. There in the hall was posted a model of the Pomegranate College campus, set within a much larger model of the local area. This consisted of the surrounding badlands, which then gave way to a cluster of roughly circular sections that filled a spherical enclosure. In fact it was a three dimensional image of a pomegranate fruit, with each seed a separate realm.

  The found passes were all in those seeds. There were five of them. As they looked, another popped into representation, in a formerly empty seed. Now there were four passes left.

  “How many applicants are still looking?” Ike asked.

  “Six, including you.”

  “So there are two more of us than there are remaining passes,” Felony said.

  “Yes.”

  “How many applicants did you start with?” Ike asked.

  “Thirty two.”

  “How many of those have been eliminated?”

  “Twenty.”

  They looked at the map. “So you plan to admit ten new students,” Felony said. “Twenty two need to be eliminated.”

  “Yes.”

  “And we need to see that we are not the last two eliminated.”

  “Yes.”

  “I fear we have waited almost too long,” Ike said. “While we were taking classes and learning the ropes, others have been getting the passes.”

  “But more than three have been eliminated for every one who found a pass,” Felony said. “Those are not good odds. In fact we have improved on them already: four out of six is better than one in three.”

  “Twice as good,” Ike agreed. “And with what we now know, our odds may be better yet.”

  “But only if we get moving.”

  They looked at the four “empty” seeds, establishing their locations. They would probably need to get into two of them, to find two passes. Ike knew that there was no guarantee that each held a pass; all four passes could be in just one seed. Or they could be in one of the prior seeds. But the prevailing pattern suggested that it was one to a seed. “Which one?” he asked.

  Felony shook her head. “I have no idea. It's a sheer gamble.”

  “How about this: we check whichever ones nobody else is checking.”

  She nodded. “Works for me. Demeanor, which are those?”

  “These two.” The parrot indicated two of the seeds.

  “We'll start with the closer one.”

  That was it. They followed a line out of the campus, through the badlands, and to the perimeter of the seed. This was a kind of wall that enclosed a distinctly different-looking terrain. The vegetation was unfamiliar throughout, resembling tree-sized ferns.

  “I've seen that kind before,” Felony said. “Sort of halfway between ferns and palm trees. I forget what they're called.”

  “Cycads.”

  “That's it! You had the answer again.”

  “You had the question. I didn't think of it until you commented.”

  “We make a team, all right, for what it's worth. Next question: where are the oaks and pines and flowers?”

  Ike considered. “I thought the pomegranate seeds were just marked sections to indicate different challenges. But this suggests that they are more than that. This could be another world.”

  “With the same gravity, temperature, atmosphere, and halfway familiar plants? That's a reach.”

  He nodded. “It must be Earth. But it could be from a different time.”

  “Time travel? Complete with ferocious paradoxes?”

  “Or maybe an alternate Earth, parallel but not identical, that split off from ours some time ago. All the seeds could be different alternates, some with dinosaurs, some with nothing but insects, some with nothing but birds, depending on what won out in their particular frames. We've seen some imports, like those dart dogs and the big running bird.”

  “So every pomegranate seed is a different parallel world? That's one hell of a fancy virtual game set up!”

  “Or a series of sets made up to resemble other Earths,” he said. “Sets aren't as complicated as real worlds, and for this purpose they work about as well.”

  “For this odd examination,” she agreed. “It's still a remarkably elaborate setup just to see how prospective students manage.”

  Ike smiled. “Did you notice how quiet our familiars are? They know what the deal is, but can't tell us. We have to figure it out for ourselves.”

  “You're too smart for your own good,” Miss Demeanor said, and Blue hissed agreement.

  “All the same, we'd better be ready for trouble,” Felony said. “Maybe one of us have the sword ready, and the other the shield. Just in case.”

  “Just in case,” Ike agreed. “Because whatever the setup, they don't want dopes or fools.”

  They moved on into the seed, Ike with his laser sword ready, Felony with her laser shield. Their colored line had faded out; they were on their own.

  They passed through a forest of cycads, but encountered no creatures of any kind. This was a relief, but it also made Ike nervous. There surely were animals; where were they hiding?

  “I know you're thinking the same thing I am,” Felony said. “So what's your answer?”

  “Maybe some calamity, like a meteor strike, wiped out all the animals, leaving only the plants, which can grow from seeds that survive the holocaust. But I'm not satisfied with that, because the world is in balance, with plants emitting oxygen and animals breathing it. Take out one, and the other will soon suffer. So there should be animals here.”

  “There should be,” Felony agreed. “Except that a lot of the life on Earth is bacterial and viral. I understand that there are ten times as many bacteria in each person's digestive system as in all the rest of his body. So there can be balance here, just not birds, reptiles, and mammals.”

  “And they're not attacking us because they're not used to mammals,” Ike agreed. “It could be like the Garden of Eden, a paradise without people.”

  “We're Adam and Eve? I think we're not innocent enough, and will be kicked out.”

  “I think it's the opposite. We'll be kicked out unless we catch on to its real nature.”

  “Which is?”

  “For now, let's make an a
ssumption. That when the Permian extinction came, two hundred and fifty million years ago, for some reason vertebrate life did not recover. It faded out, leaving bacteria and maybe the fish. That's this seed.”

  “The fish would have formed their fins into legs and invaded the land, the way they did before.”

  “So maybe no fish either. So here is this open world, waiting to be colonized.”

  Felony smiled. “I like it. But are we worthy?”

  “That's what we have to prove.” He held up his hand, imitating her Stop signal. “And not by being fruitful and multiplying. Not yet. By properly understanding it, and passing the exam.”

  “Aww.” She plainly enjoyed the role of seductress.

  The cycads gave way to a clearing. They paused, amazed.

  There was a structure, not exactly a building. It was more like a monument, five sided, its network of struts curving up into the sky.

  “The Eiffel Tower?” Felony asked.

  “More like the Awful Tower. This is its skeleton. The surfacing must have weathered away millennia ago, leaving only the invulnerable framework.”

  “It must have been some tower! It's a thousand feet tall.”

  “And maybe a thousand feet down,” Ike said.

  Felony looked down. The tower stood above a similar hole, an inverted image of itself, disappearing into the darkness below. “What immortal hand or eye...” she murmured.

  “Can frame thy fearful symmetry,” he concluded. “Somehow I doubt this is the work of our kind.”

  “But why make it and leave it to flake apart?”

  “Conjecture: when the world got wiped out, aliens visited and thought it could make a good way station between their galaxy and Andromeda. So they set it up with all the amenities. This is the signal tower, to contact other worlds.”

  “And then deserted it?”

  “Maybe not; maybe they used the station for a million years, then had to move on to another universe. So it's been here ever since, a relic of their one-time presence, like the Pyramids.”

  She clutched his arm. “Ike!”

  “Or maybe not. I'm just guessing.”

  “Shut up and look.”

  What was on her mind? He looked where she was looking.