Xanth 29 - Pet Peeve Page 9

  A large spotted cat was there. "Ah, I have been waiting for someone to play cards with," it said.

  "A talking tabby," the parody said. "Never trust a cat."

  "Cards?" Goody asked. He had not encountered a talking cat before, but perhaps it was no more remarkable than a talking bird.

  "A deck of fifty-two," the cat said as a splay of cards appeared. "A good game is poker."

  "If you poke me, I'll cut off your hide!" Hannah snapped.

  "Very funny," the cat said, unamused. "So will you play?"

  "I thought poke-her was a game fauns played, dancing around a nymph and touching her in awkward places," Goody said.

  "Do you want to play?" the cat asked again, still supremely unamused. It riffed the cards.

  "Let me see that deck," Hannah said, snatching it from his paw. She riffed through the cards herself. "I thought so: five aces! You're a—"

  "Cheetah," the cat agreed. "What did you expect?"

  Hannah returned the cards. "Let's play. What are the stakes?"

  "Foraging for supper," the cat said, its eye resting on the peeve.

  "Don't you touch me, you pukey puss!"

  "He's a cheater, and you still want to play?" Goody asked, surprised.

  "Barbarians are fools about gambling."

  Goody shrugged. "But the parody is not on the menu."

  The feline sighed. "You drive a hard bargain."

  "I'll play too," the peeve said.

  It turned out to be an interesting game. Each player started out with a stack of colored chips, and the cards were dealt in batches of five. Goody never did get quite clear about the rules, and did not do well. Neither did Hannah. The cheetah won, of course, with the parody second.

  Goody and Hannah went out to forage for supper. This was not hard at all, as there were many convenient fruit trees and plants, including catnip and beefsteak tomatoes for the cheetah. The point of the card game had been diversion, and it had been fine for that.

  The peeve elected to spend the night with Hannah, who was alert to things around her even when asleep, and very fast with her sword. Goody appreciated that; the big cat was not to be trusted.

  Next day they walked the rest of the way to Castle Roogna. As they approached its moat, three nine-year-old girls appeared, wearing little golden crowns.

  "Hello, Goblin," the first said. "I'm Princess Melody." She had greenish hair and blue eyes.

  "Hello, Barbarian," the second said. "I'm Princess Harmony." She had brown hair and eyes.

  "Hi, Parody," the third said. "I'm Princess Rhythm." She had red hair and green eyes.

  "What a cluster of creeps!"

  The three laughed. "What are you doing here, Peeve?" Melody asked.

  "You're supposed to be with the Good Magician," Harmony added.

  "Driving his household to 'straction," Rhythm concluded.

  "I'm Goody Goblin. It's my job to find a good home for the parody. I don't suppose any of you would be interested?"

  "We'd love to have the peeve," Melody said.

  "It would really make things interesting," Harmony agreed.

  "But Mother wouldn't allow it," Rhythm concluded.

  "And I'm Hannah Barbarian," Hannah said. "So maybe you will direct us to Princess Ida?"

  "Sure," Melody said.

  "She's expecting you," Harmony agreed.

  "Just follow the linear," Rhythm concluded.

  "Ha ha ha," the parody laughed.

  Goody was about to ask what a linear was, but then he saw it: a line of ears, leading across the moat and into the castle. Nine-year-old humor. "Thank you."

  They followed the line. The ears faded out as they were passed. As Hannah and Goody walked on the drawbridge, a huge green head rose from the water.

  "It's okay, Sesame," Melody called.

  "They've been cleared," Harmony added.

  "Sesame's our moat monster," Rhythm explained. "She alternates with her boyfriend."

  "Moat monsters have boyfriends?" Goody asked, bemused.

  "Oh, sure," Hannah said. "They're people too."

  The ears led down a long hall and to a stairway, where they became a line of eyes looking up from the steps. "A stare way," Hannah said, disgusted. "I'm not walking up that in my skirt."

  "Ho ho ho!"

  "The princesses are mischievous," Goody said, appreciating her problem. Sneak peeks at panties were supposed to be prevented at all times, by order of the Adult Conspiracy, lest panties lose their effect and be useless. Sometimes that rule was violated, but that did not mean that violation was to be encouraged. "Do you have any way to nullify them?"

  A bulb flashed over her head. "I do, now that you thought of it." She drew her sword.

  "I don't think this the place for mayhem," Goody said, alarmed.

  "Watch." She angled the sword. It flashed. She tilted it so that the flash reflected down onto the stairs. The eyes blinked and teared, blinded. Then, keeping the glare a few steps ahead of her, she walked up the stairs.

  "That's impressive."

  "I'm barbarian. That means ignorant, not stupid."

  "You're just lucky it wasn't a come-hither stair," the parody said nastily. "That would have lured you up before you could get your sword out. Your panties would have panted."

  "You can't distract me, buzzard brain," Hannah said, not relinquishing her focus. That of course had been the bird's intention: spoiling her concentration, so the reflection wavered, stranding her as the eyes recovered beneath her.

  At the next floor the eyes gave way to mouths. Three princesses, three types of line. They were not threatening, merely painted red lips that kissed the feet that touched them. They led to a room whose door-plate said PRINCESS IDA.

  Goody lifted his knuckle to knock.

  "Open up, you misbegotten broad!"

  Oops! Goody cast about for some fast way to explain and apologize.

  The door opened. A woman Hannah's age stood there in her gown and crown. A small ball orbited her head. "You have the pet peeve!" she exclaimed.

  She knew! "Yes. I'm supposed to find a good home for it. I'm Goody Goblin, and this is Hannah Barbarian. We need to visit Robot World."

  "Of course. Come in."

  They entered her chamber, and were soon comfortably seated, except for the bird. "What a constricted dump! Where did you get those rags you're wearing? And that crown must be made of brass."

  Ida nodded. "The bird is one of a kind. You surely wish to complete your mission swiftly."

  "Yes, provided there are some good fights along the way," Hannah said.

  "There surely will be, considering the bird."

  "Aw, what's it to you, bumbling biddy?"

  Ida ignored the bird's interjections. "Are you familiar with the process of traveling to the moons?"

  "No," Goody said, embarrassed. "It is complicated?"

  "Not at all. But you need to understand that you can't go there physically. Only your soul can go, while your body remains here."

  "Desert our bodies?" Hannah asked, alarmed. "What about my weapons?"

  Ida smiled. "Your souls will form bodies like your present ones, complete with clothing and accouterments. Your sword will be with you." She went on to explain the full process. Neither Goody nor Hannah was easy with it, but they seemed to have little choice. "I will lay a track for Robot World," the princess concluded. "You will travel rapidly there, and when you are done, you have but to release your hold on that scene and you will revert to this office."

  It all seemed at once simple and frighteningly complicated. Goody and Hannah lay on adjacent couches, holding hands so that they would travel together, and the parody perched on Goody's arm. Ida brought out something for each one of them to sniff, and they were on their way.

  Goody rose out of his body in the form of a diffuse cloud. One wisp of him extended to link to the larger cloud rising from Hannah's body, and another to the little cloud that was the parody. In one moment, more or less, they formed into their approximate norma
l shapes, and sailed upward, following a curving track of light. They did not need to make any effort; somehow the track drew them along.

  Below them their bodies looked huge and clumsy, and were growing larger. Above them the track curved toward the giant Princess Ida, and to the tiny moon orbiting her head. This was Ptero, they had learned, where all people and creatures and things that might ever exist resided. It seemed impossible for such a great number to fit on such a tiny moon.

  But as they zoomed toward it, it expanded, becoming a world with clouds and continents, rotating as it traveled its orbit. Then they were falling toward it, and it was huge, as big as all Xanth and Mundania combined. Now it seemed possible for many folk to be here.

  They came to the surface, but the bright track continued. They zoomed across to another Castle Roogna, and into it, passing folk who seemed to be standing still, and up its stairs. Then on to Princess Ida's chamber, and in, and there she was—with a pyramidal moon orbiting her head. They went to that expanding moon, each of whose four flat triangular faces was a different color, and on to another Princess Ida. After that it became a blur, as they zoomed from moon to moon and Ida to Ida. This was even weirder than Goody would have thought of expecting.

  Then abruptly they halted. They stood on a world of solid metal, with metal things zooming every which way. This had to be Robot World, seemingly as big as any of the others, though it orbited the head of an Ida who was infinitely smaller than the original Ida. Goody found the concept daunting to assimilate, so let it slip away.

  "So are you okay, goblin?" Hannah asked.

  "I seem to be. If I understand the situation correctly, we are solidified bits of our souls, possessing all the attributes of our physical selves, only smaller."

  "Something like that," she agreed dazedly. "Is the bird intact?"

  "Who the bleep wants to know, frump face?"

  "Yes," Goody answered with four-tenths of a smile.

  Three figures approached them. One looked like a human woman encased fully in armor so that no flesh showed. The second resembled a metallic goblin. The third seemed to be an iron bird.

  The armor addressed Hannah. "Wel-come to Ro-bot World," it said. "What is your busi-ness here?"

  "What's it to you, metal mouth?"

  "We are the official welcoming cohort," the robot replied, its pronunciation become more proficient. It did not seem to realize that Hannah herself hadn't answered. "Crafted to resemble the members of your party to facilitate communication. We recognize you as visitors from another planet who will require guidance around our world."

  "They think I'm the leader of this group," Hannah murmured.

  "Hee hee hee!"

  The metal bird spoke. "It seems we are addressing the wrong entity," it said. It pointed its beak at the parody. "What is your wish aboard our world?"

  "Go ram your steel foot up your copper bottom!"

  There was a pause for no more than half an instant. The bird machine seemed to be heating. "That is anatomically awkward. Is it a serious request?"

  The bird opened its beak, but this time Goody preempted it. "I am the leader of this mission," he said rapidly. "We have come from Xanth to fetch a female construction robot."

  "We appreciate the clarification," the goblin robot said. "What do you proffer in exchange?"

  "Oopsy," Hannah murmured.

  But Goody had negotiated trades before. "What are your needs?"

  "Information, of course."

  "We have a certain amount of that. What type of information do you prefer?"

  "News of other worlds, for our main database."

  "Would three individual case histories do?"

  "Yes."

  That caught Goody by surprise. He had been stalling for time while he cast about for something better to offer. "Then you shall have them, in exchange for one construction robot."

  "Agreed. But there may be a problem."

  Now came the kicker. "What problem?"

  "We are unable to ship a fully equipped and functioning mechanism to a downward world, because we lack substance there. We can provide only the program."

  Goody realized that this made sense. A solid machine might seem large here, but would be a tiny speck on Xanth. There needed to be a mechanism to expand it. "You mean instructions to build it? We wouldn't know how to use them."

  "If you provide a simple machine, and raw material, the program will construct the robot you specify."

  "How simple a machine?" Hannah asked.

  "A small lever. A wheel with axle. A heat source. An input/output module. A ceramic lens. Copper powder. A supply of iron."

  They consulted. "Probably we could get those things," Goody said uncertainly.

  "Fool!"

  Goody paused. "What's foolish about making the deal?"

  "How can soulless machines be fashioned from soul stuff, as everything here is? They're fooling you."

  "We lack souls, true," the goblin machine said. "But not everything here is soul stuff. Only the aspects of souled creatures like yourselves. We have programs instead. They guide us as your souls do you."

  "No souls," Hannah said. "That means no consciences."

  Nevertheless it seemed like the best deal. "Agreed."

  "Please come to the recording studio." The robots led the way to an open enclosure containing several chairs. "Please secure yourselves."

  There were flexible metal straps that fit over their laps, or over the feet of the birds. They followed the examples of the robots, and fastened themselves in.

  Then the enclosure took off. Suddenly they were sailing through the air, rising above the surface. The variegated surfaces of Robot World spread beneath them like an ugly tapestry. They zoomed to what might have been a huge building or a small city; it was hard to tell where one thing left off and another began, on this interconnected planet. They flew in a window or door and landed in the center of a circular amphitheater.

  "Proceed with your presentations," the goblin robot said.

  "Uh—"

  "Kitty got your tongue, bilge for brains?"

  "I think I have the idea," Hannah said. "Let's see if I can do it." She concentrated.

  A picture appeared on the spherical screen surrounding them. It showed a stork flying through the air, a bundle suspended from its bill. In a moment the scene filled in from the edges, and they seemed to be floating invisibly next to the moving bird.

  Goody was amazed. This was three-dimensional animation, evidently evoked from Hannah's thought. It was as real as it could be.

  The stork came to a village in the jungle, and glided down. It located a particular tent and dropped the bundle before its front flap, then winged away.

  The bundle bounced and fell open. A human baby was revealed, bawling lustily. A little girl, with a pink ribbon in her wisp of hair, upset about being bounced on the turf.

  A barbarian woman come out. "Look!" she exclaimed. "The baby has arrived!" She picked up the little girl and took her into the tent. "We'll call her Hannah!"

  This was the delivery of Hannah Barbarian! Goody was amazed all over again.

  The sequence continued, fast forwarding through the early years. It seemed that every member of the village lived only to go out, seek adventure, fight monsters, and defeat civilization wherever it was encountered. Hannah was an apt pupil, soon learning to swing her little sword hard enough to brush back the barbarian boys who sought to bully her. Soon (it seemed) she made her first foray on her own, going out to slay a small dragon who had steamed the toes of one of the village steeds.

  As a young adult she went on longer and fiercer adventures, developing her talent. After several years on an unusually challenging excursion she returned to the village—and was appalled. The villagers had become calm and satisfied, their wildness dissipated. In fact they were tame. Nothing she could say could rouse them. It seemed that a malign spell of civilization had been cast over the village.

  There was nothing to do but depart before the awful
satiety overcame her also. So she went out on her own, as a singleton barbarian wench, having adventures galore. Goody was amazed by the number and violence of them; she could have had a whole history book to herself. Until at last she got bored and made a pretext to see the Good Magician.

  Goody tuned out of the reprise of their recent adventures. Now he knew more about Hannah. But one thing bothered him, and as the presentation concluded he asked it: "Why didn't you ask the Good Magician for something to banish the spell on your village?"

  "Because I was too barbarian crazy to think of it."

  So she had wasted her chance for a relevant Answer. "I'm sorry," he said.

  "I'm not. This is a better adventure than whatever else I might have had. Maybe I'll find something for my village along the way."

  Now it was the parody's turn. Goody insisted on that because he was afraid that otherwise the obnoxious bird would renege.

  The peeve's scene opened out. This was a harpy's nest in a tree in the forest. An egg was just hatching, and the mother harpy was swearing a blue streak in pleasure. The streak overlapped the nest and dangled down to the ground, radiating blue. That attracted the attention of all the other harpies in the area, and they flocked in to witness the event.

  But when the shell cracked asunder and the chick emerged, what was their horror to see that it was not a harpy but a full-fledged bird. Recessive genes had fouled up the egg, and there was no human element.

  Not quite so, Goody realized as he watched. The parody had harpy parents, and harpies had distant human ancestry, therefore souls. So the peeve had a soul. And a voice. Two human elements that hardly registered ordinarily, because the voice was so negative.

  Naturally they promptly kicked the foul chick out of the nest. It bounced on the ground, peeping pitifully. It would have perished, had not an allegory wandered by, searching for meaning in obscure parallels, and mistaken it for a parable. It was actually a pretty poor excuse for a parable, in fact almost a parody. So the allegory gave it to a family of parodies, who raised it with their chicks. Thus it became a poor parody, and quite bitter about it. But it did learn to talk, and alleviated its ire by cursing all others around it. This tended to make it unpopular with the other parodies.