Swell Foop (23 page)

"Yes," Jaylin agreed, evidently relieved.

They resumed their trek downslope. They saw other winged centaurs, but left them alone. They already knew what they needed to, and it was reassuring.

They came to a bucket. It seemed to be quite ordinary, and empty. On its side were printed the words KICK ME.

"If that's what it wants," Sim squawked. He advanced on the pail. He drew back one foot.

"Don't do it!" Jaylin cried, leaping to intercept him. They fell together in an apparent tangle of eight legs, four arms, and four wings.

"Squawk?" Sim asked as they untangled.

"It's another pun! An ugly one. To kick the bucket—"

Che caught on. "Is to die!"

"That's right," Breanna agreed. "You don't want to kick the bucket before your time. Especially not here."

Justin nodded. "We have ascertained that the Void is not necessarily death. But the bucket may be a shortcut to that state, for those who become tired of stasis. An ugly pun, indeed."

"Squawk," Sim agreed.

Che felt weak-kneed again. Sim had almost committed suicide while the others watched. "Thank you, Jaylin," he said. "You have no idea how much mischief you spared us." They had become accustomed to all living things being friendly to the Simurgh's precious chick, but the bucket did not share that oath.

"Well, it was just that there have been so many puns, I sort of expected one," Jaylin said.

"So nobody kicks that bucket," Breanna said firmly. "Let's move on."

The pleasant slope led down to a deeper funnel-shaped region, its sides steepening. They were reaching the awful center of the Void.

Jaylin stopped walking. "I don't want to make trouble, but could we—maybe try walking back some, just to be sure we can?"

"This makes eminent sense," Justin agreed, and she flashed him a smile. She was still a winged centaur, but her face was unchanged.

They turned back, and had no difficulty walking back up the slope. The Ring of Void was still working.

They paused, then resumed the downward trek.

Something came rolling down from behind them. They hastily made way, and it passed, accelerating as it did. It dropped into the central hole. There was no sound, and no sight of it. It was gone.

"For sure," Breanna muttered nervously.

But what choice did they have?

"I don't want to be—" Jaylin started.

"Go ahead and be," Breanna said. "I'm as pale around the gills as you are, right now."

"I was thinking—maybe if we all held hands—"

"For sure!"

Che agreed. They needed the reassurance of each other's proximity. They knew intellectually that the Ring of Void would protect them, but emotionally they remained in deep doubt. They formed a circle around the deadly pit and extended their arms. Sim would be extending his wings, and the night colt—

"Two of you take hold of Putre," Che said. They took hold, then let themselves slide forward into the black hole.

There was a feeling of enormous compression and simultaneous velocity. They dropped down, down, ever down into the depth. The universe seemed to whirl around them, dizzyingly stable.

Then they were at the bottom, or rather the center. Things were floating all around. "Are we all here?" Che inquired mentally, as he seemed to have no voice.

"I am here," Justin's reply came. It was a thought rather than a voice.

"Me too," Breanna's thought came, tinged with female.

"Present." That was Cynthia.

"Here." Jaylin.

"Squawk."

"Neigh."

They all laughed, though it was just a round of pleasant feeling.

"I suspect we are without our bodies at the moment," Che thought. "But we are functional. Now we must locate the Swell Foop."

"So let's assemble the Ring Tube," Breanna thought. "Here is my—oops."

"It is your Ring we want at the moment, not your private parts, however delectable they may be," Justin thought primly.

"Oh, shut up, lover! I mean I can't find my Ring."

"Just look on your little finger," Cynthia thought. "It should be, um—where is my finger?"

"Where is mine?" Jaylin thought, alarmed.

"And my claw?" Sim squawked/thought.

Soon it was clear, in a foggy way, that none of them could find their Rings, because they had no extremities on which to wear them. That was, it seemed, one of the unforeseen consequences of being bodiless.

"I believe we are in a quantum state," Che thought. "We are randomly mixed together, our material beings overlapping."

"Overlap your own female," Breanna snapped. "The only one I want overlapping me is Justin."

"He means that the rules of physics are different under extreme compression," Justin thought. "We are all occupying the same point. We are merged with each other, and our Rings."

"Then how the bleep can we line them up?"

"I am not sure. Perhaps we can align our bodies."

"Then who will be left to sight through the tube?" Cynthia thought.

"I don't want anybody sighting through my tubes." Breanna objected.

"I fear this is not feasible," Justin thought. "It seems the rules of engagement have changed in the quantum state."

"No they haven't!" Breanna flared. "We're still getting married the moment this is done!"

Someone sent a wash of humor.

"Perhaps we can operate without the tube," Che thought, "and perform a physical search."

"Of whom?" Breanna demanded. "Nobody's going to search my body but—"

"Or a mental search," Justin thought quickly. "Whatever way is feasible in this state."

"I'm not too eager to have anyone snooping through my mind, either," Breanna thought.

"I fear you are not in your right mind at the moment, dear girl."

"Is that so? Well, you can just take your—"

"She feels hysterical," Jaylin thought nervously.

"Who is hysterical?" Breanna's thought screamed.

"This calls for a firm measure," Cynthia decided. "Kiss her, Justin."

"Gladly." There followed a sensation of sheer ecstasy surrounded by overlapping quantum hearts.

"For sure," Breanna thought blissfully as she sank out of sight.

"You never kissed me like that," Cynthia thought to Che.

"Well, it's hard to caress your front side and your back side simultaneously."

"You could if you really tried."

There was a mental squawk and titter as Sim and Jaylin tried to visualize centaurs doing that.

"Neigh."

Putre was right: They had to stop fooling around and start searching. They agreed to spread out mentally and check all the objects their minds encountered. There should be some special quality to the Swell Foop that identified it.

They started the search. There turned out to be all manner of junk bobbling around them.

"I found a foop!" Breanna's thought came.

"So soon," Che thought. "Then we can depart."

"I found another," Sim's squawk-thought came.

"Here's another," Cynthia's thought came.

"How many can there be?" Che demanded. "There has been no indication that there is more than one."

"We need the Swell Foop," Justin's thought came. "It must be hidden among endless ordinary foops, which are probably worthless."

"You are surely correct," Che agreed. "The Swell Foop must have generated echoes of itself in the quantum state. We may simply have to bring all of them out, and sort them outside the Void."

But it soon was apparent that there were hundreds or thousands of foops. Apparently most of the soulless things that fell into the Void became foops. They would not be able to take all of them.

They paused for thought. This was an unexpected difficulty, though Che had not known what to expect. They could not search forever, because the Demon Earth needed to be rescued soon. But how could they find the right one?

"Dam!" Putre's thought exclaimed.

"That's 'damn' if you want to be technical," Breanna's thought muttered. "Not a fitting word for a colt your age."

"No," Che thought. "He means dam—a female parent."

"A mother horse," Cynthia agreed.

"Could it be—?" Justin thought.

"Mare Imbri!" Jaylin's thought came. "Wasn't she lost in the Void?"

"She did lose her body here," Che agreed. "Because she had half a soul, she survived as a day mare, and later became a tree nymph."

"Dam," Putre repeated. "I know you! Answer me."

"What you have found must be her body husk," Justin thought. "Without a soul, it evidently has no meaning here."

"A soul!" Jaylin thought. "Putre, she gave you part of her soul. Can you give part of your soul back?"

"I will try."

After what might have been a moment, in a less timeless realm, there came a new thought. "Oh, thank you! I have meaning again."

"Dam—don't you know me? I am your foal!"

"I had no foal."

"You lost your body before you had a foal," Che thought quickly. "Your half soul survived, and later had a foal with the Day Horse. This is he, after you entered the Void."

"I am amazed," Imbri's thought came. "But I recognize this soul fragment. It is indeed from Chem Centaur, who gave it to me."

"My grandam," Che thought proudly. "Her soul regenerated, and my dam Chex had a full soul, and my soul is full too."

"I have so much to catch up on," Imbri thought. "Not that it matters."

"It does matter!" Che thought. "You deserve to know."

"We can never leave the Void, so it doesn't matter."

"But we can leave! As soon as we find the Swell Foop."

"I know where that is. It is the only foop of any value."

"Find it for us, and we will take you out of here," Che thought, and felt the emphatic agreement of the others. Especially Putre.

"Why, it is right here. Do any of you have hands?"

"Yes, two of us are centaurs, and three are human."

"Here." Something came into his mental space. He knew immediately that it was the Swell Foop, for it had an aura of grandeur.

"Then we must leave," Che thought, exhilarated. "Take hold, folks, and make sure to include both horses."

They took hold, and when the new circle was complete, Jaylin willed the Ring of Void to lift them out. They moved outward from the ball of the center, gaining velocity, and shot upward. They found themselves standing in a ring around the Void-hole, holding hands or grasping fur.

"Continue on up and out," Che said, quickly letting go to catch the thing that threatened to drop back into the hole. He mustn't lose that!

They climbed without difficulty, eight creatures. The fair flowered slope beckoned enticingly, but they did not relent. The vague border curtain was near.

Then suddenly they were out of it and back at the verge of the region of water. Their natural shapes were back: two centaurs, three human beings, one bird, and two black horses. They had made it—with the Swell Foop. And Mare Imbri!

Justin gazed at the object Che Centaur held. Now that they were safely out of the Void, it looked exactly like a warty rock.

"This is it?" Jaylin asked, sounding disappointed.

"It surely is," Che answered. He set it on the ground next to the lake. "Touch it."

Jaylin touched it. "Ooo, it's swell!"

"Precisely. But I'm at a slight loss as to how to use it."

The others touched the rock, and agreed that it was definitely the Foop. But no one had any idea how to use it.

"The Six Rings of Xanth are supposed to control it," Cynthia reminded them.

"Perhaps we should depart the Region of Water and find a more secure place to consider," Justin suggested.

"For sure," Breanna agreed for all of them.

Jaylin mounted Putre, and the party moved rapidly out of the Regions and south across the Gap Chasm, and on to Castle Zombie. There they hesitated.

"Mare Imbrium," Justin said. "We are very glad to have you back with us. But there is a complication."

A dreamlet cloud appeared over her head. In it was the head of a black-haired human woman. "I know," that woman said. "Putre has caught me up with what happened after I fell into the Void. Not only do I have a foal, I have become a tree nymph."

"I think this will make it difficult for you to return to your prior situation," Justin said gently.

"That's right!" Breanna agreed. "How can there be two of you?"

"They should get together and talk it over," Sim squawked. "They can decide what is best."

The others circled a glance around, nodding. Sim was indeed a very bright bird.

"What of Putre?" Jaylin asked.

"He should go with his dam," Justin said. "He found her. There is no further need of him to locate the Ring of Void, or to convey you there."

"I guess that's right," Jaylin agreed. She went to hug the colt. "I'll miss you, horseface. You really helped me."

A little heart floated up. Then the two horses departed, and Jaylin wiped away a tear.

"You can see him again, after we're through with the Foop," Justin said.

"In Mundania?"

He had no answer for that. He wished he had not spoken.

"We'd better go inside and catch up Jonathan and Millie," Breanna said. "And figure out the Foop."

Soon they were in the throes of it. "Six Rings and a rock," Breanna said. "Who would have thought they'd be so hard to put together?"

"Perhaps if we knew what the Foop does, we would know how to invoke it," Cynthia said.

"Considering the power of the Six Rings," Che said, "the Foop must be of a greater magnitude. It is hard to conceive of anything in Xanth that would require more than the control of all the Regions and the creatures and things within them."

"Well, our mission is to rescue the Demon Earth, so it must have power beyond Xanth," Justin said. "In fact, if only another Demon can have abducted D. Earth, it must have power of the Demons themselves."

"That makes a conceivable need," Che agreed. "Each of the major Demons has equivalent power, and we have seen how all the magic of the Land of Xanth is mere trace leakage from the Demon Xanth. This thing must be potentially stronger than the Demon Xanth himself."

"So maybe we should ask him," Jaylin said.

There was a silence. Then Justin broke it. "We could do that, but he might not like the idea of our using the Foop."

"A rival power," Che agreed. "It does seem better that we discover this on our own."

They studied the stone. "What are those warts?" Breanna asked.

"Stones are seldom regular," Che said. "They are fragments of larger processes. I assume the projections are random."

"Random can be dangerous," Sim squawked. "We had to deal with the Random Factor."

"Why would anything about an object of this potential power be random?" Breanna asked.

They considered again. Then Sim put it together: "I note six projections," he squawked. "We have six Rings. They must have to be touching the Foop to control it."

"One Ring per wart," Breanna said. "It works for me."

They took off their Rings and tried placing them on the projections. Each one fit perfectly. Obviously that was where they were supposed to go.

"Now what?" Cynthia asked.

"Maybe we have to invoke it, the way we do the individual Rings," Jaylin said. "Maybe just thinking what we want."

Breanna held her spread hands over the rock. "Rise, Foop," she intoned dramatically.

Nothing happened.

"Is it possible," Justin asked, "that there needs to be a particular order? That is, each Ring must be on a designated knob?"

"It sure as bleep is," Jaylin said. Then, seeing the other glance reprovingly at her, she apologized. "Sorry about the bad word. It just slipped out. What I mean is, that with a computer in Mundania you have to have everything just exactly right. You can't change the order to suit you. This must be like that. Maybe it's like a code, to be sure nobody gets it activated by accident."

"But if there's a set order," Che asked, "why do the knobs accept the wrong Rings? We can't put the Rings on the wrong people."

"That must be part of the protection," Jaylin said. "It's like a secret code, and you have to know it to get it right."

"But we
don't
know it."

"So I guess we have to crack the code. Then we'll know it for next time."

The others nodded. They started changing the positions of the Rings. It was surprising how many patterns there could be for six Rings with six knobs.

A swirl of smoke formed. "We're getting something!" Breanna said.

Then it formed into the Demoness Metria. "What's up, doctors?" she inquired, her outfit becoming almost but not quite translucent, so as to compel the eyes of the males in the party without quite cauterizing them. It was evidently a fine art; Justin appreciated the precision of it without quite being able to remove his own eyes from the sight.

Breanna looked as if she were stifling a bleep-loaded outburst. Justin knew why: Metria was normally mischief, and this was a very important project. If they told her to go away, she would remain to pester them. But if they didn't, she might remain anyway. The question was how to get her to depart without alerting her to the fact that something extremely interesting was occurring.

"We are merely contemplating this dull rock," Justin said. That was technically accurate.

The demoness turned, showing more silhouette than a normal woman could manage in a lifetime. "Say, that looks just like a foop."

"A smelly what?" Breanna asked.

"A piece of filth, dirt, dung, muck, feces—"

"Poop?"

"Whatever," the demoness agreed crossly. "A smell poop." She started to fade out. But then she reversed. "Hey, wait—that wasn't the word! I said foop, not poop. What are you doing with a foop?"

"Bleep!" Breanna swore. "It almost worked."

Metria looked at her. "Are you trying to get rid of me, or only pretending to try to get rid of me?"

"Does it matter?"

"No. Obviously you folk are into something interesting here. You might as well tell me, on the off chance that I'll find it boring and fade out."

Breanna shot a desperate glance at Justin. He was able to receive it because he had managed to avert his eyes from the demoness when she faded and was keeping them clear now. It was a struggle, because his eyeballs were straining to return to the barely showing cake and buns.

"It is indeed a foop," he said. "We are trying to determine what it may be good for."

"That's easy. It controls demons. Since nobody in his right mind wants to do that, I'll just remove it and throw it away, saving you the trouble." She reached down toward the stone, her décolletage flexing dangerously.

"No!" Justin and Breanna cried together.

The demoness paused. "Do you care to come clean now? I called your fake."

"Our what?" Justin asked.

"Pretense, dupe, counterfeit, dare, challenge—"

"Bluff?"

"Whatever. Tell me all about it, or I'll steal the Foop and throw it away."

"This is—this is—" Justin sputtered, unable to get the word out.

"Blackmail?" the demoness inquired sweetly, her short skirt becoming scantier.

"Whatever!"

"I guess we'd better tell her," Breanna said reluctantly.

"Very well," Justin agreed, though he would have preferred to utter a brush-scorching expletive. "This is not just any foop—it is the Swell Foop."

For once they saw the demoness aghast. Her clothing became entirely opaque. "The Swell Foop! You actually got it? I thought that was an untamed quack pursuit."

"A what?"

"A feral ugly-duck hunt. One quarter of an inch off-center."

"A wild goose?"

"Whatever! Have you any idea how dangerous that thing is?"

"No. Do you?"

"No. But it hasn't been used in centuries."

"So what were you saying about a foop controlling demons? Does the Swell Foop do that?"

"Of course. It controls Demons. You know, the major ones, big
D
's, like the Demon Xanth." She frowned. "If I may get serious a moment, you don't want to mess with that one."

"It is not our choice," Justin said.

"I suppose it isn't. But you are entering treacherous waters."

"It's weird seeing you serious," Breanna said.

"It's weird being near the Swell Foop."

"So how does it work?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know!" Justin exploded. "You said—"

"I said it was dangerous. I did not say I knew how to operate it. No demon does, of course. Otherwise we'd turn it permanently off."

"Really?"

"No. No demon can touch it."

"But you threatened to steal it and throw it away."

"That was a bluff, even for a regular foop. They are immune from demon molestation." Then she reconsidered. "However, I might stop you from using it, if I freaked you out." Her clothing began to turn glassy.

"Metria, this is serious business," Justin told her sternly. "If you don't want to help, then kindly fade out."

"Spoilsport." Her clothing opaqued again. "A demon girl just wants to have fun."

They returned their attention to the Foop. "How will we know when we have the right combination?" Jaylin asked.

"We shall have to give it a command each time we change the Rings," Justin said. "When it responds, then we'll know."

They tried a combination. "Swell Foop, rise," Justin said. To no avail.

"It occurs to me that we may be trying the wrong testing procedure," Che said. "The Foop may not do things to itself, but rather it must affect demons."

The others nodded. "Then Metria can indeed be of assistance," Justin said. "If the Foop makes her do something not of her own choosing—"

"How can we tell?" Breanna asked. "She may choose to humor us."

"It is a risk we shall have to take."

"I'll cooperate," Metria said. "Because this is interesting."

"Hold on," Cynthia said. "If we try things on her, and they work, it may simply be because she is cooperating, not because of the Foop."

"Excellent point," Justin said. "Metria, you must help us by being completely perverse. Don't do anything we ask you to, unless you are compelled."

The demoness smiled. "This may be fun."

Justin tried, with the Foop Rings the same as they were. "Demoness, turn around."

"No way," Metria said.

They tried another combination. "Turn."

"No."

They tried another. "Turn."

"Go jump."

Justin, uncertain whether she was teasing them, was becoming quietly pained. They had thought they had success when they got the Foop; now failure was looming. He tried another combination. "Turn."

"Ouch!"

All of them were startled. "What's the matter?" Justin asked.

"I got a sudden pain in my posterior. But I'm not turning."

She was starting to be truly uncooperative. He hoped they found the right combination soon.

Breanna touched the Foop. "I'm disgusted. We're not getting anywhere."

"You and me both," Metria said, turning mottled gray. "We're all wasting our time."

"I came all the way here to Xanth, and braved the Void, for nothing?" Jaylin asked sorrowfully. She touched the Foop. "For this dull stone?"

"The thought makes me cry," Metria said, and bright tears flowed down her face.

Justin suspected that they were being mocked. He tried a new combination. "Turn."

"No, it's your turn."

Several combinations later, they still had no results.

Then Sim thought of something. "For a moment there, we had emotions," he squawked. "And the demoness shared those emotions."

A glance of sheer amazed surmise circled them. "Emotions!" Che exclaimed. "It generates Demon emotions!"

"And little
d
demon emotions," Metria agreed, surprised. "I'm excited."

"And you're faking it," Breanna said. "This isn't that setting."

"Curses! Foiled again."

"But is that the same as controlling demons?" Justin asked.

"I believe it is," Che said. "Human beings are ruled by their emotions, and even centaurs have been known to be strongly influenced."