Xone Of Contention (2 page)

She looked at him “What do you mean, didn't mean to?” she demanded with cute severity “You rapped me on the noggin with your knuckle.”

"I—I thought it was just a picture I was knocking on the door. You know—hitting the site I never thought it would be literal.”

She stared at him “You're Mundane!”

He was taken aback "I confess I am. You aren’t?”

“Of course not. Not any more. Now I'm Xanthian. In real life. I mean this is just my Magic Mesh Leaf. How did you get into the O Xone?”

“There was a sign, saying something about a spell and a penalty and my foot began to hurt, and I whistled—and then I was here. So I did what it said, and looked you up.”

Breanna seemed mollified "Okay. Let's start at the top I'm Breanna of the Black Wave. My talent is to see in blackness. Who are you and what's yours?”

I'm Edsel of—of Mundania, and I guess my talent is to cruise the GigaGrid. Or to make droll jokes. But I never found this—this Magic Mesh before.

“Of course not; it's barred to most Mundanes.” The picture considered. It was a picture; just her head and shoulders, animate but flat, like a TV image. Yet her eyes looked at him, and she was responsive to his words. “You must have found a glitch. A spell that wasn't programmed. What exactly did you do?”

“Well, 1 whistled Like this.” He made a voiced whistle.

The picture wavered and became three dimensional. Breanna's lips pursed. "That's magic, all right; it just enhanced my sight.”

“You mean your site?”

She smiled. “That too. maybe. I mean, suddenly I see you rounded instead of flat. Am I the same to you?”

“Yes. But you're still just a head and shoulders. I can't see your rounded portions, though I'd like to.”

She flashed another smile, appreciating the implied humorous compliment. “For sure. That's all there is of me in the Leaf. I mean, how could the real me be here?”

“I don't know. The real me seems to be here, though that seems impossible.”

“For sure. We'll have to patch that glitch. But you don't seem bad for a Mundane.”

“Well. I hope I'm not bad even if my marriage is patchy.” He hadn't meant to say that; he was a little unsettled.

“Too bad you're not in Xanth. Marriages are forever, there.”

“I know. My friend Dug went to Xanth and met Kim there, and they have a happy marriage.”

Breanna's eyes widened. “You know Dug and Kim Mundane?”

"Sure. I'm in business with them. I was the one who first put Dug onto Xanth. The Xanth game. I mean; I didn't know he'd actually cross over.”

“Yeah, he was in the Companions game. I wish I could have been a Companion ”

“Oh? Why weren't you?”

“I was too young then, only nine. Anyway, the Black Wave had just come into Xanth then; we didn't know our way around. Sherlock went with Dug and found a good place by Ogre Chobee for us to settle in. So I guess I can't complain. But it sure sounds like fun.”

“It sure does.” he agreed. “Well, if I'm ever in Xanth, you can be my Companion and show me around.” He felt a trace of guilt as he spoke, because he was flirting with this cute girl, and as a married man he shouldn't.

“I can. That's great!”

“Only I can't get into Xanth,” he said with regret. “Dug and Kim go there only when invited. There was some kind of trial. Something about a big bird, I think.”

“Roxanne Roc,” Breanna agreed. “She won. She's just about the most important bird in Xanth now, except for the Simurgh. That's another great moment of history I missed. Bleep. I'd sure like to be in on a Great Moment. Well, I did get to go to Jenny's wedding.” Then her picture paused, orienting on him with wild surmise. “Say—maybe we can do each other some good. Maybe you can visit Xanth, and I can be your Companion and show you around, and maybe that will be a great adventure and accomplish something nice, like patching up your marriage.”

Edsel realized that Breanna was a creature of dreams. But her enthusiasm was contagious. “I'd like that. But I don't see how.”

“I just got this wonderful wild notion. Here we are talking in the Interface. If we could stretch it a little farther, and exchange places, then maybe you'd be in Xanth and I'd be in Mundania. I wouldn't mind visiting it though I sure wouldn't want to stay.” Then she reconsidered. “Well, maybe not you and me changing places, exactly. Maybe I could switch with your wife, and you could switch with my boyfriend Justin.”

“Justin?”

“Justin Tree. He used to be a tree—well, he was a man first, then a tree, then we met. and now we're betrothed but we can't marry because I'm too young. We can't even smooch much, because I'm not supposed to know the Adult Conspiracy. I hate that! I mean, what's the point in making him convert early to a young man—he took some youth elixir— if we can't do anything? It's driving me crazy.”

“I think I know the feeling,” Edsel said, though he hardly understood all of what she was saying.

“So maybe if Justin and I could switch with you folk, and get into Mundania for a while, where there's not much enforcement of the Conspiracy, we could at least go from necking to petting. And you folk could do whatever you wanted, in Xanth, and your marriage wouldn't be in trouble, because marriages never are.”

This was surely sheer foolishness, but it was wickedly tempting. “I'd do it. if there were a way.”

“I'm thinking there could be a way. With the right connection. If nobody objected.” She cocked her head "Do you think sixteen is too young?”

He knew what was on her mind. “I was sixteen when I got together with Pia, and she was fifteen. A girl can be pretty mature at fifteen, and moreso thereafter."

“For sure!” she agreed happily. “And Justin's not young at all. He's about ninety nine. I think.”

He thought he had misheard. “Nineteen?”

“Ninety nine,” she said carefully. “But he was a tree most of that time. I told you. But now he's been youthened to nineteen, so he'll be twenty one when I'm eighteen. We think that's about right. But he's got these grandfatherly reservations about things. You know, about touching girls. I figure if I can just get him safely alone for a week or so, I can bash down those barriers.” She glanced at him again. “Do you think so?”

“Uh. that depends. If—”

“Oh, right, you can't see the rest of me. Well, it's proportional. Especially when I take off my clothes.”

She did have adult notions. As Pia had had, at that age. “Then if he's got the body of a nineteen year old male, and you're sixteen, and proportional, you should be able to handle him in about three minutes.”

She laughed. “Yeah. That's what I figure. When I get the chance. Anyway, here's how: physical travel between Xanth and Mundania is difficult, unless you have a special pass. Oh, I mean you can do it, but you're liable to come out in some other time or place and be lost. But exchanging bodies—I think that's feasible.”

“Exchanging bodies?” he asked somewhat blankly.

“You're a bit slow on the uptake, aren't you,” she remarked without rancor. “If I switch with your wife, and you switch with Justin, then the two of you would be in Xanth. You'd be in our bodies, but you'd still be you. And you could do what you wanted to. So could we.”

“Oh. Yes. That could be interesting ” In fact, as he considered it, it seemed more than interesting. If he could embrace Breanna, knowing it was really Pia, so he wasn't being unfaithful... His thought trailed into an ellipsis with a potentially infinite number of dots. Some of them were white dots, like Pia; some were brown, like Breanna.

“So let's see about it. We'll need some magic to handle it, but I think I know whom to check with. I'll have to go out of the O-Xone a moment, though.”

“What does the O stand for?”

“Other. I think. Because UN neither here nor there. It's the interface between Xanth and Mundania, a halfway zone. I'm on duty because I remember some about Mundania. so can help folk like you, though we haven't been set up long and you're the first, and you're not even a Character.”

“A what?”

“A Character. Xanth folk come here to the O-Xone and pretend to be Mundanes, and I guess Mundanes try to pretend to be Xanthians, mostly in their X-Xone, and maybe soon they can meet halfway. When we get it organized. Sean's working on it.”

“Who?”

“Sean Baldwin. He's Mundane, but he's with Willow, who's Xanthian. She's a winged elf, actually. Sometimes he has to stay in Mundania, and she has to stay in Xanth, so they can't be together all the time, so they want a connection, and maybe this will be it.”

Breanna tended to provide more information than he could assimilate immediately, but it did help some. He returned to basics. “This business of exchanging bodies—I'm still not sure exactly how that works.”

“Yeah, I guess you ought to try it. Maybe you should step into a picture.”

“Do what?”

“Just walk on down to one of the scenes, and think yourself into it, and you'll get a sample. That's part of what the O-Xone is all about: sampling the other side. It'll give you a feel for it, though it's really illusion.”

“Illusion?”

She frowned. “You are slow. Here in the O-Xone the magic's not complete, and illusion's cheap, so we use it a lot. I've got to go check with Nimby, so you take a break in a picture, and we'll meet here again when we're both done. Okay?”

“Uh, okay.” he agreed.

The picture lost animation. It was just a picture, again instead of a video.

He turned and walked on down the hall, looking at the other pictures. They were of various fantasy scenes, each painted on a large leaf. One was a fancy castle, with a moat around it and fruit trees beside it, labeled CASTLE ROOGNA. Another was a monstrous gulf, labeled GAP CHASM. Another was a group of centaurs. That made him pause. The males were muscular in their human aspects, with large bows slung across their backs, while the females were—extremely well endowed. They wore no clothing on their bodies, not even halters. Fascinating! But he wasn't ready to tackle anything like that, so he moved on until he came to a scene of a deep, quiet forest. There was a squirrel in the foreground. ordinary except for one thing: it had wings. A flying squirrel, of course.

That should do. But how did he get into that body, even in illusion? There didn't seem to be any instructions. Breanna had assumed he knew how, forgetting how “slow” he was about such things. Think himself into it, as she had suggested?

“I am a squirrel.” he said tentatively. Nothing happened. “A winged squirrel.” Still nothing.

He stared into the picture, pondering. Did he need to hum-whistle to invoke the magic? He tried that, and the picture seemed to shimmer and expand, but he still wasn't in it. The winged squirrel was still there, with a dark trail wending into the background.

Then, irrelevantly, he remembered a song. It was about a young man who faced a difficult trip through a forest, yet he anticipated it with joy. He began to hum it, thinking the words. “Though the path is long and dark, rocky steep and narrow. Though the wood is dark and cold, this brings me no sorrow.” Because in that woodland lived his darling loved one. Edsel was married, but he still liked romantic situations. He pictured Pia in that wood, as lovely as she had been at sixteen.

Then he was in the scene. The forest was suddenly huge around him. He took a step, faltered, and spread his wings for balance. He was the flying squirrel! Could he really fly? It seemed worth a try.

He faced in the direction of a glade, spread his wings, ran on his hind feet, flapped—and was airborne! He pumped his wings frantically, trying to maintain balance while gaining elevation, but overdid it and stalled out. He dropped, landing on his tail. No damage done, fortunately.

But his clumsy effort had attracted attention. Suddenly a monstrous shape was entering the glade. It was a fire-breathing dragon!

Edsel panicked. He got all four feet under him, folded his wings, and scooted for the nearest underbrush. A jet of flame passed over his head, and he realized that the dragon had expected him to take flight, so had aimed high. But because he was really a land-bound creature, he had stayed on land—and maybe saved himself a frying.

However, the dragon wasn't through. It was reorienting, and this time it wouldn't miss. Brush would not protect him from that flamethrower.

Edsel scrambled for the nearest tree, getting behind it just as the flame set the brush on fire.

How could he escape? He peered up the trunk of the tree. The top seemed worlds away, and he didn't trust his claws to hold on, for all that he was a squirrel. The dragon could toast him long before he got out of range. He heard the ground shaking as it tramped toward the tree

He would have to make a break for it on the ground. Maybe if he ran toward the dragon, that would surprise it, and he could get by it and beyond it before it could turn around. Then maybe he could find a hole in the ground or something.

A giant foot crashed down on one side of the tree. Edsel turned to the other side—and there was the dragon's awful snoot. He was trapped before he even got started.

“I want out of here!” he cried. And there he was back in the hall, standing before the picture, which now showed a dragon crouching by a tree. His heart was pounding. That had been one close escape.

If this was illusion, he wasn't sure he would care to try the reality. He'd better tell Breanna the deal was off. He walked down the hall toward her Leaf.

Then, bothered by something, he turned back to the picture. The dragon was now looking around, evidently having lost the squirrel. That was what Edsel had wanted to know: that the squirrel had escaped. He had not led it into a frying or chomping. He turned away again, relieved.

As he approached the Leaf, it came to life. “Oh, there you are,” Breanna's face said. “Did you enjoy yourself?”

“Not exactly,” he said, abashed.

“I thought maybe you'd try the one with the mermaids in the pool. I hear they can be very friendly with human visitors.”

“I didn't see that one,” he said, with real regret. He could have entered a scene with friendly mermaids? He had heard it said that a mermaid had all the good parts of a woman, and none of the bad parts. As if there were any bad parts.