me, and I could tell him to turn the page, or whatever.”
“And any Mundanes in the area would pop their eyeballs, looking at the living doll,” Irene said. “If anyone does it, I’m the one.”
“So they can pop their eyes looking up your skirt,” the golem retorted, miffed.
“That may indeed be the solution,” Amolde said.
“Now wait a minute!” Irene cried.
“He means the messenger service,” Dor told her gently.
“Of course,” the centaur said. “Since we have ascertained that the aisle is narrow, it would be feasible to stand quite close while Dor remains well within the forward extension.”
Dor considered, and it did seem to be the best course. He had somehow thought he could just go into Mundania, follow King Trent’s trail by querying the terrain, and reach the King without much trouble. This temporal discontinuity, as the centaur put it, was hard to understand and harder to deal with, and the vicarious research the centaur proposed seemed fraught with hangups. But what other way was there? “We’ll try it,” he agreed. “In the morning.”
They settled down for the night, their second in Mundania. Smash and Grundy slept instantly; Dor and Irene had more trouble, and Arnolde seemed uncomfortably wide awake. “We are approaching direct contact with Mundane civilization,” the centaur said. “In a certain sense this represents the culmination of an impossible dream for me, almost justifying the personal damnation my magic talent represents. Yet I have had so many confusing intimations, I hardly know what to expect. This city could be too primitive to have a proper library. The denizens could for all we know practice cannibalism. There are so many imponderabilities.”
“I don’t care what they practice,” Irene said. “Just so long as I find my father.”
“Perhaps we should query the surroundings in the morning,” Arnolde said thoughtfully, “to ascertain whether suitable facilities exist here, before we venture any farther. Certainly we do not wish to chance discovery by the Mundanes unless we have excellent reason.”
“And we should ask where the best Mundane archivist is,” Irene agreed.
Dor drew a word in the dirt with one finger: ONESTI. He contemplated it morosely.
“This is relevant?” the centaur inquired, glancing at the word.
“It’s what King Trent told me,’ Dor said. “If ever I was in doubt, to proceed with honesty.”
“Honesty?” Amolde asked, his brow at the dirt.
“I think about that a lot when I’m in doubt,” Dor said. “I don’t like deceiving people, even Mundanes.”
Irene smiled tiredly. “Amolde, it’s the way Dor spells the word. He is the world’s champion poor speller. O N E S T I: Honesty.”
“ONESTI,” the centaur repeated, removing his spectacles to rub his eyes. “I believe I perceive it now. A fitting signature for a King.”
“King Trent’s a great King,” Dor agreed. “I know his advice will pull us through somehow.”
Amolde seemed almost to smile, as if finding Dor’s attitude peculiar. “I will sleep on that,” the centaur said. And he did, lying down on the dirt-scratched word.
In the morning, after some problems with food and natural functions in this semipublic locale, they set it up. The centaur dug out his collection of spells, each one sealed in a glassy little globe, and Dor stepped outside the aisle of magic while the spells were invoked. First the party became inaudible, then invisible; it looked as if the spot were empty. Dor gave them time to get through the unfeeling spell, then walked back onto the lot. He heard, saw, and felt nothing.
“But I can smell you,” he remarked. “Amolde has a slight equine odor, and Smash smells like a monster, and Irene is wearing perfume. Better clean yourselves up before we get into a building.”
Soon the smells faded, and after a moment Irene appeared, a short distance away. “Can you see me now?”
“I see you and hear you,” Dor said.
“Oh, good. I didn’t know how far out the magic went. I’m still the same to me.” She stepped toward him and vanished.
“You’ve gone again,” Dor said, hastening to the spot where she had been. “Can you perceive me?”
“Hey, you’re overlapping me!” she protested, appearing right up against him, so that he almost stumbled.
“Well, I can’t perceive you,” he said. “I mean, now I can, but I couldn’t before. Can you see the others when you’re outside the aisle?”
She looked. “They’re gone! We can see and hear you all the time, but now-“
“So, you’ll know when I can see you by when you can’t see them.”
She leaned forward, and her face disappeared, reminding him of the Gorgon. Then she drew back. “I could see them then. I’m really in the enchantment, aren’t I?”
“You’re enchanting,” he agreed.
She smiled and leaned forward to kiss him-but her face disappeared and he felt nothing.
“Now I have to go find a library and a good archivist,” he said, disgruntled, as she reappeared. “If you’re with me, stay away from me.”
She laughed. “I’m with you. Just don’t try to catch me outside the aisle.” And of course that was what he should have done, if he really wanted to kiss her. And he did want to-but he didn’t want to admit it.
She walked well to the side of him, staying clear of the enchantment. “No sense you getting lost.”
They walked on into the city. There were many cars in the streets, all zooming rapidly to the intersections, where they screeched to stops, waited a minute with irate growls and constant ejections of smoke from their posteriors, then zoomed in packs to the next intersections. They seemed to have only two speeds: zoom and stop.
There were people inside the cars, exactly the way Grundy had described with the demon vehicles, but they never got out. It was as if the people had been swallowed whole and were now being digested.
Because the cars were as large as centaurs and moved at a constant gallop when not stopped, Dor was wary of them and tried to avoid them. But it was impossible; he had to cross the road sometime. He remembered how the nefarious Gap Dragon of Xanth lurked for those foolish enough to cross the bottom of the Gap; these cars seemed all too similar. Maybe there were some that had not yet consumed people and were traveling hungry, waiting to catch someone like Dor. He saw one car stopped by the side of the street with its mouth wide open like that of a dragon; he avoided it nervously.
The strangest thing about it was that its guts seemed to be all in that huge mouth-steaming tubes and tendons and a disk-shaped tongue.
Oddest of all, it had no teeth. Maybe that was why it took so long to digest the people.
He walked to a corner. “How do I get across?” he asked.
“You wait for a light to stop the traffic,” the street informed him with a contemptuous air of dust and car fumes. “Then you run-don’t walk across before they clip you, If you’re lucky. Where have you been all your life?”
“In another realm,” Dor said. He saw one of the lights the street described. It hung above the intersection and wore several little visors pointing each way. All sorts of colors flashed malevolently from it, in all sorts of directions. Dor couldn’t understand how it made the car stop. Maybe the lights had some kind of stun-spell, or whatever it was called here. He played it safe by asking the light to tell him when it was proper to cross.
“Now,” the light said, flashing green from one face and red from another.
Dor started across. A car honked like a sea monster and squealed like a sea-monster victim, almost running over Dor’s leading foot.
“Not that way, idiot!” the light exclaimed, flashing an angry red. “The other way! With the green, not the red! Haven’t you ever crossed a street before?”
“Never,” Dor admitted. Irene had disappeared; she must have reentered the magic aisle to consult with the others. Maybe she found it safer within the spell zone; apparently the cars were unable to threaten her there.
“Wait till I tell you, then cross the way I tell you,” the light said, blinking erratically. “I don’t want any blood in my intersection!”
Dor waited humbly. “Now,” the light said. “Walk straight ahead, keeping an even pace. Fast. You don’t have all day, only fifteen seconds.”
