over the place when given the freedom to do so. The klaxon had sounded to warn all crushable parties that motion was commencing, so they could either get out of the way or pick their favorite saiiishin-snot. It all made a sort of violent sense, his Eye Queue informed him. He liked this city better than ever.
Now the building blocks were bouncing back, converging on him. Smash moved again, avoiding what could be a crushing experience. He found himself in a new open space, with another anchorage slot.
But the blocks were moving more quickly now, as if getting warmed up. Because they were big, he needed a certain amount of time to run between them. If they speeded up much more, he would not have time to clear before they clanged. That could be awkward.
'Well, brain, what do you say to this?' he asked challengingly. 'Can you outsmart two buildings that plan to catch me and squish me flat?'
His vine-corrupted brain, thus challenged, rose to the occasion. 'Get in the pit,' it told him.
Smash thought this was crazy. But already the brass was moving, sounding off with its tune of
compression, and he had to act. He leaped into the pit as the blank metal face of the building charged him.
Too late, it occurred to him, or to his Eye Queue-it became difficult at times to distinguish ogre-mind from vine-mind-that he could be crushed when the bolt dropped down to anchor the building. But that should happen only when the building was finished traveling and wanted to settle down for a rest. He would try to be out by then. If he failed-well, squishing was an ogrish kind of demise.
It was dark there as the metal underbody of the building slid across. He felt slightly claustrophobic-another weakness of intelligence, since a true ogre never worried about danger or consequence. What would happen if the building did not move off?
Then light flashed down from above. Smash blinked and discovered that the center of the building was hollow, glowing from the inner walls. He had found his way inside!
He scrambled up and stood on the floor, still holding his ball of string. The building was still moving, but there was no way it could crush him now. The building floor covered everything except the square where the anchorage hole would be when it lay at anchor, so he could simply ride along with it.
He looked about-and spied an army of brass men and women, each individual fully formed, complete with brass facial features, hair, and clothing-the men fully clothed, the women less so. But they were statues, erected on platforms that, like the floor, moved with the building. Nothing here was of interest to an ogre. He knew brass wasn't good to eat.
Then he spied another brass button.
Well, why not? Maybe this one would make the building stop moving. Of course, if this one stopped and the other buildings did not, there would be a horrendous crash. Smash jammed his thumb down on the button.
Instantly the brass statues animated. The metal people spied the ogre and converged on him. And Smash- Found himself leaning against the fireoak tree. Tandy stood before him, holding the gourd. She had broken his line of vision to the peephole. 'Are you all right, Smash?' she asked with her cute concern.
'Certainly!' he grumped. 'Why did you interrupt me? It was just getting interesting.'
'The lunatic fringe is tearing,' she said worriedly. 'The human villagers are in the area and will soon discover the tree.'
'Well, bring me back when they do,' Smash said. 'I have metal men to fight inside.'
'Metal men?'
'And women. Solid brass.'
'Oh,' she said, uncomprehending. 'Remember, you're in there to fight for your soul. I worry about you.
Smash.'
He guffawed. 'You worry about me! You're human; I'm an ogre!'
'Yes,' she agreed, but her face remained drawn. 'I know what it's like in there. You put your soul in peril for me. I can't forget that. Smash.'
'You don't like it in there,' he pointed out. 'I do. And I agreed to protect you. This is merely another aspect.' He took the gourd back and applied his eye to the peephole.
The brass people were converging, exactly where they had been when he left. They seemed not even to be aware of his brief absence. The building was moving, too-but it had not moved in the interim. His Eye Queue-cursed brain found all this interesting, but Smash had no time for that nonsense at the moment. The brassies were almost on him.
The first one struck at him. The man was only half Smash's height, but the metal made him solid. Smash hauled him up by the brassard and threw him aside. Smash still lacked the strength to do real damage, but at least he could fight weakly. In his strength he would have hurled the brass man right through the brass wall of the building.
A female grabbed at him. Smash hooked a forefinger into her brassiere and hauled her up to his eye level. 'Why are you attacking me?' he asked, curious rather than angry.
'We're only following our program,' she said, kicking at him with a pretty brass foot.
'But if you fight me, I shall have to fight you,' he pointed out. 'And I happen to be a monster.'
'Don't try to reason with me, you big hunk of flesh; I'm too brassy for that.' She swung at him with a metal fist. But he was holding her at his arm's length, so she could not reach him.
Something was knocking at his knee. Smash looked down. A man was striking at him with his brass knuckles. Smash dropped the brass girl on the brass man's brass hat, and the two crashed to the floor in a shower of brass tacks. They cried out with the sound of brass winds.
Now a half-dozen brassies were grabbing at Smash's legs, and he lacked the strength to throw them all off at once. So he reached down to pluck them off one at a time-He was under the tree again. He saw the problem immediately. Half a dozen brassies-no, these were men and women of the human village-were converging on the tree, bearing wicked-looking axes. The hamadryad was screaming.
Smash had no patience with this. He stood up, towering over the villagers, ogre-fashion. He roared a fine ogre roar.
The villagers turned and fled. They didn't know Smash was short of strength at the moment. Otherwise they could have attacked him and perhaps put him in difficulty, in the same way the brassies were doing in the gourd. He had replaced the illusion of the lunatic fringe with the illusion of his own formidability.
The hamadryad dropped from her tree, her hair glowing like fire, catching him about the neck. She was now a vibrant, healthy creature. 'You great big wonderful brute of a creature!' she exclaimed, kissing his furry ear. Smash was oddly moved; as the centaur had noted, ogres were seldom embraced or kissed by nymphs.
He handed the hamadryad back into her tree, then settled down for another session in the gourd. None of them had anywhere to go until the King got the news and acted to protect the tree permanently, and he wanted to wrap up this gourd business.
'Wake me at need,' he said, noting that the shimmer of the lunatic fringe was now almost gone. If trees had ogres to protect them instead of cute but helpless hamadryads, very few trees would be destroyed.
Of course, ogres themselves were prime destroyers of trees, using them to make toothpicks and such, so
he was in no position to criticize. He applied his left eye to the peephole this time, giving his right orb a rest.
He stood in an alley between buildings. What was this? The sequence was supposed to pick up exactly where it had left off. What had gone wrong?
The two buildings slid toward him, forcing him to scoot out of the way. Smash emerged into a new space-and saw his line of string. He was about to cross his own path! But he couldn't retreat; the buildings were clanging behind him.
Still, his cursed Eye Queue wouldn't let him leave well enough alone. It wanted to know why the gourd scene had slipped a notch. Was the gourd getting old, beginning to rot, breaking down its system? He didn't want to be trapped in a rotting gourd.
The buildings separated, starting to converge on a new spot. The alley reopened, the string he had just set out running down its length-and stopping.
Smash ran to the end of it. The string had been severed cleanly; it ended at the point he had re-entered the vision.
