He had an idea. He bent to scoop through the paper-turf ground. Sure enough, it turned to regular dirt below, with rocks. He found a couple of nice quartz chunks and bashed them together to make sparks.
Soon he struck a fire. The paper grass burned readily.
The tanks charged into the blaze-and quickly caught fire themselves. Their magazines blew up in violent sprays of spit. Colored bits of paper flew up in clouds, containing pictures and ads for products and all the other crazy things magazines filled their pages with. Soon all the tanks were ashes.
Smash tromped on. A paper tiger charged from the paper jungle, snarling and leaping. Smash caught it by the tail and shook it into limp paper, the black and orange colors running. He dipped this into a fringe of the fire and used the resulting torch to discourage other paper animals. They faded back before his bright-burning tiger, and he proceeded unhampered. Apparently there was nothing quite so fearful as a burning tiger. If this had been a battle, he had won it.
Now he came to a house of cards. Smash knew what cards were; he had seen Prince Dor and Princess Irene playing games with them at Castle Roogna, instead of getting down to basics the way ogres would.
Sometimes they had constructed elaborate structures from the cards. This was such a structure-but it was huge. Each card was the height of Smash himself, with suit markings as big as his head and almost as ugly.
He paused to consider these. At the near side was the nine of hearts. He knew what hearts were: the symbol of love. This reminded him irrelevantly of what the brass girl had told him about Tandy. Could it be true that the tiny human girl liked him more than was proper, considering that ogres weren't supposed to be liked at all? If so, what was his responsibility? Should he growl at her, to discourage her?
That did seem best.
He entered the house of cards, careful not to jostle it. These structures collapsed very readily, and after all, this might be the way out of the paper land. He felt he was making good progress through the worlds of the gourd, and he wanted to go on to the last station and meet the Dark Horse.
The inner wall showed the two of clubs. Clubs were, of course, the ogre's favorite suit. There was nothing like a good, heavy club for refreshing violence! Then there was the jack of diamonds, symbolizing the wealth of dragons. His curse of intellect made symbolism quite clear now. He remembered how many of the bright little stones the Dragon Lady had had; this was probably her card.
Then there was the two of spades, with its shovel symbol. The suit of farmers.
In the center of the house of cards was the joker. It depicted a handsomely brutish ogre with legs that trailed into smoke. Of course! Smash pushed against it, assuming it to be his door to the next world-and the whole structure collapsed.
The cards were not heavy, of course, .and in a moment Smash's head poked above the wreckage. He looked about.
The scene had changed. The paper was gone. The painted sky and cardboard trees existed no longer.
Now there was a broad and sandy plain, like that of the nightmares' realm, except that this one was in daylight, with the sun beating down hotly.
He spied an object in the desert. It glinted prettily, but not like a diamond. Curious, Smash stomped over to it. It was a greenish bottle, half buried in the sand, fancily corked. He found himself attracted to it; a bottle like that, its base properly broken off, could make a fine weapon.
He picked it up. Inside the bottle was a hazy motion, as of slowly swirling mist. The cork had a glossy metallic seal with a word embossed: FOOL.
Well, that was the nature of ogres. He was thirsty in this heat; maybe the stun in the bottle was good to drink. Smash ripped off the seal and used his teeth to pop the cork. After all, he was uncertain how long it would be before he came across anything potable, here in the gourd. But mainly, his action was his Eye Queue's fault; because of it, he was curious.
As the cork blasted free, vapor surged out of the bottle. It swelled out voluminously. Too bad-this was neither edible nor potable, and it smelled of sulfur. Smash sneezed.
The vapor formed a big greenish cloud, swirling about but not dissipating into the air. In a moment, two muscular arms projected from it, and the remainder formed into the head and upper torso of a gaseous man- creature about Smash's own size.
'Who in the gourd are you?' Smash inquired. 'Ho, ho, ho!' the creature boomed. 'I be the ifrit of the bottle. Thou has freed me; as thy reward, I shall suffer thee to choose in what manner thou shalt die.'
'Oh, one of those,' Smash said, unimpressed. 'A bottle imp.' He now recognized, in retrospect, this creature as the figure on the joker card. He had taken it to be an ogre, but, of course, ogres had hairy legs and big flat feet, rather than trailing smoke.
'Dost thou mock me, thou excrescence of excrement?' the ifrit demanded, swelling angrily. ' Beware, lest I squish thee into a nonentitious cube and make bouillon soup of thee!'
'Look, ifrit, I don't have time for this nonsense,' Smash said, though the mention of the bouillon cube made him hungry. He had squished a bull into a bouillon cube once and made soup with it; he could use some of that now! 'I just want to find the Night Stallion and vacate the lien on my soul. If you aren't going to help, get out of my way.'
'Surely I shall destroy thee!' the ifrit raged, turning dusky purple. He reached for the ogre's throat with huge and taloned hands.
Smash grabbed the ifrit's limbs, knotted them together in much the way he had tied the extremities of the ghastlies, and jammed the creature headfirst back into the green bottle. 'Oaf! Infidel!' the ifrit screamed, his words somewhat distorted since his mouth was squeezed through the bottle's neck. 'What accursed mischief be this?'
'I warned you,' Smash said, using a forefinger to tamp more of the ifrit into the container. 'Don't mess with ogres. They have no sense of humor.'
Struggle as he might, the ifrit could not prevail against Smash's power. 'Ooo, ouch!' the voice came muffled from the glass. 'OooOOoo!' For Smash's finger had rammed into the creature's gasous posterior.
Then a hand came back out of the bottle. It waved a white flag.
Smash knew that meant surrender. 'Why should I pay attention to you?' he asked.
'Mmph of mum genuine free wish,' the voice cried from the depths of the bottle.
That sounded promising. 'But I don't need a wish about how I will die.'
'Mmmph oomph!'
'Okay, ifrit. Give me one positive wish.' Smash removed his finger.
The ifrit surged backward out of the bottle. 'What is they wish, O horrendous one?' he asked, nibbing his rear.
'I want to know the way to the next world.'
'I was about to send thee there!' the ifrit exclaimed, aggrieved.
'The next gourd scene. How do I get there?'
'Oh.' The ifrit considered. 'The closest be the mirror world. But that be no place for the like of thee.
Thy very visage would shatter that scene.'
This creature was trying to lull him with flattery! 'Tell me anyway.'
'On thy fool head be it.' The ifrit made a dramatic gesture. There was a blinding flash. 'Thou wilt be-sorree!' the creature's voice came, fading away with descending pitch as if retreating at nearly the speed of sound.
Smash pawed his eyes, and gradually sight filtered back. He stood among a horrendous assortment of ogres. Some were much larger than he, some much smaller; some were obesely fat, some emaciatedly thin; some had ballooning heads and squat feet, others the other way around.
'What's this?' he asked, scratching his head, though it had no fleas now.
'This... this... this... this,' the other ogres chorused in diminishing echo, each scratching his head.
The Eye Queue needed only that much data to formulate an educated hypothesis. 'Mirrors!'
'Ors... ors... ors... ors,' the echoes agreed. Smash walked among the mirrors, seeing himself pacing himself in multiple guises. The hall was straight, but after a while the images repeated. Suspicious, he used a horny fingernail to scratch a corner of one mirror, then walked farther down the hall, checking corners. Sure enough, he came across another mirror with a scratch on it, just where he had made his mark. It was the same one, surely. This hall was an endless reflection, like two mirrors facing each other. One of those endless loops he had been warned about. In fact, now he saw three lines of string: he had been retracing his course. He was trapped.
