myself. I have a soul because I'm half human. Just as you do, for the same reason.'
'I never thought of that!' Smash said. 'It never occurred to me that other ogres wouldn't have souls.'
'They're brutes because they have no souls. Their strength is all magic.'
'I suppose so. My mother was a variety of human, so I inherited my soul from her.'
'And it gave you strength to make up for what you lost by being only half ogre.'
'Agreed. That answers a mystery I was never aware of before. But you still haven't explained how you-'
'Functioned without a soul. Yes. It was simply a matter of how I thought of it. You see, human beings have always had souls; they have no experience living without them. Other creatures never had souls, so they have learned to cope. My mother copes quite well, though I suppose some of my father's soul has rubbed off on her.' Tandy sighed.
'She's such a good person, she certainly deserves a soul. But she is a nymph, and I am half nymph. So I can function without a soul. All I had to do, once I realized that, was to think of myself as a nymph. It made a fundamental difference.'
'But I think of myself as an ogre-yet I have a soul.'
'Maybe you should try thinking of yourself as a man, Smash.' Her hand tightened on his.
'A man?' he asked blankly. 'I'm an ogre!'
'And I'm a girl. But when I had to, I became a nymph. So I was able to operate without sinking into the sort of slough I did before, in the gourd. I was able to follow your fight, and to step in when I needed to.'
'A man!' he repeated incredulously.
'Please, Smash. I'm a half-breed, like you. Like a lot of the creatures of Xanth. I won't laugh at you.'
'It's impossible! How could I ever be a man?'
'Smash, you don't talk like an ogre any more. You're not stupid like an ogre any more.'
'The Eye Queue-'
'That vine faded a long time ago. Smash! And the one you got in the Void-that never existed at all. It was sheer illusion. Yet it made you smart again. Did you ever consider how that could be?'
It was his turn to smile in the dark. 'I was careful not to think that one through, Tandy. It would have deprived me of the very intelligence that enabled me to indulge in that chain of thought, paradoxically.'
'You believe in paradox?'
'It is an intriguing concept. I would say it is impossible in Mundania, but possible in Xanth. I really must explore the implications further, when I have leisure.'
'I have another hypothesis,' she said. 'The Eye Queue was illusion, but your intelligence was not.'
'Isn't that a contradiction? It's illogical to attribute an effect as significant as intelligence to an illusion.'
'It certainly is. That's why I didn't do it. Smash, I don't think you needed the Eye Queue vine at all, ever.
Not the illusory one or the original one. You always had the intelligence. Because you're half human,
and human beings are smart.'
'But I was never smart until the Eye Queue made me so.'
'You were smart enough to fool everyone into thinking you were ogrishly stupid! Smash, Chem told me about the Eye Queue vine. Its effect wears off in hours. Sometimes its effect is only in self-perception. It makes creatures think they're smart when they aren't, and they make colossal fools of themselves without knowing it. Like people getting drunk on the spillage from a beerbarrel tree, thinking they're being great company when actually they are disgusting clowns. My father used to tell me about that; he said he'd made a clown of himself more than once. Only it's worse with the vine.'
'Was I doing that?' Smash asked, mortified.
'No! You really -were smart! And it didn't wear off, until you lost the vine in the flood. And it came back the moment you got a new vine, even though you only imagined it. Doesn't that suggest something to you. Smash?'
He pondered. 'It confirms that magic is marvelous and not entirely logical.'
'Or that you became smart only when you thought you ought to be smart. Maybe the Eye Queue showed you how, the first time. After that you could do it any time you wanted to. Or when you forgot to be stupid.'
'But I'm not smart now,' he protested.
'You should listen to yourself. Smash! You've been discoursing on the nuances of paradox and you've been talking in a literate fashion.'
'Why, so I have,' he agreed, surprised. 'I forgot I had lost the Eye Queue.'
'Precisely. So where does your intelligence come from now, ogre?'
'It must be from my human half, as you surmise. Like my soul. I just never invoked it before, because-'
'Because you thought of yourself as an ogre, until you saw what ogres really were like and started turning off them. Now you are sliding toward your human heritage.'
'You see it far more dearly than I do!'
'Because I'm more objective. I see you from the outside. I appreciate your human qualities. And I think the Good Magician Humfrey did, too. He's old, but he's still savvy. I ought to know; I cleaned up his castle for a year.'
'It didn't looked cleaned up to me. I could hardly find a place to stand.'
'You should have seen it before I cleaned it up!' But she laughed. 'Actually, I didn't touch his private den; even the Gorgon leaves that alone. If anyone ever cleaned up in there, no one would know where all his spells and books and things were. He's had a century or so to learn their locations. But the rest of the castle needs to be kept in order, and they felt the Gorgon shouldn't have to do it, since she's married to him now, so I did it. I cleaned off the magic mirrors and things; some of them bad pretty smart mouths, too! It wasn't bad. And in that year I came to understand that behind the seeming absent-mindedness of Humfrey there lies a remarkably alert mind. He just doesn't like to show it. He knew all about you, for example, before you approached the castle. He had you marked a year in advance on his calendar, right to the day and hour of your arrival. He watched every step of your progress. He chortled when you came up against those ogre bones; he'd gone to a lot of work to get those set up. That man knows everything he wants to know. That's why he keeps the Gorgon in thrall, instead of she him; she is in complete awe of his knowledge.'
'And I thought he was asleep!' Smash said ruefully.
'Everyone does. But he's the Magician of Information, one of the most powerful men in Xanth. He knows everything worth knowing. So he surely knew how much of a mind you had and crafted his
Answer accordingly. Now we know he was correct.'
'But our missions-neither is complete! He didn't know we would fail, did he?'
She considered, then asked, 'Smash, why did you fight the other ogre?'
'He annoyed me. He insulted me.'
'But you tried to avoid trouble.'
'Because I was at half-strength and knew I'd lose.'
'But then you slugged him. You knocked out a tooth.'
'He was going to eat you. I couldn't allow that.'
'Why not? It's what ogres do.'
'I had agreed to protect you!'
'Did you think of that when you struck him?'
'No,' Smash admitted. 'I popped him instantly. There was no time for thought.'
'So there was some other reason you reacted.'
'You're my friend!'
'Do ogres have friends?'
He considered again. 'No. I'm the only ogre who ever had friends-and they were mostly human friends.
Most ogres don't even like other ogres.'
'Unsurprising,' she said. 'So, to protect me, twice you risked your soul.'
'Yes, of course.' He wasn't certain of the point of her comment.
'Would any true ogre have done that?'
'No true ogre. Of course, since ogres don't have souls, they would never be faced with the choice. But still, if they did have souls, they wouldn't-'
'Smash, doesn't it seem, even to you, that you have more human qualities than ogre qualities?'
