started up the amobiler and set off down the road again. The vehicle ate up the miles hungrily. Never had I been such a speed-demon behind the levers as I was on that drive!
“Listen, Shurf,” I began. “Did you by any chance ask Juffin what happened the night we tried to get in touch with him? I mean the night we had such a strange conversation with Lookfi, since we couldn’t reach anyone else. Why did Lookfi break the connection?”
“I didn’t have to ask. Sir Juffin brought it up himself. He thought that you would be eager to find out. You guessed right when you suggested that it was another World. And Sir Lookfi Pence is such a scatterbrain that he didn’t even notice my call had come to him from a place where it shouldn’t be able to reach him. In this case, his absent-mindedness served a good purpose. Then something happened that you might find amusing. Sir Juffin immediately realized where we had ended up, and wanted to explain it all to you through Lookfi. Lookfi listened calmly to Juffin’s conjectures about another World, and began relating it to you. Only then did he grasp the significance of his own words. He realized that the impossible was happening and that’s when it ended. Why aren’t you laughing, Max?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m probably just trying to understand, I don’t know, something, at least! But you’re right. Usually things like that seem funny to me. You changed very much in Kettari, Shurf. Do you know that?”
“That’s logical, since . . .” Lonli-Lokli sank into thought.
“Well, of course. First Glamma Eralga’s face, then a wife like Lady Marilyn, may she rest in peace, a journey to another World, a joint, and Kiba Attsax for dessert. You poor fellow, Sir Shurf. What a jerk I am, always moaning about my own problems!”
“Well said!” I detected something strange in his voice, so I turned around. Shurf was smiling, ever so slightly. The corners of his mouth were turned up, Magician’s honor!
“Not so fast, buddy,” I winked. “There’s still another dead Magician. What’s his name, by the way?”
“Yook Yoggari. But he’s far less dangerous. I don’t regret these changes, Max. I don’t intend to deny who I am. As I’ve already said, it doesn’t prevent me from concentrating on the really important things. It doesn’t get in the way of anything, and that’s what matters.”
“All the same, if this dead fellow starts bothering you, you can count on me,” I announced airily. “I’ll come to him in his dreams, and make him sing for his supper!”
“Magicians be with you, Max. Dead people don’t dream.”
“Really? All the better. That means I’m alive, because your little friend suggested that I also . . . well, died . . . in my time, way back when.”
“Dead Magicians seldom say anything sensible,” Shurf said. “As far as I know, they always dwell in a darkened state of mind.”
“Now that makes me prick up my ears,” I said grinning. “It’s a painfully familiar state.”
I sped up so that talking wouldn’t be necessary.
We drove into Echo at dawn. Even Shurf’s boldest predictions turned out to be too modest. Noon, had he said? When we arrived in Echo, a fat, pleasant-looking sun had just begun to peek over the horizon, trying to figure out what people had managed to do in the short time it had been away. I waved at the puffy-cheeked luminary and turned into the Lane of Northern Paths. Oh, what a beautiful name! I had never heard it before. I had to slow down considerably, but there was nowhere to hurry to, and Echo in the morning seemed to me to be the most beautiful place in the World. In this World, in any case. In other Worlds there were a few rivals. But now Echo was the best place in the universe, because I was coming home, and my heart loved what it saw, without regretting what it had lost.
“You’re going to take a wrong turn,” Lonli-Lokli warned. “What’s wrong? Don’t you know this part of town?”
I shook my head, and Shurf took the task of navigation upon himself. After a good earful of his instructions, I noticed with surprise that we were already on the Street of Copper Pots, approaching the House by the Bridge.
“Are we here?” I was even short of breath from anticipation.
“We’re here. I’d like to go home, but I guess my wife will still be asleep. At this hour she won’t even be glad to see me, all the more since I don’t look like myself these days. You know, she didn’t care at all for Sir Glamma Eralga.”
“It would be convenient if Sir Kofa happened to be on duty. He could reverse the spell right away.”
I parked the amobiler by the Secret Entrance to the Ministry of Perfect Public Order, and was suddenly stupefied. The vehicle began to disintegrate. Lonli-Lokli’s reaction was lightning quick. His arms shot upward, then dropped slightly to his sides, and tiny strands of metal and wood remained poised in midair.
“Get out of here, Max!” he roared.
He didn’t have to ask twice. I flew out of the amobiler like a bullet. How I managed to grab the carton of cigarettes remains a mystery to me to this day!
I turned around when I was already in the hall. Shurf was pensively removing our traveling bags from under the debris of the amobiler.
“Give me a hand. What are you looking at?” He smiled as naturally as if he had been doing it for the last hundred years.
“You really are a fantastic racer, Max, if I do say so myself. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life!”
“If there’s anything this guy can do, it’s travel far and travel fast,” a familiar voice sounded from behind me.
I turned around and stared at Sir Juffin Hully in delight.
“You wouldn’t believe me, Juffin, if I told you how long I’d been waiting for this meeting,” I said in the ingratiating voice of Sir Mackie Ainti, and burst out laughing at the unexpectedness of it.
“Stop it, Mackie!” Juffin exclaimed merrily. “I can’t listen to that. Now try to greet me again, Max.”
“Juffin, what’s going on?” I said in my own voice, and laughed, my head a-spin.
“That’s better. Good morning Shurf. This fellow totaled the amobiler, just as I predicted. And it was an official Ministry car, if I’m not mistaken.”
“He’s a superb racer,” Shurf insisted, dragging his valuable carpet out of the rubble. “Max, perhaps you’ll help me with this?”
I grabbed the bags nimbly, leaving my friend to deal with the carpets, and Juffin and I went into the office to drink some kamra and shoot the breeze. The prospect was so tempting it made my mouth water.
I got carried away, and talked without a break for four hours.
During that time, Juffin had managed to return Shurf’s own natural-born face to him by some surreptitious gesture. (“It’s easier to destroy than to create, boys. Why should we wait for Sir Kofa?”) I was even slightly shocked at first. I had completely forgotten what Shurf looked like.
“So that’s that story,” Lonli-Lokli drawled thoughtfully when I finally shut up.
My ears were ringing, whether from exhaustion, or from listening to myself talk. Shurf, in the meantime, had gotten up from the table.
“I’m going home, if you don’t have any objections, gentlemen.”
“Of course, go on home,” Juffin said, nodding. “You could have left long ago. I understand, though. You had a right to hear out the whole story. It’s your story, too. I’m very glad Sir Shurf. About the adventure with Kiba Attsax, I mean. You think you may owe Max another serenade now.”
Sometimes Juffin’s sarcasm went overboard, and this time Shurf and I glanced at each other. I smiled ear to ear, and he with the corners of his mouth, a hole in the heavens above him!
Juffin gazed on this rare spectacle with pleasure, smiling from ear to ear as well. Such an idyll reigned in the office of the Secret Investigative Force that all the rosy tints in the universe would not suffice to describe it.
Then only Juffin and I were left.
“And where’s Melifaro’s curious nose?” I asked. “Where is everybody else?”
“I ordered them not to disturb us. There will be plenty of time later for hugs and kisses of joy. I don’t want anyone else to overhear your report about the events in Kettari. It’s top secret, Max. I hope you understand that.
