Chester looked unconvinced, but retained too much respect for the Magician to make further issue of it. 'It's getting on in the afternoon,' he remarked. 'Where's a good place to spend the night?'
Crombie stopped and whirled so vigorously he almost dislodged his riders. 'Hmph!' Humfrey exclaimed, and the golem dutifully translated: 'You blundering aviary feline! Get your catty feet on the ground!'
The griffin's head rotated entirely around until the deadly eyes and beak pointed back. 'Squawk!' Crombie said with authority. The golem did not translate, but seemed cowed. Crombie completed his maneuver and pointed in a slightly new direction.
'That's not far off the track; well go there,' Chester decided, and no one contradicted him.
Their route skirted the dead forest, and this was fortuitous because there were few other hazards here. Whatever had killed the forest had also wiped out most of the magic associated with it, good and evil. Yet Bink developed a mounting curiosity about the huge trees they spied to the side. There were no marks upon them, and the grass beneath was luxuriant because of the new light let down. This suggested that the soil had not been poisoned by any monster. Indeed, a few new young shoots were rising, beginning the long task of restoring the forest Something had struck and killed and departed without any other trace of its presence.
To distract himself from the annoyance of the unanswerable riddle, Bink addressed the golem. 'Grundy, if you care to relate it-what was your Question to the Magician?'
'Me?' the golem asked, amazed. 'You have interest in me?'
'Of course I do,' Bink said. 'You're a-' He had been about to say 'person' but remembered that the golem was technically not a person. 'An entity,' he finished somewhat lamely. 'You have consciousness, feelings-'
'No, no feelings,' Grundy said. 'I am just a construct of string and clay and wood, animated by magic. I perform as directed, without interest or emotion.'
Without interest or emotion? That hardly seemed true. 'You seemed to experience a personal involvement just now, when I expressed interest in you.'
'Did I? It must have been a routine emulation of human reaction. I have to perform such emulations in the course of my translation service.'
Bink was not convinced, but did not challenge this. 'If you have no personal interest in human affairs, why did you come to the Good Magician? What did you ask him?'
'I asked him how I could become real,' the golem said.
'But you are real! You're here, aren't you?'
'Take away the spell that made me, and I'd be nothing but a minor pile of junk. I want to be real the way you are real. Real without magic.'
Real without magic. It made sense after all. Bink remembered how he himself had suffered, as a youth, thinking he had no magic talent. This was the other face of the problem: the creature who had no reality apart from magic. 'And what was the Answer?'
'Care.'
'What?'
'Care, dumbbell.'
'Care?'
'Care.'
'That's all?'
'All'
'All the Answer?'
'All the Answer, stupid.'
'And for that you serve a year's labor?'
'You think you have a monopoly on stupidity?'
Bink turned to the Good Magician, who seemed to have caught up on his sleep but remained blithely silent. 'How can you justify charging such a fee for such an Answer?'
'I don't have to,' Humfrey said. 'No one is required to come to the grasping old gnome for information.'
'But anyone who pays a fee is entitled to a decent Answer,' Bink said, troubled.
'The golem has a decent Answer. He doesn't have a decent comprehension.'
'Well, neither do I!' Bink said. 'Nobody could make sense of that Answer!'
The Magician shrugged. 'Maybe he asked the wrong Question.'
Bink turned to Chester's human portion. 'Do you call that a fair Answer?'
'Yes,' the centaur said.
'I mean that one word 'care'? Nothing else, for a whole year's service?'
'Yes.'
'You think it's worth it?' Bink was having trouble getting through.
