Horrors of the Dancing Gods

WE'RE OFF TO SEE THE LIZARD

AT THE UPPER LIMITS OF NAVIGATION ON THE RIVER, whose name they never did quite get clearly in their minds — it meandered horribly, and with every bend it seemed to have a new and totally unrelated name — was a small inland town that nobody had named but that was clearly their first destination.

In spite of its remoteness, the town looked oddly familiar to those from Earth, if a bit out of place in this geographic setting, with large Gothic-style Victorian houses peeking out of the ends of the jungle like an enormous collection of haunted houses. The jungle in fact ended within sight of the town and very dramatically; the mountains seemed to be a two-mile-high wall.

Irving stared at the black rock beyond, and his jaw dropped. "Holy smokes! We have to go up there?"

"Over it," Joel Thebes told him. "It is not all that bad but can be quite uncomfortable."

"Hey, I'm in pretty fair shape, and there's no way I can climb that," the boy maintained. "As for the others, I don't think Marge can even fly that high, and she's the only other one with a chance."

"You misunderstand," Thebes told him. "We do not climb. As usual, we ride. You'll see, you'll see."

Larae was still uncomfortable with her secret out, as it were, but she at least accepted the fact that they were not going to cast her out, not even Irving, who had good cause for doing so. She was determined to do what she could for them.

"Will we have to stay in this town overnight?" she asked Thebes. "It does not even look inhabited."

"Oh, it is inhabited, all right," Thebes assured her. "Just not by folks who are still, well, like the rest of us." Considering that he was including himself in that "us," that meant that those who lived there were probably very unpleasant. "However, we should not have to remain here long if all the connections are right."

Poquah surveyed the small dock area as their things were placed there for them and the chameleon faerie, as Marge had begun to think of them, filed off as well, spouting their inane bad dialogue but seemingly oblivious to their surroundings. Either they were totally in character and thus natural actors or they really were pretty dumb.

"Be on your guard," the Irnir warned his party. "Irving, keep your sword ready."

The boy looked around. "You see something I don't?'

"No. I just feel the currents. Not all the denizens of this town are still on the side of the established order here. If that is the case, there might well be an attempt to prevent us from going farther."

"Terrific," Irving responded glumly.

Thebes, too, seemed to sense the danger, but when a creature emerged from one of the nearby houses and shambled toward them, he seemed to relax a bit, even though the thing was certainly tension-inducing.

"That thing was once a human being?' Larae gasped.

It was the size of an average man but bent, misshapen, twisted in such a way that it seemed both smaller and more massive. It had the look and stench of decomposing flesh and a skull-like face that looked more like an Eygptian mummy than a living being.

Thebes walked out to the thing, which stopped, and they exchanged some sort of conversation too low to be heard by the others. Thebes pointed back to them, the thing nodded, and two dead eyes looked them over carefully.

"I don't trust that little man," Larae whispered. "I don't care if he's one of you or not."

"We don't, either, and he's not ours," Irving whispered back. "He's just sort of hired help to get us through."

"I am not worried about Mister Thebes," Poquah told them. "Not until after we reach Mount Doom, anyway. If he could have reached our goal on his own, he would have been there long before now. He is not on our side or either of their sides. He is on his own side, which is a very lonely and dangerous position to be in."

Thebes came back over to them. "We should get moving without delay," he told them. 'There appears to be danger here if we stay. Get your things and follow our gimpy guide there through town. No deviations or temptations, please. There is nothing alive — as we know it, anyway — left here."

"You expect an ambush?" Poquah asked him, looking around.

"I don't know. I don't think they're strong enough for that, but with these types you can't tell. When you're already dead and looking like that, you don't exactly have a lot to lose, yes?'

The town smelled like death; even Marge, who would not normally be alert enough to do much good for anybody, found herself strangely wide awake in that grim place. There were few signs in writing of what it might once have been but some indications that at one time it had been a much larger place and that part of it had been consumed by fire. Just once was there anything that might be helpful in identifying it, but it was only a fragment of an old sign — interestingly, in Latin letters — that read "J-E-R-U." Nothing more.

They were more than conscious of being watched from the houses and dark places as they walked through the town in the gray gloom. Dead eyes, yes, but envious eyes, too, and hungry ones.

The deathly stillness was also unnerving, and when it was broken now and again by the loud cry of a tropical bird, they all jumped and hands went to weapons. Only the "machinists" seemed unconcerned, just blithely walking through as if it were a bright sunny day in Mister Rogers' neighborhood. Not worth a bite, Irving decided, and they knew it. Their very vacuousness was their protection. They were very close to clearing the town proper now, going through the remnants of burned-out buildings and charred timbers from a onetime small-town business center, when they saw their destination. While much more ordinary in many ways than the town and its denizens, it was no less scary a sight.

"A cable car? Here?" Marge gasped.

And a big one, too, from the looks of it, more than able to carry them all, some freight that was being hauled along on a cart by the crew of the sailing ship, and anything else that might want to go. It was like a giant old-fashioned trolley car without wheels, and it appeared that once out of its berth, it would be suspended by two thick black cables that went up at perhaps a thirty-degree angle toward the mountain wall, quickly losing them in the clouds and mist up there.

"We're gonna take that up there?" Irving said, both nervous and incredulous.

"What powers it?" Poquah asked, fascinated more than worried.

"You do not want to know," Thebes responded, then proceeded to pretty much tell him anyway. "A lot of very naughty souls on some amazing treadmills beneath us."

"I don't like it," Irving told them. "Once we're in that contraption up there, we're sitting ducks."

Poquah was ever the pragmatist. "You would perhaps prefer to climb? It is one or the other."

Thebes looked around nervously. "Well, I think we better decide very quickly on this. I'm afraid some of the locals want us to stay!"

Swords came out, and they whirled to see horrors emerging from the cellars of the burned-out structures: misshapen humanoid creatures that might once have been people but were now dripping with foulness.

"Holy shit! It's The Night of the Living Dead!" Marge cried, the last bits of lethargy slipping as she launched herself into the air and then straight for the waiting car.

Thebes opened his white coat for the first time and revealed a virtual smorgasbord of weaponry in nice little holders along the lining. It was no wonder he always looked like an unmade bed; there were wooden stakes and mallets, crosses, crescents, Stars of David, silver daggers, wolfsbane: it was an incredible sight.

"Zombies!" he muttered irritably. "What the hell stops the zombies?"

'Take it from experience — very little!" Poquah shouted. "Run for the car, everyone! Irving and I will try to buy you time."

Irving gave the Imir a quick, nervous glance and gulped. "We will? Um, yeah, I guess we will."

The things came on pretty fast for zombies, which had a reputation for being slow and shuffling. One reached very close to Irving, who was trying to backpedal and not trip while making as good time as possible. Now he swung the short sword in a series of broad, professional strokes that sliced right through decaying yet animated limbs, shearing them off as if they were made of butter.

That, unfortunately, stopped neither the severed limbs nor the trunk from coming on. Slashes at the legs with that sword were out of the question. "I got to get a longer sword," Irving muttered, then turned and ran so hard for the open door that he overran both Poquah and Larae. Thebes seemed to have given up on his quest for a talisman or weapon and to have got there ahead of them.

Irving made the open door of the cable car, then turned to hold it as long as possible. He saw Larae running, but she stumbled and fell, and he started to run back toward her to help her. Almost immediately he realized that a zombie was going to beat him to her.

She turned onto her back as the undead creature lunged at her, but as the zombie tried to pounce on her and rip out her throat, her legs came up, caught the thing at the hips, and then, with a powerful somersault roll, sent the zombie flying while somehow Larae got back on her feet, pulling her skirt down almost below her ass.

Irving saw a half dozen more of the creatures closing in as he reached her. "Don't bother getting pretty now!" he shouted, picking her up and sprinting for the open door, where now only Poquah guarded the entrance.

He jumped in, falling on the wooden floor, Larae spilling out of his grasp to his right. Poquah jumped aboard and pulled the sliding door shut while the approaching menace was still a good ten or fifteen feet from the car. The Imir looked around, saw an official-looking cherubic fellow in a blue uniform and brass buttons standing there beside two wooden levers, and shouted, "If you can get moving now, we might have a chance!"

"Welcome aboard, neighbors," the conductor responded in a cheery voice totally inappropriate to the situation. Marge was reminded of an animatronics figure at Disneyland. "The Borgo and Donner Pass Transit System welcomes you to what we hope will be a pleasant experience. Please have your tickets ready for collection after we start. Otherwise, I'm afraid you will be dumped overboard and fall a few thousand feet to your death, and we wouldn't want that, now, would we?"

The zombies had reached the car and were pounding on it furiously. One found a weak spot in the wood and punched through, a grisly arm dripping hunks of flesh emerging and grasped around for something to get hold of.

Larae screamed and pointed, and Poquah severed the limb with his sword. The arm, drawn laboriously by its hand, continued in motion.

"I'm sorry," the conductor said, eyeing the moving arm. "No pets are allowed on the line. I'll have to open the door—"

"The hell you will! Get us out of here!" Irving shouted at him, putting the sword almost at the conductor's throat "We'll make sure it doesn't make the trip!"

"He's one of those stupid character critters!" Marge shouted. "He isn't gonna break character unless— Hey! Look! They're leavin'!"

Irving and the others looked and saw that she was right. The zombies had suddenly ceased their assault on the cars and were now shambling back in a fair semblance of a line toward the old town. Poquah stuck the severed but still living arm with his sword, impaling it, threw open the door just a bit, and, with a strong motion of the wrist, sent it flying. Closing the door quickly, he turned to the conductor.

"I do not know what manner of creature you are," the Imir said in that cold but very frightening tone he used when he was very angry, "but if you fear iron, you will get some, and if a wooden stake is more to your taste, you will have that, too. Or we can just get moving. It is your choice. And if you are some sort of infernal mechanical device, we will find a way to run it ourselves. It is not as if we can get lost on this."

The conductor's smile never wavered, and he never looked directly at Poquah or showed the slightest sign that he'd heard or understood anything at all that had been said to him, but after a few seconds' pause that seemed much longer, he suddenly announced, "All those with no business aboard should be off. Now leaving. Please take seats or stand holding firmly to a rail."

Almost before Poquah could sheathe his sword, let alone get into one of the remaining wickerlike twin seats bolted to the floor, the conductor reached up, threw the first lever and then the second, then reached up with both hands and pulled them both back down again.

The car shuddered; then, silently, it began to move. The speed was not great, but it was certainly adequate; the ground was soon far behind, and the clouds and dark rock wall seemed to approach with dramatic speed.

Marge looked out at the deepening vista. "Gonna be dark soon and up in the clouds, too. Hell of an opportunity for someone who could fly at that altitude."

"Don't invite trouble," Thebes cautioned her. "It finds us enough as it is." He turned to Poquah, who was sitting there frowning, staring straight ahead. "Are you all right?" he called to the Imir.

"Huh? Yes, quite all right. I was just trying to think…"

"Yes? Sorry if I interrupted."

"No, no. It wasn't coming anyway, and when it does not come immediately, then it is best not to dwell on it but let it simmer. It was just that when I opened the door, I could hear music of some sort in the distance, back toward the boat. Very strange music but something I have heard before, although not recently. I just cannot place it."

"Didn't hear much of anything myself, but I wasn't listening for it," the little man replied.

"How long does this trip usually take, Thebes?" Marge called to him.

"Oh, two and a half hours, give or take. It is, after all, mechanical energy."

She nodded as they entered the cloud bank. "Then we'll be at the top at about dark."

Just at that moment they emerged again on the other side of the first layer, and she gasped at the sight of a bird the size of a small plane flying by just above them. Its sheer size and proximity bathed them in the vibrations set up by its wings and the rest of its anatomy as amplified by the rock walls, and it did seem also to be making a series of sounds.

"My God! That thing's huge!"

Thebes nodded. "Yes, it is a hard rock roc. Don't worry. So long as you remain inside, it won't bother us. The only problem you might have is if we meet one of its brethren, one that feeds on creatures with a high mineral content, particularly iron. They have been known to weaken or knock cold various faerie just by flying nearby unless you are prepared for them."

"Yes," Marge sighed, wondering just how much of a comedian Thebes thought he was or if he was actually serious about this. "I can see that heavy metal roc would take some getting used to."

Larae had straightened her skirt and managed to get herself feeling at least a bit more comfortable, but she was beginning to feel oddly chilled and wondered if her bag had made it.

"I'll go check," Irving said, but discovered that not much had made it on that wasn't already in their hands. Marge had no luggage and carried nothing, nor would she have been strong enough, anyway. Thebes was supposed to take the two small suitcases, but now it was clear that he'd dropped them and just sprinted for the open car door in a panic.

Poquah's small satchel with the money bag and whatever introductions and magical stuff he'd brought along was safe and on board, but there was not much else. Everything they'd bought of a tangible nature had been left behind.

That bothered Larae a lot more than it bothered Irving. "Then this is all I have? Not even a comb or a brush, let alone a change of clothes?' She sighed and looked very unhappy.

"Getting kinda chilly up here," he noted uncomfortably, "but other than that, I can stand it, particularly if it's this hot most of the rest of the way. Poquah can buy you the few things you need."

"If we find another place with real people and stores," she retorted, then sat back and sighed. "I don't know. Perhaps I have been all wrong from the start on this, trying so very hard to keep my own sense of self-identity. If it wasn't for these," she added, touching a breast, "I'd be better off simply accepting it, cutting my hair very short, and simply deciding to become a boy. Then I could stop worrying so much about such things."

Irving looked at her. "I don't know. There's too much about you of who and what you were — and in effect-still are — to ignore, even if that one thing is there."

"You speak as if it were a trifle, like a mole or a deep voice. All I am saying is that the true curse isn't that being there so much as what you say — that I am almost wholly of one sex with the organ of the other. It is strange somehow, but do you know that I actually have been in some ways more comfortable this way?"

"What!"

She nodded. "I do not fear rape, since the rapist will only get an ugly joke on him, yes? I have had no period in almost a year now, with all that implies, and I cannot be made with child. There is a confidence in being male that you would not understand; you were born that way. There's certain freedom, a sense of independence and power that as a woman I was without."

"Would you rather have been born a guy?"

"Perhaps. I am still undecided on that. Certainly in my culture and in the others I have seen so far, the human ones, anyway, it is preferable if one ever wishes to break out and become someone important, do adventurous romantic things, and take chances on life. And of course, had I been born a boy, I would not exactly be sitting here now, would I? The curse was on the firstborn girl."

"Is that what you'd wish for, then?" he asked her, feeling a bit distanced from someone he was growing to like an awful lot no matter what her problems. "To have been born a boy or to become one fully?'

She shrugged. "I do not know. That is the truth. Your prize is within the Rules. It may have powers to destroy worlds, but it might well not have the power to dissolve a demonic contract. We shall see. We will have to get there first."

He nodded. "That was some maneuver you pulled back there with the zombie. Where'd you learn that?"

"All good girls who wish to remain good girls take some sort of self-defense training in my homeland," she told him. "I am not very good with weapons, but at defending myself with my own body I am not at all bad."

The cable car reached the top of the range, and there was a tremendous lurch and a sound as if the whole roof of the car were being marched upon by an invading army. A number of the car's occupants were thrown right out of their seats, and others were badly bounced around.

"Nothing to worry about, folks," the conductor told them. "Just switching through here to be ready for the down side."

That was reassuring, because the sun had set and they were surrounded by total darkness.

Well, not quite total. In fact, for the first time in this land, and in full splendor, the sky was full of stars.

Even Marge found the stars both friendly and familiar. They were essentially the same stars and constellations as on Earth, for this universe was in many ways a minor image of Earth.

Now they cleared the tops of the peaks, and as they did, they passed the other car going back to where they'd come from. It was surprisingly lit up and seemed to be filled with ordinary-looking people standing and sitting and reading papers and looking tired like commuters on a subway heading home. Marge looked over at the "mechanics" on their car and realized that those others were more of the same. Fresh clichés were replacing tired old ones.

Now they were on their way down, but there were few clouds in sight on this side of the mountains. Instead, there was a vast sea of blackness below, broken only here and there by solitary lights whose origins could not be guessed. From that height it wasn't unlikely that they were seeing eighty or a hundred miles, but if there was any city or town over there, it certainly was hiding itself well.

It didn't appear that much weather of any sort made it over the mountain wall; all below, as far as the eye could see, was one vast desert.

Larae's adrenaline and excitement had worn off, and she drifted off to sleep after a while, her head sinking over onto Irving's shoulder. For some reason it bothered him, as if it weren't right somehow now that he knew she wasn't all a she, but another part of him was torn by his respect for her. He really liked her in spite of it all, and it wasn't as if her situation were her own fault. With a very light sigh, he lifted his arm and put it around her.

Damn it! I know what I would wish for if I had that thing, he thought in frustration, and it wasn't a true-blue boyfriend.

It could be worse, he supposed. She could still have kept her old form down there, but with that demon adding teeth. Whoa! He had a sick feeling just thinking about that one. If he was going to start thinking like that, maybe it was time for him to take a nap, too.

Marge looked at them and smiled. They did make a great couple, except for that one little detail that shouldn't matter but did. She'd been brought up too much one way, and Irving in another. Still, wouldn't that be the final nail in Joe's coffin if he saw this and knew all the facts!

She went over to Poquah and gestured toward them. "Any hope for her?'

"Difficult to say," he replied. "I do believe she is correct in that her initial situation is tied up in both a bargain and a curse. With the Lamp, which was a product of the djinn universe, it would not be a factor, but the McGuffin is within the Rules and was fashioned by artisans of our own space-time continuum. Remove the curse, and the original bargain is back in force and she becomes a sacrifice and property of the demon. You cannot wish away the bargain; that was sealed in blood with Hell on their continuum. I am not even certain she can very much change the way she is right now. The moment the wish is made and the original Lothar curse dissolves, Hell will enforce it, even if it is for mere nanoseconds. About the only thing that might be lifted is the geas, since that was imposed, not a part of the original bargain, and in our continuum."

"So they're stuck?"

"Well, she certainly is. Irving is still the same as always and has other options."

"But you can see the attraction."

"Yes, just looking at them, one can see many threads of common destiny linking one to the other. Of course, this isn't a fatal disease, since such threads are broken all the time by divorce, death, infidelities, and even plots, abductions, accidents — well, you know. His nature, fortified by his own views of his father and his father's condition and reactions, though, makes it almost inconceivable that he could find happiness in what would be essentially a homosexual relationship. She could, but not Irving. It simply isn't in him."

She nodded. "And it's eating him alive." She sighed. "I guess there's always wishes to change some things, huh?"

"Not for the likes of them," the Imir commented, "unless of course we can solve that Hell's bargain conundrum. Master Ruddygore is actually pretty good at that sort of thing, but there are many such that have no answer. I want no one thinking of this as a wish-at-a-time reward system. First of all, we haven't gotten it yet, and second, if we had it, we don't really know how to use it. It is supposed to be rather tricky. I have been given one wish, one statement carefully crafted by Master Ruddygore, and that is the only one allowable."

She looked at him with a knowing smile. I wonder how you are going to enforce that, considering it's not you but most likely Irving or even Larae who'll set hands on it, if anyone does.

She got up and went over to a window and looked out. Although it was very dark inside the car, by her own night vision and faerie sight she saw her reflection in the glass, and she didn't like what she saw at all.

She was taller, thicker built, and more of a sexual bombshell than ever. She was also taking on a golden glow, and the reds in her skin were beginning to darken uniformly. She was far more than halfway across the line from Kauri to Succubus; it was almost impossible to see her old self anymore. It was something that should have angered and repelled her as the sight of such creatures always had before, but…

It didn't.

She began to wonder if she could even try a legitimate tryst with Irving, whether she dared do so. The very idea she still had reservations about that provided some encouragement, but it didn't answer the question. Would Irving help her, or would she harm him irreparably?

She stood there, studying that reflection, wondering how she could solve this problem, or, worse, if she really wanted to.

Shortly before midnight they reached the other station. It wasn't much different from the one they'd left, except it had no zombies, no jungle, no old houses, no… well, not much of anything, period.

The welcoming committee consisted of one very large, very tall fat guy who spoke and was dressed like something out of the Arabian Nights and had that method of speaking where you could virtually see the exclamation marks.

"Welcome! Welcome, effendis! Please accept my humble greetings to you all on getting this far! Come! Come! I am Ali ben Hazzard, your host for this next and final leg of your journey! Please! Come this way! We have tents over here, and sweet teas and fine coffees,_, and a way to relax and get some sleep!"

They all looked at Thebes. "Is this guy legit?" Marge asked him.

"Oh, yes. He manages the prepaid expeditions to and from here," the little man assured them. "Why do you ask?"

"Well, um, hasn't anybody told him that for a guy named Ali ben something who talks and dresses like that, he's not an Arab or a Persian? That in fact he's a Mongolian, or so it seems?"

"Oh, yes, that. He knows. He just hopes you will not notice. I think there probably was an Ali ben Hazzard many, many years and a number of owners ago. He is actually an improvement over the last one I knew here. He was a snake man with a nasty complexion and big reptilian eyes and all the rest. Made it next to impossible to believe anything he said. He kept saying everything with a forked tongue."

Marge let that one pass.

Hazzard's setup, virtually invisible from the air, was actually quite elaborate. Big tents, thick rugs, and silken coverings, all the comforts of a nomadic home.

There was good stuff there, too: not just the teas and coffees promised but wines as well, and sweet rolls and a savory stew that ben Hazzard assured them had nothing more sinister in it than Iamb.

"I didn't think there was anybody this straight and up and up on this whole continent," Marge commented to Thebes.

The little man gave his Lorre-like chuckle. "Oh, he is one of those who is more or less the dishonest side of Yuggoth, really. You see, he offers absolutely safe and honest service at an incredibly exorbitant price."

"What's dishonest about that?"

"Why, I would think that it is obvious. What is a criminal enterprise? It is there to supply those things, regardless of cost, that society has deemed illegal or immoral but that the people want anyway. Here, everybody cheats, so you pay through the nose for honesty. It is that simple."

Marge shook her head as if to clear it. "Yeah. Simple as calculus. Never mind."

Ali ben Hazzard was a good host, and after they had eaten and drunk their fill, he took them to a large trough where there was actually tepid water for washing off, then showed them their small tent. It was big enough for them all but wasn't exactly built for privacy.

"It is too late to make the journey tonight, so rest!" their effusive host told them. "Tomorrow you will rise, eat, and have a fairly easy day on your own, and then we shall set off after an early dinner while we still have some sun but the shadows begin to cool."

"We're not going to travel tomorrow during the day?" Irving asked.

He chuckled. "You must be joking, young sir. It is about as cold as it gets right about now and will remain this way until about dawn! Within an hour, the temperature will climb several degrees an hour and will not begin to decline until the sun is very low. At midday this desert is hot enough to fry brains!"

Thebes nodded to confirm this. "It is probably about thirty now — ninety-two or so Fahrenheit. Tomorrow, forty-five, even fifty is not unheard of, and fifty-five is common farther inland. Is that not so, friend Ali?"

"Indeed it is, effendi! Not for nothing is the Great Rift often called the Worse Than Death Valley! So sleep!"

And after a while they did. After the discomforts of the ship's deck and its eternal wetness and hard sacks, the rugs and silk over sand were a blessed relief.

Marge, of course, did not sleep but wandered outside. The heat made no difference to her; she felt neither cold nor warmth in any measure, and once you've jumped into liquid lava a few times, the kinds of temperatures bandied about for this desert didn't seem all that big a deal.

She was simply trying to decide _.what to do.

It took a couple of hours, with late half-moon rising well in the sky, before events made her decision for her.

Someone stirred, then slipped as silently as possible out of the tent, probably too troubled to sleep or perhaps just overtired. Marge was surprised to see that it was Larae.

A thought suddenly struck Marge, and she found it quickly maturing into an irresistible impulse, and she'd been faerie too long to resist one of those.

She went up behind Lame as the girl stood not far from the tent, looking at the moon. Suddenly she heard someone and turned and saw not Marge but Irving there. Only it wasn't Irving, not exactly. It was some kind of dream Irving, some idealized Irving from her own mind and fantasies…

Although very real, the cleansing eventually would lead Larae back to sleep, in which she'd have more peaceful dreams and awake refreshed, unsure of any true action but remembering it as a kind of fantasy pleasure.

Larae had certainly been in need of it, and Marge was quite pleased that she'd been able to control it and limit it to the old ways. Not long ago she could have gone a week or more before feeding again from a load of guilt like that, but after this she was still hungry. She might be able to restrain herself, pace things, if Irving didn't present an opportunity, but Marge knew she'd find it next to impossible not to follow through if Irving should walk out of the tent at some point the way Larae had.

It was worse than she'd thought. She was becoming insatiable…

Within twenty minutes a disturbed-looking Irving came outside to look at the moon.

The heat of the day fully lived up to its billing, and the current Ali ben Hazzard still lived up to his effusive hospitality, although Poquah found himself paying for all sorts of extras that might well have been considered essentials. Guaranteed wholesome food, for example, was horrendous; no guarantee, well, that was pretty cheap, but you use those grungy pots over there. Water? No problem! Oh, you want a cup! Well, that's different!

Irving and Larae both slept very late and awoke quite close to each other. It was very strange how he felt this morning, the boy thought, but damn it, she seemed somehow ten times more attractive than before — and he'd been attracted to her since his first glimpse of her back on the big boat.

But it was wrong, damn it! He couldn't get around that. He couldn't do what he really wanted to do with her, even though somewhere in the back of his mind was a nearly perfect sensation that somehow they'd done exactly that, impossible though it was. They could be friends, but how could they truly be lovers?

Larae felt no such reservations even though she had exactly the same sensations and vague half memories that must have come out of dream but still seemed so real. She would try very hard to break down that conflict within him; it had bothered her only culturally before, and somehow it troubled her not a bit now. Still, if this mad expedition somehow succeeded, she knew that one way or another she'd get her hands on that thing they were seeking long enough for just one wish. One wish she'd thought of that would solve it all.

They had a midday siesta, then a substantial dinner with the sun perhaps ten degrees above the horizon. Finally it was time to move.

Irving looked around. "I don't see much in the way of camels or horses," he noted. "What are we supposed to do? Walk?"

Ali ben Hazzard looked at him with those almond eyes and grinned. "Of course not, effendi! How would we ever get anywhere with mere camels in conditions like this?" He removed what seemed to be a panpipe from a pocket in the folds of his robe and blew a series of notes on it

Three broad Persian-style rugs approached and braked to a stop.

"Ohmigod!" Irving exclaimed.

"Very good models, effendi, among the best!" Ali assured them. "Now, I want each of you to get a bit of practice before we go. I would not want to lose you out there in the middle of nowhere!"

"Flying carpets?' Marge yawned. "Fascinating. No handholds, though, I note. Doesn't bother me, but I'm not too sure about the rest of you."

"Oh, you will need them as well, madam!" ben Hazzard assured her. "I do not think that anyone flies this fast. Your destination is more than a thousand kilometers that way!" he noted, pointing to the south and slightly west. "If all goes well, we will make it, with one brief stop, in about eleven hours. Now, come! It does take a bit of practice, you know, and if you fall off and survive, we will lose time. We do not want to be aloft in daylight!"

It appeared that flying carpets weren't quite as easy to handle as in the old tales, that was for sure. For one thing, the speed was quite good, but balance was the key, and that meant lying pretty well flat and making certain that anything you did was balanced by what someone else did.

The first carpet was to have the "mechanics," along with some freight. After some balance tests, a couple of the vacuous fairies were shifted to ben Hazzard's carpet.

Irving, Larae, Poquah, and Marge were on the second, or middle, carpet, arranged pretty much to balance out the weight. Again, some small boxes and such were placed in the center, along with a supply kit. The general rule was, no matter what you did, you held on to the carpet, and you never stood up.

Ben Hazzard himself, along with Thebes and the leftover "mechanics," made up the third and final carpet, along with probably the most freight.

The first carpet seemed to have kegs rather than boxes, and a hopeful Thebes asked what the kegs contained.

"A yellowish dye, effendi! I have an order for it, and it is quite rare! Very difficult to get! You need to go into the dark jungles and find a particular giant insect, a member of the tick family but one which feeds on certain very large plants rather than animals. It is very lazy, and it simply lies on the plant and drains its juices slowly over time. Inside its stomach, the interaction of plant and tick juices can, if the tick is removed and cut open, result in a very good dye! Different plants produce different colors, but those are yellow, one of the rarest colors!"

It was still not quite dark, but Marge, hearing this outrageous explanation, shook her head and wondered just how little inhibition of any sort she had left. It was so very, very tempting…

"How do we go to the bathroom?" Irving asked ben Hazzard.

"If you cannot hold it until the break, use the container in the back. Yes! That squared wooden one there! Just remember how fast you are going and always be the last one to the rear of the carpet, eh?"

Irving looked at it and sighed. "Yeah, okay. So I guess it's time now, huh?"

They got on their carpets, lay down, got one more set of cautions from ben Hazzard, and then it was time. The caravan master played a series of notes on his pipes, and slowly, ever so slowly, the carpets rose up into the air until they were lined up in the light of the setting sun about thirty feet above the desert in the order ben Hazzard had determined.

"Ready?" the man with the panpipes called. "All right, then! We go! Hold on!"

He played a few notes, and slowly the first carpet, then the second, and finally the third moved out in a direct line toward the south-southwest, accelerating as they did so, the wind picking up and blowing against them as they went faster and faster.

Marge couldn't stand it anymore. Not at all worried and stuck like glue to the front of the carpet, she sat up and pointed.

"Okay, everybody. Follow the mellow tick woad!"

If any of them got it, they didn't give her the satisfaction of a reaction.