Myth-Ion Improbable

Chapter Seven

"You can't go home again."

PRINCESS LEIA

At the first sign of light through the shutters, I went downstairs. The sun was barely up, the shadows still long in the street, yet the front door to the hotel was wide open and all the shutters on the windows had been retracted. These people didn't like the night, that was for sure. I desperately wanted to ask them what they were afraid of, but there just wasn't a way to ask the question without giving away the fact that I didn't belong here, in this dimension. And at the moment I had enough problems to face without bringing more down on my head. Aahz had always told me to solve one thing at a time.

The problem I had right now was that I wasn't sure I could solve any of my problems.

I went down the street to Audry's, tipping my hat to the guy with the shovel who was back in the street picking up after the horses. My old bartender friend and employer from yesterday had the door to Audry's open and the shutters retracted. I was the first customer.

"Didn't find her, huh?" he asked as I entered.

"She must have got sidetracked and stayed with a friend," I said. "She'll show up pretty soon, I bet."

He winked. "Yeah, pretty women can lose track of time."

I didn't want to think about how he came up with that.

I had decided about halfway through the night that I was s o hungry, I could even eat old veggies.

"Mind if I have a small breakfast and a glass of your wonderful beverage?"

"You bet," he said, pouring me some of the carrot juice.

I looked at the glass of orange liquid. Given enough time I might actually only loathe the stuff.

"You're lucky this morning," he said. "Just got a fresh wagon-load of the best from the fields."

"Terrific," I said.

He vanished back into the kitchen and I took up my seat at the window, taking a sip of the juice. It wasn't as bad as I remembered it from yesterday, but I was sure that was because I was another day hungry. From my seat at the table I could see the entire street and all the activity along a part of it. If Aahz and Tanda came down the Main Street, I'd know it.

The bartender brought me a small plate of veggies that were actually hard and fresh. I was shocked and managed to eat them all over the next three hours, plus finish the entire glass of carrot juice. Surprisingly enough, after that I was no longer hungry.

But I was a lot more worried about ever seeing Aahz and Tanda again.

After another hour I decided that I was going to head back up to the cliffs. I offered to wash the plates and clean up the kitchen to pay for my breakfast, but my bartender friend told me to come back later, have some dinner, and do it then. I agreed, hoping I'd never see him or his kitchen again.

It took just over an hour in the mid-day heat to walk up the road to where we had first arrived in this dimension. I didn't meet anyone on the road, and the air was so hot and silent near the cliffs, it felt as if I was walking through my own tomb.

I shook myself off and tried not to let my thoughts go to the dark side of this.

I moved over to the rocks where we had hidden to watch the two guys go by. My head was sweating under my hat so that when I reached the shade near the cliff I took it off.

I was setting my hat on a rock when I saw the glint of metal tucked down in a crack in the rock. I glanced around, but no one was watching, so I leaned down and looked closer, not believing my eyes. There, tucked into an opening in one rock, was a short metal cylinder, like nothing I had seen in this dim ension so far. It was the D-Hopper.

I carefully pulled it out, noticing that a folded piece of paper came with it. The map!

For some reason Aahz and Tanda had left me the D-Hop per and the map. More than likely they had suspected Glenda, while I had been too blind with lust or love to see anything.

I looked at the D-Hopper to make sure I wasn't hallucinating in the heat. It was real. I held it up like an idol and did a little dance of joy right there behind the rock. For the first time I had some options. I could do something instead of just waiting and hoping. The relief was almost more than I could take.

"Slow down and think," I said to myself, hearing Aahz's voice in my head as clearly as if he were standing beside me.

I took a few deep breaths of the hot air and looked out over the valley toward the town below. If Aahz and Tanda had walked up here to hide this for me, Glenda had beat them back to Vortex #6. And more than likely she had gotten the jump on them, which was what had kept them from coming back for me.

That thought took all the excitement out of the moment. I just hoped they were still alive. Glenda didn't strike me as being bloodthirsty, but I had been wrong about her before. More than likely if she considered Aahz and Tanda competition in getting the treasure, she would do something to stop them. She hadn't considered me a problem.

But something had stopped them from coming back, that much was clear. They were the ones that now needed rescu ing, not me. The tables had turned and I needed to make sure I did this right. The life of my friends might depend on it.

I tucked the map in my pouch and sat on the rock with the D-Hopper on my lap, trying to make myself think what I needed to do next. The D-Hopper was set for Vortex #6. That was good, but if I went there, and couldn't find Aahz and Tanda, could I get back here? At least here I could live on carrot juice and bad veggies. I didn't give myself much of a chance on Vortex #6, even with increased magik powers in that dimension.

I had a slight working knowledge of the D-Hopper from carrying one on the shopping trip with Tanda. There was a place on the D-Hopper that set the current dimension as a return point. I carefully looked over the cylinder, then without changing the setting for Vortex #6, I set the current dimension as a return point.

I double, then triple-checked myself. If I triggered the D- Hopper I would jump to Vortex #6. If I triggered it again, I would jump back to this spot.

Okay, that problem was solved.

I stood and was about to hop when I remembered what I might be going into.

"Stop and think," I said aloud, again with Aahz's voice echoing through my head.

With luck, the D-Hopper would put me back into the cabin, but in case it didn't, I needed to be ready.

What happened if Glenda was still there with them? I needed something to fight her with. I picked up a good-sized rock that fit nicely in my hand. It wasn't much, but it might be enough if it came to a fight.

"Okay," I said aloud. "Anything else?"

I couldn't think of anything. And in the heavy coat I was starting to sweat more than I had before.

"Think, then act," I said, repeating what Aahz had said a hundred times. "It's time to act."

With one last look at the town of Evade down in the valley, I took a deep breath and triggered the D-Hopper.

The storm slammed into me like a hammer. I tucked the D-Hopper into my shirt and focused on how Tanda had led us the other three times to the cabin. The dust didn't let me see anything around me, but I knew there were some scattered trees. We had passed them the last two times.

Tanda had gone slightly downhill and to the right, so I figured out what I thought was directly downhill, then angled a little to the right, counting my steps to make sure that if I was on the wrong path, I could get back. After twenty steps could see the faint shape of a tree. I was sure that had been there the last time, so I kept going.

Another thirty slogging steps and another tree loomed out of the blowing dust. I thought that had been there as well. So far so good.

I kept moving for fifty more steps before I saw the faint light in the window of the cabin below me. I had almost missed it, walking too high-along the hillside.

I eased my way down to the cabin and tried to look in the window, but the dirt and shades made it so that I couldn't see anything.

It looked as if I was going to have to go in, hard and fast, like a soldier going after a dangerous outlaw.

I got to the door, braced myself, and eased open the door la tch then shoved hard, the rock from Kowtow ready in my hand as I stumbled in.

My momentum pushed me three steps into the room be fore I caught my balance and stopped. I had the rock raised to hit at Glenda, who I expected to be standing there, ready to fight me.

She wasn't there.

The cabin was warm and comfortable, just like the last time I had seen it.

Tananda and Aahz were sitting at the table, eating what smelled like beef stew with slices of homemade bread.

"Nice entrance," Tanda said, smiling at me. "What took you so long?"

Aahz just shook his head.

"Shut the door, would you?"

I stood there with the rock in the air over my head, not really believing what I was seeing. I had so convinced myself that Aahz and Tanda were in trouble that I couldn't believe that they were simply having lunch and waiting for me. Why had they let me stay the entire day and night in Kowtow?

Why had they chanced that I would even find the D-Hop per where they had left it?

"Door!" Aahz said. "You born in a barn or something?"

Behind me the storm was raging, blowing dust into the cabin. I lowered the rock, tossed it out into the dust, and then closed the door.

Tanda stood and came up to me, smiling. "Aahz, I told you he'd make it just fine," she said, giving me a hug that convinced me that she was just fine, and I wasn't dreaming all this.

Aahz snorted. "After all the mooning over our friend Glenda, I didn't think his brain would ever work again."

I asked the one question I wanted to know most of all.

"Why didn't you come back?"

"We couldn't," Tanda said, patting me on the back and leading me to the table, where she slid some bread toward me as I sat down.

I stared at my mentor, who was just eating and not paying much attention to me at the moment. He did that when he was very angry or very happy, and at the moment I honestly didn't know which it was.

"Stew?" she asked, holding up a pot of what was making the room smell so good. "Glenda left us enough food to last for a few weeks at least."

"Nice of her," Aahz said, the anger clearly there.

"When you didn't come back for me I thought you were both dead."

"We would have been dead in four or five weeks," Aahz said. "When the food ran out."

Tanda served me up a dish of the stew and then sat down next to me after patting my shoulder.

"So why couldn't you come back?" I asked, not wanting to eat until I had some answers. "What happened?"

"Well," Aahz said, still not looking at me, "we both knew Glenda was up to something, and was going to try to double-cross us."

"And we expected her to leave you on Kowtow," Tanda said.

"You expected that?" I was stunned and suddenly angry. "Why didn't you at least warn me?"

Aahz looked me directly in the eye. "Would you have lis tened, apprentice?"

"Yes," I said defensively.

Now they both laughed.

Clearly they thought I had been too much under Glenda's spell. And the more I thought about it, the more I saw that they were right, at least to a point. When Glenda started her act on the bartender, I started to get suspicious, but not enough to think it through.

"You were the closest to her, apprentice," Aahz said, his voice stern and in lecture mode. "You should have been warning us about her, not the other way around."

As normal, Aahz was right.

"So what happened here?" I asked, trying to not admit I had been wrong, even though we all knew I had been.

"We headed up to the rocks and left the D-Hopper and the map," Tanda said, "then I jumped us here."

"And right into Glenda's waiting arms," Aahz said. "Just as she had been planning."

"She used a dimension-blocking spell on me," Tanda said. "She searched us for the D-Hopper, wished us both luck when she couldn't find it or the map, and hopped out."

"I assume she's going after the treasure," Aahz said. "And now she's got a full day's start on us." So what I had been feeling from Aahz was anger, both at me and at the fact that we might lose the treasure, after getting so close.

"So what's a dimension block?"

"A spell that keeps another person from jumping out of a dimension," Aahz said. "Some cultures use it to imprison people. It's a pretty basic spell."

"That you haven't taught me yet," I said.

He shrugged. "There's a lot I haven't taught you. And after falling so easily for this Glenda's charms and smooth talk, I'm not sure if I ever will."

Tanda patted Aahz's green hand across the table.

"Easy on your apprentice. He's young and full of hormones. He did get back here, didn't he?"

I wanted to ask what a hormone was, but figured I'd get that information from Tanda later, when Aahz wasn't around to make fun of my stupidity. He was disgusted enough with me as it was. And this time around I agreed with him. I shouldn't have been so easily taken with Glenda. She'd given me a couple of compliments and I'd been putty in her hands.

I looked at Tanda. "So once you jump out of here with the D-Hopper, the spell is broken?"

"Exactly," she said.

"Finish up," Aahz said. "We've given her enough of a head start as it is."

"So how do we get the treasure home once we find it?" I asked, then instantly realized just how stupid my question was. It had been Glenda who had told us we were too far from any of our known worlds to dimension-hop safely. That had been another of Glenda's lies.

Tanda shook her head. "I think that's where Glenda got me. She blocked my sense of dimensions when we got near her. When we jumped back here from Kowtow, into the storm, I could sense Vortex #4 and Vortex #2. We can get home any time we want."

My relief at that, combined with my relief at finding Aahz and Tanda all right, was more than I could handle. I stared at my stew, trying to make myself eat as much of it as I could. Doing anything else and I just might fall apart completely.

"So what did you do when she left you?" Tanda asked.

I shrugged, making myself focus on what I had managed to do right.

"Paid our bill by doing the dishes so no one would be chasing me, then explored the town to see what I could see, then sat and waited, staying in the open so that you could find me."

"And slept?" Aahz said, his voice sounding disgusted.

"Not really," I said. "I got a hotel room because those people are deathly afraid of being outside at night. And of something called a round-up."

"Really?" Tanda asked.

I glanced up from my stew. Even Aahz was now showing interest.

"Yeah, they bolt their doors and shutter every window, every night," I said. "I couldn't think of a way to ask them what they were afraid of without tipping my hand that I was a demon. And at that point I had other problems to figure out, like what to do next if you two didn't come back."

Aahz nodded. "So we need to be careful at night."

"The bartender guy said the round-up was still a few days off, since it wasn't the full moon yet."

"I wonder what they're rounding up?" Tanda asked.

"Or who's doing the rounding?" Aahz added. "There's a lot to Kowtow we don't know. You have the map?"

"I sure do," I said, taking it out of my pocket and handing it to him.

As I did I had another realization. The map was magik. It hadn't shown us the right path to Kowtow until I took the magik out of it, but back on Kowtow the magik had returned to the map.

"Aahz," I said, smiling at my mentor, "you know, don't you, that the magik returned to the map when we reached Kowtow?"

"Yeah," he said, almost sneering at me. "So? Glenda saw it as well."

"Exactly," I said, smiling at my green mentor, "Glenda looked at the map while we were in Evade. Right?"

Suddenly Tanda burst out laughing, long and hard and so loud I thought she might hurt herself.

I smiled at the puzzled expression on my mentor's face. Considering how stupid I had been lately, getting back on top and giving him some good news felt good.

"The map is a puzzle," I said. "That basic nature of the map won't change just because we reached Kowtow."

Suddenly the light in Aahz's eyes brightened and slowly a smile crept over his green-scaled face.

"Glenda has the wrong location."

"Exactly," I said. "The map changes every time we get closer, just as it did with dimensions. I'm betting it will do that on Kowtow as well."

Aahz put the folded map back in his belt pouch and stood, suddenly in a hurry.

"Great thinking, Skeeve," he said. "Let's get back to Kow­ tow. Glenda is going to come looking for us to get the map when she discovers she has wrong information. And when she does, I want to be ready for her this time."

I liked that idea a lot.