"This is the basket," Ivy said. "It"s one of the magic devices we found in Humfrey"s collection. He evidently used it and sent it back. You will ride in it to h.e.l.l."
"But I can"t fit in that little thing!" Lacuna protested.
Grey smiled. "Your body will rest in a coffin, just as Humfrey"s does. Only your soul goes to h.e.l.l. Don"t worry, your body will be quite safe here, until you return to it."
Ivy walked to a low solid bench. She lifted its top- and it came up, manifesting as the lid to a plushly lined coffin. "Lie down in here," Ivy said.
Lacuna was beginning to have, if not exactly second thoughts, first-and-a-half thoughts. Sleep in a coffin? But if it was the way to go, then she had to do it.
She got into the coffin and lay on her back. Somehow this action made her feel even older and duller than she hoped she was. Grey put his finger behind the hanging tiny basket and pushed it toward her. "Get into this."
Lacuna wanted to protest, but found herself floating up toward the basket, which was rapidly expanding. She caught its edge with her hands and climbed in. It was now quite ample in size; she could stand upright within it and peer over the edge and down.
She saw her huge body lying there in the coffin. It looked every bit as blah as she had feared.
She turned to face the other way. As she did so, the basket began to move. It was swinging along at the end of its rope, which was firmly knotted to the stout handle. The room, indeed the entire Good Magician"s castle, seemed to have disappeared. She was on her way.
The basket tilted and moved down. Lacuna clutched the edge with both hands. She was pa.s.sing through a region of shadows and clouds. Behind the clouds were vague flashes, as of lightning, making the outlines show momentarily. Some of the clouds resembled monstrous ugly faces, as if c.u.mulo Fracto Nimbus, the meanest of clouds, had posed for his portrait.
One of the clouds opened its big mouth, and the basket swung right into it. The scenery changed; now there were things floating, ranging from tiny acorns to huge acorn trees. This was evidently the dream realm, normally accessed through the peephole of a gourd. It seemed there were other ways to visit it. To h.e.l.l in a handbasket! Who would have expected it! At least it was interesting.
But some of the scenes through which she was pa.s.sing were more than interesting. They were grotesque. There were human forms in various states of distress, and animals who seemed lost, and a.s.sorted objects that looked broken. The stuff of troubled dreams, spare props, perhaps hanging here in limbo, waiting to be fashioned into truly unpleasant episodes for those sleepers who deserved them. Lacuna had seldom suffered from bad dreams; that was part of the boredom of her being. How could a person rate bad dreams if a person never did anything of doubtful validity?
Then a vague face formed, neither interesting nor dull of itself. From its mouth poured numbers in scattered order. These numbers grew larger as they moved, becoming individual pictures. They were odd indeed! One was of a man walking along with two left feet, making him pretty awkward. Another was a blue or purple horse; actually she couldn"t quite tell what color it was, because it seemed to keep changing, never being fixed. A third was of a man whose head was a pile of animal manure.
Suddenly Lacuna caught on. "Figures of speech!" she exclaimed. "In the realm of dreams they are literal! A man with two left feet, a horse of another color, a dunghead!" These folk were worse off than she was, which made her feel both better and guilty. How awful it must be to be literal.
Then, abruptly, the basket swung into a small chamber. It b.u.mped against the floor, almost overturning, and she had to scramble out. She had arrived.
As she caught her balance, she saw the basket swinging up and away. "Oh!" she cried, grabbing for it, but she was too late. She had lost her transport back.
But Grey and Ivy knew where she was. Surely they would send the handbasket back when they realized that it was empty. She had to believe that!
She looked around-and there sat old Good Magician Humfrey in a hard wooden chair! She recognized him instantly; there was no mistaking the gnomelike features and great age of the little man. He seemed to be snoozing.
That was all. The rest of the chamber was bare, except for another chair.
She sat in that chair. There did not seem to be much else to do. She smoothed out her dingy dress, noting that she wore the same clothing as usual despite being in spirit form now. That was just as well; she would not have liked to go naked to this infernal region, though probably it was not the best place to keep secrets. This surely was not h.e.l.l itself, because there was no fire. It must be h.e.l.l"s waiting room.
But why was Humfrey still waiting here? In fact, what was he doing here anyway? Where was his family? It had been ten years since the man had disappeared from his castle along with his wife and son, leaving Xanth in the lurch. Chex Centaur had discovered his absence, with her companions Esk Ogre and Volney Vole; the challenges seemed to have been in the process of being set up for the three, when the occupants of the castle had suddenly departed. It was the great current mystery of Xanth: what had happened?
Well, perhaps that wasn"t her business, though she was as curious as the next person. She had just one Question which was her business with the Magician. She would just have to stifle her interest in the rest of his life.
She did not want to wake him from his snooze. But she wasn"t sure how long she could safely remain here. If this was h.e.l.l"s waiting room, at any time a door could open and a demon could appear, saying "Next!" in that bone-chilling tone. Then either Humfrey would be taken, or she herself would. Either way, her chance for her Answer would be gone.
"Ahem," she said politely.
One of Humfrey"s eyelids flickered. Then both did. His eyes popped open, fixing on her. "Lacuna! What are you doing here?"
"You recognize me?" she asked, startled.
"Of course I recognize you! You baby-sat me when I had been youthened by overdosing on the water from the Fountain of Youth. You were a rather sweet sixteen at the time, quite unlike your present blah state."
She had forgotten how sharp he was on information. Of course, he was the Magician of Information. Even in his youthened state he had been very quick to learn things. So after most of eighteen years without seeing her, he had identified her present nature with dismaying facility.
"I came to ask you a Question," she said.
"I"m not answering Questions now. Go to the castle. Murphy"s boy is supposed to be minding it."
"He is. He sent me here. He said that only you could give me my Answer.""
"Why? Doesn"t he have the Book of Answers there?"
"Yes, but he can"t decipher the technical parts, and my Answer is there."
He nodded. "It does take most of a century to master the programming language. I happen to know. I did it faster because I had special training. But he"ll get there in due course."
"I can"t wait a century!" she protested. "I"ve already gone from sweet sixteen to blah thirty-four. I"ll sink into dismal anonymity before another decade is out."
He glanced at her appraisingly. "More like six years."
"Six years?"
"A person is only allowed three great mistakes. Your first was in not marrying that young man. Your second was in turning thirty. Your third will be in turning forty, and that will finish you as a potentially worthwhile female human being."
He certainly understood her situation! "Magician Grey Murphy told me of the first mistake. If I can change that, I"ll be left with only two strikes against me, and my life may become worthwhile. The rules aren"t the same for married women. That"s why I came to you."
Humfrey considered. "I suppose I might as well do something while I"m waiting here. Suppose I give you the coding so that you can show Grey Murphy how to get your Answer from the Book?"
"That would be fine!" she said.
"And what service will you do me in return?"
"What do you need?"
"I need to have the Demon X(A/N)th take notice of me!" he said. "I"ve been cooling my heels in this waiting room for ten years, waiting for him to ask me what I want."
"You mean you"re not going to h.e.l.l?"
"Not exactly. I"m here to take someone from h.e.l.l. Then I can return with her to Xanth."
"With her? Who is she?"
"My wife."
"The Gorgon is in h.e.l.l?"
"No. She"s waiting for me to get my business done here. It"s Rose I"m after."
"Rose is your wife? But what about the Gorgon?"
"What about her?"
"How can you have a wife in h.e.l.l when the Gorgon is your wife?""
"I married Rose before."
"But then-"
"It"s a long story," he said shortly.
Lacuna realized that Humfrey must have done more than twiddle his thumbs in the century or so he had lived before meeting the Gorgon. Rose must have been a wife who died. "But no matter how long it is, if you bring Rose back, you"ll have two wives, and that"s not allowed in Xanth."
"Who says it isn"t?"
"Queen Irene. When Prince Dolph got betrothed to two girls, she said he could marry only one."
Humfrey sighed. "That does complicate things. But the Queen"s word is law on matters of social protocol, however inconvenient it may be. Her son must have been most upset."
"He was," she agreed. "But he finally worked it out."
"He was young. I am too old to adjust to such nonsense. What am I going to do? I can"t leave Rose in h.e.l.l."
"You are asking me? But you"re the Magician of Information."
"True. I shall have to think about this. I shall review my life, and gain the perspective to make the right decision. Herein lies your service: use your print to record my biography.""
"But I have nothing to print on," she protested, surprised.
"Print on the wall."
"Yes, I could do that," she agreed. "But what is the point of printing it? Why can"t you just review your life in your head?"
"Because my head isn"t that big!" he snapped. "Also, I"m trying to attract the attention of the Demon X(A/N)th, and maybe the story of my life written on the wall will do it."
"Why do you want to see the Demon X(A/N)th? I thought you were here to rescue your former wife."
"I am. But only the Demon can authorize it."
Lacuna nodded. It was beginning to make partial sense. "And you have waited here all this time, heating your heels, being ignored by the Demon? Why don"t you take a break where it"s more interesting?"
"Because the Demon doesn"t want to deal with me."
"But then the Demon may never take note of you!"
"No. It is in the Big Book of Universal Rules: the Demon has to meet with his appointments before doing anything else. So I shall wait here until he appears."
"But all this time-surely you can afford some time off. He"s probably asleep and it won"t make any difference."
Humfrey fixed her with a steely gaze. "You don"t understand the psychology of the Demon X(A/N)th. He will appear here the very instant I step out. Because the rules also say that if the Demon appears, and there is no person in the waiting room, because the person didn"t have the interest to remain, then the appointment is vacated. Then he won"t have to see me at all."
Lacuna was appalled. "You mean the Demon knows you are here and is deliberately ignoring you, hoping to catch you out? And it has been this way for a decade?"
"Exactly. So I don"t dare step out. I was lucky the Demon didn"t realize when Grey Murphy and Ivy tried to wake me in the dream coffin four years ago. But I know I won"t be able to get away with that again. The Demon may have been inattentive once, but he never makes the same mistake twice."
Now she knew why the Good Magician had disappeared and never even left word. He had been unable to, without risking the loss of his mission. So he had remained here in this absolutely dull waiting room, doing nothing. Waiting for the Demon.
"Your recent life has been a worse blah than mine!" she exclaimed, suffering a revelation.
"What else is new?" he inquired sourly.
"But still-suppose the Demon came this moment and said it was all right to take Rose out of h.e.l.l and back to Xanth. What about the Gorgon?" For Lacuna had known and liked the Gorgon, whose terror was all in her face, not in her nature.
"It"s bad enough trying to figure out what to do about Grey Murphy when I return," the Magician grumped. "It isn"t right to send him back to Mundania to avoid Com-Pewter."
"Oh, that"s no problem," she said quickly. "I will free Grey by changing the print on the evil machine"s screen."
He stared at her. "No wonder I overlooked that Answer! It"s obvious! Simply a matter of overwriting Pewter"s directive and using the key command "Save and Compile." I could have given him that Answer before."
She shrugged, not wanting to annoy him further.
"Well, if you are so good at seeing the obvious, what"s your solution to my problem of two wives?"
She spread her hands. "Maybe they could take turns?"
"That"s ridiculous!" he exploded. "It just might work, if the Queen doesn"t interfere."
"Well, if one wife is technically dead, while the other is alive, maybe Queen Irene couldn"t object."
He sighed. "It may not come to that. The Demon X(A/N)th isn"t going to grant my appeal anyway."
"But-but then why-"
"Because it would be unthinkable not to make the effort. I was less experienced before, and didn"t consider such an approach, but now it must be tried."
Lacuna wondered what kind of a woman Rose was to warrant such devotion from such a normally truculent man. To sit in h.e.l.l"s waiting room for a decade, expecting a negative response!
She knew better, but she couldn"t help arguing a little more. "Why won"t the Demon grant your appeal?"
"For the same reason he doesn"t want to meet me: it"s more complicated to deal with this matter than to ignore it. The Demon cares nothing for my convenience, only for his own."
""Wouldn"t it be easy for him just to hear your appeal and turn it down and be done with it?"
"He can"t do that. The rules say that he has to be fair. If he is fair, he may have to grant my appeal. So he is avoiding me, hoping I will give up and go without his hearing me."
The two were really in a contest of wills, she saw. Humfrey wanted something that the Demon X(A/N)th didn"t want to give, so they were locked in this endurance contest instead. It was sad. But it was also somewhat like Humfrey"s own treatment of those who pestered him with Questions at his castle. He was being served as he served others. Probably he would not appreciate having that pointed out, so she stifled whatever remark she might have been tempted to make.
"How will he avoid granting your appeal, if he has to play fair?" she asked.