Board Stiff (Xanth) (29 page)

“Good idea,” Tammi said, removing her own outer clothing. Her figure was not as robust as Astrid’s, but she was young and healthy. “But how do we deal with the women?”

“I am trusting that they won’t recognize us in this state,” Astrid said. “They may not have seen us at all, as we never went around the village, and it was men who hauled us to the oubliette. We’ll be just two somewhat exposed girls.”

“We can say we lost our clothing,” Tammi agreed. “As we have, though not accidentally.”

The two departed. Mitch checked the unconscious man. “He’s coming around,” he said. He squatted beside the man. “Quick, where is the dragon?” he asked before the man opened his eyes.

“Other side of the castle,” the man said. “One side’s the oubliette; other side’s the dragon cave. We lower them down the same way.”

“Thank you,” Mitch said. Then they departed before the man recovered further. He might wonder what had happened, but he would not talk about it, knowing better than to incriminate himself.

They posted Pewter by the castle entrance to intercept and guide Astrid and Tammi when they returned, and walked around the castle. Sure enough, there was another chamber, with another hole in the floor, and a pulley apparatus with a pallet. It was a pretty simple operation, really.

“My turn,” Tani said. “Lower me down.”

“Are you sure you can do this?” Tiara asked, concerned.

“Oh, yes. I have tamed many creatures, some of them dragons. I will have it eating out of my hand, literally.”

Tani got on the pallet and Ease cranked her slowly down. They heard a muffled roar as the dragon winded her and charged over to gobble her up. But then there was silence.

“Safe,” Tani called.

“My turn,” Mitch said, a trifle grimly. He got on the pallet and Ease cranked him down. Then after two and a half moments, he called back “Safe!”

The others followed. There was the dragon, a huge fire breather now lying with its head on the floor gazing soulfully at Tani. She had indeed tamed it.

“Next stage,” Mitch said. “Making sure the dragon knows each of us, so it won’t eat us when we haul the conspirators here. And to explain exactly what we want done with the conspirators.”

They performed the unusual introductions and explanation. The dragon listened passively. “Do you understand?” Tani asked it at the end.

“Of course I understand,” the dragon said, startling them all.

“You talk!” Tiara said.

“No less surprising, so do you, damsel.”

“But you look like a monster!”

“And you look good enough to eat.”

“Druce is an educated dragon,” Tani explained. “He doesn’t even like the taste of humans. So he herds them down into the catacombs for the cats to deal with. The cats don’t like their taste either, so they generally pass them along to the goblins. We’re not sure what happens to them then; goblins vary.”

“But Druce will keep the four conspirators with him, cleaning out his stables,” Mitch said. “They will not be harmed unless they try to escape. That way we can draw on their expertise later, if we need to.”

That made sense, Kandy thought. But it also avoided bloodshed, as they had agreed. Tani had made a worthwhile contribution to the effort.

They returned to the upper chamber. Soon Astrid and Tammi appeared, dragging the body of a conspirator. Ease worked the winch and lowered the man down into the dragon’s lair.

In due course they had processed all four conspirators. The last one, to their surprise, was a woman.

“Now we tackle the Mayor,” Mitch said, satisfied.

“Do we really need to?” Astrid asked. She was back in her dress, her undercover mission done. “With the conspirators gone, and the pun animus being ameliorated by Pastor and Futura, won’t the village revert to normal soon enough?”

“You’re right,” Mitch said, surprised. “Our job here is done: we have dealt with a local crisis, and eliminated a bastion of anti-pun sentiment. That was surely the reason for this event. We can be on our way.”

“And so can we,” Tani said. “Tammi, why don’t you and I walk on to the next village together, and get to know each other, since we almost share a name? Then in the morning I can get to know your alter ego too, without saying more than I need to about our adventure today.”

“I’d like that,” Tammi agreed. “It will give my existence better continuity.”

The two bid farewell to the five, and set out for the next village.

Then Tiara removed a sequin from Astrid’s dress. “I hope we don’t land in another dungeon with a dragon.” Then she replaced it.

Chapter 12:

Cloud

It was not a dungeon. It was a wide open plain with wind gusting across it. Clouds floated low in the sky, scudding rapidly here and there.

“That’s odd,” Mitch remarked.

“Odd?” Tiara asked.

“Those clouds are not going all in the same direction.”

Now Kandy saw it: the clouds were small, as clouds went, at different levels and colors, and they were scudding different ways. That was odd indeed.

It got worse. Two clouds collided and fell apart, the red mist mixing with the green vapor to form a weird brownish fog that turned upside down and floated upward like a dead fish. It was as if it had expired and given up the ghost. It did not rise far before other clouds converged, blowing it back and forth, shaking loose vapors that they then sucked in.

“Cannibalism!” Tiara exclaimed, shocked.

“And to think I thought Fracto was bad,” Mitch said.

“Fracto?” Astrid asked.

“Fracto Cumulo Nimbus, the king of clouds. Remember him? He likes to rain on parades.”

“But I gather he didn’t eat other clouds,” Astrid said.

“Not that I know of. But these are obviously a different breed of cloud. How can they move opposite to the wind?”

“And what does any of this have to do with our Quest?” Ease asked.

“There must be some relevance,” Astrid said. “There always has been, so far.”

“What’s happening with that yellow cloud?” Tiara asked.

They looked. The yellow cloud was floating very low and looked lumpy, as if having some internal complication. Then it rained a shower of yellow drops.

“I think it’s pooping,” Astrid said.

“That’s called raining,” Tiara said. “Clouds don’t poop.”

“Those pellets look solid to me.”

“Maybe it’s sleet, or hail.”

“We’ll find out soon,” Ease said. “It’s coming toward us.”

Indeed it was, with yellow pellets dropping and bouncing on the ground. “Duck!” Mitch said.

They ducked down, hunching against the threatened hail. It came at them fiercely, bouncing off their backs. Ease put the board up as a shield, and the pellets bounced off it with a loud rapping sound.

Then the cloud was past. They straightened up cautiously, shedding snagged pellets.

“That’s the funniest hail I ever saw,” Ease said. “It’s like alphabet soup.”

“Letters!” Tiara said, picking up a handful. “Different letters of the alphabet. How can they be raining from a cloud?”

“This is curious,” Pewter said. “There was once a virus in the OuterNet that infected machines like me, causing the letters of a printed page to drop down and pile up on the floor. It was impossible to maintain a complete document.”

“A virus,” Mitch said. “Can they do other things than melt puns?”

“Indubitably. There are many different viruses on the OuterNet. That’s why I learned to make a firewall, that is standing me in good stead now. It keeps the viruses out.”

“Could a virus infect a cloud?”

“I doubt it could mess up a regular cloud, as they are little more than floating vapor. But there is another kind of cloud that could be devastated.”

“These are not regular clouds,” Mitch pointed out.

“True. These just may be animations of OuterNet clouds. That would explain the special effects.”

“And what is an OuterNet cloud?”

“It is an electronic database of enormous capacity that stores data for third parties.”

“Can you repeat that in plain talk?”

“It’s like a huge storage bin for information for anyone.”

“Thank you. So there could be letters of the alphabet in one of those?”

“There would be data files containing records of many types. To assimilate them a person would summon them and read their words.”

“Which are now falling out of the cloud as loose letters.”

“Well, after a while the letters would become too heavy for the cloud floor,” Tiara said. “So they would drop to the ground.”

Mitch nodded. “I’d say that’s the virus Pewter described.”

“It could be like the pun virus,” Astrid said. “Or another of a host of viruses, none of them doing anyone any good.”

“So we need to get rid of them,” Tiara said. “That must be why we’re here.”

“And how to we do that?” Ease asked.

“That it seems is our challenge,” Pewter said. “But we can’t even get into a cloud, let alone clear out a virus.”

“I am not sure of that,” Astrid said.

“You think we can get into a cloud?”

“I fear we can’t avoid it. That gray one is coming for us.”

So it was. Kandy saw that it was so close to the ground that bits of its fluff were scraping off as it scudded over irregularities on the terrain. They had nowhere to go. They just had to stand and let it smite them.

It loomed rapidly closer, its surface roiling. Then suddenly it was upon them, and the world was gray.

Slowly the dense fog thinned, and they were able to see again. They were standing in a cubic gray room with several doors in the walls. The doors were labeled with words like FILE, EDIT, VIEW, FORMAT, TOOLS, and HELP.

“What is this?” Mitch asked.

“It is a dialogue box,” Pewter said. “It offers a number of options, as represented by the doors. The user clicks on the option he wants.”

“Clicks?”

“Touches.”

“And what happens when he selects an option?”

“He normally gets a new series of options.”

“New?”

“Like this.” Pewter rapped on the door marked FILE. It opened, and they filed through to another chamber girt by more doors. These had the words NEW, OPEN, CLOSE, RELOAD, PROPERTIES, and PRINT.

“What good is it?” Mitch asked.

“Good is irrelevant. This is the Cloud.”

“Yes, the cloud swallowed us. I meant, what good are all these options?”

“The Cloud is a huge database, part of the OuterNet. It always offers myriad options.”

“Is there one that will let us out of here?”

“Somewhere there should be a QUIT door. But that will accomplish nothing. We must be here for a reason. We need to tackle that reason.”

“Is there an option that will clarify that reason?”

“Of course not. Net options never offer you the one you really need.”

“One door says HELP,” Astrid said. “Could we open that one to find what we need?”

Pewter seemed amused. “You can try.”

Astrid went to the HELP door and opened it. It showed a chamber with doors marked MENUS, TOOLBARS, SHORTCUTS, MACROS, SPREADSHEETS, and COMMON HELP TOPICS.

“I have no idea what these are about,” she muttered. She opened the COMMON door.

That one’s chamber had doors marked GENERAL, WIZARDS, LINKS, GUIDES, INTERFACE, and CONFIGURING.

“I’ll try one more,” she said grimly. She opened GENERAL.

Those doors said SHORTCUTS, ACCESSIBILITY, GLOSSARY, VERSIONS, LAYOUT, and MENU.

Astrid reversed course, closing the doors behind her. “You’re right. HELP is no help.”

“Actually they all make sense on their own terms,” Pewter said. “They simply are not intended for real folk.”

“Such as those who actually need help?”

“Exactly. Only when you need no help do the HELP menus help you.”

“That’s insane.”

“Welcome to the OuterNet.”

“I don’t think we need help to figure out our problem,” Mitch said. “We knew there are viruses infecting the clouds of the Net, just as the pun virus infects Xanth. If we figure out how to nullify the viruses here, we may have a clue to dealing with the pun virus. That may be our purpose in this Event.”

“That does make sense,” Astrid agreed.

“You’re so smart, dear,” Tiara said, kissing his ear.

“What’s this door?” Ease asked. “It says DO NOT OPEN. That makes me curious.”

“Don’t open it!” Pewter warned.

But as usual, with Ease, the warning was too late. Ease put his hand on the knob and opened it.

A torrent of little metal bugs swarmed out. Some were scuttling along the floor. Some were crawling across the wall. Some were flying.

“What are these?” Ease asked, taken aback.

“Those are bots,” Pewter said. “They normally are used to crawl through the OuterNet and collect any new information they can find, so the big Search Engines can use it.”

“Search engines? Are they like trains looking for scenery?”

“No. They have names like Goggle and Binge, and they can find anything in the Cloud. But I don’t think these are legitimate info gathering bots; I fear they are virus bots, probably sent by Stuck Net. That’s why they were walled out, but opening that door gave them access. Now we’re in trouble.”

“How can you tell?”

“Because my firewall is holding them at bay. It stops viruses. These are viruses masquerading as bots, and they are up to no good.”

Now they saw that the bots had formed a circle, or rather a sphere, around them, and those that tried to get closer were burning and crashing to the floor. They could not quite reach the members of the Quest. They were viruses all right.

“Sorry,” Ease muttered.

“Oh, we would have had to go out among them anyway,” Pewter said. “Because if what we need could be found in the Cloud, someone would have found it already and exterminated the viruses. We need to locate their source and get rid of it. Meanwhile, let’s hope the Cloud has a secondary firewall.”

There was the snap, crackle, and pop of viruses hitting a nearby barrier. It seemed there was another firewall. The Cloud had not depended on just one.

“How come there was a door to let the bots in?” Mitch asked.

“A hacker probably made it,” Pewter said.

“A hacker?”

“If you listen, you can hear them hammering, sawing and hacking, trying to make new portals. They don’t like being shut out of anything.”