Currant Events (7 page)

 “That's amazing,” the small
dragon said. “What are you?”

 But the scene faded out before the copy
could answer.

 Clio pondered. She had not encountered
this one before, perhaps because she had had no truck with dragons. A dragon
with mental powers had copied himself, complete with those powers. Where was
the pun? He had done it by spinning, but that seemed to be a mechanism, not a
pun. Was it a false claim? Was he spinning a tale? Yet for the purpose of the
contest, it had to be assumed that what was presented was true.

 She watched it again, and finally
asked. “Is he telling the truth?”

 “Yes. He is really copying
himself, complete with mental powers.”

 It was beyond her. She had to give up.
“What's the pun?”

 “He's a psi-clone.”

 Clio groaned. “Oh, I should have
gotten that one. A whirling copy of mental powers. What an awful pun.”

 “Puns are best when they're
worst,” the black dragon said smugly. The billboard was marked3 to 2.
“Now remove your sock.”

 Feeling vaguely unclean, she drew off
her sock, exposing her tender foot to his hungry gaze. She knew he was
crunching that foot, in his imagination. Ugh!

 But it was her turn again. This was
tougher than she had expected, as the dragon was coming up with some puns that
were new to her, but the contest did seem to be fairly run. It was time for her
to come up with a tough one of her own.

 Her picture formed: a huge barrel, a
cask, sitting on the ground. All around it were odd creatures and things:
silly-looking demons, weird plants, unlikely animals. Beyond were human people
and dragons who approached the region, saw the oddities, held their noses, and
turned away, obviously disgusted. Sometimes they accidentally stepped on
something, and it stuck to their feet and evidently smelled bad. Nobody could
stand the things. Then a crew of people came with nets. They caught the odd
things and dumped them in the barrel and jammed the lid on. The scene was clear
at last, and now the people were satisfied.

 The black dragon viewed the scene
several times, mystified. 'Those things look like bad puns, but they are
cleaned up, so where's the pun?"

 “In the barrel,” Clio answered.
“All of the unruly puns are there, so people can live in peace.”

 “Puns in a barrel.”

 “In a cask,” she agreed.

 Then suddenly he got it.
“Puncheon! A cask for unruly puns!”

 He had indeed gotten it, just when she
thought she had won. Now the billboard was 3 to 3. “Remove your other
shoe,” he said.

 She hated this, but had to do it.

 She removed her other shoe, and stood
with one foot bare, the other socked. The black dragon licked his lips.

 It was his turn. A scene formed,
showing a group of centaurs. That surprised her; she had thought that the
dragons didn't know about other types of creatures found in Xanth.

 “We know about some, when they
travel through,” Drew explained. “Centaurs are smart, and we learned
to respect their archery.”

 The centaurs formed a circle. One of
them stepped into the center. The others were silent, listening while he spoke.
Then he stopped out and another went to the center, and was accorded similar
respect.

 That one was easy. “The centaur of
attention,” Clio said. The dragon snorted a puff of black smoke, resigned.
The billboard showed her ahead, 4 to 3.

 Her turn. She showed a young human
woman surrounded by demons. They were not making mischief for her in the way
demons normally did; instead they were acting like servants, doing her chores
for her, bringing her cake and eye scream and other delicacies. Extremely
obliging demons.

 But just as the dragon's supposedly
tough one was easy for her, her tough one was easy for him. “Demons are a
girl's best friend!” And the board went to4 to 4.

 Clio had to remove the other sock. One
more loss, and she was done. And it was the dragon's turn.

 The scene formed: a wooden stake had
little legs and was running around, almost jumping, the feet making clip-clop
sounds as they landed, approaching a mixed crowd of humans and dragons.
“What is the nature of ultimate reality?”

 “Get out of here, you crazy
stick!” a human exclaimed, and a dragon snorted steam. But the pole was
undismayed. “I must have your answer.” And it kept after them, until
they gave answers, however irrelevant.

 Clio pondered. What was the pun?
Running something up the flagpole? But there was no flag. Answering a
stick-getting stuck? No. Getting shafted? But the pole wasn't hurting anyone,
it was just demanding answers. It was a really funny pole, running around like
that.

 A running pole. Suddenly she had it.
“A gallop poll!”

 The black dragon heaved so much smoke
he disappeared in the cloud. “And those feet look so delectable,” his
disgusted voice emerged.

 The score was 5 to 4. She had won. Now
they had to listen to her pitch. At this fleeting moment, she almost liked
puns.

 Make your pitch,“ the black dragon
said with resignation. ”Then get out of here before my hunger overwhelms
me."

 Clio hastened to oblige. “Xanth is
running out of dragons. Ours generally don't have souls, and some ailment is
taking them out, so we need new dragons, with souls.”

 “We are nothing but souls,”
the black dragon said. “What we lack are bodies.”

 “We are arranging to make bodies
from organic material,” Clio said. “So that you can animate them.
Then you will have all Xanth to roam. Of course there will be some
limits-”

 “I have heard enough,” he
said gruffly.

 “But-”

 “How many can you take?”

 “You're agreeing?”

 “Of course. We have way too many
dragons here, and are eager for new hunting grounds. Especially in reality. We
would all go, if we could.”

 “We need five pairs of each type.
That is, males and females, so they can-”

 “We know what they can do. There
are six hundred twenty-five types of land dragon. You'll take ten of each,
evenly divided in gender?”

 “Yes, that is what we want.”
She could hardly believe it was so easy, after the problem getting him to
listen.

 “He knew your business,” Drew
said. “He just wanted to see your tender feet.”

 “He made me indulge in the pun
contest, just to-?” She was overwhelmed by annoyance as she put her socks
and shoes back on.

 Then the dragons started laughing.
After two moments, Clio and Becka were obliged to join in. It had been a good
joke, in dragon terms.

 “That's six thousand, two hundred
fifty dragons,” the black dragon continued as the laugh subsided.
“How are you going to transport them all to Xanth?”

 “Why, when we're done here, we'll
just expand back to where we came from, and-” She paused as the dragon
shook his head. “And you didn't come from Xanth. You can't do that.”

 “You're smart, for a human. You
had better get some practical advice, while I select the pairs with the
privilege of going. Shall we meet again, here, in one day's time?”

 “But I have other dragons to
contact. The flying, the swimming-”

 “Not until you get ours on the
way. It will be enough of a traffic jam as it is.”

 He was right. She didn't know what to
do.

 “We know,” Drusie said.
“We'll ask Princess Ida.”

 “But she's way back in
Xanth!”

 “OurPrincess Ida,” Drew
clarified.

 “Oh. Of course. We'll talk to
her.”

 Becka changed to dragon form, a feat
that impressed the congregation of dragons. Clio got on, and she took off. She
trusted Drew and Drusie to know where they were going.

 They lifted above the belly and flew on
toward the tail. This was another long flight, but her dialog with Drew and
Drusie made it interesting. They had much information about Dragon World, and
were very curious about Xanth. But there was one thing that bothered Clio.

 “You say the black dragon knew my
mission all along,” she said. “I had understood that you were
guarding my mental privacy.”

 “I was,” Drew said
defensively. “No one got it from you.”

 “Or from Becka,” Drusie said.
“I guarded her.”

 “Then how did it get out? Could
someone have read your minds?”

 “No, we automatically protect our
own minds,” Drew said.

 “From the moment we discovered our
commitment to you,” Drusie added.

 “That small dragon who un-ate
you,” Becka said. Her thought was relayed as speech by the little dragons.
“Could he have done it, just before you started guarding?”

 “No, he's not a telepath,”
Drew said. “He was mentally invisible.”

 “What about some other dragon in
the region?” Clio asked. “Just lying there listening?”

 “There could have been,” Drew
agreed. “We are short-range telepaths, being small. Big ones can range
much farther. We weren't guarding our thoughts, and you weren't guarding
yours.”

 “It could have happened
then,” Drusie agreed. “A big land dragon could have picked up enough
from your minds, and relayed it to others as a matter of general
interest.”

 “So by now the whole planet knows
our business,” Becka said, disgusted.

 “Actually it doesn't need to be
secret,” Clio said. “I was more concerned that dragons might be
reading our minds despite your protection. That would make the pun contests
dangerous.”

 “They aren't doing that,”
Drew assured her.

 Reassured, Clio relaxed. She would
continue to play the game of puns if that was what the dragons wanted, knowing
that they would in the end consider her proposal. Since it was apparent that
dragons were eager to become real in Xanth, she knew her mission was bound to
be a success. But they would make her go through the motions.

 There were flying dragons in the sky,
large and small, but none of them approached aggressively. That suggested that
they did know her business, and were making a point of not interfering with it.
That, too, was reassuring.

 Now they were flying along the thinning
tail section of the dragon world. Since the world was coiled, this was bringing
them back toward the head. Clio was not as alarmed about this as she had been
the first time. Now she knew that despite its horrendous shape, it was just a
planet, not a living creature.

 They were flying above the great eye.
It winked.

 Clio almost fell off her perch.

 “It does that,” Drew said.
“Our world knows what is going on, and it can read any mind it chooses to.
But it never reveals secrets. It just watches. I think it likes you.”

 “That's nice,” Clio said
faintly. “But we were on that eye. It was solid land and water. How
could it wink without disrupting everything, causing earthquakes and
storms?”

 “Illusion,” Drusie said.
“The folk down there would not even have been aware of the wink. It was
just for us.”

 “This world grows more interesting
by the hour.”

 “Well, we like it,” Drew
said. “We wouldn't want to leave it, if only other dragons accepted our
relationship.”

 A small portion of the tail extended
beyond the clamping teeth. They flew along this, then glided down to the very
tip. Tiny as that seemed from afar, it was like the broad peak of a very tall
mountain as they landed. Becka returned to human form, with Drusie in her
pocket.

 They stood before a modest house.
Princess Ida had never been much for show. In fact she was just about the
nicest person in Xanth, and her character seemed to be the same on the tiered
moons.

 The door opened and a dragon peered
out. Clio was appalled; had Ida been eaten by a rogue?

 “By no means, Clio,” the
dragon said, utilizing the same thought conversion Drew and Drusie did. “I
am Ida.”

 “But you're a dragon!”

 “Well, this is Dragon World.
We're all dragons here, except for the prey.”

 Clio realized that it did make sense.
After all, there was a tiny moon circling her head: the next derivative world.
“I apologize for my confusion. On Xanth, you're human.”

 “And if you lived here, you'd be a
dragon. Do come in, Clio, Becka, Drew, Drusie.”

 They entered her house, which was more
like a big nest inside. There were gemstones galore; dragons did like them.
They sat on giant diamonds.

 “And what brings you here, from
far Xanth?” Ida inquired politely. Obviously she knew, but was observing
the forms.

 “We are recruiting dragons to
replace the ones Xanth is losing,” Clio said. “We have recruited more
than six thousand land dragons of every type. We are arranging for bodies for
them in Xanth. Now we need to transport them safely there.”

 “Ah, of course. It's a long way,
in size. I believe you will need a net.”

 “A net?” Clio asked blankly.

 “A dragon net. I have a number,
saved for this purpose.” Ida smiled at Clio's evident confusion.
“This is not the first time dragons have emigrated to another world. This
is after all the source world for dragons; they need a convenient way to reach
their destination worlds.” She lifted one foot, showing a small net in the
shape of a bag. “This should do.”

 “But some of those dragons are
big!” Clio protested. “And there are so many of them. This would
barely do for the smallest.”

 “It stretches,” Ida said
patiently.

 “She knows what she's doing,”
Drew thought privately.

 It wouldn't be polite to doubt her
further. Clio took the little net and tucked it into her other breast pocket.
“Once the dragons are in the net, how is it transported to Xanth?”

 “A Xanth native will have to guide
it there in the usual manner,” Clio said. “Hold it and will yourself
home. You will expand and find yourself there, in my Xanthly study. Do not
release the dragons until you are safely beyond the castle, in the neighborhood
of their new bodies. Someone will have to assist them in occupying them,
because they have never been truly physical before.”

 “I'll help,” Becka said.
“And Che Centaur will be there. He's organizing the bodies now; he's very
smart.”

 “That will surely work,” Ida
agreed. Clio remembered that her talent was the idea, but that she could not
originate ideas; once another person who did not know her talent expressed an
idea, Ida could agree, and then it was so. Becka evidently did not know, so
that was fine.

 “But there are more dragons to
come,” Becka said. “How will I return here for them?”

 “Once you have been the route, it
is easier to repeat it,” Ida said. “Merely return to my Xanth persona
and think of Dragon World, and you will soon be here.”

 That seemed to cover it. “Thank
you so much,” Clio said, somewhat awkwardly.

 “Just remember me in your history
of the experience.”

 “I certainly will! This entire
world is so remarkable it will take three chapters. I never liked dragons
before, but my outlook is changing entirely.”

 “Experience does that,” Ida
agreed.

 They left the house, Becka changed, and
they took off for the next meeting, which the dragons said was with the water
dragons. This turned out to be not far away, as it was in that wet nose of the
planetary dragon. They simply flew across from the tip of the tail to the nose.

 It loomed hugely: two enormous nostrils
filled with what Clio hoped was water. They landed on an island formed of what
she hoped was land. Clio dismounted, Becka changed to girl form, and they stood
on the tiny atoll. All around was a thickly rippling sea, filled with swimming
dragons of all colors and sizes.

 A giant head lifted from the water. It
was as big as the whole isle. That made Clio nervous, but she reminded herself
that the dragons probably weren't really interested in chomping her. They
wanted to play the game of puns, then hear her spiel.

 Then a long rope-like tongue snaked
out, looped around her body, and lifted her in the air. Clio screamed as she
was carried toward one monstrous eye. This time she got a good seven E's into
it and two K's, her personal record, along with a doubled exclamation point.
“EEEEEEEKK!!”

 “It's all right,” Drew
hastily reassured her. “She just wants to get a better look at you.”

 That spared her the effort of winding
back the scene. “But that tongue!”

 “It's her weapon. There are five
types of weapon: fire, smoke, steam, suction, and the prehensile tongue. But
she's not going to chomp you.”

 “Indeed I am not,” the
dragoness said mentally. “I know your business, and am interested. But the
school would be disappointed if we did not play the game out properly. Present
your first pun.” And the tongue lowered Clio gently to the ground and
released her.

 The tongue as a weapon. Clio would have
been less impressed if she had not just experienced its competence. The dragon
could reach quickly out and snare prey and haul it in to the mouth before it
knew what was happening. Fire could toast, smoke could suffocate, steam could
cook, but none of them actually brought a fresh morsel to the mouth. Suction
would have similar ability. On Xanth the last two categories did not exist.

 But she had a pun to present. What
would do? She took the first one she remembered; it might not be the best, but
it would do. The picture of a human woman appeared, in the air over the water.
She was walking, but one leg was shorter than the other, so that she tilted to
one side at about a thirty degree angle. “What is her name?” she
asked.

 “Rumple-tilt-skin,” the
dragon guessed.

 “That's clever, but no.”

 “Angle.”

 Sounding like Angel. “Again,
no.”

 “Tilta.”

 As in Tilda. “Sorry.”