Golem in the Gears

 
Chapter 1. Quest

Grundy Golem stretched and bounced off his cushion. He looked at himself in the mirror, not totally pleased. He stood the height of a normal man's spread- fingered hand, and that was fine for sleeping on a cushion but not all that great when it came to making an impression on the Land of Xanth.

It was a nice new day. Almost, he was able to forget that he was the least significant of living creatures. When he had been a true golem fashioned of wood and rag he had longed to be a real living thing, supposing that he would be satisfied if only he could become flesh. At last he had won that goal and for a time he had believed that he was happy. But slowly the truth had sunk in: he was still only a handsbreadth greater than nothing.

No one took him seriously. They thought he had a smart mouth because he liked insulting people; actually it was because he was trying desperately to cover over his deepening awareness of his own inadequacy. When he used his talent of language to make some other person or creature feel low, he felt a little higher himself—for a moment. But now he knew that this was a false device, and that his mouth had mainly brought him the contempt of others. He wished he could undo that damage and make

of himself a genuinely worthwhile and respected person— but he didn't know how.

Meanwhile, he was hungry. That was a consequence of being real: he had to eat. It hadn't been that way when he had been a true golem. Then he had suffered no hunger, pain, or calls of nature. But he liked it better this way, he decided, because he also felt living pleasures.

And living miseries...

He slid down the banister and scrambled out the win- dow that was normally left open for him. He landed in a clump of toadstools that had sprung up overnight, knock- ing several over. Unfortunately, a small toad had been sitting on one.

"Clumsy oaf!" the toad croaked, righting himself. "Watch where you're going!"

"Listen, frogface," Grundy retorted. "This is my path! You have no business here."

"I was on a toadstool, as I have a perfect right to be," the toad protested. "You just came barging through!"

The creature had a case, but Grundy didn't care. His irritation with the situation—and with all ot Xanth— caused him to react in the familiar way that he wished he didn't. "Know what I think of that? I'll bash all these stinky things to smithereens!" And he grabbed up a stick and laid about him, knocking over toadstools right and left. Grundy was no giant, but they stood only about knee- high to him, and were easy to dispatch.

"Help!" the toad croaked. "Berserker on the loose!"

Suddenly there was a stirring throughout the weedy region beside the castle wall. Toads appeared, hopping in toward the summons—small ones at first, then larger ones, and finally one huge one.

Grundy realized he was in trouble. He tried to scramble up to the window, but the monster toad opened his pon-

derous maw and speared the golem with his tongue. The tongue was sticky; Grundy could not get free. The toad retracted it and hauled Grundy in.

"Eat him! Eat him!" the massed toads cried. "Teach him to leave toadstools alone!"

Grundy clutched at a half-buried rock, managing to halt his progress toward the maw. But now the little toads hopped on him, pounding him with their feet, and one of them wet on him.

Disgusted as well as frightened, he grabbed that toad and heaved it into the maw of the giant toad. The maw closed. The tongue released Grundy and snapped back home. Evidently the giant toad didn't mind what he ate.

But the little toads minded. "Get that monster!" they croaked, and snapped at him with their tongues. They couldn't do him much damage singly, but as a group they might. He tried to dodge the snapping tongues, but there were too many.

In addition, the giant toad was catching on that it hadn't eaten the whole thing. It reoriented on him.

Then Grundy spied a hypnogourd. That might help! He ran to it and dived behind it, so that its peephole was facing away from him and toward the toads. As the giant toad opened its maw and lined up its terrible tongue, Grundy shoved the gourd around so that the peephole bore directly on it.

The big toad looked—and froze. Its gaze had been trapped by the gourd.

"So there, filth-tongue!" he cried. "Now you're stuck!"

But the little toads weren't stuck. They averted their gazes and came leaping at him. One landed on his head, bearing it down. Grundy shook the creature off, but in the process caught a glimpse of the peephole himself.

Suddenly he found himself inside the gourd. He was

standing amidst giant wooden gears. The huge toad was there too, and had a leg caught between two of them. The gears were drawing it slowly but inevitably between them, crushing it.

"Halp!" it cried. "I'm gonna croak!"

"Well, you were gonna eat me!" Grundy retorted. But he didn't like this; it was too ugly a demise.

He tried to pry the toad out, but the gears were too strong. Then he saw a small, loose gear. He picked it up and jammed it next to the toad's leg. As the two turning gears ground together, the loose one was crunched. In a moment the moving ones shuddered to a stop.

Now a huge stallion appeared, virtually snorting fire. His hide was midnight black, and his eyes glinted blacker. "I should have known!" the Night Stallion snorted. "A golem in the gears!" There was a subtle flicker.

Then Grundy and the giant toad were back in the real world, out of the gourd. Grundy realized that they had been ejected. The big toad's leg was whole, but it seemed to have lost its appetite.

Grundy realized that he had suffered the ultimate indignity: he had been rejected by the hypnogourd! No one had any use for him!

He scrambled again for the window, and this time made it. Fouled with the sticky spittle of the giant and the wet- ting of the midget, he fell inside. What a mess!

But worse than the ignominy of his present condition was his realization that he was of so little account that even a toad could humiliate him. It wasn't just a matter of size; it was an almost total lack of respect. He was a nobody, socially as well as physically.

What use was it to be a living creature, if he was of absolutely no consequence?

He found a bucket of wash water left over from yes-

terday's scrubbing of a floor, and labored to get himself clean. While he worked, he came to a conclusion, an answer to his question.

It was no use to live without respect. But what could he do about it? He was what he was, an insignificant creature.

As he ran across the room, he heard stifled sobbing. He paused, for now he also cared about others. He was seldom able to show it in ways they appreciated, but he did care. He looked about and discovered that it was a plant—a small green stem that looked rather wilted. Grundy's magic talent was the ability to converse with other living things, so he talked to the plant.

"What's the matter with you, greenface?"

"I'm w-wilting!" the plant responded.

"I can see that, potroot. Why?"

"Because Ivy forgot to w-water me," the plant blub- bered. "She's so wrapped up with her mischief that—" It tried to squeeze out another tear, but could not; it had no water left.

Grundy went to the bathroom, climbed up on the sink and grabbed the damp sponge there. He hauled this down, dragged it across the floor, and to the plant. Then he hefted it up and squeezed it in a bear hug, so that water dribbled into the pot.

"Oh, thank you!" the plant exclaimed as it drank in the moisture. "How can I ever repay you?"

Grundy was as selfish as the next creature, but he didn't see any way the plant could do anything for him, so he elected to be generous. "Always glad to help a fellow creature," he said. "I'll tell Ivy to give you a good water- ing. What's she doing that's so distracting?"

"I'm not supposed to tell..." the plant demurred.

Now Grundy saw what the plant could do for him. "Didn't I just do you a favor, wiltleaf?"

The plant sighed. "Don't tell I told. Ivy's a terror when she gets mad."

Grundy well knew that! Ivy was eight years old and a full Sorceress; no one crossed her without regretting it. "I won't tell."

"She's teaching Dolph to be a bird, so he can fly out and look for Stanley."

Grundy pursed his tiny lips. That was mischief indeed! Dolph was her little brother, three years old and a Magi- cian who could change to any living form instantly. Cer- tainly he could become a bird and fly away—but just as certainly that would be disaster, because, if he didn't promptly get lost, he would get eaten by some airborne predator. This had to be stopped!

But Grundy had promised not to tell. He had broken promises before, but he was trying to steer a straighter course. Also, if he told on Ivy, he would be in immediate and serious trouble. He had to find some private way to stop this.

He went through the motions of breakfast, but found no answer to his problem. He saw Ivy going to Dolph's room and knew he had to act—without admitting what he knew. So he pretended to encounter her accidentally, intercepting her in the hall. "Whatcha up to, kid?"

"Go away, you little snoop," she said amiably.

"All right—I'll play with Dolph instead."

"Don't you dare!" she said with moderate fury. "I'm playing with him."

"We can both play with him," Grundy suggested. To that she was unable to demur, because she didn't want to give away her secret by being too insistent.

Dolph was up and dressed and ready to play. He was

a handsome little boy with curly brown hair and a big smile. "See—I'm a bird!" he exclaimed, and suddenly he was a bird, a pretty red and green one.

"Ixnay," Ivy whispered, but Dolph was already chang- ing back, pleased with his accomplishment.

"Can I go out and fly now?" he asked.

"Why would you want to fly?" Grundy inquired as if innocently.

"He doesn't," Ivy said quickly.

But Dolph was already answering. "I'm going to catch a dragon!" he said proudly.

"No, he isn't!" Ivy cried.

"That's very good, Dolph," Grundy said. "What dragon will you catch?"

"No dragon!" Ivy cried.

"Stanley Steamer," Dolph said. "He's lost."

Grundy turned to Ivy as if surprised. "What's he talking about? You know he's not allowed to go out alone."

"I told you not to snoop!" Ivy said furiously. "It's none of your business!"

"But you can't send Dolph out! If anything happened to him, your father would ask the walls of Castle Roogna who put him up to it, and then your mother would—"

Ivy put both hands protectively against her backside, knowing where her mother's wrath would strike. "But I've got to rescue Stanley!" she wailed. "He's my pet dragon!"

"But nobody even knows where he is," Grundy pointed out. "Or even whether he's—" He had to break off, because it would not be smart to utter the dread conjec- ture in Ivy's presence. Stanley had disappeared when a monster-banish spell had accidentally caught him. Of course he wasn't a monster; he was a pet, but the spell had not distinguished one type of dragon from another.

Naturally Ivy had pestered Good Magician Humfrey about Stanley's whereabouts, but there were so many dragons in Xanth that Humfrey's spells had not been able to isolate Stanley. Or so Humfrey claimed. Humfrey was younger than he once hadbeen, and probably his magic wasn't up to snuff, but he wouldn't admit that.

"Somehow I'll find him," Ivy said resolutely. "He's my

dragon."

There was some justice in that claim, l^obody could hold a dragon unless that dragon wanted to be held, and it had been friendship that held Stanley. Ivy had perceived him as her friend and her pet, and her enormous and subtle magic had made him so. Grundy was sure Stanley would have returned to her, had he been able. The fact that he had not returned strongly suggested that he was dead.

And Ivy would not give up the search. Grundy knew her well enough to accept that. Yet if she were not dis- suaded, both she and her family might in the end suffer much greater distress than the loss of one little dragon— such as the loss of a little brother. Ivy was a Sorceress, but she was also a child; she lacked adult judgment.

Grundy could neither tell on her nor allow her to pro- ceed with this foolish project. What was he to do?

It occurred to him that there was a noble way out of this dilemma—a way that just might bring him some of the esteem he craved. "I'll find him for you," he said.

Ivy clapped her hands in the way that little girls had. "You will? Oh, thank you, Grundy! I take back half the mean things I've said about you!"

Half? Well, half a loaf was evidently all he rated. "But while I'm doing it, you mustn't do anything yourself," he cautioned. "That could mess it up."

"Oh, I won't, I won't!" she agreed. "Not until you

bring him back."

In this manner Grundy found himself committed to a Quest he strongly suspected was futile. But what else could he have done? Ivy needed her dragon back, and he needed to be a hero.