Man From Mundania (6 page)

He tried one more time, passing over Melanoma, Mi-

asma, Treblinka, and Polyploidy in favor of one that

sounded safe: Salmonella. That turned out to be a mis-

take. Sal was a great cook, but the food turned out to be

contaminated.

Now, waking weak and bleary, he had finally caught

on: "Worm, you're doing it deliberately! You are offering

me only treacherous girls!"

I AM NOT WORM. THAT WAS ONLY THE INSTALLATION

"All right, already! So I'll call you Sending! Now why

are you finding me only girls who are trouble?"

HOW COULD YOU SAY SUCH A THING!

"Every one of them has something wrong with her! If

you can't do better than that, I don't want any! All that's

happened has been a lot of heartache and my grades de-

scending to D +! Let's give up on girls and concentrate on

scholastics."

TRY ONE MORE GIRL.

"No! I'm through with women! I want to make good

grades and be something in the world!"

TRY ONE MORE GIRL.

So it was that way. He could not out argue the com-

puter; it only repeated itself indefinitely. "All right: one

more girl. And when that one messes up, it's grades."

CHOOSE—

"No you don't! All those names are pied! I don't care

about the name! Just find me a good girl, one I can be

with and—"

AGREED.

"No tricks, now, or the deal's off! Any little pretext and

I'll dump her! You got that, Worm—1 mean, Sending?"

GO TO THE APARTMENT ACROSS THE HALL.

"All right! One more time!" Because, after all, he did

need a girl. Without one, he would be reduced to having

to do his homework, which was a fate only half a smid-

geon this side of oblivion.

Grumpily, still in his rumpled pajamas though he saw

by the bleary clock on the hall wall that it was nearly

noon, he knocked on the apartment door.

The door cracked open and a blue eye peered out.

"You're not a monster, are you?" she inquired.

Grey had to smile. "Well, I do feel like one at the

moment, but as far as I know, that's temporary. Who are

you?"

She opened the door wider, reassured. "Oh, good, a

human person! I was afraid that in this horror house it

would be much worse. I'm Ivy."

"I'm Grey. Are you a normal girl?"

Now she laughed. "Of course not! I'm a princess!"

26 Man from Mundania Man from Mundania 27

Well, she had a sense of humor! Despite his best inten-

tion, he liked her. Maybe the Sending really was playing

it straight this time.

Ivy invited him in, and they talked. She seemed just as

eager to know about him and his situation as he was to

know about her. Soon he was telling her all about his

dreary life, which somehow seemed much less dull when

she was listening. Ivy was an attractive girl about a year

his junior, with blue eyes and fair hair that sometimes

reflected with a greenish tint, evidently picking up what-

ever color was near her. She had been frightened at first

but now was relaxed, and was a fun person to be with.

But there were some definitely odd things about her.

For one thing, she seemed quite unfamiliar with this city,

or indeed, this country, perhaps even this world. He had

to show her how the stove worked and even how to open

a can of peas. "What funny magic!" she exclaimed,

watching the electric can opener.

For it seemed that she believed in magic. She claimed

to be from a magic land called Xanth, spelled with an X,

where she was a princess and pies grew on trees. So did

shoes and pillows. Monsters roamed the jungles, and she

even had a pet dragon called Stanley Steamer.

She was obviously suffering delusions. Sending had

mousetrapped him again. But by the time he was sure of

this, it was too late: he liked Ivy too well to let her go.

She was a great girl, apart from her dreamland. Since her

delusion was harmless, he decided to tolerate it.

But there were hurdles. One came when she realized

that he was not teasing her about his situation. Her face

clouded with horror. "You mean, this isn't a setting in the

gourd? This really is Mundania?"

That was a quaint way of putting it! "That's right. Mun-

dania. No magic."

"Oh, this is worse than I ever dreamed!" she ex-

claimed. "Drear Mundania!"

She had that right! His life had been about as drear as

it could get—until she came into it. "But what are you

doing here if you didn't know you were coming?" he

asked. For the sake of compatibility, he did not debate her

Xanth delusion; he would find out where she really was

from, eventually. The truth was, he rather liked her dream

realm; it had a special quality of appeal. Pies growing on

trees—that certainly sounded better than canned beans!

"I used the Heaven Cent," she explained matter-of-

factly. She lifted a common old style penny she wore on

a chain around her neck. "It was supposed to take me

where I was most needed, which is where the Good Ma-

gician is lost. But the curse must have—oh, no!''

He was catching on to the rules of her magic land. "You

mean it would have taken you there, but a curse made it

go wrong? So you're stuck where you shouldn't be?"

"Yes," she said tragically, near tears. "Oh, how am I

to get out of this? There's no magic in Mundania!"

"That's for sure." Yet somehow he wanted to help her

to return to that magic land, even though he knew it wasn't

real. Her belief was so firm, so touching!

"Oh, Grey, you've got to help me get back to Xanth!"

she exclaimed.

What could he say? "I'll dowhat I can."

She flung her arms around him and kissed him. She was

an expressive girl. He knew she was suffering from a per-

vasive delusion, and that sooner or later the authorities

would pick her up and return her to whatever institution

she had escaped from, but he also knew that he liked her.

That made his dilemma worse.

Grey did what he could. He took Ivy to the college

library and looked up Xanth. It turned out to be a prefix,

"xantho," meaning "yellow," that connected to various

terms. Ivy said that wasn't what she wanted. The library

was a loss.

Then, on the way back to the apartment building. Ivy

spied something in a store window. "There's Xanth!" she

exclaimed, pointing.

Grey looked. It was a paperback book. On it was a star

proclaiming "A New Xanth Novel!" Did Ivy think she

came from this book?

"There's Chex!" she continued.

"Chex?"

28 Man from Mundania Man from Mundania 29

"The winged centaur. She's actually four years younger

than me, but she seems older because her sire's Xap the

hippogryph, and monsters mature faster than human folk,

so she matured halfway faster than I did, and she's married

now and has a foal, Che. And there's Volney Vole, who

can't say his esses, only he thinks we're the ones who have

it wrong. And—"

"This book—it really describes where you think you're

from?" he demanded incredulously.

She faced him, baffled. "Where I think I'm from?"

"This book—it's fantasy!"

"Of course! Don't you believe me?"

Damn! He had his foot in it now! Why hadn't he thought

to avoid the issue? "I believe—you think you're from

there," he said carefully.

"I am from Xanth!" she retorted. "Look in the book!

I'm in there, I know!" But she was perilously close to

tears.

Grey wavered. Should he get the book and check? But

if she was in it, what would it prove? Simply that she had

read the book and made it the focus of her delusion. Be-

sides, he remained broke.

"Uh, I'm sure you're right," he said. "I don't need to

look in the book. '

That was a half truth, but it mollified her. They contin-

ued walking back to the apartment building.

Grey's mind was seething with thoughts. Now he knew

where Ivy thought she was from, but he didn't know

whether to be relieved or alarmed. It wasn't a land of her

own invention—but was it any better as a land someone

else had invented? The delusion was the same. Still, it did

offer some insight into her framework; if he got the book

and read it, he would at least be able to relate to the things

she did.

Still, he wished that she had a better notion of the dis-

tinction between fantasy and reality. She was such a nice

girl in other respects, the perfect girl, really, and he could

really like her a lot, if only—

Could like her a lot? He already did! Which made it

that much worse.

In the hallway she stopped. "This can't be Mundania!"

she exclaimed.

"Where else would it be?" he asked warily.

"Because we can understand each other!" she said ex-

citedly. "We speak the same language!"

"Well, sure, but—"

"Mundanes speak gibberish! They can't be understood

at all, unless there is magic to translate what they say into

real speech. But you are perfectly intelligible!"

"I should hope so." Was this the beginning of a break-

through? Was she coming to terms with reality? "What

language do they speak in Xanth?"

"Well, it's the language. The human language, I mean.

All human folk speak it, just as all dragon folk speak Dra-

gonese, and all trees speak tree-talk. Grundy Golem can