Vale of the Vole (33 page)

"There is only one solution," Chex said "Complete your mission. Then if there is fault, it is none of yours, and you need have no further shame The wiggle princess would not reject you then, but if she did, you would know that it was her error, not your own "

"But I am guilty of unvolivh weaknew," he protested

"Only in your bad dream," she said "You are afraid of weakness, you have not practiced it in life."

Volney shrugged Then he marched back into the zombie vole. The dream formed—and dissipated immediately, leaving Volney on the far side of the gate

"Now you believe," Chex said. "The dream has lost its power over you. Thus it was unable even to form."

"Now I believe," Volney agreed. "I will complete my mivvion, regard-lew of temptation or rejecvion."

Esk took a breath. "My turn," he said.

The zombie man came to meet him. Esk merged—and his dream opened out.

It consisted of a swirling universe of stars and dust and moons, all moving in the splendor of their separate trajectories, rather than being fixed in their shell the way they were in reality. The moon, instead of being a mass of green cheese, was in this weird vision a monstrous ball of cratered rock. And, strangest of all, the Land of Xanth was but a peninsula on the surface of a giant mundane sphere. Esk would have known that this was a hallucination even if he hadn't already been aware that it was only a dream!

The scene kept coming toward him, the detail expanding, until it became a map of Xanth, on which he was standing. Then a parallel picture formed, identical to the first, except that Esk was not in it.

That was all. He stood disembodied, studying the two pictures, one with his image and the other without. There was absolutely no other distinction between them.

He screamed. In a moment he found himself back in the passage. Chex hurried across and embraced him, much as he had embraced her between her dreams, comforting him as his horror slowly faded.

"But what doev it mean?" Volney asked, perplexed. "I vaw no monvterv, no vhame. Merely two venev."

"There was no difference!" Esk cried. "None at all!"

"True," Chex murmured. "But this was no horror to us. Why should it be to you?"

As he thought about it, Esk came to understand it. "I am in one, and not in the other—and there is no difference. I make no difference at all!"

"Yes, Esk," Chex said.

"It doesn't matter whether I live or die," Esk said. "Xanth is just the same. What justification is there for my existence?"

"That is only your fear, not the reality," Chex reminded him.

"But maybe it is reality!" he argued. "I am nothing and nobody; what I do doesn't matter. I realize now that I set out to see the Good Magician because I needed some proof that I had some importance, some mission in life. Getting rid of the demoness, saving my folks from her—that was only a pretext. I hoped the Good Magician would somehow—make me worthwhile."

"But you are worthwhile!" Chex said. "How can you doubt that?"

"I tell myself I am," Esk said. "But deep inside, I'm not sure that it is so. What have I done to make any difference at all to Xanth? If I had never lived, would it matter to anyone or anything? The picture with me in it is just the same as the one without me."

She considered. "I suppose that could be. But it would be similarly true for all of us. Objectively viewed, we may ah1 be unworthy. But I think there is an answer. You don't have to settle for what you are at this moment. You can work to make a difference. This is what Volney will do. Then the pictures will change."

Esk nodded. "When you say it, it does seem to make sense. But how can I make a difference? Xanth is so big, and I'm so small."

"How much difference would the Kiss-Mee River make?"

"A lot. But that's Volney's mission. We're only helping."

"But if he can't do it without you?"

"And if I could help him do it—then there would be something that would not be the same without me," Esk said, liking the notion.

He walked back into the gate. The zombie met him, and merged, and the dream came again.

"I am nothing now," Esk said. "But I can make a difference, and I'm going to try. If I succeed, I will be something. That's all I can do—all any person can do. To make an honest try. If that's not enough, then nothing's enough, and it's not worth having any bad dreams about."

The pictures shimmered. Then something wriggled on the one that had his image. A river that was almost straight on the other map was assuming curvature here.

That was all. It was only a dream, but it gave Esk tremendous satisfaction. He knew what he had to do to abolish his deepest fear. To guarantee that his life had some bit of meaning. His life was not necessarily empty until he failed to accomplish that mission.

The vision dissipated. Esk found himself standing on the other side of the gate.

Only Marrow remained on the original side. "It is my turn," the skeleton said. "But I hesitate."

"That is understandable," Chex said. "We have all had very difficult experiences."

"I have no concern about a bad dream," Marrow said. "I do not dream, because I am not alive. My concern is that either there will be no reaction, because there is nothing in me to generate it—no fear, no shame, no guilty secret—or that my attempt to cross will trigger an error that will blow the program."

"Do what?" Esk asked.

"This trial is geared to living folk, with dreams," Marrow explained. "If one without dreams enters it, the mechanism could clash, unable to orient, and the entire setting could be compromised or destroyed. I am uncertain whether this should be risked."

"He has a point," Chex murmured. "He is a creature of the bad dreams; how can he have one of his own?"

"What happens," Esk asked, "if the program, ah, blows?"

"This entrance to the framework of the gourd would be closed off," Marrow said. "You might be trapped here, with no route of escape. Or there could be emotional or physical damage to the three of you."

"Marrow iv a good guide," Volney said. "We may not complete the quevt without hiv advive."

"Then maybe we should risk it," Esk said.

Chex nodded. "Maybe we should. There is after all no indication of trouble; there is a skeletal zombie ready. Come on through, Marrow."

The skeleton shrugged. "It is, as the saying goes, no skin off my sinus cavity." He marched into the gate. The zombie skeleton met him, and the two merged.

A picture started to form. It showed Marrow, standing in the passage, exactly as he was. Then it dissipated, and Marrow was standing back where he had started.

"It tried to make a dream for him!" Esk exclaimed.

"And found nothing on which to fasten," Marrow said.

"I'm not sure of that," Chex said. "There had to be something even to start it, and I think we should understand what it is. It could be significant."

"He was bounced without a dream," Esk said. "It thought there was going to be a dream, so it started it, but then it found out there wasn't, so it ended."

"But there was a dream," she insisted. "A simple one, but nevertheless a dream. That suggests that Marrow does possess some reality on our terms."

Now Volney was interested. "What could vuch a reality be? He hav no life."

"The picture was just of him, unchanged," Esk said. "For a moment I thought it was him, until it faded."

"Indeed it was me," Marrow said. "Since I have no life, I have no dream. It was just a picture of me as I am."

"Yes, it was," Chex agreed. "Therefore, that must represent your deepest fear or shame."

"I have no fear or shame," Marrow repeated.

"That may be why you were rejected," Chex said.

"Because it accepts only those who can reconcile their dreams, and I had none to reconcile," Marrow said, nodding his skull.

"No. Because you refused to come to terms with it."

That amused Esk. "Why should he come to terms with what doesn't exist?"

"Because it does exist," she said firmly. "Had it not existed, he would have passed through without challenge. But there is a zombie doppel-ganger waiting for him, and he can't pass until he overcomes that deepest spectre within him."

"There is nothing within me," Marrow protested. "My skull and rib cage are completely hollow, as you can see." He knocked on his skull with a knucklebone, and the sound was hollow.

"So was the skeleton in the dream," she agreed.

"You mean he's afraid of himself?" Esk asked incredulously.

"Perhaps." She gazed at Marrow. "Are you?"

"What could there possibly be to fear in that?" Marrow asked, irritated.

"You are avoiding an answer."

"But there is nothing in me to fear by me," the skeleton said. "I exist only to generate fear in living human folk. I have no other reality."

"So your dream suggests," Chex said. "Does that please you?"

"Why should it? I have no right to be pleased or displeased. It is merely my situation."

"Again, you avoid an answer."

"How do you think I feel?" Marrow demanded.

"I'd be pretty upset," Esk said. "Here my deepest fear was that I counted for nothing in Xanth, so my life may have no meaning. You aren't even alive. That's one step below me, even."

"It would be foolish of me to wish for life," Marrow said curtly. "It involves messiness."

"How can a creature who isn't alive be foolish?" Chex asked.

"Life is just a mass of awkwardnesses about consuming substance and eliminating substance," Marrow said. "Of discomfort and pain and shame. The end is exactly what I already am: dead. It is pointless."

"But life has feeling," Chex said. "And you have feeling. Is your deepest fear that you can never be any more than you are now?"

"But I can never be more!"

"Why don't you try the gate again," she suggested.

Marrow shrugged and walked back into the zombie. This time a more substantial picture formed—of him, as he was.

"But I don't want to be like this forever!" Marrow cried abruptly. "And maybe I don't have to bel If Esk can make of himself something worthwhile, why can't I aspire to be more than a spook?"

The dream held for a moment more, then faded. And Marrow was on the near side of the gate.

"I will hug you," Chex said. She did so.

Marrow seemed dazed. Esk could understand why. The skeleton was coming alive, at least in aspiration. That was an enormous advance.

Esk marveled, privately. He understood how living folk could become dead, but not how dead folk could become alive. Was this a genuine process, or merely an illusion spawned by this realm of dreams? Suppose Marrow only thought he was starting to dream, and therefore to live?

"Let's move on," Chex said briskly. "We now have better notions of our motives and natures, but it will come to little unless we find that containment spell."

All too true! They moved on along the passage, which seemed brighter now.

"No more rot," Volney remarked, sniffing the floor. "We have pawed beyond the vombie region."

"I am glad of that!" Chex said. "Not merely because I am not partial to rotting flesh, but because this means that this is indeed an access to the whole of the world of the gourd, not merely the zombie segment. This path is proving itself."

Then the passage terminated in a blank wall. The path went right up to that wall and into it, but they could not pass through that solid stone.

"What now?" Esk asked, dismayed.

Chex passed her hands along the wall, feeling for crevices or loose panels, while Volney sniffed at the bottom for any evidence of impenna-nence. Both found nothing. The wall remained completely solid and immovable.

"Any notions, Marrow?" Esk asked wryly.

"Perhaps. There is obviously a way through this barrier, as there was through the last. We have but to find that way."

Esk suppressed a sharp response about restatements of the obvious. "Then what is your notion?"

"This is the realm of dreams. Perhaps a dream is needed for the wall."

"You mean if we dream we can pass it, then we can?"

"More likely we shall have to handcraft a dream, as is generally done here."

Chex became interested. "How does one handcraft a dream of passing through a wall?"

"One designs it and implements it," the skeleton said seriously.

Chex showed signs of suppressing the same irate response that Esk had. "Could you be more specific?"

"Certainly. It is possible that if we portray a passage through the wall, it will operate as portrayed.**

Chex seemed doubtful, but she scouted about the passage until she found a fragment of stone that was black and crumbly. She used this to mark a black line on the wall. She extended it into a crude picture of a door. Then she pushed against the door. Nothing happened.

"Let me try," Esk said. He took the rock and drew a doorknob. Then he made as if to grasp and turn that knob.