A Tryst of Fate, page 34
“But I’m not central to the showdown.”
“Yes you are. I know it.”
He was central? He had assumed he was peripheral. All he wanted was to somehow earn Squid’s forgiveness and retire with Incident. Why should Demons, those galaxies to grains of sand, care about him? His grain of sand?
The caller intervened. “Kiss your partner.” The music returned to the dancing mode.
What? This had not been in the rehearsal.
“You heard him,” Incident said, stepping into him.
He embraced her and they kissed, and it was immensely sweet. The music made an enhancing surge, and there was an appreciative “Oooo,” from the audience. They liked this hint of romance. But he felt her alarm, her fear for him, as though it might be their last kiss. Could that have been why it had been added?
“Men, side left,” Ninja called.
They separated, and Goar sashayed to his left, around the corner, to join Ruby Rabbit as her original partner Beetle went north. She smiled at him. She looked stunning in her dress and tiara; he was suddenly more conscious of this, now that she had become his temporary partner.
“Honor your partner.” They bowed to each other.
“Honor your corner.” Who was now Birdie, resplendent in her feminine crown.
“Do-si-do with your opposite.” Who was now Squid. She smiled just as if she were enjoying it. Dancing with her murderer.
It continued as before, until the Dialog. The music went into its hush.
“I hope the finale doesn’t break up the Oma group,” Ruby said. That was right: it was Demon Oma they were out to punish, and Oma had been responsible for the institution of the Oma groups. His fate could indeed affect them.
“I hope not too,” he agreed.
“Rabbit needs to make the holes to transition Sarah Spinel between Mundania and Xanth,” she continued. “To see to Baby Dinosaur Spinosaurus. We need Bird to take us from the hole to Queen Smote.”
“The sexy Dragon Queen,” he agreed again, remembering.
“I like her. We’re both smart animals who can assume human form. I am sure she’ll take good care of Spino.”
“She surely will.”
“So the group needs to stay together.”
She was right. “Yes.”
The command came. “Kiss your partner.”
But Ruby was Rabbit’s girl. Now he remembered freaking out when she had eaten the mushroom and become fifty feet tall and he had looked up at her bare torso. That was now an embarrassing intimacy. “Uh—”
“It’s just a dance move, silly,” she said, and kissed him.
That set him back in another manner. She did know how to kiss. He had thought that only Incident or the Goddess Tiamat could have serious impact on him, but Ruby was proving otherwise.
“Men, side left.”
Halfway relieved, he sashayed on to the north side of the square. There was Birdie. She had looked beautiful across the square; up this close she looked ravishing. “Hello, Goar,” she said confidently.
“Hello, Queen Birdie.”
“Just Birdie will do, here in our privacy. We’re friends, after all.”
The privacy of being the center of the audience’s attention? Yet, oddly, it was true. The dance was its own environment.
“Honor your partner.”
They bowed to each other, and she was every bit as curvy as Incident and Ruby. It seemed to be something about the costumes.
The dance continued until the Dialog. “Bird of course will stay with me,” she said. “But he also values and loves his friends of the Oma group, and doesn’t want to lose them. You are included in that number, Goar.”
“I have the utmost respect for Bird.”
“But you see, there is a problem. The group has its mission of performing Good Deeds and making Xanth a better realm. That will require it to travel much of the time. Bird is needed there, and I think not merely for transport. But I need him too. I do love him; that’s not just pretense. He freed me from more than that tower. The thought of constant separation from him mortifies me.”
“I appreciate that.” Where was she leading?
“The only solution I see is for the group to reside at Shee Castle, so Bird can be with both me and the group. I will make a nice garden section for it, with facilities for humans, rabbits, and turtles as well as birds. Does that seem suitable to you?”
“Yes.”
“Then I hope I can count on your support, when the time of decision comes.”
That was easy, because she was correct. “Yes.”
“Thank you.”
“Kiss your partner.”
Again he hesitated. She was a queen! Dance or no, it would be presumptuous to kiss her in public. But as with Ruby, she did not waver. She took him in and kissed him ardently. And he had to add one more to the list of women who could half stun him when they tried. She was evidently grateful for his support, so she had tried.
“Men, side left.”
You are indeed the key to this event, Terza thought to him as he moved to the next position. You transformed the Oma group into a force for good.
No, Incident did that, he demurred, because of the conscience cloud.
Well, at least you are one stone in the arch. Every rock is vital.
I suppose.
She laughed mentally. You don’t want to take any credit. You have no selfish motive.
He had to demur again. I want to obtain Squid’s forgiveness so I can be at peace.
She nodded mentally. That selfishness I find acceptable. But brace yourself: the showdown is incipient. She withdrew.
Now he faced his nemesis, Squid. She was fabulously lovely, and still smiling as if she were enjoying it. He danced with her, and followed the commands, and she was perfect in every move. The consummate girl. What would she say to him in the dread Dialog?
All too soon it came. The music hushed. He blurted out his thought. “If I had known you, Squid, I would not have killed you. I am so sorry.” As if that clumsy apology could make up for slaughtering her.
What she replied surprised him. “Goar, you were crafted as a golem for one purpose only: to kill me. Otherwise you would not exist.”
That had to be true, but it did not make him feel justified. “It would have been better if I did not exist!”
“Not so. What you were crafted to be is one thing. What you subsequently crafted yourself to be is another. You are a good man, Goar.”
“Not nearly as good as the one I killed along with you.”
She shook her head. “You did not kill Chaos. He was not here at the time. He borrows Laurelai’s male form Larry as his host. It is Chaos I love. I don’t know why he loves me. He is the most powerful Demon of them all, and I am only an imitation girl.”
Now they were in it, and somehow he found it fitting. He spoke again in a manner he had not anticipated. “You don’t know why Chaos loves you? I do. It is because you are a truly lovely girl.”
She laughed, marvelously well. “But I’m not even a girl. It is only a shape I form.” She became the cuttlefish, her dress hanging awkwardly.
“I was not referring to your physical aspect.”
She turned human again, blushing. She had been caught by an unexpected compliment. “Thank you.”
“But this showdown of the Demons. How does it relate to me? I am just a grain of sand. My purpose ended when I killed you.”
“As I understand it, my murder was set up to provoke Chaos into acting rashly, and making an error. The trap was for him. You were the instrument then, and remain so now. Oma will somehow try to make Chaos make the first move.”
“Move?”
“This particular Demon game relates to status, as they usually do. The rule is that he who moves last, Demon style, moves best. So if Chaos moves first, he loses. But we managed to change it by naming Oma, who will now lose by default if he doesn’t move first. Unless he finds another way to make Chaos move first. So this whole thing is a tryst of fate, a coming together to decide who is to be dominant. We are merely tiny instruments.”
Goar found that tricky to visualize. “I suppose if I tried to kill you again, Chaos would have to move to stop me. But I am not going to do that.”
She smiled, her sincerity animating it, and somehow that moved him more than the smiles of the others had. “I know. You’re on my side now.”
“Kiss your partner,” Ninja called.
Somehow it seemed as if they had been in dialog longer than the moment allotted for the other dialogues, but perhaps that was just his subjective impression.
He faced her, suddenly deeply uncertain. “Squid, I don’t deserve to touch you, let alone kiss you.”
“Brace yourself. I do believe the crisis is upon us.” She put her arms around him, drew in close, and kissed him. For an instant it was excruciatingly sweet. She, too, could wow him when she tried.
There was an explosion of darkness. It was not the kiss. They jerked apart.
There was a torus of darkness around them. It was expanding outward and inward. The turf of the garden was disappearing into it as if falling into an absolute void.
“Oma has taken over Ninja Turtle!” Terza exclaimed, manifesting as human. She was plainly horrified.
Ninja spoke with the Demon timbre. “By Demon practice, the second one to make a power move is the victor. Now the choice is upon you, Chaos. You have the first move. You can take me and preserve the existing order, or you can save your beloved mortal girl. You cannot do both.”
“Oh, bleepity bleep!” Squid swore. “The utter tumor figured a way to make Chaos waste his move on me.”
Goar realized that the threat to Squid did not count as a Demon move. Only an action directly against another Demon counted. Squid was mortal. Stopping Oma’s attack on Squid—that would count, by Demon protocols.
The circle was closing rapidly. It would soon engulf them. But what was it? Goar reached out to touch it with his socked hands.
His hands disappeared. His arms now terminated in severed bones.
“I have found the secret of Nothing,” Oma continued. “There is no explosion, merely the emptiness that occurs when the positive and negative aspects of matter, the positrons and negatrons if you will, join and cancel out. It has been asked why is there something rather than nothing? Because the positive and negative aspects are kept apart by the invisible forces for the universe. The original Big Bang generated those forces and thus enabled matter to exist. Eliminate those forces and the two aspects come immediately together and are gone. The original state of quiescence returns, without energy, matter, or rules. I can destroy the universe merely by invoking the force-nullifying process. But in this case, I have limited it to a single spot. That spot. The closing torus, designed to progress inward until it meets itself in the center and ends, along with whatever matter is in that center.
“What say you now, Chaos? Your power can stop the process, because the opposites can’t come together when chaotic. But by the rule of this engagement, you can act only on one site. Me or Squid. Choose now, or she perishes by default and I win and will become the highest status Demon, immune to any subsequent retaliation.” He rubbed Ninja’s hands together in evil glee. He seemed to relish his enemy’s discomfort as much as his own impending ascent to Dominant Demon, the one with the highest status. He knew Chaos couldn’t let Squid be Nothinged, so Oma stood to win either way. He was a truly nasty being.
Goar whirled, facing Squid as their spot became a quickly diminishing island in a blank void. “I will need your help. Change form and cling to my shoulders. I will carry you out.”
“Goar, you can’t walk through that,” she protested, frightened. “You will cease to exist from the feet up.”
“Trust me.”
“Oh, I do! But—”
“Now!”
She relented and changed, flinging out a tentacle to wrap around his thick neck and haul the rest of her up and in to him. She plainly believed they both were lost, but did as he asked.
Goar mentally flipped a chaos bomb into the torus. There was a cloud of confusion as the disappearing matter turned chaotic. Positive and negative were trying to come together, but were being randomly diverted, so existed as inanimate pandemonium.
He stepped into it. He could feel his feet dissolving into confusion. But he still had control of his legs, and kept them moving, striding onward. He grew shorter as the invisible pit became deeper, or maybe as his legs dissolved, but he kept going. Only a few steps were all that were required.
A splash of the fog of confusion hit him on the face-plate, melting it. But one eye patch remained, and most of his painted mouth. He ignored the pain and plowed on.
He reached the shore of remaining matter and fell forward, putting Squid onto firm material. They were through!
Now Bird Man and Beetle Bunny followed his example and flipped their chaos bombs into the seething void. Overwhelmed, it shriveled to a point and ceased to exist. Nothing had been vanquished! Or would have been, had it not been self-limiting.
“You are safe now, Squid,” Goar gasped. “Oma’s ploy has been nulled.”
Squid re-formed as the girl. “Goar, you saved me! And you saved the existing order! The Demons owe you!” She was so excited that one hand and one foot turned tentacular.
He could see her with his remaining eye, and was able to make the mouth speak. “I just had to do right by you, when I could. I owe you more than that.”
She calmed, re-forming. “Thank you, Goar.”
“No she isn’t safe!” Oma screamed, seeing his victory lost. “She’s still doomed, and so are you, golem! So is everything else! After me, Nothing! The Torus was designed to be self-limiting. The main Nothing Bomb is designed to progress outward, with no limit, as long as anything remains to be consumed. That includes space itself. The universe! It is the opposite of the Big Bang. It is the Wee Whimper! Behold your doom!”
He extended his hand, holding a globe labeled N for Nothing. Then before anyone could react, he emerged from Ninja Turtle. He assumed his natural form, which was a giant tumor with arms and legs, somewhat like a BEM, and charged directly at Squid. The globe expanded in his hand as he moved, consuming that hand, becoming a larger ball as it ate the arm below. Oma was committing suicide rather than suffer the survival of his enemies. By the time the globe reached Squid, it would be man-sized, ready to eat her in a single toothless tongueless gulp. Goar knew that even if she fled from it, it would continue to expand, inevitably taking her in, and then the universe. Even Chaos might not stop it, if it got established in the next few seconds. It would swallow everything, leaving Nothing.
Goar did not act without thinking. He acted with thinking. That was the point. He filled his mind with the Idea. Then he used his limb stubs to hurl himself forward to intercept the charging Demon before he reached Squid. Goar took the bomb into himself as the rest of Oma disappeared into it.
And the bomb faded out with, yes, a wee whimper. Goar remained in place, unaffected. The bomb and Oma were nonexistent.
Squid stared. “What just happened?”
“I nullified the Nothing,” Goar explained, pleased that it had actually worked. “Nothing is stronger than the Universe, but one thing is stronger than Nothing. That is the Idea. If the Idea exists, then so does its pyramid: Mind to think of it, Brain/Body to generate Mind, food, water, air to nourish that body, Environment to provide that necessary sustenance, World to provide that environment, and Universe to form the matter to make the stars and planets that become worlds. It all starts with the Idea, and with the Idea there is everything. I nullified Nothing with Everything.”
“I won’t pretend to understand that,” Squid said, shaking her head. “So I will simply say thank you, again. You saved me twice. Now it is time to get you back together.” She was being practical rather than philosophical, a trait Goar had noted in other women.
Goar looked down at himself. He existed to slightly below the waist. There was nothing beyond. The chaos bomb had done the job on the Nothing Torus, but some Nothing power had remained. Enough to take out half his body. “You’re welcome, Squid.”
She got down to his level. “We didn’t finish our kiss.” She put her mouth to his face-plate and kissed him, heedless of the ugliness of his damaged head. “And I forgive you,” she concluded.
The audience burst into applause. He had forgotten it existed. That it still existed.
Then the impact struck him. She had forgiven him! Goar was overcome by sheer joy. He had taken her life, but now had given it back, and she had returned his life to him. “Thank you,” he said, and lapsed into oblivion.
He woke an indeterminate time later. The audience had become the dancers, and they were indeed trying some squares. Laurelai stood before him. “I harvested some items for you. Lie flat.” She pushed his shoulder and he rolled over. “Some fresh limbs.” She removed his terminated forearms and applied new ones complete with hands. Then she did the same for the stumps of his legs, fitting whole new ones. “Now sit up.”
He discovered that he could do so. In fact he was able to stand again. The new limbs worked perfectly. His arms had functional hands with five fingers apiece, and his legs had regular human feet with toes. But how could this be? The new limbs had to be inanimate, tree limbs in fact, but he could feel them perfectly.
“A new face.” She removed the plate and slapped something soft onto his head dome. Suddenly he could see perfectly, and his mouth felt whole.
“Thank you,” he said, in part to verify that his face was really working.
“And one other minor detail,” she murmured, setting something at his crotch. He felt that too. It was male anatomy!
“But—” he started.
She efficiently put trousers on him, protecting his privacy, then reached in and tweaked the final addition. It sprang to life. How was this also possible?
