Darius’ joke was registering on another level. She burst out laughing.
Nona did not quite understand the laughter, but realized that it meant that the situation was all right. That was a relief, because she didn’t want trouble with these new friends and their marvelous forms of magic. All she wanted was to get this awful manure off her body and out of her hair.
CHAPTER 5—JUPITER
COLENE had to laugh, because it wasn’t the time to cry. She knew Darius hadn’t been doing anything with Nona, because Seqiro was reassuring her on that. Even if Nona was a luscious young woman closer to Darius’ age with, Seqiro said, formidable powers of magic. Certainly she wouldn’t be rolling in the hay with him when the hay was reeking bat droppings.
Darius took a step toward her. “Get away from me, you stinker!” she cried. “Get into the water and wash up.” She glanced at the horse’s feet. “You too, horsehead.”
The three of them marched to the water. Seqiro stepped in, but the other two hesitated. “Yes, take off your clothes,” Colene said. “Wash them too.”
Guided by that, the man and woman pulled off their clothing. Colene watched, feeling less threatened because she seemed to be in charge. They were doing it at her direction. So it didn’t matter that Darius was a handsome man and Nona a beautiful woman. That he had one terrific kind of magic and she another. It was all under control.
Yet somehow little boxes were forming in the margin of Colene’s mind, reproducing themselves and extending down the page. She drew boxes when she was upset; they overran some pages of her diary. It was written in the form of letters to Maresy Doats, her fanciful equine companion and best friend before Seqiro came into her life. But the boxes told the story better than her written words.
Each box was really a representation of the real box she kept at home on Earth. In it was a small collection of significant things: sleeping pills, razor blades, and her Will. The Will might not be legal, but it was real. It told how to dispose of her things. She knew the box would be found after her death, and hoped that the Will would be honored. Meanwhile, while she lived, the box retreated from her awareness when she was undepressed, and loomed in close when she was normal. It multiplied, trying to surround the page. If the boxes ever succeeded in completely encircling her words, then she would be confined, and would have to lift the lid of the real box and eat the pills and slash open her wrists and let the rich red lifeblood pour out, and sink slowly into oblivion and be gone. She didn’t believe in hell, and hoped she wasn’t mistaken, because otherwise she was surely going there.
Colene blinked. Three faces were staring at her from the water. Seqiro, standing only ankle-deep. Darius, waist-deep. And Nona, also waist-deep, her bare breasts exactly the kind Colene longed for, remarkably full and firm. The three had been receiving her thoughts.
It was funny: they had no clothing, but she was the naked one.
“They have magic, but you are the remarkable one.” It was Provos, whom she had forgotten for the moment. “You do not die in my memory.”
And Provos remembered the future. She knew. Colene turned and hugged the older woman.
AFTER that things improved. The soiled clothing was beyond salvage. Nona and Darius donned new tunics Nona made magically from chips of wood: green for him, red for her. Neither wore anything underneath, as was the custom in this reality. They ate a meal Nona made from horsehairs. It was good, and the woman assured them that the food would not revert to its original form once it was inside them. Colene could appreciate how handy Nona would be to have around.
“What next?” Colene inquired.
“We must go to Jupiter,” Darius said. “For this must be where the Megaplayers live. We can ask them to help Nona change the animus to anima, and then the despots will fall and we’ll be able to go back through the anchor and travel the Virtual Mode again.”
“To Jupiter!” Colene exclaimed. “That monstrous planet Hobard showed us? How can we get there?”
“By following the filament,” Nona said. “All planets are connected by filaments; we can reach any, if we have the time and the magic. I think Darius’ magic will enable us to travel along it.”
“But Jupiter’s huge!” Colene protested. “Its gravity would crush us!”
“Gravity?” Nona was baffled.
They went through Seqiro to clarify the concept: the force that held people to the ground.
“Oh, but that is the same everywhere,” Nona said. “People change size with their planets, but all stand with equal force.”
“People change size?” Colene feared they had another confusion.
“So I understand,” Nona said. “I have not been away from Oria, but our myths tell of great folk and little folk. The Megaplayers are great folk, as we can see by the size of their instruments.”
“Okay,” Colene said dubiously. “If gravity doesn’t crush the giants, it shouldn’t crush us. Magic is wonderful stuff! But how do we get to the filament? I see from Seqiro’s mental picture that it connects to the planet under the East Sea.”
“We can go under the sea,” Nona said. “Just as Seqiro and I did.” She sent a picture of horse and woman standing under the water, with weird air tubes leading up.
Colene nodded. “We’ll have to have something better than air tubes, because that sea will get deep in that crevice. But I guess we can try it. Let’s go.”
Then Provos spoke, and they listened, understanding her thoughts if not her words.
“The despots are searching for us. They were looking for hoofprints, but realized that we are together. Their minions spied us by midmorning, and they came in force to capture us. We were traveling under the water toward what Nona calls the East Filament, but they dived down and intercepted us. They had thought that Nona was our captive, but she showed her magic in her effort to save us, and they knew her for what she is, and killed her.”
Colene looked at Nona, who was staring in horror at Provos. Any resentment Colene had had of the lovely woman evaporated. Colene thought of killing herself—but Nona faced involuntary death. That was worse.
Darius looked thoughtful. “This is not what must happen,” he said. “This is a warning. You saved the two of us from similar mischief when we traveled together. Because I heeded the warning, and we changed my future, your past. Then your memory changed.”
Provos looked blankly at him. Colene realized why: this was in her past, so it was beyond her memory. But it offered a hint how they should proceed.
“Suppose we do something else,” Colene said. “Suppose we don’t go in the water? I mean, we just go hide in the jungle, or something?”
Provos looked confused. “We have to be more specific,” Darius explained. “And we have to actually plan to do it, so that she can remember it.”
They could change the future! But something else occurred to her. “Provos said I did not die in her memory. But if we change it, then I might die.”
“We shall find a future in which we all survive,” Darius said. “And in which we remain together. Now we must decide on it, for midmorning is not far distant.”
They decided to make short hops up toward wild country halfway toward the head of the planet, conjuring each person individually. Nona would train another familiar, with Seqiro’s help. It seemed that she had trained a bat that way before; that was how they had landed in the bat cave and gotten all gunked with guano. Once the despots gave up the chase, they would see about resuming their mission to Jupiter.