There was a more pressing problem on my mind, however. After three days of visiting strange worlds, I was hungry enough to bite my own arm for the blood. They say if you're hungry enough you'll eat anything. Don't you believe it. The things placed before me and called food were unstomachable despite starvation. I know; I tried occasionally, out of desperation, only to lose everything else in my stomach along with the latest offering. Having Tananda sitting across from me, joyfully chewing tentacled things that oozed out of her mouth and wriggled didn't help.
Finally I expressed my distress and needs to Tananda.
"I wondered why you hadn't been eating much," she frowned. "But I thought maybe you were on a diet, or something. I wish you'd spoken up sooner."
"I didn't want to be a bother," I explained lamely.
"It isn't that," she waved. "It's just that if I had known two dimensions ago there were half a dozen humanoid dimensions nearby that we could have hopped over to. Right now, there's only one that would fit the bill without us having to go through a couple of extra dimensions along the way."
"Then let's head for that one," I urged. "The sooner I eat the better off we'll be." I wasn't exaggerating. My stomach was beginning to growl so loudly it was a serious threat to our disguises.
"Suit yourself," she shrugged, pulling me behind a row of hedges that tinkled musically in the breeze. "Personally, though, it's not a dimension I normally stop in."
Again the alarm sounded in the back of my head, despite my hunger. "Why not?" I asked suspiciously.
"Because they're weird there-I mean, really weird," she confided.
Images flashed across my mind of the beings we'd already encountered. "Weirder than the natives we've been imitating?" I gulped. "I thought you said they'd be humanoid?"
"Not weird physically," Tananda chided, taking my hand. "Weird mentally. You'll see."
"What's the name of the dimension?" I called desperately as she closed her eyes to begin our travels. The scenery around us faded, there was a rush of darkness, then a new scene burst brightly and noisily into view.
"Jahk," she answered, opening her eyes since we were there.
Chapter Four:
" ‘Weird' is a relative, not an absolute term."
-BARON FRANK N. FURTER
You recall my account of our usual modus operandi on hitting a new dimension? How we would arrive inconspicuously and disguise ourselves before mingling with the natives? Well, however secluded Tananda's landing point in Jahk might be normally-it wasn't when we arrived.
As the dimension came into focus it was apparent that we were in a small park, heavily overgrown with trees and shrubs. It was not the flora of the place which caught and held my attention, however, it was the crowd. What crowd? you might ask. Why, the one carrying blazing torches and surrounding us, of course. Oh-that crowd!
Well, to be completely honest, they weren't actually surrounding us. They were surrounding the contraption we were standing on. I had never really known what a contraption was when Aahz had used the word in conversation, and being Aahz he wouldn't define the word when I asked him to. Now that I was here, however, I recognized one on sight. The thing we were standing on had to be a contraption.
It was some sort of wagon-in that it was large and had four wheels. Beyond that I couldn't tell much about it, because it was completely covered by tufts of colored paper. That's right, I said paper-light fluffy stuff that would be nice if you had a cold, runny nose. But this paper was mostly yellow and blue. Looming over us was some kind of monstrous, dummy warrior complete with helmet-also covered with tufts of blue and yellow paper.
Of all the things that had flashed across my mind when Tananda warned me that the Jahks were weird, the one thing that had not occurred to me was that they were blue-and-yellow-paper freaks.
"Get off the float!"
This last was shouted at us from someone in the crowd.
"I beg your pardon," I shouted back.
"The float! Get off of it!"
"C'mon, handsome," Tananda hissed, hooking my elbow in hers.
Together we leaped to the ground. As it turned out we were barely in time. With a bloodthirsty howl, the crowd surged forward and tossed their torches Onto the contraption we had so recently abandoned. In moments it was a mass of flames the heat of which warmed the already overheated crowd. They danced and sang, joyfully oblivious to the destruction of the contraption.
Edging away from the scene, I realized with horror that it was being duplicated throughout the park. Wherever I looked there were bonfires set on contraptions, and jubilant crowds.
"I think we arrived at a bad time," I observed.
"What makes you say that?" Tananda asked.
"Little things," I explained, "like the fact they're in the middle of torching the town."
"I don't think so," my companions shrugged. "When you torch a town you don't usually start with the parks."
"Okay, then you tell me just what they're doing."
"As far as I can tell, they're celebrating."
"Celebrating what?"
"Some kind of victory. As near as I can tell, everyone's shouting-we won! we won!"
I surveyed the blazes again. "I wonder what they'd do if they lost?"
Just then a harried-looking individual strode up to us. His no-nonsense, business-like manner was an island of sanity in a sea of madness. I didn't like it. Not that I have anything against sanity, mind you. It's just that up ‘til now we had been pretty much ignored. I feared that was about to change.
"Here's your pay," he said brusquely, handing us each a pouch. "Turn in your costume at the Trophy Building." With that he was gone, leaving us openmouthed and holding the bags.
"What was that all about?" I managed to say.
"Beats me," Tananda admitted. "They lost me when they called that contraption a float."
"Then I'm right! It is a contraption," I exclaimed with delight. "I knew they had to be wrong; a float is airtight and won't sink in water."
"I thought it was made with ice cream and gingerale?" Tananda frowned.
"With what and what?" I blinked.
"Great costumes-really great!" someone shouted to us as they staggered by.
"Time to do something about our disguises," Tananda murmured as she waved to the drunk.
"Right," I nodded, glad we could agree on something.
The disguises should have been easy after my recent experience in other dimensions. I mean the Jahks were humanoid and I had lots of ready models to work from. Unfortunately I encountered problems.
The first was pride. Despite the teeming masses around us, I couldn't settle on two individuals whose appearance I wanted to duplicate. I never considered myself particularly vain; I've never considered myself as being in top physical condition-of course, that was before I arrived in Jahk.
Every being I could see was extremely off-weight- either over or under. If a specific individual wasn't ribs-protruding thin to the point of looking brittle, he was laboring along under vast folds of fat which bunched and bulged at waist, chin and all four cheeks. Try as I might, I couldn't bring myself to alter Tananda or myself to look like these wretched specimens.
My second problem was that I couldn't concentrate, anyway. Disguise spells, like any other magik, require a certain amount of concentration. In the past I've been able to cast spells in the heat of battle or embarrassment. In our current situation I couldn't seem to get my mind focused.
You see there was this song-well, I think it was a song. Anyway the crowd acted like it was singing a rhythmic chant; the chant was incredibly catchy. Even in the short time we'd been there I'd almost mastered the lyrics-which is a tribute to the infectious nature of the song rather than any indication of my ability to learn lyrics. The point is that every time I tried concentrating on our disguises, I found myself singing along with the chant instead. Terrific!