The Paths Of The Perambulator Read online

  “It has nothing to do with magic,” said the wizard firmly. “What has happened, what is happening, is the result of natural law.”

  “Whatever.” Jon-Tom waved the comment off and took a second to make sure the object doing the waving was a normal five-fingered hand. “You call it natural law, I call it magic, somebody else calls it physics. The result is the same. Structures and functions are being altered against the will of those involved.” He let the fingers of his right hand strum lightly over the duar’s strings. A mellow, soft tone filled the room. Fortunately that was all, but Clothahump checked the corners of the chamber just to be certain.

  “Yes. And there is no way of predicting when the changes will occur or how severe will be their effects. But it must be stopped. If nothing is done, the changes will continue with greater and greater frequency. They will also become more extreme.”

  “How could I turn into anything weirder than a giant blue crab?”

  “Look at yourself and reconsider that question,” said the wizard dryly. “I would rather live as a blue crab than as a tall mammal devoid of pigment.”

  Jon-Tom had become inured to comments about his species defects and continued to lightly strum the duar. “So who’s out to get us, then?”

  “No one is out to get us.”

  “There’s no vast evil behind what’s happening? That’s a switch.”

  “Not on the part of the cause of the disturbances, no,” Clothahump told him. “It is a natural phenomenon, like an earthquake.”

  Jon-Tom knew better where earthquakes were concerned but decided not to interrupt the wizard with a digression. “You say ‘it.’ Everything that’s happened has a single cause?” His little finger tried to turn back into the worm again, but a sharp glance seemed to put a halt to the incipient transformation.

  “That is correct.” Clothahump began to pace the bedroom. “It is producing blurs, alterations, changes in the composition of existence by inducing shifts in the atomic substructure of matter. It does this by emitting destabilizing bursts of energy of unbelievable intensity. The degree of change our universe experiences varies proportionately to the strength of each burst.”

  “Our universe?” Jon-Tom swallowed.

  Clothahump nodded somberly. “Did I not say it was a large problem? Fortunately such occurrences are as rare as they are serious. There are not that many perambulators around. And that, my boy, is the source of these unsettling alterations we are experiencing.” He squinted through his glasses. “You comprehend my meaning?”

  “Oh, sure, absolutely. Uh, what’s a perambulator?”

  “Well, it is one of two things. It is either a baby carriage or a perambulating prime. I believe we can safely exclude the first as the cause of what is happening. The other is difficult to define. It is reputed to be a part organic, part inorganic, part orgasmic creature that’s neither here nor there, only in this instance it’s both here and there. It drifts around, cavorting between an infinite number of possible universes as well as the impossible ones, inducing changes wherever it goes.”

  “I see,” murmured Jon-Tom as he frantically tried to sort some sense out of the bits and pieces of seemingly contradictory nonsense the wizard had been spouting.

  “There aren’t many of them,” Clothahump continued. “Normally they pass through our universe so quickly that the few disruptions they cause occur without attracting attention. Although it has never been done, it is theoretically possible to capture a perambulator, to restrain it, and to hold it in one place. As you can imagine, this would be very unsettling to something that is used to traveling freely between entire universes. Our theoretically restrained perambulator would be likely to respond by throwing off more frequent bursts of perturbating energy. This is what I believe has happened.”

  “So what you’re saying,” Jon-Tom replied slowly, “is that we are in trouble because something that is capable of disturbing the entire fabric of existence is suffering the equivalent of an interdimensional attack of claustrophobia.”

  “Your analysis is unnecessarily verbose, as usual, but you are essentially correct.”

  “Wish I wasn’t. How do you stop something like that?” He was aware that his skin had suddenly turned a delicate shade of puce. Clothahump had gone bright pink. It only lasted a moment, and then his normal healthy skin color returned. “I understand the need for urgency. The world’s a tough enough place to try to make a go of it in without having to worry about its changing from day to day.”

  “The solution is simple, though accomplishing it may prove otherwise. We must find the place where the perambulator has been frozen in space-time and free it to go on its way.”

  Jon-Tom shook his head. “I still don’t understand how something that’s capable of traveling from one dimension or universe to another can be restrained. It’s not like catching a butterfly.”

  Clothahump spread his hands. “I don’t know how it can be done, either, my boy. But something has done it. Or someone.”

  The tall youth essayed a nervous grin. “Come on. Surely you don’t think someone like you or me is capable of doing something like that?”

  “Anyone is capable of anything,” Clothahump informed him sternly. “There is nothing that can be imagined that cannot be done given enough time, devotion, intelligence, and blind luck.”

  “So somebody has to find this thing, cope with whatever has it trapped, and free it before we all go nuts. Swell.” Again his fingers caressed the duar’s strings. “So why can’t somebody else do it for a change? Why not send a whole coterie of wizards after this thing?”

  “Because, as you well know,” Clothahump said in his best lecturing tone, “I am the most powerful and important wizard there is, so it behooves me to act for the common good in instances where others would have not the slightest inkling how to proceed.”

  Jon-Tom’s expression turned sour. “Uh-huh. And, of course, I have to go along with you because I’m sharing your house and your food and you’re the only chance I have of ever returning home.”

  “And because you have a good heart, value my counsel, and suffer from an irresistible urge to help others who are in trouble,” the wizard added. “You also are an incorrigible show-off.”

  “Thanks, I think. Well, at least all we’ll have to deal with are these damn changes. They’re disconcerting, but it’s not like they put us in any danger of bodily harm.”

  “That remains to be seen,” said the wizard unencouragingly.

  “Look, can’t you manage without me? Just this one time? On your own?”

  Clothahump steepled his fingers and looked blandly skyward. “If the perambulator is not freed and the world changes too many times, the local structure of matter could become permanently distorted. We might lose a thing or two.”

  “Like, for instance?”

  “Like gravity.”

  Jon-Tom took a deep breath. “Okay, I’ll come. You’ve made it pretty clear that there’s no place to hide from this thing.”

  “No place at all, my boy, any more than there is a place where you can hide from my criticisms.”

  “You sure you want me along, what with my inaccurate spellsinging and all?”

  “Do not take my little jibes to heart. You have accomplished some wonders with that instrument, and your voice and you may yet have the chance to do so again in the course of our journey. Besides, I’m getting on, and I need someone young and strong . . .”

  “To help you over the rough spots, I know,” said Jon-Tom, having listened to the wizard’s lament many times before. “I said I’d come, didn’t I? Not that I have any choice. Not that any of us have any choice, I guess, with the stability of the world at stake. What’s this perambulator thing look like, anyway?”

  Clothahump shrugged. “No one knows. It is said that it can look like anything, or nothing. A tree, a stone, a wisp of air. You and I define what we see in terms of what we are familiar with. We compare new sights to the nature we know. The perambulator is not a fre
ak of nature; it is a freak of supernature.

  “It is said that in shape and composition, structure, and outline it is like many individuals I know: unstable. There are ancient lines that insist it is pleasant to look upon. Nor is its character malign. It does not disturb from purpose or evil design. The perturbations are an unavoidable consequence of itself. It would be a very nice thing to encounter, I suspect, if it did not have this unfortunate habit of causing the universe in which it happens to be residing to go completely haywire.”

  “And you’re sure that’s what we’re dealing with here?”

  “Nothing else but a perambulator could perturb the world in such a fashion,” Clothahump assured him. The wizard had assumed the shape of an elderly moose with bright yellow wings. It needed the wings because he was sitting atop a hundred-foot-tall spruce. Jon-Tom looked at the dizzying drop beneath his own dangling, furry legs, and fought to hold on to the crown of his own tree. He saw no reason to disagree with the wizard’s assessment.

  The perturbation lasted longer this time, almost three minutes, before the world snapped back to reality. Jon-Tom breathed a sigh of relief when it became clear that they had returned to the reality of Clothahump’s tree once again. Of course, in reality they had not moved, had never left it. Only reality had moved.

  “You’re sure these are real changes we’re experiencing and not just some kind of clever mass delusions?”

  “You would have found out had you fallen from that tree in which you had been squatting a moment ago,” Clothahump assured him. “You would have changed back, of course, except that you would now be lying spread all over this floor. You had been given wings, but could you have determined how to use them in the brief moment of falling?”

  “I’m beginning to see why we have to find this perambulator and free it fast.” He walked over the washbasin and poured himself a glass of water from the jug standing on the shelf nearby. Except that instead of water, the glass filled with an alarmingly noisy bright blue liquid that fizzed and bubbled. He had the distinct impression that his drink was angry at him.

  The glass slipped from his fingers. As it tumbled, the fizzing reached epic proportions. He dove for the far side of his bed while Clothahump retreated inside his shell. Propelled by the explosive blue fizz, the glass rocketed around the room, bouncing off suddenly rubbery walls and hunting furiously for the creature that had dared try to drink it. It barely missed Jon-Tom’s head as he scrambled beneath the bed.

  Lacking either a butterfly net or a shotgun, they could only wait until the fizz lost its zip. This occurred at almost exactly the same moment when they slipped back to reality and the perturbation ceased. Occupied once more by ordinary water, the glass lost momentum in midair and shattered wetly against the footboard of the bed. Clothahump emerged from his shell while Jon-Tom warily crawled out from beneath the bed, keeping a watchful eye on the liquid debris lest the puddle try to bite him.

  “Try the sink again, my boy. It should be all right now.”

  Jon-Tom straightened. “Never mind. Suddenly I’m not thirsty anymore.”

  “You’re going to have to keep your nerves under control. We all are. Why, we haven’t so much as begun, and things can only get worse before they get better.”

  “That’s what I enjoy about assisting you, Clothahump. You’re always so reassuring about the outcome.”

  “Tut, my boy,” the wizard chided him sternly, “you must remain calm in the face of chaos. If for no other reason than to maintain control over your spellsinging.”

  “ ‘Keep control.’ ‘Stay calm’ Easy for you to say. You have some idea of what we’re up against, and you’re the world’s greatest sorcerer. Of course, you can keep your reactions under control. You’re sure of your abilities. I’m not. You know that you’ll be okay.”

  Clothahump’s reply did nothing to boost Jon-Tom’s confidence.

  “Are you kidding, my boy? I’m scared shitless.”

  II

  Jon-Tom had to bend his head to avoid bumping it on the ceiling. Clothahump had proven himself an accommodating host where his ungainly young human guest was concerned, but such accommodations did not extend to altering the tree-home spell to provide the dimensionally expanded interior with higher ceilings and doorways. Such spells were time-consuming and expensive, the wizard had informed him, and one did not mess with the details unless something happened to go wrong with the plumbing.

  So he was compelled to bend low whenever moving from room to room. It wasn’t all bad, though. There were beneficial side effects. During the months of residing in the tree he’d become quite agile, and he could now take a blow to the forehead without so much as wincing.

  He thought he was intimately familiar with every chamber and cubbyhole the tree possessed, but the tunnel Clothahump was presently leading him down was new to him. Not only was it alien in appearance, it seemed to be leading them downward.

  Sorbl appeared, waiting for them. The famulus held a glowing bulb on the end of a stick. The light flickered unevenly, a clear sign that Sorbl had put the illumination spell on the bulb by himself.

  “Here I am, Master.”

  “Drunk again,” snapped the wizard accusingly. Sorbl drew himself up straight.

  “No, Master. See, I am not swaying.” Indeed, Sorbl looked rock-steady. “I see you and Jon-Tom clearly.”

  Jon-Tom looked at the famulus. Yes, the great yellow eyes were much less bloodshot than usual.

  Clothahump nodded brusquely toward the glow bulb. “We won’t be neding that.”

  “You are going down into the cellar, Master?”

  “Cellar?” Jon-Tom let his gaze travel upward. “I didn’t know the tree had a cellar. How come you never showed it to me before, sir?”

  “It is not a place that is used for storage. It is a place used only for certain things. There was no reason to use it—until now.”

  The famulus extended the glow-bulb pole. “Here you are, Master. I’ll be going now.”

  “Going? Going where? You’re coming with me, Sorbl. How do you ever expect to learn anything if you keep running off?”

  “From books, Master.”

  “Books are not enough. One must also gain experience.”

  “But, Master, I don’t like the cellar.”

  Clothahump looked disgusted and put his hands on his hips—well, on the sides of his shell, anyway. Being a member of the turtle persuasion, his hips were not visible.

  “Sometimes I think you’ll never progress beyond famulus. But I am bound by our contract to try to hammer some knowledge into you. Keep the light if it reassures you.” He shook his head. “An owl that’s afraid of the dark.”

  “I am not afraid of the dark, Master,” Sorbl replied quickly, seeming to gather some of his self-respect around him. “I’m just afraid of what’s down in the cellar.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Jon-Tom, “is this something I ought to know about? What’s this all about? What are you so frightened of, Sorbl?”

  The owlet gazed up at him out of vast yellow eyes. “Nothing.”

  “Well, then,” asked a thoroughly confused Jon-Tom, “what’s there to be afraid of?”

  “I told you,” the famulus reiterated, “nothing.”

  “We’re not making a connection here,” said the exasperated Jon-Tom. He glanced at Clothahump. “What’s he so scared of?”

  “Nothing,” the wizard informed him solemnly.

  Jon-Tom nodded sardonically. “Right. I’m glad that’s cleared up.”

  The wizard glared at his assistant. “Sorbl, you must stay with me. I may require your aid. We have to do this because it is the only way I can divine the location of the perambulator. That should be obvious to anyone.” He eyed Jon-Tom expectantly. “Shouldn’t it?”

  “Absolutely,” said Jon-Tom without hesitation, simultaneously wondering what he was concurring with.

  “Furthermore,” Clothahump went on, turning his attention back to Sorbl, “you will be accompanying me on the jour
ney to come.”

  “Me?” Sorbl squeaked. “But I’m still just a famulus, a lowly apprentice. And besides, someone will have to stay to look after the tree, pay the bills, take out the—”

  “The tree can look after itself. I’m ashamed of you, Sorbl.” He gestured at Jon-Tom. “This lad is coming with me, so how can you think of staying behind?”

  “It’s easy if I put my mind to it.”

  “He comes from another world entirely and has no desire to apprentice in wizardry matters, yet by persevering he has developed into something not unlike a spellsinger. He should be an example to you. What happened to your ambition, your drive, your desire to experience and learn about the mysteries of the universe?”

  “Can’t I just stay and take care of the laundry?” Sorbl pleaded hopefully.

  “You are my apprentice, not my housekeeper,” Clothahump reminded him sternly. “If I’d wanted just a housekeeper, I would have contracted with someone far more comely and of the opposite sex. As my apprentice, you will follow and learn whether you like it or not. You signed the contract. At the time I thought you were doing so with half a brain. I did not realize you were in the afterthroes of a drunken stupor, nor did I know that was your preferred state of consciousness. But a contract is a contract. I will make a wizard of you even if it kills both of us in the process.”

  “How about just one of us?” Sorbl muttered, but to himself.

  “Besides,” Clothahump continued in a more conciliatory tone, “on this particular journey you can be especially useful.”

  “I can? I mean, I can.”

  “Indeed. During the perturbation we experienced this mom-ing, you displayed none of the panic one would have expected from one of your intellectual temperament.”

  “Perturbation? What’s that?” Sorbl appeared genuinely bemused.

  “Don’t you remember?” Jon-Tom stared at the owl. “The change. The tree turned into a cave, the forest outside into an ocean. Clothahump and I became giant blue crabs and you turned into some kind of squiggly centipede thing.”

  “Oh, that.” Sorbl looked relieved. “For a moment I thought I’d missed something. You mean you saw it too? That’s a switch.”