The Dastard (2 page)

The Dastard didn't wait. He phased into limbo, orienting on that place/time where/when Ho had broken his shoe-lace. In due course he found it, and entered regular existence just before Ho came down the path. He picked up the rock Ho was about to stumble on and hurled it into the brush. Then he returned to the present. He was alone; Ho was not making his journey to meet and marry Princess Ida. There would be no child, and no potatoes.

Oh, this was wonderful! The day was yet young, and he had already abolished four significant events.

However, there was nothing remaining in this general place or time; he had used it up. It might be another day before he found anything else.

He was hungry, so he paused at a path-side stand that served freshly harvested pies. There was a small orchard of pie trees behind it, obviously well cared for. The young woman tending the stand was unusually pretty; she practically glowed in a lovely green hue, from her blonde green hair to her fair-green complexion. The Dastard liked her immediately, so he struck up an acquaintance. “Who are you?”

“I am Jade,” she replied. “My talent is to make anything into a jade stone.” She indicated a number of jade stone statuettes she had converted from other substances.

“Are you married?”

She giggled, embarrassed by the directness of the question. “Of course not!”

This looked promising. One thing the Dastard lacked was a woman to appreciate him. For various reasons that escaped him, girls tended to avoid him once they got to know him, so he had had no serious romantic relationship despite being twenty-two years old. He had thought his acquisition of his wonderful talent four years before would change that, but it hadn't. So he was still looking, and maybe Jade would do.

“How about marrying me?” he asked.

“Oh, I couldn't possibly do that,” she said.

“Why not?”

“Because I'm in love with Mac.”

Oops. He had forgotten to ask whether she had a boyfriend. Pretty girls usually did. But maybe the situation wasn't wholly hopeless. “Who is Mac? What's his talent?”

Jade was happy to talk about her boyfriend. “He's just the most handsome, smart, wonderful person I know. He's different. He can split into three likenesses, called Mac, Mike, and Mal, and each is a bit different in looks and temperament, so it's never boring. We met three years ago, and it just got better, so now we're going to marry and be happy forever after. Oh, it's just so utterly thrilling!”

The Dastard was really getting to dislike this Mac/Mike/Mal. But maybe if he could get rid of him, Jade would be available for himself. Three years was within his range. “How did you meet him?”

"Well, I was baby-sitting for Okra Ogress three years ago. Her twins were Og and Not-Og, five years old. Og was already getting really stupid, even for an ogret boy, and Not-Og was getting really ugly, even for an ogret girl. He could lose track of how many toes he had, and she could curdle cream with one smile. In short, they were wonderful ogre children, and Okra was really proud of them. But her husband Smithereen had gone on a boulder-smashing expedition and not returned, so she knew he was lost, and she had to go find him, and so she left the twins with me, the neighbor's daughter. It was a few weeks before she returned, and the ogrets were getting bored, so I took them for a walk in the woods, where they could practice being really stupid and ugly. I didn't have to worry about safety, because nobody who isn't duller than an ogre--and there are none such--ever bothers an ogre. Or an ogret. The very greensward cringed at their approach, and the sun dimmed when they glanced at it. They both had fun twisting small trees into pretzels and teaching young dragons the meaning of fear; these are just things ogres naturally do. They are so justifiably proud of their strength, stupidity, and ugliness.

“Then Fracto drifted by. That's Cumulo Fracto Nimbus, the worst of clouds, always looking for picnics to rain on or valuables to blow away. He thought he would have some fun with the ogrets, because he figured they couldn't do anything back to him. He made a foggy face and started blowing up a storm. But it didn't turn out the way he expected. The wind stirred up half a soul that had been half buried somewhere, and as it flew by, Og grabbed it, and held it, wondering whether to eat it or squeeze it into pulp. Just then a stone gargoyle happened to pass by, and Not-Og smiled at it, for a moment petrifying it with her un-beauty. When it stood immobile, she pulled off one of its gargoyle socks, admiring its colors. Og saw that, grabbed it, and stuffed the half soul into it. Not-Og snatched it back. Og grabbed it again and hurled it into the cloud. The half soul escaped and found Fracto. That made Fracto turn halfway good. He collapsed his storm front and sailed rapidly home to the Region of Air where his partner Hurricane Happy Bottom lived, and they did whatever clouds do to summon the stork, and after that Fray came on their scene, and she got the half soul. Just what sort of a cloud she will turn out to be we don't yet know.”

“This is all very interesting,” the Dastard said, expending a fair sized lie at this point, because it was really all very boring. “But what does it have to do with your meeting Mic/Muck/Mock?”

“That's Mac/Mike/Mal,” Jade said sharply. “I'm coming to that.” She gave him a brief green stare, then resumed her how-we-met narrative. “The day was getting on, so we started back toward home. But the ogrets heard someone declaiming heroic poetry and ran to see who it was, and I had to follow. It turned out to be a woman polishing a freshly waxed statue. It was the statue doing the declaiming. For a moment I was mystified what it all meant, but then I realized that she was waxing poetic. Fortunately poetry bores ogres, unless they are speaking it themselves, so that didn't hold the twins long. We resumed our trek, and encountered a group of big furry animals. I hadn't seen anything like them before, so I inquired: 'What kind of creatures are you?' And two of the biggest ones, who seemed to be males, replied 'We are bears. We are Bears Noting, and these are bears mentioning.' They indicated two females. 'And we are bears repeating, bears repeating,' two small ones said. That left one more, who was busy scratching figures on a pad he carried. He looked very interesting, but didn't speak. ”Do you feel you are of no account? I asked. 'By no means,' he responded. 'I am an interest bearing account.' So then I understood, and we went on toward home."

“But about 3M,” the Dastard said, trying to stifle his burgeoning impatience.

“I'm getting there,” Jade said severely. “We had to stop, because there was an imp ass. It was just a little mule, but we realized it had strayed from a settlement of imps and needed to be returned. So Og picked it up, and Not-Og smiled around until most of the surrounding foliage wilted, and there was the imp colony. Og set the imp ass down there, so that it no longer blocked our way. The imps were very grateful, so they told us where we could find some nice varieties of thyme. A person can never get too much thyme, so we thanked them and went there; it wasn't far off the path, but we would never have found that patch on our own. There was 2/2 Thyme, and 4/4 Thyme, and 6/8 Thyme--just a great variety of very special Thymes. So I gathered a timely assortment, and we started back for home again.”

“Will you get on with it!” the Dastard said, becoming foolishly impatient. He was beginning to wonder if this pretty green woman was worth the effort. Her endless talk was as dull as she was lovely.

“I'm getting there,” Jade said, favoring him with a glare. “We started back--and there, coming along the path the other way, was Mac. I was so surprised that I fell back. Right on my soft bottom, as a matter of fact. A stray gust of wind came at that moment. My skirt flared up and gave him a good flash of my panties. Maybe that was just as well, because he froze in place, as men do, and remained that way until I got back on my feet. I realized that chance had enabled me to capture his attention. He was a handsome man, so I decided to keep it. And that was the beginning of it all, and soon we will be married. Meanwhile, the ogres--”

But the Dastard was already fading into limbo. He went back three years, then zeroed in on the thyme patch. He considered half a moment, then set about fashioning a baffle. He set it up by the path, just upwind of the place Jade would tumble, so that when the stray gust of wind came, it would be deflected before it reached her skirt, and her skirt would not flare, and the man would not see her panties. So she would not catch his attention, and they would pass without noticing each other.

He returned to the present. There was Jade, just as pretty as before. “So how about marrying me?” he asked again.

“Oh, I couldn't possibly do that,” she said. “I'm in love with Eck.”

“Eck?” he asked distastefully.

“Eck Sray, my fiancé,” she explained. “He sees through things. When we first met, he saw right through my skirt to my panties, and--”

Oh, no! He had abolished the incident that attracted Mac's attention to her, only to have her meet another man who was attracted by the same thing. Which meant that the Dastard still didn't have any decent chance to get an indecent look himself.

He was tired of such frustrations. So he decided to snatch what spot of pleasure he could, and move on. His talent had one more aspect that could be extremely useful on occasion, and this might be such an occasion.

He reached across the table and caught Jade's head. He pulled her in for a hot kiss. It was pretty good, considering that her lips were mushy; surprise had made her forget to firm them.

Then she jerked away and screamed. A huge older man appeared from the garden. “What's the matter, honey? This creep bothering you?”

“Yes, Father,” she said. “He kissed me!”

“Well now,” the man said grimly. He strode toward the Dastard, raising a hamfist.

But the Dastard got out of there by going into limbo and changing his own recent past. He could do that, to a limited extent. He could go back as far as a day, if he hadn't been changing the lives of others, or otherwise as far back as the last change he had made. When he changed others, that fixed his own presence, lest he run afoul of paradox. So in this case he was limited to about five minutes, since he had abolished Mac. That was enough; he went back to just before he kissed Jade, and this time he didn't kiss her. The episode had never happened.

But he remembered it. He was the only one who could remember events that he had made unhappen. So that he didn't lose his awareness of his own dastardly deeds. After all, what would be the point, if he didn't remember?

Jade was still talking about how great Eck Stray was, and how they were going to be married soon, and then he wouldn't need to see through her clothing to see her panties, because she would show them to him anytime.

“Uh, sure, thank you,” the Dastard said, trying to control a fit of jealousy, and moved on. She was a pretty girl, but as usual he had gotten nowhere. He hated that.

There was another nexus some distance ahead. Maybe that would be better. He needed something to shore up his spirits. He had a great talent, and he had no soul, which gave him wonderful freedom, but it wasn't enough. He wanted a woman, too. A pretty one.

Farther along he spied an animal going the opposite way. Was this the nexus? No, his sense did not respond. But the creature approached him. It was a male canine, but did not seem to be a werewolf. What did it want?

He saw that it wore a mundane collar, from which dangled a little sign. He read the sign: MY NAME IS BOSS. I AM A 90 POUND BLACK LABRADOR DOG. I LOST MY HOME AND AM LOOKING FOR A NEW ONE. CAN YOU HELP?

“Certainly I can help,” the Dastard said. “But I won't. Go away.”

The dog walked sadly on. It was momentarily satisfying to frustrate him, but hardly worth the effort.

In due course he came to the nexus. It was at a statue of the Sea Hag, a Sorceress he had always admired. She took the bodies of young pretty girls and used them until they got worn and ugly, then moved on to others. She must have a fabulous history! She was old, in spirit if not in current body, and must have been around since the dawn of Xanth.

Then he saw a girl standing there by the statue. She was sort of halfway pretty, with blonde hair and brown eyes, but young. The Adult Conspiracy could get after a man who tangled with too young a girl; he had had some experience, and didn't need any more. So she was of no personal use to him. Still, she was at the nexus, so this needed to be investigated.

She saw him, “Did you see a big dog? I thought I saw one not long ago, maybe looking for a home.”

The Dastard ignored this. “Who are you?” he asked her.

“My name is Becka,” she said. “Who are you?”

That set him back. The Dastard was not used to people asking him questions. “Why do you want to know?”

“Because I'm supposed to wait here until a certain man comes, and then I'm supposed to go with him and help him in whatever way he wishes. I need to know whether you are that man.”

This was interesting. She was at the nexus, and she wanted to help him. Maybe she was what he was looking for, despite her youth. If she didn't tell, who would ever know? So he gave it a try. “Kiss me.”

“No.”

“If you're supposed to help me--”

“Not that way.”

“How do you know?”

“I'm too young.”

“Maybe not,” he said. He grabbed her and sought to kiss her.

Suddenly he was holding on to a dragon with purple-tinged bright green scales.

He backed off five minutes and tried again. They went through the introduction, and this time he answered her question. “I am the Dastard, because I do dastardly deeds. Do you have a problem with that?”

“I guess not,” she said. “You must be going to do something good for Xanth, that I'm supposed to help you with. Otherwise the Good Magician wouldn't have sent me.”

“The Good Magician! He sent you to meet me?”

“Yes. Didn't you know?”

“No. Why should that little old wizened gnome want to do anything for me?”

“I don't know. My guess is he wants to do something good for Xanth.”

The Dastard pondered. This was a curious business. He hadn't known that Magician Humfrey even knew about him, let alone wanted to help him. Maybe it would be better to slide back through limbo and nullify that connection. But he hesitated, because he knew the Good Magician was a sharp old codger with a lot of information, and if he changed Humfrey's action once, he would not be able to change it again thereafter, because of the rule of paradox. Maybe the Good Magician was counting on that, to mess him up. So he would play along, and learn more about it, not acting until he was sure. Having a good magic talent was one thing; using it effectively was another.