Xanth 33: Jumper Cable by Piers Anthony

Author:Piers Anthony [Anthony, Piers]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780765323514
Publisher: Tor Books
Published: 2009-10-13T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9: Innocence

Next morning they gathered again in the Found Cabin. It was Princess Dawn’s turn, and she was ready with the little silver unicorn symbol. But Jumper was ner vous. He paused before taking his dose of conversion elixir.

"In each case, there has been a man in trouble, and his sister Sharon has been there with him," he said. "This is scripted material, and we have been playing right into the script. I think that is dangerous for the success of our mission."

"It surely is," Haughty agreed. "But how else can we fulfill the Prophecy?"

"I don’t know. But I am beginning to wonder about the validity of the Prophecy. We have taken it on faith. Suppose it, too, is crafted by Pluto?"

That made them pause. "How do we know?" Haughty asked. "We never questioned it."

"Neither did the Good Magician," Dawn pointed out.

"But neither did he exactly endorse it," Eve said. "He’s letting us figure it out for ourselves. Maybe what we have to figure out is that it’s fake."

"That is my concern," Jumper said. "If so, we are wasting our time here in the dream realm."

"But we have met some really handsome men," Phanta said.

"Which may be the idea," Olive said. "To distract us so we don’t question the larger picture."

"And now we face a challenge of Innocence," Dawn said. "Could it be our own innocence at stake?"

"We’re knot very innocent after what we did with those men," Wenda said.

"This is the dream realm," Eve reminded her. "We may be deluded about what stork summoning actually entails. Have any of us done it in the real realm?"

"Yes, I have," Phanta said. "But I ghosted out the stork aspect."

"And I," Maeve said. "It got the stork after me."

"I haven’t done it directly," Olive said. "But a number of my imaginary friends have, so I think I have a fair notion." She glanced passingly at Jumper.

"So have I," Jumper said, taking his cue. "But that was with an imaginary woman, so maybe it doesn’t count."

"How does your experience here in the dream compare?" Eve asked.

"It’s much better in the dream," Phanta said. "The man is paying more attention, catering to you, loving you. In the real realm, once he gets what he wants he either goes away or falls asleep. It’s not nearly so much fun."

"He went away," Maeve agreed ruefully. "Leaving me to deal with the stork alone."

"That’s the risk the girl takes," Olive said. "My friends are mostly disgusted. They thought he liked them for themselves, and it turned out that once he sent the signal he hardly cared about anything else."

They glanced at Jumper. "I guess I did that," he confessed, embarrassed. "I was interested in just the one thing. She didn’t complain. But she was teaching me."

"She liked interacting with a man who didn’t drop dead at the sight of her," Olive said. "Your spider heart didn’t pain you the way a human heart would have."

"Still, I was being a typical thoughtless man. You girls encountered much better men.

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