“Don’t freak out, Fernando,” Pogo told his assistant manager, “I’m just going to the food court. You’ll be fine.”

Little Fernando tried to smile but it was the sickly grimace of an infantryman ordered to charge a machine gun nest. He pointed with a shaking finger at the crowd of bargain-hunters that had turned Saturday afternoon at Kirby Shoes into a battle zone. “But it’s the Summer Madness Event…!”

Perry Como Cashman, who had been named after the singer by a soon-to-be-absent father and had been called “Pogo” by his friends since junior high school, sighed. “I know, dude. But I haven’t been out of the store since I opened at seven this morning and I haven’t eaten anything and I’m starving. Little Ed’s back from his break and Big Ed’s here and whatsisname–you know, Stockroom Dude–can help out if you really need another body. I’ll be back in, like, twenty minutes max, so just hold your water.” Pogo patted Fernando on the shoulder. “I’ll bring you back something if you want.”

Fernando’s eyes were showing whites around the edges. “A gun or a knife, please. That lady threw a hiking boot at me!”

“Emergency!” shouted Little Ed from the other side of the store. “There’s a woman climbing the display wall, trying to get the last set of kids’ Adidas! Oh, man, she just clubbed somebody with a Brannock device…!”

#

Pogo was whistling as he made his way across Victory Plaza Mall. It had been a serious pleasure to leave Fernando and the others to deal with this latest crisis. For at least the next few minutes, the only thing he had to decide was whether he wanted cashew chicken, egg rolls, or both.

As he circled an ornamental fountain full of splashing toddlers, he thought he heard someone calling his name. He did his best to ignore it, but a few moments later he heard it again–felt it might be more accurate, since it was so faint, so distant. He turned with a grunt of irritation, expecting to see Fernando or one of his salesmen chasing after him, but saw only the usual afternoon shoppers, bored young mothers and seniors avoiding the San Fernando Valley heat in the air-conditioned mall.

Pogo…! Pogo Cashman…!

He turned in a full circle, but nobody was even looking at him, let alone calling him. Hunger hallucinations, he thought. Better get some pot stickers, too…

Pogo…!

This time the voice sounded so close he whirled, expecting to find some practical joker standing right behind him, but he was alone in the center of the shopping center concourse. An instant later, he fell through the floor, tumbling through the very fabric of reality and into a darkness that throbbed with honks and squeals like a prog-rock band tuning up.

He fell for a long time. Long enough to get bored.

I really wanted some egg rolls…! was his last thought before he abruptly fell back into the world. The problem was, it was not the world that Pogo Cashman had fallen out of in the first place.

#

“Did ye do yersel’ a hurt, m’lord?” Small, rough hands pulled at him, trying to help him sit up. “Are ye wounded?”

Pogo was wondering about that himself, because everything sure smelled, sounded, and looked strange. Some shit had definitely gone wrong, either with the Victory Plaza Mall or Pogo Cashman himself. All the walls seemed to have fallen down and he was surrounded by trees instead of retail stores. Also, why was Fernando talking funny? And why was there a big, black horse standing just a few feet away?

“M’lord? What befell ye?”

“Fernando, you were supposed to…” But then he realized it wasn’t his diminutive assistant manager standing over him but someone quite different–in fact, the stranger made little Fernando look like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He was a dwarf, with a nose like a brown avocado, a bushy, dirty beard, and large bare feet.

“Who are you?” Pogo asked him. “And how did I get to Disneyland?”

“I ken that land not,” the small fellow said. “But ye know me sure, lord. Ludo, yer ain sworn vassal.”

Pogo was really beginning to worry now. He had never had the greatest imagination (except during his youthful days of pharmaceutical exploration) and if he was imagining all this, that had to mean a pretty severe head injury.

And I never got my lunch, either, he thought sadly. Now I’ll probably spend months eating hospital food. “Okay, Lou,” he said, trying to be a good sport. “Then if this isn’t Disneyland, where are we?”

The dwarf frowned, obviously concerned. “The forest of the Ardennes, Duke Astolfo. Sure ye must recollect!”

“Duke Astolfo?” The name was sort of familiar–a relief pitcher for the Angels, maybe? Professional surfer? “Hey, should somebody call an ambulance? Because I think I might have a brain injury or something. Or could you kind of steer me back to the mall, at least? I manage Kirby Shoes–you know it? Across from Orange Julius, next to J.C.Penneys?”

Ludo shook his head. “This is nay guid and the dark will soon come. We maun make camp.”

“Yeah. So is there a snack bar or a store or something around here? A minimart? ‘Cause I never got any lunch today.”

But the dwarf only shook his head again and helped Cashman to his feet. He was stronger than his size would have suggested. “Can ye ride, m’lord?”

“On a horse?” Pogo examined the huge, black beast. Horses didn’t look anywhere near so big on television. “I don’t know. Is it hard?”

#

Supervisor Fnutt had called a sudden and mandatory meeting for all management personnel. Even sub-sub-manager Quidprobe, the new kid in the office, knew that had to be a bad sign.

All the dozens of managers and sub-managers of the Crossover Division of the Department of Fictional Universes were crowded into the conference space, although most of them looked as though they would rather be pretty much anywhere else. Fnutt the supervisor was pacing back and forth at the front of the room–or what would have been the front if the Department of Fictional Universes had been in any way compelled by Euclidean geometry.

“This is bad!” Fnutt squealed. The supervisor was a small green fellow with a small green mustache and a tendency to become shrill. “Very, very bad!” At the moment, he was in danger of shattering every coffee cup in the room. “How could this happen?”

“Does it matter?” asked Bardler, who managed the Matter of France, his tone heavy with doom. “It’s happened. It’s too late now to do anything but watch the destruction!”

Quidprobe, a sub-sub-manager in the Poul Anderson subdivision, with untaxing maintenance duties in the seldom-accessed Ariosto section of Anderson’s Matter of France, raised a rubbery, three-fingered hand. “I still don’t understand what happened.”

“One of your boss Digry’s idiot clerks sent the wrong personnel request,” Bardler snarled, “and so some idiot named Cashman–a shoe store manager, no less!–was dispatched to Anderson’s medieval France for a tricky assignment, instead of the guy who was supposed to go, Porter Gervaise Castlemane, an English chemical engineer and former SAS officer.” Bardler scratched both his noses. “Who would have been perfect by the way. Castlemane can kill a man with just his fingertips.”

“Yes, we sent the wrong initial request,” bubbled Quidprobe’s boss, Digry, “but then one of your idiot clerks didn’t see our Correction Form!” Digry was so upset his face was pressed against the window of his tank and his nicitating membranes snapped up and down like windshield wipers in a deluge. “We spotted the mistake in moments. We sent the proper MP-362A immediately. But someone in your office must have been taking a nitrogen break.”

Bardler didn’t seem to have an argument at the tip of his feeding tube, so he just scowled.

“Stop! We’ll figure out what went wrong later!” Supervisor Fnutt was getting dangerously squeaky again. “Right now we have to think of something to do about this…catastrophe!”

“Can’t we just reverse it?” asked Quidprobe. He been less than a century on the job–very young by departmental standards–but he was ambitious, as the young often are. As far as he could tell, the other managers uniformly loathed him for it.

“It doesn’t work that way,” screeched Fnutt, his mustache writhing like a caterpillar on a griddle. “Departmental regs say that once the personnel unit has been transferred into the fictional world, any change of plan has to go to the top for approval The very, very top.” Just the look on Fnutt’s face was enough to make even the most hardened of department employees moisten with fear where his, her, or its limbs attached. “So either we call the big boys right now and tell them we have royally screwed the tetramorph or we have to leave him there.”

“And if we leave him there, everything else will go wrong,” said Bardler darkly. “Roland will stay insane. Nobody will save Charlemagne from Agramant and Aelfric. Christendom will totter and fall.”

“But it’s only a crossover story about the Matter of France, one of Anderson’s old books–in fact, what we’re dealing with here isn’t even an actual story by Poul Anderson!” said Quidprobe. “I was looking over the order this morning. It’s only some kind of pastiche for an anthology based his work–and not very closely based, either, I couldn’t help noticing. I suspect the guy writing it is a bit of a hack. So who cares?” But when Quidprobe saw the look on the faces of his superiors his cheerful smile faltered and he blanched right down to his basal chromatophores. “Uh…what don’t I understand?”

Supervisor Fnutt was clearly doing his best not to lose his temper, but some of the more veteran managers looked like they were already wondering if they would get time off to attend Quidprobe’s funeral. “Listen…youngster. What you don’t understand is that when something goes wrong enough with an important creator like Anderson’s version of a world, the problem will ripple out from there.”

“Ripple?” Quidprobe looked around.

“It means, you bottom-hole-breather,” growled Bardler, “that when this Cashman guy fails, it’ll infect the entire Matter of France. The whole thing! Not just Anderson’s version, but Ariosto, the Song of Roland–which is, incidentally, the oldest surviving piece of French literature–and who knows what else.” Bardler was getting angrier as he spoke, and Quidprobe was now doing his best to slide under the table, but fear had made the sub-sub-manager rubbery and he was going horizontal as much as vertical. “A few weeks from now,” Bardler shouted, “Charles the Great will probably be known as Charles the Loser!”

Even Quidprobe’s boss Digry looked anxious. “That bad? Really?”

“You knock the pins out from under Charlemagne and after a little while, there goes Arthur and the Round Table, too!” Bardler declared with a certain grim satisfaction. “And then–goodbye, English literature! Farewell, Western European Humanism! So long, it was fun! Write if you find work!”

“Enough!” squeaked Fnutt.

Bardler dropped back into his chair and subsided into scowling silence. All around the long table managers and sub-managers shifted uneasily, thanking whatever they prayed to that they were not in Quidprobe’s now rather viscous seat. In fact, Quidprobe wasn’t in it either: he had finally managed to slither onto the floor.

“It’s your orb and your game now,” Fnutt told them with dark finality. “As far as I’m concerned, this meeting never happened. And when I’m ready to send my report at the end of the day, I don’t want to see any loose ends that I’ll have to report to…you know who.” Fnutt rose to his full, if unprepossessing height, and marched out of the conference space, followed a moment later by his mustache.

“So…” said Digry at last. His bubbling voice seemed so loud in the silence after their boss’s retreat that even Quidprobe, reorganizing his splayed pseudopods on the floor beneath his chair, could hear every word clearly. “What do we do next?”

“I hear there might be a few openings in the Department of Pointless Philosophical Rambling,” ventured one of the sub-managers.

By the time young Quidprobe had finally managed to clamber back up onto his slippery seat, the conference space had emptied and a large, shouting mob was forming around the copying device as his fellow managers and sub-managers hurried to update and dispatch their resumés.

#

“Truly ye remember naught?” asked Ludo, his face scrunched in dismay like an old paper bag. “Not y’r dalliance with the fair Alcina? How the sorc’ress tired of ye and turned ye into a wee myrtle tree and the a’ the hounds would make water upon ye?”

“Huh?” Cashman was doing his best to understand the dwarf, but the little fellow was clearly suffering from some kind of head injury himself: some of his words sounded like English, but the rest were gobbledygook that sounded like the excitable guy on Star Trek. “I don’t know, man. Can we eat now?”

“Nae, we cannae eat yet.” He hadn’t called Pogo “M’lord,” in a while. “I’ve had nae chance to find victuals, have I?”

“Vegetables? Can’t we get some real food? Like burgers? Or pizza?”

“Victuals! I said ‘victuals’! Are ye daft?”

“I’m not deaf. I’m not even nearsighted, dude. How come you can’t talk like a normal person–like me?”

“Like ye? Like ye?” For a moment Ludo seemed angry enough to walk off and leave Pogo in the woods alone, but then he flopped himself down beside the sandy trail and folded his short legs under him. “Go tak up yon shield,” he said.

Shield at least was a word Pogo recognized. He lifted the big hunk of wood and metal off the saddle horn of the black horse. He didn’t have to reach as high as he expected to, and his hands seemed bigger and stronger than he remembered. He was beginning to wonder if the world around him wasn’t the only thing that had changed. “Yeah?”

“Luik on yon painted crest. Tell us what ye see.”

Pogo decided he must mean the painted front of the shield, so “crest” must mean the advertisement on the front, like the stripey Adidas flower. “Yes,” he said. “The crest. I see. Very interesting.” The design was weird and old-fashioned, a huge trademark of crudely painted lion-type creatures alternating with what Pogo was pretty sure was the New Orleans Saints football team logo. He stared as hard as he could, but it yielded up no secrets. “And…?”

“Do ye ken it not?” Ludo asked. “The three lilies and three leopards of England? The token of your father the king?”

“My father is a king?” As far as Pogo knew, his father was a guy who painted faces on rocks he found at the beach and sold them to tourists.

“Aye, and ye have a grave duty to a’ of Christendie. Can ye truly remember naught?”

The communication thing was beginning to be a problem. “I gotta be honest, Louie. I didn’t understand a thing you just said.”

The dwarf stared at him for a moment, then went off muttering and sat on a fallen tree, pulled out a huge pipe, lit it and began to smoke like a man who was in a hurry to achieve lung cancer.

#

Quidprobe was the only person left in the conference room. He might even have been the only person left in the entire building. His coworkers had hurried off to renew old friendships in other departments that might have openings, or establish alibis for where they had been when the wrong personnel requisition got approved for the Anderson world, anything but dealing with the actual problem.

Well, Quidprobe thought, let them. I’m not like that. I’m a fellow who solves problems instead of running from them. Also, he didn’t know anyone in any of the other departments very well. In fact, after a short hundred years or so in the job, half the people in his own section still didn’t know Quidprobe’s name.

Fnutt’s universal viewer was still sitting on the conference space table and Quidprobe was curious to see what was going on with the botched transfer. Perhaps this Cashman creature would turn out to be just as good as the one everyone had expected to enter the fiction-world instead–perhaps everything would turn out all right after all, and all the veteran department managers had panicked needlessly. And if he brought them this good news, perhaps Quidprobe himself would get some of the credit. He even let himself fantasize for a moment that this could be the start of big things for him–a raise, maybe even a promotion. By the Peerless Punctuation of Poe, wouldn’t that be grand! He could get himself a new exocontainer that wouldn’t break down half the time, and maybe even some top-of-the-line rigid graspers. Wouldn’t the folks back home stare and jealously emit phosgene when Quidprobe came back to visit and told them he was a supervisor! And when he whipped out his fancy new graspers and…and grasped things, well, his old classmates would just froth themselves with jealousy.

After all, he thought, dialing through the various Poul Anderson worlds, past the speeding Leonora Christine and Dominic Flandry, leaving behind the modernist creations and moving farther and farther into the more primitivist inventions such as The High Crusade and The Man Who Came Early, how hard could it be to succeed in an environment as primitive as the Matter of France, where people couldn’t even remove their heads without incurring permanent damage? The Pogocashman organic might not be all that advanced himself, but at least his civilization had discovered things like nuclear power and canned foods.

At last the focal window located the Three Hearts and Three Lions world and dilated wide so that Quidprobe could get his first look at the Pogocashman creature. The Pogocashman’s Assisting Character–a construct named “Ludo”–was trying to teach him how to fight with the ancient weapon known as a sword, which apparently was the main form of social intercourse in primitive France, but the Pogocashman was sitting on the ground whimpering in pain, his hands bloody.

“You’re supposed to hold the other end,” the dwarf said wearily.

Quidprobe had a sudden powerful urge to look over his own rather slight resumé to see what needed updating. He stabbed at the button to close the focal window, but the machinery was made for more conventionally rigid digits than Quidprobe’s and he wound up pressing the button beside it as well. He had only a moment to stare at the label under the accidental button, which read “INTERVENTION–Do Not Engage Without Departmental Permission!” in boldly emphatic symbols in several appropriate languages, then Quidprobe abruptly found himself drawn into an infinitely long thread and then pulled through an infinitely narrow (and infinitely painful) needle’s eye before the darkness swallowed him.

#

Pogo could only stare. The dwarf, who a moment before had been glaring at him in that way of his which was already becoming sadly familiar, had abruptly straightened up and made a noise like a hamster clubbed with a tennis racket, then dropped to the earth in a heap. Now he was lying there looking quite dead. Pogo was just wondering if he needed to find Disneyland security or something when the dwarf groaned and sat up.

“Where am I?” the little bearded man asked, looking from side to side. Then he saw Pogo and groaned again, this time even louder. “’Intervention’! Oh, Lolitas of Leiber, I pushed the ‘Intervention’ button!”

Pogo wasn’t sure what the little fellow was babbling about, but he was pleased by the sudden change in the dwarf’s speech. “You stopped talking funny!”

The other stared for a moment, his mouth working deep in his beard, then he sighed and said, “Right. I’ve replaced the Assisting Character and the machines have keyed my dialect to the Main Character’s own form of speech. Just as well. I never understood that detail of the original story, anyway–why would a French dwarf be speaking with a Scottish burr?”

“Huh?”

The dwarf stood up and slapped the dust and sand from his trousers. “Very well, let’s figure out how we’re going to get this fixed so we can both go back home. We’re in some serious difficulty here, and changing dialects is the least of our problems.” He turned to Pogo. “Let me ask you one important question first, creature. Is there any chance at all that my managers are wrong and you’re really Castlemane from the SAS? Special Air Services? Does that mean anything to you?”

Pogo thought hard. “When you’re on a plane and they bring the cart with the drinks on it?”

“Excrement of Ellison.” The dwarf sat down again, this time with a thump. “They were right. Ah, well, we might as well make the best of this. My name is Quidprobe…”

“Huh? I thought it was Lego or something.”

“Never mind what it used to be, it’s Quidprobe now. And you are the Pogocashman, correct?”

“Uh…yeah. I manage Kirby’s Shoes in the Victory Mall. In the Valley…?”

The dwarf shook his head. “But this still doesn’t make much sense, even if someone sent the wrong form–usually the obvious mistakes get thrown back by the machines before they’re executed.” He turned to Pogo. “Is there a reason the multiverse should choose you instead of the right fellow, or was it just a really, really unfortunate clerical error? Have you ever been involved in dimensional slippage before?”

Pogo shrugged. “Well, I guess I experimented a bit during high school. I mean, like, didn’t everybody?”

The dwarf sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. “I’ve only had a head for a few minutes, and already I have such a headache. So that means you don’t know anything about the madness of Roland or Charlemagne, or any of this, do you? And I’m guessing that you don’t know who Roland is, the character you’re supposed to help, or Charlemagne, the character he’s supposed to help. And so of course you also don’t know how important all this is–do you?”

Pogo looked at him seriously, really trying, trying to focus on the important things. “Uh, no, not really. Hey, before you fell down and started talking normal, didn’t you say something about dinner?”

#

“Do you understand now?” Quidprobe had put it in the simplest possible terms–words and concepts so basic that even an infant of this backward existential plane could understand it. He fixed the organic creature with a hard glare. “It’s important that you do.”

The Pogocashman smiled hesitantly. “Can you run that all by me again, man? I think I missed a little of it. Sorry. I’m really hungry, man.”

Quidprobe sighed. “Very well–but pay attention this time, will you? Stop swinging that bladed weapon around before you cut your own head off.”

The Pogocashman blushed and slid the sword back into its scabbard. “Sorry. Who did you say you worked for? The Department of Fixable Universes?”

“Fictional Universes. The Department of Fictional Universes, Crossover Division, Poul Anderson Subdivision. And you’re right in the middle of three of them, at least.” Quidprobe scratched at his face, distracted by the borrowed body he was wearing. It was strange to have his brain perched in a round box of bone at the top of a fleshy stalk like this, and the hairy tendrils on the dwarf creature’s face itched him horribly. “This is a mess, that’s what it is. The chosen Main Character was supposed to be this Castlemane fellow, who was crossing over from your organic world into a fictional universe created by the famous science fiction writer Poul Anderson, which itself was a version of the fictional universe called the Matter of France. With me so far?”

The Pogocashman looked interested. “What is the matter with France? I mean, some of that stuff they eat, like frog’s legs…”

“Of France. The Matter of France. It’s like the French version of the King Arthur stories, except instead of King Arthur and his knights, it’s Charlemagne and his knights–Sir Roland, Sir Roger, Duke Astolfo, Holger the Dane, all those legendary characters.”

The creature nodded cheerfully. “Okay. I’m totally with you, man. Sir Loin and Chateaubriand and the rest.”

Quidprobe ground his teeth together for a moment–another odd sensation, like having an oral cavity full of stones. Patience, he told himself. This poor creature has to live with teeth all the time. “But this isn’t even Anderson’s version, you see–it’s some other lesser writer’s version of Anderson’s version. And somehow when this idiot anthology writer started his story, instead of this Castlemane fellow crossing over from the real world into the Anderson universe, you showed up instead. So instead of a problem-solving engineer and man of action, we have…” He broke off. No need to rub it in. “Do you know anything about engineering? Physics? Anything at all?”

The Pogocashman considered. “I got a participation ribbon in science once. See, I was making this volcano for the science fair, but I was late for school, so I figured I could mix the baking soda and vinegar first and it would save time when I got there.” He shrugged. “It sort of exploded my backpack, but they gave me the ribbon anyway before they sent me home…”

Quidprobe winced. “Yes. Well. Science not a strong point, then. But we have bigger problems at the moment.”

The creature nodded more emphatically. “Yeah, man. Like getting something to eat, right?”

“No!” Quidprobe was beginning to understand that this was going to be even more difficult than the series of impossibilities he had already conceded. “No, like figuring out how an unprepared cipher like you is going to help the great Roland get back his sanity and save this world from being conquered by the forces of Chaos. And beside your complete lack of scientific knowledge we have no other tools but Astolfo’s enchanted horn and a book of useful spells–both of which are in your saddlebag, by the way, so don’t lose them.” But it had suddenly occurred to him that perhaps he wasn’t listening to his Main Character as carefully as he should. This Pogocashman was a creature not of the symbolic plane like Quidprobe himself, but of the physical: perhaps all his talk of hunger was meaningful. Perhaps he really did need some kind of organic sustenance–perhaps he would even be more responsive once he’d taken in nutrients.

Quidprobe strode to the edge of the clearing and looked around until he detected the life-signature of a small creature, a rodent with a bushy tail. He caught it with a quick grab of his still-unfamiliar hands, carefully crushed its skull so it wouldn’t suffer, and then dropped it in the Pogocashman’s lap.

“Um…” The recipient looked with dismay at the gooey mass. The tail was still twitching fitfully. “Isn’t there any way to…um…cook this?”

“I don’t doubt it,” said Quidprobe. “Start a fire. The oxidation process should char the meat efficaciously.” He was tired–the transition into this physical body had taken a lot out of him, and carrying around the weight of a skeleton was extremely wearying. “I wish you success in your consumption.”

“Huh?”

“By Howard’s Holy Haunches, you do say that a lot, don’t you?” Quidprobe’s patience was growing thin; he desperately wanted to rest the clumsy organic body and put his mind to work. “Go ahead and consume that. You’ll need your strength–our task here won’t be easy and we’ll both probably die horribly.” He rolled himself up in his cloak and stretched out on the soft forest earth. “Which is only slightly better than having Supervisor Fnutt angry at me. But of course, I’ll likely get both.”

#

Pogo had dropped out after the first day of Boy Scouts when he realized there were no snacks at meetings and they all seemed really fired up about taking a fifty mile hike. Since he hadn’t stuck around to earn his Camping merit badge he wasn’t really certain about the best way to cook a smashed squirrel.

The fire had burned down nearly to ashes, just a few smoldering coals. Pogo tossed in a couple of small twigs but they were green and wouldn’t catch. He went to the saddlebag, being very careful not to startle the scary big black horse, and looked for anything useful. He found a cow horn with silver decorations on it and a seriously old-fashioned book–the dwarf had said it was something about spelling. Pogo squinted at the strange writing and couldn’t make out any of it, but he didn’t really care anyway–he already knew how to spell. Hell, he’d spelled “Mississippi” right once in fourth grade, in front of the whole class, which was pretty good for anybody!

He tore a page out of the book and held one corner to the coals. The piece of rough, thick paper caught with a strange green-blue flame, and for a moment he thought he could hear voices whispering in the wind, but then the page was gone and the voices were too. He wadded up several more pages and kept tossing them in until the fire was really burning, then jammed the squirrel onto a stick and poised it above the flames. It actually smelled pretty good except for the burning fur, and he began thinking it would be nice to have something to drink as well.

After a short search he found one of those Renaissance Fair squirt bags hanging on the saddle. When he squeezed it something like honey-flavored vodka jetted into the back of his throat–that which didn’t go down his chin or onto his chest–and it took him a while to stop coughing. The medieval booze wasn’t Southern Comfort or anything but it was still pretty good, but Pogo wished he had something less messy to drink it out of. As he sat smelling the squirrel, now bubbling nicely, he suddenly thought of the horn. Wasn’t that what those old-timey guys drank from in all the movies?

He squeezed some of the honey-stuff into the horn and it promptly ran out the narrow end and into his lap. He took another messy swallow from the bag to help his imagination, and sure enough, he soon had an idea. The binding of the book was held together with some kind of glue, so he peeled some of it away, wadded it up, then poked it into the narrow end of the horn. It held pretty well, and now he could use the horn as a drinking cup.

Swigging from his horn and moving the squirrel around the fire to keep it from burning, Pogo began to feel like a true knight of the Olde Tymes. Enough honey-stuff and he didn’t even mind burning his fingers on hot squirrel meat.

Food in his belly and a nice buzz starting, he sat for another hour or so drinking and feeding the rest of the book to the fire. The colors and whispers and shapes that rose up with the smoke were as entertaining as any double-feature at the Reseda Drive-In.

#

“Time to go,” the dwarf said loudly.

Pogo skinned his eyes open a crack. For some reason, the sun was up. “Man, Quickpoop, not so loud!”

“Quidprobe. My name is Quidprobe.” The little guy didn’t sound happy. “Get up. We have to save Roland and yesterday was all but wasted.”

“Amen to that.” Pogo groaned and sat up. He was lying beside the ashes of the firepit and realized he must have passed out there. The empty bag and the horn lay beside him, both covered with a surprising number of ants. He staggered to his feet, gingerly brushed off the busy little insects, then snuck the two objects back into the saddlebag. The dwarf reminded him a little of his old high-school math teacher and Pogo didn’t want him any grumpier than he already was.

“You said this Roland guy went crazy?” Pogo asked when they were riding again, the dwarf perched on the saddle in front of him. Pogo didn’t really care about Roland, but he was trying to distract himself from the immense, huffing monster of a horse and the way that its bumping progress made his head and stomach feel, which was not too great. “Really crazy? Was it, like, a drugs thing?”

“No, it was a ‘love thing’,” the dwarf told him. “For love of the fair Angelica, Roland has lost his wits. Now the greatest knight in Christendom has become a violent madman. He has killed hundreds of his own allies–destroyed whole towns! Worse than that, the pagan armies of King Agramant, aided by Duke Aelfric’s evil fairies, have besieged good King Charlemagne in Paris. If Roland cannot be returned to sanity to fight for Charlemagne, more than Paris will be lost.”

“Wow,” said Pogo. “Like what else?”

“Everything,” said the little man. “If the armies of Chaos triumph over Charlemagne here, then soon King Arthur and his Round Table will fall, too. Folktale and myth will totter. Soon all the most important tales of Western civilization will collapse. Juliet will not love Romeo. Faust will not make his bargain. Robin Hood will be executed by the Sheriff of Nottingham. Even little Oliver Twist will die a pauper.”

Pogo did his best to sound intelligent. “Yeah. Wow. And that’s all bad stuff, huh?”

Quoidprobe made a noise of frustration. “And of course Starsky and Hutch will be killed in a fiery automobile crash.”

“Oh, no! Not the Torino!” Pogo almost fell from his saddle. “All because of me?”

“Unless we can do what needs to be done, Pogocashman. Unless you can fulfill Duke Astolfo’s destiny by recovering the hero Roland’s wits and restoring him to sanity.”

Pogo considered this awesome responsibility. “So how are we supposed to cure this Roland guy of being crazy?” he asked the dwarf. “Therapy or something? Because I don’t know much about that stuff.” He pictured himself taking notes on a pad while a man in armor wept on a leather couch. “Or should we just take him to a real doctor…?”

“His wits are utterly lost. They must be recovered, as I told you. That means we have to bring them back to him.”

“Bring them back?” Pogo frowned. “Where are they?”

“On the moon.”

#

“So, hey, Quillpod,” he asked some time later, “if we’re in one of those fairytale things, why don’t we just hurry up and fly to the moon?”

“My name is Quidprobe and it doesn’t work that way,” the dwarf explained through clenched teeth. “Quidprobe. Please remember. And the reason we can’t just fly to the moon is that the rules of these things say you have to earn your passage. You’re a knight, after all, the great Duke Astolfo of England–you have to do some courageous knightly deeds.” The dwarf thought for a moment. “Or at least that’s how it usually works, but I think we’d better just try to avoid getting messily killed and hope we get lucky somehow with the whole moon thing.”

Messily killed. That sounded even worse than We can still be friends, which up to now had been Pogo’s least favorite phrase. “So where are we going?”

“Well, we’re making a very wide detour around the house of Caligorant the ferocious, people-eating giant, then we’re heading north. Somewhere along the way you’re supposed to get a flying horse and give Rabican here,”–he gestured at the huge steed beneath them–“to fair Bradamant. Then you help out Prester John, King of Ethiopia, and afterward you can ride the flying horse to the Earthly Paradise. The holy folk who live there will help you get to the moon.”

“Whoa. Sounds like a lot of commuting time,” Pogo pointed out. “Why don’t we just phone some of them and ask them to meet us somewhere?”

The dwarf shook his head and made a little gurgling noise. “That six thousand years until I retire is beginning to seem like a long time.”

#

They rode for most of the day until the sun was low in the sky and the forest had largely given way to a flat, desolate countryside haunted by croaking ravens and the cries of other, stranger creatures. The ground on either side of them was wet and treacherous, the path so narrow that Rabican could scarcely put one hoof in front of the other. Pogo had long since digested the apples he had scavenged for lunch and was seriously wondering why no one in this place had ever thought of a restaurant, let alone a drive-thru, when the dwarf suddenly reached out and grabbed Pogo’s arm.

“Rein up, Pogocashman,” he said. “I think I may have made a mistake. We’re supposed to be going around the swamp, but instead it looks like we’re heading right into the middle of it.”

Pogo was trying to pay attention to the little man but he was distracted. All day long wasps and bees had been swarming around his saddlebags and he couldn’t figure out why. He kept fanning them away but they kept coming back. Right now a particularly large bumblebee was climbing his arm like an angry ball of lint. “And that’s bad?”

“Balls of Blish, yes, that’s bad! That also means we’re heading right toward Caligorant!”

The bumblebee finally sputtered into the air and then landed on the saddlebag again and crawled inside. Pogo exhaled. “And who’s he again?”

“Only the nastiest giant in all these parts, an ogre who eats knights the way the other folk eat salted nuts. He owns the unbreakable Net of Vulcan and he hides it in the dirt near his house, then chases travelers into it.” Quidprobe suddenly began to squirm sideways in the saddle, trying to look back past Pogo. “And if we’re in the swamp, then we’re already too close to him.” He stiffened. “What’s that out there? Do you see that?”

Pogo turned to look over his shoulder. “What? That big boulder?”

“That’s not a big boulder. This is a swamp. Have you seen any boulders this afternoon? It’s a giant trying to hide in a very flat place.”

Pogo felt a cold chill go up his back. “Yeah, it does sort of look like that, now that you mention it.” And then the boulder stood up and began hurrying toward them, the ground shaking with each huge step. “Oh, shit, what do we do?” Pogo squealed. “What do we do? It’s coming!”

“Use the book of spells!”

“The what? That book? I burned it!”

Even with the ogre bearing down on them, the dwarf turned to stare at him in astonishment. “You burned the book of spells?”

“I thought you said it was a spelling book! I needed to cook the squirrel.”

“We’re in a forest, literally surrounded by wood, and you burned the book of spells? You idiot!” Quidprobe sounded more like Pogo’s old math teacher than ever. “Quick, blow the enchanted horn! Its noise terrifies everything that hears it!” A look of panic crossed his wizened face as he saw Pogo’s expression. “May the Large Lizards of Le Guin defend us–don’t tell me you burned that too!”

“No, no!” He pulled the horn from the saddlebag. “Here, see!”

Quidprobe stared, wrinkling his nostrils. “It stinks of mead! And why is it covered with insects?”

Pogo tried to shake off the stinging bugs, but they clung fiercely. The giant thundered toward them.

“Me so hungry!” the ogre boomed in a voice that made Pogo’s bones vibrate. His mouth was huge and his teeth were yellow and jagged. “Food, don’t run!”

“Blow the horn!” screamed Quidprobe. “What are you waiting for? Oh, why couldn’t you have been a chemical engineer or something useful…?”

“I’m trying!” Pogo shouted, and it was true; he had been blowing into the horn with absolutely no result. Pogo was beginning to feel that plugging the end with gooey book-glue might have been a mistake.

“Look out!” Quidprobe leaped off the saddle as the giant stretched his vast and dirty hand toward them. Pogo threw himself after the dwarf, still clinging to the magic horn.

“Little men not fall down,” boomed Caligorant in a disapproving tone. “You run. Make more entertaining.”

Pogo had the horn against his lips once more and was blowing as hard as he could, puffing until his cheeks ached.

The giant paused to observe him, a look of confusion and hurt on his wide, ugly face. “Why you not run? Better you run, fall in net, then me eat. Fun for everyone!”

Pogo took a moment’s rest from his fruitless blowing. His head was swimming and he felt like he was going to pass out. “No…thank…you…” he panted. “We don’t want to be eaten.”

“Me think you unreasonable,” said Caligorant, spreading his tree-trunk arms. “But me guess me eat you anyway.”

A close-up look at the giant’s hideous maw was all Pogo needed to decide to start blowing again. Just as he was certain his brains were going to fly out of his ears before he could coax even a squeak out of the horn, the hardened plug of glue popped out of Pogo’s horn and, covered in confused ants and angry hornets, shot up one of Caligorant’s huge and hairy nostrils.

“Owwwwooooooooo!” bellowed the giant, leaping up and down and slapping at his sinuses in dismay. “Beeeezzz izzz in nozzzzze! Beeeeeeeezzzzzz!”

Pogo and Quidprobe managed to scramble out of the way, but noble Rabican was not so lucky: the ogre came down with one foot right on top of the great black warhorse, squishing it quite flat.

“Warrrrgggggl! Warrrraaarrrrarrrgl!” thundered the giant, then ran off down the path toward his house. Pogo ran after him.

“What are you doing?” Quidprobe shouted.

“My horse is stuck to his shoe!”

A moment later Caligorant tripped over something and crashed to the ground, then began thrashing and bellowing even louder in pain and frustration, unable to get up. By the time Pogo reached him the giant was wound head to foot in a net of fine silvery mesh. The trussed Caligorant made an enormous hocking noise, then finally managed to spit out the plug of glue. It bounced away across the swamp like a hooked tee shot, ants hanging on for dear life and the yellowjackets fizzing angrily.

“Helb me!” the ogre cried, his nose swollen into a crimson volleyball. “Me caught in Vulcan’s Det! Helb!”

“Why should I help you, dude?” Pogo asked. “You were going to eat me!”

The giant looked at him, considering. “You helb, me let you go, just eat your friend.”

Pogo examined the mess that had been noble Rabican, knightly charger. Pretty much the only thing recognizable in the smear on the giant’s heel was the saddle chased in silver, shiny once but now slightly dulled by horse juices, and a few fragments of the enchanted horn. Pogo wasn’t going to be drinking out of it any more.

Quidprobe hurried up, eyeing the tangled giant warily. “Middens of Moorcock, how are we going to finish the quest?” he wailed. “Without a horse we’ll never get anywhere!” He looked at the ogre and scowled. “At least we can kill this ugly big bastard now.”

“Just because me try to eat you…?” Caligorant grumbled. “Seem like over-reaction.”

“No, we’re not going to kill him,” Pogo told the dwarf. He’d been thinking about how Big Ed sometimes lifted Little Ed up on his shoulders to take things off the high shelves so he didn’t have to go downstairs to the stockroom for the ladder. “We’re going to ride him.”

#

“Me want to file formal protest,” the ogre complained as Pogo and Quidprobe tightened the girth strap around his neck. Quidprobe, not trusting the Pogocashman’s knots, also checked to make sure the giant’s hands were securely tied behind his back. “Treaty of Pax Nicephori specify no saddles on prisoners.”

“You tried to eat us,” the Pogocashman pointed out. “And you stepped on my horse. So, basically, shut up.”

Quidprobe had just got used to riding atop the huge battle charger, but now they were traveling at the height of the treetops. The forest itself was pretty in a primitive sort of way, its trees, streams, and meadows as well-ordered as one of the departmental schematics Digry was always making him study, but the rest of the experience wasn’t ordered at all. In fact, it was downright disturbing, especially the part about having a skeleton. How did these creatures live with these weird struts inside them? Flexibility was almost nil…

“Who are those guys?” the Pogocashman asked, pointing to a small group of mounted, armored men in the distance. “Oh, and there’s some more over there. Wow, there’s a ton of ‘em. What are they doing?”

Quidprobe shrugged. “Performing quests, most of them. The Forest of Ardennes is a busy place. If we bump into any knights they’ll probably want to fight, so tell them you’re on a holy quest or you’ll have to stop and joust every ten minutes. Do you know what that means?”

“Oh, hell yeah!” The creature nodded his head vigorously. “I took this hippie chick to the Renaissance Fair in Agoura once. I wanted to watch the jousting, but all she wanted to do was get her tarot cards read. Like three times! Two bucks a pop! I didn’t even have enough left to get a turkey leg!” The Pogocashman shook his head in sad recollection. “I really wanted to try one of those turkey legs.”

“Yes, very sad,” said Quidprobe. “But we must keep our minds on the matter at hand. With our horse dead there’s no point in meeting Bradamant because we have nothing to exchange for the hippogriff, so we might as well go straight to Prester John. The only problem is, he’s in Ethiopia.”

The ogre made a noise of irritation. “Me not swimming to Africa.”

The Pogocashman wasn’t listening–he had been distracted by a loud clanging from nearby. “What’s that?” he asked.

Quidprobe listened for a moment, then felt the disturbing sensation of his hackles lifting. “Oh dear, I completely forgot about Orrilo.”

“Maybe you ride him,” suggested Caligorant.

“What’s an Oh Real Oh?” the Pogocashman asked.

“Orillo. He’s an infamous bandit. Very dangerous, very cruel. And because of a magical spell, nothing can kill him.” Even as Quidprobe spoke the din from the clearing ahead of them grew louder, and now they could see the shapes of armored men through the trees. Three knights, one in shiny black, the other two in more colorful outfits, were fighting with swords, the two bright against the dark one. “Poor fools,” he said. “They haven’t a chance against Orrilo.”

“Why not?” the Pogocashman asked. “They look like they’re doing pretty good.”

“Watch.”

Even as the dwarf spoke, one of the knights managed to cut off the black knight’s arm. The Pogocashman gasped as the black knight’s sword clattered to the ground, but strangely, no blood came from the wound. Even so, the other attacker took advantage of the enemy’s literal disarming and lopped off Orrilo’s head, but the bandit knight only bent over, picked up his arm and put it back on his shoulder, where it connected and stuck; then, as his two enemies watched in dismay, he found his head and returned that to his shoulders, where it also stuck. A moment later he was attacking the knights again.

“Why are you laughing?” Quidprobe asked the Pogocashman.

“Because I saw this movie,” Pogo told him. “You know, ‘I fart in your general direction!’ It’s those Nudge-Nudge guys!”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Quidprobe said, “but I promise you that Orrilo is real and very dangerous.” He watched the black knight hammering his enemies, who were definitely beginning to look as if they would rather be somewhere else. “Unless his spell of invulnerability is broken, nothing can kill him.”

“How do you break the spell?”

“I don’t know,” said Quidprobe with a touch of aspersion. “I don’t know because some idiot burned our book of spells.”

“You don’t have to be all vague and sarcastic,” Pogo said. “I know you’re talking about me.”

At that moment, one of the colorful knights snuck a lucky swipe past Orrilo’s guard and lopped off his head again. The force of the blow sent it rolling across the clearing. It fetched up near Caligorant’s immense feet.

“Me smell something yummy,” the giant said.

The Pogocashman climbed out of the saddle and jumped down to examine the bandit’s head.

“Use caution–he’s very dangerous…!” Quidprobe warned.

“Be cool, dude! I just want to check this out!”

There was no blood dripping from the severed neck, but the Pogocashman still held the head at arm’s length by its feathered crest before opening the visor. The face inside was cheerful if a bit sweaty, with handsome features, a grayshot beard, and black, beetling eyebrows.

“Toss me back to my body, will you?” said Orrilo’s head. “Then if you want to have a go, just stick around. I’ll soon have finished carving up these two.”

The Pogocashman, head dangling in one hand, climbed laboriously back onto the giant’s neck.

“What if I don’t?” he asked the head when he was back in the saddle. “I mean, what if I just hang onto your head up here? You won’t be able to do much then, right?”

“Yes, but my body will follow you around until it gets my head back, and then you’ll have to fight me anyway.” Orrilo’s head grinned. “I can’t be killed, remember? So basically, you’re in deep merde either way.” He saw the puzzled expression on the Pogocashman’s face. “That’s French for “shit”,” the bandit explained.

“Oh.”

The knight’s armored body turned and hastened toward them at a clanking trot; the other two knights, choosing discretion over pointless valor, took advantage of the distraction to flee the clearing. Within moments the body had reached them and was jumping up and down in front of the giant trying to reach its dangling head.

“Him smell good,” said Caligorant, but the Pogocashman was busy trying to work through what the black knight had told him.

“So no matter what I do, I’m going to have to fight you?”

“Pretty much,” said Orrilo. “Say, you don’t have a drop of claret, do you? I’m parched. Better wait until I’m back on my body, though, or it will just run out onto the ground and that would be a sad waste of wine. Ho ho!” He was amused by his own joke. “Ho, ho! Funny, eh? Too bad most people don’t get to know that side of me.” Orillo’s head looked around as best it could while dangling in mid-air. “Now, where did my body go?” He tilted his eyes down as far as he could. “Seriously, where is it?”

“How should I know?” The Pogocashman was clearly feeling grumpy.

Quidrprobe pulled on his sleeve and pointed down. “Ummm, you might…want to…”

“What? What’s the problem now, little dude?”

Quidprobe pointed. “Look.”

A pair of legs clad in black armor were poking out of the giant’s mouth, kicking as haphazardly as a child failing a swimming test.

“Oops,” said the Pogocashman. Quidprobe thought it was a bit of an understatement.

The head was beginning to get frustrated. “Oops? Oops what? Where’s my body?”

“Spit that out,” the Pogocashman told the giant. “Go on. Spit it out.”

Caligorant quickly swallowed down the rest of the body. When the ogre spoke, it was in tones of perfect innocence. “Spit out what?”

“Where’s my body?” shouted the head. “I’m telling you, there’ll be trouble here. The Royal Assize is going to be passing through here in a fortnight or so and if someone’s nipped off with my body there’ll be hell to pay, sure enough!”

“Don’t know what this royal ass size is,” the Pogocashman whispered to Quidprobe, “but maybe we better not stick around.”

“You may have something there,” Quidprobe said. “In fact, I’m sure you do.”

Despite the stream of invective coming from it, the Pogocashman didn’t seem to remember he was still holding Orrilo’s head until they were a good distance from the clearing. The giant, belly full, was whistling happily as he walked.

“I can’t believe this!” The bandit’s head hadn’t stopped shouting for a moment. “I can’t believe you just let your pet giant…eat my body like that. That’s not right!”

“Is he really going to live forever like this?” the Pogocashman asked Quidprobe as the black knight’s head described all of his important friends at the court of Charlemagne, as well as several more among the nobility of Faerie, and listed the various penalties that could be levied against the owners of a dangerous steed like a giant. “With no body?”

“I think so.”

“Then find me something to put this damn head in.”

When they found a suitable sack, still smelling of the onions that Quidprobe had hastily transferred to the saddlebag, Pogo dropped the head in.

“You’re not really going to do this to me, are you?” Orrilo’s head demanded.

“Damn right. Until you learn to shut up.” The Pogocashman twisted the top of the sack and tied it closed.

“Merde,” said the head’s muffled voice.

“Yep.” The Pogocashman looked down with no little satisfaction at the giant’s distended stomach. “Sooner or later.

#

“Me hungry again,” said the giant as he waded through the waves toward the Ethiopian shore. “Swimming hard work. Food was stringy, too.”

“I’ll thank you to speak a little more courteously about me,” Orrilo’s head complained from the sack. “Or about my body, anyway. I mean, I’m right here! How do you think I feel? And I’m not stringy–I’m sinewy.”

“You say sinewy–me say stringy. Point is, not enough good stuff.”

“Will you both shut up?” Pogo asked. The two of them, giant and disembodied head, had spent the entire swim arguing about what kind of whalefish that was, and whether the wind was nor’east or nor’south or nor’something. It was like listening to Big Ed and little Ed’s endlessly stupid disputes about whether Han Solo could beat Dirty Harry in a fist-fight. “Head, if you can’t keep quiet in that bag I’ll put you down the back of the giant’s pants instead. You think you’ll like that better?”

“Charmless,” said Orrilo, but fell silent.

“So what now?” Pogo asked the dwarf.

“Bradbury only knows,” Quidprobe said glumly. “This is a fictional universe originally created by Poul Anderson, based on a world created by a bunch of medieval poets. But this is some other writer doing a cheap knock-off of Anderson’s world, with characters taken from Ariostro’s version. And you.” He blanched. “I just had a horrid thought–what if this hack chose you as the protagonist on purpose? We could be in the hands of a madman!”

“Yeah,” Pogo agreed, although he hadn’t understood anything the dwarf had just said. Harry Ostro and Pole Anderson sounded like the names of Muppets. “So, like I said, what now?”

“If this story were being written by a real writer like Anderson I might have some idea,” the dwarf said, scowling. “But with this fool in charge–well, anything could happen. And since they couldn’t even send me a proper Anderson hero with a working knowledge of science and engineering and such…well, whatever does happen is bound to be pretty stupid. What did you say you did for a living, anyway?”

“Retail management,” said Pogo promptly. That always sounded better than mentioning the shoe store.

“Well, that should do us a world of good.” The little man didn’t really sound like he meant it.

As the day wore on, the hilly slope continued to lead them upward through dry, mostly barren country until Pogo could see they were climbing the highest of a small range of rocky hills. As they neared the top of the hill, Pogo noticed what he at first thought were large birds wheeling in the air above the hilltop, although something about their shapes didn’t look quite right.

“We’re getting near,” said Quidprobe.

“That’s good, right?”

“Good in the sense that we’re at the next stage of the quest,” said Quidprobe. “Bad in that we’re going to have to deal with the harpies somehow, and to be honest, I can’t imagine what we’re going to do in a million years.”

“Harpies?”

“Horrible female demons. They persecute Prester John. He’s blind. They steal his food.”

“Whoa, I saw this movie!” Pogo said. “There were skeletons in it too. And Hercules. I think it was called Jason and the Astronauts.”

The dwarf made a noise of irritation. “This is not a movie. This can kill you. But to be fair, Ariosto did steal that bit from the original Jason and the Argonauts, so in that sense you’re right.” A hopeful look momentarily lit the dwarf’s brown, wrinkled face. “How did they deal with the harpies in this moving picture?”

“I dunno. I was kind of stoned, to be honest. I think they threw a net on them and whacked the shit out of them with swords or something. Too bad we didn’t save the giant’s net, huh?”

Quidprobe sighed. “Yes. And I’m guessing a proper Poul Anderson hero would have remembered that before we swam across the ocean.”

“We?” inquired the giant. “Me think not.”

“Yeah, it’s a bummer.” Pogo was getting a bit tired of the adventure now. It had gone on way too long to be just an acid flashback, at least as far as he knew, although to be fair, pretty much all he knew about flashbacks were health class warnings and what he’d seen on Hawaii Five-O and Streets of San Francisco. Also, the thing Quidprobe had said about “this can kill you” hadn’t exactly made him feel warm and tingly.

Speaking of not feeling warm and tingly, the closer to the hilltop they got, the easier it was for Pogo to see that the flying shapes weren’t anything like birds: they were human-sized, and their wings looked more like the kind you saw on bats. Stuff that was cool on movies and television seemed a lot less fun when it was flying back and forth not far away, letting out nasty screechy noises that echoed down the dusty hillside.

“May I just mention that it’s really getting unpleasant inside this sack,” announced Orrilo’s head. “If I’d known I was going to spend hours smelling my own breath I would have taken up that newfangled teeth-cleaning fad.”

“Why you complain?” said Caligorant. “You ride in nice bag. Me have to carry you all. Uphill, too.”

“You tried to eat us,” Pogo reminded him.

“He did eat me,” said the head in the bag.

“Me didn’t ride you,” the giant said, sulky as a sixth-grader whose parents would only buy him cheap knock-off running shoes instead of Pumas. “Me play fair.”

“I don’t recall you being particularly fair to me when you ate my body,” Orrilo said. “One moment it was just standing there, the next moment–hey-presto, it’s lunchtime!”

“Me couldn’t help it. Was right there, begging me eat it.”

“It wasn’t doing anything of the sort,” said the muffled voice from the sack. “Because it didn’t have a head on. So spare us the untruthful excuses.”

“Me meant metaphorically.”

“Well, then I wish you would have only eaten my body metaphorically too, you large oaf. Then I wouldn’t be bouncing along here all day having to smell the onion I broke my fast on two days ago–and it wasn’t even a particularly nice onion. If I’d known I was going to spend the rest of my life in a sack I would doubtless have been a bit more selective…”

Pogo smacked the bag so hard that Orrilo’s teeth clicked together. “Jeez, just shut up!”

“You should be quiet too, Pogocashman,” the dwarf said in hushed tones. “We’re almost there and harpies have sharp ears.”

As they neared the top of the hill, Pogo could see the ruins of what had once been a castle. The harpies were swooping in and out past the broken walls, busy as mosquitoes during swim trials at fat camp. Someone seemed to be shouting at them.

“Curse you, foul creatures! Why do you torment me?” But though the words were angry, the tone seemed strangely weary, even resigned, like a woman with a size nine foot trying yet again to fit into a size seven pump.

“It’s coming from over there, Quitpoke,” Pogo told the dwarf.

“I don’t ask much,” said the little bearded man, just as resigned and despairing as the mystery voice. “Just that you use my correct name. Once, anyway. Once would be nice…”

The climb was not an easy one, even on giant-back. “Oh, grand,” called Orrilo’s head from inside the sack. “Bump, bump, bump. Are you sure you can’t jounce me around a little more? Maybe you could drop me and kick me like a football.”

“Don’t you ever stop talking?” asked Pogo.

“I might if I had something else to do. In fact, I’ve been told I’m actually a very good listener. But for some reason, I don’t seem able to, I don’t know, play a game or dance or whittle or do pretty much anything else to entertain myself. Now why is that? Oh, right–because you let your pet ogre eat my body!”

“Pet ogre?” rumbled Caligorant. “Me not pet. Me prisoner of war.”

They rounded a bend in the hilltop path and now Pogo could make out a spot in the ruins where an entire section of wall had fallen away, revealing the shell of some mighty hall. It was around this crumbling structure that the harpies whirled. A pale figure cringed in a tiny alcove, partially sheltered from their attack but not from the abuse the flying creatures hurled at him–and not just abuse: the harpies also sprayed their own filth everywhere as they flew. The rocks all around were streaked with the stuff, and the buzzing of flies seemed almost as loud as the shrieks of the old man and his tormentors. They might look very much like angry old ladies, but Pogo now knew for a fact that harpies did not wear adult diapers.

“Man, that guy is screwed,” he said.

“That’s Prester John!” Quidprobe looked worried. “You have to save him!”

“Why? I didn’t put him there.”

“It’s just how it works–quests, heroes. Don’t you ever read?”

“Sometimes. Magazines and shit.”

“Me want rest,” said Caligorant. “Me tired and hungry.”

An idea came to Pogo. “Could you eat those harpies?”

The giant made a face. “Me not eat. Taste like poopoo. Meat dry like twigs.”

“Well,” said Orillo’s head from inside the sack, “I suppose I should be relieved that my poor body was consumed by such an epicure. I mean, I wouldn’t want to be eaten by someone who’d devour just anything…”

Caligorant swiveled his head like a tank turret to look back at Pogo. “Me eat talking head now? Stop head talking?”

“We must save Prester John,” said the dwarf.

Pogo frowned, trying to imagine a scenario in which he might go running through a downburst of little-old-batwing-lady crap and not being able to manage it, but even as he stared the harpies suddenly rose up into the air in a single coherent swarm, wheeled once more above the ruins, and then flew off, shrieking and cackling.

“Now!” The dwarf smacked him on the arm. “Go now!”

Pogo sighed and gave the giant a thump of his heels, setting him lumbering across the open area toward the ruined walls and the weeping, white-bearded figure that the dwarf had named Presto John.

“Dude, I totally don’t get this,” Pogo said as he helped the quivering, sightless man into the shelter of one of the crumbling chambers. “Why are those crazy bat-ladies out to get you?”

Presto John had been tall–you could tell he’d been a big guy once, like a football player or something–but his troubles had bent him until he looked almost like a question mark. His beard was long and fouled by stuff Pogo didn’t want to think about too much. Just being next to him would have been an issue, except the whole place already stank of harpy-shit.

“I was vainglorious,” the old man said. “I imagined myself as king of not only fair Ethiop, but of the earthly Paradise as well, where once Adam and his consort Eve did dwell.”

“What’s this old blind guy supposed to do for us?” Pogo whispered to the dwarf. “Is he a magician or something?” He figured with a name like Presto the guy must do some tricks. “I don’t mean to be a dick or anything, but he can’t even wash his beard.”

“If you save him, he’ll do a favor for Roland’s allies,” the dwarf whispered back. “That’s all you need to know, really.”

“I can hear you, bold paladin. My ears have not failed, only my orbs of vision,” John said sadly. “And yes, I would gladly give you all that was in my power to give, were I free. But here I remain until someone can rescue me from these ghastly creatures, who delight only in my punishment.” He shook his head. “Not only do they steal and foul my food so that I am always near starvation, they talk to me incessantly–as if a pious Christian man like me would ever bandy words with such demons of darkness!”

“Talk to you? About what?”

“Did you hear me not, Sir Knight? I said I do not bandy words with Satan’s underlings. They would doubtless wish me to listen to their complaints–a rare irony!–for they claim they are bored by the very task of tormenting me. Would that I had my sight and my sword–then would I give them a challenge they would never forget…!” For a moment, the ancient man tried to draw himself up to his once-impressive height, but it was too painful and he curled in on himself again in despair. “But perhaps you, good Sir Knight–for I hear by your voice that you are a bold and doughty man–perhaps you could punish them and quiet their endless taunting and shrieking.”

Pogo did not answer, and not just because there was no way in hell he was going to get in a fight with a bunch of magical flying crap-flingers. He was thinking, and although it was not something he did very much, he was busy at it now. The bony faces of the harpies had reminded him of a certain kind of senior-citizen customer that always drove him crazy–the kind that just couldn’t be satisfied, that always had one more question, one more stupid little complaint. But more important, now he was also remembering Dooley, the roving assistant manager from the Pasadena branch of Kirby Shoes who had been sent in by the main office to help when Fernando and Little Ed had both been out sick for a few days. Dooley had been a genius at dealing with old biddies, listening to them as if their confused questions and complaints actually made sense, letting them take all day to make a decision on a lousy pair of 7.99 slippers. Instead of trying to hurry them into buying or leaving, which is what Pogo and his co-workers had always done, Dooley would just gather several of the oldest customers together in one part of the store where he could chat with and flatter them all at the same time, saving time and steps. Turned out most of them were lonely and just wanted to something to do, which is why they were in the mall in the first place, but if a young man in a suit and tie listened to them attentively they’d actually buy things. Dooley booked a surprising amount of sales just from such crabby, unlikely customers, and Pogo had never forgotten it.

His thoughts were interrupted by a squeak from the dwarf. “They’re coming back! I can hear them!”

“They never give me rest,” Prester John said sadly. “Truly, I am cursed for my damnable pride…”

Pogo reached into the saddlebag and pulled Orillo’s head out by the hair. It blinked in the sunlight. “Zounds! You could give a fellow some warning,” the head complained.

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” Pogo told him. “I’m going to toss you up there where the harpies are. I don’t know whether they’ll eat you, crap on you, or just drop you twenty or thirty times from really high up. Maybe they’ll do all of that.” He considered for a moment. “Although not necessarily in that exact order…”

“What?” The bandit’s handsome face contorted in dismay. “You would murder me in cold blood?”

Pogo did feel a little bad about it, but Orrilo had been planning to carve him up too, just like he did everyone else who passed by. “Look, let’s face it,” Pogo told the head, “I’m not going to carry you around with me for the rest of my life. But I’ll bet those harpies would love someone to talk to. So if you just make some chitchat with them, act real sweet and listen real good, they probably won’t kill you. Hell, they might even be nice to you.” He remembered some of the senior customers and suppressed a shudder. “Y’know, like give you hard candy with bits of Kleenex stuck to it. Show you pictures of their fat grandkids. Stuff like that.”

“They’re right above us!” the dwarf shouted. “We have to get to some shelter…!”

But Pogo had other plans. He waited until the first few harpies had swished past over their heads, shrieking and cursing and spattering the nearby stones with things too disgusting to think about, let alone describe, then he took Orrilo’s head and spun it around by the hair like an Olympic hammer (which made the head yell some interesting French swear words), then threw it straight up in the air. One of the harpies turned in mid-air and snatched it in her claws like an eagle taking…whatever eagles took. Some other kind of bird. Except instead of a bird, this was a head that was still screaming as she carried it higher up in the air.

“Don’t hurt me!” Orrilo’s head shouted as it disappeared. “Some of my best friends are harpish…!”

#

Even as the giant left the ruins and clumped down the hillside, Quidprobe couldn’t quite figure out what had just happened. “But…why did the harpies just…leave?”

“They just wanted someone to talk to,” said the Pogocashman with an air of satisfaction. “Like those old guys you meet waiting for a bus. They probably won’t even remember ol’ Presto here,” he indicated the blind man clutching the giant’s shoulder nervously, “until they’ve told the head the same stories about their operations and stuff about ninety times.”

“You have saved me, brave Astolfo,” quavered the old man. “Bring me down the mountain and I will take my armies to war against wicked Agramant.” John let out a dry chuckle–he was definitely perking up. “That foul Saracen dog will not enjoy besieging Paris when he learns I am burning his castles here at home!”

Quidprobe could only shake his head. The Pogocashman was proving to be more resourceful than he’d expected, but the odds were still running very high that the organic creature’s dumb luck could not last, and that in the end they would be just as completely and hideously doomed as Quidprobe had always feared. Still, it was a pleasant surprise to be out in the sunshine and away from the harpies, even if he was still forced to ride a stinking giant beside an old man who was not particularly clean, either.

“So what’s next, little dude?” the Pogocashman asked. “We’ll drop Mr. John at the nearest town, then fly to the moon, right? With some guy named Griff the Hippo?”

Quidprobe shook his head. “I doubt the hippogriff will be available to us, since we no longer have a horse to trade for it. The fair Bradamant will not wish to ride into battle on a steed as stenchful and unpleasant as this ogre.”

“Me can hear you,” rumbled Caligorant from immediately beneath Quidprobe’s dwarfish bottom. “Me find that hurtful.”

#

It took them several days to find their way across the wilds of Ethiopia–or at least this imaginary version of Ethiopia–to the mountain atop which Quidprobe believed they would find the Earthly Paradise. He could only hope he was right, since this particular location had never been written into Anderson’s original work, and only faintly implied by its connection to the rest of the Matter of France, but hoping and guessing was all the sub-sub-manager had been doing since he’d been thrust into this ruptured story, anyway.

The Pogocashman, buoyed by his victories, spent much of the journey explaining to Quidprobe how he had been inspired by tracts like The Sales Pyramid or Think Accessories to “Add” Value. Somehow the whole of his philosophy seemed to come down to telling people “I have a handbag for you that would go great with those,”–an eldritch phrase of indubitable power, at least according to the Pogocashman. Quidprobe could only shrug–that was one thing that having shoulders was good for, anyway–and hope their luck would continue to hold, although he thought it unlikely. For one thing, the saints that inhabited the Earthly Paradise were likely to be a fearfully rules-oriented bunch, and he suspected they weren’t going to like the Pogocashman’s rather freewheeling approach to the Matter of France.

His retail philosophies finally exhausted, the Pogocashman was now engaged in his newest pastime, spitting for distance and accuracy from the summit of the giant’s shoulders, each expectoration accompanied by the odd, ritualistic chant, “Got you again, Vader!” It was hard to believe the Pogocashman was a genuine bull organic, his sperm coveted by all the females of his species, but there had to be evolutionary subtleties that Quidprobe could not grasp. He was beginning to think that for all his years studying them in preparation for his job, he would never really understand non-symbolic life forms.

#

Another trudge up another long hill, the giant moaning and grumbling all the way–“Caligorant want to lie down.” “Caligorant foot hurt.” “Me hungry again.” It was worse than working a lonely Sunday shift with Little Ed, who had the conversational skills of a snappish dog.

“So, what’s up this mountain, anyway?” Pogo asked Quidprobe.

“I told you,” the dwarf said. “It’s the Earthly Paradise. It used to be the Garden of Eden.”

“So,” Pogo said hopefully, “like a restaurant or something?”

The little man sighed. He did that a lot. Pogo was beginning to suspect the dwarf had asthma, like Little Ed. Or at least like Little Ed claimed he had: Pogo thought it was funny how Little Ed only had asthma attacks when it was time to clean the lavatory. “Not anything like a restaurant,” the dwarf explained. “It’s where the saints live. Is knowing that not part of your human religious rituals?”

“Don’t know.” The closest Pogo had ever come to church as a kid was when his electrician father had installed a forty-watt light bulb in a manger for the local church’s Nativity Play. The bulb had been Baby Jesus. When the play was over, Pogo’s dad had brought it home. “Here,” he had told Pogo. “Go bury this in the backyard and see if it comes back to life in three days.” His dad had moved out a few weeks later and Pogo had never asked him exactly what he had meant.

As they climbed, Pogo couldn’t help noticing that the foliage was growing more lush, the sights more lovely, and even the smells more pleasant. Grass as green as Astroturf grew everywhere, and bright flowers pushed their way up between the stems, colorful as an Easter sales display. The bees were big as sparrows but mellow as old hippies, and the sun shone warmly everywhere but the cool, inviting shade beneath the majestic trees growing beside the track.

“Wow,” Pogo said, paying his highest compliment to natural beauty. “Somebody ought to build vacation condos here and start a time-share business. They would totally clean up.”

When they reached the summit of the hill, they discovered a grassy plain of a grandeur that matched the approach, and at the center of it a vast palace that looked to be carved from a single ruby.

“Behold,” the dwarf said. “The Earthly Paradise.”

“Wow,” said Pogo. “That’s bitchin’!”

“Me hungry again,” said the giant.

As they grew closer the palace became no less amazing, sunlight glinting from every angle and facet so that the castle sat in a sparkling red glow. As they reached the palace tall gate, it slowly rose to reveal a white-bearded man who looked to Pogo like nothing so much as a skinny Santa Claus. The man greeted them warmly, although he did seem a bit taken aback by Caligorant.

“Come,” he said. “Enter and make yourselves welcome, travelers. Refresh yourselves. Your…steed…will be seen to as well. What would you eat and drink? The Lord’s bounty is such we can give you whatever your heart desires.”

“Little fat women,” said the giant promptly. “But young. Me like them crunchy, not chewy.”

The bearded man suppressed a shudder. “Perhaps we can find a suckling pig or two for your mount,” he told Pogo. “So few of our guests eat pork, anyway. It’s a desert-tribe thing.”

“You are the holy Evangelist, aren’t you?” asked Quidprobe, who was trying to brush his tangled whiskers into a more respectable shape. “John the Baptist, as some call you?”

Pogo had thought John the Baptist was some kind of southern university, but the man nodded. “It is true: I am he that trumpeted the coming of our Savior. And now that you have come to us, pious Astolfo,” he said, this time talking to Pogo, “the saints and I will try to help you accomplish your quest, for your liege Charlemagne is dear to us, and his kingdom the bulwark of Christendom against both the Saracen and the treacherous fairies.”

Pogo had walked past a club in Hollywood once and a very tall woman had tried to get him to come inside. He’d almost gone in, too, until he’d got close enough to see the woman’s five o’clock shadow. Pogo Cashman might not know what Saracens were, but he knew all about treacherous fairies.

The saints came out to meet them–not marching in, as Pogo had hoped, but walking like normal people. Still, they seemed nice, if a trifle on the quiet side, and the food they laid out on the long table in their splendid dining room, although a plain meal of butter, bread, honey, and some kind of vegetable soup that didn’t even have alphabet noodles in it, was as tasty as anything Pogo had encountered for a long time. Thus, when they showed him and Quidprobe to a clean, warm room with two beds, Pogo was ready to drop immediately, but the dwarf seemed determined to talk.

“They’ll want to make certain you’re a shriven and holy knight before they help you get to the moon,” the dwarf said, clearly worried. “Saints are supposed to be big on things like that.”

Pogo yawned. He wondered if Buzz Aldrin’s golf club was still lying around up there. Maybe he’d get to hit a couple of drives. Once he’d realized that the astronauts were not going to be attacked by moon men, the golf part had been the one thing about the whole Apollo mission that had caught his imagination. But when he asked the dwarf about it, Quidprobe only seemed irritated.

“By Dunsany’s Jodphurs, are you even paying attention, Pogocashman? This isn’t your world and that isn’t your moon–in fact, it’s not even a real moon, it’s a medieval moon filtered through at least two or three different storytellers. It’s probably made of some kind of cheese. No, I don’t mean that, and don’t you dare ask me the question I can see forming even now.”

Pogo grunted his disappointment. “So?”

“This religious thing truly worries me. Anderson’s story-structure allows you some leeway to make mistakes, but they were expecting someone with an elementary knowledge of things like history and science that you don’t seem to have.”

“I’m doing all right so far…!”

The dwarf waved his hand. “Yes, yes. But you’re going to have to talk to the saints about your love of Christ and your holy vows as a knight before they help you. How are you going to get through that with…what did you call it? Guidelines for Retail Management?”

“Well, then tell me what to say!”

“You don’t understand.” The dwarf was sitting on his own bed now, his feet dangling well above the stone floor. “I studied story construction. My background is in themes and influences, in the sometimes very thin line between homage and plagiarism. Religious instruction is not my field!”

“Okay, yeah. That’s kind of a drag.” But Pogo was too tired and too full of good food to worry about it. He only wanted to sleep. “Don’t sweat it, little dude. I’ll figure out something to tell them tomorrow.”

“You don’t ‘figure out’ how to talk to the saints about religion,” said Quidprobe in the helpless tone of a veterinarian trying to get a particularly stupid pit bull to let go of his arm. “These are the founding fathers and mothers of the Christian religion. It’s all they think about!”

But Pogo Cashman had shut his eyes.

#

Somehow, though, despite the great and comfortable weariness that it was his greatest wish to surrender to, Pogo couldn’t fall asleep. The idea that he would have to pay for this hospitality by answering questions about something he knew next to nothing about was beginning to trouble him, too. He doubted they would consider the story of his dad’s light bulb enough to get him off the hook. Also, now that he was having his first comfortable night in a while, Pogo was perversely beginning to miss his tiny apartment and especially his television and stereo, and wondering if he would ever get back. The experience hadn’t been too bad for an acid flashback, which he had been assured back in high school consisted mostly of imagining you could fly and then jumping out of tall buildings, but it was definitely short on the modern conveniences. How long had he been here, anyway? How many episodes of WKRP In Cincinnati had he missed? John the Baptist was all well and good, but Pogo needed a weekly dose of Johnny Fever.

Quidprobe said he needed help from these religious guys to finish his quest, so he obviously wouldn’t be getting to see Loni Anderson in her tight sweater unless he convinced them. He hated dealing with people who wanted him to learn a bunch of shit that only they cared about. In fact, it reminded him more than a little of one of his supervisor’s Sunday Schools, a nightmarish event that happened every couple of months where he kept all the employees in the store for hours after closing time, making them take tests about stock numbers and the “Courtesy Checklist” and learn slogans like “Remember the G.S.M. FAT! (Greet, Seat, Measure–Fit, Accessorize, Ticket.)” As manager, Pogo usually had to do the lion’s share of work at these meetings, and sometimes even lead them while the supervisor watched him like mall security following a shoplifter. The only way he had found to escape the worst of these Sunday School sessions was to throw another employee under the bus, usually by saying something like, “Gee, sir, I’m having trouble getting Fernando to understand the value of bringing a packet of socks with every shoe he fits. Maybe it’s the language barrier.” This despite the fact that Fernando had been raised in Northridge and spoke English at least as well as Pogo–better if you counted all that grammar stuff. “I’m out of my depth, sir,” he would tell the supervisor while Fernando pleaded with his eyes to be spared. “Perhaps you could show us the best way to get through to him.”

Which was usually enough to light an evangelical fire in the supervisor’s eye, and then Pogo could kick back and watch poor little Fernando get put through two hours of hell in his place, learning how to foist off expensive tube socks on various customers who were acted out by the supervisor.

Which wasn’t that bad an idea for his present problem, now that Pogo thought about it. Of course, Fernando, the perfect victim, wasn’t here, and Pogo was nervous about how he would get back home without Quidprobe, but that didn’t mean a suitable subject couldn’t be found…

#

“Oh, yeah,” he told John the Baptist when he had been ushered in to see the venerable Evangelist, “I’d totally love to talk about my holy vows and how hard I’ve been shrivening and everything, but first I need your help with a little religious matter. Kind of a spreading-the-faith problem, if you get what I mean.”

The old man’s eyes glinted like those of an avid shopper spotting a two-for-one table. “Spreading the faith? Why, yes, I suppose I’d be the one to ask!” John the Baptist tried to chuckle affably, but it had a slightly hungry sound. “Not meaning to toot my own horn, of course, but that’s pretty much what I’m known for. Of course, all these centuries living here, waiting for the Last Judgement and surrounded by those who are already saints, I don’t get much call to practice my trade…” His hand fastened on Pogo’s; it was kind of alarming how hard the old man squeezed. “Tell me, how can I help, my son?”

“It’s not me, sir, it’s…it’s the giant.”

John’s eyebrows climbed several centimeters nearer to Heaven. “Really? That monstrous creature is desirous of joining the fold?”

“Oh, sure, yeah, I think so…but maybe this isn’t a good time, with you needing to talk to me before you send me on to the moon, and, like, Charlemagne in so much need and everything.”

“Nonsense,” John said firmly. “Always time to assist an errant soul looking to find its way to the bosom of our Almighty Father.”

“Well, I can’t help noticing that Caligorant talks about being hungry all the time, and I’m beginning to think he means in a kind of, um, spiritual way. Do giants have souls?”

“That is in dispute,” said John, his eyes growing distant. “In fact, this might be a fascinating opportunity to determine…” He trailed off, then made an effort to focus again. “I’m sorry, but we really should discuss your quest first, then perhaps we can find time to pursue this interesting sideline afterward. Now, perhaps you can tell me about the religious training of your youth–were you a squire to a pious knight?”

“Oh, definitely.” Inwardly, Pogo was cursing. He’d had the Baptist on the hook, he could tell. C’mon, Cashman, he told himself. Like the Kirby Shoes manual says–”Nothing shows if you don’t close.” He cleared his throat. “I mean, yeah, we totally have to deal with the important stuff first. And I’m totally going to answer your question, too. It’s just that…well, he cries at night. When he thinks no one is around.”

“The giant?” asked John the Baptist in tones of astonishment. “He laments his state?”

“Cries about all the innocent people he’s eaten, yeah, absolutely. You should talk to him about it. I really think he’s, like, all ready to come to Jesus.” He wondered if lying like this was a sin, but since this was only a made-up version of John the Baptist, and he was lying to him about a made-up giant, too–well, how bad a sin could it be?

“Clearly I must speak with this deluded creature,” said John, standing up and brushing off his crimson cloak. “Not to mention that the prophet Daniel, who has always been very certain of who and who would not be redeemed, would be most…instructed if I should convert the creature.” His eyes gleamed. “And smarty-pants Isaiah would be pretty surprised, too…”

“Um, just to warn you, he won’t…admit it or anything. I mean, he’s really stubborn.” Pogo forced a laugh. “Ha ha! You know these giants! You’ll have to keep after him. It may take a while.”

John seemed full of energy and high spirits. “No fear–after all, we have until the Second Coming!”

Pogo almost had to run to keep up with the ancient Evangelist, who seemed to be heading right for the stables, so keen was he to begin the ogre’s conversion. “But what about me getting to the moon?”

“Don’t worry,” John called back over his shoulder as he broke into a run. “I’ll have one of the grooms hitch up the chariot for you. Practically drives itself…!”

#

As the golden chariot was tugged into the sky by the four ruby-red horses, and the ground fell away with sickening speed, causing Quidprobe to grab the railing and gasp at the unfamiliar (and queasy) feeling of acceleration on organic skeletal structure, he could still hear the giant bellowing far below.

“No! Shut up and leave Caligorant alone! ‘Suffer little children’ only good part!”

Quidprobe looked down at the retreating ground once, then decided not to do that again. Instead he tried to focus on the great, pale orb of the daytime moon, which was growing larger every moment.

“Are the horses going to be able to breathe?” the Pogocashman asked. “Like, in space?”

Quidprobe shook his head, although he was mildly impressed with the question: the Pogocashman hadn’t shown much interest in such practical things to this point. “This is based on the medieval imagination, not reality,” he said. “Point one–these horses are magical flying horses, so they can probably breathe where we’re going. And, if we’re lucky, so can we.”

“Huh.” The Pogocashman looked down at his armor. “Hadn’t thought about us. This isn’t exactly an astronaut suit, is it? Pretty cool, though. I mean, if I was twelve again I’d think this was the greatest thing ever.” His bemused smile didn’t last long. “Right now, though, I’m just kind of wanting to go home.”

Quidprobe sighed. “When I was a youngster, I dreamed of being the world’s foremost jelly-tube architect. I never imagined I’d be flying around in the open air, wearing a body with bones in it.”

“Poor little dude,” the Pogocashman said, patting him on the head in a way that made Quidproble’s dwarf-whiskers bristle. “Don’t sweat it–we’ll get out of this okay. You said it’s a story, right? Stories always end happy.”

Quidprobe was glad none of his colleagues from the Existential Despair Division were present. Clearly the Pogocashman was familiar with only the most elemental kinds of fictional universes. A moment later, though, Quidprobe realized that he desperately wanted the Pogocashman to be right.

By the Silver Buttocks of Eddison and the Smoking Jacket of Cabell! he thought in sudden horror. What if this is one of those stories where the companion dies?

Quidprobe spent the rest of the ride sitting in the bottom of the chariot trying not to hyperventilate.

#

The surface of the moon was even crazier than Pogo had thought it would be, like the abandoned set to some ancient black and white movie, with bits of ruined walls and statues poking through shifting dunes of sand and the Earth hanging close above their heads in a most disturbing way. The saint who rigged up the chariot had told them to head toward the highest hills, and soon they were standing on the peak of the highest looking down into a bowl-shaped valley which from this distance appeared to be nothing so much as a badly tended landfill littered with a zillion odds and ends. They left the chariot on the hill and made their way carefully down the slope.

“So this is it?” Pogo asked as they neared the lake of bric-a-brac. “We’re supposed to find Roland’s brain in all this?”

“Everything here is something that someone on earth lost,” the dwarf explained. “That was Ariosto’s idea, anyway. The saints said all the lost wits are in one part.”

“Ah, I got it, just got to find the right section. Like Men’s Casuals, or Children’s.”

Quidprobe looked puzzled, but Pogo was on familiar ground now. He scrambled a little way back up the slope and began to scan the valley, looking for clues as to how the merchandise was inventoried. In his store, they kept all the similar things together, so all the men’s black dress shoes were in one area, all the brown ones beside it, and a little farther away, the men’s casuals and sport shoes. It shouldn’t be too hard to make sense of this, if he could only recognize what the various objects were.

“Start walking around,” he called down to Quidprobe. “Tell me what some of this stuff is.”

The little man began an awkward tour through the mounds, calling out what he found to the best of his ability to recognize it. “Lost keys!” he shouted as he stepped through a field of clinking bronze and iron. “Letters!” he yelled, then picked one up to read a few lines. “The prose is quite romantic–think this might be lost loves.” He trudged along, stopped to shade his eyes against the Earth-glare. “There’s a mountain over there that looks like it’s made of…suitcases and steamer trunks. Goodness, it’s quite big!”

“Lost luggage, I bet,” Pogo called. “Keep going!”

The dwarf picked his way through artifacts both real and imaginary–the collars of thousands of lost dogs and cats, a lake of corroded clocks representing lost time, and an even larger sea filled with silver and gold coins and paper money, perhaps the monetary losses of drunkards and gamblers. For a moment, Pogo considered slaloming down the sandy hill and filling his pockets with some of those coins–the gold itself should at least be worth something–but since Quidprobe kept telling him this was all imaginary stuff, he doubted it would come back with him…if he even made it back home, that was.

Immense piles of bent swords and broken arrows which might represent lost battles or lost nerve; delicate masks cracked and dirtied–Quidprobe guessed they might have something to do with lost reputations–and an immense, uneven field of toys and dolls that the little man suggested might stand for lost innocence, the dwarf listed them off and Pogo took note, trying to see something like the organizational grid he had learned in his management training workbook, “Knowing Your Inventory = Sales Power!” As the timeless day wore on and he could begin to make out some patterns, he scrambled down the slope and joined the little man. All of the saddest and most personal things seemed to be clustered at one end of the immense sea of lost wages, savings, and livelihoods, where the coins glittered like the foamy caps of frozen waves, so he led Quidprobe there and they began to search every mound, puzzling for long minutes sometimes over what the objects might represent.

“Hey, Dickrobe,” he called. “I think I found something!”

“It’s Quickpoop!” snarled the little man, kicking something in his irritation. “No, Quidprobe! Quidprobe! See what you’ve done! I don’t even know my own name anymore!”

“Whoa. Mellow, dude. I was just messing with you.” He’d actually figured out the dwarf’s correct name several days ago, but it was more fun to make up new ones, especially because each time he pretended to get the name wrong, Quidprobe squeaked like a rubbed balloon. “Anyway, I think I might have found what we’re looking for–it’s a bunch of little jars with people’s names on them.” He bent and picked one up, read the carefully engraved label. “Who’s Em-pee-dockles?”

“Empedocles–Greek philosopher,” called Quidprobe from somewhere on the far side of a heap of lost opportunities. “Jumped into a volcano to prove he was a god.”

“Was he?”

“No.”

“Jackpot!” Pogo picked up another. “Pie-thuh-gore-ass?”

“Pythagoras. Another brilliant thinker, except he thought beans had little human souls in them.”

“Okay, this is looking good. Joan of Arc?”

“Heard voices,” said Quidprobe. “Trusted the English. Crazy as a coot.” The dwarf sounded much more cheerful. “Hold on, I’ll come help!”

As he and the little man clambered over the mounds of shifting glass jars, each one filled with a cloudy but slightly luminous liquid, a label caught Pogo’s eye. He picked it up and examined the jar, which was larger than most of the others, although still no bigger than a soft-drink can. CALIGULA. He knew the name–it was a dirty movie about some emperor guy who had sex with everything that moved and a few things that didn’t; there had been ads all over one of the men’s magazines Pogo kept in a box in his closet. If this was that Caligula guy’s wits, did that mean his memories were inside it, too? Pogo lifted the jar up and tried to stare into the shifting fluids, hoping for just the faintest visible scene of a Roman orgy, but no matter how he stared he couldn’t make out anything but the cloudy liquid.

“Oh! Oh!” Quidprobe began to shout quite close by, startling him. Shamed, he hid the Caligula jar.

“What? What is it?”

“By the Hierarchies of Heinlein, I believe I’ve found it! Come over here!”

Pogo made his way across mounds of shifting cut-crystal jars to the dwarf’s side. The little man was holding up a container nearly as large as Caligula’s. Pogo squinted at the silver name-plate and shook his head in disappointment. “No, man, this belongs to some dude named ‘Orlando.’”

“That’s the Italian way of saying Roland,” the dwarf told him. “And look at how big it is! It’s his, it must be!”

By the little guy’s excitement, Pogo could tell that Quidprobe was feeling ready to go home, too. “Well…cool, then, I guess. Let’s take it and get going. Good job.” But Pogo was a little sad he hadn’t found it himself. After all, wasn’t he supposed to be the hero of this story?

#

“Well, it was nice of those saints guys to let us hang onto the chariot,” Pogo said, staring over the side as whatever ocean stretched between Ethiopia and Charlemagne-land rolled away beneath them. “So where are we headed now?”

“Paris,” said Quidprobe. “The fairies and the Saracens have it under siege, and only Roland can save the day.”

“Right.” Pogo squinted at a sailing ship far below, so tiny he half-expected to see someone wading after it, trying to recover it and put it back into its bottle. “What’s a Saracen, again?”

“The villains in this particular epic,” the dwarf told him. “Non-Christians.”

Pogo thought guiltily of his own meager forty-watt faith. “Right. Damn those Saracens.”

After some time had passed, they swooped down over fields of ripening grain, gliding so low that Pogo could see workers looking up in astonishment. It was kind of cool, really, riding in a flying chariot. He wondered if he would be rewarded for bringing this Roland guy back his brains. Maybe Charlemagne would give him a castle of his own and a bunch of servants. If he got to keep the chariot it would be even better. All it was missing to be the near-perfect ride was a righteous sound system, so he could swoop down on bad guys blasting “Smoke on the Water” at concert volume…

But really, I’d rather go home, he had to admit. Somewhere they already have stuff like James Bond movies and car stereos and onion rings. Somewhere I know how things work.

At last, they reached Paris, where the twin armies of Islam and Faerie had surrounded the city walls like coffee grounds filling the sink around a failed garbage disposal. As they flew over, many of the enemy troops pointed up at them, shouting curses and firing arrows, but the flying horses nimbly avoided the hostile shafts and then brought the chariot swooping down over the walls to land in a commons at the center of the city where the tents of the besieged army were massed, their many colorful banners trembling in the breeze like (Pogo couldn’t help thinking) the triangular pennants of the world’s largest used-car lot.

When they landed, the dwarf announced who they were and they were taken by a company of armed men to the king.

Seated on his throne, armored all in gold, gray-bearded Charlemagne looked noble enough to make Pogo instantly wish to enroll in whatever management training courses he offered. Now this was what a supervisor should look like!

“Our thanks, noble Duke Astolfo,” the king said in a voice almost exactly like the dad from Bonanza. “You have done us a great service by freeing Prester John, and soon may prove to have done an even greater one, if you can bring back the wits of our greatest paladin, Sir Roland.”

Pogo mumbled that the king was welcome.

“Already the messenger pigeons tell me that Prester John has brought his armies to bear on both Duke Aelfric’s Faerie and Agramant’s infidel lands,” Charlemagne continued. “Both have already lost much of their stomach for this siege. I think if Roland should be returned to health and bring his mighty blade Durendal back to my service, their resolve should quickly crumble.”

“But where is Roland, your Highness?” asked Quidprobe.

“Ranging all across Paris like the madman he is, destroying property and the lives of those who try to restrain him. I have asked my bravest knights to harry him hence, with trumpets sounding, so that we may try this sovereign cure you have brought us for his broken wit.” He paused. “Hark? Do you hear? Even now he comes toward us.”

Pogo could hear the horns quite clearly, dozens of them all blatting and tooting excitedly, like a monster rush-hour backup on the San Diego Freeway. Charlemagne and his court got up and hurried outside in time to discover one of the strangest things Pogo had ever seen–several dozen knights in armor getting their butts severely kicked by one naked, frothing, bearded man.

It was pretty impressive, actually, like an episode of the Hulk where they’d run out of budget for green make-up. The knights were armed with shields and spears and swords and axes, and the naked guy with nothing but a massive spar that might have been the roof beam of a large house, but which he was swinging as though it were a Little-League-size Louisville Slugger, bashing armored men out of their saddles and sending them flying through the air to crash in crumpled heaps that Pogo suspected would be impossible to do anything about until someone invented the can-opener.

“Ropes,” shouted Charlemagne in his booming Ben Cartright voice, “throw ropes about him!” Now Pogo really did expect to see Hoss and Little Joe run out with their lariats, but instead a variety of soldiers came forward and flung loops of rope over Roland, who seemed more bemused than angry–at least until he tried to move on and found that the ropes prevented it. As he was flinging the soldiers around at the end of their cords like armored yo-yos, more soldiers ran in with more restraints until at last Roland was temporarily brought to a helpless standstill, and could do nothing but growl and snap at the air.

“Now!” said Quidprobe, shoving Pogo forward. “The crystal jar! Hurry up and make him inhale it!”

“Go to him, Duke Astolfo!” cried Charlemagne. “The fate of all the Christian world is upon thy brave shoulders!”

Pogo couldn’t help noticing that even with more than two dozen men holding him, bearded crazy Roland was looking like he might break free any moment. Pogo swallowed hard, then dashed forward past the soldiers and between the straining ropes, trying to get close enough to make the mad knight breathe the fumes.

Roland fixed him with a rolling eye. “Argle argle argh!” he shouted, spittle flying. “Kill!”

“Uh, yeah. I totally would too, if I were you.” Pogo reached under his chestplate and pulled out the crystal jar, then cracked it open beneath Roland’s nose. Something glowing and silvery rushed out and into the knight’s distended nostrils.

“Argle! Bargle argle!” Roland roared, then suddenly a very different look crept onto his face–an expression of surprise.

“Sweet Jove!” the great knight shouted, looking down at himself in dismay. “I am naked and hairy! What have I done…?” The look of surprise quickly turned into something more severe–an expression of horrific shame. “By the Vestals–I made my horse a senator! What was I thinking? And I married one of my own sisters as well–not even the good-looking one!”

With this, Roland threw himself in the dirt and began to crawl on his hands and knees, weeping and pulling his hair. Pogo stood watching, trying to figure out what had happened. Was this what the knight was normally like when he was sane? If so, Pogo couldn’t understand how he was going to be much use against the fairies and Samaritans.

While everyone else was also staring, Quidprobe sidled up next to Pogo. “Uh…are you certain that you gave him the right wits back? I mean, if I didn’t know better, I’d swear he sounded less like Roland than like one of the crazier Roman emperors–you know, like…”

“Caligula!” Pogo said. “Damn! I must have pocketed his jar when you called me.” He reached under the breastplate and found a second jaw waiting there. He took it out and saw to his relief that this one was indeed labeled “Orlando.” “So what do we do now?” Pogo asked.

King Charlemagne and his court watched in slightly uneasy wonderment as Duke Astolfo and a dwarf chased a scuttling, weeping Roland around the town square. When they caught him at last, Quidprobe managed to get a foreshortened leg-lock around one of the knight’s arms so Pogo could get the vial under his nose and pull the stopper. As Roland inhaled between wails of lamentation, the silvery stuff flew up his nose. The naked man paused, as if tasting something beloved and familiar, then relaxed, smiling with relief.

“Yes!” he cried. “Praise God I am released from my madness! I am Roland again!” This time the naked man leaped to his feet with a loud cry of joy and relief, incidentally throwing Astolfo and the dwarf quite a distance, so that as the noise of celebration rose at the bold knight’s return, Pogo and Quidprobe just lay on their backs and waited for the sky to stop spinning.

“Dude,” Pogo said at last. “That was pretty weird. Does this mean we can go home now?”

“I think it’s time to find out,” said the dwarf. “Let’s get out of here before these armies start killing each other all over again. Once he’s done celebrating, Roland’s going to be tossing Saracen heads all over the place.”

Pogo nodded and helped the dwarf get to his feet. As they walked quickly away from the crowd that surrounded the noble (if still nude) Roland, Pogo examined the damage the long siege had done, at the burned and ruined houses, the countless fresh graves and the bloated corpses of animals still lying unburied in the street. “Wow. Everyone says Paris is so great, but it’s kind of a dump, really. I mean, seriously, how do they ever get tourists to come here?”

#

Quidprobe was astonished to be both alive and in one piece, and was in a hurry to get back to the symbolic plane before the Metaverse realized how unlikely that was and decided to rejigger the odds. “Intervention over,” he told the Pogocashman. “The story has been fulfilled. As soon as I get back to the Department, I’ll send you home again.”

“Promise, man? I mean, this is pretty interesting to visit but I wouldn’t want to live here, if you know what I mean.”

Quidprobe only nodded. For once he knew exactly what the Pogocashman meant. “I promise. I can’t send you home until I get back to the Department where all the machinery is, but as soon as I get there, I’ll do it.” He took a breath, noting for perhaps the last time how strange it felt when the lungs inside his chest inflated. How awkward organic life was! But interesting, too. As Quidprobe began to consider the precise symbolic sequence of thoughts that would take him back, an idle curiosity floated up to him–what other sensations did organic beings have that he had never experienced on the symbolic plane?

Ah-ah, he told himself. No use wondering because I’m never going to do something like this again. Ever.

The Pogocashman was looking at him strangely as he finished his preparations. “What is it?” Quidprobe asked. “Have we forgotten something?”

“Naw. I’m just…” The organic creature was avoiding eye contact, which seemed strange. “I’m kinda gonna miss you, little dude.”

Which was odd, because Quidprobe himself had been feeling something similar, although he had not realized it until just now. “Where I come from,” he told the Pogocashman, extending a bony, organic hand, “we say, ‘May all your stories have a proper ending’.”

“And as my people say,” said the Pogocashman, slapping the palm of Quidprobe’s hand even as they both began to turn intangible to each other, “Gimme five! And keep on truckin’, baby!”

A moment later Quidprobe was tumbling down a long, whistling tunnel of different shades, temperatures, and textures of blackness. After a while, it began to resolve itself into shapes–a whole crowd of shapes, all his coworkers and managers and even Fnutt the supervisor… and they were all clearly waiting for him! Welcome banners! Treats and streamers! It was a party–for him! Quidprobe was thrilled. Someone had seen what he was doing and alerted his superiors! He had been noticed and now his bravery would be celebrated and he might well be rewarded for saving the Matter of France and all of Western Literature.

But although his coworkers waved and cheered as he coalesced back into the collection of symbolic solids he had worn all his life until this adventure, he saw that many of them were also laughing, although they were doing their best not to make it obvious. Then, as his familiar world came into sharper focus, he could finally read the signs.

“WELCOME BACK QUICKPOOP!”

“QUITPUNK–OUR HERO!”

“CONGRATULATIONS, QUARTPUMP!”

He stood for a moment, glowering at them. “Very funny,” he said. “Did anyone notice I saved the world?”

Fnutt the supervisor stepped forward and handed him a piece of treatsweet on a disposable plate. “In all seriousness, you did very well, Quick…Quidprobe. Saved the Department a lot of trouble. Good to have you back.”

Quidprobe thanked him. The departmental supervisor wandered off to refill his container of natured spirits, and for a moment Quidprobe just stood and soaked in the glory of his successful return, the proximity of his own office and peers and home. He stretched out one of his pseudopods and reveled in its boneless suppleness, its entirely obvious rightness. Yes, it was very good indeed to be home at last.

Which suddenly reminded him of his former companion, still stuck in an imaginary past for which, recent victories aside, he was probably not entirely suited. Quidprobe hurried to the office machinery center, his fingers slippery with frosting and his rubbery young soul in a hurry to get back to the party–a party in honor of him! He punched the button.

“Safe journey, my friend,” he said to the image.

Somebody had put on some music–something slithery and non-traditional. The younger workers were dancing. Quidprobe didn’t stay to watch the monitor.

#

Pogo was just beginning to worry that the dwarf might have forgotten him when the walls of Paris began to grow faint and translucent before his eyes, as though the entire damaged city was turning into glass. A moment later he found himself hurtling down what seemed like the worlds’s longest, driest, and coldest Slip-n-Slide.

Finally going home! was his thought as the winds between realities spun him. Finally! But he’d had a pretty amazing adventure and he’d done pretty damn well, if he said so himself. He really deserved some kind of reward. And to think it all happened because he got sent into the story instead of some English guy.

Yeah, that English guy. Wonder whatever happened to him…?

A moment later Pogo tumbled out of the void and into the reality of his familiar world, to warmth and carpets and beautifully painted oriental screens and heavy wood furniture. And also to a slender naked woman sitting on a bed, brushing her hair with her back to Pogo.

“Hurry, darling!” she said, in one of those posh Upstairs-Downstairs PBS accents. “It’s cold. I want to get under the covers with you so you can warm me up. In fact, I want you to do more than just warm me up, you amazing man…”

Reward…! Pogo thought. Jackpot! Hallelujah!

But then she turned and saw him standing in the doorway. For a moment a look of confusion seized her lovely face. “You…you’re not my husband! Who are you?” Then she began to scream, and scream, and scream.

Pogo was going to find it very difficult to explain to the village constable what he was doing in Mr. Castlemane’s house.

Meanwhile, six thousand miles away, the appearance of a naked Englishman in the middle of Kirby Shoes Summer Madness Event was barely noticed. There was a sale going on, after all.