neetha Napew - The Paths Of The Perambulator

“A bad one, that,” Clothahump commented. “I should not have enjoyed continuing through life without a skeleton.

Mudge settled himself back on his tree. “You’re right. There’s worse things than goin’ through a change o’ sex. At least you look like somethin’. Me, I could use a good stiff one.”

“Under the circumstances, I believe we could all do with a drink.” He waddled toward their packs. “Will you join us, Dormas?”

“Under the circumstances, you bet your shell-shocked ass I will.”

The bottle was passed around, and when each of them had sipped from the same opening, shared the same liquor, the feeling of a real bond between them was stronger than ever.

“I’ll just repack it for you, Master.” Sorbl tried hard but failed to completely mask the eagerness in his voice.

“I will manage.” The wizard fumbled with the carton from which he’d extracted the bottle. “Otherwise we will not have the advantage of your excellent eyesight for very long. We may need it the next time this happens.”

“You’re sure there’ll be a next time soon?” Jon-Tom inquired.

“I did not mention a frequency. There is no way of predicting the perambulator’s perturbations. We could suffer three or four in a single day and then go for weeks without incurring anything more upsetting than momentarily blurred vision. One of the few certainties about a perambulator is its uncertainty. One can no more predict the frequency of occurrence than one can the severity. Truly it is most unsettling.”

“Tis freakin’ weird is wot it is, guv’nor!” Mudge slid down atop his bedroll and put a paw to his forehead. “All of a sudden I feel like I ate somethin’ with little green things growin’ out of it.”

Jon-Tom would have grinned, except for the discovery that his own stomach was doing flip-flops. Sure enough, all of his companions were suffering similar dysenteric effects. Dormas was trembling on her feet.

Looking none too healthy himself, Clothahump was studying each of them in turn. “Yes, I, too, am experiencing the symptoms of an unpleasant internal disorder.” He winced, closing his eyes briefly. “It appears to be developing with extraordinary rapidity, for which we may find reason to be grateful.”

“Another—perturbation already?” Jon-Tom groaned.

“No, I think not. Rather, the aftereffects. The minuscule creatures we became, it seems, were not entirely harmless. As you may recall, each was slightly different in size and appearance from the other.”

“You think they’re causing the pains we’re feeling now? That they were disease-causing organisms?” Jon-Tom wondered aloud.

The wizard sat down very carefully. “We did not notice this at the time because a disease is most unlikely to generate its own symptoms within itself. Now it is different. We have each of us become the disease that we were.”

Jon-Tom’s stomach settled even as he felt beads of sweat start from his forehead. First upset, then fever. At least whatever it was they had contracted was moving through their bodies with unnatural speed. He glanced over at Mudge.

“How about you? My stomach’s okay now, but I’m bum-ing up.”

“No fever in me, I thinks, mate,” replied the otter. “Trouble is, I’ve developed this bloody itch.”

“That’s too bad. Where?”

“I’d rather not get too specific, mate.” He looked to his left, to where Sorbl was landing unceremoniously in the bushes. Unpleasant bodily noises soon reached them.

Emulating Clothahump, Jon-Tom took a seat. Since this wasn’t a perturbation but merely the aftereffects of one, it should pass soon enough. He might have tried to spellsing them back to health, but he didn’t want to push his luck. Besides which, he didn’t feel very much like singing just then.

From what little he could tell, Dormas appeared to be suffering from an unbelievably accelerated case of hoof-in-mouth. Clothahump was now blowing his nose nonstop and giving every indication of trying to ride out a severe cold. He stared across at Jon-Tom through suddenly swollen eyes.

“How interesting. Red blotches are beginning to appear on your—on your—achoo!—face.”

“Measles.” Jon-Tom swallowed, wiping sweat from his brow. “I never had the measles. This isn’t so bad after all. I’ll have them and be done with them permanently in a day or so instead of a couple of weeks. How about that? We finally get something beneficial out of a perturbation.”

“Don’t try to tell that to Sorbl.” The wizard nodded toward the trees behind Jon-Tom. From within the brush pitiful retching sounds alternated with less pleasant ones.

“Too bad.” Of them all, Mudge appeared the least affected by his personal infection. “Needs to lead a ‘ealthier life, the poor sod.”

“I have not had a cold in some time,” observed Clothahump. “And you say you have never had these measles before?” Jon-Tom nodded. “It appears then that each of us has contracted something new to our systems, or at the very least something which we have have not experienced in some time.”

“Blimey, you’d think you were all dyin’, wot with all this sneezin’ and sweatin’ and pukin’ an’ all. Wot you chaps need is—” He halted in mid-sentence and his eyes got very wide. Abruptly he bent over and grabbed his crotch with both paws. The reason for his earlier reluctance to identify the location of his itch was now apparent.

Clothahump studied the bent-over otter studiously as he blew his nostrils for the fortieth time. “A new and particularly virulent strain, I should say.”

“Of what?” Jon-Tom touched his cheek with one hand, felt the heat.

“Difficult to say. Gonorrhea, perhaps, or something even less comfiting.” The otter was rolling around on the ground and moaning while he clutched at his privates. Since the diseases they had contracted were moving with exceptional rapidity through their bodies, each of them was suffering the cumulative effects of his or her respective infection. None was more discomforting than the otter’s.

“It ain’t fair,” he was shouting at a vicious fate, “it ain’t fair!”

“Nothing the perambulator does is fair, Mudge.”

“It can’t be. I mean, everyone’s been clean wot I’ve been with the ‘ole bloomin’ year.”

“Doesn’t mean anything to a perturbation,” Jon-Tom told him sympathetically.

Breathing hard, the otter at last rolled to a stop. Sitting up, he pulled down his shorts and commenced to examine himself in detail. “Blimey, you don’t think there’ll be any permanent effects, do you, mate?”

“Mudge, I have no idea. I hope that I’m going to be immune to measles from now on, but I’ve no way of knowing for sure. None of us do.”

Clothahump adjusted his glasses, blew his nose yet again, and murmured, “Poetic justice.”

Mudge’s head snapped around, and he glared at the turtle, barely suppressing the frustration and fury he felt. “If we didn’t absolutely need you to straighten out this rotten mess the world ‘as got itself into, Your Wizardshit, it would give me the greatest pleasure to knock your bloody smug face down into your bloody arse.”

“I did not make the comment out of a casual desire to provoke.” Clothahump was not in the least concerned with the otter’s threat. “I have had occasion to notice, water rat, that you are a great one for laughing at the misfortunes of others. But when it is your own person that is involved in disquieting circumstances, your sense of humor absents itself.”

“Don’t be too hard on him,” Jon-Tom requested. “Really, sir. There’s nothing funny about venereal disease. Why, it could cause shriveling and complete ruination of his—”

Mudge let out a cry of despair and fell over on his side.