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Lynchbany had been harder on the jeep than on any of them. While never exactly
responding like a Porsche, its handling had become worse than ever. He'd
driven the last couple of days haunted by visions of the wheel coming off in
his hands just when they were attempting to round a sharp bend in the road.
But the wheel stayed on the steering column.
Just get us into town, he whispered silently at the straining machine, and
I'll see that you get a formal funeral.
They swung around a hill crowned with pines and saw the cloud first. A massive
black cloud. It was not moving. It just hung there in one place like a lump of
sooty cotton that had been pinned to the sky.
Directly above Ospenspri. Jon-Tom slowed but didn't stop.
As for beautiful Ospenspri, the Ospenspri that Clothahump had never ceased
describing to him ever since they'd left home, Ospenspri of the numerous
streams and delicately arched bridges and many fountains, Ospenspri the flower
of the north, it bore little relationship to the wizard's word pictures.
Instead of tall, graceful buildings with fluted walls, the valley that lay
beneath the black cloud was occupied by a succession of mud and adobe huts.
Dirty water flowed down a few central canals. These joined together below the
city to form a single river. What beggared comprehension was not the fact that
the water above the city flowed clear and pure, but that it appeared to become
fresh again the instant it left behind the city limits. It was as though the
pollution it acquired within the city was unable to depart with the current.
Yet there was no sign of any kind of filtering or treatment system where the
canals became river.
There were plenty of trees among the houses, as Clothahump had predicted.
Every one of them was dead, and not from the onset of winter. They had been
blighted by something far worse than inclement weather. On the slopes north of
the city where grew the famed apple and tokla orchards there was nothing but
twisted, spiny lumps of brown bark huddled together against the wind. No
neatly tended rows of healthy trees with busy citizens working among them.
And hovering over it all, that single, ominous, unmoving black cloud.
Sorbl fluttered down to resume his perch on the frame of the backseat. "Are
you sure we didn't take a wrong turn somewhere, Master?"
"No, we did not take a wrong turn, you feathered twit." But there was little
venom in the wizard's retort.
He was staring in disbelief at the city spread out before them. "This is
Ospenspri. There's the Acomarry
Hill, and there the three springs, each winding its own way into town." He
rose, leaning on the windshield for support. It groaned.
Behind them stood the autumnal forest of the Bell woods, shedding its leaves
to the accompaniment of mournful but hardly malign notes. Ahead was
once-beautiful Ospenspri, with its polluted waterways, devastated
architecture, and clear air, dominated by that unnatural mass of cumulonimbus.
When he spoke again, his tone was subdued.
"Drive on, lad. Something dreadful has overtaken this place and the people who
make their home here.
Perhaps we can do something to help. We are honor-bound to try."
Jon-Tom nodded, took the jeep out of neutral. The tenuous transmission made
gargling noises, and they lurched forward.
"What's a tokla?"
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"You never had a tokla, my boy?"
"I don't think so." He kept his eyes on the road as he spoke. "It doesn't
sound like anything that grows where I come from."
"That is your loss, then, for it is a most delightful fruit. You can eat all
you want because it shrinks inside your stomach."
"You mean it shrivels up?"
"No. It shrinks before it is digested. In shape it is like this." His hands
described an outline in the air that reminded Jon-Tom of two pears joined
together at their tops. "Each bite starts shrinking on its way down. By the
time it hits your belly, it's barely as big as a fingernail, but you're sure
you've eaten something as big as a loaf of bread."
"Would that ever be a hit on the shelves back home," Jon-Tom murmured. "The
tokla fruit diet."
"Diet? What's a diet?" Sorbl asked.
"You don't know what a diet is?"
"You always repeat questions, Jon-Tom. I don't know why humans waste so much
of their talking time.
If I knew what a diet was, I wouldn't have to ask you what a diet was, would
I?"
"I think I like you better when you're drunk, Sorbl."
The owl shrugged. "I'm not surprised. I like me better when I'm drunk too."
"A diet is when people intentionally restrict their intake of food in order to
lose weight."
The famulus twitched his beak. He was a little shaky on his unsteady backseat
perch, but not so shaky that he couldn't recognize an absurdity when he heard
one.
"Why would anyone want to lose weight, when nearly everyone is working hard to
put it on? Are you saying that among your people there are those who
intentionally starve themselves?"
"To a certain degree, yes. They do so in order to make themselves look better.
See, among the humans where I come from, the thinner you are, the more
attractive you're considered to be."
Sorbl wiped at his mouth with a flexible wingtip. "Weird."
"The multiplicity of peculiar notions your world is infected with never ceases
to amaze me," Clothahump put in. "I am glad 1 am exposed to them only through
you. I do not think I could cope in person."
Sorbl interrupted long enough to point. "Look. It's not deserted."
They were passing through the first buildings now, though the mud and wattle
structures were hardly worthy of the term. Staggering listlessly through the
filthy alleys were the citizens of Ospenspri. It was evident that whatever
catastrophe had blasted their community had affected them personally.
As with all large cities, the population was a mixture of species, and all had
been equally devastated.
Felines and lupines, quadrupeds and bipeds, all wore the same dazed
expressions. They shared something else besides a communal aura of
hopelessness, a singular physical deformity that owed its presence to
something other than defective genetics. Difficult to accept at first, the
evidence overwhelmed the visitors as they drove on toward the main square.
Every inhabitant of Ospenspri, every citizen irrespective of age or species or
sex, from the youngest cub to the eldest patriarch, had become a hunchback.
Clothahump adjusted his glasses, his expression solemn. "Whatever has happened
here has crippled the people as well as their land. Turn right at this corner,
my boy."
Jon-Tom complied, and the jeep slowed as it entered an open circular
courtyard. In its center stood a thirty-foot-high pile of mud and gravel.
Water trickled forlornly down its flanks. It was surrounded by a fence
fashioned of rotted wood and a few lumps of granite.
"Stop here." Jon-Tom brought the jeep to a halt, watched as Clothahump climbed
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