Myth-ion Improbable

Aahz wasn't adding anything, so I figured it was safe to say what I was thinking.

"Wouldn't a cow that gave golden milk live in a golden palace?"

Again they just all three stared at me.

"More than likely," Tanda said, nodding slowly.

Silence again filled the small cabin. At that point I figured it was better to just eat more bread and leave the thinking up to them.

After an hour of pla

Before we hopped, Aahz made real sure that either Glenda or Tanda could hop back to this cabin. And he had Glenda help him set his D-Hopper so he could as well. It seemed I was the only one who didn't have an emergency getaway. I pla

After the hop, we ended up standing near a large rock cliff face. The air was warm and dry, and the sun was high over­head at the moment.

The area around us looked like desert, but the ground sloped away from us down to a lush, green valley. A road came over the hill beside the cliff, wound past where we were, and down the hill to what looked to be a small town built out of wood. From what I could tell there was no building over two stories tall. The buildings seemed to be centered around the main street.

"That town is called Evade," Glenda said. "Mostly cow­ boys and bars."

"Cowboys?" I asked. Since I had no idea what a cow looked like, I couldn't imagine what a boy cow would be, or why they would build a town.

"Cowboys are men who take care of the cows," Glenda said. "For some reason they're called that in just about every dimension there are cows or cattle."

I wanted to ask her what a woman who took care of cows was called.

"In this dimension," Glenda said, "the cowboys are a strange bunch, let me tell you."

Aahz stood, staring at the town in the valley below them.

"In what way?"

Glenda shrugged. "They seem to treat the cattle almost like they were sacred. They never hurt a cow, they never push a cow too hard, and they always talk nice to the cattle. And they protect them against anything."

"Now that is weird," Tanda said.

"Why?" I asked.

Aahz looked at me with one of his looks that said I was asking too many questions. I knew that look well, since I saw it two or three times a day.

"Because, in most dimensions, cows are nothing but food. Here, killing a cow is a hanging offense."

"So what do these cowboys look like?" I asked. For once, courtesy of my earlier adventures, I knew what a hanging offense was. In fact, I knew about it intimately enough to not want to dwell on the memory.

"Actually, in this dimension, they look a lot like the three of us." Glenda laughed. She glanced at Aahz. "We're going to have to do something about you, though, big boy. They don't know about demons here, let alone Pervects."

Aahz said nothing. I think he was just glad she didn't call him a Pervert, as so many did.

Suddenly, over the hill behind us, along the road, there was the sound of something coming. Glenda had us move back behind some rocks at the base of the cliff and watch. I made sure I had a pretty good view of the road so that I could disguise us all in the right clothes.

A minute later, two men appeared at the top of the rise. They were on horses and were headed slowly down the hill toward the town below. They both were dressed pretty much the same. They had on plaid shirts, jeans-like pants, high boots, and wide belts. Their skin was tan from a long time in the sun, and they wore wide-brimmed brown hats on their heads. One was a little older than the other and both had short hair and mustaches. They rode side-by-side in silence. After they got a distance down the hill, Tanda turned to me. "Get what they look like?"

"Easy," I said.

Pulling in the energy I needed, I changed all of us into our local disguises. I gave us all black hats, and basically similar plaid shirts. Since I couldn't see beyond the clothes what my magik did when I disguised someone, I glanced at Glenda. "How do we look?"

"Perfect," she said. "Even Aahz's tan is red instead of green."

"Are we going to need horses?" I asked. "I can't do them."

"We might," Glenda said, looking frustrated. "Especially if the golden cow isn't close by. We might have to do some traveling, and, from what I remember, horses are the only means of travel here."

"Money?" Aahz asked. "We're going to need money as well."

"I don't think so," Glenda said. "This place doesn't use money."

I thought Aahz was going to have a heart attack. It was like telling him the sun would never come up again.

"So what do they use to trade and buy things with?" Tanda asked, also shocked at the very idea.

"Work," Glenda said. "Work is their capital."

Now I was just as lost as Aahz and Tanda looked.

Glenda went on. "You work for someone when you want something from them. They keep everything on IOU's. So if you want a drink or some food, you sign an IOU and then later you have to work off the debt."

"This is a strange place."

Glenda agreed and we started off down the hill, four strang­ ers walking into a town full of cowboys. I just hope my dis­ guises worked. Just in case, I stayed real close to Glenda. Not that that was a hardship or anything.

The town of Evade was active and primitive. The only street was appropriately enough called Main Street. It was dirt and hardened mud and very rough. It split two rows of wooden buildings with covered wooden sidewalks in front of them. Outside the main street were houses scattered through the farmlands, tucked into groves of strange-looking trees.

Music and laughter were coming from a number of the doors along Main Street. Bright-colored signs were over some of the doors, with names like Battlefield, Wild Horse, and Audry's. I had no idea what any of those names meant.

Horse-drawn wagons and single horses were tied up on rails along the wooden sidewalks, and the entire town smelled like horse droppings, of which there were some pretty good-sized piles spaced along the road.

A man with a white hat and a big shovel was slowly pick­ ing up fresh horse leavings and tossing them onto the piles. I wanted to ask him what debt he was trying to pay off, or what he was trying to buy, because whatever it was, the price was too high.

When we reached the main area of town we stepped up on the sidewalk on the left side and into the shade. Sud­denly I realized just how hot our walk from the cliff had been, and how lucky it was these people wore hats. The sun hadn't seemed that hot at first, after coming from Vor­tex #6, but now that we were in the shade, I realized how bad it was.

We strolled along the wooden sidewalk, trying to look as if we belonged. Of course, in a town that couldn't have more than a few hundred full-time residents, four newcom­ers stood out like a bad blister in new shoes.

"Howdy," the first man we passed said to us. He tipped his hat and just kept right on moving.

By the time I tipped my hat back, he was past us.

A woman in long skirts and a flower-patterned blouse walked past us a few moments later.

"Howdy," she said.

I tipped my hat, as did Aahz.

She smiled at us, showing some pretty strange-looking teeth.

After she was past us I glanced down at my neck to make sure the Translator Pendant that Tanda had given me was still there. It was, but it couldn't be working, because I had no idea what "howdy" meant.