The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump

As in my earlier venture into virtuous reality, they both appeared idealized to my second sight; Cholmondeley handsome, with more meat on his scrawny bones; Madame Rudi minus about half of her corpulent self and her screechy tough-guy accent. As before, I couldn't see myself at all.

I couldn't see any skin of Judy, either.

Not as before, I couldn't see anything but my spirit guides. The Nine Beyonds were dark as an underground cave at midnight. My sight had been totally obscured when I slipped the virtuous reality helmet over my eyes. What I was sensing now felt darker than totally obscured. I don't know how, but it did.

It was just dark like a cave; it didn't feel as if we were inside one. If we'd been in a garden before, my guess was that we were in jungle now, jungle on a moonless, starless night a million miles - or maybe farther - from anything of man's. Though I knew my body was back in a cool room at the West Hills Temple of Healing, the air that seemed to be around me felt hot and wet and smelled as if dungs I didn't want to know about were just beginning to rot somewhere not far enough away.

Things were moving there, too, and I didn't know what they were because I couldn't see them. Whatever they were, I didn't think they meant us well. This was not a place where we were meant to be. A sudden sharp noise made the self I didn't have start in alarm: it sounded as if something had stepped on a dry twig, although where you could have found a dry twig in that stifling humidity, I couldn't tell you.

I remembered the One Called Night was also known as the Crackler. Having remembered, I wished I could forget again.

I turned to Madame Ruth. "How are we supposed to find Judy in all this?" We were somewhere in one Beyond; even if we somehow went over every inch of it (and I was afraid it had a lot of inches), that left eight more to search. We were liable to be there forever, or maybe twenty minutes longer.

The Emperor Hadrian's death poem ran through my mind; Animula vagida blandula… Little soul, wandering, gentle guest and companion of my body, into what places will you go now, pale, stiff, and naked, no longer sporting as you did? If I'd perceived myself as embodied in that dreadful place, I would have burst into tears. The image fit only too well what I feared was happening to Judy's spirit.

"We'll do the best we can, Mr. Fisher," Madame Ruth answered. "Beyond that, I don't know what to tell you. This domain is not shaped by us alone; the Power who dwells here influences our perceptions. We must attempt to move, and hope we find ourselves guided toward Mistress Ather."

She'd warned before we set out that this wouldn't be as easy as contacting Erasmus had been. She hadn't warned how bad it would be. Maybe she didn't know till we tried it; virtuous reality is a technology that's just opening up, which means one of the things its practitioners are still discovering is what can go wrong.

I got the feeling that if anything went seriously wrong in the Nine Beyonds, Hr. Alt Murad would learn some things he hadn't expected - and some new intrepid explorers of virtuous reality would have to try to rescue three more spirits lost in this suffocating place.

Would they have any better fortune than we did?

Madame Ruth had said we had to try to move, to explore the Nine Beyonds and hope we found Judy. Move we did, but it wasn't easy. The Nine Beyonds resisted every metaphysical motion we made. We cried out, but everywhere in vain. It was as if we were drunk, as if the Nine Beyonds themselves were having sport with us, mocking our search.

We might as well have been wading through mud, through quicksand, through hot dinging slime.

And it felt as if the area in which we stood and moved was growing smaller all the time. With everything perfectly black all around us, with Madame Ruth and Nigel Cholmondeley the only things my second sight could perceive, I don't know how I got that impression, but I did. That led me to another interesting question (if interesting and horrible are synonyms): what would happen if it closed real tight around us?

Someexperiments you'd rather not see performed, especially on you.

No sooner had I thought that than I discovered I wasn't the only one feeling the invisible closing in. Voice tight with concern, Nigel Cholmondeley said, "I think we had best withdraw, lest we be overwhelmed by that which lurks in darkness here."

"How do we get away?" I asked.

"Break me circle; free your hands," Madame Ruth said.

"Quicldy!"

That hadn't been easy even when we were leaving the virtuous reality garden. Remembering you had an actual physical body that could do things was tough; making it do those things tougher.

And not for me alone - I watched the virtuous images of Cholmondeley and Madame Ruth twist in concentration as they struggled to make their bodies respond to their wills.