"You could if you really tried."

There was a mental squawk and t.i.tter as Sim and Jaylin tried to visualize centaurs doing that.

"Neigh."

Putre was right: They had to stop fooling around and start searching. They agreed to spread out mentally and check all the objects their minds encountered. There should be some special quality to the Swell Foop that identified it.

They started the search. There turned out to be all manner of junk bobbling around them.

"I found a foop!" Breanna's thought came.

"So soon," Che thought. "Then we can depart."

"I found another," Sim's squawk-thought came.

"Here's another," Cynthia's thought came.

"How many can there be?" Che demanded. "There has been no indication that there is more than one."

"We need the Swell Foop," Justin's thought came. "It must be hidden among endless ordinary foops, which are probably worthless."

"You are surely correct," Che agreed. "The Swell Foop must have generated echoes of itself in the quantum state. We may simply have to bring all of them out, and sort them outside the Void."

But it soon was apparent that there were hundreds or thousands of foops. Apparently most of the soulless things that fell into the Void became foops. They would not be able to take all of them.

They paused for thought. This was an unexpected difficulty, though Che had not known what to expect. They could not search forever, because the Demon Earth needed to be rescued soon. But how could they find the right one?

"Dam!" Putre's thought exclaimed.

"That's 'd.a.m.n' if you want to be technical," Breanna's thought muttered. "Not a fitting word for a colt your age."

"No," Che thought. "He means dam-a female parent."

"A mother horse," Cynthia agreed.

"Could it be-?" Justin thought.

"Mare Imbri!" Jaylin's thought came. "Wasn't she lost in the Void?"

"She did lose her body here," Che agreed. "Because she had half a soul, she survived as a day mare, and later became a tree nymph."

"Dam," Putre repeated. "I know you! Answer me."

"What you have found must be her body husk," Justin thought. "Without a soul, it evidently has no meaning here."

"A soul!" Jaylin thought. "Putre, she gave you part of her soul. Can you give part of your soul back?"

"I will try."

After what might have been a moment, in a less timeless realm, there came a new thought. "Oh, thank you! I have meaning again."

"Dam-don't you know me? I am your foal!"

"I had no foal."

"You lost your body before you had a foal," Che thought quickly. "Your half soul survived, and later had a foal with the Day Horse. This is he, after you entered the Void."

"I am amazed," Imbri's thought came. "But I recognize this soul fragment. It is indeed from Chem Centaur, who gave it to me."

"My grandam," Che thought proudly. "Her soul regenerated, and my dam Chex had a full soul, and my soul is full too."

"I have so much to catch up on," Imbri thought. "Not that it matters."

"It does matter!" Che thought. "You deserve to know."

"We can never leave the Void, so it doesn't matter."

"But we can leave! As soon as we find the Swell Foop."

"I know where that is. It is the only foop of any value."

"Find it for us, and we will take you out of here," Che thought, and felt the emphatic agreement of the others. Especially Putre.

"Why, it is right here. Do any of you have hands?"

"Yes, two of us are centaurs, and three are human."

"Here." Something came into his mental s.p.a.ce. He knew immediately that it was the Swell Foop, for it had an aura of grandeur.

"Then we must leave," Che thought, exhilarated. "Take hold, folks, and make sure to include both horses."

They took hold, and when the new circle was complete, Jaylin willed the Ring of Void to lift them out. They moved outward from the ball of the center, gaining velocity, and shot upward. They found themselves standing in a ring around the Void-hole, holding hands or grasping fur.

"Continue on up and out," Che said, quickly letting go to catch the thing that threatened to drop back into the hole. He mustn't lose that!

They climbed without difficulty, eight creatures. The fair flowered slope beckoned enticingly, but they did not relent. The vague border curtain was near.

Then suddenly they were out of it and back at the verge of the region of water. Their natural shapes were back: two centaurs, three human beings, one bird, and two black horses. They had made it-with the Swell Foop. And Mare Imbri!

CHAPTER 11: LIAISON.

Justin gazed at the object Che Centaur held. Now that they were safely out of the Void, it looked exactly like a warty rock.

"This is it?" Jaylin asked, sounding disappointed.

"It surely is," Che answered. He set it on the ground next to the lake. "Touch it."

Jaylin touched it. "Ooo, it's swell!"

"Precisely. But I'm at a slight loss as to how to use it."

The others touched the rock, and agreed that it was definitely the Foop. But no one had any idea how to use it.

"The Six Rings of Xanth are supposed to control it," Cynthia reminded them.

"Perhaps we should depart the Region of Water and find a more secure place to consider," Justin suggested.

"For sure," Breanna agreed for all of them.

Jaylin mounted Putre, and the party moved rapidly out of the Regions and south across the Gap Chasm, and on to Castle Zombie. There they hesitated.

"Mare Imbrium," Justin said. "We are very glad to have you back with us. But there is a complication."

A dreamlet cloud appeared over her head. In it was the head of a black-haired human woman. "I know," that woman said. "Putre has caught me up with what happened after I fell into the Void. Not only do I have a foal, I have become a tree nymph."

"I think this will make it difficult for you to return to your prior situation," Justin said gently.

"That's right!" Breanna agreed. "How can there be two of you?"

"They should get together and talk it over," Sim squawked. "They can decide what is best."

The others circled a glance around, nodding. Sim was indeed a very bright bird.

"What of Putre?" Jaylin asked.

"He should go with his dam," Justin said. "He found her. There is no further need of him to locate the Ring of Void, or to convey you there."

"I guess that's right," Jaylin agreed. She went to hug the colt. "I'll miss you, horseface. You really helped me."

A little heart floated up. Then the two horses departed, and Jaylin wiped away a tear.

"You can see him again, after we're through with the Foop," Justin said.

"In Mundania?"

He had no answer for that. He wished he had not spoken.

"We'd better go inside and catch up Jonathan and Millie," Breanna said. "And figure out the Foop."

Soon they were in the throes of it. "Six Rings and a rock," Breanna said. "Who would have thought they'd be so hard to put together?"

"Perhaps if we knew what the Foop does, we would know how to invoke it," Cynthia said.

"Considering the power of the Six Rings," Che said, "the Foop must be of a greater magnitude. It is hard to conceive of anything in Xanth that would require more than the control of all the Regions and the creatures and things within them."

"Well, our mission is to rescue the Demon Earth, so it must have power beyond Xanth," Justin said. "In fact, if only another Demon can have abducted D. Earth, it must have power of the Demons themselves."

"That makes a conceivable need," Che agreed. "Each of the major Demons has equivalent power, and we have seen how all the magic of the Land of Xanth is mere trace leakage from the Demon Xanth. This thing must be potentially stronger than the Demon Xanth himself."

"So maybe we should ask him," Jaylin said.

There was a silence. Then Justin broke it. "We could do that, but he might not like the idea of our using the Foop."

"A rival power," Che agreed. "It does seem better that we discover this on our own."

They studied the stone. "What are those warts?" Breanna asked.

"Stones are seldom regular," Che said. "They are fragments of larger processes. I a.s.sume the projections are random."

"Random can be dangerous," Sim squawked. "We had to deal with the Random Factor."

"Why would anything about an object of this potential power be random?" Breanna asked.

They considered again. Then Sim put it together: "I note six projections," he squawked. "We have six Rings. They must have to be touching the Foop to control it."

"One Ring per wart," Breanna said. "It works for me."

They took off their Rings and tried placing them on the projections. Each one fit perfectly. Obviously that was where they were supposed to go.

"Now what?" Cynthia asked.

"Maybe we have to invoke it, the way we do the individual Rings," Jaylin said. "Maybe just thinking what we want."

Breanna held her spread hands over the rock. "Rise, Foop," she intoned dramatically.

Nothing happened.

"Is it possible," Justin asked, "that there needs to be a particular order? That is, each Ring must be on a designated k.n.o.b?"

"It sure as bleep is," Jaylin said. Then, seeing the other glance reprovingly at her, she apologized. "Sorry about the bad word. It just slipped out. What I mean is, that with a computer in Mundania you have to have everything just exactly right. You can't change the order to suit you. This must be like that. Maybe it's like a code, to be sure n.o.body gets it activated by accident."

"But if there's a set order," Che asked, "why do the k.n.o.bs accept the wrong Rings? We can't put the Rings on the wrong people."

"That must be part of the protection," Jaylin said. "It's like a secret code, and you have to know it to get it right."

"But we don't know it."

"So I guess we have to crack the code. Then we'll know it for next time."

The others nodded. They started changing the positions of the Rings. It was surprising how many patterns there could be for six Rings with six k.n.o.bs.

A swirl of smoke formed. "We're getting something!" Breanna said.