Volney sighed. "It iv the time for the baring of vecret vhamev. I was a vuitor for an ekvtremely volivh female vole, but vhe turned invtead to another."

"An extremely volish vole turned you down?" Chex asked. "Surely that is no fault of yours!"

"Yev it iv," Volney insisted. "Volve mate for life, and when I wav rejected, I became ineligible for any vubvequent matvh. There wav nothing for me to do but depart."

"One rejection makes you-taboo?" Chex asked. "That hardly seems reasonable."

"You are not a vole," he reminded her. "Think of me av having vprouted wingv."

"Point made," she agreed, grimacing.

"But then you were going-and helping your folk," Esk said. "Where is the shame in that?"

"I did not undertake the mivvion for the good of the Vale, but av a pretekvt to depart," Volney explained.

"Still, you did plan to complete it, didn't you?"

"Yev But when I met Wilda-"

"You were tempted to forget your mission," Chex concluded "Yes, I can appreciate that But you did resist that temptation, so there is no shame "

"The vhame iv in the temptation," Volney said "I vhould not have been"

"I doubt it," Marrow said "You resisted that temptation both in life and in the dream."

Chex nodded "I think you have not yet faced your deepest fear or shame"

Volney sighed with an exhalation of 'Vs."

"Then muvt I fave it now," he said. He walked forward into his doppelganger vole.

The scene re-formed. Dulcet Wilda Wiggle came forward to meet him, sniffing noses. The smell of flowers grew strong.

Volney hesitated, then took the plunge If seduction by her was not his deepest potential shame, what was? He moved in to embrace her in the volish way.

Her nose wiggled She was smelling something A picture formed above them, a scene within the scene, a female vole turning away from the Volney of the scenelet.

"She realizes he is a rejectee," Chex murmured.

Abruptly the wiggle turned away The scent of flowers faded. Volney was left there-rejected again.

Abruptly he woke, back beside them in the pa.s.sage. Now his deepest concern was clear, that his basic unworthiness as a vole would have alienated the wiggle princess, had he chosen to dally with her. Then he would have been guilty twice- of betraying his mission and his Vale, and of failing at that.

"There is only one solution," Chex said "Complete your mission. Then if there is fault, it is none of yours, and you need have no further shame The wiggle princess would not reject you then, but if she did, you would know that it was her error, not your own "

"But I am guilty of unvolivh weaknevv," he protested.

"Only in your bad dream," she said "You are afraid of weakness, you have not practiced it in life."

Volney shrugged Then he marched back into the zombie vole. The dream formed-and dissipated immediately, leaving Volney on the far side of the gate.

"Now you believe," Chex said. "The dream has lost its power over you. Thus it was unable even to form."

"Now I believe," Volney agreed. "I will complete my mivvion, regardlevv of temptation or rejecvion."

Esk took a breath. "My turn," he said.

The zombie man came to meet him. Esk merged-and his dream opened out.

It consisted of a swirling universe of stars and dust and moons, all moving in the splendor of their separate trajectories, rather than being fixed in their sh.e.l.l the way they were in reality. The moon, instead of being a ma.s.s of green cheese, was in this weird vision a monstrous ball of cratered rock. And, strangest of all, the Land of Xanth was but a peninsula on the surface of a giant mundane sphere. Esk would have known that this was a hallucination even if he hadn't already been aware that it was only a dream!

The scene kept coming toward him, the detail expanding, until it became a map of Xanth, on which he was standing. Then a parallel picture formed, identical to the first, except that Esk was not in it.

That was all. He stood disembodied, studying the two pictures, one with his image and the other without. There was absolutely no other distinction between them.

He screamed. In a moment he found himself back in the pa.s.sage. Chex hurried across and embraced him, much as he had embraced her between her dreams, comforting him as his horror slowly faded.

"But what doev it mean?" Volney asked, perplexed. "I vaw no monvterv, no vhame. Merely two venev."

"There was no difference!" Esk cried. "None at all!"

"True," Chex murmured. "But this was no horror to us. Why should it be to you?"

As he thought about it, Esk came to understand it. "I am in one, and not in the other-and there is no difference. I make no difference at all!"

"Yes, Esk," Chex said.

"It doesn't matter whether I live or die," Esk said. "Xanth is just the same. What justification is there for my existence?"

"That is only your fear, not the reality," Chex reminded him.

"But maybe it is reality!" he argued. "I am nothing and n.o.body; what I do doesn't matter. I realize now that I set out to see the Good Magician because I needed some proof that I had some importance, some mission in life. Getting rid of the demoness, saving my folks from her-that was only a pretext. I hoped the Good Magician would somehow-make me worthwhile."

"But you are worthwhile!" Chex said. "How can you doubt that?"

"I tell myself I am," Esk said. "But deep inside, I'm not sure that it is so. What have I done to make any difference at all to Xanth? If I had never lived, would it matter to anyone or anything? The picture with me in it is just the same as the one without me."

She considered. "I suppose that could be. But it would be similarly true for all of us. Objectively viewed, we may all be unworthy. But I think there is an answer. You don't have to settle for what you are at this moment. You can work to make a difference. This is what Volney will do. Then the pictures will change."

Esk nodded. "When you say it, it does seem to make sense. But how can I make a difference? Xanth is so big, and I'm so small."

"How much difference would the Kiss-Mee River make?"

"A lot. But that's Volney's mission. We're only helping."

"But if he can't do it without you?"

"And if I could help him do it-then there would be something that would not be the same without me," Esk said, liking the notion.

He walked back into the gate. The zombie met him, and merged, and the dream came again.

"I am nothing now," Esk said. "But I can make a difference, and I'm going to try. If I succeed, I will be something. That's all I can do-all any person can do. To make an honest try. If that's not enough, then nothing's enough, and it's not worth having any bad dreams about."

The pictures shimmered. Then something wriggled on the one that had his image. A river that was almost straight on the other map was a.s.suming curvature here.

That was all. It was only a dream, but it gave Esk tremendous satisfaction. He knew what he had to do to abolish his deepest fear. To guarantee that his life had some bit of meaning. His life was not necessarily empty until he failed to accomplish that mission.

The vision dissipated. Esk found himself standing on the other side of the gate.

Only Marrow remained on the original side. "It is my turn," the skeleton said. "But I hesitate."

"That is understandable," Chex said. "We have all had very difficult experiences."

"I have no concern about a bad dream," Marrow said. "I do not dream, because I am not alive. My concern is that either there will be no reaction, because there is nothing in me to generate it-no fear, no shame, no guilty secret-or that my attempt to cross will trigger an error that will blow the program."

"Do what?" Esk asked.

"This trial is geared to living folk, with dreams," Marrow explained. "If one without dreams enters it, the mechanism could clash, unable to orient, and the entire setting could be compromised or destroyed. I am uncertain whether this should be risked."

"He has a point," Chex murmured. "He is a creature of the bad dreams; how can he have one of his own?"

"What happens," Esk asked, "if the program, ah, blows?"

"This entrance to the framework of the gourd would be closed off," Marrow said. "You might be trapped here, with no route of escape. Or there could be emotional or physical damage to the three of you."

"Marrow iv a good guide," Volney said. "We may not complete the quevt without hiv advive."

"Then maybe we should risk it," Esk said.

Chex nodded. "Maybe we should. There is after all no indication of trouble; there is a skeletal zombie ready. Come on through, Marrow."

The skeleton shrugged. "It is, as the saying goes, no skin off my sinus cavity." He marched into the gate. The zombie skeleton met him, and the two merged.

A picture started to form. It showed Marrow, standing in the pa.s.sage, exactly as he was. Then it dissipated, and Marrow was standing back where he had started.

"It tried to make a dream for him!" Esk exclaimed.

"And found nothing on which to fasten," Marrow said.

"I'm not sure of that," Chex said. "There had to be something even to start it, and I think we should understand what it is. It could be significant."

"He was bounced without a dream," Esk said. "It thought there was going to be a dream, so it started it, but then it found out there wasn't, so it ended."

"But there was a dream," she insisted. "A simple one, but nevertheless a dream. That suggests that Marrow does possess some reality on our terms."

Now Volney was interested. "What could vuch a reality be? He hav no life."

"The picture was just of him, unchanged," Esk said. "For a moment I thought it was him, until it faded."

"Indeed it was me," Marrow said. "Since I have no life, I have no dream. It was just a picture of me as I am."

"Yes, it was," Chex agreed. "Therefore, that must represent your deepest fear or shame."

"I have no fear or shame," Marrow repeated.

"That may be why you were rejected," Chex said.

"Because it accepts only those who can reconcile their dreams, and I had none to reconcile," Marrow said, nodding his skull.

"No. Because you refused to come to terms with it."

That amused Esk. "Why should he come to terms with what doesn't exist?"

"Because it does exist," she said firmly. "Had it not existed, he would have pa.s.sed through without challenge. But there is a zombie doppelganger waiting for him, and he can't pa.s.s until he overcomes that deepest spectre within him."

"There is nothing within me," Marrow protested. "My skull and rib cage are completely hollow, as you can see." He knocked on his skull with a knucklebone, and the sound was hollow.

"So was the skeleton in the dream," she agreed.

"You mean he's afraid of himself?" Esk asked incredulously.

"Perhaps." She gazed at Marrow. "Are you?"

"What could there possibly be to fear in that?" Marrow asked, irritated.

"You are avoiding an answer."

"But there is nothing in me to fear by me," the skeleton said. "I exist only to generate fear in living human folk. I have no other reality."

"So your dream suggests," Chex said. "Does that please you?"

"Why should it? I have no right to be pleased or displeased. It is merely my situation."

"Again, you avoid an answer."

"How do you think I feel?" Marrow demanded.

"I'd be pretty upset," Esk said. "Here my deepest fear was that I counted for nothing in Xanth, so my life may have no meaning. You aren't even alive. That's one step below me, even."

"It would be foolish of me to wish for life," Marrow said curtly. "It involves messiness."

"How can a creature who isn't alive be foolish?" Chex asked.

"Life is just a ma.s.s of awkwardnesses about consuming substance and eliminating substance," Marrow said. "Of discomfort and pain and shame. The end is exactly what I already am: dead. It is pointless."

"But life has feeling," Chex said. "And you have feeling. Is your deepest fear that you can never be any more than you are now?"

"But I can never be more!"