Yet that, too, was only the beginning. She was stripping him also, in her fashion. It was the mystery of her soul that truly fascinated him. Demons had no souls, and even passing contact with mortal souls flummoxed them. That was how Squid had corralled the most powerful Demon ever to exist: she had inadvertently touched him with her soul. He could not give up that contact. If the Demons had any weakness, it was their addiction to the nuances of the soul, once they encountered it. That generally meant human contact, though there were exceptions. Squid was one; as the adopted alien sibling of four human children, herself emulating a human child, she had gradually picked up a soul, sharing portions of theirs. They had gladly shared with her, their souls growing back what they gave to her; it had made them siblings in a closer sense than mere family relations ever could. But hers was nevertheless an artificial soul, a composite of four. Apoca represented the first fully natural soul this Demon had encountered. He was for the moment lost in wonder, feeling like a grain of sand himself. This was, perhaps, what Squid had really wanted: not his appreciation of the barely significant maturity of Apoca’s speck-of-sand physical body, but his intimate contact with the incalculable majesty of her original soul.

  Yes, he had touched humans before, notably Larry, whose body he used as his human host. But that was hardly the same. Larry’s physical body was male, but his true gender was female. The Demon actually provided the masculinity for the form. He was thus adjacent to the soul but could not properly understand its essence. The mystery remained. This contact with Apoca, in contrast, lent another perspective: that of quasi-romance. From that orientation he was able to explore her soul spiritually. That made all the difference.

  “Souls are complicated,” Aurora remarked to Nolan. She, as an ant, had none of her own, but surely appreciated his. He could only agree.

  The physical universe was also complicated. Now Apoca saw the galaxies in their clusters, extending outward to the very boundary of reality. They were myriad, infinitely too many to count or even to imagine. Together they formed obscure shapes, each galaxy being a mere atom in a vastly larger structure. Was it some kind of creature? She couldn’t tell.

  Then she realized that it was the real bodies of the Demons, rather than their local mock-ups, amorphous clouds of matter and force. The largest was a turmoil of seeming nothingness, a chaotic mass of concept and emptiness.

  Chaotic? It was the Demon Chaos in his natural form! He animated the mortal body of Larry merely as a device to become tangible to Squid and the other mortals. Because there was no possible interaction otherwise.

  She was kissing half the universe.

  Apoca was a spirit, touching a male entity who had no spirit. Her form was a matter of opinion. Now she traveled, propelled and guided by she knew not what. She flew at many times the speed of light, which the foolish Mundanes thought was impossible, to a galaxy so distant that its light might never reach Xanth. She plunged into it, passing between stars or through them, unaffected. She came to a world shaped roughly like a scorpion with an elevated tail. Then to that tail, which seemed to grow enormously as she approached it. There were seas and mountains on it, rivers and valleys and weird trees.

  On the spreading branch of one tree was a nest, and in the nest was a kind of scorpion, with three legs in front and two more behind, and a raised segmented tail with a deadly-looking stinger on the end. She landed on that stinger, turning out to be tiny compared to it, and took hold of its skin.

  And she picked up on the scorpion’s thoughts. “Contact telepathy,” Aurora said. “Scour Scorpion doesn’t know we are here, but we can read him.”

  Scour Scorpion was lovesick. He longed for the acceptance of a lovely female, Scylla, but she was largely uninterested in him. He had been told that he had something that would win her savage heart, but he had no idea what it was. He was just a low-caste imported worker locked into a dull and wearing job that the higher-caste workers wouldn’t touch. If he did not perform at par one day, he would be cashiered the next day and sent back to his home tree in disgrace. He had to perform!

  He contemplated the day’s garden of bulbs. Fifteen of them ready to be stung. The first ones would be easy, as his night’s accumulation of serum impregnated them with the trigger for forming the meaty bolus that the top-caste mantises fed on. The middle ones would be doable. But the last ones would feel like running his tail through a wringer.

  He glanced at his tail. It was a standard segmented effort, indistinguishable from any other of its type. Its only distinction was the pink copper ring he wore on the second to last segment. He had inherited it from his mother. She had told him to wear it always until he found a female worthy of it.

  Which led into another frustration. There was the female he thought worthy: Scylla. She was the collector of the stung bulbs, which she took to the curing oven along with the produce of the adjacent workers. She had the loveliest tail he had ever seen, the segments perfectly aligned. He would gladly give her the ring, but only if they had a relationship. There was no sign that she would ever be amenable to any personal association with him. Still, he mooned and sunned and starred for her.

  Well, on to work. He picked up the first bulb and held it firmly high by two of his forelegs, maintaining his balance with the third leg. He swung his stinger over his head. He stung the bulb with the needle point of his stinger, injecting just the right amount of serum. He set it down and waited for his stinger to recharge. Then he picked up the second bulb and stung it also. He shut his eyes and imagined that it was a juicy honeybug that would scream and expire, coagulating into a delicious meal. The third one he pictured as a predator that had mistaken him for a victim. Yow! As it instead got a bellyful of poison. Served it right.

  He gave up the joys of imagination as he progressed through the middle range. This was merely wearing work and his tail was tiring. He just wanted to get it done.

  Then came the final five bulbs. His stinger was weary and running low on serum. Each one was a worse chore. Finally he reached the last one, but just couldn’t sting it. He was out of juice.

  Scylla arrived. Oh, no! He didn’t have the complete array. She would report him, as she was required to do, and he would be busted and sent home in disgrace. But what could he do? He needed more time to recharge.

  “This is sad,” Nimbus said. “He’s going to wash out, and lose his job and his girl, when he could so readily win both.”

  Apoca was perplexed. “How so?”

  “All he has to do is give her the ring. It will multiply her potency and make her the most influential stinger of her generation. That’s why his mother was so great. It works only on females, a female secret, so he has to give it to the right one.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “I know about scorpions. They are compatible scourges. That’s how they operate.”

  Apoca was intrigued. “Too bad we can’t tell him that.”

  “I wonder. We’re not ghosts, we’re visitors. Maybe we can.”

  So Apoca tried. Scour! she called mentally. Give her the ring! You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

  Scour reacted. “What am I thinking? This is crazy.” He did not realize that the thought was not his own.

  Apoca tried again, boosted by the nickelpede’s ability. It is not crazy. It is your chance to win her. Take off the ring and proffer it to her.

  Meanwhile Scylla Scorpion was entering his area. “All done?” she clicked.

  “I—no, not yet,” Scour clicked as he tried desperately to think of a suitable stall. “I have one left to do.”

  She eyed him with all three antennae, surprised. “Why not all of them?”

  GIVE HER THE RING!

  Numbly, he applied his pincers to the ring and carefully twisted it off his tail. “First I must give you this.” He proffered the ring. “It was my mother’s.”

  Scylla was amazed. “Is that what it looks like? A Ring of Power?”

  YES.

  “Yes,” he echoed, fearing disaster.

  She took the ring and applied it to her own tail. Suddenly she seemed almost to glow. Her posterior assumed a new vibrancy as the power of the ring infused it. “It is! It really is! With this I will be the most potent stinger in the clan!”

  “Yes,” he agreed weakly. “My mother was.”

  She oriented her lovely antennae on him. “Yes, of course I will marry you, Scour, as soon as I deliver these boluses. I will honor your mother’s legacy. We have some caste rising to do.”

  Just like that? “But—”

  “Oh, yes, one remains to do.” She picked up the last bulb, held it high, and delivered a perfect sting. Then she set it in the trough with the others. “Thank you for saving one for me to verify with.”

  “Uh, yes, of course.”

  She pinched one of his pincers in a scorpion kiss that made his whole body reverberate. “Come along, now. There are nuptials to accomplish, among other things.”

  Apoca and Nimbus lifted off Scour’s tail as the happy couple walked toward their sudden future. It seemed that their job here was done.

  “We were visiting angels,” Apoca said, amazed. “Touching poor mortals.”

  “We made it happen,” Nimbus agreed.

  They sailed up, up, and away from Scorpion World. Away from the stellar system. Away from the anonymous galaxy. In a tiny fraction of a moment it was like a grain of sand behind them. They were back in the larger fabric of the universe.

  Next Apoca became aware of the other larger reality. “I am still kissing Demon Chaos, back in Xanth proper. Only an instant has passed.”

  “A romantic instant,” Nimbus agreed. “Are we going home now?”

  Apoca eyed the zooming galaxies they were passing. Each was unique to itself, grandly rotating about its massive black-hole center with its curtains of stellar spirals studded with novae and supernovae. “I don’t think so. We’re still headed outward.”

  “Something is sending us somewhere. Do we know why?”

  “I have no idea. Maybe Chaos is up to something.”

  “What would he be up to, aside from feeling up your soul and fathoming your mature kiss?”

  “I have no idea. But there must be something.”

  They came to a black blob of a dim-starred galaxy and plunged into its fringe. Somehow in that dark fog they found a Stygian system with a gloomy planet barely able to maintain its orbit, hosting giant alien slugs. And on to a colony of slugs basking in muck, then up along a muddy river slogging its way through the meanders of a gloomy forest, and out to a giant cabbage in the quicksand center, where two sodden rafts were moored. There were even moldy signs identifying the river, in a language they had never heard of but somehow were able to read now: STYX.

  The River Styx? That bordered Hell? No, it had to be a trick of translation. This would be the alien hell, parallel to the one near Xanth. In a universe as vast as this there had to be parallels.

  They flew to a giant gray slug feeding on the cabbage. The smell was awful, but of course that was their Xanthian perspective; it might be like perfume to the natives. They landed on the head section of the slug, which was not aware of their presence. So this was another anonymous visit.

  They read the slug’s mind. He was Slough, a young male ready to mate and start a family, if only he had a prospect. There was a lady slug he liked, but she had no interest in him. That situation seemed almost familiar to Apoca; maybe it was universal. Her name was Slender Slug, and she was just coming into season. If Slough did not get her soon someone else would. But how could he get her amicable attention when she was looking for an older, better-established, more slimy male? At any rate he had come here to feed because he had seen her come to this cabbage, and he wanted to be near her, just in case. He stayed on the opposite side so she did not know he was there and could not angrily send him away.

  “Let’s delve,” Nimbus said. “I’m not much familiar with slugs, but as long as we’re reading his mind, maybe there’s something buried in the sludge.”

  They delved. They found a packet of salve Slough had inherited from his grandfather, of little or no seeming value other than nostalgia. It was supposed to enhance adhesion, enabling a slug to double or triple his stickiness when navigating difficult surfaces. Slough had never needed it, but perhaps in the future he might.

  Meanwhile this was excellent cabbage, tasty and nutritious. He finished one large leaf and moved to an adjacent one.

  And there around the bulbous body of the cabbage was Slender. She was twice his mass, as a nubile female should be, and thick in proportion. But for a lady slug she was, well, slender. In fact, she was cramming her body full of cabbage in order to put on more mass and be ready for mating and progeny. To be as solid and sexy as she could manage.

  And she was in trouble. The leaf she was feeding on had detached from the main bulk of the cabbage and was leaning perilously close to the surrounding quicksand. If she got dunked in that, she would be lost.

  Slough was at a loss what to do. He could not even try to help her physically; if he slid to her leaf it would just make the descent faster. In any event, her greater weight would soon slide them both into the deadly sand, never to emerge. He could not pull her clear even if he had a secure leaf to stick to; she was far too heavy.

  The salve! Apoca yelled mentally. Give it to her!

  Slough hesitated, perplexed. Why was he thinking of that?

  It is super sticky, Apoca reminded him, pretending to be his own sluggish thoughts. So she can power her way up and off.

  Oh. That might indeed help. Slough emitted a package of smells, the slug way of communicating. He wafted the little cloud of them toward her. “Take my salve,” they conveyed in aromatic detail. “It will enable you to stick much better.”

  She sent a fragrant cloud back. “I’ll try it. I’m desperate.”

  He brought the package to the surface, then humped his skin, flipping the bundle across to her. It struck her flank and stuck there as it was supposed to. She flexed a fold of her skin and took it in. She would absorb its content internally, then spread it out to her surface.

  In barely a moment and a half she felt its impact. “Oooh!” she wafted. “It’s working! I can stick much stronger.”

  Then she slid powerfully up the dangling stem to the safety of the main body of the cabbage. “You saved me!” she wafted. “How can I ever repay you?”

  “Mate with me,” Slough wafted, hardly believing his fortune. He knew he had to act immediately, while her gratitude was fresh and before any other male winded her readiness.

  “Come do it,” she wafted.

  He slid toward her, his system revving up for the engagement.

  Apoca and Nimbus were already up and away, their business here done. “Bleep,” Apoca muttered. “I wanted to see how alien slugs signaled the stork.” She was flying by the imperative of the kiss, not her own will.

  “At least we were able to help, again.”

  “Yes. It seems we had a romantic mission here also.”

  “We helped Boy Get Girl,” the nickelpede agreed.

  Now they were back out in the universe, among the sand grain galaxies. Still amidst the kiss, which had now lasted all of two instants.

  “This is really coming to obsess me,” Apoca said. “What is the Demon up to, apart from plumbing the very depths of my being?”

  “Maybe he owes favors to alien creatures and is using us to handle them.”

  “With his immense power? It would be easier to do them himself.”

  “Not if he has trouble relating to tiny souled folk, as the scorpions and slugs seem to be. You would have trouble handling nickelpede or ant affairs.”

  “I would,” Apoca agreed. “But I’m not sure that’s the whole of it.”

  “Neither am I.”

  “Regardless, Chaos is a pretty good kisser. Squid may be young, but she has taught him well.”

  “Now he will be better, thanks to you.”

  “Perhaps.”

  They came to a giant cluster of young stars that were not exactly a galaxy but were packed so close together they seemed to be almost touching each other. They dived into it. The stars turned out to be farther apart than they had seemed from a distance, whole light-minutes, but the region was a burning blaze of light.

  “Aurora would love it here,” Nimbus said.

  “I would,” Aurora agreed. She was in touch, relaying their experience to Nolan.

  They were in a dense tapestry of beams of light passing between the closely packed stars. There were flickers throughout it, as if currents were animating it. No, they were beams of colored lights, zipping between stars as if playing tag.

  They intercepted one such beam, a blue one, and became an unnoticed part of it. This was Blair Blue, young, bright, and male. He was orienting on Pinkie Pink, a pretty female. If he could catch her he could have her; this was that kind of game, fun but with real stakes. The girls loved to tease the boys but did have to merge beams if fairly caught. However she had little if any romantic interest in him, so eluded him by using clever reflections at intersections that shot her off in unexpected directions. All he could catch were tantalizing flickers of her deliberately narrow escapes. He was becoming quite frustrated, exactly as she intended.

  “This kind of teasing is not nice,” Apoca said. “She is trying to torment him.”

  “If there is a way for him to catch her, and our pattern remains, we must know the clue to what he needs,” Nimbus said.

  “Yes. But what is it?”

  “What indeed. As far as we can tell, Blair is a completely ordinary light beam, while Pinkie craves novelty.”

  “Novelty,” Apoca agreed. “Actually we represent considerable novelty, being alien creatures from unimaginably far away. Too bad that doesn’t count.”

  “Unless we make it count,” Nimbus said thoughtfully.