Blue hissed once.

  “You understand everything I say?”

  Hiss.

  “And you think the professor is an idiot?”

  Hiss. Hiss.

  They all laughed. Ike had tried a trick question, just making sure.

  “You said our familiars can help us perform magic,” Felony said. “What kind of magic?”

  “That depends on your aptitude. As with anything, it takes time to develop useful skill. Initially they will mainly warn you of danger. You must learn to be extremely sensitive to their warnings. Some dangers will be subtle; those are the main ones they can help you with. They can also enhance magic you perform. You will discover more as you work with them, just as you are discovering about each other as you associate. In fact, you should go into the badlands now and discover more about this aspect. Be very cautious at first.”

  “There seem to be few other applicants remaining,” Felony said. “They must all be out looking for passes.”

  “Indeed,” Howell agreed. “But most of them are dead.”

  “Dead!” Then Felony recovered. “Oh, you mean eliminated as candidates.”

  “Yes. They will not be admitted to Pomegranate College. They went out foolishly and carelessly and were destroyed by things they could readily have learned about in these classes.”

  “We will try to be more careful,” Ike said.

  “Indeed,” the professor repeated.

  They went out to the badlands beyond the campus, their new familiars riding along. “She seemed contemptuous of those others,” Felony remarked as they walked.

  “I suspect they deserved contempt. They were given the chance to do it right, but they went out and did it wrong. This is too complicated a setting to be wasted on careless folk. It may be like a game of Scissors.”

  “Scissors?

  “You don’t know that one? This group of people sit in a circle and pass around a pair of scissors. As each one gives the scissors to the next, he or she says “I received these scissors crossed and pass them on uncrossed.” Or whatever way they are. You can see the scissors uncrossed. There’s no problem until someone new to the game gets them. Then like as not he does it wrong, and everyone else sees that. It seems that sometimes he has to do the opposite of what he says, to get by successfully. It’s maddening.”

  “That doesn’t sound like much of a game.”

  “One by one the newcomers catch on, and start doing it right. Here’s the key: what counts is not the scissors, but the legs. If your legs are crossed, you pass the scissors on crossed, even if they’re uncrossed. It’s just a teasing game, but it can frustrate some folk endlessly.”

  “And you think those passes we’re searching for are like scissors? That maybe they aren’t really the point?”

  “Or at least not the point we think. You do need the scissors for the game; without them there is no game. But you have to watch for more than them. They may be only part of the point.”

  “I see,” she said thoughtfully. “Miss Demeanor, what do you think?”

  “I think he’s right,” the parrot said.

  “Do you agree, Blue?” Ike asked.

  Hiss.

  “But if that’s true, and they are tracking us, then they know we’ve caught on,” Felony said.

  “All part of the process. We still do have to find passes. They just may not be exactly what we expect.”

  “Scissors,” she agreed.

  They activated their laser shields and crossed the campus line.

  They came to what they thought of as the big bird tree. Blue hissed.

  Ike stopped immediately. “That’s a warning, isn’t it? There’s danger?”

  Hiss.

  “But Demeanor didn’t say anything,” Felony said.

  Then something dropped from the thick foliage of the tree. It looked like a person. In fact it was a nude young woman, with a flaring mane of black hair, full breasts, and a lovely figure. She opened her arms to Ike.

  Hiss.

  Ike stepped back. “That’s why! She’s a danger to me, not to you. She may be trying to tempt me close enough so she can bite me.”

  The nymph growled and showed her pointed teeth. Fangs, really.

  Ike extended his shield and advanced on her. “Get away, nymph, or I’ll burn you!”

  The nymph retreated, growling. Soon she was gone.

  “Score one for the familiar,” Felony said. “Blue did warn you.”

  “He did. Thank you, Blue.”

  Hiss. It sounded like “Welcome.”

  They walked on, watching carefully. Then the parrot spoke up. “Beware, Felony. There’s a male.”

  “What would a man want with me?” Felony asked. “I’m not luscious today.”

  “Any female is prey to this male. Get away from here.”

  “What’s the point in coming out here to try out our weapons, if we just flee before we encounter anything? I don’t have to fear any man as long as I’ve got my sword and shield.”

  “I can’t help you if you don’t heed me,” Demeanor said, nettled.

  “I am heeding you. I just am not inclined to let a stupid man drive me off without even token resistance.”

  Ike did not comment. This was another side of Felony. She had wanted to impress him and had succeeded, but it was clear she had her issues.

  “Well, I tried,” the parrot said.

  “You tried,” Ike agreed sympathetically.

  Felony marched on, and Ike followed. Then a figure stepped out from behind a boulder. It was a naked male with a huge erect phallus. In fact it looked like a satyr, the mythical shaggy goat-footed creature of lust. He looked at Felony. She froze in place. Then he beckoned, and she started walking toward him.

  Blue hissed.

  “Uh, Felony,” Ike said.

  She ignored him. She seemed to be in a trance. Worse, her familiar seemed to be similarly fascinated. The satyr had used his magic to enchant them both. That explained how he could catch even reluctant women: it was a variant of the love spell Felony had demonstrated on Ike.

  But Ike was not about to let Felony be raped. “Satyr!” he called. “Fair warning. Desist, go your way in peace.”

  The creature ignored him, just as Felony did. His monstrous member swelled visibly, preparing for action. Presumably in this game-context it would fit without destroying her. Or maybe this was another way for an applicant to get killed.

  “Well, I tried,” Ike said. Then he drew his sword laser and beamed the satyr through the head.

  And the thing did not react. He stood there with a literal hole in his head, his phallus still growing. Felony was almost there.

  Ike got smart. His second stab was through the phallus.

  Now the satyr reacted. He folded in on himself, mortally wounded. He shrank, becoming a quivering mound of flesh. In moments he was a pile of goo on the ground.

  Felony snapped alert. “You got him!”

  “Before he got you,” Ike agreed. “I didn’t think you really wanted to make it with him.”

  “Never!” she said, shuddering. “I was horrified, but his gaze locked me in and I had to obey. I knew he would rape me, and I wouldn’t be able to resist, and I might get my innards pulped, and I’d want to die of disgust yet still get a guilty pleasure from it. It was awful!”

  “That’s the way of it,” Demeanor said. “He got me too. No female can resist a satyr once he makes eye contact. I should have looked away.”

  “Fortunately Blue and I are males,” Ike said.

  “I was a fool,” Felony said. “You must be disgusted.”

  “You didn’t know,” Ike said. “I would have been caught by that nymph, if Blue hadn’t warned me.”

  “But I was warned, and walked into it anyway.”

  Ike did not argue with her. He simply drew her into him and kissed her.

  “Thanks,” she said. “I needed that.” She glanced at the parrot perched on her shoulder. “And next time you warn me, I’ll heed it.”

  “That’s the object lesson,” Demeanor said, satisfied.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Ike said. “We’ve had enough for one day.”

  “No, I want to continue, at least until I succeed in not making a fool of myself today. Does that make sense?”

  “Yes,” Demeanor said, and Blue hissed.

  “Then we continue,” Ike agreed, bemused. Felony was tough, emotionally, when push came to shove. He liked that about her, too.

  They walked on. Blue hissed, but Ike didn’t see anything. “I appreciate that there’s a threat,” he murmured. “But I don’t see it. Can you show me where it lurks?”

  Blue hissed and slithered out of his pocket and into the air. He moved quietly to a pile of debris from some erstwhile flood and hovered there a moment, then returned to Ike. So there was something in there.

  “Okay, act innocent,” Ike murmured to Felony. “While I set off this bomb.” She nodded.

  Ike took his shield stub and held it ready. Then he walked nonchalantly to the pile. As he approached it, something stirred. A cute little pig emerged.

  “Oh, how sweet,” Felony said.

  Demeanor made a sound as of stifling laughter. They both knew that this was likely to be anything but sweet.

  “Well, hello there, piglet,” Ike said. “May I pet you?”

  The pig pointed his snout at Ike and inhaled. Blue hissed.

  Ike snapped on his shield just as the pig shot out a jet of fire. It was a blow torch! The fire bounced off the shield and blasted back at the pig, scorching its whiskers. It squealed angrily and ran away.

  “Well done, hero,” Demeanor called, chuckling, and Blue hissed approvingly.

  They walked on. Felony saw a pretty green and gold flower and reached out to pick it. “Nu-uh!” Demeanor warned. “That’s poison. One touch and you’re dead.”

  Felony hastily backed off. “Thank you.”

  “That’s what I’m here for.”

  The land sloped down. Soon they came to a river. It coursed curvaceously around the landscape before meandering elsewhere. Part of it broadened out oddly, with squared off gaps in the bed. “What’s this?” Ike asked.

  “A mini-quarry,” Demeanor explained. “The river bed is formed of tuff, a nicely workable and pretty stone made of compacted volcanic ash. They mined it for the foundations of the college buildings. The river doesn’t mind.”

  “I see that it is much prettier where the water covers it,” Felony said. “The fragments they chipped away to make the blocks look like soggy old cereal.”

  “They must have weathered down,” Ike said. “It seems to be relatively soft rock.”

  “In just a few years?”

  He shrugged. “It’s workable, which is why they used it.” But he wondered. If it weathered rapidly, why use it for foundations? That could be mischief.

  They forded the river and walked on. But then Blue hissed and Demeanor sounded off almost together. “Something wicked this way comes,” the parrot said.

  Ike and Felony drew their laser sword stubs, but Blue hissed again. “Those won’t work,” Demeanor said.

  “What will work?” Ike asked.

  “Just get out of their way, or hide.”

  Now they saw a pack of dogs charging toward them. They were in open country just beyond the river. There was no place to hide.

  Blue launched himself from Ike’s pocket and slithered rapidly toward the river. “Good idea,” Demeanor said.

  They ran back to the river just as the dogs were closing in. Now Ike saw that their noses were circular snouts, and they were firing out little darts. Those were surely poison-tipped. Their shields might have stopped the darts, but Ike’s shield was set on reflect and probably would not be able to handle a dozen darts simultaneously.

  They didn’t hesitate. They jumped into the river. The dogs surged up to the bank, looking for targets to fire on. Ike held his breath and ducked under the surface, and Felony did the same. When he ran out of air he surfaced briefly, saw the dogs still there, took a breath, and ducked back down even as darts splatted into the water around him. Felony matched him.

  Fortunately the attention span of the dart dogs was brief, and after several breaths they were gone. Ike and Felony emerged from the water. Blue had gotten along nicely in the pocket, not needing to breathe often, while Demeanor had flown up high, out of the darts’ reach.

  But now Ike and Felony were sopping wet, their clothing plastered to their bodies, and it was uncomfortable. “We’d better get home,” he said. “Where we’ll be dry.”

  “We can dry here,” she pointed out. “The sun is shining.”

  “And we’ll get sunburned.”

  “You just don’t want to get naked with me!”

  “Wrong. I do want to. That’s why we’d better get home to dry.”

  She eyed him cannily. “Did you just pay me a buried compliment?”

  “I think I did.”

  “But I’m not luscious.”

  “Nor do you need to be. I can see enough of your body now to know that I’d better not see any more of it. I might lose control.”

  “Even though this is all virtual? Anything we do here is all perception and no reality. Completely safe.”

  “Completely unsafe. I want to get our relationship straight before we do anything that serious, even in virtual. Please stop wickedly tempting me.”

  She shook her head, bemused. “I think you just turned me down for the right reason.”

  “I hope so. I’d hate to pass up a chance like this for the wrong reason.”

  “So would I.”

  “Do you want my comment?” Miss Demeanor inquired.

  “No!” they said almost together. Then laughed.

  They sloshed their way back to campus and to their stalls. Soon Ike was home, completely dry. Had he done the right thing?

  Chapter 5:

  Awful Tower

  Next day they met as usual. Their familiars were waiting there at the rendezvous point. They went to Professor Howell’s classroom to report, and she agreed that they had bonded will with their familiars and were ready to use them in the field.

  “It’s past time for us to start looking for our passes,” Felony said. “I wonder how many are left?”

  “Five,” Demeanor said.

  “You know the count?” Felony asked, astonished. “Why didn’t you say?”

  “You didn’t ask.”

  “And you’re not supposed to volunteer,” Ike said before Felony could explode. “So it’s not meanness.”

  “You do understand,” Demeanor said.

  Felony was back in control. “And do you know where the remaining ones are?”

  “No. Only the count, which is updated whenever another is found.”

  Ike wondered again whether the passes were truly necessary, but knew they would be foolish to gamble that they weren’t. The scissors game did require the scissors, if only as a distraction. Their best bet was to find two passes, then ponder whether they really wanted to apply for admission. They still had no idea what the college taught. Only that it was bound to be important, to warrant this elaborate admissions setup. This supremely odd exam.

  “To what extent can you advise us on our search for passes?” Ike asked Demeanor.

  “All we can do is warn you of danger, and facilitate your magic,” the parrot said. “We can’t tell you where any pass might be.”

  Ike pounced on that. “You say your count is updated whenever one is found. Do you know where each is found? Can you tell us where?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s what I thought. You aren’t allowed to—”Ike paused, doing a double-take. “You said yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe we should check out where the other passes have been found,” Felony said. “That may provide a pattern we can use to zero in on the remaining ones.”

  “That works for me,” Ike agreed. “It might even enable us to make up for lost time.”

  “But maybe we need to put them in order,” Felony said. “Or better yet, to plot them on a map of the environs. Can you provide such a map?”

  “No,” Demeanor said.

  Blue hissed twice.

  “Oh, shut up, serpent tooth! I was getting to it. I can’t provide the map, but I can lead you to where it is posted and plot the points for you.”

  “That will do,” Felony agreed.

  They went to the main annex. There in the hall was posted a model of the Pomegranate College campus, set within a much larger model of the local area. This consisted of the surrounding badlands, which then gave way to a cluster of roughly circular sections that filled a spherical enclosure. In fact it was a three dimensional image of a pomegranate fruit, with each seed a separate realm.

  The found passes were all in those seeds. There were five of them. As they looked, another popped into representation, in a formerly empty seed. Now there were four passes left.

  “How many applicants are still looking?” Ike asked.

  “Six, including you.”

  “So there are two more of us than there are remaining passes,” Felony said.

  “Yes.”

  “How many applicants did you start with?” Ike asked.

  “Thirty two.”

  “How many of those have been eliminated?”

  “Twenty.”

  They looked at the map. “So you plan to admit ten new students,” Felony said. “Twenty two need to be eliminated.”

  “Yes.”

  “And we need to see that we are not the last two eliminated.”

  “Yes.”

  “I fear we have waited almost too long,” Ike said. “While we were taking classes and learning the ropes, others have been getting the passes.”

  “But more than three have been eliminated for every one who found a pass,” Felony said. “Those are not good odds. In fact we have improved on them already: four out of six is better than one in three.”

  “Twice as good,” Ike agreed. “And with what we now know, our odds may be better yet.”

  “But only if we get moving.”

  They looked at the four “empty” seeds, establishing their locations. They would probably need to get into two of them, to find two passes. Ike knew that there was no guarantee that each held a pass; all four passes could be in just one seed. Or they could be in one of the prior seeds. But the prevailing pattern suggested that it was one to a seed. “Which one?” he asked.