Another hallucination, then? I looked around to make sure I was alone, then shook my head vigorously, making a mental note that inhaling sugar did even stranger things to the system than drinking booze or snorting solar-bat manure. (Actually, I have never snorted solar-bat manure – at least that I can remember. But Assistant Vice Co-Associate Minister for Exploratory Science Suzie Gonzales, one of the sexiest (and smartest) human women I ever met, once fell face first into the stuff, and for the next three days she insisted she was a wild west stagecoach and that I was Billy the Kid. And I promised I would forget all about that. So never mind.)

Okay, so that last hallucination had been a bad one. Nuts, naked, in bed, with me. Not that she lacks charms, but. But the price to be paid, at some point in the future?… Agh.

As if grabbing after shreds of a fast-dissipating dream, I fought to make sense of our time in the Nameless City. There had been the creatures with weird tails. Probably. Then… talking trees? Followed by the vague, warped recollection of meeting a strange being who sat on a dazzling golden throne, whom others referred to as the ancient god… Thulu? And some kind of test that I passed – barely – using a toilet and an eight iron… culminating in some talking doors and a deranged little elf named… Karakal.

Wondering how much of it actually happened, I knew that it was less than all. Alas, with dire certainty, I also knew it was more than none.

Still woozy, I got to my feet and left the cabin to get some fresh air, making it maybe five meters before Cuspitui let out an amused yowl, pointing at me, causing me to look down. Whereupon I went back and got dressed, then re-emerged.

Stumbling to the rail, I saw with some relief that we had crossed onto higher ground featuring… well… ground. Actual dirt and trees and shrubs. I half wanted to leap down and taste them all! Behind us still glinted the painful dessert brightness. But as the dunes and sugarworms receded into distance, I made a vow never to go there again; no matter what happened up ahead, I was not coming back this way, even if it meant finding a long, long route around!

12.

Farther toward the bow, I saw that Nuts was using the finder while deep in conversation with a compact-looking Standard who held some weird-looking contraption of his own. He looked familiar, and a name floated upward.

Karakal.

“So… you’re real,” I commented, restraining myself from pinching the fellow, to be sure. When you live with demmies, you learn to constrain many impulses. “I hoped… I thought I dreamed all that.”

“Hmph,” replied Karakal, “You don’t seem bright enough to imagine half of what you saw in our town.”

“Um… huh?” I knew I had been insulted, but could not actually parse the diss.