Travel Agency: Scouts, part 3 of 6

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“Being a woman is nothing,” Natalie said. “I’ve been men and women, male and female dwarves and camel-centaurs and even merfolk. But having to stay in the same shape for six days! I don’t know if I can do it.”

This story is set, with Morpheus' permission, in his Travel Agency universe.


Travel Agency: Scouts

Part 3 of 6

by Trismegistus Shandy


This story is set, with Morpheus' permission, in the same setting as his story “The Travel Agency” and its three sequels. Thanks to Morpheus for his feedback on the first draft.

The original stories and this one need not be read in any particular order.

A commenter remarked that it was hard to keep the scouts' names straight. I'll try to fix that in a future edition. For now, here's a list:

  • Keisha / Tariq -- former spymaster, retired after his legs were amputated.
  • Stephanie / ul-Kalsim -- Tariq' successor as spymaster, the head of this expedition.
  • Lauren / the Subtle One / Sumalm -- a wizard in the sultan's service, less powerful than the Grey One / Ms. G. but still formidable
  • Rae Nan / Tvalenn -- a camel-centaur and spy
  • Natalie / ul-Balimmu -- an ifrit, friendlier to humans than most ifrits; a friend of the Subtle One


Sometime not long after that, the perpetual novelty — one new and unfamiliar thing after another ever since she arrived in this female body and this strange world — finally became too much for Tariq. She was never afterward able to clearly remember the events of that evening between leaving the clothing-market and collapsing in exhaustion in her host’s bed, later that night. Vague images of inns, bazaars, and markets, sampling strange merchandise and tasting strange food and drink, loud eerie music, crowds of strangers in exotic dress, all tangled up in her mind and came back to her in bits and pieces over the next days and months.

Tariq woke the next morning to find a strange woman in his bed. It had been so long since he had been young and healthy enough to attract a woman to sleep with him that the pale hue of her skin and her yellow hair, or the strange surroundings, at first seemed no stranger than the idea that such a beautiful woman would share his bed... certainly he had been drunk last night, on something stronger than ordinary date-wine.

Then sensations from his changed body, and memories from yesterday, snapped into focus. She was Keisha, or wearing Keisha’s body, and this woman lying next to her was Stephanie — ul-Kalsim, his old protege, later his successor in office, his commanding officer for this mission. Had they...? Apparently not; she was fully dressed, wearing the same tunic and trousers she’d worn yesterday, although she or someone had taken off her shoes and loosened the waist-fastenings of her trousers. Stephanie was dressed as modestly as she had been yesterday, though that wasn’t saying much, but had apparently changed clothes before she fell asleep.

A pressure from her bladder induced Keisha to get up, trying not to wake Stephanie, and search the room for a chamber-pot. Not finding one right away, she remembered the curious water-filled chamber-pot in the clothing market, and wondered if it might be in a separate room. That turned out to be the case.

A little later she emerged from the bathroom after peeing, washing her hands, and experimenting with the knobs on the large bathtub. She met Natalie waiting outside the door and greeted her: “Good morning.” Natalie, looking bleary, went into the bathroom, not bothering to close the door behind her as she dropped her trousers and sat down. Keisha explored the place, finding Lauren and Rae Nan more or less asleep in another bed; Lauren blinked and looked up at her as she looked into the room, but didn’t say anything.

She remembered from the note yesterday that the original Keisha had said she was welcome to any of the food and drink in the apartment, except for the wine. She explored the kitchen and found a number of things to eat and drink, some of which did not require cooking — she had a vague memory of someone trying to explain the use of the automatic-but-not-magical cooking tools, but didn’t trust herself to experiment with them just now. While she was scrounging bread, cheese, raisins, and milk (kept cold in a marvelous cabinet), Natalie came into the kitchen, followed soon by Lauren, and eventually by Rae Nan and Stephanie.

They were mostly silent, preoccupied with their own thoughts, except for desultory “Good mornings.” Finally Stephanie said: “We need to compare notes about yesterday, and make plans for the next few days. Melanie said she would come here this morning to take us to the Science and Technology Museum — does anything know what that is?”

“It is a repository of lore,” Lauren said. “She seemed to think that we could learn there how the cars work, how the toilets and sinks make water flow without our having to work the pumps, and so on.”

“You’re absolutely sure it’s not magic?” Keisha asked.

“As certain as I can be. There was little magic in the place we first arrived, less in the downtown area where Melanie took us to eat and drink, and if there is any at all here, I cannot sense it. And as low as the ambient level of magic is, it isn’t being used at all, by anyone but the Gray One, and that only in the building where we first arrived.”

“Can you do anything with it?” Stephanie asked.

“Perhaps I could levitate something tiny, an ounce or two, if we return to that area near the Gray One’s office. I couldn’t do even that with the paltry level available downtown, and nothing here.”

“I can’t stand it!” Natalie burst out, rubbing her arms together. The others looked at her in surprise; tears were running down her cheeks. “I got more and more uncomfortable all yesterday evening, and then I felt okay when I slept, but now it’s worse than ever. I’m stuck in this form and I can’t change!”

“We’re all stuck in these bodies until six days have elapsed,” Stephanie said. “Is it really so bad...?”

“She is used to changing her form at least once or twice per day,” Lauren said sympathetically, and put a hand on her shoulder. “Shh, calm down. You’ll get accustomed to it within another day or two, I hope. I felt terribly uncomfortable being a woman at first, but this morning it doesn’t feel so strange.”

“Being a woman is nothing,” Natalie said. “I’ve been men and women, male and female dwarves and camel-centaurs and even merfolk. But having to stay in the same shape for six days! I don’t know if I can do it.”

“You must, therefore you can,” Lauren said. “We will be here to help you.”

Keisha put an arm around Natalie’s other shoulder and held her while she sobbed. Finally her tears gave out and she said, “Thank you. I’ll try to be calm.”

“Is there anything we need to do to get ready before Melanie arrives?” Keisha asked.

“We should change clothes,” Stephanie said. “Melanie said that people here wear different clothes every day, and different ones for sleeping. But you were too drunk to change clothes, so we just put you to bed in what you had on.”

“And we need to bathe, too,” Rae Nan said. “Melanie said people here bathe every day.”

“She said something about a ‘shower’, didn’t she?” Natalie said. “When she said that word I had a vague image of water falling from the sky, like rain, but indoors...”

“Oh!” Keisha said. “I was experimenting with the knobs on the bathtub, before you woke up, and I found that you can get water to fall on you from above. That must be the ‘shower’.”

Since Keisha had started eating first, and was already sated, the others let her have the bathroom first while they ate some more. She found clean clothes in the drawers and closets of her host’s bedroom and took them with her into the bathroom before taking off her clothes.

There was a full-length mirror on the back of the door, and she took a few moments to study and admire her reflection. Keisha was a good-looking woman, not among the most beautiful Tariq had ever seen, but more to his taste than most of the women he had seen here, such as Stephanie or Rae Nan with their pale skin and yellow hair. She gingerly felt of her breasts for a few moments, then ran her hands down her sides and rested them on her thighs... Suddenly she remembered the note from the original Keisha: “And don’t you dare have sex in my body.” Too much self-exploration would violate the spirit of that, if not the letter. She resolved to be circumspect.

Further inspection revealed that Keisha was a virgin. After that, she turned her attention to the knobs on the bathtub. Some little experimentation got a fine mist of deliciously hot water spraying from the upper faucet; she stood under it, luxuriating in the feel of it, for a long while, then took up the bar of soap and washcloth she’d found on the shelves of the tub and began scrubbing herself. There were several bottles, tricky at first to open, which seemed to contain scented liquid soaps of several different kinds; she tried a little of each before she finally rinsed off and fiddled with the knobs until the flow of water ceased. Before she managed to turn the water off, she momentarily made the flow go suddenly cold, and gave a yelp; another few moments of frantic turning of knobs and the water ceased. She shivered, and reached for a towel.

When she had dressed and came out of the bathroom, she found the others sitting on the chairs and couches of the front room, talking.

“— yes, how those things work is important,” Stephanie was saying. “But this place is so strange and different, we hardly know what questions to ask yet. I think after we look at this ‘Science and Technology Museum’, we should — Oh, Keisha, you’re done. Good. Who has the next bath?”

“I’ll go,” said Natalie.

“Here, let me show you what I figured out about the knobs and faucets...” Keisha led Natalie into the bathroom and demonstrated what she had figured out. Natalie looked on and nodded from time to time while she stripped off her clothes. Ifrits didn’t have much if any sense of modesty... Of course, Keisha was a woman too, and it was no great breach of propriety for her to see Natalie naked.

She closed the door behind her and returned to the front room. Lauren was saying:

“...that they don’t know anything about us — just the Gray One’s servants and his clients, the people he has sent as visitors to our world, and a few friends whom they’ve told about their travels. How many people is that? If the Gray One has been operating in the north for years before he appeared in our western foothills, he must have sent hundreds of people from one world to the other, but still knowledge of our world is not general here.”

“It’s probably related to the way they have so little magic and don’t use even that,” Rae Nan said. “We’ve always known there were other worlds, though only the greatest mages can travel to them or send people to them, but if they have little or no magic, perhaps they have no suspicion that other worlds exist?”

“That’s probably it,” Stephanie suggested. “Maybe we can ask Melanie. But be circumspect; we don’t want to reveal too much to her or the Gray One.”

Just then there was a knocking at the door. The scouts looked at one another.

“That’s probably Melanie,” Stephanie said, “but in case it’s not, either Lauren or Keisha should answer that, as they are the place’s proper residents.”

“I’ll do it,” Keisha said, and went to open the door.

It was Melanie.

“Good morning,” she said. “Are you guys ready —? No? Come on, it’s already eleven o’clock! I know you were kind of drunk last night, but...”

“I have showered,” Keisha said, standing aside to let Melanie in, “and Natalie is showering now. It is your custom to shower or bathe every day, is it not?”

“Yeah, you should all do that. Well, I’m getting paid the same to show you around or wait for you, so it doesn’t matter to me.” She sat down on the sofa next to Rae Nan. There was an awkward silence for a few moments.

“So, are you excited about today?” Melanie asked.

“Yes,” Keisha said with a smile. “Can you tell us some more about the ‘Science and Technology Museum’ before we go there?”

“Well, let’s see — where should I start? I suggested it because I remember, from when I went there on field trips in high school, seeing an exhibit that shows you how a car’s engine works. You wanted to know how they work, right? And they’ve got a lot of other exhibits like that, showing how different kinds of machine work. It’s not the best museum in the world for dinosaur skeletons or stuff like that, though we’ve got a few small ones, but the technology exhibits are pretty cool.”

“That sounds like what we want,” Lauren said. “Can you explain a couple of words, though?”

“Sure.”

“What are dinosaurs?”

“They’re kind of like your world’s dragons, except they don’t breathe fire, and they aren’t around any more — they all died out millions of years ago. And most of them didn’t fly, except for the pterodactyls.”

Lauren and Keisha were the only ones on the team who had ever seen a dragon, but the others were familiar with them from travelers' tales.

“Your world has a very long history,” Lauren said, “if you can remember things that happened millions of years ago. Our oldest histories tell us only of things that happened thirteen thousand years ago.”

“Oh, that’s not history, that’s — um — archeology? Or paleontology or some other ology — I told you I wasn’t a great student. Humans weren’t around yet when the dinosaurs lived, I know that much. We dug up their skeletons and somehow, maybe we’ll find out at the museum today, scientists figured out how long ago they lived. Our actual written history goes back — um, I’m not sure, at least three thousand years and probably longer, but I don’t think it’s anywhere near thirteen thousand years. Maybe we can go to the History Museum later in the week?”

Lauren and Stephanie looked at one another. “Let’s decide later,” Stephanie said.

Just then Natalie came out of the bathroom, naked, drying her hair with a towel. “Where’s that bag of clothes we brought for my host body?” she asked. “Oh, good morning, Melanie.”

Melanie was blushing bright red, something possible only for people with pale skin like many of the people here, or in the northern regions of Keisha’s world. She looked away from Natalie, as did Stephanie.

“The bags are there in the corner, remember?” Rae Nan said. Of course, as a camel-centaur, she wasn’t bothered by nudity any more than an ifrit.

“Oh, right.” Natalie squatted and looked at them, then opened a large pink bag and started pulling clothes out of it.

“When you talked about the dinosaurs, you said something about ‘our world’s dragons’ — does that mean you don’t have any dragons here?” Keisha asked, as much to distract Melanie from her embarrassment as out of curiosity.

“Right. No, we don’t have any dragons here, or a lot of other kinds of animal and plant and people that you have in your world. I think we have some animals that you don’t have, too, but it’s hard to be sure since I’ve only seen a few places in your world, the areas where Ms. G. has been operating the longest. I didn’t know your world had camels or cactus until a couple of weeks ago, when I was guide for some people from your country for the first time.”

“But there aren’t any speaking people here except for humans?”

“Right.”

“Just in this city, or in your whole world?” Rae Nan asked.

“On this whole planet, anyway — we aren’t sure about other planets.”

“What is a planet?” Lauren asked.

“Um... I’ll show you an exhibit at the museum that will explain it better than I can do in words.”

By then Natalie was dressed, but the others had gotten so busy asking questions and listening to Melanie’s answers that no one else had gotten in the shower. Finally Stephanie said she would take the next shower. Unlike Natalie, she gathered up a change of clean clothes from her host’s bag before she went into the bathroom, and later reminded Rae Nan and Lauren to do the same.

A while later, after everyone had showered and dressed to Melanie’s satisfaction, they all went out to the minivan and got in. The Science and Technology Museum was in a part of the city with fewer tall buildings than the downtown area, but more than the neighborhood around the Gray One’s office. The Museum itself was five stories high, and strangely curved, not rectangular like most of the other buildings here — or at home, for that matter.

They each paid a few green pieces of paper — Keisha vaguely remembered Melanie explaining about paper money last night — as they entered the museum. In the front hall there were two skeletons of strange creatures, not entirely unlike dragons, but without wings — the dinosaurs Melanie had told them about. Lauren wanted to stop and study them, and read all the placards describing them, but Stephanie insisted that they first study the part of the museum dedicated to showing how machines work.

“This way, then,” Melanie said, and led them down a hall to their left, lined with glass display cases containing a bewildering variety of things. This led to a larger room which contained several cars and parts of cars, on raised stands, or hung from the ceiling with strong cords, or mounted on the walls. Some of the cars were sliced down the middle, opened up to reveal their insides, not only the passenger compartment, but the hidden workings.

“Here you go,” Melanie said. “This will show you how a car engine works.” She led them to a large placard with a stylized diagram, vaguely resembling the real car engine they saw raised on a stand beside it, and a great many words describing the diagram. She pressed a red knob and a voice began speaking.

“An internal combustion engine works by burning an energy-dense fuel, such as gasoline, inside a combustion chamber...”


They spent several hours studying the internal combustion exhibit, listening to the invisible speaker repeat his account several times and watching lights glow in different parts of the diagram, comparing the diagram to the actual engines, one whole and one cut open to reveal its insides, that were displayed alongside the whole cars. Natalie grew bored with this and wandered off to explore other parts of the museum. Melanie seemed anxious not to let her out of her sight, and, exacting a promise from the others to stay in that room, followed her. Rae Nan grew bored as well, but stayed with the others.

After a while Melanie and Natalie returned. “Are you guys hungry?” Melanie asked.

“Yes,” Keisha said, and Rae Nan, who had sat down on a bench at the other end of the room some while ago, jumped up and said: “Yes, let’s eat.” Stephanie and Lauren reluctantly allowed that they could stand to eat something, as well.

“We could eat in the museum cafeteria,” Melanie said, “but I’d rather go out to one of the restaurants down the street. They’ll stamp our hands so we can get back in.”

They followed Melanie out the front door of the museum, pausing to let an attendant make an inky mark on the back of each of their hands, and along the sidewalk to a crosswalk. Keisha vaguely remembered Melanie showing them how the walk signals worked, sometime last night. They waited until the cars rushing past suddenly slowed and stopped, then followed Melanie across the street to a restaurant. This one didn’t serve wine or the stronger stuff Keisha had drunk last night, but it served exotic food, a spicy mix of meat and vegetables wrapped in flexible pieces of flatbread.

“I think I nearly understand how these cars‘ engines make them go without magic,” Lauren said. “That is, I understand how the fuel flows through the little pipes into the chambers where it burns, and the wind from the flames makes the gears spin and the wheels turn... It’s wonderfully clever. But there is much I don’t understand, such as how the engines are built — it must take a smith months or years of work to forge all those parts, and yet you have thousands of cars on the roads, driven by poor folk as well as rich... And what is this fuel that burns in the engine, this ’gasoline'?”

“Blacksmiths don’t make car engines,” Melanie said. “They’re made in factories. Each person makes one part, and other people put the parts together, and they all work at once, so they can make lots of engines and cars in a short time. And gasoline — maybe another part of the museum explains how it’s made. I know it’s made from oil, but I don’t understand the chemistry of it.”

Stephanie said, “I understand the basic principles, but there are so many details to remember... we’ll have to spend several days comparing our memories and writing down as much as we can, when we get home.”

“So you want to make your own cars?” Melanie asked. “Cool!”

Keisha and Stephanie glanced at each other. She’d figured out what they were up to — it wasn’t hard — but she seemed okay with it.

“Yes,” Stephanie said. “If it’s possible.”

“But why don’t you start with something simpler? Like trains?”

“Trains?”

“They’re like cars, but they go on rails, instead of open roads. And they use steam engines instead of internal combustion engines, or at least they used to when they were first invented; I think they’re simpler, with not as many tiny parts. And I think they just burned coal, or even wood — so you wouldn’t have to build refineries to turn oil into gasoline.”

“That sounds promising,” Keisha said. “Is there another room at the museum that shows how a steam engine works?”

“Sure.”

Keisha, Stephanie and Lauren spent the afternoon studying the model steam engine and the diagrams explaining its workings, while Melanie escorted Natalie and Rae Nan around other parts of the museum. After the museum closed for the day, Melanie asked if they wanted to go out to eat, or go see a movie — whatever that was — or just return to the apartment.

“When we go to the apartment, can you show us how to use the oven?” Keisha asked. “I looked at it but couldn’t figure out the knobs, and couldn’t find any firewood... Does it burn gasoline like the cars?”

“Not gasoline, no. I’m not sure if the one in your apartment uses electricity or gas — natural gas, I mean, not gasoline. And I’ll show you how to use the microwave as well, that’s easier and faster. Why don’t we do it now, and eat supper at your apartment? We can go out somewhere afterward, if you’re not too tired.”

Everyone agreed — most of them were strangely tired from their day at the museum, even though they hadn’t done much but walk around a little and stand in place a lot. On reaching the apartment, they gratefully took off their shoes and sprawled on the sofa and soft chairs in the front room for a while. Keisha followed Melanie into the kitchen, where they looked in the cold-cabinet — called a “refrigerator”; as Keisha expected by now, Melanie didn’t know how that worked either, except that it used “electricity,” the same thing that powered the lamps set into the ceilings of every building they’d seen. Melanie found and identified several foodstuffs, most of them unfamiliar to Keisha, though a few she had seen and tasted in her travels, that would be easy to cook using the “microwave” — a truly marvelous oven, which cooked in a small fraction of the time a wood-burning oven or stove would require.

“There are things you can’t do with it,” Melanie warned. “It’s no good for cooking eggs, for instance, or baking bread. And you have to be careful what sort of container you cook things in — only certain kinds of glass and ceramics are safe, metal will make it explode and plastic will melt and poison your food. But for the kinds of food it can cook, it’s the best thing since sliced bread.”

They ended up cooking some things in the microwave and others on the stove — which had coils of wire on top which became red-hot when you turned a knob — and served an eclectic but fairly tasty supper to the others after little more than half an hour. By the time everyone was sated, Natalie was anxious to get out and do something else, but most of the others were too tired to go anywhere.

“I’ll take her to a club, maybe,” Melanie said. “Or a movie — we’ll figure out where to go. Are you guys sure none of you want to come?”

“I’ll go,” Keisha said. She was a little tired, but she felt as though she hadn’t gotten as much use out of these wonderful healthy legs as she wanted to.



I'll probably post part four in about a week.

When Wasps Make Honey, the sequel to Wine Can't be Pressed into Grapes, is now available from Amazon in Kindle format and from Smashwords in EPUB format. See here for more information.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. An earlier version of this story was serialized on the morpheuscabinet and tg_fiction mailing lists in January 2013.

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Comments

This is terrific!

The "Stranger in a Strange Land" concept doubled (well, for most of them) is very nicely done, and the writing is crisp and well-crafted. Being a woman and a visitor to our world must be stressful. No wonder most of them were tired near the end! It's a little difficult remembering which woman holds the spirit of which "scout," but that's to be expected from such a large group.

Keep them coming, hon! Looking forward to more! *hugs*

Randa

I agree,

this is a very entertaining tale. Travelers from the future/past or from an alternative universe or from a differently advanced world will always be amazed by what we have here.

And vice versa.

T