Xone Of Contention Read Free Page A

marriage wouldn't be in trouble, because marriages never are.”
    This was surely sheer foolishness, but it was wickedly tempting. “I'd do it. if there were a way.”
    “I'm thinking there could be a way. With the right connection. If nobody objected.” She cocked her head "Do you think sixteen is too young?”
    He knew what was on her mind. “I was sixteen when I got together with Pia, and she was fifteen. A girl can be pretty mature at fifteen, and moreso thereafter."
    “For sure!” she agreed happily. “And Justin's not young at all. He's about ninety nine. I think.”
    He thought he had misheard. “Nineteen?”
    “Ninety nine,” she said carefully. “But he was a tree most of that time. I told you. But now he's been youthened to nineteen, so he'll be twenty one when I'm eighteen. We think that's about right. But he's got these grandfatherly reservations about things. You know, about touching girls. I figure if I can just get him safely alone for a week or so, I can bash down those barriers.” She glanced at him again. “Do you think so?”
    “Uh. that depends. If—”
    “Oh, right, you can't see the rest of me. Well, it's proportional. Especially when I take off my clothes.”
    She did have adult notions. As Pia had had, at that age. “Then if he's got the body of a nineteen year old male, and you're sixteen, and proportional, you should be able to handle him in about three minutes.”
    She laughed. “Yeah. That's what I figure. When I get the chance. Anyway, here's how: physical travel between Xanth and Mundania is difficult, unless you have a special pass. Oh, I mean you can do it, but you're liable to come out in some other time or place and be lost. But exchanging bodies—I think that's feasible.”
    “Exchanging bodies?” he asked somewhat blankly.
    “You're a bit slow on the uptake, aren't you,” she remarked without rancor. “If I switch with your wife, and you switch with Justin, then the two of you would be in Xanth. You'd be in our bodies, but you'd still be you. And you could do what you wanted to. So could we.”
    “Oh. Yes. That could be interesting ” In fact, as he considered it, it seemed more than interesting. If he could embrace Breanna, knowing it was really Pia, so he wasn't being unfaithful... His thought trailed into an ellipsis with a potentially infinite number of dots. Some of them were white dots, like Pia; some were brown, like Breanna.
    “So let's see about it. We'll need some magic to handle it, but I think I know whom to check with. I'll have to go out of the O-Xone a moment, though.”
    “What does the O stand for?”
    “Other. I think. Because UN neither here nor there. It's the interface between Xanth and Mundania, a halfway zone. I'm on duty because I remember some about Mundania. so can help folk like you, though we haven't been set up long and you're the first, and you're not even a Character.”
    “A what?”
    “A Character. Xanth folk come here to the O-Xone and pretend to be Mundanes, and I guess Mundanes try to pretend to be Xanthians, mostly in their X-Xone, and maybe soon they can meet halfway. When we get it organized. Sean's working on it.”
    “Who?”
    “Sean Baldwin. He's Mundane, but he's with Willow, who's Xanthian. She's a winged elf, actually. Sometimes he has to stay in Mundania, and she has to stay in Xanth, so they can't be together all the time, so they want a connection, and maybe this will be it.”
    Breanna tended to provide more information than he could assimilate immediately, but it did help some. He returned to basics. “This business of exchanging bodies—I'm still not sure exactly how that works.”
    “Yeah, I guess you ought to try it. Maybe you should step into a picture.”
    “Do what?”
    “Just walk on down to one of the scenes, and think yourself into it, and you'll get a sample. That's part of what the O-Xone is all about: sampling the other side. It'll give you a feel for it, though it's really