Non yelped in surprise, blocking with Icosian. Picoid clung to Non’s back as Ico took the portal.

  Half a minute of running and blocking later, Non reached the mountaintop and closed the portal, leaving Mama Eagle behind as Papa Eagle attacked. Backing from the aerie calmed the angry bird slightly. The sheer cliff on one side limited movement options.

  Non opened another portal, then backed through it while holding the eagle off. Ico leaped through. Next to a Radio & Telegram building, he caught his breath after the eagle attack.

  A shotgun loaded behind him. “Identify Yourself NOW!”

  “I’m Non Sequitur, a GCC agent!”

  “A mountain hopper. You picked the wrong one! Where were you planning next? Point!”

  Non pointed to another mountaintop.

  “Wrong! Restricted! Check your portal maps, agent! Point to the nearer one on the right. Yes, that’s the one. Now GO! Check your map next time.”

  Without even looking back, Non and Ico stepped to the next indicated mountain and closed the portal. Immediately, something big grabbed his neck and yanked him to the side, holding him off-balance.

  “Non! Last Refuge predicted you’d arrive here around now. I’ve got your belt.”

  Non turned to look at the centaur, then the girth belt. “Uh, looks great, Yoke. Am I going to get beat up again?” He struggled to calm himself after the series of surprises.

  Yoke laughed. “You’re half stitches and staples. We can spar when you’ve healed up.”

  Non reached for the belt. “Thanks for getting this for me, Yoke.”

  Yoke did not release. “Bearwarden paid for this, Non. You didn’t make this delivery easy for me. He appreciates that you helped in the impactor event. I’ll put it on you.”

  Non strived to appear jovial and thankful as Yoke tightened too much, then loosened, until the new surcingle snuggly wrapped Non’s girth. “This is great, Yoke.”

  “Bearwarden’s money. There’s also a matching torso belt if you want it, and a martingale.”

  “I’ll take it all, Yoke. And thanks for being a friend of my father.”

  Yoke added the extra tack. “I caught up with your dad, Non. Lagen told me how careless you’ve been. I feel sorry for both of you. How’d he get stuck with Grassleaf’s kid? Which reminds me: Last Refuge approves, but advises caution. There, try walking with it.”

  Non looked at his new gear, then walked. Ico sniffed at it. “I like it.”

  “I’m done here, then. Can you give me a portal to that mountain?”

  A check in the Enchiridion revealed a map of approved high elevation portal zones. “It’ll cost me twelve planck, Yoke, but sure.”

  “There’s a cost?” Yoke considered the distance and then pulled out coins. “You’d cover this? I’ll add it to expenditures, but enough for me to think about it. Here’s twenty.”

  Non accepted the golden coin. “Great power comes with a big pricetag. Hours after you beat me up, I paid my last year of savings to get hit by a train.”

  After sending Yoke on his way, Non plotted a route to the sod farm. A portal could save him 40 minutes, but Non chose to walk.

  From Non’s shoulder, Picoid watched the mountain scrub. “Remember when we left Swee?”

  “Yeah, you told me about the Clove War then.”

  “That was the last time we had relative privacy. It seems we’re a quintette now.”

  “You, me, Tycho, Ico, Coronis. A quintette. Our alone time includes train chasing, sewers and a shower. I feel fine being alone with you, for what it’s worth.”

  Picoid ate a bug that took too much interest in Non’s neck. “Anything you’ve been putting off?”

  Ico ran and barked, daring Non to keep up.

  “Good question. Ico, you’re on.” They began a vector-enhanced acrobatic mountain descent. Having the badge on a girth belt helped. Picoid took to the air to join the race.

  Non and Ico traded the lead until they approached the second sign, framed by a woodpecker’s wing.

  Mycology Park. Warden Husseia. Danger Zone! Stay on the grass or road.

  “When in doubt, look it up. Anna Maria Hussey, author of Illustrations of British Mycology. A friend of Darwin. The Audubon of fungi. I hope she’s not right here listening.”

  Picoid flew up to a dying tree with dozens of mushrooms growing on it. “This one is packed with bugs.”

  Non walked past the sign, then knelt to uproot and munch dandelions. He spread out his new glockenspiel keys on the lush grass and deftly tapped out Powerhouse. Picoid added fancy raps to access grubs while Ico howled.

  Non laughed. “I’d say that’s pretty good.”

  The fun ended as a bobcat scaled the woodpecker’s tree. Fearfully, Picoid flew back to Non’s shoulder. The bobcat screamed with annoyance as Non stowed his keys and stood, Ico barking on his back.

  After backing away, Non sent up his d120 to maintain a zone of awareness. Colored marks prioritized items in the fungoid forest. Two green dots got grabbed as snacks: a fried chicken mushroom and a shiitake. Ico, the ever-curious pup, jumped down to investigate a colossal maroon flower. Non noted a putrid odor akin to rotting flesh that attracted flies and perhaps canines.

  “No on the stinky plant, Ico, give it a wide berth. Sophis, do I have upgrade options I’ve missed?”

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  While mulling over those choices, he indulged in the local edibles. A nutty saffron milkcap here, a peppery chanterelle there. The black trumpet had a wonderful smokey flavor.

  “I like all of these. Straw Man helps False Impression with moving, walking figures. Gambler’s Fallacy suggests favorable simulations for Appeal to Probability. Polymath doesn’t fit my fallacy theme, but I’d love to have it. Moving the Goalposts looks tremendously useful.”

  Life teemed in the fungal jungle. Insects buzzed in the air, while rustling leaves and the occasional snap of a twig kept them alert. A vibrant array of fungi sprouted from every crevice and fallen log.

  “Could I make a suggestion?” asked Picoid.

  “Of course! You’re my top tier advisor.”

  Picoid yelled “Look out for the canines!” and wing-pointed. Non turned to face the sudden pack attack.

  Non blinked the screen away to see the nine mushers attacking him, then used his arms and hooves to swat three leaping beasts out of the air. After the initial attack, the canines maneuvered to surround Non, who positioned a tree behind himself. A cloud of flies and stinking spores added to the chaos. Non spun Icosian on his left, acting with the tree to guard two sides of a triangle around him.

  “Keep that spinning there.” Non threw and guided his die into the pack leader’s mouth, then forced the beast back as he kicked or punched away mushers getting too close. Another musher tried jumping through the whirr of the spinning staff and landed several meters away.

  “Do not provoke me!” Non kept his composure despite his exposure.

  Barks changed to whines as Non stood firm. Ico returned barks, ready to jump from Non’s back.

  The mushers retreated as suddenly as they first attacked.

  Non looked for other threats. “I recall why I avoid danger zones. Everyone okay?”

  “I panicked, but I’m better now. May I borrow your badge while I try some fungi?”

  The Badge stayed in Picoid’s proximity while the Die stayed above Ico. Non reviewed Musher information to ensure a basket fungus wouldn’t grow out his head due to spores, then rechecked for Ico. Once the hiking trail seemed safe, he returned to character development.

  “If you get Straw Man I can run that for you. Also, I’m reading notes from Andromeda Traveler. Moving the Goalposts would have exposed this secret task.”

  Non tried his Raiders Arnold Toht barfight impression. “Get them. Get them both.”

  An eerie sound unnerved Non. He consulted the color-coded dots overlaid on the fungal jungle before them. Ico pointed left to a red dot creature.

  “Avoid these.” The more Non looked, the more his map filled with red dots. Picoid’s vision and Ico’s sense of smell added more. He plotted a new trail to avoid the red dots. “For the heck of it, Picoid, set up a small animal simulacrum for them to attack.”

  Seven surprise formians in hiding soon took out the fake rabbit Picoid sent in.

  “No, no, no on that quest. Let’s get out of here.” Non allowed uninteresting dots to direct his path.

  Picoid shoulder-landed. “The exit has a wash area. Then forest and farms before the sod farm.”

  A teen ratgirl waited at a geodesic house shaped like a sculpted puffball. “Did you want a free antifungal wash, sir? I like your bird and dog. You’re pretty, too. It’s not painful, just a mist.” She lifted the pressure washer.

  “Please go ahead.” He raised his arms as the ratgirl started. “May I take a puffball with me?”

  “Sorry, no. But if you continue on through the quaking aspen, you’ll easily find other puffballs.”

  The equitaur let the mist soak everywhere on himself, his items and his two companions. “Thank you, I appreciate it. Is the aspen forest one of those clonal things?”

  “Yes it is!” said the ratgirl. “Estimated ten kilotons and twenty thousand years old.”

  While walking through the forest of gray trees, Non stacked his saddlebags over the lacrosse scoop over his floating badge and finally over Ico, then started looking surreal and split into pieces.

  “You should practice your abilities,” said Picoid, watching from a branch. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”

  “I’m practicing. Coronis has my body surface in fine detail. Masked Man lets me change my pattern to things like aspen trunks. False Impression offers up to twelve simple surfaces to work with. Straw Man gives me a doppelg?nger. Measurability tracks the location of every tree for me. Perspective improves all of those and tracks your location. Coordination Sequence and Combination keeps them working fluidly together. And my portals, the Window of Opportunity, lets me add to the chaos. Have you ever seen a piece of surreal art named Blank Signature? Coronis is helping me.”

  “I can look it up. René Magritte, the artist that did The Treachery of Images AKA This is not a Pipe. Your BS piece has a lady riding a horse through trees, but with weird gaps. You’ve definitely got some weird gaps there. If I was a sniper, I think I’d hit a tree. ”

  Non waved to himself, who waved back. One of them picked up a puffball.

  “Don’t fire until you see the blue of his eyes,” mused Picoid. “I’ll go scout out that sod farm.”

  Picoid alighted next to a damaged arrow with black fletching, its head missing. A nearby daisy served as a measure of scale.

  Reconnaissance counted twelve snipers around a manor, either on the roof or amidst the shade trees. Non pondered his latest map after caching the stash of drugs.

  “An idea for you, Non. You’ve hidden the drugs just two kilometers from the farm. How about letting them know? Send your badge with a map to knock on the door.”

  “All the world’s an approach stage, and the snipers and schemers are merely players. We won’t do anything blind until we know the mastermind. Do you see any pitfalls in my plan? Screens here, portals there to misdirect shots. Can you calculate the odds of pulling off each exit and entrance?”

  “And… I’m dead. Let’s try for alive.” Over twenty minutes, Non refined his strategy, tweaking positions and timings. His possibilities against posse abilities gradually improved until the simulation’s predicted outcome showed survival. He tried his best plans in a 3D traincar simulator.

  Picoid, projecting from a virtual tree, interjected. “Your strategy might work. But let’s not lose sight of the bigger picture. You’re a courier for the same cutthroat hydra-heads responsible for this chaos. Can’t we skirt around the sod farm and aim directly for either Labyrinth Books or Cecrops Chops?”

  Data streams shifted in the simulation. “That’s not how Quid Pro Quo operates.”

  Picoid retorted immediately, his voice carrying an undercurrent of glee. “Aha! The Appeal to Tradition fallacy! Argumentum ad antiquitatem. It’s all there, black and white, clear as crystal. Your argument is unsound and you know it!”

  Non’s ears fell. He had no counterpoint. “Alright... What do you suggest then?”

  Picoid pointed to Non’s newest ability. “I asked Ariesta to make adjustments.”