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    joke? "Uh—"
     
    She looked at him, comprehension coming. "Yukon
    tundra stammer eater?"
     
    "I can't understand you either," he agreed. Then did a
    doubletake. He had understood her—in a way!
     
    "Mafia theist Monday error!" she exclaimed.
     
    Grey shook his head; she had lost him again.
     
    "Buttery cookie unstable yodel fourteen?" she demanded.
     
    "I don't know—I just don't know! Something happened,
    and suddenly we can't communicate. It's almost as if a trans-
    lator were turned off—"
     
    He did a second double take. Turned off? Could his
    computer have anything to do with this?
     
    "Pardon me," he said, and hurried back to his room.
     
    He turned on the computer. It took a few seconds to
    warm up; then the screen lighted.
     
    RY, it concluded. He remembered: it had been in the
    process of telling him he'd be sorry.
     
    "Is this your mischief. Sending?" he demanded.
     
    I TOLD YOU NOT TO TURN ME OFF. THE MISCHIEF IS
    YOURS.
     
    ' 'That's Com-Pewter!'' Ivy exclaimed at the door.
     
    "You know this machine?" Grey asked. Then: "You're
    talking my language again!"
     
    "You're not talking gibberish anymore!" she agreed.
    "I can understand you again!"
     
    "What's this about the computer?" he asked. "Do you
    know about computers?"
     
    "Com-Pewter is an evil conniving machine," she said.
    "He rewrites reality to suit himself. If you're in his
    clutches—"
     
    "I'm not in anyone's clutches!" Then he reconsidered. That
    chain of girls, starting with Agenda and ending with Ivy her-
    self—the Sending program had been responsible! When he
    turned it off, he could no longer talk with Ivy. Obviously there
    was a connection. "We'd better talk," he said.
     
    "Yes," she agreed quickly. "But not here!"
     
    "Not while this thing is listening!" he said. He reached
    to turn it off, but hesitated. They couldn't talk, if they
    spoke gibberish to each other!
     
    So he left the computer on, and went to her room. Ob-
    viously that wasn't beyond the machine's range, because
    its translation still worked, but maybe it couldn't actually
    eavesdrop on what they were saying.
     
    "Now I'm not sure where we are," Ivy said. "If this
    is Mundania, we shouldn't be able to understand each
    other, and that happened for a while, but magic doesn't
    work in Mundania either, and it takes magic to make
    Mundane speech intelligible. So if there's magic—"
     
    "I have this funny program," Grey said. "It talks to
    me without my having to type in—well, anyway, I don't
    think it's magic, but—"
     
    "Program?"
     
    "It's a set of instructions for the computer. It's called
    Sending, and it—well, that computer hasn't been the same
    since. It does things it never did before, couldn't do be-
    fore, and it seems, well, alive. It—1, uh, wanted a girl-
    friend, and—"
     
    "And it brought me?" she asked.
     
    For a moment he feared she was offended, but then she
    smiled. "It brought you," he agreed.
     
    "But it was the Heaven Cent that brought me here."
     
    "Maybe the computer knew you were coming."
     
    "Maybe. But Com-Pewter doesn't hesitate to rewrite
    events to his purpose. Are you sure the Good Magician
    isn't here?"
     
    "This is Mundania! No magicians here." But then he
    remembered Sending, and wasn't sure.
     
    "Humfrey could be here, but then he couldn't do magic.
    He would look like a small, gnomelike old man. His wife's
    tall and—" She made motions with her hands.
     
    "Statuesque?"
     
    "And his son Hugo, my friend—"
     
    Grey felt a shiver, not pleasant. "Your friend?"
     
    ' 'From childhood. We were great companions. But we were
    already growing apart, and for the last seven years I haven't
     
     
     
     
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    Man from Mundania
     
    Man from Mundania
     
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    seen him at all, of course. But I'm sure none of them are
    happy, if they're stuck in Mundania. So if they are here—"
     
    "I haven't seen any people like that. But of course I
    don't know many people in the city."
     
    "Either they are here and