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Then the fissure closed, trapping her. This must have happened at the same time as your stork sought an alternate couple to deliver your baby to. Only the stork returned just before the fissure closed. So it must have been the same Xanth.”
    “The fissure closed,” Surprise said slowly. “How then do we go there, to rescue either the Simurgh or my baby?”
    “That is where it gets complicated. It seems that there is a way to travel between realities, but it has not been used before, because there is no control over which realities connect. Now we must use it. The storks have the secret; the Stork Works connect to all realities, so they can deliver anywhere. The problem will be locating the right reality.”
    “Out of a small infinity,” she said. “That sounds difficult.”
    “Difficult and dangerous,” he agreed. “We run the risk of getting lost ourselves, and being similarly trapped away from our own Xanth. We also run the risk of encountering something lethal. There is a smell of something ugly here, but we don't know what it is. That is why the Good Magician tried to discourage you. He knows you could lose much more than your baby.”
    Surprise fastened on something else. “An alternate couple for my baby. I thought the storks were exceedingly choosy. Mine was; it balked on a mistake about my age. How could he just deliver my baby to just any other couple?”
    “He couldn't,” Che agreed. “He would have to find the next closest couple, in a hurry, because storks have tight schedules. That must have been one beyond the fissure.”
    “What, an ogre and unicorn?” she demanded bitterly.
    Che laughed, briefly. “By no means. It would have to be an alternate Surprise and Umlaut couple who lacked a baby.”
    “Another us?” Somehow that aspect hadn't sunk in before.
    “Yes. The fissure must have made that possible just when the stork needed to place the baby, so he didn't need to return it to the Stork Works and trigger an investigation. A remarkable coincidence.”
    “A remarkable foul-up!” she said. “He didn't even wait for me to get the record corrected.” Then she realized there was something else. “When you say 'remarkable coincidence,' that's not exactly what you mean, is it?”
    “True. I tend to question remarkable coincidences.”
    “Please, I'm not nearly as smart as you are. Tell me in plain language.”
    He sighed. “I dislike being unkind. But the unusual nature of the coincidence, and the seriousness with which the Good Magician is taking it, suggests to me that this was not sheer chance. I suspect someone deliberately stole your baby. That is why it is apt to be difficult to recover it. You will not be able simply to clarify the error and get it back. You may encounter opposition. Someone might try to do you harm, rather than yield your baby.”
    Surprise felt a chill. Indeed, Humfrey's attitude was making ugly sense. Steal a baby, and if the mother was bothersome, get rid of her. She might indeed lose more than her baby.
    Still, she persisted. “If my baby went to an alternate Surprise and Umaut, how could they hurt me? They would have to be like us, and we wouldn't hurt them.”
    “And of course they wouldn't try to steal your baby,” he agreed. “That is why I suspect some malign influence.”
    “What could there be? We're just an ordinary couple. Who would care about us?”
    Che glanced sidelong at her. “You are hardly ordinary, Surprise. You were delivered five years late, with a truly remarkable talent barely shy of Sorceress caliber. Umlaut did not even exist; he was a temporary construct made to facilitate a Demon wager. You with remarkable bravery put your very soul on the line to enable him to become real. Now he has half your soul, on loan from the Demon Jupiter, and you have the other half, parked in you by the Demoness Fornax for convenience. Things were all up in a heaval before the Demons decided on that compromise.”
    “Well, since then we've been pretty