(Sorry for the delay: in retrospect I shouldn't have started this series right before a pair of back-to-back trips. Thanks for your patience.)
The Ork doesn't like being stuck in any cave, even one with a couple of humans in it for company, so he insists on exploring the dark tunnel at the back of the chamber. The team push their way through and eventually the tunnel ends — right in the middle of a tall cliff face overlooking a vast pitch-dark cavern. The Ork flies down to explore, and eventually ferries Trot and Cap'n Bill down to the cave floor, where they soon find another passage.
This all sounds a little familiar to anyone who's read Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz — a series of caves which serve as survival puzzles, house wacky wayside tribes, or contain groups of randomly hostile freaks. And where did Dorothy and the Wizard's underground adventures take place? Why, in a series of vast caverns deep under California — exactly where Trot and Cap'n Bill are wandering! Presumably, with a good hex map and careful record-keeping, the two of them might find the right passage leading to the Valley of the Gargoyles, or the vegetable people in their glass city, or the Vale of Voe with its invisible bears.
It strikes me that there's a ton of potential crossover material here. In fiction there's a surprisingly self-consistent depiction of underground civilizations in the western United States. H.P. Lovecraft's "revision" for Hazel Heald, "The Mound," describes an enormous underground cave civilization under Oklahoma, the sinister realm of K'n-Yan, which lies above the even nastier abyss of N'Kai. It certainly seems possible that the California caves are just an outlying part of the main realm of K'n-Yan.
A very similar subterranean phantom empire made a move against the surface world in 1935, sending masked "Thunder Riders" to wreak havoc. Fortunately for all surface-dwelling folk, singing cowboy Gene Autry was able to foil their schemes and inspire a rebellion among the oppressed subterranean proletariat, before going on to serve in the Air Corps in World War II.
And all of these underground dwellers are doubtless examples of the "Deros," or DEtrimental RObots, sadistic mutant beings who plague surface dwellers with thought projections, and occasionally kidnap them for horrid purposes. They're described at greater length in the writings of Richard Shaver, appearing in Amazing Stories in 1950.
Happily for Trot and Cap'n Bill, their journey does not lead them into the clutches of K'n-Yan or the Deros. Instead they march for hours through seemingly endless tunnels, as their very limited supply of food and candles shrinks alarmingly.
Eventually they find a shaft of daylight entering the dark tunnel, but it shines down a long vertical well. Fortunately the Ork's propellor tail has a thrust-to-weight ratio greater than 1, so he is able to fly up the narrow shaft carrying Trot and Cap'n Bill. They emerge in a lovely landscape near the sea. This new land has fruit trees and melon vines, which solves their logistical problems.
A bit of exploring establishes that they are on an island, but it isn't uninhabited. Trot spots a shed-like building and the two of them go to see who lives there. (The Ork has flown off as his feet are sore after so much walking in tunnels, and flying lets him rest them.)
The island's sole inhabitant is a little man with a long pointed beard. His name is Pessim, and he is "the Observer." As his name suggests, Pessim sees the worst in everything, and worries about imaginary dangers. Despite these qualifications he does not have a well-paid job at CNN. His relentless negativity soon grates on his visitors, especially Cap'n Bill.
Suddenly the three of them are plagued by what seems to be a large bee, buzzing about them and refusing to be driven away. Only when Trot gets a good look at it that they realize what it is: it's the Ork, only miniaturized somehow. Perched on Trot's shoulder the Ork explains what happened: as he was flying about the island he spotted a bush laden with lavender berries, and stopped to try one. Immediately he began to shrink, went in search of help.
The Observer finds this hilarious. He explains that the same thing happened to him when his neighbors exiled him to the island. He ate a lavender berry and shrank, but unlike the Ork he couldn't fly, so had to struggle along on the ground, dodging hungry wildlife. Eventually he decided to find another shrinking berry and reduce himself out of existence altogether. But the berries he found were dark purple rather than lavender, and restored him to full size.
After some difficulty they persuade Pessim to show where the dark purple berries grow, and the Ork is soon back to normal.
The three travelers stay on the island for a few days, until they can no longer stand Pessim's company. Unfortunately they don't have the tools to build a boat, and neither does the Observer. Then the Ork has a happy inspiration: use the lavender berries to reduce Trot and Cap'n Bill to a convenient size for him to carry, and then he will fly them off the island. They can bring along a few purple berries to get back to normal once they've crossed the sea.
This touches on something I've noticed in other Oz books: Baum likes to use his magical wonders as puzzle solutions. It's very reminiscent of how roleplaying game players think, especially in the early days of Dungeons & Dragons. I know that the Oz books are not listed in Gary Gygax's famous "Appendix N" of inspirational reading, but I have a strong suspicion that he read the Oz books as a child. Except for the lower body count (though the Oz books do have their share of violent mayhem) Baum's adventures could easily be products of the old TSR company.
With his miniaturized passengers the Ork flies across the sea, bypasses an island, and eventually lands on a mountain top (which to any modern air traveler sounds like a very bad place to choose). As soon as Trot and Cap'n Bill are back to full size again, they poke around the mountain and discover its sole resident: the Bumpy Man.
The Bumpy Man is called that because he is bumpy. Even his bumps have bumps. He is a Mountain Ear, which is to say, his job is to hear things and tell them to the volcanic mountain he lives on, thereby preventing it from erupting. After a jolly song he invites the travelers to stay for dinner. According to the Bumpy Man the travelers have arrived in the famous land of Mo, which they have never heard of. But he has never heard of California, either, so they're even.
Mo is a diabetic's nightmare of a country. All the food is candy — the Bumpy Man serves them molten molasses candy for dinner — and it rains lemonade rather than water. How anything survives in a land where the average ph is somewhere around that of stomach acid is never explained.
Somewhat stickily, our heroes go to sleep.
Next Time: Adventures!
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