The Garbage Chronicles Page 26

  “You didn’t mention that before. I thought Abercrombie was the prince’s concern.”

  “I’ve been thinking about it. I’ll probably never see my ship again, meaning there’s no way to return to Earth. I was called a patriot once. That’s what some folks said, anyway. There was a Colonel Peebles, though. He criticized me for making independent decisions. So I hit him in the face. I hit a lot of people in the face.”

  “And you want the honor back?”

  “Sure. Wouldn’t anyone?”

  “I wonder if it’s worth the danger,” she said.

  “I don’t know,” Javik said. “All I know is I have to do it.”

  They fell silent.

  Presently the ground became soft and moist, and the travelers made impressions in the soil as they walked. Javik heard and felt the suction of his heels as he lifted them to make each step. The red top of an AmFed garbage cannister was visible in deep mud off the trail to their left.

  Wizzy dropped from the treetops now, gliding gracefully across the path in front of Javik. “End of the forest,” Wizzy called out. Then he raced ahead along the path, disappearing over the crest of a little hill.

  Prince Pineapple followed Wizzy, showing his broken helicopter beanie last as he too disappeared over the hill.

  Javik was next to reach the crest. Here the sunlight was much stronger, with only a few slender trees on each side. At the bottom of a little hill a great swampy area stretched as far as he could see. He smelled decaying vegetation. Patches of brackish, green moss and other plants floated in the dark water. Skirting the edge of the water, tangled bushes seemed shadowy and threatening, even in full sunlight.

  “Bottomless Bog,” Prince Pineapple said, looking back at Javik.

  As Rebo caught up, a mosquito buzzed in Javik’s ear. He swatted it away.

  Bottomless Bog was a stupefying thing, appearing every bit as wide as the great Dusty Desert. But the bog seemed even more foreboding. It was dark, dank, and mysterious.

  Wizzy flew back and buzzed nervously near Javik’s ear. Thinking he was another mosquito, Javik nearly cuffed him, withdrawing his hand just in time.

  A slender, straight line ran down the center of the bog. Prince Pineapple identified this, saying, “According to legend, that is a single log. In ancient times, trees grew in the area now comprising the bog, trees which were as high as these cliffs.” He looked up.

  High, polished cliffs stood on two sides of the bog, reflecting the bog’s dark surface on their mirror faces. The cliff tops were immersed in clouds, extending so far up that Javik could not see how high they were.

  “And how deep is the bog?” Wizzy asked:

  “Bottomless,” Prince Pineapple said.

  Wizzy cast a fearful cat’s eye gaze at the bog. “Bottomless?” he said. “But it looks shallow.”

  “It isn’t,” Prince Pineapple said.

  “Just a minor obstacle, Wizzy,” Javik said, sneering. “Remember your philosophy. Find happiness in each situation.”

  Wizzy glowed an embarrassed shade of red.

  “I wonder if we could go around,” Javik said, swatting another mosquito. He looked at Wizzy, adding, “You’re energetic today. Fly around those cliffs and see if there’s a way for us.”

  “Are you kidding?” Wizzy said. “I’m beat now. Maybe tomorrow.”

  Scowling, Javik said, “If you hadn’t played in the forest all day, you might be able to make yourself useful.”

  “I’m not at your bidding!”

  That’s telling him! Prince Pineapple thought.

  “Let’s have a look at that scroll,” Javik snapped, glancing at the prince.

  Slowly, Prince Pineapple brought forth the Sacred Scroll of Cork from under his coat. He extended it to Javik.

  “Come on,” Javik said. “Don’t play games with me.”

  “Games?” Prince Pineapple asked.

  “Reach back in your coat and get me the scroll.”

  “It’s here. In my hands.”

  Javik’s eyes flared angrily. Then a look of shock crossed his face. “I don’t see it,” he said. His fingers darted forward and touched an unseen parchment held by the prince. “I can’t see the damned thing anymore!”

  “Nor can I,” Namaba said. She looked at Rebo.

  “Nothing there,” Rebo said.

  Prince Pineapple thought for a moment, then said, “We have all recharged now. Lord Abercrombie’s spell is on each of us.”

  “I can see the scroll,” Wizzy said sassily. “And I’ll read it to you, Captain Tom . . . if I so choose.”

  “You’ll read it,” Javik said. “Remember what papa said.”

  “Spread it open,” Wizzy snapped.

  Javik and Prince Pineapple held the scroll open, deciding not to place it on the moist ground. Wizzy hovered in front of it, his yellow cat’s eye slanted at something no one else could see. “Uh huh,” Wizzy said. “Uh huh.”

  “What does it say?” Prince Pineapple asked anxiously.

  “We have to cross the log. No way around, according to a specific notation. An unnamed meadow is shown on the other side. Then we must pass between two white cliffs. At this point the scroll is marked ‘Moha.’”

  “Nothing on what Moha is?” Prince Pineapple asked.

  “I looked for that when I could see the scroll,” Javik said. “There’s no detail at all.”

  “Beyond Moha,” Wizzy said, “it’s only a short distance to the Dimensional Tunnel. It’s adjacent to the Magician’s Chamber entrance.”

  “We’d better start across,” Prince Pineapple said. He tugged at the scroll.

  Javik considered keeping it, but had another thought and released it. No sense antagonizing him unnecessarily, Javik thought.

  “Be careful with my nutrient kit as you cross the log, Captain Javik,” Prince Pineapple said. He placed the scroll back in its carrying place beneath his orange vari-temp coat. “If you lose it, all of us except for Wizzy will perish. That includes your girlfriend.”

  Javik nodded, pursing his lips. “Lead on,” he said, pointing toward the log.

  Prince Pineapple reached a flat-stone-covered path leading down to the point where the log touched the shore. Decaying moss clung to the sides of the log and floated in the water. Jumping on the log, Prince Pineapple looked back and said, “No rhymes, please! Can’t afford a backflip here.” He started across the log, unable to see the opposite shore.

  Just as Javik reached the log, a thick swarm of mosquitoes surrounded him. He fought them off, but they were persistent. He felt his skin swell on the back of his neck and on his forehead.

  “Goddamn bugs,” Javik said. He fumbled in his pack. “And no repellent here!”

  “They don’t seem to bother Rebo or me,” Namaba said. She was just behind Javik, and helped him swat the mosquitoes. “Our skin is pretty tough.”

  When the mosquitoes had eaten their fill of Javik, they flew off, skipping across the murky water. To Javik, they seemed gleeful as they left, frolicking away on full stomachs.

  Namaba tested the log with her forepaw. The log didn’t move.

  Behind her on the shore, Rebo asked, “You okay?”

  “I think so,” she said. “It seems sturdy enough.” She stepped on it carefully, balancing her two rear paws on the wide surface of the log. Then she took a little hop forward, pulling with her forepaw and pushing with both hindpaws.

  “Watch for patches of moss,” Prince Pineapple said, glancing back. “The wet stuff is slick.” He was several meters ahead, moving cautiously.

  Wizzy waited until last. Hesitantly he scooted along the log behind Rebo, just millimeters above the surface.

  “Whatsamatter, Wizzy?” Javik called back, seeing Wizzy’s trepidation. “You don’t seem so chipper anymore.”

  “Don’t tease him,” Namaba said. She smelled stagnant water.

  “Mind your own business!” Wizzy screeched. He had a funny feeling as he followed the others. Something was wrong in this place. Terribly
wrong.

  “Perfect!” Lord Abercrombie said, brushing dirt off his half body as he left the Soil Immersion Chamber. “Now let’s try a nice little earthquake in Sector 114!”

  Not taking time to dry-shower, Lord Abercrombie used his wardrobe ring to dress while he floated on air through the labyrinth of passageways. Following the circuitous route known only to him, he arrived presently in the Disaster Control Room. There he saw meckies working on one of the computer terminals. Parts were strewn on the floor.

  “Just needs a minor adjustment,” a silver meckie reported, his voice a less-than-reassuring mechanical whine. “Nothing to worry about.”

  “Hurry,” Lord Abercrombie said. “They’re crossing Bottomless Bog. The end of my fleshy self is near, he thought. This would be a nice way to go out.

  “Another hour at most,” a gold-plated female meckie said. “We’ll finish in plenty of time.”

  Lord Abercrombie floated around the room nervously while the meckies continued their work. He knew it would take all the remaining hours of daylight for Prince Pineapple and his group to cross the bog—at least five to six hours. I’ll drown that motley bunch in the bog, he thought. Then tomorrow, before my permanent soil-immersion, a nice quake-induced rockslide to bury the Vegetable army on the trail.

  King Corker’s open French brocade carriage sped along Avenida Seven in bright afternoon sunlight, pulled by one hundred of the strongest carrot men in the realm. The king was late for the games. He sucked impatiently on his grain alcohol tube.

  “Faster!” the king yelled, his voice a drunken gargle.

  The white-suited cantaloupe coachman cracked his whip over the blinder-fitted carrot man team, urging them to greater speed.

  Snap! Snap!

  Now the coachman brought his whip arm way back to get a good lick at the team. The tip of the whip caught King Corker’s backpack tube as he sat in the rear, pulling the tube right out of his mouth.

  “Fool!” King Corker yelled.

  The coachman glanced back nervously as the coach took an exit leading to Corker Stadium. “Sorry, Your Majesty,” he said.

  King Corker rubbed a sore upper lip. He muttered angrily, glaring at the crowd as his coach entered the stadium. The crowd roared their support for his royal personage.

  “Whoah!” the coachman bellowed, hauling back on the reins. The coach screeched to a stop in front of the flag-draped royal box.

  Two watermelon man aides ran forward. They helped King Corker down.

  “Damn fool driver!” King Corker said as he was escorted to his box seat. He pulled his backpack tube forward to look at it. The tube was bent. “Get this pack off me,” he ordered, refusing to sit down. “And bring me another.” One aide removed the royal alcohol pack while the other ran for a new one. “My driver did it,” King Corker fumed. “With his infernal whip.”

  “Shall we tweak his nose, Sire?” the aide asked.

  King Corker considered this while the other aide fitted him with a replacement pack. “Yes,” the king said. “Then twist his ears. And don’t forget to cut five centimeters off his nutrient cord. He won’t be so careless again.”

  As the king took his seat, he saw a bright flash on the horizon, beyond the gray concrete fighter car track. Realizing it was a comet, King Corker felt his heart palpitate. His breath became short. He took a deep breath, feeling his heart pounding wildly.

  The comet’s nucleus was bright red, the color of Earthian blood. It had a threadlike, golden tail that stretched across the sky.

  “Bad omen,” a woman said behind King Corker. She was a member of the royal court.

  Others in the stands whispered nervously, concealing their words from the king’s ears.

  King Corker knew what they were saying. A comet like that always brought evil tidings, often portending the death of a king. He watched the comet swing wide and then speed away. It disappeared below the horizon.

  King Corker lifted one arm weakly, signifying that the games were to begin. A bright blue starter Hare flashed over the track, in line with the last sighted position of the comet’s nucleus.

  Seeing the flare, Marta Evans hit the red super-accelerator toggle on her dashboard. Her pink and black fighter car sped down the ramp of the Wommo auto carrier, bumping as it hit the pavement. It was a hot afternoon.

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw a blue and black enemy fighter car running with her on the parallel track. Two hundred fifty meters ahead, the simmering tracks merged. She had played this Earth game six times now, with six enemy kills.

  I’m good, she thought. Damned good! She licked her lips, anticipating how good the toasties would taste at their evening orgy. She tasted perspiration salt on her lips.

  Her car shook.

  “Piece of crap car,” she muttered. “It’s not steering right.”

  She noticed ripples in the pavement ahead. Her car dipped and rose, screeching as its underside slammed into each peak and valley.

  Earthquake! she thought. Instinctively, she hit the brakes.

  But before her car could slow appreciably, she and the parallel car arrived at the merge point simultaneously. They exploded in pink and blue balls of flame. Two glowing toasties shot skyward. Then white parachutes flowered, supporting the toasties as they dropped to Cork.

  In his earthquake-damaged royal box, King Corker pulled himself out of a heap of rubble. Large portions of the grandstand had been destroyed, and his subjects cried out in pain from wherever they lay. One of the king’s watermelon man aides lay on his face nearby, mortally wounded. He had been split asunder, and his black seeds were all over the place. The other aide was nowhere in sight. Survivors streamed out of the stands, running wildly to get away from the stadium.

  Having remained in the Disaster Control Room for the earthquake, Lord Abercrombie saw the results flash across a digital CRT screen. “Oh, no!” he moaned. “We hit the wrong sector! We’re wiping out our allies!”

  “We’re sorry, Lord Abercrombie,” the meckies said in unison. They milled around nervously, awaiting an outburst from their lord.

  “It’s not entirely your fault,” Lord Abercrombie said, feeling compassion for the dented and scratched meckies who had tried so hard for him. “If only I had decent equipment!”

  “Do you think the monopoles did it?” one of the meckies asked.

  “How the hell do I know?” Lord Abercrombie said. He bemoaned his misfortunes for a full five minutes, then recalled his decision to soil-immerse himself in the Realm of Magic the following day. It was beginning to look like a very wise decision.

  Wanting a last fling in the Realm of Flesh, Lord Abercrombie set his loyal meckies to work yet another time. They worked feverishly, searching for that precise combination of tachyon laser signals that would shake Bottomless Bog.

  Fifteen minutes later a meckie reported a tremor in Sector 221, a region five hundred kilometers from the bog. “Strength zero point two three, Sandlin scale,” the meckie said.

  “That’s closer,” Lord Abercrombie said, heartened. “Not very large, though. Try again. Stronger and closer.”

  The next quake was ten times as powerful. Unfortunately, it was also ten times as far away.

  “Keep trying,” Lord Abercrombie urged. “We’ve got it going now, and I’ll shake the whole planet if I have to.” He wondered how long the aging equipment would hold together—machinery that had been knocked down on Earth, containerized, and catapulted across an entire universe.

  But fortune smiled on Lord Abercrombie this time. A sizable tremor shook Bottomless Bog. Prince Pineapple was less than fifty meters from shore when he felt the log move. Looking back, he saw ripples rolling across the dark water, hurling themselves against the log. The log was quite narrow at this point, having tapered significantly.

  “Look out!” Wizzy squealed. “Waves!” Feeling too weary to fly, he dropped to the surface of the log and held on with magic suction.

  Frantically, Prince Pineapple motivated his stubby legs and scramb
led for the shore. He made it.

  Javik and Namaba fell to their knees on the log and tried to hold on. The log began to whip, first one way, then the other. They crawled to safety with no time to spare.

  Rebo was not so lucky. He was on a more slippery section and was having trouble keeping his balance. From the shore, Javik saw that the water pods on Rebo’s back were getting in his way.

  “Dump the pods!” Javik yelled.

  Rebo pulled off the roped-together plastic containers and dropped them in the bog. They floated. Then, on all three knees, he started to crawl for shore.

  Suddenly the log snapped just behind Rebo, sending him and Wizzy in opposite directions on different pieces of wood. Rebo began to lose his balance. He held on precariously for a moment, then fell in the water with a splash.

  “Help!” Rebo yelled. Slimy, decaying vegetation filled his mouth. His voice gurgled, “Hellup!”

  Javik found the black and white striped Tasnard rope in the survival pack. “Swim!” he yelled. “Swim for shore!”

  “I don’t know how!” Rebo yelled, floundering in the water. Steam shot out of his ears from the exertion.

  “Help him!” Namaba said. “Oh, Tom, help him!”

  Javik mentoed the Tasnard rope. It flew toward Rebo, but fell far short, plopping in the thick water. “Not enough line,” Javik said.

  “Oh God!” Namaba said.

  Wizzy had been carried quite far away on the other section of the log. He glowed orange-hot, attempting to dry away any water that touched him. Swampy water ran across the surface of the log, hissing when it hit Wizzy’s superheated surface.

  Feeling a survival-inspired burst of energy, Wizzy rose straight up in the air, hovering above the log like an autocopter. Bright silvery-purple particles shot out of his rear, forming a short tail of intense light. Far across the water, Wizzy saw Rebo drowning. And he saw the unsuccessful shoreside effort to save him.

  Wizzy’s first instinct told him to fly for shore. Already he had been weakened by the water, and he was not certain how much strength he had left. His strength had shown a troublesome proclivity for appearing and disappearing without warning.