by Mark Cain
“Well, he’s ABD for one thing.”
“Ah,” Orson replied knowingly.
“Also, I talked with him. He’s a pretty smart guy.” A final connection closed in my skull, and I pointed at Bik. “Smart enough to plant a spy in our midst.”
We both turned to Bik, who was hopping up and down in my hat like he needed to take a pee.
“You!” I spat out, with all the venom I could manage. I grabbed his toboggan and shook it. “You’ve been spying for your grandfather.”
“Yes. No. I mean, not intentionally! That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!”
“Tell us what?” Orson sneered. “That you’re a spy?”
Bik stared down at the snow. “I didn’t know I was spying for him. Grandpa just said to give him a call periodically and let him know how we were doing.”
“I'd been suspicious for a while now, but it wasn’t until you and I went down to Nine together that I figured out what was going on. Surtr is planning a takeover, and he’s been keeping The Spark all to himself.”
“How? Where? And why should we believe you?”
Bik looked up at us with a pout. “Because I just saved you from falling off the mountain. Why would I do that?”
“He’s got a point, Steve.”
“Maybe. But you’ve been looking pretty chipper since you got back from visiting him.”
“That’s because Grandpa took one look at me, said, ‘you haven’t been eating enough,’ then threw me in his secret stash of Spark.”
No wonder Surtr has seemed to burn hotter, while the rest of us have been turning into frozen leftovers. “Where’s he keep it?”
“Under his chair.”
Orson was still suspicious. “And why did he give you some of the good stuff?”
Bik almost spat. “Because he was trying to buy my loyalty. He wants me to be some kind of page for him after he takes over Hell.”
“Take over Hell!” Orson laughed. “That’s a good one! Why, all Hell would freeze over before … ”
“DON’T FINISH THAT SENTENCE!” both Bik and I shouted.
“Oops,” my assistant said sheepishly. “That … that would explain a lot.”
“If Hell freezes, anything could happen. Even the overthrow of Satan.” I turned to the young fire giant. “But why wouldn’t you stay loyal to your grandfather, Bik?”
Bik’s kicked at a nearby snowdrift. Okay, it was really the size of a rock, but for him it was a snow drift. “Because … because my grandfather isn’t a very nice person. You know, he was supposed to destroy the Earth, and he would have too, if the Scandinavian religion hadn’t lost out to Christianity. If Grandpa takes over Hell now, I bet he’ll get around to doing it eventually.”
“And I haven’t even mentioned my personal reasons. Grandpa, well, he’s always been pretty mean to me. Little things, like sending me to bed without supper, eating my parents … ”
“Gaaah!” Orson gaahed. “He ate your parents? Why?”
“He was hungry … and he wanted their flame. He’s greedy like that, and generally short-tempered and unpleasant. Nothing like you and Orson … and BOOH.” Bik got quiet for a moment. “Gee, I hope BOOH is alright.”
That put a chill on the conversation. It also made me sympathetic to Bik … but just a little. “Okay, I believe you, provisionally anyway. So can you give us any information that will help when we get to the summit?”
“Only that, as you’ve suspected, you’ll find the problem with the pipeline up there. And that Ymir is waiting for you. Grandpa, see, well, he knows you’re smart, Steve. He said you’d end up here eventually.”
“How would Ymir know I’m coming?”
“Hotline. There is a direct phone link between the two of them. Grandpa told me Lord Satan put it in place so they could coordinate the running of the HVAC system.”
Ah, the blue princess telephone I noticed the first time I met Surtr. This didn’t explain why he had chosen the princess line, but the color seemed appropriate.
“Okay,” I said, “that all checks out, and if he ate your parents, you certainly have reason enough to hate him.”
“You forgot sending me to bed without supper.’
“That too. So, any helpful hints on how we tackle Ymir?”
Bik shrugged. “Not a lot, I’m afraid. I don’t know much about him, except that he’s a little, well, slow.”
“Yeah, Satan said the same thing. Not exactly a mental giant.”
“He also moves slow.”
“Slowly,” Orson corrected. He hated adjective/adverb confusion.
“Really?” I said, ignoring our resident pedant.
“Uh huh. Grandpa says that in the beginning, Ymir was pretty much all by himself. There weren’t any natural predators for fifty foot high frost giants, so he didn’t need to move fast. Also, he apparently has such a tiny brain that it takes all his concentration to do even the smallest thing. Of course,” Bik added, “if the smallest thing he decides to do is take a swat at you, and he connects, you’re a pancake.”
“Great,” Orson rumbled.
“Don’t worry, Orson. I’d be a pancake. You’d probably be more of a waffle.”
“Har, har.”
“He could also shoot a blast of freezing air or ice at you.”
I was scratching my chin, thinking hard. I looked above us. The top of Erebus was less than fifty feet away. “Okay, he can be deadly, but he’s dumb and he’s slow. Orson, I think we should approach the summit from opposite directions. That should confuse him.”
“Hell, it sounds like most anything could confuse him. If I had three balls, I could go in juggling. That would probably confuse him too. Wait!” he said brightening, digging into his bag and extracting three brightly colored orbs. “I have three oranges! Grabbed them from the crate just before we left the office. What?” he said, noticing my frown. “I thought I might get hungry.”
“You didn’t bring any to share?”
“Sorry.”
“Skip it.” My stomach was a little queasy anyway. An orange probably wouldn’t have sat on it very well at the moment. “When we find Ymir, I’ll start the talking, but chime in whenever you want. Perhaps two people talking at once will overload his brain.”
“So, that’s our plan?” Orson said, stuffing the oranges in the pockets of his parka. “Approach from opposite sides, juggle some oranges, and talk at him? Then what?”
I had no idea what we’d do next. “Then we improvise.”
“Super.”
“Hey, it’s who I am.”
“I might be able to help,” Bik piped in. “I’ve been feeling pretty good since Grandpa submerged me in his Spark tank. Even up here, I’m pretty confident I could burn up the pavement, and I bet Ymir hates fire as much as Grandpa hates ice.”
“Well,” I said, trying not to sound negative, “you’ve certainly grown since we first met you, but you’re still kind of little.”
“You might be surprised by what I can do.”
“Okay, but, ah, why don’t you get in my parka pocket instead of back in the hat, you know, stay out of sight until we need you?” I didn’t want the little guy to get hurt.
“A pocket’s fine with me, but let me get back in your pocket protector instead. I can slip in and out of that quickly.”
“Fine,” I said, opening my jacket and stuffing Bik in the plastic sheath. “Ready?”
“Ready.”
“Don’t mumble.”
“Sorry. Ready.”
From my tool belt, I pulled Orson's hammer. It wasn’t likely to help me much against a giant, but I felt better with some sort of weapon in my hand. Orson took out an orange and tossed it up and down while he considered things then shoved it back in his pocket. I guess he wanted his hands free for the climb.
We left the Santa bags in the snow. The less encumbered we were, the better.
Turned out the way to the summit was pretty easy. Our ice cleats were all we needed to climb the last few dozen yards. We were briefly plunged in
darkness as we ascended through the cloud cover, but on reaching the top, we discovered ourselves above the storm.
Orson and I made a complete circuit of the summit, in opposite directions, in our hunt for Ymir. There was nothing to be seen except a few large boulders and a bunch of ice. And the pipeline, which on reaching the summit, bent, continued its way in horizontal fashion for a while then made a second bend toward the Elevator and the surface of Level Two. As I crawled over the pipeline, I noticed something was attached to it, at the point just before it left the mountain. The anomaly was a large rubbery sac; it looked like a giant tick. On the downstream side of the sac, a large chunk of ice was crushing the pipe, choking it off. The sac seemed to be slowly expanding.
“I think we found out where the fuel is going,” I said when we crossed paths while reconnoitering the summit. Orson only nodded.
In a couple of minutes, we were back where we started, with no sign of Ymir. “Where the hell is he?” Orson fussed.
Long moments passed. Then a hillock of ice on the side of the peak twisted, and I found myself looking into eyes as blue as the ice of Antarctica. Slowly, the giant got off the ground where he had been sitting and stood. Ymir was every bit of fifty feet, just like Bik had said. In fact, I had thought he was part of the glacier that covered most of Erebus, though he moved faster than a glacier. Not much faster, but some.
“Ymir!” I shouted. “I am Steve Minion, Hell’s Super, and you, sir, are in violation of 49 CIR 193!”
“What’s that?” Orson yelled.
“The Code of Infernal Regulations,” I said, not taking my eyes off the frost giant. “It’s the part that governs construction and maintenance of pipelines. I looked it up.”
As we had been talking, Ymir slowly looked from one of us to the other, trying to keep up with the conversation. Then he smiled, having finally processed at least some of what I said. “MIN … ION!” he said in a ponderous voice. Ymir reached out a fist. It hovered above me, a while boulder of ice - with knuckles - then the giant let it drop.
He may have been slow, but gravity wasn’t, and the fist fell with the rapidity of anything dropping forty feet to the ground. I rolled to one side, and the blow fell six feet away from me. Not too close, but close enough to make me nervous. “Now, Orson, now!”
Quickly, Orson reached in his pockets and grabbed the three oranges. “Hey, Ymir!” he shouted, juggling for all he was worth. “Check this out!”
As Ymir turned to face Orson, the giant’s arm froze in midair. Well, it was already frozen, but you know what I mean. Apparently, Ymir had difficulty doing more than one thing at a time.
Shit, this guy was so dumb, he really did make Digger look like Einstein. In Ymir’s defense, though, he was so fucking huge his little brain probably had to work overtime just sending a neural impulse to something as far away as his fist.
“Steve!” shouted a voice from my pocket. “Now, while Ymir is distracted, throw me at him.”
“But, you’ll get hurt.”
“Don’t argue! Now!”
So what else could I do? I reached in my pocket, grabbed the little guy and …
Flicked my Bik
Straight at the frost giant. By the time he reached Ymir, Bik was in flames. He burned a fairly significant hole in the center of the giant’s chest.
Ymir, hand still frozen in midair, looked down at the wound. “WHA … ?” he managed to say before slumping back against a large boulder. His fist nearly got me again, but then the entire arm collapsed against his recumbent body.
But where's Bik? Has he been crushed by the falling giant?
I breathed a sigh of relief as a flash of light came toward me at great speed. Bik started zooming around my head. “See? See?” he yelled excitedly. “I told you I could help.”
“That was great, kid!” I said. “Now it’s my turn.” I didn’t know if Ymir was dead or just unconscious, but I was taking no chances. As I rushed over to the fallen giant, my hands were already spooling out duct tape from both rolls. Round and round him I ran, taping Ymir to the boulder against which he had fallen, and none too soon, for the hole in his chest was already closing, and he was regaining consciousness.
Or as conscious as he ever got.
Ymir tried to lift his arms, one at a time, but the duct tape held fast. “WHY … WHY CAN’T MOVE?”
“Because you’re under arrest, uh, you’re my prisoner, uh, Satan says be still!”
“SATAN? NOT SURTR?”
Orson was still juggling the oranges as he walked up to us. “I still got it,” he said, tossing the three in the air then catching them one at a time in his parka pocket.
“OOH! MA … GIC.”
I ignored the antics of my assistant. “Ymir, why’d you do it? Why’d you help Surtr?”
The ice giant slowly cocked his head from side to side, then he looked at me with his baby blues. He really did have beautiful eyes. “SURTR SAID ME HAVE MORE COLD … IF HELP HIM.”
My foot was resting on one of Ymir’s toes. He could probably have given it a flick and sent me sprawling, but I wanted to communicate to his primitive brain that I was alpha dog. “Surtr lied to you. He played you for a sucker, Ymir.”
The giant’s eyes clouded over as he tried to process this. Finally, he bellowed, “THAT NOT NICE!”
“No, it isn’t. Now, if you’ll excuse me for a second, I’ve got a pipeline to fix. Bik, you stay here and keep an eye on our frosty friend. Come on, Orson.”
We went over to the boulder of ice that had pinched the pipe closed. For ten minutes we put our shoulders to it, but the thing wouldn’t budge. “What now, Steve?”
“Steve!” yelled Bik. “Watch out!”
Ymir’s foot was moving in our direction. With his big toe, the giant pushed the ice block off the pipeline. The soul stuff, trapped in the sac, was like a system under pressure, and it forced open the line, removing the dent. I didn’t even need my stethoscope to hear the swishing of souls passing through the far side of the pipe. In seconds, the sac was deflated.
Puzzled, I walked back over to the prisoner. “Why did you do that?”
“SURTR LIE TO ME … TRY … TRY TO MAKE RIGHT.”
I looked into those clear blue eyes for any sign of guile, but there was none. He may have been dumb and easily manipulated, but he wasn’t bad. And that was good enough for me. “Orson, cut Ymir loose, would you?”
“What? Are you crazy?”
“Maybe, but not about this. Look at him.”
Orson shot me a glance that as much as said I was an idiot, but then he too stared into Ymir’s eyes. “You’re right,” he said, and reached for his knife. “He may be a patsy, and a bit lacking in intellectual wattage, but he’s not a monster.”
“WHO ‘PATSY?’”
“Don’t you worry about that, Ymir,” I said, patting him on the knee. “Say, can I borrow your phone?”
“SURE. OVER THERE.”
In a grotto nearby was a four foot phone. It had no buttons or dial, but the phone was bright red, and I had a pretty good idea who would be on the other end of the line. With both hands I shoved the receiver out of its cradle. It fell to the ground, and I put my head to the earpiece.
“One ringy-dingy,” I said to myself, waiting for a connection, “two ringy-dingy.”
“Ymir!” rasped an all-too-familiar voice. “You moron! I told you to stay off this line! It could be bugged.”
I moved over to the mouthpiece. “Wrong, flamebutt. It’s Minion.”
“Minion!” I didn’t even need to move back to the earpiece to hear him, and the sputtering coming from the end of the line was most gratifying.
I was on my hands and knees above the mouthpiece. I wanted to make very certain Surtr could hear me. “I took care of your pal, Ymir. And I fixed the pipeline. Now I’m coming for you, you son of a bitch!” Then I yanked the phone line out of the back of the phone.
“Time to go,” I said, returning to the group.
Orson had just finished p
ulling the last of the duct tape off of Ymir. The giant just sat there. He was smiling, though. If ignorance was bliss, I was looking at one happy camper.
“Go? Go where? Not back down the mountain.” Orson gnashed his teeth.
“No,” I said, eyeing the pipeline. I drew my assistant’s attention to the ladder that ran along its top. “You and Bik stay here. I’ll go first. If this works, you can follow me. If not, well, you two can climb down the old fashioned way.”
“I don’t like it, Steve. If you fall, you might still get caught in some Erebus mumbo jumbo.”
“I have faith.”
“In Hell? Are you kidding?”
I looked at my friend and smiled. “I have lots of faith. I have faith in you, Orson. I have faith in Bik, now.” The fire giant was sitting on Orson’s shoulder, beaming, literally, and I had to squint to look at him. “And I have faith in a few others. I think it will be fine.”
With that, I made my way to the ladder. I crawled along it, keeping a firm grip on each rung as I went. I didn’t know when …
Gravity shifted, and my legs dropped. I was hanging from the ladder by my hands.
Here goes the faith part.
I whistled for BOOH and let go.
Chapter 27
I had fallen twenty feet and was just beginning to resign myself to going splat on the surface of Level Two, when I heard a rustling of wings. BOOH, looking a little worse for wear, but otherwise intact, snagged me with a claw.
“Boy, am I glad to see you!” I said, stroking his foot, and trying not to cry. “Are you okay?”
“Skree!”
I looked up. Orson was already out on the ladder, Bik no doubt in one of his pockets. In moments he’d hit the gravity flip-flop point. “Up for catching one more?”
“Skree!”
Orson’s legs were now dangling toward us, and he looked at me with a hopeful and mildly desperate expression. I grinned and flashed him the thumbs up. My friend let go of the ladder, fell a bit, then BOOH snagged him too.
“You two okay?”
“Yes, I believe so,” Orson said. There was a slight sheen of sweat on his forehead, but he was maintaining a brave face.
“You bet,” Bik replied. He had crawled out of Orson’s pocket and was sitting in the hood of the parka. The young fire giant had a fierce look in his eye.