Far Travels, The Gracchian Adventures, Book One

by Kristi Seibert

  Chapter 19

  Recovery and (Some) Explanations

  ================

  Macready paused only long enough to ascertain that Mr. Neudel was still alive and then rushed off for some hurried consultations with the Gracchus in charge of the event. Before the squad of four emergency workers arrived, Macready was able to as the kids a few questions. Luke drew a map of approximately where they’d been when they’d first encountered the gibbles.

  “Gibbles? What in heaven’s name is a gibble?” Macready asked.

  Abby explained that the creatures were exactly like the Gracchian creatures of folklore. “They had orange eyes just like in the pictures. And they were evil They chased us and tried to attack us like they’d attacked Mr. Neudel,” she said.

  “So you carried Nicholas Neudel all the way from the meadow where he’d been shot?” Macready asked.

  “Well, we were chased for a while, but Abby hit one of the gibbles, and then later Luke shot two of them with the Xenoth on Mr. Neudel’s wrist,” Tom said.

  “What?”

  Tom patiently repeated himself with the others nodding in agreement.

  The emergency squad of four Gracchus arrived and withdrew Mr. Neudel from the jellycar, wrapping his entire body in a clear bag that they inflated so it appeared that the patient was trapped inside a giant, oblong balloon. Weirdly, the balloon floated. With incredible speed, the small quartet maneuvered Mr. Neudel’s enclosed body into a large jellycar and sped off, almost running over feuding Aeris in its path.

  Tom continued his tale. “Then we got to Eck’s Cave and no one was there so we, um, borrowed one of the jellycars and came here.” Tom hoped that they wouldn’t be in trouble for using someone else’s jellycar. The situation had called for emergency measures, but adults weren’t always rational.

  “We don’t know if there are more gibbles,” Sara added. She thought that the adults seemed insufficiently aware of what kind of horrible creature had been chasing them.

  “Wait here,” Macready said. Once again, he trotted off to consult with the Gracchus. Surprisingly, Miranda Tavish went with him and was heavily engaged in the discussion with the senior Gracchus.

  “Well, I think further explanations can wait a bit,” Mrs. Vargas said sensibly. “Let’s get you into some dry clothing. And then why don’t we all get together at our place for some hot food? I’m sure we can all use it.”

  They agreed to meet at the Vargases’ in an hour.

  =================

  Alex and Marisol Vargas put together a simple dinner of enchiladas from the deep freeze, a huge mixed salad and ham sandwiches. Mrs. Vargas knew that everyone would be famished when they came in the door, so she put out a big bowl of homemade tortilla chips and salsa for starters. Since the House of Fire was closed for the day, they set up everything at one of the big tables near the kitchen where there would be plenty of room for everyone.

  When the Ellsworths arrived, Abby and Tom were offered a choice of cider or Mexican hot chocolate (much to Abby’s delight) and Oliver had a Dos Equis. Minutes later, the Whipples walked in with Ms. Tavish right behind. The late spring evening was just beginning to turn to dusk.

  “Macready said he’ll be a little late, but he asked us to delay explanations until he arrives,” Alex Vargas said when they were all seated around the table, eating chips. “He said that he’s bringing someone who needs to hear all this, too.”

  Abby and Tom had both had hurried baths. Abby was feeling much better, and she could tell that her friends were, too. She felt warm and safe and slightly sleepy. Dad had sprayed a painkiller on her right hand, and the swelling was down. Abby knew that the adults had lots of questions, but it was good not to talk about stuff for a while.

  “Do you still have the box?” Sara whispered. She was seated right next to Abby.

  Abby nodded and surreptitiously touched the box through her loose shirt. She hoped that she’d be able to give it to the Gracchus soon. It was too important, maybe too dangerous, to have around the house.

  The boys especially wanted to know how the MAFM did in the race, and from there the discussion turned to the raucous mudfight at the end when the split decision was announced. Everyone was on a second round of drinks and Mr. Whipple was delivering a mini-lecture on the history of the last time the race ended in a tie when, finally, Macready arrived.

  ===============

  Macready hadn’t changed out of his Bonebreaker clothes, and they still whiffed of sulfur. He had managed to clean of most of the mud that had splattered on him, but there were still flakes of dirt here and there.

  No one much noticed Macready’s attire, however. Their attention was focused on the person with Macready: a sleek Gracchus with dark brown fur interspersed with silver.

  “My friends, may I introduce Quirinal?” Macready said. “I think he needs to hear your story.”

  A little gasp escaped Abby’s lips. This must be the person that she was supposed to deliver the box to. But how did Macready know? It couldn’t be coincidence, could it? And she knew she’d heard the name Quirinal before today.

  Quirinal lifted a small hand in acknowledgement of the Humans’ greetings. In response to Mrs. Vargas’ offer of beverages, he gladly accepted a steaming mug of hot chocolate, the cinnamon and milk making a heady froth on top.

  Abby remembered where she’d heard the name Quirinal before. Quirinal was the Gracchus who had made first contact with Nigel Wooster, years ago. Could this possibly be the same person?

  When he was settled in one of the higher chairs that the House of Fire had specially made for their Gracchus clientele, Quirinal said, “May I first begin by saying that the……” He paused.

  “What were the children calling them?” Quirinal asked Macready.

  “Gibbles. Or Lural. They use both terms.”

  “That the gibbles are gone, cleaned up. You need fear them no longer.”

  Oliver was unsatisfied. “You knew about these things, these gibbles, and you didn’t warn people? What if the children had been hurt?”

  “Please,” Quirinal said. “We didn’t expect them to, ah, break through again. The problem has been solved.”

  Macready shot the Gracchus a sharp look but didn’t contradict him.

  Tom spoke up, “What do you call them, then?”

  “They’re a race named Luraloxin, sometimes shortened to Lural,” Quirinal said.

  Luis said, “Mr. Neudel said they were hunters.”

  “Yes, this group was hunter-killers,” Quirinal spoke very precisely, using English, not Gracchian, perhaps not wanting to rely on the vagaries of the LMD chip to avoid any misunderstanding. His English was excellent, almost without accent.

  “Then why did they look like gibbles? They looked exactly like the gibbles in the books,” Abby insisted.

  Quirinal nodded. “They chose this form for this expedition, and, we believe, for several surveying expeditions prior. Possibly for the purposes of inducing fright and disbelief among those who might see them. If someone claimed to see a figure from folklore, they’d likely be dismissed as having hallucinations.”

  “Like if we said we saw the Loch Ness Monster or the Abominable Snowman back on Earth,” Luke said.

  “Yes, precisely,” Quirinal said.

  Tom was triumphant. “I told you I saw some weird thing with orange eyes when I crashed the jellycar last month.”

  “Son, you still shouldn’t have been driving the car,” Oliver said.

  Luke was getting antsy. “Why were they trying to kill Mr. Neudel?”

  Macready stepped in. “Why don’t you tell what you saw, and then Quirinal will try to answer all your questions.”

  And so the five Human children told the story of accidentally losing their way on the route to Pelerin Mountain and encountering the Lural and Mr. Neudel in the meadow. They all chipped in, correcting details and relating different parts of the story.

  “You
were going to Pelerin Mountain?” Macready interjected at one point. He had a quick consultation with Quirinal. “That meadow you describe is far past the mountain. In fact, you were close to the Sun Bridge. We couldn’t figure out why you took the route you did.”

  “Luis had a compass,” Sara said. “That’s why.” Luis glared at her.

  “Well thank goodness you weren’t on the correct route,” Macready commented. Luis stuck his tongue out at his sister. “Anyway, please carry on.”

  So the story continued. The timer bell chimed for the enchiladas, but Mr. Vargas just took the food out of the oven, covered it and came back to hear the rest of the tale.

  Abby’s moment of triumph was hers to tell: “So after I fell down and the gibble was almost ready to get me, I hit him here,” she gestured to the point of her own chin, “and just like Macready told me, I followed through. His head snapped back, and he didn’t get up again.”

  “Well done, young Ellsworth,” Macready said. Abby beamed.

  Mrs. Vargas didn’t approve of violence, but she wondered if it might be a good idea for Sara to learn how to hit. As long as she didn’t hit the wrong people for the wrong reason, it could be a useful skill.

  When Luke came to the description of how he had shot the two pursuing Lural with Mr. Neudel’s Xenoth, Quirinal asked him which buttons Luke had pushed.

  “All of them,” Luke said. “I was in a hurry, and I didn’t have time to figure out which was which.”

  Quirinal nodded. “I see. The molecular unsteadiness of your targets made them especially vulnerable, I believe.”

  “Uh, are they dead?” Luke asked. He had no idea what ‘molecular unsteadiness’ was but was willing to take Quirinal’s word for it.

  Quirinal made a small gesture of negation. “If not now, probably soon. They’re back from whence they came, and their masters don’t take well to failure.”

  “Oh.”

  Tom told the rest of the story, how they’d arrived at Eck’s Cave to find no one there. “So we borrowed a jellycar. And we weren’t sure that the Lural were gone, so I took out the speed governor in case we needed to outrun them,” he confessed.

  “I think under the circumstances, you can rest easy,” his Dad said. “We will, of course, pay for any necessary repairs.”

  “Not a worry,” Quirinal said. “Any loss is indemnified.” He didn’t explain further, but Tom relaxed a little. ‘Indemnified’ sounded good.

  “And now, I must insist, dinner is ready,” Mrs. Vargas said. The chips and salsa were but a memory. “The rest is going to have to wait until after we’ve eaten.”

  “But is Mr. Neudel okay?” Sara asked.

  “He is….adequate,” Quirinal said. He didn’t elaborate.

  ==============

  Dinner was wonderful. Abby decided against the excitement of enchiladas and instead opted for a ham sandwich, thick and delicious with lots of mustard and mayo. Luis had the same, but Sara, Luke, Tom and the adults all had spicy enchiladas. Quirinal didn’t eat but did accept a refill of hot chocolate.

  When the food was eaten and the dirty dishes cleared away, Quirinal began to talk.

  “The man you know as Nicholas Neudel is a soldier,” he began. “I can think of no better word to describe someone who is responsible for protecting his home from outside influences which would seek to do it harm.

  “One of those outside influences is the Lural.”

  Quirinal took a cube out of a small bag he’d brought. It looked like one of the map cubes that had been handed out at the beginning of the Bonebreaker Race. He pressed the button on the top, and a three-dimensional image of a sweet, furry animal with big ears was projected from the cube. The creature looked a lot like a child’s drawing of the Easter Bunny, except for it seemed to be holding some sort of spiked whip.

  “If it helps your sleep at night, this is the true appearance of the Lural,” Quirinal said with a twitch of his nose.

  Tom didn’t think that helped at all. In fact, it was quite awful.

  Abby felt triumphant. She had been right. This rabbit thing was what Mr. Neudel had been hunting at the Gate facility the night of the fireworks. He had been up to something.

  “But then how did they….” Luis’ voice trailed off. From bunny to gibble was too big a leap.

  “Suffice it to say that they have taken not only the form of a gibble, but also the form of a Human. There is dangerous copy error with the method they used, but his was not a prime concern to them, and we’ve shut off that corridor in any event.

  “Thankfully,” Quirinal continued, “their race is not advanced enough to have come up with Gate technology on their own, particularly since their current regime has seen fit to rid itself of all their scientists and scholars. You must know that evil is essentially stupid and weak by itself.”

  “But if they don’t have Gate technology, how did they travel from their world to ours? Abby asked.

  “Ah, like most such vicious regimes, they have to borrow or steal from another. In this case, the betrayal of one of our own, a Gracchian, gave them gate technology. One of our great, great failures.”

  Quirinal sighed and closed his eyes. He looked ineffably sad. Almost as if he were thinking aloud he said, “The attraction of endless night for those who would then rule the darkness….ah, the loss.”

  He revived after a moment and continued, ”Now the problem is almost rectified. The Gate is closed, and with the help of the information Nicholas Neudel brought back,” here Quirinal shot a look at Abby, “we can isolate the Lural effectively for as long as necessary. The current sorry civilization of theirs will continue to fall and perhaps someday, with a little help here and there, it will rise again in a better form.”

  Abby pulled the black box from inside her shirt and pulled the cord over her head.

  “Here. I guess this belongs to you,” she said. Abby walked around the table and placed the small box in Quirinal’s hands. “Mr. Neudel told me to give this to you.”

  “I know. I knew it was safe, Nicholas assured me. He’s quite fond of you.” Here the sadness left Quirinal’s eyes and Abby could have sworn he was laughing inside. She wondered if the Gracchus had somehow found out about her spying activities.

  “And now, I have business I must attend to. Goodnight, my fellow Gracchians,” Quirinal said, walking to the exit.

  He turned in the doorway. “By the way, have you heard that the awards ceremony is scheduled for tomorrow, midday? It will be held in the central square with its fortuitous deficit of mud rather than at the Blue Pearl Sea. I hope to see you there.” And the Gracchus was gone.

  =================

  As they said goodnight to Sara and Luis and thanked Mr. and Mrs. Vargas for dinner, Abby and Tom were still bursting with questions, but obviously they wouldn’t learn much more that night. Quirinal knew more than he was telling, and adults never seemed to tell everything to kids anyway. Abby suspected that Macready also knew more than he was letting on—how did he know to find Quirinal?—but he was already gone, too.

  Yet a few interesting pieces of information were still to come their way that night.

  ================

  The Ellsworths were walking home with the Whipples and Ms. Tavish since they all lived in the same general area. Abby was pleased to see that Dad was walking next to Ms. Tavish.

  “I wonder if we’ll be able to visit Mr. Neudel in the hospital,” Luke said as they moved through the streets. The kids were a few paces behind the adults. Aurelia was quiet tonight. A few other pedestrians strolled the walkways, but the general sense was of people recovering from the rigors of the day in their peaceful homes. Post-Bonebreaker parties were nonexistent; everyone was exhausted.

  Ms. Tavish turned slightly in response to Luke’s question. “I doubt it, Luke,” she said. “With severe injuries, the Gracchus keep patients in sterile isolation to prevent complications from infection. Particularly from other-wor
ld sources.”

  “That’s too bad,” Abby said. She didn’t much like hospitals, but she’d go to see Mr. Neudel. Besides, they’d been pretty well exposed to him already.

  “Why was Mr. Neudel sent, do you suppose?” Tom said. “He’s so small for a Human and can’t be that strong. Maybe they should have sent a Nawak.”

  Once again, Ms. Tavish turned. She waited until Tom, Abby and Luke were walking next to her and said, “It was Mr. Neudel’s brother who betrayed us to the Luraloxin. Partly his mission was an attempt to bring him back, though that wasn’t the primary aim.”

  Abby finally voiced the question that had been nagging at her subconscious mind ever since she’d first met Nicholas Neudel and sensed something offbeat about him, something stranger even than his clothing choices. She was also upset that adults didn’t ever seem to tell the whole truth. “Ms. Tavish, what is Mr. Neudel, really? Is he a Gracchus? Did they transform a Gracchus into a Human?”

  This could explain the weird way he talked, his home decoration scheme, the mission against the Lural.

  Miranda Tavish hesitated, then said, “The news is going to break soon anyway, now that the Gracchus have established relations with Earth.

  “Nicholas Neudel is fully Human, as much as you or me; the Gracchus do not use the dangerous matter-shifting technology that the Lural developed, would never use it. But Nicholas was born and raised here on Gracchia, and his mind is patterned more like a Gracchus than a Human. The truth is that Humans have lived on Gracchia for almost a hundred years before the opening of the Gate between the two worlds.”

  Tom said, “But the Gracchus don’t interfere in the affairs of other planets. Um. Do they?”

  Ms. Tavish snorted, halfway to a laugh. “They don’t officially make their presence known, at least not until Gate-level technology has arisen. The Gracchus don’t want any nascent civilizations to expect salvation from the outside. But they are world-savers, make no doubt about it.”

  The group slowed as they approached Ms. Tavish’s house. A light burned in her front window.

  “Why were there Humans here before the Gate, before contact?” Oliver asked.

  “As I understand it, this happened in the middle of the last century, when the truly dangerous biological weapons were developed. If some of them had gotten out of control, Humanity would have entered into a new dark age and taken eons to recover, might never have recovered. Having some of us here was insurance for survival of the species.”

  They’d arrived at Ms. Tavish’s front porch.

  “Plus, the Gracchus wanted an early chance to evaluate Human potential up close, I believe,” Ms. Tavish added as she climbed her front steps.

  “Goodnight and sleep well,” she said. “Abby, Tom, Luke, I’m very proud of you.” Ms. Tavish waved goodbye and closed the door.

  “I might have to write a paper,” Mr. Whipple speculated.

  =================

  That night, Abby dreamt she was being charged by a large group of gibbles, but when she turned to run, her feet wouldn’t move. She looked down to see that her feet were uncased in blocks of concrete. Abby could wiggle her toes, but trying to move was impossible. Just as the gibbles sprang at her with claws outstretched, trying to gouge her eyes out. Abby woke up. Wilson was laying on he feet, his warm gray body pinning them down. Abby withdrew first one foot, then the other, trying not to disturb him too much. Of course he woke up anyway, and Abby stroked the length of his spine. Wilson stretched first his front legs, then his back, yawned, resettled into a furry curl, and went back to sleep.

  Then Abby heard a noise.

  =============

  “Tom, Tom, wake up!” Abby urged her brother. “There’s something at the front door.” She’d left her bed in a hurry and rushed to get Tom.

  Quirinal had assured them that the gibbles were gone for good, but what if he was wrong? What if one or two had tracked them home? Even though she didn’t have the black box anymore, maybe they were out for revenge. Did other species have the concept of revenge? Abby had hit that gibble pretty hard, had knocked him out in fact. He could be mad about being hit by a girl. Ha.

  “It’s probably just Wilson,” Tom mumbled and turned over. He resumed his deep breathing.

  Abby shook him again. “No, no, it’s outside. There’s something outside the front door. Wilson’s asleep on my bed.”

  Tom rubbed his eyes and sat up. “Then let’s go get Dad.”

  “Can’t we see what it is first? Then we can call him if we need to.”

  “Okay, okay.” Tom climbed out of his warm bed, stretching and reaching for his bathrobe. Abby was a little irritated that he didn’t hurry more.

  Tom tied his sash as they followed the curving corridor of the hallway to the front door. The slight twinkling of thousands of embedded lights in the walls and ceiling illuminated their way. Abby and Tom reached the front door and waited a moment, but there was no hint of danger. Tom jumped when Wilson arrived on little cat paws and bumped his head against Tom’s ankles, but the cat gave no indication of nervousness.

  “What did you hear, exactly?” Tom whispered.

  “A noise. A sinister noise.”

  “Sinister?”

  “I don’t know. I guess it could have been a knock,” Abby whispered back. Would a gibble knock? Probably not.

  “Alright, I’ll look outside. You scream for Dad if there’s anything out there.”

  Abby nodded.

  Tom put a hand on the knob then quickly turned it and yanked open the door, prepared to shut it again if there was anything more menacing than a cat on the doorstep.

  They stood out in front of the house and gleamed in the scanty light. Tom saw multiple eyes, red and white, staring back at him.

  Abby screamed.

  Tom realized what was on their front porch: their bicycles. What he had thought were eyes were merely the reflectors on the wheels, lit up by the illumination coming from the house.

  Dad rushed into the corridor and sprinted towards the front door. Like Abby, his sleep had been shallow and plagued with vague nightmares. His hair was spiky, striped pajamas awry.

  “Hi Dad,” Tom said.

  “WHAT IN THE NAME OF….,” Dad shouted. He caught sight of the bikes waiting outside the front door.

  “Tom, Abby,” his voice was eerily calm, “why are your bicycles on the front porch?”

  “We don’t know,” Abby said. “I heard a noise, and we came out here and found them. And someone has cleaned them up. Look! I had a big scratch on the frame, and it’s gone now.”

  “I thought you left your bikes somewhere in the forest,” Dad stated.

  “That’s where they were, Dad,” Tom said, “but now they’re here.”

  Oliver rubbed his eyes. “Please,” he began, “please can you bring them inside and can we all have a QUIET NIGHT?”

  “Sorry, Dad,” Tom said. Dad was peeved, but it wasn’t their fault that someone had delivered the bikes in the middle of the night.

  “Sorry, Dad,” Abby echoed. She and Tom wheeled the bikes inside and left them next to the front door.

  The Ellsworths went back to bed, and this time they slept through ‘til morning, including Wilson.

  ===========