by Joe Mahoney
“What about it?” I asked Sebastian.
“It’s telling me that there is a Necronian ship in orbit around this planet, and hundreds or more Necronians on the surface.”
“You weren’t able to tell that when we first got here?”
“I knew they were there. I just didn’t see any point in alarming you.”
He was probably right about that. I turned to Iugurtha. “So you have a Necronian infestation on your hands. What do you plan to do about it?”
“I will see to it that the Necronian scourge on this planet never bothers me again,” she said.
“And if you fail?”
“I will almost certainly fail if I spend too much time talking to you. You wanted to speak to your nephew.” She pulled a relatively unsophisticated pair of binoculars from her utility belt, passed them to me, and pointed. “There he is.”
I held the binoculars up to my eyes. After waving them around for a bit I managed to spot a group of T’Klee assembling a mechanical spider much like the one standing beside me now, but no Ridley. Elsewhere a combination of humans and T’Klee stood around a long table peering at an assemblage of tiny figurines. Close to them a small army was busy cooking up vast amounts of food, while not far from them several men transferred boxes off a truck sporting the biggest wheels I’ve ever seen. There was no mistaking any of the muscular men for my scrawny nephew.
I put the binoculars down. “Not seeing him.”
Iugurtha pointed again. “There.”
I looked through the binoculars again and spent several moments observing Iugurtha’s army going about the dubious business of preparing for war. Nowhere did I spy Ridley. “Still not—” Iugurtha took hold of the back of my head and swivelled it none-too-gently. “Ow!” I said. “What are you—?”
And suddenly there he was, standing before the long table with the figurines on it. Not quite the way I remembered him, but definitely Ridley; there was no mistaking that nose. I had already seen him, I realized, I just hadn’t recognized him. And no wonder. Ridley always kept his hair as long as possible. Now it was shaved to a mere bristle. And he was dressed almost completely in mauve—the Ridley I knew wouldn’t have been caught dead in anything resembling purple. He had hair on his face, too, a wisp of a moustache and a hint of a goatee. I hadn’t thought him capable of growing facial hair until well into his forties.
Perhaps most misleading of all, though, was the set of his face. He was smiling. Ridley never smiled, not since the death of his mother. Now he stood with his hands clasped behind his back grinning from ear to ear. Several adult humans and T’Klee stood around him, all of the humans laughing, two of them doubled over as if Ridley had just told them the funniest damned joke of their lives.
The table with the figurines suggested that they were playing a game. I felt a little put out. I love games. Sadly, aside from Doctor Humphrey’s infrequent visits, there was no one around Port Kerry with whom to play. When he had first come to live with me, I had tried to interest Ridley in a few games—checkers, Parcheesi, that sort of thing—but to no avail. And now here he was playing some childish game with a bunch of strangers.
I tossed the binoculars to Iugurtha. “How do you get down from here?”
Iugurtha snapped her fingers. The spider crawled forward. Two silver limbs shot out, encircled my waist and legs, and lifted me high into the air.
“Just a minute!” I exclaimed.
But it was not up for discussion. Iugurtha clung to one side while the spider held me firmly on the other. We began our descent, plunging quickly along a sheer vertical drop. The spider descended much as an ordinary spider would, attached to a filament emanating from its artificial thorax. It bounced off the cliff face once or twice, and I wondered how Iugurtha could possibly hang on, but she managed. The spider’s vise-like grip was suffocating. I threw up on the way down.
At the bottom, the spider let go. I fell to my knees and hunkered there for several minutes trying to pull myself together. Iugurtha busied herself cleaning the spider.
“Never. Do that. To me again,” I told her when I was able.
She offered to let me ride the spider to Ridley. An incredulous snort let her know what I thought of that idea. She hopped on the spider and started off alone. I rose and followed unsteadily on legs like strands of over-cooked spaghetti. I quickly lost sight of Iugurtha and the spider, but there were no forks in the path, so little chance of losing them.
The wonders of this hidden valley soon consumed my attention. The trees I already knew—I felt almost at home beneath their mauve canopies. But a forest of any kind flourishing inside a giant cavern was something to behold. Apart from the trees (which may have differed in ways I could not perceive), the world inside Iugurtha’s mountain was not quite the same as the world outside where Sweep and Half Ear and the rest of the T’Klee lived. Slender flowers swivelled as I passed, their plum petals quivering, watching me with alien senses as certain as if they’d possessed eyes. Hidden creatures emitted evocative sounds I’m sure never touched the ears of any T’Klee outside this place. The scents were sweeter, the air cooler, the light unchanging, and not a single insect plagued me.
Humans were everywhere, rivalled only by the number of T’Klee. More abductees? None of them paid me any mind. The further I went along the path the busier it got, humans and T’Klee working in tandem, never seeming to stop. Stockpiling ammunition, assembling weapons, building, cooking, training, cleaning, exercising.
And, evidently, playing games.
“Ridley,” I said when I found him.
I had imagined a few possible reactions. Surprise. Relief. Gratitude. I would not have been taken aback had he burst into tears. But the boy didn’t even look up.
He was standing in a glade before a sturdy table surrounded by perhaps a dozen humans and T’Klee. Ignoring everyone else present, I strode forward and grasped him by the shoulder. His gaze remained fixed on the table top in front of him. The surface had been constructed in relief, and painted to represent different sorts of terrain—water, desert, mountains, forests. Game pieces came in a wide variety of shapes, sizes and colours. It looked complicated. It looked intriguing. It was Ridley’s turn, I gathered, for only when he had finished studying the board and moved a tiny statuette of a cat did he turn and look at me.
He was no longer smiling. In fact, he was frowning. “Uncle. What are you doing here?”
Of course—he was still under Iugurtha’s control. I must have expected this reaction on some level, for I adapted quickly.
“It’s over, Ridley,” I said, taking a fatherly tack. “We’re going home now.”
The humans present had been silent. Now they began babbling to one other in languages I couldn’t understand. I didn’t take my eyes off Ridley. He held up his hand and the babbling stopped.
I took advantage of the silence. “Listen to me. I’m taking you home. I’m taking you home if I have to physically drag you there myself.”
In my peripheral vision I saw two men step toward me. Two men who looked like they spent all their spare time working out, and who had nothing but spare time.
Ridley held up his hand again. The men stopped in their tracks. “You’ve come a long way to find me, Uncle. I appreciate that. But I have a job to do. I’m not going anywhere until it’s done.”
I snorted. “A job? Playing games?”
Ridley chuckled.
After all I’d been through his chuckle made me angry. “This is serious, Ridley. You have no idea what you’re mixed up in here. These people are about to go to war—war, Ridley. You’re not old enough to go to war. No one is. Not any war, let alone a crazy, intergalactic one. You’re only fifteen—school is starting in a couple of weeks. You want to jeopardize your education?”
“This is an education, Uncle.”
“I’ve no doubt. Which will do you exactly how much good when you’
re dead?”
“I’ve no intention of dying.”
“No one ever does, Ridley, no one ever does. Now. What about Rebecca? How do you think she’s going to feel when you’re dead—you just sweep her off her feet and die, is that it?”
“Man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. Rebecca knows that.”
“And if she doesn’t?”
He shrugged. “Then she isn’t the girl for me. Besides, it doesn’t matter. Iugurtha can take me back to any time. For her it’ll only be a few hours or days, then I’ll be back.”
“Look, Ridley. Your mother—”
“Okay, Uncle.” He sounded annoyed now. “Don’t talk to me about Mom. You of all people. She’s dead. It’s sad, but it was a long time ago. I’ve come to terms with it. I have to live my own life now.”
Clearly I wasn’t getting through to him. I tried again. “Ridley look, if this is about something else—I know we never really got along. I take full responsibility for that. When you come back—”
“Uncle.”
“Yes?”
“This isn’t about me at all, is it?”
I frowned. “Of course it’s about you. It’s about getting you home safe and sound.”
He shook his head. “It’s about you. It’s been about you from the very beginning. You want me back safe and sound so you won’t feel like a failure. Well too bad, Uncle. You are a failure. You failed to save my mother, and now you failed to save me.”
He turned back to the game. “Save yourself, Uncle. If you can.”
The two big fellows stepped forward and latched onto me, one on each side.
“Ridley, listen to me. This isn’t you talking, it’s her—she’s controlling you!” My eyes lit on some of the other players for the first time. The T’Klee. One of them was missing half an ear. I connected the dots. The board was the planet C’Mell, the pieces combatants. This wasn’t a game at all—it was a strategy session. What was Ridley doing at a strategy session?
“Half Ear!” I said. “He’s just a boy!”
Half Ear swung his massive head around to regard me. It was Half Ear all right, though quite a bit older. Judging from his appearance he still had a fair bit of life left in him. He couldn’t understand a word of English, of course, but—rather incongruously for a cat—he wore a pair of dark glasses and a set of in-ear headphones. I could make out a tiny figure of a T’Klee on each lens of the glasses. Translating?
He trotted toward me. When I had been a part of Sweep, Half Ear had seemed powerful but benign. Now, despite his advanced age, he just seemed powerful. Until he started to talk. Then he seemed like Half Ear. A very stern Half Ear.
“Who are you?” he asked.
Just as I had in Sweep’s brain, I understood his every twitch and shudder. “I’m this boy’s uncle,” I told him.
Ridley looked at me funny.
A part of me knew that uncle would translate the same as father to Half Ear. Few T’Klee knew or cared who actually sired them.
“Is that true?” Half Ear asked Ridley.
Ridley had to wait for the translation before responding. “Yes.”
“Set him down,” Half Ear ordered.
The big guys set me down but did not let go.
“What do you want?” Half Ear asked.
“To take my nephew back home with me. He’ll get hurt if he stays here.”
Half Ear regarded me. With contempt, I realized. If I knew anything about T’Klee males, it was that they expected their sons to confront danger, not avoid it.
“It’s cool you can speak T’Klee, Uncle,” Ridley said. “But I need you to go away now.”
Half Ear looked at me for a second. Then to my surprise he turned and cuffed Ridley on the side of the head hard enough to knock him down.
“Hey!” I said.
“Don’t talk to your uncle like that,” he told Ridley.
Ridley climbed to his feet holding his jaw. “Sorry, General.”
“Your counsel at this table is invaluable, but it’s no excuse for bad manners. Now apologize to your uncle.”
“I’m sorry, Uncle.”
Half Ear turned back to me. “As for you, I’m not impressed. You barge in and interrupt an important discussion at a critical juncture. You allow your son to insult you, and then fail to discipline him. It’s no wonder he doesn’t want to go anywhere with you. And even if he did want to go with you I couldn’t allow it. We need him here.”
There was only one way to handle a male T’Klee of Half Ear’s stature: stand up to him. So I drew myself up and faced him, knowing full well that he could eviscerate me with a single talon. I opened my mouth to speak and was unceremoniously punched in the gut by one of the big guys. He hit me hard enough to knock the wind out of me, and then they lugged me out of the glen. Half Ear, Ridley, and the rest turned back to the table.
“Rihleegh!” I wheezed as they carried me out.
They discarded me far down the path, where I lay sprawled in the dirt, reeling as much from Half Ear’s words as from the punch in the belly. I looked up to find Iugurtha standing over me. She clutched the book to her chest. Humphrey was at her side. His suit was torn and stained in several places. His hair was an unruly mess and a salt-and-pepper beard obscured much of his face, but his eyes were clear. He was carrying the bag I had brought through the gate for him.
“Can’t breathe,” I told him.
He knelt down beside me. “I saw the whole thing. You just had the wind knocked out of you. Draw your knees up to your chest.”
I did so. Still, it was a while before I began to feel like myself. “I’ve lost him, Doctor.”
Humphrey nodded. “At least you can talk to him. See him. Joyce, she’s…”
I glanced at Iugurtha, standing apart from us. I thought I could perceive elements of Humphrey’s wife in her slender frame, in the way she carried herself. “I know. Iugurtha told me.”
“Joyce and I had a big fight, you know.”
This wasn’t surprising. Humphrey could be opinionated. And Joyce was headstrong too, in her way. You didn’t want to be within a city block of them when they started in on one another.
“I went too far, as usual. Said some things I shouldn’t have. We went to bed angry. Never go to bed angry with your wife, Wildebear. Make it up to her, whatever it takes. Kiss her goodnight. Tell her you love her, even if you don’t feel like it. If you don’t, she could wind up as part of a demon and you’ll never see her again. Just glimpses of her here and there. A gesture here, an expression there. Promise me, Wildebear. That you’ll never go to bed angry with your wife.”
The odds of ever even having a wife were slim to none, so it was an easy promise to make. “I promise, Doctor. But Iugurtha’s not really a demon. You know that, right?”
He shrugged. “Whatever she is, Joyce is as good as gone. I can’t talk to her again, or hold her, or really see her. You can with Ridley. Cold comfort, I know. But the point I’m trying to make is that you can still reach him. You still have hope.”
“I’ll try to remember that, Doctor. I’m sorry about Joyce,” I added sincerely, thinking of Sweep, also lost inside Iugurtha.
Humphrey had lost his wife. I had bet and lost my nephew. Worse, in failing to persuade Ridley, I had now pledged myself to Iugurtha in the slim hope of keeping him safe.
You failed to save my mother, and now you’ve failed to save me.
Ridley’s parting words stuck with me. They made no sense. Why would he blame me for Katerina’s death? How could I have saved her? I hadn’t been anywhere near the accident that had killed her. Part of me thought I should go back and talk to Ridley again. Another part knew better.
I climbed painfully to my feet and made my way to Iugurtha. “You win,” I meant to tell her.
But I couldn’t bring myself to say it. Saying so would seal Ridley’s
fate. My hands balled up into fists like two white stones and I opened my mouth to give this manipulative alien bitch a piece of my mind. But before I could do so she began to talk, and her tone—it was subtly different now. I knew it well enough: she sounded just like the principal of the school where I worked.
I was working for her now.
“I have a job for you,” she said, and went on to talk about taking advantage of my ability with the gate, which she dug out of my knapsack. She wanted me to perform an errand of some kind. Someone required medical attention and I was to take Humphrey to them. I’m not sure where, I wasn’t really listening.
“What did you do to him?” I interrupted.
She tilted her head to one side as if trying to dislodge water from her ear. “Ridley?”
“Of course Ridley.”
“I told you. A few tweaks.”
“What tweaks?”
“He has a talent for strategy. He’s also very psychologically perceptive. I magnified these attributes as much as I dared.”
“He thinks I’m responsible for his mother’s death. Is that your handiwork too? Filling his head with lies?”
“He didn’t see clearly before. He sees more clearly now.”
It wasn’t his eyesight she was talking about. “You mean you’re telling him what to see. What to think.”
“Hardly. He’s telling us.”
“How could that be? He’s just a boy.” It was starting to sound like a mantra.
“Ridley is no ordinary boy, Mr. Wildebear. Believe what he tells you. He sees more than you or me.”
“That wouldn’t be very difficult right now.”
“Mr. Wildebear, you promised you would do whatever I want if—”
“I know damned well what I promised.” I was not keen on the promise, not if it meant leaving Ridley alone, but I would keep it. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “I could really use a drink.”
Iugurtha dug a flask out of her khakis and handed it to me.
I sipped from it. “Not exactly what I was thinking, but it’ll do.” I emptied the flask of water and handed it back.