Sapale rose to see who or what was tapping at the portal. Add anger to her prior emotions. Yeah, she was going to flay someone in about three seconds.
**********
I have absolutely no idea why I thought it was a good or proper thing to do. Why was I knocking at my own vortex's door? Dude, it was my vortex. But, in for a dollar in for a dime. Why wasn't anybody answering? Someone had to be inside. I counted at least three thermal images through the hull. I knocked again, harder.
“Hang on,” came the voice of my one true love. “I'll be there quick as I can to kill you several times ov …” She trailed off when she saw me. Then her face grew dark, very dark. Scary dark. “Why the hell did you change clothes, sneak out, and knock on the door? That is the stupidest lamest stunt I've ever seen you pull, and we traveled together two billion years, asswipe.”
“Hi,” I said uncertainly. “Honey, I'm home.” I waved like an idiot. “It's me.”
“Oh really? You are you? Thanks for the 4-1-1. There I was thinking you were me.”
“Have I come at a bad time?” I mumbled.
“No. You came at all. I know Mirraya thought we needed you, but for the record I was dead-set against it. Thank you. You just reinforced the validity of my dissent.” She attached her probe fibers to the hull. “Close portal.”
“Yes, Form Two,” responded Stingray.
The opening sealed instantaneously.
It then reappeared instantaneously.
“Blessing?” snapped a pissed wife of mine.
“Yes, Form Two?”
“I thought I was Form One now?”
“You were up until now. By protocol, you are Form Two now that Form One has returned.”
“Form One has returned?”
“Yes. Can you not see him? He stands zero point six five meters in front of you.”
“He's returned from the dead?”
“That is not a speculation I can currently support or refute. I can only report that he is back.”
“You might try saying hi,” added Al.
“You're EJ, right?” Sapale said as her jaw dropped.
“I don't think so. Should I be?”
“You were a couple minutes ago?” She nodded her head over her shoulder. “Back in your quarters.”
“EJ's here? Why the devil …”
“That twice I've heard my name used in vai …” EJ, like Sapale before him, trailed off. He stopped dead in his tracks too.
“Jon?” asked Sapale in a whisper.
“I think so.” I extended my probe fibers and retracted them. “Yup, it's me all right.”
“But, but …”
“But I died?”
“Oh you more than died. Way I heard it, that maniac Gáwar ate the tiny pieces left after he crushed you.” EJ spoke with unmistakable relish.
“Ouch,” I said reflexively.
Tell me about it,” he responded.
“Jon?” asked Sapale with a trembling voice. Then she jumped up and wrapped me up in a most pleasant knock-down bear hug.
“That'd be my cue to skidoo,” said EJ with a one-eighty pivot.
“You replaced me kind of quickly, didn't you?” I teased as we tumbled on the ground.
She bit my ear—actually quite hard.
Five minutes later we were at the mess table with hot coffee. I took a sip. “Wow. Peet's Major Dickason's Blend.”
She set her mug down. “It's a special occasion, Lazarus.”
“I won't go as far as saying it's worth dying for, but I will say yes to a refill.” I held out my mug.
“Pot's right over there,” she responded without moving anything but her thumb over a shoulder.
“And so ended the tender homecoming,” I bemoaned playfully.
“Oh I'm not done celebrating with you yet. I just am not your handmaiden.”
“Ah, no prob. If you could just point her out I'll ask her to refill my mug.”
She shook her head. “And to think I was glad to see you back. Silly girl.”
“Hey, that reminds me.” I reached into a deep pocket of my bitching new jumpsuit. “I got you this, you know, as a present.”
She accepted the ornate box questioningly, with a dubious glance. “What's this?”
“A present.”
“You have got to be kidding. What was your first clue?” She slowly tore the ribbon off and opened the box. She pulled out the figurine. “What the f …”
“It's me,” I said quickly to cut her off.
“No. It's a tiny statue of you, which by the way I like more than the real you.”
“It's in case, you know, I get killed for good. It's something to remember me with.”
She glared at the porcelain. “I don't know what to say.”
“Thanks?”
“I was thinking more along the lines of I want a divorce.” She set it down. “Then again, it is a gift from you.”
“Bar's pretty low, isn't it?”
“Pretty,” she agreed with a smirk.
I slid a golden locket across the table.
She picked it up and inspected it. “Exploding jewelry?”
“No.” I smiled. “Open it.”
She did. Sapale stared at the contents a good long while. “I don't get it. Two hairs? The statue was lame, but two hairs? You going for the world record here?”
“They're our real hair. One lock of yours. One lock of mine.”
“Where did you get honest to goodness hairs from us? We've both been dead forever.”
I frowned. “Hard to explain. I think you might want to drop it for the time being.”
“For the time being? Why?”
“I thought I heard something about you not being done celebrating with me yet.”
“Oh yeah. That I did.”
**********
An hour or so later the entire team was in the galley. Everyone had badgered me repeatedly to tell them how I could possibly be back from beyond the veil. I told them all I'd explain it once when we were all together. After I told them the story about Pravil and the Pillars, boy did I draw blank stares.
“Look, sport. If you don't want to tell us, fine,” snapped EJ. “But even I wouldn't try and pawn off a cock and bull story like that one.”
I shrugged. “What can I say? That's what happened.” I fluttered my eyelids. “Which kind of leads me to the topic of what in the name of sanity are you doing here?”
“Unicorn skewered me and deposited me here against my will,” he scoffed.
“Ah. Perfectly understandable.”
“We needed him,” said Mirraya as she strode thorough the portal. “Otherwise he'd still be under his slimy rock.”
“Mirri,” I exclaimed. “This just gets better and better.”
We hugged as best one could with a golden-metal-scaly-ten-foot-tall dragon.
“Sorry, Uncle. There's no joy in Mudville,” she responded.
“Where's Mudville?” asked Daleria.
“It's a saying, kiddo,” replied EJ. “She's letting him know gently we're up Shit Creek sans paddles.”
“What? Does that run through Mudville?” Poor girl was idiomatically incarcerated.
“How bad is it since I've been gone?”
She looked me squarely and coolly. “Worse than that.”
“That being?” I pressed.
“Whatever bad you envisioned before asking.”
“Okay. We got a plan?”
“Yes,” Mirraya replied.
“And it is …”
“I don't know. I'm waiting for you to tell us,” Mirraya responded flatly.
“Oh crap,” I replied.
“You could say that twice,” quipped EJ.
Mirri gave me the Reader's Digest version of their battle with the Cleinoids and whatever else I needed to know.
“I think my plan is to return to being dead,” I mumbled to myself.
“Happy to help,” beamed EJ cheerfully.
“Give me about half an hour. I'll get back to
you,” I said hollowly.
“Mi tiempo es tu tiempo, amigo,” he reassured.
CHAPTER TWENTY
“Vorioc?” shouted Carol as she entered an empty cave somewhere in the Milky Way galaxy.
Aside from an impressive echo, her cry returned no acknowledgement.
“Where is that useless male when I actually need him?” she fussed out loud.
“I don't know,” came a voice from behind her. “But I'd be willing to help you locate him if sex was involved in the reward.”
She spun to see Vorioc there with a massive grin on his face. He was in an erect humanoid form. So were his genitals, she noted with some displeasure.
“Must you always?” she chided, rattling her forehead pebbles at his groin.
“Must I? Nay. Must I when you are about? Yes, I proclaim …”
“Put a lid on it. I'm here for an important reason.”
He bobbed his eyebrows. “Can there be any other more critical to life?”
“You are so close to emasculation you could not believe it,” she growled.
“Promises, promises.”
She rattled her rocky bulk to the ground. “It would appear you're going on for a while. I'll sit if you don't mind. I'll sit if you do mind.”
“Poof,” he said, casting his palms into the air. “There went the mood.”
“I'm pissed.”
“At me? How novel.”
“Let me start over. I came to find you because I'm pissed. Please note temporally that I was in a foul mood before I made contact with you. Now, for the record, I'm doubly pissed.”
“Do tell,” he said, taking a seat on a nearby boulder.
“It's those damn Cleinoids.”
Vorioc said nothing. He did sigh loudly.
“I repeat. It's those damn Cleinoids. You have to do something about them.”
He pointed a finger skyward. “Ah ah. You added to your thought content. And why is it I have to do something about them? Hmm? Are your offensive powers broken?”
“One, do not take that tone with me. Two, pray I remain only pissed at the rat gods and not you. Three, you are the man of the house. It naturally falls to you to deal with the invasion of pests. Everyone knows that. Four, I'm pissed.”
“Excuse me, eternal bliss. How does point four factor into your argument?”
“It helps clarify how quickly and definitively you must act.”
“Ah.” He thought a moment. “What is it that they have done to vex you?”
“This time?”
“This time.”
“You know that garden I planted a while back?”
“The one with,” he waved his hands in the air, “all those sentient fungi?”
“Yes, that one. You know the forked toadstools were developing quite the sense of humor.”
“That's not the way I heard tell. Query: What's the smallest room. Response: a mushroom is not funny.”
“I giggled.”
Vorioc shook his head slowly. “What about your sentient garden do you wish to tell me?”
“The Cleinoids destroyed it.”
Vorioc stiffened. “They what?” The walls of the cave trembled from his booming response.
“Yes. They ruined four excellent days’ work.”
His face turned to stone—literally. “How dare they trouble you in the slightest.”
“Then you will act? You will smite them?”
Vorioc's face melted back to flesh. “Yes, I will.”
“Then you do love me.”
“Such was never in doubt.”
“Shall I await your return here?” she asked with great anticipation.
“Er, no. I did not say when I would deal with the Cleinoid infestation, only that I would.”
“Why is now not the best time to act?” she asked menacingly.
“Because … because I'm busy … otherwise occupied. That is why.”
She craned her head side to side. Pebbles clinked. “You do not appear to be otherwise occupied.”
“Well I am. I just haven't thought of the with what part just yet.”
“Why are you stalling? I have been wounded.”
“I know and I acknowledge your pain. It's just … well, it's the damn smell. Once you kill a few of those Cleinoids, the stench stays on your fingers for ages. They smell like rotten cheese fermented with obridge droppings.”
Vorioc spun when he heard a pack of screeches behind him. It was a dozen flocks of terrestrial obridge, and they were all relieving their bowels as one. That is when Vorioc noted that the floor of the cave beneath them had suddenly become Roquefort cheese that was oh so long in the tooth.
He turned back to Carol. She was gone.
“Oh bother,” he said to himself and the obridges.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“You want to what?” barked EJ.
“Hey, y'all said you were waiting with bated breath and whispering humbleness for me to come up with a plan.”
“Technically, yes,” responded Toño. “However, I at least was hoping for a non-insane plan.”
“It's not crazy,” voiced Sapale.
I proffered both hands in her direction. “See, my brood's-mate supports me.”
“Crazy called and said it had an injunction. It will sue if its bad name is associated with Jon's lamo so-called plan.”
“Okay,” I replied, totally miffed, “then one of you haters tell me how you're going to save this universe.”
“I don't have a solid idea as of now, but I know this much,” spat EJ. “It will involve me staying in this universe to save it.”
“I'm not sure I see the wisdom in returning to the Cleinoid base,” Daleria said thoughtfully. “Can you convince me?”
“Wow, at least one team member can muster civility,” I wheezed. “Look, you guys tried to fight them here. Ya barely succeeded. It's a proven fact in my book that if we dig in here and go toe-to-toe with the ancient gods we will lose. Ergo, the only logical choice is to fight them back on their turf.”
“I'm not certain that's logical,” responded Daleria. “Even if we wiped them out to a god back there, it would do nothing to stop the ones already present in this realm.”
“Honey, a plan has … phases. You execute part one, then part two. It's a logical progression.”
“First off, Mr. Spock, stop using that word logic in the context of whatever comes out your piehole,” slammed EJ. “I think the little lady's getting at the point that you can't complete phase two and then hope you develop a viable phase three. You get dead while standing there with your teeth in your mouth.”
Daleria stood. She wasn't tall and she was thin, but she rose with authority. She jabbed a finger at me. “I am not honey.” The digit swung to EJ. “And I am not a little lady. I am a Cleinoid demigod and I am angry. I am also an equal member of this whatever it is, so you will both show me respect or I will show you exactly what a Cleinoid demigod is capable of inflicting.” She sat.
Sapale clapped loudly. “You go, girl. Right down their piggy little throats.”
“Daleria,” I said, lowering my head, “I'm sorry. You're right. I spoke in anger. Just because everyone I care about and respect was lambasting me, I shouldn't have struck out at you.”
“You have the annoying habit of turning an apology into a victim-spiel,” observed my wife of forever. “Return said gift for a full and complete refund.”
“I know this much,” I said, changing the subject back to serious, “if we give the bulk of the Cleinoids enough time, they'll find a way to get here. Then it will be curtains for sure.”
“But why do you theorize we can kill them better there than here?” posed Mirraya. “They're just as strong there as they are here.”
“Yes and no. There we have the element of surprise. Plus, we were able to use some of their magic against them. I'll bet we can do it again.”
“Wait,” said Sapale. “Now I get it. You just want to get another shot at Gáwar, don't you? It sticks in your
craw that he killed you and you want to return the favor.”
Wow, was she clairvoyant all of the sudden? “I will admit that taking Gáwar out would be the first order of business upon our return. But,” I raised a finger in hopes it would distract my wife from being so spot-on, “that is only because he is so powerful. When we take him down it will demoralize all the Cleinoids.”
“What, you think they'll offer their unconditional surrender when they see Gáwar's dead?” snapped EJ. “Your plan just gets thinner and thinner. If you keep talking much longer it'll be invisible.”
“Man, you are a Negative Nellie,” I returned.
“Ouch, that really hurt,” he replied.
“Boys,” thundered Toño, “that will just about do it. We have no time for Jon-Ryan pettiness squared.”
We both gave him such sour looks. Identical sour looks in fact. Go figure.
“Let me take this step by step,” said Daleria. “We return to their home. We somehow kill Gáwar. We fight more effectively and cull through the Cleinoids better then we can actually hope to do. What's next?”
“I do not know,” I replied frankly. “I honest to goodness don't. But we'd have a wind to our back and we'd be making forward progress.”
“Oh ca-ca-ca crap,” sneezed Sapale.
“What?” I returned weakly. I didn't know where she was going, but I knew it was going to be Jon-unfriendly.
“Whenever you are reduced to your football analogies I know we're in deep doo-doo. Most often preterminal deep doo-doo.”
“Hey, football analogies efficiently convey enhanced meaning,” defended EJ.
“So spoke the remainder of the peanut gallery,” responded Toño.
“Okay, this is the point where I as leader call for a vote,” I said resolutely.
“And then you do whatever you wanted to do anyway. Yeah, I'm familiar with the drill,” responded Sapale.
“And who exactly anointed you leader?” pressed EJ.
“He is our leader. End of discussion.” Mirraya spoke with passionate conviction. “We do not require a vote, Uncle Jon. We will follow your instincts. They have never failed us.”
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