They seemed about to dash themselves on the rocks when the Elgg swooped under a glass tunnel filled with purple neon vapor that created a sort of bridge between two jagged cliff faces and suddenly they were dodging diamond- and orb-shaped chambers and their interconnecting tubes in a perfectly executed series of maneuvers taking them down the mountain. Tom wondered if all the acrobatics were necessary or if they were strictly for his benefit, not that he was complaining either way. Tom had been breathless from biking over to Lindsy’s house to humiliate himself, and then he had been breathless next to Crap Kingdom sprinting naked from one disappointment to another, but now he was breathless from catapulting through a wonderland of crystal towers full of mysterious people and harnessed, pulsating clouds of indescribable brilliance. There was no question which one he liked best. They had entered a tunnel that seemed barely wider than the Elgg’s wingspan. Every so often a walkway or balcony would jut out from the tunnel walls and the Elgg would be forced to duck one way or the other, but it seemed instinctively aware of the size of the rider on its back, somehow always managing to leave Tom just enough room to duck and not get his head sheared off. It trusted him to duck, Tom thought. It believed in him.
Then the sky was open above them again, and the tunnel’s bottom spread out to become a landing strip. The beast slowly brought its wings in and touched the ground. It galloped to the edge of the landing strip. There was nothing but darkness beyond. Then it turned, and Tom could see they were at the foot of the mountain, staring up at the crystal-enclosed brilliance that climbed up and up, all the way to the tower that tapered off until it became that tiny spire blinking red up there in the unharnessed clouds. Tom sat up. He cracked his back. He remembered he was naked, but he didn’t care. He enjoyed hanging out naked in his room at home. Maybe he could convince them that being naked was part of his culture.
Men Tom hadn’t noticed before appeared out of dark corners of the landing strip. They looked like soldiers. They had the armor Tom had seen in his visions and brandished long crystal pikes that were almost twice as tall as the men themselves and had jets of dancing red smoke coming from their tips. They surrounded Tom and lowered the smoking ends of their weapons at him without a word.
“Easy, gentlemen! Easy!”
Hearing this, the soldiers lifted their weapons and looked up. On a platform high above the landing strip, a slim-faced older man had appeared. He turned and ran down a flight of steps to reach them. Instead of armor, he wore a sort of tight-fitting translucent material that had been made into a jumpsuit and was filled with yellow smoke.“We’ve got one at last! We’ve got—”
He stopped on the last step and actually took Tom in, in all of his nakedness.
“Oh my. It’s like the old days. Step down, son.”
As if it understood what the man had said, the Elgg bowed, and Tom did as he was told. The man in the yellow jumpsuit chose that moment to start looking up and around the room and basically anywhere except for directly at Tom. One of the soldiers laughed and elbowed a coworker.
“Let’s have it quiet now!” the man in the jumpsuit shouted. “Errr . . . let’s see what we can do here. . . .” He looked around. “You,” he said, indicating the soldier who had just been snickering at Tom. “The hose.”
Reluctantly the soldier disappeared into the shadows, then reappeared, holding the end of what looked like a fire hose except its length was completely see-through. He handed the nozzle of the hose to the man in the yellow jumpsuit.
“Hold still, son,” the man said. He pointed the thing at Tom and twisted a lever on the nozzle. A jet of white steam shot out the end. Tom braced himself instinctively, because, as many misadventures pulling lids off boiling pots of macaroni had taught him, steam was very, very hot, and would burn you. It turned out he didn’t need to worry. This steam didn’t burn at all. He tried to move his arms from where they sat wrapped around his body after he’d tried to protect himself from the steam, but they wouldn’t move. His legs were stuck together, too. The steam had formed a solid cloud around him that didn’t dissipate and acted like a straitjacket.
“I told you to hold still, I think,” the man said. “Right, just try to hold your arms at your sides.” The man grabbed the giggling soldier’s pike. “And let’s please really hold still this time?” With no hesitation, he plunged the smoking end of the pike toward Tom, who didn’t even have time to prepare for death. The man made three cuts, two at his sides and one at his legs, then lifted the pike back up. Tom was still alive. He tried lifting his arms and found that he could. The steam still clung to him, except now, instead of a straitjacket, it acted as a shirt and pants, encircling his arms and legs, completely opaque and, he found, quite warm, but without the sensation of wearing anything at all. It was the freedom of nudity combined with the warmth and protection of clothing. Well, this was just the best. Tom wanted to ask if he could maybe get one of these steam-suits for around the house.
“Thanks!” Tom said.
“No thanks necessary,” said the man, handing the pike back to the soldier. “It benefits all of us. Now, there is little time for pleasantries, as I am sure the king will want to see you immediately, but I am Glubwhoa Tchoobrayitch. If you wish, you may call me by the abbreviation ‘Tchoobrayitch.’” Tom’s first thought was that the abbreviation wasn’t much shorter than the name. His second was that he didn’t think he’d ever get tired of hearing that a king wanted to see him immediately.
“Nice to meet you,” Tom said, “I’m Tom.”
“Hello, Tom.” He got Tom’s name right on the first try. Tom liked everything about this kingdom better so far.
“Bring me another Elgg,” Tchoobrayitch said to his men, and they fell all over themselves to run off the landing strip and into the shadows. They came back with an Elgg that was smaller than Tom’s. It didn’t have to be led by a leash—it simply walked alongside the soldiers up to Tchoobrayitch, who hopped on.
“If you’ll retake your Elgg, Tom,” Tchoobrayitch said, smiling, “hopefully you’ll be more comfortable this time.”
Tom’s Elgg bowed once again in front of him, and once Tom got on, it rose to its full height.
“The king may be sleeping,” Tchoobrayitch said, “but we shall wake him. He will want to be made aware of you right away.”
After a few minutes of dodging through a tangle of interconnected tubes and tunnels, Tom and Tchoobrayitch emerged into an enormous chamber. It was easily four times bigger than any stadium Tom had ever seen on Earth. The whole swirling-gas theme of the Ghelm kingdom kept making Tom think of Jupiter, but what they found embedded in one wall of this chamber looked almost exactly like it. It was an orb whose surface was all tumultuous, miniature super-storms. Tom had seen it in his visions. Opposite the orb, the visible stone workings of the mountain ringed a circular chasm, deep and dark and black with a steady, howling wind blowing out of it that seemed to be coming straight from hell. All around the orb’s station in the wall were portholes, presumably for ventilation for the impossible wind. Tom looked down. The wind was tearing his mist-clothing apart but luckily, it was being regenerated at exactly the same rate. Tchoobrayitch turned left, starting up a path carved into the cliff face of the chamber. They were headed away from the chasm, toward the orb.
Tom clung hard to his Elgg, which was struggling not to be blown up against the chamber wall. He wondered if he would get to keep it during his stay here. He sure hoped so. He could name it. He’d never had a pet bigger than a goldfish. It would be neat to have any pet at all, let alone a pet he could ride around as it flew.
Finally they reached the orb. Tchoobrayitch reached out a bare hand and placed it on the orb’s surface, then took it away, leaving a red handprint. The handprint lingered there for a second and then fluttered away into the orb’s interior storm, like a paper cutout blown down the sidewalk on a windy day. A second later, the entire orb began to float out and down to
ward the center of the chamber. It left a huge vacant hole in the wall, and on the other side of the wall was night, and bare country.
The orb stopped moving and hovered in mid-air several feet away from the edge of the path . Tchoobrayitch’s Elgg leapt off the edge, into the wind, landing on the top of the orb. It skittered to the dead center and, as soon as it had found its footing, Tom’s Elgg did the same. Tom clung harder than ever to the back of his faithful but as-yet-nameless Elgg, worried that he would be blown off its back and dashed against the cliff wall or sucked out of the giant space left by the missing orb.
Instead, his Elgg nobly achieved the summit of the orb. It positioned its feet in a very specific way, and then, synchronized, both Elggs deployed their impressive wings, and none too soon, because the second they did so, the top of the orb opened and they plummeted down into it. The Elggs’ wings acted as parachutes, and Tom and Tchoobrayitch floated straight down into a throne room. There was no mistaking it, Tom thought. For one thing, it actually had a throne.
Sitting on the throne was the man in the crimson armor from Tom’s vision: the Ghelm King.
He was young for a king, maybe in his mid-forties, though Tom was notoriously bad at judging the ages of people over eighteen, and for all he knew, the Ghelm aged at a different rate from Earth people. He had a beard, but it was brown and manicured, in stark contrast to the Crap King’s tangled white monstrosity. He didn’t look mean or evil or even mad. He looked at his subject and then at Tom. Tchoobrayitch dismounted and his Elgg trotted to the back of the room. Tom’s Elgg lowered its head and Tom dismounted. Instead of heading for the back of the expansive throne room, his Elgg padded up toward the king. It came around to his right side and hopped up, landing with its front paws on one arm of the throne and its back legs still on the ground. The king nested his chin on his right fist and leaned in, toward the Elgg. It began whispering in the king’s ear, its mouth displaying the full range of articulation that a human’s mouth had, its tongue flicking in and out as it told the king something.
It was disturbing to see a creature Tom had assumed did not have the power of speech suddenly betray the fact that it could talk, and especially to see it do it so conspiratorially. What was it saying? More disturbing: Tom had been naked on that thing. He’d presumed it wouldn’t mind, because it was an animal and therefore didn’t draw any distinction between clothed and not clothed. But it could talk, and talking meant culture, and culture probably meant a general dislike of having naked kids climb all over you. There was a very real possibility that right now it was saying to the Ghelm King, This kid was naked when I found him, and then he just climbed on me like that, like it wasn’t a big deal. I know! Eww, right? What a gross kid! Tom just couldn’t catch a break when it came to kings.
The Ghelm King nodded. The Elgg took its legs off the throne and joined its friend at the back of the room. The king smiled. He looked at Tom.
“Hello, son! What is your name?”
“Tom,” Tom said.
“Tom!” the king said. “I am King Doondredge Anyetteese-Krx. You may shorten it to Doondredge if you like, when addressing me.” The Ghelm kingdom, Tom thought, was definitely big on having long names that didn’t get much shorter even when you shortened them. “This is one of my Out-of-Orb Lieutenants, Tchoobrayitch, though I presume you’ve met. And those,” Doondredge gestured to the back of the room, “are the Elgg. They are hearty creatures and also have the gift of being remarkably perceptive. Excellent judges of character. The one that brought you here after finding you on a routine patrol tells me, having looked you in the eye and employing its innate biological ability to tell a great deal about a person by doing so, that you would be an excellent candidate.”
“A candidate for what?” Tom asked.
“I’m surprised you hadn’t guessed,” Doondredge said. He raised an eyebrow. “For Chosen One.”
24
“YOU NEED A Chosen One?”
“Yes, of course! Nearly all cultures have a story that speaks of an unlikely outsider who will come to their aid in a time of great need. Our culture is something of a curator of other cultures, and across worlds, we have seen that this is the case.”
The Ghelm were Crap Kingdom’s enemies, Gark had said so. The first time Tom had fled the clutches of an Elgg, it had chased him down and shown him a vision where the Ghelm were burning Crap Kingdom and enslaving its people. Maybe that vision wasn’t a threat, though. Maybe it was a warning. Maybe it was really his destiny to save the people of the nameless kingdom by being the Ghelm’s Chosen One, and somehow brokering peace. It seemed complicated, but who said prophecies were clear-cut? The only clear-cut prophecies came on pieces of printer paper, and those were the kind of prophecies that put Kyle in charge.
“What do you need me to do?”
“Recall, if you will, the visions you saw when our Elgg made contact with you this evening. Realize that they can be, and shall be, very real, should you do the very simple thing I ask of you.
“We are an adventurous people, Tom. Unlike some races, we are not content to merely pine for a lost and glorious age, stewing in our own filth. We venture forth. We view the Vortex on which our city rests as our birthright, and we have built our society around exploring the worlds it grants us access to.”
As he spoke, the floor, which had seemed solid a second before, revealed itself to be translucent, and the dark, stationary clouds that had given the glass floor the appearance of being made of stone or marble began to part. Through the orb’s bottom, the gaping mouth of the Vortex came into view.
“This is no piddling portal, blowing open and closed at odd times, offering us passage to merely one world. We believe it to be the main inter-world artery, and we believe a controlling cosmic entity entrusted such a magnificent prize to a race strong enough and smart enough to defend it, to exploit it, to use it for a great and glorious end: nothing less than a total takeover of the All-Worlds.
“We have, for countless generations, been assembling a force of warriors bred from every race, of every sentient species the Vortex has cycled us into contact with. The time is drawing near when that force will have reached a state of readiness, of toughness forged in permanent war, to stage this attack. This time will draw near faster if I have a skilled protégé by my side. The attack will go more smoothly, will be less costly in terms of lives, will leave more intact societies for us, the conquerors, to manage. And that management, the new cross-world order, leagues stronger than the loose cooperative that is in place now, will only be possible if it is done in partnership with someone with the qualities described to me just now by our Elgg friend there. I need someone like that, Tom. Someone I can entrust with many, many, many worlds.”
Tom thought: This is amazing.
Then he thought: This is evil.
Still, he wanted to know: What are the All-Worlds? There were more universes than just this one and Earth’s? Why did it have to be this guy telling him all of this? It was all exactly what Tom would have wanted to hear a month and a half ago staring up at his ceiling, but he had to hear it from a guy who was very probably evil. And this evil guy was promising Tom a part in all of it. A huge part. Leader not just of a bunch of people in what was essentially a junkyard in the middle of a barren plain, but of many, many, many worlds.
Could he maybe just look at the worlds? Did he have to do all the evil stuff, too?
“All you need to do to take part in our glorious destiny is this: Tell me the words to bring down the Wall.”
Okay. Now there was no doubt about the evilness.
Doondredge didn’t want Tom to be the Chosen One at all. He only cared about Tom because he thought he was from Crap Kingdom and therefore knew the words to make the Wall disappear. But how had he known to say the “Chosen One”? How had he known what Tom wanted to hear? Then he realized: the Elgg. It hadn’t been reading Tom for qualities of stre
ngth and bravery; it had been scanning his weaknesses, and then showing him an instantly generated 3-D movie based on those weaknesses.
It was that easy. Any fantastic creature could look him in the eyes and tell how much he hated that Kyle had what he had, because it had once been Tom’s but Tom hadn’t known how to appreciate it. And it took Kyle getting it, and loving it, and earning it, to make Tom see what he’d done wrong, and the more he burned with envy, the further away he got from ever getting anything like it again.
Now that Tom knew Doondredge was certain he would betray his friend, he was determined not to. Tom wondered, though: Would he have sold Kyle out if it wasn’t just a trick Doondredge was playing, if it was all real? He didn’t know, and now he would never know, but the fact that there was even any possibility that he might have done it, under the right circumstances, made him feel like the jet-black Vortex he could still see through the unclouded glass floor was actually inside his chest, and always would be.
Crap Kingdom Page 17