Tales from the Multiverse

by Pam Uphoff

  She wrinkled her nose and eyed him uncertainly. "Is that your usual pickup line?

  "Heck no. Wait till you see the scene where I'm trying to seduce the Spoiled Daughter, played by his wife. Then you hear all my pickup lines."

  "And I'll probably have to kill you, after." Jack muttered.

  "Umm, depends on how many retakes we have to do, because Margo starts laughing helplessly."

  "Margo is going to have a hard time." Margo said.

  "Hey, Jacob? How safe is that part of the world? Do we need real guides and guards while we're on site?" Eldon looked innocently over at the Director.

  "We'll take some muscle along with us, hire what we need, over there." He swept a look around the room, noting uncertainty.

  "I know some Martial Arts types, might be handy to have around. They can shoot too, but just bare handed they're good. Might make the women feel a bit safer. Want me to bring them around?"

  There were a lot of nodding heads.

  Jacob harrumphed. "I thought you were a tough fellah."

  "I am. I'll also be busy acting."

  "Well . . . bring them around for the first rehearsals. We'll see." He flipped more pages. "So, we have love scenes on either side of the waterfall. With G. trying to dodge the big girl. The Good Guys cross back over the river on the ferry. As they start to head for the park Exit, the Guide stops them, and looks at some hoof prints."

  "Horses, not zebras, and only about a day and a half old." Johnathan jumped in. "Let's see where they camped."

  "Then we have the next big fight scene. The lightning stick doesn't work very well in the misty environment right around the falls."

  "Ha! The mist shorting out your fancy fire stick, Bubba?"

  Jacob gave Jack a repressive glare. "I think we can improve on that. So we go hand to hand, and Jack gets knocked into the falls while G. rescues his daughter. The confrontation between G. and the King is sidetracked when the King's biggest guard recognizes the Guide's sister as his wife, and the boys get introduced to their father . . . and G. and Margo have run like hell. Down to the bottom of the falls where the anthropologist is giving Jack mouth-to-mouth, while the kid keeps crocs at bay." Jacob nods. "Stupid, but it'll film well. So, everyone's happy. And the cute Anthro chick is heading in that direction, so G. and Jack decide they'd better go with her, at least as far as the Kenya border? Daughter gets her nose out of joint again. So they drive along and while they're admiring some wildlife, the Atlanteans swoop out of nowhere and grab the wrong lady. Ride off. Big chase, with women being grabbed, grabbed back, and all that. They come up on Kate making magic. The Atlanteans grab both women and disappear. Literally."

  Phillip grins. "They do that all the time. It feels awful, but it certainly saves wear and tear on the horses."

  Jack tried to loom from his chair across the room. "Do what?"

  "Oh, they call it taking a shortcut. That old witch claims to be able to fold space. They walk in one side and walk out the other, hundreds of miles away. They can only do it every fourth or fifth day, wears them out, you see?"

  "So the Good Guys cross into Kenya and keep going, until they find someone who saw the migration. This time they sneak into camp, and grab the women. Another fight, at night, some nice lightning effects, but the king doesn't want to kill the women, so he lets them go, and the Bad Guys mount up and ride off into Somalia."

  "I don't know if I should feel sorry for the Somalis or the Atlanteans." G. drawled.

  Jack shook his head. "They've picked the one place on Earth they could actually improve.

  "We'll think a bit about that as the end, or if we need to add anything more." Jacob closed his script with a snap. "Good. Now, there will be mostly exteriors, but some, especially that running, woman snatching fight we'll film here, and CGI the right sort of trees and wildlife in the background. Interiors, damn few. A few nighttime scenes, Eldon and Margo's waterfall scene . . . Once we're back here, with all the locations in the can we can check them. If it didn't work there, we'll make the scenery and reshoot it here."

  "Right. Let's meet tomorrow, and do a run through of the first scene. Eldon bring your muscular friends, so I can look them over. Everyone get your passports to my secretary, she will arrange any visas we need. Mike, you're on the horses? Good."

  Chapter Three

  Eldon wasn't surprised to find his federal friends on his heels as he walked up his sidewalk. "I talked Jacob into looking over a couple of my friends. I said they were good at martial arts, so they didn't need to carry guns. I said they'd make the women feel safe. So I certainly hope they can be here at five AM tomorrow. Casual dress, jeans and tee shirt will do nicely. They can mention that they could pull in some more people if Jacob is worried. I gather the Sudan isn't the best place to be running around the countryside. Ask if he wants rifles in case of hungry lions, or if they'll have locals for that. Oh, and I'm going to need a passport pretty quick if this is going to work."

  Mrs. North and Miss Higgins were a perfect nanny/maid/cook combo. Mrs. North wanted to live in, to make getting the kids off to school easier. Miss Higgins lived out, but was willing to work to just about any schedule.

  Betelgeuse smirked. "And I didn't let on that I knew they worked for the Government. So they won't run screaming at the first weird thing that happens."

  Lyle Hemmingway and Perry Zaragosa were on his doorstep at five in the morning.

  Zaragosa briefed him. "Right, we met at the gym where you work out. You came to our dojo a couple of times to spar, but you don't follow a style and started driving up to Sacramento all the time, so you haven't joined the dojo. Got it?"

  "You bet. Hop in. If you come with me, they can't send you away until they kick me out, so you can kick back and try to not intimidate the ladies. You're hitching a ride by virtue of making them feel safe, so make them feel safe." Eldon started the Mercedes and hit the garage door switch. Perry, riding shotgun, looked to be what Eldon was beginning to understand was "Hispanic" while Lyle was one of the extra pale people, who were all "Caucasian," but not all Caucasians were all the way pale like that. He'd just about got it all figured out.

  At the studio gate, the guards had a note that he was bringing people. Their names were taken and then he swooped around to the designated sound stage.

  They were early so he took the opportunity to walk out a couple of his own scenes, hamming up his attempts to charm the Spoiled Daughter. Jacob came in halfway through, then Jack and Margo. Jacob stood Jack, Lyle, and Perry around the stage and had Eldon do it all over again with Margo there. He emoted sex, and fairly purred. Margo radiated appalled horror and thinly disguised terror, looking around for a place to run to.

  Xtreme crowed in delight. "I'll bet Jack accidentally hits you too hard in the fight scenes."

  "Bah. Jack's a professional." Eldon sniffed. "He'll steal my scenes, and relegate me to the has-been bin before I've actually been."

  The kid rolled his eyes.

  "No? Okay, umm, maybe I'd better get all my girlfriends in to spectate, and then he'll realize I wouldn't dare risk getting fresh with yet another woman."

  "I thought you liked Lily?" Xtreme frowned. Hollywood was a tough place for a guy to learn about women.

  "I do, however I am . . . like, a member of a commune, I guess you'd call it, here. I could get a couple of the gals to come and radiate disapproval of my actions. How about that?"

  The boy looked at him cynically. "Does Lily know about this commune?"

  "I told her, but she hasn't met any of them yet. It may be painful."

  "Deadly, I'd say." Jack shook his head. "You just get weirder all the time."

  Lily drove up to Sacramento with him, Friday night.

  The kids mobbed him, Betelgeuse hugged him and looked Lily over thoughtfully.

  Lily was still gawping at all the kids. "Eldon how many of these are yours?"

  "Three. Nightmare, wave at the lady. And the two littlest." Both of whom were doing their best to crawl into his lap.
r />   The redhead bounced over and leaned against his legs.

  "I'm Nancy now, remember?"

  "Yes, I do. And how do you like Kindergarten?"

  "Miss Reed is really nice, and I have lots of friends. Especially Janie. Miss Reed lets me read lots of books. She says I'm really, really smart."

  "I suspect Miss Reed is correct."

  Betelgeuse worked her way around the horde that was calling for pony rides, and introduced herself to Lily. "Sorry about the mob scene, but Eldon is a kid magnet. I remember doing the same when I was little."

  "Oh, umm, I thought you were a girlfriend, err."

  Eldon looked around, "Hey! Betelgeuse's practically still one of the kids."

  Betelgeuse shook her head. "Eldon's at least a Big Brother figure to me, and if he ever had sex with my mother, I really don't want to know."

  Eldon snorted. "Fat chance! Told you this wasn't the standard type commune."

  "Okay, I may regret asking this, but who are the mothers of Eldon's three."

  "Right." Betelgeuse surveyed the group. "Nightmare's mother is Falchion. Who is also the mother of Rampart and Mayhem." She pointed to two more redheads. "Wheeler Dealer's mother is Gauntlet, who is also the mother of Quarrel here." She touched the golden blonde beauty, aged ten, then patted the other baby. "X-Cape's mother is Arrow. She doesn't have any halves on her mother's side. Here. Did Eldon explain anything?"

  "Umm, he got as far as his having once been a member of an inter-dimensional criminal gang. Umm, you guys don't look very gangish." But she snuck a peek in Eldon's direction. He was handsome in a rugged way, but he still had considerable loom factor.

  "Oh boy. And Eldon seems awfully serious about you. I guess you get the long version. Well, just on our world, Okay? There was a gang of magic users who went bad. Seriously, they were killers, assassins. Eldon had gone to school with some of them and was there when they killed this prince. He didn't know anything about it, but who's going to believe that? Well, it turned out it was the prince's uncle that hired them, and since the old king didn't feel like executing his own son in revenge over the death of his grandson, he didn't execute the gang members either. Now the head of the gang, Ricardo, was killed, then they captured about half the rest of the gang, including Eldon and Heso. They all got tossed into this inter-dimensional prison. The rest of the gang went into hiding, had a bunch of kids—it was all women who escaped—and just kept a low profile until they encountered Rior. I was . . . Umm, five then? Something like that. Rior was a spy from another World, The One World they call it. Except he'd been burned, and abandoned. He got the women talking about how they made corridors, which they knew all about, and gates, which they didn't. So he got them studying the gates. Once they figured out gates, they pulled a raid on the inter-dimensional prison and freed everyone. So after that, they took up larceny across the Multiverse."

  Lily looked dubiously at Eldon.

  He squirmed. "I've never killed any Good Guys, but I was present at the prison break when guards were killed, and present and fighting when the dimensional cops raided our hideout and one of them was killed, so I am guilty of the murders, same as everyone else. I'm trying to just help raise all the kids, and not have anything to do with the actively criminal parts of the gang . . . but they keep showing up to check on the kids."

  Eldon sighed. "They—we—have never broken any laws apart from faking IDs, here in your world. And I'm not going to let them. The kids need a stable home, and good examples."

  Eldon abruptly steered Lily out the door. "That's most of the reason I've not thrown myself at you. I'm a wanted criminal, elsewhere, and eventually the D-cops will find us. Betelgeuse helped with a couple of robberies, since she grew up, but not murders, not even accidental ones. She may be able to avoid prison. And the kids need a home to grow up in, so I hope the cops are slow to find us."

  "Eldon . . . I can't do criminal stuff."

  "I know. I think half the reason I brought you up here was to show you that I really am foreign to your society, and to . . . break off our relationship. I . . . find you hard to resist. You're good looking, smart and your personality . . . you practically glow in the dark. You need to run far away from me."

  She blinked damp eyes at him, and nodded. He got up and stuck the end of the corridor onto the back wall of the garage, right in front of his Mercedes. She gave him a hug, without looking at him, and walked through to his LA garage, and out of sight.

  Betelgeuse sighed behind him. "That was sad."

  "Yeah, I knew better than to fall for an honest, decent person." He walked back in, undressing, and turned into a pony for the kids to play with. Nothing like mass adoration and total exhaustion to heal a broken heart.

  He left the single corridor open and spent lots of time with the kids for the next month. They made him figure out how to morph into various zoo animals, and a good time was had by all.

  At the moment he had nine horses. His four pinto mares and five yearlings. He gave the kids all riding lessons on the mares, and worked with the yearlings, getting them accustomed to the saddle and bit, and picking up their feet and loading into horse trailers.

  Chapter Four

  Then, with the final script beaten out, the troupe headed for Africa. Lyle and Perry had made themselves useful around the set and when they volunteered a couple more martial arts experts, they were all included in the mass exodus. Lily was along as a wardrobe assistant. Eldon Brown's passport passed all inspections, and no one noticed he was stretching a multi-dimensional corridor behind him. With his hair dyed black for the film, he fit into the native scene . . . poorly. His facial features marked him as not belonging to anyone's tribe, and he got many suspicious looks until he opened his mouth and they decided he was an American. Then he got treated like all the pale skinned people.

  They flew into Nairobi where Jacob's advance team had located all the guides and equipment they'd need. They drove the path of the film backwards, picking exact locations, shooting footage and a few scenes as opportunities presented themselves. In Uganda, Katy Marcil did her folding space dance as the dramatic cloud shadows chased brilliant sunshine across the vivid green grass and white thunderheads gathered over rugged black mountains and the base of the clouds grew purple and darkened the sky. The sun drove beams through holes in the cloud cover and lightning flashed in the distance.

  Jacob sighed in artistic repletion. "You can't buy effects like that."

  Katy was smug and happy, with nearly half her job done, while the rest of them hadn't started.

  They reached Murchison Falls National Park and camped and scouted. Jack and Sue's sultry scene came off well. Then Eldon and Margo tried theirs. The first time she did laugh, the second he got rude and she got mad.

  Jacob sighed. "I'll think about that second one. 'I'll leave you alone if you won't squeeze my testicles any harder.' Hmm. Might actually work. Now can we try it as written before the light goes?"

  Eldon channeled a bit of his God of Perverts behavior from a Houston worlds away, and there was some genuine shock in Margo's attempts to avoid him and cut the confrontation short.

  Jacob smiled in satisfaction, and Margo huddled under Jack's protective wing and they both glared.

  They camped in luxury while Jacob took just the essentials up into the Sudan to film at the Pyramids and ruins of Meroe. Perry and a local were conscripted for a brief scene, where the pursuing Good Guys find the two rich Arabs that the Bad Guys stole the cars from. Then Eldon was driven up for his first appearance, first, the scene, supposedly still back in the Sudan where he kidnaps the daughter. The second scene when the Good Guys catch up to him at the bridge over the river. The 'Arabs' take one look at Eldon's imaginary pyrotechnics and flee on foot, leaving their cars blocking the bridge. Eldon and two of his royal troops ride off, leap the imaginary flames of the putatively burning cars and galloped off into the park.

  At least, that was the idea. Eldon took one look at the pretty little arab horses and mild mannered 'Wild
Trek' mounts that were all Mike could find, and walked his corridors to bring in three of the mares. With illusions of being solid black, bay, and chestnut, the big pintos willingly reared on command, scooped up screaming women, leaped cars and galloped off.

  Mike boggled. "How did you do that? I had to bring some horses in from Egypt. And those are definitely not Arabians."

  "They're Atlanteans. Bigger and heavier. But we'll need all of them soon enough."

  "And camels." Jacob walked around the big 'black' mare Eldon was riding. "Did you buy or rent them? Will there be any problem bringing them with us?"

  "No problem. The owner's got a trailer. Shall I take them back now? And see if he can transport these other horses as well?"

  "Excellent plan."

  Eldon walked his three out of sight and popped them into a bubble. He walked back and eyed Mike's collection. Good looking but too small, too gentle or both to even fake being warhorses.

  "Don't think I didn't recognize your pintos, Eldon. How did you do that?" Mike looked pissed.

  "Magic. Watch." He bubbled the other horses and walked away.

  "Eldon. Stop doing things like that, we really need to have those horses for some other scenes."

  "Indeed. C'mon, Mike. They'll be there." Eldon grinned at his expression, and made sure he was watching when he brought them out that night when they camped. All six drew mosquitoes in the dusk, and he broadcast a spell to repel insects of all kinds and included himself in that effect. The trio of arabians were all stallions, all a bit randy and willing to fight each other, with the three mares so close. Eldon whipped up a hormone destroying spell and laid it on nice and heavy, then tied them with the 'Wild Trek' geldings in between. The guards, both native and the undercover Feds were out patrolling, so he climbed under his unneeded mosquito netting and slept until rousted out at dawn.