Samantha Smart

by Maxwell Puggle

  Toward the top of the path, Marvin came to a realization and then made a split-second decision. Concluding that he would most likely never be able to outrun these jungle-trained hunters, he turned around and stopped, pointed the stun-gun at the man in the front of the pack and yelled the only word he was sure they would recognize, hopefully to some effect.

  “VASCHE!!!” he blurted out, at the same time activating the stun-gun. A flash released two arcs of 200,000 volt blue-white electricity through the air and into the warrior in the front of the pursuing posse. He flew back into the others and lost consciousness, drooling and soiling what little clothing he had on. A faint smell of ozone hung in the air and the pursuers looked terrified, perhaps thinking that their leader was dead.

  Marvin’s gambit paid off. They all hit the ground in ‘worship’ position, the utterance of their shark god’s name in combination with a very visual display of power had been enough to scare and confuse them. He stood, breathing heavily and still holding the weapon out in front of him, then yelled “Vasche,” once more and lightly kicked the closest man to him. The native looked up at him, and Marvin gestured to him that they should all leave immediately. They didn’t seem to quite get the idea, so he blasted the man and made more obvious gestures for the rest to be on their way. This seemed to work. It was a good thing, too–you couldn’t usually get more than two good shots with the stun-gun without needing a recharge. The natives turned tail and ran, leaving Marvin with two messy warriors who would regain consciousness in a moment. He ran. Up and out of the village, into the boulder fields of the cliff tops.

  Jordan had returned quickly to the chief’s building, having abandoned the chase to the warriors. He fumed and cursed, and the girls feared that their treatment would be somehow worsened in response to Marvin’s daring escape. Strangely, however, this was not the case. Jordan gathered all their belongings and stripped them of their wrist-communicators, but then went suddenly away, perhaps to see about Marvin, and left them in the warriors’ care. After a very brief discussion between the chief and the priest, they were led away to a small hut, where they were looked after by several small, mostly older women.

  The new situation wasn’t that much more comfortable. Their clothes were taken from them and they were given ritualistic dresses to wear, leaving little doubt that they were scheduled for sacrifice to the shark-god. They were also brought fruits and fresh meat, which they accepted reluctantly in their hunger. All the while the little women kept muttering prayers and sprinkling water on them, and the girls were beginning to get very nervous as the night wore on. I sure hope you can figure us out of this one, Marvin, Samantha thought, batting away a palm leaf that one of the women had been fanning her with.

  *

  Marvin slid down into a crevice between two massive boulders, out of breath and with his heart racing like that of a hunted animal’s. This, he decided, must be as safe a place as he could find. Catching his breath, he repeatedly stuck his head out the side of the crack to gaze back in the direction of the village, though he had probably run at least a mile from it on the cliff tops. At last, feeling that no one had followed him, he switched on his wrist-communicator and pressed the talk button.

  “Professor?” Marvin gasped.

  “Marvin!” the familiar British voice came back. “How goes it? Any luck with finding the plant yet?”

  “Uh–yeah, we got the plant. Sort of. Listen–”

  “Sort of? What do you mean you ‘sort of’ have the plant?”

  “Listen,” Marvin pleaded. “The girls are being held in a native village by Jordan Slane. I, uh, escaped, used a stun-gun. We need help, Professor!”

  “Oh, dear,” The Professor’s tone turned to one of concern. “Marvin, are the other wrist-communicators in the enemy’s possession right now?”

  “Um, well, yeah, I mean–the girls still had them on when I busted out an hour or so ago, but–yeah, he’s got ’em.”

  “Very well. This line is no longer secure. I want you to do something for me, Marvin,” The Professor’s voice said calmly.

  “Sure, man. What?” Marvin replied.

  “Take the wrist-communicator off. Look on its back, its underside. You will see two small compartments that can be opened. The larger one is for the battery. I want you to open the smaller one.”

  “Um–okay. Hold on.” Marvin fumbled with the thing with no success. “I can’t get it open, Professor,” he despaired.

  “If you had a very small stick or a–a, well, I don’t know exactly–but something small and thin... ”

  “Oh, wait–got it!” Marvin rejoiced, proud of himself. He had used a little lip of metal on the stun-gun, the only other thing he had, to achieve the desired effect. He smiled and opened the compartment.

  “You should see a tiny green button,” The Professor continued coaching him. “I want you to press it.”

  “Done,” Marvin came back. His voice was not consistent in volume due to the fact that he had to keep flipping the thing over to talk into it while working on its backside. “Okay. Now what?”

  “You can put it back on, after you close up the hatch there,” Smythe guided him. “Stay where you are if you can; help will be forthcoming, I promise you. Smythe out.”

  “What? Wait!” Marvin petitioned their fearless leader. “Yo, what does that mean, ‘forthcoming’!?” There was no reply.

  *

  The night was long and sleepless for the girls, though it was quiet and the distant sound of waves lapping against the shore was somehow slightly relaxing. It did not, however, change the fact that morning would come, which it did. A little before sunrise, the attending women came to fetch them, and along with a couple of spear-toting warriors led them out of the hut that had been theirs for a night. They were taken down the winding stairs that were cut into the rock next to the waterfall, down, down, down... until their bare feet suddenly felt soft, fine sand underneath them.

  The shore was bathed in a warm, pink light as the sun rose over the gulf, each wave tipped with a taffy-textured crest that made the morning world look like an impossible candy-land. As the girls were marched out to the water’s edge they stared at the beautiful picture, half hoping that the Good Ship Lollipop would appear to rescue them and whisk them away to a place that wasn’t so tense, so angry and so vengeful as the reality of Jordan Slane. They each thought about their lives, reflecting on happy moments and sad, wondering if the world would go on without them or if the Slanes’ fiendish plan would in fact succeed with them out of the way.

  Samantha tried to keep her wits about her, tried to pay close attention to what the natives were doing and wondered nervously what ghastly fate lay in store for her and the others. Jordan was directing two crews of canoe paddlers from the shore, waving his hands and speaking in their strange, ancient language. It appeared as if they were to be taken by boat out to the stone platform that sat some hundred yards out from the beach, from which several stone pillars rose up to a height of ten feet or so.

  The natives herded them somewhat roughly into their canoes, parting them from their female attendants who threw flower petals on them as they were paddled away from shore. The sun had risen somewhat quickly and the waves now looked bright blue, that brilliant, electric blue that one only sees in travel brochures depicting tropical island vacations. Alas, a vacation this was not, and the girls’ hearts and thoughts grew heavy as the boats approached the platform.

  As they pulled alongside it, they could see that it was in fact far larger than it had looked to be from land. The pillars were closer to twenty feet high than ten, and the whole structure seemed to have a super-sized, deity-scaled theme that made all the people seem like miniature dolls next to it. They were pulled out of the canoes firmly but gently and each was led to the base of a pillar, two guards to a girl. Some sort of iron manacles had been anchored into the stone in each one at about six or seven feet off the platform, and the girls were shackled in these, their arms high above their heads. The closing of
the manacles around their wrists was a frightening, very physical feeling of finality, of the last possibility of escape vanishing, and Suki began to whimper. The natives backed away and let Jordan have the platform to himself as they piled back into their canoes.

  “And so it ends,” Jordan smiled an evil smile. “The race of sharks, as always, tears the race of humans to pieces. Oh, trust me, ladies, we’ll find your friend Marvin–I wouldn’t count on his coming to your rescue. But even if we don’t find him–well, he may fancy himself something of a survivor, but let me assure you, thousand-year-old Central America is no Brooklyn, New York. I suspect some other of the land-dwelling species will finish him off.” Jordan smiled his impossible, morph-toothed smile again, walking back and forth in front of the girls.

  “And then what!?” Samantha burst out angrily. “Say you succeed, and the earth is covered with saltwater–what then!? Do you think you can build half as beautiful a society as humans have? Will you–will you create wondrous works of art? Will your shark-men write sonnets like Shakespeare’s? Will they make music? Or build incredible buildings?”

  “Your society holds no beauty for us,” Jordan turned serious, stepping closer to Samantha. “Your race is no better than ours. Your ‘artists’ are inspired by pain, by violence. These qualities we accept as natural; we embrace them. We do not, as you do, deny our own nature.” He stood very close to her face now, his head morphing into an angry shark-expression. “The world we build will be, if nothing else, an honest world, free of deception, free of duplicity. We will let nature be the world’s artist, the world’s poet and architect, the world’s composer. All that will remain for us to do will be what comes naturally to us–the urge to hunt.” Jordan’s toothy grin hovered inches from Samantha’s face, drooling with what appeared to be genuine appetite. Suddenly, however, his face snapped back to normal and he turned away from her.

  “But to others, some respect is due. You three we give now to Vasche, my ancestor, for it is in his time that your end is scheduled.” He paced back toward the canoes and began laughing maniacally, then got back into one of them. Both boats then pushed off and headed back toward the shore.

  Though Jordan’s close-up teeth had felt threatening and unnerving, Samantha knew in the back of her mind that he could not actually touch her. Unfortunately, this was probably not the case with Vasche, who was presumably a regular denizen of this time. She racked her brain for some means of escape as she helplessly watched the natives’ canoes paddle away. But it was too late.

  *

  Brianna screamed, pointing out to sea as best she could with her manacled hand. A huge, dark shape was approaching the platform, moving fast. A fin cut through the surface of the water as it came, heading straight for them. Just as it reached the platform, it leapt out of the water and grew legs, or arms, straddling the stone ledge and heaving its massive, primitive form onto the flat surface. It was huge, much bigger than they’d expected, and it paused for a moment on the platform and shook water from its body like a dog. A crowd of natives was cheering from the shore, and everything began to blur into a surreal collage of horror and fear. Vasche, for it must have been Vasche, the Slane ancestor, the shark god, sniffed the air as if deciding which of the girls to devour first. Samantha stared over at her two friends, her heart pounding in her chest. Brianna had fainted and now hung limp from her manacles. But Suki–Suki was staring up at the sky, as if totally entranced by something... else. Samantha craned her neck to follow Suki’s gaze, wondering what could possibly be more interesting than their imminent death at the hands (or jaws) of a gigantic, hideous, primitive shark-man. She heard before she saw.

  Thuk! Thuk! Thuk! Several Javelin-like objects pierced the thick hide of the Vasche-creature, causing it to writhe in pain and let out a horrible screaming sound. It morphed erratically, trying to regain its pure shark form and slipping, badly wounded, back beneath the gentle waves of the gulf, trailing blood as it went. Then Samantha saw it, the agent of their rescue. It was a small speedboat, dangling from a sort of giant, square parachute, quickly descending and angling itself toward the stone platform. There were spear-guns mounted on the boat’s front, and at their triggers–Marvin, and Professor Smythe!

  It would almost have been funny to Samantha if she hadn’t been purely terrified a few moments earlier. The boat-chute looked like some scene out of Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang as it touched down on the water, Marvin engaging its engine. The two rescuers zipped quickly over to the platform and Marvin got out, carrying a glass vial with him and leaving The Professor at the controls.

  “Hold very still,” Marvin instructed as he uncorked the vial and poured what must have been some powerful acid onto the chains of Samantha’s manacles. The metal hissed and smoked, then gave way almost instantly. Some drops had fallen onto the platform and were fast eating holes through the stone, a sight that made Samantha gulp for a moment, looking down at her wrists, which held the remains of the manacles.

  “Help me,” Marvin instructed, handing her another vial of the stuff and then running over to the pillar that held the unconscious Brianna. Samantha followed suit, rushing to Suki’s column and imitating what she had seen Marvin do with the acid. There was a collective roar coming from the shore and canoes were already paddling out to them, fast.

  The girls jumped into the flashy speedboat, helping Marvin to carry onboard the limp Brianna. The Professor, presumably not wanting to leave any evidence of their presence in this time, had pulled the deflated parachute aboard and was packing it away inside the hull of the boat. Marvin slid behind the wheel and gunned its engine. It was very fast. The girls were thrown backward as the vessel sped along the cliff-lined shore, and it seemed for a moment as if they were heading straight for the canoes full of warriors in pursuit.

  “Marvin!” The Professor yelled, but Marvin had ideas of his own. He floored the accelerator and shot right at the pursuing natives. It looked as though they were going to collide. Wide-eyed warriors threw their spears and jumped overboard from their canoes. None of the spears came close to hitting them, though one glanced off the front of the fiberglass boat. At the last moment before impact, Marvin jerked the wheel to the right and tore off north along the rocky coastline.

  “That was stupid, Marvin!” The Professor chastised the ‘Brooklyn Bandit,’ honestly angry. “One of us could have taken a spear to the head! Cackling Quetzl-Coatls! Don’t ever do anything like that again!” He was holding his heart in an ‘I’m too old for this sort of thing’ way.

  “Well,” Marvin sighed, smiling a little, “No one will be following us for a while.”

  “That is true,” Samantha chimed in. “But that was a stupid stunt, Marvin; someone could really have gotten hurt. I suppose it’s hard for me to be angry, though, when I was expecting to die moments ago and you’ve just saved all our lives–you, too, Professor.” She kissed the old, flustered Brit on the cheek, making him blush uncharacteristically.

  “Well, uh, yes, well, of course!” Smythe stammered. “Aaaahhh–Marvin?”

  “Ya, boss,” Dr. Marvy replied, focused on his speedboat driving. He was quite enjoying it and wishing that their real time didn’t require silly things like drivers’ licenses.

  “You know where to head to, correct?”

  Marvin looked down at the boat’s dashboard, which featured a bright digital display with many numbers and some sort of wavy lines on it.

  “Yup, I figure about fifteen to, oh, twenty or twenty-five minutes.”

  “What’s that?” Samantha’s scientific curiosity kicked in. She slid closer to Marvin and studied the dashboard’s readout, which seemed to be changing as they traveled along.

  “Built-in terrain recognition,” Marvin explained. “You know, navigation stuff. They use it in fighter jets and things like that. It scans ahead of you with radar and feeds the information back to here,” he pointed at the wavy lines with his finger as he drove. “Then the computer compares it to all the radar maps in its database and lets you kno
w exactly where you are.”

  “Cool,” Samantha cooed. “Where’d you get this boat, Professor?”

  “I, er, borrowed it from the Chelsea Piers on Twenty-third Street. I’m, ah still working on a way to replace it; I fear we can’t get it back the way we, ah, got it here.” Smythe fretted.

  “G.P.S. would’ve been easier, and easier to find a boat with,” Marvin displayed his geekiness. “That is, a global positioning system. It guides you by a very precise satellite signal.”

  “I’m actually considering building G.P.S. into the next round of wrist-communicators,” The Professor took up the topic, equally zealous in his knowledge of popular electronics. “I daresay it’d be quite useful, on any mission. There is a problem, though... ”

  “What’s that?” Samantha asked.

  “Well, you see–it won’t work on any mission into the past beyond 1995 or so, because–”

  “Because there aren’t any guidance satellites,” Samantha finished his sentence, understanding.

  “Precisely. Sort of a disadvantage to traveling in the past, you know. Unless–well, I did manage to perfect a sort of wireless closed-circuit that lets us communicate through time. If I could somehow patch the satellite signal into that frequency, well, I might be able to get it to work.”

  “So, we’d be able to get global positioning from satellites–in the future?”

  “Yes, well, I suppose so. But, I mean, it’s just a signal like the one that carries my voice, and you’ve been getting that from ‘the future.’”

  “Anyway,” Marvin steered the conversation back to the ‘present,’ “The terrain recognition is working fine. Luckily we’re on a coast, which makes it a lot easier, right Professor?”

  “Indeed,” Smythe replied. “I programmed the map databases for this specific area, though I’m sure the coastline has changed a bit over the last thousand years.”

  They zoomed along, pulling gradually back towards the shore as they went. The cliffs had blended down into the jungle they had marched through, and it stretched out like a vast, dark cloud of green that covered the land completely. The boat ride reminded Samantha of their stint in the alternate timeline, and suddenly she grew concerned.