He pulled the strip of cloth around the back of his head and tied it in a knot, forming a Rambo-style headband.
“I’ll give you a fonking war!”
Thirty-Four
Tyrra sat in Cal’s chair, twisting it lazily from side to side and watching nothing interesting happening on screen. She idly fiddled with the remote access module of Nushtuk’s robot that Cal had picked up, clunking and unclunking the magnetic connectors to the chair’s armrest.
The Currently Untitled still sat on the landing pad outside the Controller’s office, pointed slightly away from the station so it was mostly looking out at a particularly uninteresting area of outer space.
Tyrra had seen outer space a lot of times before, and had no real urge to look at it again now. Once you’d seen one patch of darkness dotted with stars, you’d seen them all.
“Voice!” she barked.
There was a prolonged sigh from the ceiling. “Yes, miss?”
“They are taking a long time,” Tyrra said.
“Indeed, miss,” Kevin confirmed.
“Why are they taking a long time?”
“I’m afraid I do not know, miss. The station’s security prevents me from running any scans.”
Tyrra tutted. “You are useless.”
“How very kind of you to say so,” Kevin said.
Silence fell, broken only by the creak-creak-creak of Cal’s chair.
“That isn’t annoying at all,” Kevin said.
Tyrra continued creaking the chair.
“By which I mean it is. Extremely annoying, in fact.”
Creak-creak-creak.
“I wonder if there’s anything good on television,” said Kevin, trying to distract her.
The screen changed to show a heavy-set gentleman wandering around in a circle, wearing nothing whatsoever on his lower half.
“Who’s got the pants on?” he yelled, waving his hands in the air above his head.
“Not you,” hollered back an off-screen audience, then they broke into laughter and applause, and the partially clad gentleman skipped gleefully around and around.
“Well, that looks utterly awful,” Kevin said.
Click.
The screen changed. The Puppetopia puppets were hugging each other, accompanied by a heartstring-tugging piano arrangement, and an, “Awwww!” from the two watching children.
“Not that,” Tyrra said. “Change it.”
“With all due respect, I’m in charge of the monitor, ma’am,” Kevin said. “You are but a guest aboard this ship. I’ll decide what we do and don’t watch.”
He flicked the channel.
“I mean, we’re not watching those puppets, obviously. Ghastly things.”
The next channel was running a singing contest. Kevin and Tyrra both listened to a three-mouthed woman tell a touching story about how her grandmother used to sing to her, before launching into a high-pitched warble that made Tyrra’s gums ache, and screeched feedback throughout the interior of the ship.
Click.
The next channel they landed on was playing a clip show of hilarious spaceship crashes. Kevin was tempted to keep watching in case the Currently Untitled showed up on there anywhere, but the laughter track quickly proved grating and he pressed on.
Click.
A documentary.
Click.
Someone dancing. Or possibly having a fit.
Click.
A man smashing a big hairy creature in the face with a flagpole.
Click.
An animal doing the funniest things.
“Wait,” said Tyrra, sitting forward in the chair. “Go back.”
“Back where, ma’am?” Kevin asked.
Tyrra gestured to the screen. “On that. Go back to the thing before.”
Kevin clicked back a channel. A young woman in smart-casual dress was strolling along a street, talking directly to the camera.
“Don’t you just hate junkrats and pirates?” she asked, pulling a face that suggested they were a mild—but irritating—inconvenience. “Doesn’t it drive you crazy when they take your cargo, wreck your property—even murder your families? It’s so aggravating, and can often be upsetting.”
She shrugged and pulled a sad face.
“But, what can you do? I mean, it’s not like you can shoot a bunch of pirates, right?”
She stopped walking and put her hands on her hips. She was back to smiling, but suddenly all-business. “Wrong!”
The footage changed to show the same woman lit dramatically from below as she blasted dozens of screaming pirates with a rapid-fire blaster rifle in agonizing slow motion.
“Was this what you were looking for, miss?” Kevin asked, as the woman’s voiceover started listing the merits of, it seemed, shooting pirates to bits with big guns.
Tyrra frowned at the screen. “No, it’s… I thought I saw…”
The chair groaned as she sat back again. “Doesn’t matter. I was mistaken.”
“What was it you thought you saw, miss?” Kevin asked.
Tyrra shook her head. “Nothing. I am so bored I am seeing things that aren’t there.”
She began to twist Cal’s chair again. “They are still not back. They’ve been gone too long.”
“Perhaps we should play a game,” Kevin suggested, switching back from the broadcast feeds to a live view of space. “To take our minds off it.”
“Is it a math game?” Tyrra asked.
“Would you like it to be?” said Kevin, trying to keep the tremor of excitement from his voice.
Tyrra shook her head. “I’d rather die a thousand agonizing deaths.”
“Oh. That’s a shame. You rather got my hopes up there, miss,” Kevin said. “Still, there are plenty of other options available to us on the game front.”
“Like what?” Tyrra asked, glancing up.
“Tell me,” Kevin began. His eyes would have twinkled merrily, if only he’d had any. “Have you ever heard of a little something called ‘Charades’?”
Thirty-Five
“You’re bleeding.”
“Yes, I know,” Cal grunted.
“A lot.”
“I can see that,” he said through gritted teeth.
“We should stop somewhere, and take a look at it,” Floora suggested.
“Sounds great,” said Cal.
He stopped climbing and glanced around them, being very careful not to look down.
“Where do you suggest?”
“Well…”
“Because, I don’t know if you noticed back there, but we’re climbing up a big cliff.”
“I mean, yes, but…”
“And there aren’t a lot of places to stop for a sit down.”
“No, I suppose…”
“So, probably best to just press on, really?” Cal said. He glared over his shoulder at Floora, who had taken up her usual perch on his backpack, almost daring her to argue. “Do you agree?”
Floora sighed. “Yes. Yes, I guess so,” she said.
Cal reached up, found a handhold, then grimaced as he heaved himself another few inches up the vertical cliff-face. A few feet away, one of six Hovercams kept level with them, watching them with its beady electronic eye.
“It’s just that you really are bleeding a lot,” said Floora.
“Again, I know,” Cal grimaced, kicking with a foot until he found somewhere solid to put it. “I don’t understand it.”
“You got cut open,” Floora explained.
Cal sighed. “No, I understand the process. But I should be healing. I have this, like, Wolverine healing factor. I recover from damage like—”
He took a hand off the wall in order to snap his fingers, but then his other hand began to slip and he hurriedly grabbed back on.
“Jesus,” he whispered, clinging to the rockface like a limpet. “That was close.”
How long had he been climbing for now? He couldn’t say. It felt like hours, but he suspected that was just the fire in his muscles talking,
albeit backed up by the cramp in his lungs, the pain in his spine, and the terror that filled everything that was left over.
How high up were they? Again, he couldn’t say, mostly because he refused to look down. There were clouds below him, he knew that much. He’d passed those a while back. Climbing through them had been interesting, with visibility reduced to practically zero.
Floora had told him that her big eyes meant her vision was much more powerful than his, which had given him some hope. But then, she’d confirmed that even with her giant peepers, she could see fonk all whatsoever in the clouds, and that hope had quickly evaporated again.
Below the clouds, the weather had been fine. Not great, but dry, mostly clear, and—importantly—not in the least bit windy.
Above the clouds, it was a different story. Thanks to another layer of cloud far above the clifftop, a depressingly endless drizzle had turned the rock face dark and slippery. His homemade Rambo headband was helping to keep the worst of the water from his eyes, but his face had numbed to the point he felt he’d never be able to change his expression from the current pained grimace it was fixed in.
The wind wasn’t constant but came in sudden gusts that caught between him and the mountain and tried its best to separate them. It was usually preceded by a high-pitched whistle, giving him a half-second to brace himself for the main event.
There were a few… birds, he guessed, circling around. Big fonkers, the size of pterodactyls. They were also, he realized as one swooped by above him, the shape of pterodactyls, with long jaws, pointy heads, and wings the texture of old leather.
Great.
Seriously, just fonking great.
Space pterodactyls. Just what he needed.
Cal grabbed for the next handhold and dragged him and Floora another foot up the side of the cliff. Every single part of his body objected, with the exception of his survival instinct which was rooting for him all the way.
“Jesus. Maybe the guys were right about the Banoffee pies,” he muttered, taking a moment to catch his breath.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Cal found a toehold and pushed on.
“So, why isn’t it working?” Floora asked. “Your healing thing, I mean?”
“You tell me,” Cal grunted. “You’re the science guy.”
The wind whistled through gaps in the uneven cliff surface.
“Hold on!” Cal warned, tightening his grip and flattening himself as best he could against the wall.
The wind came a moment later, buffeting him, forcing its way between him and the rocks. He clung on, his fingers cramping, his eyes closed against the onslaught of rain the wind always dragged along with it.
Floora squeaked in distress as she buried herself in against Cal’s bag, the gales battering her wings around on her back, as if objecting to their very existence.
“I can’t hold on!” she yelped.
“Yes, you can!”
“I… can’t! I’m going to fall! I’m going to—”
The wind dropped.
“Wait. No. I’m fine,” said Floora. “But that was a close one.”
“Get in the bag,” Cal instructed. “You’ll be safer in there.”
Floora only hesitated for a moment before Cal felt her clamber around on his back, and heard the bag being opened.
And then, with the briefest of screams, she fell. Cal felt her weight leave him as she lost her grip, then return with a vengeance when she caught a trailing strap of the bag and jerked to a stop beneath him, almost wrenching him off the wall.
“Fonk, fonk, shizzing fonk-fonk!” he cursed, clinging on with everything he had.
A pterodactyl squawked a few feet above him, the sudden sound almost making him lose his grip all over again.
“Jesus! Fonking things.”
Whispering some words of encouragement to himself, Cal stole a look down.
Oooh, shizz.
Oooh, shizz, they were high.
The layer of cloud was eighty or ninety feet below. It didn’t look as thick from up here, and Cal caught glimpses of the ground beneath it. At least, he thought it was the ground, but it was too far away for him to be able to see it clearly, so he couldn’t be entirely sure.
Floora hung from the bag’s strap, clinging to it with both pudgy hands. Her eyes, which had already been taking up most of the real estate on her face, were now threatening a full hostile takeover of her entire head.
The nearest Hovercam drifted closer, capturing the moment in glorious close-up.
“Help. Help me. Cal, help me,” she whimpered.
“I can’t,” Cal told her. “You have to fly up.”
“I can’t fly! We’re hundreds of feet in the air!” Floora sobbed. “I shouldn’t be this high!”
“You don’t have to fly far,” Cal said. “Just up onto my back.”
Floora shook her head. “I can’t. I can’t. I’m too high. It’s too far.”
“Come on, kid,” Cal said, doing an admirable job of sounding positive. “You said you liked science, right? Then science the shizz out of this. Figure out the distance, calculate all the whatnot, and then go for it.”
“I can’t fly this high!”
“You’re not flying high, you’re only flying a short distance,” Cal told her. “I’ve seen you do that before. I know you can do it.
“I can’t!”
“Yes, you can. You’re Point A, Point B is my back. How far is that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do,” Cal said. He adjusted his grip, trying to ease the pain that burned along the lengths of all ten fingers. “Point A to Point B. Figure it out. Science it.”
“Did you just use ‘science’ as a verb?” Floora asked.
“I don’t know what a verb is, so I have no idea,” Cal told her. “Just think a fonking happy thought and fly, already.”
Another pterodactyl screamed past in a rustling of leathery wings.
“OK. OK, I can do this,” Floora whispered.
“Great! Can you do it in the next five seconds?” Cal hissed, facing the wall and shifting the weight on his feet. “Seriously can’t hold on here much longer.”
“Here I go. I’m doing it. I’m doing it.”
The weight on his back lessened, just a fraction. Cal listened to the frantic flapping and whimpering as Floora fluttered higher, then gasped as a high-pitched whistle rippled through the gaps in the rock-face.
“Shizz! Floora!”
She landed on his shoulder and dropped down into the bag just as the wind hit them. The fingers of Cal’s left hand gave up. They just gave up, clearly having had enough of this climbing lark, and choosing to condemn themselves and the rest of his body to death rather than hold on a moment longer.
He swung away from the wall, the fingers on his right hand still determined to cling to life and, by extension, the cliff. Both feet sided with their corresponding hands, the right toes remaining wedged into a foothold, the left wrenching free as the wind hammered him again.
Floora screamed. Cal felt a dizzying rush of panic as he came to the conclusion that two limbs were not nearly enough to climb a mountain with.
He also came to the realization that it would take too long to convince his left side to rejoin the climb, and that he was going to fall to his death in the next three seconds.
These two things combined helped him come to a decision. Quite a reckless decision, he thought, midway through the process of carrying it out, but a decision all the same.
He jumped.
Specifically, he jumped toward the Hovercam, which had moved in for a close-up on the dangling Floora, and hadn’t moved since. This meant it was right behind him and a little below, and so perfectly placed for him to land on.
Assuming, of course, it could take his weight.
He hit it, stomach-first, then scrabbled to wrap his arms around it. It dropped like a stone, and Cal had that same insides-on-the-outside sensation he experienced whenever the Curr
ently Untitled went to warp speed.
The Hovercam continued to plunge until they were all swallowed by the clouds. Once in there, it stopped abruptly, almost throwing its unwelcome passengers off.
“What do you think you are doing?” asked a voice from inside the floating ball. It wasn’t the Host, but the voice of the Controller himself.
“I’m giving you what you want. A damn show,” Cal hissed. “And I don’t think you want it to end yet.”
“You’ve made it to Sector Three,” the Controller replied. “That’s farther than most get.”
“But you don’t want it to end like this,” Cal said. “Reduk Topa can’t die jumping off a cliff. That’s not good TV.”
The Controller said nothing.
“So, here’s what’s going to happen,” Cal said. “You’re going to fly us up to the top, drop us off, and we’re going to continue on our way. Then, I’m going to win this fonking thing, gather up my friends, cut off every one of your arms, and stick them up your ass. Sideways. All at the same time.”
The Controller continued to say nothing.
“Or, I can let go right now and the show’s over,” Cal said.
He gave that a moment to sink in.
“So,” he asked, his voice muffled inside the cloud. “What’s it going to be?”
King Floomf of the Floomfles stood in the Emergency Situation Room, his eyes fixed on the screen. It was currently showing the bank of cloud Topa had tumbled into on the Hovercam, and not much seemed to be happening.
Technically, the Emergency Situation Room was the same living room he’d been watching Puppetopia in earlier, but after seeing the Floomfle wandering around on The Hunt, he’d felt the urge to give it a more serious sounding title that better reflected the enormity of what was happening.
“How has this happened?” he asked for the fifth or sixth time. “I don’t understand. How can this have happened?”
“We don’t know, sire,” admitted the footman, who had discreetly cleared away King Floomf’s food tray, mopped some of the soup from the old man’s beard, and given the room a light vacuuming in case anyone else popped round.
King Floomf tore his eyes from the screen for as long as he could bear. “But, I mean… It’s unheard of. It’s impossible.”
The Hunt for Reduk Topa Page 28