“Quite a ride, eh?” Brother Carrot said.
The dunes in the distance looked like great ocean waves to the prince. He recalled a trip across the Purple Sea when he was a child, a vacation cruise with the most important pineapples of the day. Those were better days.
Seated on the floor in the corner, Rebo was watching a fly crawl along the floor. It jumped over a ridge in the pegged wood, then took a big hop toward Prince Pineapple.
Seeing the fly out of the corner of one eye, Prince Pineapple smashed it with one foot. “Miserable fruit fly!” he cursed.
Brother Carrot snickered.
“Now why’d you have to do that?” Rebo asked.
“Because I hate fruit flies!” the prince thundered. “That’s why!”
“Poor little fellow,” Rebo said. “He couldn’t have harmed you. Not a big strong pineapple man like you.”
Prince Pineapple looked away haughtily, peering out the porthole again.
“It’s a survival thing with him,” Brother Carrot explained. “Fruits are trained from infancy to kill fruit flies. Slaves are always leaving them on my ship.”
Wizzy flew to the couch and set down on a cushion next to Brother Carrot. “I see you keep many Fruit slaves,” Wizzy observed, looking up at the carrot man’s ruddy, orange face. “Only moments ago, however, you were criticizing King Corker for the same practice.”
“This thing you introduced as Wizzy,” Brother Carrot said, looking calmly at Prince Pineapple. “What is it, precisely?”
Before Prince Pineapple could answer, Wizzy piped up, “I’m a little comet, Your Excellency, from far across the universe.”
“I know nothing of comets!” Brother Carrot exclaimed, proud of his ignorance. “You are strange creatures . . . all of you.”
“Come here, Wizzy,” Javik said. “Leave Brother Carrot alone.”
Brother Carrot placed a large hand on Wizzy, saying, “I’ve decided to answer your question, little fellow. The Fruits took the first slave. We merely retaliated.”
“But where does it stop?” Wizzy asked. “And who can be sure which side took the first slave? You have firsthand knowledge of this?”
“Really!” Brother Carrot said haughtily. “This is a truth which my people have always known. How dare you question our ways?”
Javik snatched Wizzy away before the argument worsened. “My apologies, sir,” Javik said. “The little fellow here is not overly bright. We’ll explain it to him later.”
“Put me down!” Wizzy said.
“Okay,” Javik said, placing Wizzy on a side table. “But don’t ask any more questions.”
“That’s right,” Brother Carrot said, glaring at Wizzy. “You’ve got a lot to learn.” Brother Carrot sat back, seeming to realize for the first time how angry he had become. His face broke into a wide smile. The boisterous, friendly laugh returned.
“I’m going topside,” Javik announced, stepping cautiously across the deck as the ship rocked. “Is that okay, Brother Carrot?” he asked, lunging for a dark-stained railing on the two-step staircase leading to the door.
“It’s a mite dusty up there,” Brother Carrot said. “But go ahead.”
“I’ll be back soon,” Javik said. “I want to see how this ship works.” As his foot touched the first step, he caught Namaba’s gaze. He heard the wind outside. The ship creaked.
While Javik watched, Namaba rose from her haunches and loped to his side. She kept the gaze of her soft red eyes on him as she moved.
Javik stepped back and drew his service pistol. “Get back over there,” he snapped.
“I want to talk with you,” she said. “Alone.”
Looking beyond her to the corner, Javik saw Rebo sitting on his haunches there. Rebo’s expression was troubled. “All right,” Javik said to her. He motioned her ahead of him.
In the corridor outside, Javik slid the cabin door shut. With the pistol, he motioned to the right.
Namaba led the way down the long, dark-stained corridor, loping on three legs in the Morovian way. Bright brass light standards clung to the walls, casting yellow light on Namaba as she passed. Javik smelled linseed oil.
At the end of the corridor, Javik motioned Namaba aside and swung open a heavy door leading to the deck. The door squeaked noisily. Hesitating, he watched dust swirl along the deck and heard the crewmen and their overseers shouting back and forth. The ship attacked the face of a fresh dune, throwing a thick cloud of dust and sand across the deck toward Javik. He slammed the door shut.
“We’d better stay in here,” Javik yelled, raising his voice to be heard over the noise outside. Feeling something in his eye he tugged at the eyelid.
Namaba looked at him with sparkling, innocent eyes. “I don’t care where we go,” she yelled. “But I need to talk with you.”
They moved down the corridor to a quieter place. With his gun still drawn, Javik looked intently at her. She was taller than he, and easily twice his weight, with light brown hair around her face that shone golden in the light of a nearby light standard.
“What is it you want?” Javik asked, blinking to clear his eye.
“Why did you bring us?” she asked. “Just to have Rebo carry your water? Is that all? We can’t survive without food.”
“Maybe I didn’t think it out too clearly,” he said, his voice wavering. He stared at the floor.
“Well it’s high time you did,” she snapped. “Our lives are at stake.”
Javik stared past his pistol barrel at the pegged oak deck. He heard Namaba chug-breathing, and saw the base of her hairy forepaw on the deck. He did not look up, feeling unable to meet her gaze.
“We have to eat,” she said. “You can’t leave us to die somewhere along the trail.”
Slowly, Javik raised his gaze to meet hers. “I haven’t done you any harm,” he said. “There was no food for you back there.”
She looked away. Then: “There are animals in the woods of this planet. We could hunt.”
“You mean kill something and cook it?” Javik asked, his face twisted at the revolting thought.
“You have a thunder piece. I assume it kills.”
‘“I couldn’t eat that sort of food,” he exclaimed. “It would have to be processed, blended, strained, and stabilized first.”
“You’d eat it,” she said, “if you had no choice.”
“I’ll share what little food I have with you,” Javik said.
“The contents of your pack are but a snack to us,” she said, glaring at him. “You’re just stumbling around, aren’t you? Do you expect to find a restaurant out here, with nice clean plates and tablecloths?”
Javik considered gaining the offensive by criticizing her for stealing his food from the ship. But that was history and unchangeable. Her voice carried an unmistakable scolding tone, but had an underlying softness that intrigued him.
God help me, Javik thought, but, I think she’s attracted to me. It was inevitable. Women just had to get close to him.
In the captain’s cabin, Prince Pineapple stood at a porthole with Wizzy hovering at his side. The ship was surfing across the face of a dune wave, pitched at such an angle that the prince had to hold a brass wall handle.
“Your Captain Tom doesn’t trust me,” Prince Pineapple said. “That’s why he took my nutrient kit.”
“It does give him a degree of control,” Wizzy said.
“You agree with what he did?” The words were clipped, angry.
“Not necessarily. But I can see why he feels as he does. I have read his thoughts. He believes you want the Magician’s Chamber for yourself, that you will do anything to gain power.”
“How preposterous! Wherever did he get such an idea?”
“He saw something he didn’t like in your eyes. You rarely meet his gaze. And he heard the wrong inflection to your voice. Insincerity was the word he used in thought.”
“What sort of evidence is this?” Prince Pineapple gazed at Wizzy until Wizzy’s cat’s eye focused on him. Then
the prince looked away.
“A commander needs no evidence. He is responsible for his mission and for the welfare of his party. He makes decisions.”
“That sounds like an army training manual excerpt,” Prince Pineapple observed tersely.
“Not entirely,” Wizzy said. “I’ve seen something of this as well. Any observant being can see the nervousness or guilt in your eyes. It’s in your mannerisms, too. You seem . . . uncertain.”
Prince Pineapple shook his head in dismay. Can it be? he wondered. Do others see something I’m not aware of myself? No. I can’t believe it.
While the prince thought, Wizzy gave advice on what he should do to get back in Javik’s good graces. This struck Prince Pineapple as peculiar, considering Wizzy’s own shaky status with the leader of their expedition. The drone of Wizzy’s voice was starting to give Prince Pineapple a headache.
“Leave me alone,” Prince Pineapple said, pushing Wizzy away from the window.
During his next soil-immersion period, Lord Abercrombie searched for monopoles diligently, trying to find the subatomic particles that allegedly were causing him so much trouble. They were nowhere to be found. But Lord Abercrombie knew they were there. He tried magically inducing two rockslides, a flood, and a forest fire, all without the tiniest hint of success.
If I ever find a pack of those little buggers, Lord Abercrombie thought, God help them!
After a while, he turned his attention to activity on the planet’s surface, using his billions of visual and auditory sensors. He saw the Freedom One crossing Dusty Desert. It made him angry.
Prince Pineapple wants to replace me, Lord Abercrombie thought. Add him to my list of enemies. Right up at the top with the monopoles. And Brother Carrot with his army of blithering Vegetables. I’ve always worried about him. Can’t forget Javik, either. He’s Uncle Rosy’s emissary.
Furiously, Lord Abercrombie pulled himself out of the hole. “They’re all against me!” he muttered, blowing dirt off his wardrobe ring. After mentoing the white stone on the ring, a dry shower cleaned every pore on his fleshy half. Using the turquoise stone next, he watched and felt a white caftan with a blue scroll sleeve thread its way over his half body. A black satin slipper wrapped itself around his foot, and a thistle half crown attached itself to his skull.
“I can see some of my enemies,” he said. “I hear them, too—plotting against me and against my Corker allies. But what can I do? Hardly anything while buried. One tiny rockslide is the grand total of my magic.” He kicked a tuft of dirt. The dirt crumbled. Moments later he stood before an instrument panel in the Disaster Control Room. “Three of the bastards on one ship!” he said, his voice reflecting fury and frustration. “Maybe I can get all of them at once this way . . . if those monopoles stay out of my way.”
He touched a green console button, then slammed down three adjacent brown toggles. “Sector one-one-six,” he said, speaking into a microphone. “Three hundred k.p.h. winds . . . from the southwest, heading two-eight four.”
“Confirmed,” a computer voice reported.
Meckies at stations around the room tapped keyboards to coordinate the attack.
“Don’t fail me,” Lord Abercrombie said, coaxing the old equipment.
“Two fifty,” a meckie reported.
Lord Abercrombie closed his eye and prayed softly.
“Three hundred, sir,” came the next report. “Approaching the desert sailing ship. Impact estimated at four minutes.”
“Hot damn!” Lord Abercrombie exclaimed.
“All systems working,” another meckie said.
“I’m going into soil immersion,” Lord Abercrombie said, turning to leave. “I want to enjoy this firsthand.”
“Trouble, sir,” a meckie said. “That reverse rain again.”
Lord Abercrombie leaned over and moaned, “Oh no!”
“Equipment shorting out, sir.”
Sparks flashed from all the consoles in the room.
“So close,” Lord Abercrombie said, feeling ready to cry. He straightened and barked a command: “Shut down all systems!”
Hurriedly, the meckies did as they were told.
Abercrombie stepped back as the console near him continued to spark. At times like this he felt like giving up on the Realm of Flesh. But Magic offered no more prospect of success.
The rolling whine of an emergency siren sounded from the tunnel outside their door, along with the loud whirs and clanks of approaching meckies. Soon the room was full of meckie tenchnicians, searching for a loose piece, a pulled wire, or anything else that might have caused yet another failure.
But Lord Abercrombie sensed this search would do no good. This planet is cursed, he thought. Someone has made it uninhabitable for beings like me.
“Hit ‘em with anything we’ve got left!” Lord Abercrombie shouted. “Try wind, earthquakes, anything!”
It was midday, with three synchronized Corkian suns blazing overhead. As Javik stood with his companions at the edge of Dusty Desert, he felt cool in his vari-temp coat. The coat fluttered in a light wind. Behind them loomed the wall of closely fitted granite stones that formed this far side of the bowl holding the desert.
“That rain was really something,” Rebo said. “Came right up out of the desert. Damndest thing I ever saw.”
“I’ve seen it before,” Prince Pineapple said. “It’s become rather commonplace on Cork.”
“We’ve seen it too,” Wizzy said, hovering nearby. “When our ship was approaching the planet.”
Brother Carrot waved from the deck of his desert schooner as it pulled away. “Good luck, my friends!” he yelled. Javik heard him say something after that, but the words were lost in the wind. The Freedom One picked up speed, cutting through rapidly moving clouds of surface grit.
“Nice fellow,” Namaba said.
Prince Pineapple searched the wall for a place to climb.
“I don’t think Fruits and Vegetables are so different,” Wizzy said, perching on a wall stone near Prince Pineapple. “Brother Carrot carried a folding shovel on his belt, just like yours. He had a barbed cord, too.”
“Pshaw!” Prince Pineapple said, finding a foothold to begin his ascent. “Fruits are superior. Everyone knows that. We grow on trees and high vines, while Vegetables grow next to the dirty ground.” He climbed partway up the wall.
Wizzy glowed red as he retrieved data from his internal storehouse.
Prince Pineapple neared the top of the wall. “There is no comparison,” he said. He lifted himself to the top of the wall and stood with his hands on his hips, looking down at the others with an air of superiority.
Wizzy flew up to hover in the prince’s face, “What about strawberries?” Wizzy asked. “They’re Fruit, and they grow along the ground.”
“A strawberry is not Fruit!” Prince Pineapple exclaimed. “What an odd notion!”
“Enough of this,” Javik said, climbing the wall by the same route Prince Pineapple had taken.
“You’re wrong, Prince!” Wizzy said. “Extremely wrong! And what about green beans? They grow on high vines, which would make them as good as any Fruit.”
“Preposterous!” Prince Pineapple thundered.
Reaching the top of the wall, Javik stepped between them. “Stop this!” he snapped. “Some of us do not have time to stand around arguing. Unlike his Royal Hind Ass here, my food source is not unlimited.”
Prince Pineapple scowled ferociously.
Wizzy added Javik’s expletive to his own stored arsenal.
Namaba and Rebo scaled the wall without help from Javik’s Tasnard rope. As Namaba reached the top, she gave Javik a scolding smile.
He looked away. “All right,” he said. “Let’s find the trail and get a move on.”
When they had descended the other side of the wall, Javik told Prince Pineapple to bring out the scroll.
“Idiots,” the prince muttered as he handed over the scroll he still could not see. “I am surrounded by idiots.”
&nbs
p; Javik knelt on the ground, where he spread open the scroll. “We’re here,” he said, pointing to one side of the Dusty Desert.
To Prince Pineapple’s eyes, it looked as though Javik were pointing at the ground. “Draw me a map in the dirt,” the prince demanded, “so that I may see too.”
Hurriedly, Javik used a stick to scratch out a portion of the scroll map on the ground. “Here’s the Dusty Desert,” he explained as he drew. “And icy Valley. Just beyond that is a forest. We’ll camp there.”
“The valley must be behind us,” Prince Pineapple said, turning and pointing at a misty area between two snow-covered hills.
“Tomorrow we cross Bottomless Bog,” Javik said. “If these distances are correct.”
“Where’s that Moha shown?” the prince asked. “Something disturbingly familiar about that name.”
“Here,” Javik said, making a mark in the dirt.
Just then, a ferocious wind roared across their position, obliterating the dirt scratchings and nearly tearing the parchment from Javik’s grasp.
“Lord Abercrombie is angry,” Prince Pineapple said. “He will not let us pass without a fight.”
“You think he caused that wind?” Javik asked. “Naw. There’s no weather control here.”
“We will see,” Prince Pineapple said, groping for the scroll he could not see.
Javik released the scroll and watched the prince roll it carefully. Namaba tied it with the piece of leather cord. When the Sacred Scroll of Cork was safely secure beneath his coat, Prince Pineapple turned away from the wind, taking the path that led toward the misty valley.
Javik removed his vari-temp coat and stuffed it in the pack. He felt the warmth of three suns on the back of his neck as he followed the others. Javik imagined tiny solar nutrients entering his body, and tried to convince himself that his strength was returning. But this was a ruse. He knew he was declining, and had a frightening thought: What if the whole planet was against him?
Can such a thing be? he wondered. Javik felt that forces were whipsawing him—doing with him whatever they wished.
He felt the suns cool, and looked back. Clouds were moving in from behind. Ahead, curls of fog were approaching, running out of the valley to greet them. A shiver ran down the back of his neck and through his shoulder blades. He stopped to put the coat back on.
The Garbage Chronicles Page 22