“What is this?” he asked E.T.
“It’s from the Shemoda Nuncoor, the Sleeping Princess Plant.”
“And what does its pollen do?” The Flopglopple brought his fingertip to his smiling mouth. His tongue tasted the golden dust, and a second later he was asleep on his feet, toes pointed out. A loud snore broke from his lips and he swayed back and forth, and finally crumpled to the ground.
E.T. shook him by the shoulder. “Rise and sign. Up and atom.”
The Flopglopple lay where he was, snoring deeply. E.T. sighed, slipped his arm under the Flopglopple and slung him over his shoulders. Staggering under the burden, he marched off, the Flopglopple still asleep, drooping down his back.
Out of the constellation of Nebo, an uncharted star appeared, growing larger. “Here it comes!” cried Sinistro, rising from his place in the forest.
The falling star became a brilliant sphere, descending through darkness, vapor trailing. Its lateral jets fired and the ship was trimmed, its descent path straight to the landing pad in the canyon. It seemed to leap between the moons, grew enormous, and glided down over the pad, where a swarm of Micro Techs awaited it.
In the hills, at the rim of the canyon, Sinistro paced excitedly, his metallic folds opening and closing with nervous bursts of energy. Electrum was beside him, and Occulta, the three dark princes of the underworld lit by the momentary glow of the descending spacecraft. “She’s a ship of rose and gold,” said Sinistro, his gaze, long buried in the labyrinths, now widening and remembering. “She’s what a chieftain needs!”
“True, true,” said Electrum, his quartz eyes pulsing, as the ship’s magnetic field touched them in its descent, its great energy stores firing, landing jets coming on as it lowered gently down.
“It shall be ours,” said Occulta, and turned toward E.T. “Thanks to our little doctor of greenery, eh?”
E.T. stared fearfully at the three princes of the underworld. Their electric intensity had increased here upon the surface, where the storm winds blew. They were wild now, pacing, their metallic folds billowing out, their laughter edged with a desire so ancient he’d forgotten how fierce it was. These were former masters, accustomed to power, and denied it too long.
Sinistro put his arm around E.T. “Did you get your special plant? The one you spoke of?”
“The Sleeping Princess!” sang out the Flopglopple, who’d finally awakened. “Shemoda Nuncoor, for a good night’s rest.” He flopped around dreamily, twiddling his noodle-limp thumbs. “I had a dream of running so fast I met myself coming the other way.”
E.T. looked at Sinistro, Occulta, and Electrum. “I have what is needed.” He pointed to the launch pad below. “I can control activity there.”
“Excellent,” said Sinistro. “And now come with us.”
E.T. and the Flopglopple followed the dark lords to a crevice concealed in the backward slope of the canyon. In the space of a single afternoon, the old mining experts had widened and deepened it, so that it had become a staircase of stone, leading to a chamber in the canyon, which they’d carved into their headquarters. Observation niches, cut into the canyon’s face, looked directly down on the launch pad.
“We’re safe in here,” said Sinistro.
“Don’t you find the ambience of rock much friendlier?” Occulta gestured to the cold, stark stone interior. “And from here—” He stepped to the observation niche. “—we shall monitor the great ship of Lucidulum, until we have unraveled its secrets.”
“Some of the new technology has left us behind,” said Sinistro. “But we shall learn quickly. Look, look at Electrum’s eyes!”
They were pulsing as always, but now they’d filled with myriad points of light, connected in a pattern. Micron stood before him, and looked into the eyes. “Navigation circuitry. Is it—?”
“The starcruiser’s,” said Sinistro, pointing through the niche to the launch pad below. “Electrum has tapped it telepathically.”
“Electrum knows how to listen,” added Occulta. “His body resonates with things when he so desires. And his eyes reflect what he hears.”
“I can see the ship’s entire first stage sequence,” said Micron.
Electrum sat perfectly still, only his eyes animated, electrical messages flowing within them, as he listened to the starcruiser’s secrets. His body was as the stones around him, motionless but not lacking in perception; he flowed, out through the stones into the air, and then inward to the heart of the ship. His voice came in a whisper:
“Delicate surveillance down there. This I feel too. The ship knows it has been penetrated.”
“But it hasn’t known the likes of us within its recent program,” said Sinistro, smiling.
He sat upon the stone couch, beside Electrum. For a moment his body remained animate; but then it suddenly stilled, deeply so, the mineral elements of his nature, those that were cold and patient, taking over. He became as still as Electrum, as he directed his gaze upon the second hole cut in the rock wall. E.T. and Micron saw a flutter of energy flow from his head, and then in a flash it sped out through the rock wall. His eyes, pale mirrors, grew suddenly bright. “Ah,” whispered the old pirate of the stars, “what sublime power they use down there.”
His mirror eyes flashed with reflections from the ship’s master computer, its reaction chambers, its energy extractors.
Micron looked into Sinistro’s mirrors. “He’s linked with the ship’s drive—all settings can be extrapolated from this.” Micron began to figure, and his transparent little body filled with whirring mathematical formulas.
Occulta’s metallic cloak opened, traces of electromagnetism trailing from it. “Orbital speed, spiraling sunward.” He smiled, closing his cloak about him and seating himself on the couch beside his concentrated colleagues; a moment more and his posture became like theirs, like three ancient figures carved in bas-relief, in a lost cave on a time-forgotten planet.
“Handy fellows,” said Micron, as he continued to make calculations from their eyes.
But E.T.’s eyes had grown deeply troubled. The alchemy of the dark princes was directed at the ship, which to him had always been like a flower of the sky. Now that flower was about to be plucked, violated.
He drew the Flopglopple aside. “I’ve been trapped by these old sorcerers.”
“Permit me,” said the Flopglopple, “but wasn’t it we who went calling on them?”
E.T. nodded grudgingly. Events were his responsibility. “I want to end the matter. Let this plan dissolve back into the night.”
The Flopglopple gazed closely at him, eyes squinting at E.T.’s forehead. He touched it. “A transmission signal is forming in your brain. Through axons and synapses. I see it speeding off, and time opens.”
E.T. felt it also then, a telepathic current moving independently from his head. It pierced the dimensions, passed its twin sister, Light, and found the magnetic field of Earth.
The din was tremendous, of anger, greed, and folly. Within this din was Elliott, trapped in the net of Earth’s madness. “His identity is already blurring,” said E.T.
“Yes,” said the Flopglopple, tuning in to the transmission. “He is no longer constant with himself. He is becoming just another dull pattern of conformity.”
“El-li-ott,” whispered E.T., desperate to save his friend. He looked at the Flopglopple. “I must disregard the consequences.”
“I always do,” said the Flopglopple.
Their conversation was interrupted by Occulta’s arm snaking out from between his folds. His head flashed suddenly; then the light vanished from his head and emerged from his extended fingertip. A beam of laser intensity fired at the rock wall, the searing beam cutting a perfect rectangle from the stone. The chunk of stone fell to the chamber floor, and starlight appeared through the smoldering hole. A comet plume appeared in the sky, sailing past.
“A comet like that—we catch it, implant a thousand megaton explosive, and mine the interior. For jewels, my friends, the most precious food!”
He fell silent again, and Micron continued monitoring the information-filled eyes of the three immobile princes of the underworld. But he was stopped suddenly by a sharp clacking sound that came from the dark lords of metal. The sound was repeated, and Micron scratched his head. “Iron reeds closed by a magnet, wasn’t it?”
The magnetic clack came again. Their heads glowed, Sinistro, Electrum, and Occulta flashing simultaneously, and light began to weave and merge directly above them.
“The star of Nebo,” said the Flopglopple softly.
A transparent globe formed from the projected light. Rolling from their heads, it grew and filled the rock chamber. Its shimmering surface began to crackle with electric force, and snake-like bands of energy wrapped around it, as if holding it in shape.
“High energy enclosure,” said Micron, nodding. “Old Magic, isn’t it?” he asked E.T. “From the Former World?”
“Yes,” said E.T. gravely. “It is an earlier power.”
The bubble shimmered, and then, within it, more substantial objects began to appear—a command seat, an instrument panel, a second seat and matching panel, with switches covering the inner surface of the bubble.
“A replica!” cried Micron. “Perfect, look at the detail!”
“The flight deck of the ship,” said E.T., staring into the energy enclosure, where the flight deck was appearing.
The Flopglopple flopped forward and extended his finger toward the bubble. A spark leapt from it and caught him on the nose. “Yaa!” The shock ran through him to his toenails, on which he now hopped up and down in distress. “Dod-gamma, that hurt. Owch, owch, owch . . .”
“Look,” said Micron, pointing but not touching. Within the energy enclosure, three figures were taking shape, perfect replicas of Sinistro, Occulta, and Electrum, except pale, and transparent. Outside the bubble, where the three old pirates actually sat, the light in their bodies was dim, all their energy streaming out into the bubble, where simulacra of them were slipping into the control seats. Ghostly fingers worked the switches and set the launch circuits working.
“They’re activating a mental lift-off,” said Micron.
The bubble began to glow with brilliant force, like the ship of starlight itself. E.T. felt his spirit lifting with them, into night, space, the track of far worlds.
Then, quickly as it had come the bubble exploded, its enclosed images vanishing too, and the three lords of darkness slumped forward on their stone couch, exhausted by the energy it had cost them to manifest the bubble. But one glittering mirror eye of Sinistro opened, and a metallic smile crossed his lips. “We held her soul. We know her secret.”
C H A P T E R
1 2
“So, Doctor,” said Sinistro to E.T., “what’s on this planet Earth to which you so desperately want to go? What kind of treasure can we expect?”
E.T. thought for a moment, in the stone lair, the outlaw band seated around him. “One day you might have your own—closet.”
“I would like that,” said Sinistro, pretending he understood. “Indeed, I cannot wait to have my own closet.”
“And a football helmet.”
“Yes, naturally, I must have one of those.”
Electrum leaned forward, eyes flashing. “What about me?”
“You might have your own TV set,” said E.T.
“Truly wonderful,” said the dark lord, gold and silver streams of excitement showing within his metallic shell.
Occulta leaned toward E.T. “And I? What shall I have?”
“Your own bicycle,” said E.T.
Occulta nodded, not wishing to appear ignorant before his colleagues. “That’s as it should be. Good, very good.”
E.T. looked at the three old miners, at their hungry mouths and lustful eyes; he’d stirred the banished emotion of greed, and formed a scheme for its destructive waves.
I fear, he said to himself, I am once more involved in a terrible up-screw.
E.T. and his Flopglopple crept slowly down the hillside. The Near Moon was only a crescent and the Far Moon had not risen at all, and the forest around them was dark. Ahead, through the trees, the lights of the launch pad gleamed, rectangular multicolored patterns blinking on and off, as the base cycled through its constant program, all of it rayed out around the ship of starlight itself.
“I dreamed we had a spaceship,” said the Flopglopple, “but it was a strange one.”
“Shhhhhhh,” said E.T.
The Flopglopple put a finger to his own lips, and reminded himself to be quiet. “Shhhhhhh.”
E.T. shifted his mental wave to the modality of green, photosynthetic layer. A lush and succulent mental wave answered him, and his body turned directly and automatically toward it.
“Faint tendrils brush over my mind,” he said to the Flopglopple softly.
“Yes, mine too,” giggled the Flopglopple, “very ticklish.” Then, remembering he must be more quiet, once again he put a finger to his lips, saying, “Shhhhhh,” to himself.
“This way,” said E.T.
“The wave grows stronger,” said the Flopglopple. “Like a leaf wrapping itself around me.”
“It is the food of the Mind Holders,” said E.T. “It sends out these mental waves.”
“There,” said the Flopglopple, “through the trees.”
Ahead were several square acres of paddy, where the refined substance grew—a hybrid of Bazmat Lizoona, Brain Plant of the Jungle. “No food is more powerful,” said E.T., “nor so refined as that which grows here.”
The crescent of the Near Moon was reflected in the water of the paddy, upon the gelatinous slick that was the plant’s virile substance.
“Its power rises in a mist,” said E.T., pointing to the wisps above the paddy. “It is lured by the moonlight.”
“It feels our approach,” said the Flopglopple.
“It knows me,” said E.T. “I am one of those who bred it.”
The mist of the plant had begun to reach toward him, the wispy tendrils caressing the revered doctor, so instrumental in creating the present and most sublime strain.
Taste me, said the plant, for in the tasting the plant felt itself fulfilled, metabolized through the mental centers of the taster.
“Bazmat Lizoona,” said E.T., quietly addressing the mental spirit of the paddy, “I’ve brought a new nutrient for you.”
He crept forward, into the shadows surrounding the paddy. The two moons shone their slender crescents on the still waters, and the lights of the launch pad were only a glow in the sky beyond the treetops.
E.T. opened up a pollen pouch. “I have brought you Shemoda Nuncoor, the Sleeping Princess.” He emptied the pollen pouch into the arms of Bazmat Lizoona. An ecstatic tremble ran through the gelatinous substance of the paddy.
“A new hybrid has just been made,” said E.T. to the Flopglopple.
“And tomorrow the base will dine on it,” said the Flopglopple.
“In these refined organisms, all process is heightened and quickened,” said E.T., as the trembling of the gelatinous mass continued, spreading from one side of the paddy to the other. A sound like sighing came from the thick viscous substance. E.T. crouched, for the sound was a loud one, and carried a strong signal, of a quivering Brain Plant. Would the caretakers hear and come running?
He heard no approaching footsteps. He nudged the Flopglopple and they crept away quietly, back toward the woods. But the Flopglopple tripped over the root of a Jumpum tree, and shook the tree awake.
Jumping time!
The Jumpum leapt up, woke its friends, and they all shook their leaves and danced.
“A jumping contest,” groaned E.T.
They stuck out their roots and turned, waved their branches and came back, toeing, footing, tapping, their boisterous rustling filling the night air.
“Back to the paddy,” whispered E.T. frantically to the Flopglopple, and they raced back to the paddy, where they each scooped up a handful of Shemoda Nuncoor. Then, racing back to the Jumpum
s, they stuffed the sleeping potion down the Jumpums’ knotholes.
Sleep-y, said the Jumpums. They stopped, stretched, swayed back and forth dreamily, and then nodded off, branches drooping. And E.T. and the Flopglopple continued their retreat through the woods.
The launch pad was now visible through the trees, with the starcruiser at its center, portholes beaming. E.T. turned to the Flopglopple.
“How do I dare think of putting myself in command of such a thing? I’m no hero of the cosmos.”
“You’re very good with geraniums,” said the Flopglopple.
“I nap on the long voyages. Or play checkers.” He lowered his head and continued shuffling along. “What is to become of me?”
“Waves of probability can’t be seen,” answered the Flopglopple.
They continued along the dark forest path, the starship still faintly visible through the trees. Then a sudden rushing of their senses told them—the ship was about to fly. A low whirring sounded, and a moment later light was streaming through the forest, as the ship began to lift off. E.T. and the Flopglopple craned their necks back as the ship cleared the treetops. Its main thrusters filled the air with rainbow gases and it shot straight up.
“On the path between Lakama and Oto,” said the Flopglopple, pointing to the twin luminaries of the first boundary of space. The ship, like a comet, sped between them, and then was gone beyond the reach of the naked eye.
E.T. and the Flopglopple hurried on, their path taking them out of the woods and in sight of the rocky face of the canyon where, like slitted eyes in a giant’s face, the niches of the hidden grotto watched all that passed. Behind the niches sat Sinistro, Occulta, and Electrum, and E.T. could feel their concentration, could almost see the beams of their powerful focus as it swept the launch pad, spying out its inner workings.
“Hurry,” said E.T., which is not a word you have to say twice to a Flopglopple. The creature whizzed away, up the rocky trail of the canyon wall. E.T. followed, lifting his feet carefully, so as not to trip in an undignified manner on his head. A Doctor of Botany must be well balanced and set a good example. By borrowing a priceless starcruiser. I must be mad . . .
E.T. The Book of the Green Planet Page 9