She took a nervous step back. “Don't you even think—"
Too late; he swung the sword in a great arc that should have taken her head clean off. She felt only the slightest touch, as if an insect had walked across her throat.
Scrornuck grinned. “I think he likes you."
She slugged him.
* * * *
"Mmm, that's good,” Jape murmured, sipping his coffee.
"It's mud,” Scrornuck said. “Now this is good!” With a flourish, he produced three steaming plates of perfect huevos rancheros. “The store didn't have the really strong chilies, so the salsa's a little bland. But I think you'll like it."
Nalia dug in. “Mmm, this is great!"
Jape watched her eat. “I hear you had a nightmare."
She nodded. “I've had it every now and then since I was a kid, but it was really bad last night."
"A recurring nightmare? Sometimes they have meaning. Can you tell me about it?"
"I guess.” She described her vision of silvery birds releasing a sweet-smelling mist, and the people around her suddenly bursting into flames and disappearing.
Jape listened carefully to her story, and then shrugged. “I don't see any immediate meaning."
"Speaking of dreams,” Scrornuck piped up, “I had an interesting one this morning, just before I woke up."
Nalia looked up from her breakfast. “Really? I didn't figure you slept deeply enough to dream."
"You can dream with one eye open."
"Good students can dream with both eyes wide open,” Jape said. “I got through grad school that way. What were you dreaming about?"
"It wasn't exactly a dream—more like a memory. Something that happened a few years ago."
"Did it involve a trip to the moon?"
"Yeah. How'd you know?"
"You've been telling Nalia your life story ever since we got here. It makes sense you'd be dreaming about the next part."
"I suppose; but I still have a feeling it's trying to tell me something."
"Then let's hear it,” Jape said, draining his cup. “But first, can you give me a refill?"
The ungainly space vessel disappeared into the blackness behind Scrornuck as he glided silently over a dead gray landscape of low mountains and plains peppered with round craters. While he still had no sensation of a body, he knew he was somehow part of a small, spidery machine, an awkward contrivance of tubes and cylinders, some shining in the brilliant sun, others dirty and dark. He turned slowly, seeking some sign of color, but saw only an unending panorama of gray beneath the black sky.
The landscape slid by more quickly as the machine descended, and suddenly color appeared: a dome of violet-white light, miles across, completely filling a small crater. Small lightning bolts jumped silently into the sky from a surface that churned as if alive. A flat-topped peak protruded from the very top of the dome, as if skewering it.
Scrornuck perceived sound and vibration, as blue-and-white flame erupted below him. The machine slowed, made a graceful circle around the dome and landed in a cloud of dust, between two small peaks on the crater's rim.
A great bolt of lightning snaked through the cracks of the crater rim and struck the machine. He heard a sound like thunder and saw flying shards of metal as the machine disintegrated around him. Then he saw nothing but violet light, followed by darkness.
He came to and got up slowly, taking a deep breath, feeling like the wind had been knocked out of him. Breath? Yes—he again had a body, with arms, and legs, and lungs. He was clad in his familiar kilt, and Ol’ Red, the wonderful sword, hung from his belt. Taking another deep breath, he shouted, “Hello!” at the top of his lungs. There was no answer, but it felt good to make noise.
Where was he? Inside the dome, it appeared. He stood on a featureless plain of drab gray dust, under a sky of uniform lavender-gray punctuated by occasional bolts of silent lightning and thin, ragged, gray clouds. A few tiny bits of black, rather like dirty snowflakes, blew by on the wind.
Bewildered, he sat upon a small boulder to contemplate. His body, he knew, lay in tatters within the silver disc. Therefore, this must be the afterlife. The drab landscape bore little resemblance to the Heaven described by the churchmen. Nor did it match their descriptions of Hell: where were the demons, the fire and brimstone, the eternal torment? He heard no screams of agony, merely the faintest distant moaning, as if a vast choir were expressing mild discomfort. If this was indeed the Inferno, it seemed something of a light-lager version.
Seeing no point in sitting any longer, he headed toward the source of the moaning. It was a long, dull walk—if anything the dome was larger on the inside than it had looked from above. As he walked, he encountered a few people, wandering without any discernible destination or hope. They spoke a strange, singsong tongue, and to his surprise he found himself understanding as if he already knew the language. Something, it seemed, had turned his modest talent into a truly wondrous Gift.
Though the people were tight-lipped, their few words confirmed that the dome was a place of punishment. But as Scrornuck probed further, their “crimes” sounded more like what his faith defined as virtues: opposing slavery, refusing to worship an emperor who declared himself divine, resisting that emperor's decision to make war on a neighboring people.
After a timeless time spent wandering through the endless nothing, he began to wonder if in fact he'd found the most subtle torment of all—no demons, no fires, no tortures, just unrelenting boredom. He decided to act, and set his eye on the central mountain. He'd seen that the peak stuck through the dome, and according to Dante it should provide the way out. If not, perhaps he would meet the judge who had sent him here, and demand the opportunity to plead his case. With a whistle on his lips and a spring in his step, he set off.
After another timeless time spent walking across the gray desert, he reached the foot of the mountain and found a trail leading up. He had company on the long climb—not the inhabitants of this watered-down Hades, for while he had invited many, none were willing to accompany him—but rather, some knee-high creatures that looked vaguely like a cross between an insect and a scorpion. They skittered about, waving their claws, gnashing their teeth, following but not interfering with his journey.
He'd climbed about halfway to the peak when a flash of blue-white light, the first real color he'd seen, appeared in the sky. It seemed to be outside the dome, for it descended slowly and vanished on top of the mountain. Wondering if this might be his judge, he picked up his pace, rapidly leaving the insect-like creatures behind.
Soon he reached the place where the mountain passed through the lavender sky. The trail appeared to continue beyond the dome's boundary, but when he tried to climb he found the “sky” was a tough, elastic membrane that blocked his path. He retreated a few steps to contemplate how best to continue.
The sky quivered and rippled, and a foot, clad in a bright-blue boot, stuck through. A moment later the rest of the Blue Man followed, and Scrornuck rushed to greet his friend.
Before he could speak, he heard from behind a purposeful clicking, clacking, grinding noise—the sound of uncountable claws and teeth sharpening and preparing to attack. He turned and saw the mob of insect-like creatures scuttling up the mountainside. They were after the Blue Man, and Scrornuck somehow knew that if they made even a single rip or tear in that blue suit, his friend would be dead.
The Blue Man retreated, moving awkwardly up the trail, and quickly found himself trapped against the unyielding purple-gray sky. He pushed hard, but the elastic membrane simply stretched and pushed back. As the bug-like creatures closed in, Scrornuck drew his sword and charged. He hacked the insects apart by the dozens, but there seemed to be an infinite supply of them. The bugs climbed up his legs, biting and snipping off little chunks of skin and flesh and leaving behind not wounds but small, bloodless holes. Perhaps he wasn't made of flesh and blood, after all.
As the bugs pressed their attack, Scrornuck was forced to back up, until he was onl
y a few feet from the Blue Man. The creatures climbed up his arms, snipping bits and pieces of his fingers, and he knew he'd soon lose his ability to control the sword with his grip. He shook the insects off, only to have more climb up, onto his shoulders, onto his face, snipping away at his eyes and nose. Roaring in anger, desperation and rage, he raised his arms high over his head and rammed Ol’ Red's grip hard against the inside of the dome. As the bugs swarmed over him one more time, he shifted his fingers just so. The glowing blade surged forth, hammering the underside of the dome. The membrane stretched tight, Scrornuck's elbows and knees buckled as he fought to push back, and with a sudden tearing sound, the dome gave way.
The wind shrieked as gray mist blew through the rip and into the blackness beyond. As he felt the dome tear further, he shifted his grip, shaping the sword's blade into a tube, forcing the wound in the dome further apart, making it big enough for his companion to make his escape.
The dome suddenly ripped wide open, and the howling wind launched Scrornuck into the black sky. The bugs abandoned their attack and dropped away, some frothing and bursting as though something were boiling within them. A storm of violet-white flame and lightning surrounded the mountaintop as the surface of the dome peeled back and huge pieces of the membrane flew into the darkness. At the center of the gale, surrounded by flying chunks of the dome and clouds of swirling mist, a spidery machine rose from the top of the mountain on a column of pale blue flame. Scrornuck felt himself being drawn toward the machine, and realized he was again without a physical body, not breathing, unable to feel hands or feet.
For a time he slept. When he awoke, he was with the Blue Man, in the vessel they'd stolen earlier, the gray landscape receding rapidly behind them. “Nick of time,” the Blue Man observed, looking down at his hands and smiling. He wore a number of rings, one of them an emerald, a jewel so beautifully green that it almost seemed to glow.
"So that's my dream, or my memory,” Scrornuck concluded. “I can't help thinking there's a reason I'm remembering it now. But I can't figure out what it is."
Nalia chewed the last of her huevos slowly, as if chewing on the story as well. “You know, the big purple dome in your story sounds an awful lot like the Orb. You don't suppose..."
"This dome was miles across,” Jape protested. “The Orb we saw at McGinn's was just a little ball."
"It was bigger on Friday night,” Scrornuck said. “Maybe it's still a baby."
* * * *
By midday the three had followed the trail about a third of the way up the mountain's northern slope, and found themselves at the head of a narrow sandstone canyon. Bright-green ferns hung from the ravine's sheer walls, and the brook had carved three round pools, each about ten feet across, separated by small, cheerfully burbling waterfalls.
Scrornuck stuck a finger into the cool, gently swirling water of the upper pool. “Mother nature's own whirlpool bath!” he said. “Who's ready for a dip?” Jape and Nalia nodded, and in short order the three were soaking contentedly, enjoying a tasty picnic lunch and sipping ice-cold beers.
"Eek!” Nalia jumped as a little blue fish nipped at her toe. “What's that?"
Scrornuck winked at Jape. “Khansous piranha, maybe?"
Jape stared into the water and deadpanned, “They're the worst kind—I've heard a school of them can strip a man to his bones in minutes."
As Nalia shrieked and tried to scramble out of the pool, Scrornuck burst out laughing. “Relax,” he gasped, “that's just a harmless little bluegill."
"There's no such thing as piranha?"
"Not within five thousand miles of here,” Jape said. He and Scrornuck were still grinning and chuckling when she shoved their heads under the water.
A little later, between bites and sips of the delicious lunch, Nalia raised a question. “In the story you told this morning, it took days to get to the moon. I thought you could just press the little button on that gizmo of yours."
Jape frowned. “I wish I could, but the Traveler can't actually move me an inch."
"It took us to another world yesterday."
"More than a world,” Jape said. “A time stream is another complete universe, with its own sun, moon and stars. The Traveler takes us from one time stream to another, but always to exactly the same place, same time, same day of the year.” He took a sip from his longneck. “In theory, the equations describe free movement in time, in space, and between time streams. In practice, we've only been able to solve two special cases: moving into the past of your own time stream, and jumping from the absolute present moment of one time stream to the absolute present moment of another while staying in the same place. When we went to that other world yesterday, we were still a few miles south of the Junction, on the afternoon of July 24. The year may be different—125 here, 2021 in that other world—but it's always the same place, the same time, the same day of the year. In all the other cases, we can't figure out what the math means."
"I can,” Scrornuck said. “It means we have to walk."
Jape nodded. “Sometimes we have to walk, and sometimes we can't go anywhere.” He consulted the device. “Right now, it can solve the equations for twenty-seven other time streams. There are more than two thousand others that just don't add up. And of those twenty-seven, only three are at the correct elevation. In the others, the ground level is anywhere from thirty to a hundred feet below where we are now—if we went to those worlds, we'd appear in thin air and fall. Not much fun unless you're into high-diving."
"Speaking of which, I see a good jumping cliff up there.” Scrornuck hoisted himself from the pool and started climbing the canyon wall.
"Wait for me!” Nalia called, scurrying up behind him.
"If you hurt yourself,” Jape warned, “I'm going to patch you up with the stuff that really hurts!"
"You mean there's a kind that doesn't?"
In a few minutes they reached the top and surveyed the canyon. The deep part of the middle pool, about thirty feet below, was at most eight feet across. Hitting it safely would take careful aim. “Now don't be scared...” he began.
She laughed. “Scared? My friends and I used to jump from the high cliff south of town—there was a hole about six feet across and twelve feet deep, and if you missed it you'd land in about six inches of water. Compared to that, this is easy."
He wrapped an arm around her waist. “Okay, then. Here we go!” They jumped, hitting the deep spot perfectly, with a whump that echoed up and down the valley. Laughing, they climbed the waterfall to join Jape in the upper pool.
"Well,” Jape said sternly, “it looks like I have two crazy people to deal with."
After lunch, they continued up the mountain, reaching a sunlit hillside punctuated by magnificent evergreens and tall columns of rock. “Let me get this straight,” Nalia said, “you think somebody built this mountain?"
Jape nodded. “I know the geology of Khansous, and there's no way a mountain should be here. This was constructed."
Scrornuck looked up toward the flat summit. “They must have used some really big earthmovers. Boy, would I like to get my hands on one of those!"
"You didn't get into enough trouble with the giant Japanese robots?"
The trail ended abruptly, at a fence with a locked gate. A sign, its paint faded but still clear, read:
ALPINE LAKE PROJECT BOUNDARY
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT
UNIFLAG DEVELOPMENT GROUP, INC.
Small type on the bottom of the sign listed the contractors and sub-contractors authorized to use this gate.
"Alpine Lake,” Jape said approvingly. “Looks like we're on the right path."
"Yep.” Scrornuck unslung the pack and prepared to lift it over the gate.
"Wait!” Nalia grabbed his arm. “We can't go there! It's cursed, like the guy said!” She pointed to a corner of the sign, where faded red letters warned, NO CAST ACCESS. Next to the warning was a UniFlag logo, featuring a large image of Spafu.
"Of all the..
.” Scrornuck began angrily.
Jape put a finger to his lips. “She has a point, Mister Saughblade. We are guests, and we should follow the rules.” He handed Nalia a small laminated card. “I think this gives us permission to continue."
She studied the card, turned it over and studied the other side. Then she nodded, handed the card back, and hopped gracefully over the gate. Scrornuck and Jape followed. “What the heck was that?” Scrornuck whispered as he picked up the pack. Jape handed him the card. One side was covered with fine print, while the other bore three words in large red letters: ALL ACCESS PASS. “This is a backstage pass from the Bruised Boogie Orchestra's farewell tour!” Scrornuck said.
Jape shrugged. “An All Access Pass is an All Access Pass."
A little further along, they came to a field of brilliant yellow flowers. “These are beautiful,” Nalia said, “and look—there's a big fruit under each one!"
Scrornuck sniffed a flower. “Smells like fish.” He broke open a fruit and sampled its soft white flesh. It tasted a bit like shrimp, a bit like crab, a bit like fish. “Vegetable sushi, anybody?” he said, offering Nalia a piece.
She made a face. “It tastes like raw fish insides? No, thanks."
"You don't know what you're missing.” He sprinkled a bit of his spice mixture on the fruit and ate a bigger piece. “Good stuff."
A shadow passed over them as a dragon, its wings bright red and easily thirty feet tip-to-tip, swooped toward the field. Skimming inches above the flowers, it extended a rear claw and in a single, fluid motion flipped a fruit into its mouth. With a regal flap of its wings, the dragon climbed, turned, and flew off to the north.
"Well, look at that,” Jape said, making a note on his scroll. “A field of dragon food!"
The Last Protector Page 24