by Debi Gliori
Titus prodded the ex-thug with his toe. Pronto obliged with a desolate wheeze.
Trying her hardest to keep a serious expression pinned to her face, Mrs. McLachlan wrapped an arm round Latch’s shoulder and began to explain what had really happened. “You see, you were just a wee bitty impetuous, dear. If you’d waited for me, I could have turned that nasty gun into …” Seeing the look on Latch’s face, Mrs. McLachlan hastily changed tack. “Now, dear, if you hadn’t been so brave and rushed in to tackle that brute single-handed …,” she crooned.
A tiny smile began to hover round Latch’s mouth.
“… and with no thought for your own personal safety …,” Mrs. McLachlan sighed admiringly.
Bored with all this Latch flattery, Titus drifted back to his computer screen and discovered that it was now working again. To his delight, there was a message informing him that he had mail. Titus downloaded it and began to read while Pandora experimented with the musical possibilities of a metamorphosed thug.
“… and the way you dropped him with just one blow—I’m just lost in admiration …,” murmured Mrs. McLachlan in the background.
Pandora leaned over her brother’s shoulder to read whatever it was that he was so engrossed in.
“… such strong hands you have, and you cut a fine figure in a kilt …” Somehow Mrs. McLachlan was keeping a straight face as she laid the flattery on with a shovel.
“OH NO!” wailed Titus. “DAD! NO! Help, we’ve got to do SOMETHING!”
“Somebody get Mum!” yelled Pandora. “Something awful’s about to happen! LATCH! GET MUM! NOW!”
Inside Titus’s modem, Tarantella sighed. There they go again, she thought. One drama after another. And so much noise and fuss. She looked down at the sleeping Damp. The baby was oblivious to her siblings’ recent near-extinction, her father’s imminent crispdom, and her mother’s inebriation. She slept, slung in the cradle of Tarantella’s eight legs, cocooned in spider silk, her mouth slightly open and her cheeks flushed pink from the warmth of the modem’s internal workings.
The Revenge of the Hot Toddy
Signora Strega-Borgia proved difficult to wake. “S’amatter?” she protested as Latch hauled her out of bed and Mrs. McLachlan dragged her under a cold shower. “Wossarush? S’apanic? Aargh! STOP! It’s freezing! Wossgoinon? Aah! No! STOP THIS!”
Mrs. McLachlan, satisfied that her employer was now fully awake, turned off the shower. Signora Strega-Borgia lurched out of the bathroom leaving a trail of wet footprints behind her. The nanny followed, holding out a bath towel by way of a peace offering.
“This had better be good, Mrs. McLachlan,” Signora Strega-Borgia said, ignoring the towel and pulling a bathrobe around herself. “There had better be a very good reason for knocking me out with your fiendish hot toddy, then trying to drown me in that—”
Mrs. McLachlan interrupted, “Madam, hurry, it’s the Master and the wee baby.…” Her voice broke.
“What is it? Where’s Damp? Luciano? Flora, tell me. Are they hurt? Injured?” Signora Strega-Borgia’s eyes filled. “Oh no. Not dead, no! Tell me not. TELL ME THEY’RE NOT DEAD, Flora. FLORA!”
“No, madam, but …”
“Where are they?” screamed Signora Strega-Borgia, grabbing Mrs. McLachlan’s shoulders and shaking her. “Where ARE they?”
“Oh, madam,” Mrs. McLachlan sobbed, “they’re in the computer.”
“I don’t believe it!” yelled Signora Strega-Borgia, abruptly releasing Mrs. McLachlan’s shoulders and pacing round her bedroom, addressing the furniture. “She drags me out of my sickbed, half-drowns me in water cold enough to give a polar bear hypothermia, leads me to believe that my baby daughter and missing husband are in mortal danger, and for what? FOR WHAT?” She paused in front of her reflection in the dressing table mirror. “FOR WHAT?” she bawled.
The mirror rippled and spoke:
Thou art the fairest,
as everyone knows,
but thou hast ice water
dripping off thy nose …
“Shut UP!” yelled Signora Strega-Borgia, continuing through clenched teeth. “For what, I ask you? Woken, drowned, and frozen in order to learn that baby and spouse are on the computer. How earth-shattering. How desperately important. How—”
“Madam,” interrupted Mrs. McLachlan.
“Yes, MRS. McLachlan?” said Signora Strega-Borgia, in a voice that dripped vitriol. “What now? Perhaps you need to tell me that … let me see … it’s Saturday? The earth is still turning? Night will follow day?”
Showing remarkable patience in the face of Signora Strega-Borgia’s tide of sarcasm, Mrs. McLachlan continued, speaking slowly and clearly as if to a small child. “I said IN, madam, not on. IN, as in, ‘Your husband and daughter are in the computer.’ ”
“What?” wailed Signora Strega-Borgia. “No, don’t answer. Show me. Please. I don’t care how they got in there, just take me to them.”
A Muffin-Scented Gale
“Titus, can you send an e-mail to Dad?”
“Fat lot of good that would do,” said Titus, his eyes glued to his father’s last message on the screen. “E-mail’s not going to save him now.”
“Titus! Yes or no? Can we e-mail him?”
“Yes,” sniffed Titus. “We can. Now. Since the computer seems to be working again. Why? What’s the point? What are you doing, Pandora?”
Pandora looked up from where she’d been hunting under her brother’s bed. “Got it.”
“Got what?”
“The wand, Titus. I’ve got an idea. I’ll shrink myself like Damp, and you blow me into the modem, e-mail me to Dad, I’ll shrink him, and—”
“Oh BRILLIANT!” yelled Titus. “Oh, Pan, what a GREAT PLAN! What a STAR! You’re a GENIUS!”
“Yes, I have to agree,” said Pandora, circling the wand round and round her body.
“WAIT!” screamed Titus, grabbing her wrist. “Stand on the modem, or on the table. If you shrink on the floor, I’ll never find you.”
“Oops. Good thinking, Titus.” Pandora clambered onto the table and began again. She spun with the wand, slowly at first, and then faster and faster until, with a final thrust, she pointed the wand directly at her heart. “Oh no …,” she wailed.
With a crash, the table beneath her gave way.
“Oh NO,” groaned Titus. “You forgot, didn’t you, dumbo?”
“Contrawand,” moaned Pandora, her gigantic mouth pressed against the plaster cornice of Titus’s bedroom ceiling. “Hang on a tick.…”
Pandora filled the room.
Her massive feet pressed hard against the bedroom door, her mountainous bottom swamped Titus’s bed, and with one colossal fist, she plucked her brother off his seat and brought him within range.
“Who’re you calling ‘dumbo’?” she said.
Titus, gazing into an eyeball the size of a watermelon, swallowed painfully. “N-n-not you, sister dear.”
“I thought not,” Pandora sighed. “Listen, squirt, much as I’d love to play around with you, we don’t have the time, so if you’ll be good enough to pass me my wand from under that table.…”
She gently placed her brother back on the floor and he passed her the wand. In her wardrobe-sized hand, it looked like a matchstick as she made dainty circles round her stomach.
“Careful,” warned Titus. “Any bigger and you’ll go through the roof.”
With a patter of falling plaster, Pandora resumed her normal size.
“Right,” she said, spitting out bits of ceiling. “Let’s put the modem on this footstool, and I’ll climb up here, and …”
Round and round, she spun the wand, and with a grin for Titus … vanished.
“Pan? PANDORA? Oh NO! Now what?” He bent over the footstool, trying hard not to breathe. “Pandora—yell if you’re still here.” He leaned closer to where he hoped his shrunken sister might be, his ear close to the modem.
A tiny voice said, “Yeuchhh. Don’t you ever wash in there? You’re so GROSS,
Titus.”
“Get ready, Pandora. Curl up in a ball, and that way you might not break too many limbs … five, four.” Titus leaned carefully over the footstool and stood, fingers poised over the keyboard. He took a deep breath.
“I’m scared, Titus.”
“Three, two, don’t be a wuss, Pan, one … PUFF! We have Liftoff.…”
There was no applause, no spectacular blast of smoke. There was just a profound absence of Pandora.
There was a huge muffin-scented gale, sweeping her up, tumbling her over and over. There were spinning colors, a kaleidoscopic whirlpool, and then … black. There was pain all over as she crashed and bumped into unknown things in the modem. But mainly, there was fear. Something breathed in there. More than one thing, in fact.
Pandora had never felt so afraid in her life. What if …? No, don’t. Titus called me a wuss. Titus doesn’t know the half of it. Give me a couple of lengths with Tock any day. Pull yourself together, girl, somewhere out there are your father, your baby sister, and your favorite spi—
“TaranTELLA!” shrieked Pandora.
“ShhhHH! Quiet,” hissed the spider, clamping a hairy leg over Pandora’s mouth. “You’ll wake the baby, and believe me, you don’t want to do that.” Tarantella shuddered and released Pandora. “Who ever would have thought that such a hairless little wrinkly could make such a din.”
“Oh, Tarantella, well DONE. You found her.” Pandora reached out to stroke Damp’s face and stumbled. In front of her, a black void opened up.
“Whoa. Careful,” warned Tarantella, snatching Pandora back to safety. “Fall into that and you could end up anywhere,” she said, opening her eyes wide for emphasis. “Anywhere.”
Above their heads, blue flashes of electricity crackled. Each flash illuminated the industrial landscape that surrounded them. Giant lentils on spindly legs alternated with vast stripy cylinders poised on metal scaffolds. Towering skyscrapers perched on a landscape crosshatched with gleaming metal runways. It was bleak, it was ugly, and it was utterly devoid of life.
“Where is this?” whispered Pandora.
“This is the printed circuit board,” intoned Tarantella, dropping her voice to a whisper and adding, “that black tunnel into which you so nearly fell, that … that is the void, the portal.”
Pandora peered at the spider in the gloom. Tarantella’s eyes glowed.
“That’s the way in, d’you mean?”
“Dear child, think of it as an entry ramp leading onto a great motorway … or perhaps a trickling brook that turns into a great river and eventually rushes into the sea … or perhaps—”
“Tarantella,” interrupted Pandora, “how do I hitch a lift on an outgoing e-mail?”
“You simply stand in front of one, just like you’d stand in front of a speeding tractor-trailer. Just like, believe me. Hits you like a ten-ton truck, whizzes you off into the Web, and seconds later, SPLAT, you’ve arrived.” Seeing Pandora’s horrified expression, Tarantella expanded further. “I imagine it’s similar to what flies feel when they’re spread across a windshield. One minute buzz, buzz … and the next thing that goes through their minds is their bottom.”
Pandora groaned. Her Rescue Dad Plan appeared to have a serious drawback. But, she thought, hang on a minute.… “How come you’re not dead? And Damp? You’re not both windshield smears, are you?”
Tarantella arranged herself for a cozy chat. “What you’ve failed to grasp, O leggily challenged one, is that this is virtual travel. Not real travel. Not the same thing at all.”
Oh heck, thought Pandora. Do NOT Pass Go until the spider has delivered an interminable lecture.…
“Look, hairless one, when you send an e-mail, you’re not sending a bit of paper with a letter written on it, are you?”
“No … but,” said Pandora, propping her chin on her knees and trying to look interested.
“Nor does your e-mail travel only on cables and wires, does it?”
“Nhuh?” said Pandora, beginning to lose the plot.
“Sometimes it’s bounced through space via satellite, or zapped out by microwave …”
“Duh,” agreed Pandora. It was warm in the modem. Warm and cozy. She leaned back into Tarantella’s furry body and watched Damp’s eyes roll behind her eyelids.
“… so you see it’s utterly painless,” droned the spider. “If you don’t believe me, I’ll show you.”
In the vast spaces beyond the confines of the modem, Titus brought his fingers thudding down on the keyboard. Spotting an opportunity to demonstrate the wonders of Web travel, Tarantella acted swiftly. “Look, here comes one now. Hang on tight.…”
Holding Pandora and Damp snug against her abdomen, Tarantella leapt in front of Titus’s outgoing message to [email protected].
Endgame
Death was horribly slow in coming, thought Signor Strega-Borgia. The air in the computer room stank of melting plastic as one by one the banks of computers surrounding him overheated, sent out onscreen warnings of system errors, and, with small puffs of black smoke, went down.
This must be what lobsters feel like as they boil alive, he thought. Droplets of sweat dripped off his nose and hissed as they landed on the floor. The air burned his throat with each breath he took. Forget lobsters, he thought, more like barbecued chicken. To distract himself from his imminent extinction, Signor Strega-Borgia loaded Revenge IV into the last working computer. He huddled on a chair, curled in a ball, waiting for the game to run.
Onscreen came a menu: CHOOSE YOUR WEAPON.
nuclear warhead
nail-studded club
rusty dagger
vial of vitriol
box of dynamite
“Oh very good,” groaned Signor Strega-Borgia as the last choice scrolled past him: flamethrower.
He armed himself and clicked onto the main menu:
battleground, choose from the following:
supermarket on a saturday afternoon
london taxi stand at 11:20 p.m. on a rainy friday night
the oval office, washington, d.c.
phning ptui jungle, somewhere in the subtropics
Signor Strega-Borgia sighed. For some reason, this game was failing to hold his attention. He gazed blankly at the screen, where little figures armed with nail-studded clubs were invading the fish counter in a busy supermarket. A message box appeared: YOU HAVE MAIL.
Signor Strega-Borgia stared at the message. He wondered who on earth it was from as his fingers slid across the keyboard. He found the Open Mail command and pressed ENT and ER. Maybe he could ask for help. Maybe it was the local fire station e-mailing the palazzo, to inquire why it was belching smoke and flames all over the rural Italian countryside. Maybe it was one of his evil half brother’s associates, checking that he’d melted. He glared at the screen, willing it to hurry up and download this unknown message. Another box appeared onscreen:
MESSAGE DELIVERED
REPLY?
“What message?” wailed Signor Strega-Borgia. “There’s nothing there. It’s empty. It’s BLANK!”
Over the crackle and hiss of the encroaching inferno came a tiny squeaking sound. “Not the rats,” moaned Signor Strega-Borgia. “Burned to a crisp in the company of several roasted rodents is not a nice way to go.”
The Internet journey to the palazzo was swift and brutal. Pandora’s eyelids were dragged back into her skull and her eyes streamed. It was exactly like being a bug stuck to the windshield of a speeding tractor-trailer. Space whooshed past her, deafening, blinding, and utterly terrifying. In the midst of the technological maelstrom, she caught a brief flash of something strangely familiar.… Several somethings, in fact.
Heading on a collision course toward Tarantella, Damp, and Pandora were the missing rat babies, their yellow teeth bared in the airflow, their tails streaming out behind them. Just as it seemed inevitable that the two parties of e-travelers should collide, the ratlets veered off to the left and vanished. Almost immediately, with an excruciatingly jarring im
pact, Pandora, Damp, and Tarantella arrived at the portal. The spider nimbly dragged her cargo onto a ledge, from where they could look down in safety onto the endless rush of traffic below.
“There,” said Tarantella, “now you know. Just give me a minute to powder my nose and I’ll take you back home.”
“Where are we now?” groaned Pandora, checking herself for breakages.
“Does it matter?” said the spider, producing a tiny mirror from a hidden pouch and peering at her reflection. “Let’s return this baby to where she belongs before she wakes up.…”
“I can’t go back yet,” whispered Pandora. “I have to find Dad.”
“You’ve lost your father?” Tarantella muttered through a mouthful of lipstick. She puckered up at her reflection with a kissing sound and continued, “How very careless of you.… I ate mine.”
Pandora shuddered. “Where’s the way out?” she said.
“Up thataway,” said the spider, indicating a steep tunnel leading away from their ledge.
Pandora stood up and hugged Tarantella. “Awwwk. My lipstick …,” moaned the spider. “What was that for?”
“Look after Damp till I return,” said Pandora, “and if I’m not back in twenty minutes, go home without me.”
“Now hang on a minute,” the spider said, her eyes growing saucer-like with alarm. “You’re not leaving me with this baby. No way. It might leak, it might smell, it might … WAKE UP AGAIN. No, no, NO. Wherever you go, I’ll be right behind you.”
“I hoped you’d say that.” Pandora smirked. “Come on, then, this way.”
Together they scrabbled up the tunnel toward the light. Tarantella pushed Pandora onward when the tunnel climbed steeply. Damp rocked from side to side, swaying under the spider’s abdomen, rocked in a hairy cradle.
“It’s getting hotter,” Pandora said, stating the obvious. The sides of the tunnel were no longer hard and cool. Each step they took sank into warm rubbery stickiness. “It’s like wading through molasses,” she moaned.