by Tod Davies
He would have asked more, but just then the Bardic Gnome entered, sweeping a low bow to Justice as she, coolly nodding, went out. It was this Gnome’s task to recite the after dinner poems recounting the Noble Deeds of the Gnomes. He wore a gold wreath around his head, and he declaimed his tale in a voice that filled the hall.
“Listen to my tale [the Bardic Gnome began] of the Gnomes of yore. How we came to these Plains and conquered them, for the good of all people, creatures, animals, vegetables and minerals thereon.
“Many, many years ago, our Ancestor Gnomes lived on the Great Lawn in the Sky. They formed the Great Circle, and one day, at the Great Council in the Great Circle, the Great Big Gnome spoke out. He said: ‘This lawn is good. But good is not Great, and we Gnomes are Great. We must not keep our Greatness to ourselves! We must search out new lands to impress with our Greatitude. We must carry our message of Greatness to all! This is our DESTINY!’
“The Ancestor Gnomes agreed with the Great Big Gnome’s sage words. So they prayed to Mr. Big. And Mr. Big, who answers the prayers of all who serve him (may he be praised a Great Many Times), granted their wish. A Great Hole opened up in the Great Lawn, and the Ancestor Gnomes jumped down and down and down into the bowels of the Sky until they came to our Great World.
“This was the Dawn of Time.”
Snotty looked around. Every Gnome was still, except for the moving lips of some, who silently recited along with him the words of the Bardic Gnome.
“Eons passed [the Bardic Gnome went on]. The Gnomes fought for their Great Destiny. You know, oh my Brothers, of the Greatness of Gnomic Deeds!”
“Hear hear!” cried a Gnome with an eye patch. There was a solemn pounding of pewter goblets on gray metal tables in response.
“Acre by acre we conquered the Plains. Closer and closer have we moved to our Great Goal.”
At this, there was a collective intake of Gnome breath. Snotty looked on, eyes shining. The Great Goal! It would be his Great Goal as well!
“Our Great Goal, oh my Gnomic Brothers: to conquer the PEAK OF TRANSCENDENCE!”
“YES!” Snotty shouted, jumping up with his fist in the air.
The Bardic Gnome, flattered by this attention on the Sun God’s part, gave a creaky bow and went on. He told of Great Battles with the creatures that fled from the Plains to the fastness of the Mountains of Resistance. “Those foul mountains that ring the Great Peak! They hide those base Rebels, those who hate our Freedoms and our Gnomic Destiny!”
“Let’s GET ’EM!” Snotty yelled.
“Hear hear!” another Gnome shouted. “Hear hear!” the Gnomes shouted all around.
The Bardic Gnome told now of those Gnomes of yore who found the one secret way to the Peak undefended by the Rebels. “The Pretty Pass! That fatal snowy way! Remember, oh Gnomes, the many thousands of our people frozen alive as they came to the Pretty Pass. Thousands of Gnomes bonded to its rocks forever in the frozen air!”
“That’s bad,” Snotty said and frowned.
“But the SUN GOD has been foretold!” the Bardic Gnome boomed. All eyes turned to Snotty, whose face glowed hot and red. “He it is who will THAW the Pretty Pass, gateway to the Peak of Transcendence, and enable us to conquer the Great Peak. This was promised by Gnomic Prophets since before the Dawn of Time!”
Snotty ducked his head. He felt very hot. Was it possible he was going to do all that? “Well, why not?” he thought. “I’ve done all right at everything else I’ve tried. Why not at being a Sun God, too?” So he sat straight up and raised another defiant fist in the air.
The Great Hall erupted. The Gnomes were on their feet now, tears in their eyes, stomping and yelling, cheering the Sun God who would lead them to Victory.
It was the Apotheosis of Snotty. The high point of his life. “This,” he thought earnestly to himself as he acknowledged the accolades of the masses, “is what I was born for.”
He took bow after bow until his head spun.
“If only,” he thought, coming up for air, “If only I could feel it. I mean, that I am the Sun God.” He took a drink from his goblet and felt he almost had the Greatness of it in his grasp. He hadn’t thought about Snowflake all night, not once, not at all. He had made his way to the top. Nothing could stop him now.
The Gnomes cheered and cheered. “Hooray! Hooray for Snotty! Hooray for Snotty the Sun God!”
His body burned with desire for the Peak and with the Fever of the Plains.
But the funny thing was, except for that, he couldn’t feel a thing.
Chapter IX
MEANWHILE, IN THE MOUNTAINS
Outside on the Plains, a full moon shone. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. You could see every stunted tree, every bare boulder, every bit of nasty scrub grass as clear as if it were day. And besides, no one would dare to assault such an impenetrable fortress. So the Guard Gnomes, watching from their towers jutting up from the Wall, found their job an easy one.
It was true what the General Gnome said about Gnome Technology. Not the smallest infraction against Gnome Greatness escaped it. Nothing outside of that Greatness had a chance.
It was troubling that there was still an Enemy, but there wasn’t a Gnome among them who didn’t believe it was a matter of time before that Enemy too was history. The Gnomes didn’t worry much about the Rebels: a ragtag muddle of dreamers and toys and animals and gardeners, not a trained fighter in the whole pathetic bunch. Rank amateurs who fought only when they had to—“if you can imagine anything so unprofessional!” as the General Gnome said to Snotty with the after dinner port.
No, the Gnomes had nothing but contempt for the Rebels, who never crept out of their mountain home. “Country bumpkins!” snorted the General Gnome. “They’d rather grow flowers and drink chocolate than fight like men!” There had been much laughter at this. Snotty joined in.
Snotty did wonder how, if what the General said was true, the Rebels could be an actual threat. But he didn’t like to ask.
“Why don’t we just head up the mountains and get ’em?” he said instead, and the General looked at him with that approval that warms the heart of the Sun God wherever he may reign.
“Well, we would, you know,” the General confided, and poured Snotty another bumper of port. “Only we can’t figure out the paths that go around the Pretty Pass. We can’t figure them out at all. Look....” Here he spilled some salt onto the gray table top and traced out a rough map with his knife. “There’s some kind of path like a goat track, back and forth, back and forth through the scrub. We’ve never found it. And spies have told us there is a wider road, made of white stone”—Snotty frowned as a vague memory tugged at him—“but the thing must be hiding in plain sight, because we can’t find that one either, no matter how hard we try! Not on our own, anyway.” Here he gave Snotty a penetrating look. “We look to you, Snotty! You have been foretold. It’s you who will show us the way up the Path of Care. It’s you who will brave the Path of Solitude!”
Snotty had a gratifying vision of himself dressed in shining armor, leading a charge up the mountains toward the Peak of Transcendence, trampling what was left of the Rebels—or spearing, or shooting, or bombing them (“whatever,” he thought in his enthusiasm)—in his eagerness to get to the top.
He gave a happy little burp, and all around him the manly Gnomes beamed.
Meanwhile, above the Plains, over the Mountains, a Star shone in the East.39 Not one of the Guard Gnomes bothered to look up—their job was to guard the Plains, not the sky—so not one of them saw the Star (if that, indeed, was what it was) move across the sky, in a way very strange for a Star. Stranger still, this one made a rustling noise as it went, as if from the flapping of wings. Stars don’t have wings, of course. But this one certainly did. And no matter what it was, it shone with the brightest light of anything in the sky, brighter, even, than the Moon Itself. As it approached the Gnome Fortress, its light streamed down onto the gray towers.
Falling under this light, the Gnomes on the battlement
s below stretched out their arms and smiled. Each Gnome yawned, and nodded, and then, still smiling, fell asleep. Every so often one would give a forlorn yelp, as if dreaming of somewhere far away, where Gnomes sat in a circle on a Great Lawn telling stories and smoking cigars.
While the Guard Gnomes slept, a black bank of clouds swept over the sky, covering the moon.
Reversals like this, fast and unexpected, happen in the desert.
Everywhere was black. The sky was an impenetrable velvet cloth. The Guard Gnomes snored on. There was not a movement to be seen on the Plains. Except... what was that at the very edge of the foothills of the Mountains, right where they meet the Plains, on the banks of the Stream where it runs into the River there? Was that a prick of light? Did it flash and then go out?
Or was it nothing after all?
Probably nothing.
The Guard Gnomes slept on.
The wind blew the clouds fast across the moon and tore the velvet curtain in one long jagged tear. In that half light, a Gnome might have spotted a single line of moving figures, muffled and hooded and masked, heading across the open Plains toward the Fortress. But when the wind mended the tear in the clouds and the Plains turned black again, he wouldn’t have been able to say if that single file of movement had been real or just a trick of the desert light.
The dangers of approaching the Fortress of the Gnomes were legendary. No one would take the risk of crossing the open desert out of cover of the Mountains. No one would be fool enough to try. No one ever had tried. Every Gnome knew that.
But these were desperate days for the enemies of the Gnomes. And there were strange stirrings in the Mountains of Resistance.
Chapter X
KIDNAPPED!
After the Grand Feast, Snotty retired to his rooms accompanied by his Entourage.
This Entourage was made up of the highest-ranking Gnomes. You could tell this because of the noise from the many decorations clanking on their gnomish chests. These medals made so much noise as the group made its progress through the halls that Snotty couldn’t understand a word of the conversation that went on over his head.
“Mmmmmmmr... mrrrr... and so we see that errr... the grand assault pprrr... of course, we Gnomes have always aaawwwrrr....” That was what it sounded like. Every so often, the sound of the rrrsssss meant the speaker had made a joke. Then the other Gnomes laughed.
Snotty inclined his head in what he hoped was a stately way and did what everyone else did. In this way he acted wisely, as many a Great Leader has before.
At one point, the murmuring ended clearly in a question. It sounded something like this: “And so... gggrrr... your position... ssssrrrrrrr?”
Everyone looked at Snotty.
Snotty cocked his head. One finger touched his cheek. Then he said, “Vvvrrrrrr...ooooppppphhhrrrrr....grraaaannnddddeeeuurrrrrr!”
He nodded curtly to show that he was finished.
The Entourage stopped its progress to listen with greater care. All of the August Dignitaries were much struck by the wisdom—more than the wisdom, the plain good sense—of their Sun God. Nodding with respectful enthusiasm, they burst into a spontaneous round of applause. Andwith many exchanges of incomprehensible compliments (“lllrrrrr... nnrrrrr... mmmmmssssttt... hhnnnrrrrddddd...”) they bowed him into his suite.40
“Bye-bye! Thanks for the great evening, guys! See you tomorrow! Sleep tight!” Snotty bowed and bowed until the door shut and he was alone. Then he turned and surveyed his Grand Suite.
“Wow,” he said.
It was really grand. There was gray carpet so thick that Snotty’s feet sank into it up to his ankles. There was pale gray linen on the enormous, Gnome-sized, gray metal bed. Laid on the silver satin coverlet were pajamas embroidered on the breast pocket with a silver Sun. There was a gray wood writing desk with a gray-shaded lamp, set before a huge gray leather chair. And the bath! That was gray and white marble with platinum spigots in the shape of birds. The towels beside it were so large and soft that Snotty could have curled up and slept in one.
“No one in Megalopolis—even the best parts—has a room like this,” Snotty thought with satisfaction.
Now Snotty believed in his star. For twelve years he had known he was destined for greatness. “And I was right!” he said, bouncing up and down on the bed. “Keep going and things can only get bigger, better, grander, more important still! Snotty the KING! Snotty the EMPEROR! Snotty the SUN GOD! HAH!”
But to tell the truth, Snotty was not enjoying himself as much as he could have been. He was feverish—hot and restless—and he couldn’t stand still.
“It’s stuffy in here,” he muttered uneasily, loosening the collar of his evening shirt. “And I’m not used to all that rich food.” He bounced up and down a couple more times, but it wasn’t all that much fun after all. “Maybe I need some fresh air.”
The doors that led to the balcony were Gnome-sized, of course, and the door handle was above his head, but he solved this by pushing and pulling at the gray leather steps that were meant to help him into the Gnome-sized bed. Once he had those in place, it was easy to climb up, push down on the handle and go out the door. A moment’s work and Snotty was on the Gnome-sized balcony, breathing the night air of the Plains.
There were no stars. The sky was black. The wind whistling across the Plains made him shiver and cling to a balcony pillar. This was also Gnome-sized, and Snotty had to take care to keep an arm wrapped around its massive post, otherwise he might have fallen through the man-sized space in between.
From up there, Snotty had a wonderful view of the Wall of Prejudice. Its closely woven material glittered in the guard tower lights. Snotty enjoyed the sight of it rippling in the desert wind.
As he admired it, he saw—just out of the corner of his eye—something wrong. “No,” he thought, shaking his head. “Can’t be something there. Everything’s the way it always is. Must be seeing things.” Still, when he looked closer, he saw a shadow... a glimmer... nothing definite. “No. Yes. Wait. There it is again!” It was impossible. But there it was.
Something pushed at the fabric of the Wall of Prejudice. An unknown force punched a hole through it, piercing it from the outside. “What is it?” Snotty thought, excited. So excited was he by the novelty of the situation that he forgot the danger.
A hole worked its way open in the shimmering links of the Wall. By degrees it grew bigger and bigger until it was as big as Snotty himself. And then through it, breaching the Wall of Prejudice, came a dozen weird beings.
Snotty had never seen anything like them before.
Each one was compact, cylinder shaped, multi-colored, and springy—like a short, squat pogo stick. These bounced up and down on the ground. Snotty could hear them. “Boing... boing... boing...”
What were they?
What could possibly breach the Wall of Prejudice?
Snotty didn’t recognize them. How could he? These were Ideas. Snotty hadn’t come across many Ideas in Megalopolis, and certainly no brand new ones, shiny and bright, like these. They looked amusing, even laughable, and small. It’s an odd fact that Ideas like this frequently turn out to be the most formidable of all.41 But of course Snotty didn’t know this, and he didn’t realize their power until seven small figures, hooded and masked, appeared through the breach in the Wall made by them.
Too late Snotty realized the danger. “GENERAL!” he shouted. “The ENEMY! Sound the ALARM!”
At this, a hooded intruder looked up, eyes glittering through the slits in its mask. Calmly, it plucked an Idea off the ground and hurled it straight at Snotty.
He ducked just in time. The Idea flew over his shoulder and landed on a Guard as he sounded the klaxon horn. But the Idea just bounced off and landed on the railing of the tower where it teetered this way and that.
The raiders disappeared, then reappeared weighed down by a large bundle. As they hurried toward the hole, from this bundle fell a pair of black reading glasses.
“They’ve got Justice!�
� Snotty yelled. He heard sounds from the far side of the Fortress: neighings, snortings, squealings, shoutings. From this, Snotty knew the Rebels had set the caged Monsters free.
“Snowflake?” Snotty thought. He had a second’s doubt before pushing it away and shouting: “To arms! To arms! Gnomes, to arms!”
The Gnomes answered the call of their Sun God, running from all directions and waving huge weapons. They had no chance to use these, however. The Rebels engaged them in hand-to-hand combat, and in this the weapons were of no use. The Gnomes were trained to attack and kill the Enemy at a distance, not, as it were, man to man. So even though these raiders were no higher than three feet tall, and even though there were only seven of them, and even though Justice weighed them down, their desperate bravery and unexpected tactics won their escape. Many a Gnome fell, hacked at the knee, or punctured in the bunion. In a flash the Rebels were through the hole in the Wall of Prejudice, back out on the Plains, free—and with Justice, too.
“No!” Snotty wailed. The Guard Gnome above swung his klieg light to the outside of the Fortress wall and nicked the Idea teetering there on the railing’s edge. The Idea tumbled off and down and hit Snotty a good smack right on the back of the head.
“OW!” yelped Snotty, clapping his hand over it and yanking with all his might. But the Idea stuck to Snotty no matter what he did. He yowled and pulled with his other hand, trying to get rid of it the way you try to get rid of a wasp whose stinger is already too far in. In his frantic attempt to get away from the Idea, Snotty lost his balance and tumbled off the edge of the balcony, falling to the ground below.
Snotty watched the courtyard hurtle up toward him. He shut his eyes and waited for the end. But this time there wasn’t one. Instead the Idea, sticking to Snotty, pulled him back up. Snotty was amazed at the strength of it. For a minute there, he almost enjoyed himself, swooping low over the ground, pulled along by the Idea. He would have enjoyed himself, anyway, if it hadn’t made for the breach in the Wall of Prejudice and headed for the desert outside.