Locksmith

by Nicholas Maes

  “You’d be able to keep count,” Alfonse said, “if my sister stopped singing.”

  “My singing keeps my spirits up.”

  “But it’s driving us crazy!”

  Lewis sighed. Everyone was grumpy. They had been swimming aimlessly for hours on end, and still they were up to their necks in mud. At the same time the sky was a mass of grey, the land was shaking like a bowl of jelly, and the wind was blowing from every side at once, creating waves of mud that kept pitching them over. While the Heliform patches were helping them float, they were tired of paddling and wiping muck from their eyes.

  Whomp!

  “Fifty-two.”

  “That’s fifty-one, you nincompoop!”

  The worst part was the boulders. Every so often there was a loud explosion and an elephant-size stone rose a mile upward, only to crash down and roll a wave toward them. Three times they were scattered like pins in a bowling alley.

  “This mud won’t end,” Gibiwink whined. “And we’re swimming in circles.”

  “And that darkening mass means trouble,” Lewis muttered, nodding to a purple haze on the horizon. “Something strange is headed this way.”

  “Things look grim,” Todrus agreed. “But at least they can’t get worse … Arrgh!”

  His cry of surprise made everyone flinch, especially when he leaped from the water.

  “Something touched me,” he explained moments later. “I’m sure it’s nothing dangerous, but I’ll dive and check it out.”

  That said, he did a backward flip and plunged beneath the surface. Lewis expected him to be gone for a minute, but he returned seconds later, looking pale and nervous.

  “Things are worse than I imagined,” he said. “There are hundreds and hundreds of leeches below, the smallest of which is three feet long.”

  “Leeches!” everyone cried in horror.

  “Swim close together!” Lewis shouted. “And keep your voices down so we don’t attract their notice. Maybe they’ll lose interest and swim —”

  Even as he spoke, something slimy touched his foot. At the same time a shape emerged from the water — black and long and tubular, with suckers attached to a rubber-like belly. The suckers were pointed straight at Lewis. When the creature launched itself at him, he punched it without thinking. His fist sunk into the beast’s body, and a sticky fluid oozed around it. Much to his relief the creature returned to the depths, only to be replaced by a thousand others. Rising together, they lifted the group from the water — it was as if an island was taking shape beneath them.

  “This isn’t so bad,” Gibiwink whispered. “At least we’re getting a bit of a rest.”

  “Maybe these creatures are trying to help,” Todrus said.

  “The Bombardier was once surrounded by fish,” Alfonse muttered. “They were friendly at first until they tried to eat him.”

  “Shut up about your comics!” Adelaide screeched. “Mention them again and I’ll —”

  Adelaide’s threat ended in a cry of pain. Her calf was bare, and a leech had stabbed it. Quick as a flash, she kicked it away, but not before a cloud of blood took shape. Its smell and taste drove the creatures crazy. The horde began to quake all over, pitching Lewis and his friends to their knees as if they were standing on a large mound of jelly.

  Two suckers cut into Lewis at once, one in his hand, the other near his ankle. Even as he drew them out, a couple more assaulted him. They couldn’t penetrate his outfit, true, but attacked him where his flesh was exposed, or wherever they could worm into his clothing. He shrugged these off, then another half-dozen, punching and kicking as fast as he could. Adelaide and Alfonse were fighting just as madly, and bleeding from at least five different wounds.

  It was lucky the leeches weren’t interested in frogs. Their skin was much too thick for the leeches’ suckers, and this left them free to attack the brutes. Again and again they hammered out, bruising them, denting them, and ripping off their suckers. At one point they lifted thirty leeches at once — the ooze from the creatures’ wounds had them stuck together — and heaved them fifty feet into the air.

  Stunned and frightened, the mass retreated.

  “They’ve backed off!” Lewis cried, blood trickling from his outfit.

  “They’ll attack again,” Todrus panted. “The smell of your blood is just too tempting.”

  “It isn’t fair,” Gibiwink complained. “For every one I smash a hundred others show up.”

  “And look at the sky,” Alfonse moaned. “It’s about to explode!”

  It was true. While they had been fighting, the distant haze had taken over the sky. The air was heavy and crackling unpredictably.

  “I suspect,” Todrus mused, “we’re in for a Zilatsky effect.”

  “What’s a Zilatsky effect?” the others asked.

  “It’s the inversion of the soil’s igneous compounds and —”

  Before he could finish the chemistry lecture, a bolt of lightning jumped alive, but not like any lightning Lewis had seen. Instead it was more like molten metal, and when it smashed into the mud, a mile or two off, it triggered a change in the soil’s texture. A band of yellow sped toward them.

  “We’re going to be electrocuted!” Gibiwink wailed.

  “Not if the leeches kill us first!” Lewis cried.

  The leeches. They were charging again. Their thrashing was causing the water to boil, and the surface was quivering with suckers past counting. Lewis heard Adelaide scream — unless that shriek had come from him.

  Again the leeches raised them out of the water, and the children flinched as twenty suckers struck at once. Lewis kept punching, but his attackers were too many. His legs and stomach and back were hit, and he could feel the blood literally being sucked from his body.

  One leech in particular — it was over six feet long — scrabbled over the roiling masses and aimed itself at Lewis. Pinning him, it assailed his throat with its suckers.

  Lewis struggled hard, but the leech was slurping all over.

  It was exactly then that the yellow band struck. There was a blinding flash, the air split apart, and the leech went flying as if yanked by an invisible hand. The suckers, thank goodness, had disappeared …

  But wait! The mud had turned a bright yellow! And what … how? It was hard as stone! The leeches were trapped beneath its surface, and here and there the odd sucker protruded.

  Lewis wheeled to inspect his surroundings. He couldn’t budge. The mud had hardened around his feet and calves, his elbows, wrists, and the back of his skull — the parts of him, in other words, that had been touching the mud when it froze over.

  “Is everyone okay?” Lewis yelled, alarmed that someone’s head might be buried in the substance. When his friends answered yes but that their limbs were pinned, he asked if anyone knew what had happened.

  “It was the Zilatsky effect,” Todrus said. “It carbonized the sediment and —”

  “Forget your science!” Gibiwink interjected. “How do we escape this mess?”

  Lewis strained against the soil, searching out a pressure point, twisting back and forth and slackening his muscles in an effort to lessen the grip on his limbs. He tried this manoeuvre a dozen times, but the hardened mud refused to relinquish its hold.

  “I’m afraid this mud’s unbreakable,” he groaned. “I’m sorry. I should never have let you come on this mission.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Todrus said. “Gibiwink and I volunteered, remember?”

  “I did, too,” Alfonse added. “And my sister wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

  Adelaide glared at her brother. “I had a recital! I wanted to practise! Do you think I would have hitched a ride if I’d known I’d end up dying like this?”

  “I told you not to come!” Alfonse snapped, “For once you should have listened to me!”

  The pair started shouting in earnest, and Lewis wished he could block his ears. Before he and Alfonse had become best buddies, he had always wanted a brother or sister, a family member in a
ddition to his parents. After hearing the Pangettis squabble all these years, he thanked his lucky stars that he had no siblings.

  They were back to their old grievances. Adelaide was yelling she was sick of his comics, and Alfonse was insulting her playing again. Lewis was about to intervene, but before he could an odour broke out.

  “What’s that smell?” Adelaide asked, pausing in mid-insult. “Is something burning?”

  Alfonse wrinkled his nose. “The ground’s heating up!”

  “Todrus, is this part of the Zilatsky effect?” Lewis asked.

  “No,” the frog answered. “You’d see brown-red flecks from the iron sulfates.”

  “I’m causing the reaction,” a soft, almost unearthly voice intruded. “Any moment now and you’ll be free of this mud.”

  Everyone gasped and tried glancing round, but this person was standing outside their field of vision.

  “Who’s there?” Lewis demanded.

  “I call myself the Stranger, Lewis.”

  “How do you know my name?”

  “There’s no time to explain. Please close your eyes. There will be a small explosion soon.”

  While they had been speaking, the mud’s temperature had risen. It was also smoking violently now as bright green fumes that could have been sliced with a knife assailed their nostrils, choking them.

  There was a flash of blue and a muted roar. The mud beneath the group broke apart, and their “bonds” dissolved into a hundred tiny fragments. After waiting for the shower of mud to clear, Lewis and his friends jumped to their feet.

  A moment later they were confronting the Stranger. As hard as they tried to hide their reaction, one by one their jaws slackened in horror.

  CHAPTER 9

  The “Stranger” looked human, but there were a few crucial differences. Its limbs were misshapen and coated with a bark-like substance. Two ungainly humps grew out of its back, as well as three tentacles, each black and deadly-looking. A fourth was lying spent on the ground — it had been used somehow to break up the mud. Its feet consisted of two sprawling flippers, and while its head was roughly the size of a human’s, it had no nose and one eye in its middle, a big, empty space with no pupil to speak of.

  “Thanks for freeing us,” Lewis said, concealing his disgust. “How did you —”

  “Never mind,” the creature replied, shy because of its hideous looks. “This mud will melt and the leeches will return. All of you must hurry to safety.”

  “But we’re lost,” Adelaide groaned. “We don’t know where to go.”

  “I’ve been following you,” the Stranger confessed. “And I know about your mission to Yellow Swamp. If you’re willing, I can lead you there.”

  “Who are you?” Todrus demanded. “And why should we trust you?”

  “There’s no time to explain,” the Stranger insisted, pointing to the ground whose surface was melting. “You’ll have to trust me. That’s all there is to it.”

  Without further ado, the Stranger hurried off. As it moved, it dragged its feet against the soil and produced an ugly, slapping sound. For a moment the group hesitated, not knowing what to think of this monster. As the mud rose past their ankles, however, they nodded to one another and set off in its wake. If it wanted to hurt them, it would have done so already.

  “Have you noticed something?” Adelaide asked a few minutes later. “None of us is bleeding.”

  “So?” Alfonse jeered.

  “She’s right,” Lewis said, examining his limbs. “I was bleeding when we were fighting the leeches. Yet, as far as I can tell, my cuts are gone.”

  “It’s these outfits,” Todrus said. “They’ve bandaged your wounds. That Grumpel has come up with some terrific inventions.”

  “Let’s test his other stuff,” Alfonse recommended, “and fix ourselves a meal.”

  Everyone agreed, their stomachs rumbling. The last time they had eaten was in Grumpel’s office, and they had burned a lot of energy since. Unfortunately, the Stranger wouldn’t hear of resting — the mud was melting quickly and every second counted.

  But they had to eat. Telling the others to continue marching, Lewis removed his food transformer, aimed it at the ground, and sprayed three times. Pop! The soil changed in front of his eyes. From mud it was transformed into a pinkish goop, hot to the touch and delicious-smelling. He gathered up a mound of it and chased after the others.

  Todrus flicked his tongue. “This stuff is incredible.” He bolted down a juicy hunk. “The reaction is part hydrokinesis and part enzyme transfer, if I’m not mistaken.”

  Gibiwink sighed. “Never mind the science. This goop is tasty!”

  After eating a few mouthfuls, Adelaide ran forward and offered some to the Stranger. It was moving as fast as its webbed feet allowed and focusing hard on the path before them.

  “You should eat something, too,” she said, handing it the goop.

  “Thank you,” it replied. “That’s very kind of you.”

  “How do you know where to go?” she asked. “Everything looks alike in this region.”

  “The swamp speaks to me. I’m following its voice.”

  “Oh.”

  Adelaide reported her exchange with the Stranger to the others. Everyone wondered how a swamp could speak, and again they had serious doubts about their guide.

  Todrus, though, squeaked with excitement. “It makes sense. It’s ion conductivity. The Stranger was present when Yellow Swamp blew up. It absorbed the ion clusters at large, and these are naturally drawn to the swamp, the same way iron is attracted to magnets.”

  “And that’s why we landed so far from the swamp,” Adelaide added. “The chopper picked up the Stranger’s ion clusters and not ones coming from the swamp itself.”

  They continued forward. At one point the question arose why Grumpel had decided to ruin this landscape. Lewis said the spill had likely been an accident, that Grumpel had maybe intended something smaller and not realized the effects would alter the region. The frogs disagreed: Grumpel didn’t make mistakes, not when something huge was at stake. The damage was intentional, in other words. Adelaide, for her part, kept watching the soil, worried it would melt at any moment, while Alfonse said that in Bombardier 19 Dr. Gong breeds dinosaurs in the Arctic region and changes the climate to keep them alive …

  Everyone ignored him — a pity as it turned out.

  Adelaide spotted the wall of haze first, about a mile in the distance. “Excuse me,” she called out. “What’s that cloud up ahead?”

  “It’s the Pother,” the Stranger said, breaking off its concentration. “Did I mention it was dangerous?”

  The group moaned. “Dangerous?”

  “Lethal,” the Stranger declared.

  Lewis studied the obstruction. “How close will we go to it?”

  “We’ll be walking right through it,” the Stranger told him. “And we’ll be lucky to escape without someone disappearing. I just hope we reach it before the mud gives way.”

  The group looked down. By now the mud was up to their calves. If they didn’t make it to the Pother soon, they would be bobbing in the muck again with the leeches in pursuit.

  Some twenty minutes passed. Their legs were aching and they wanted to rest, but the mud was rising with each passing second. By now its depths had liquefied, too, and a mass of leeches was swimming beneath them. Only a foot of frozen mud stopped them from attacking. And to add to their troubles, the Pother towered above them.

  It wasn’t normal. Neither solid, gas, or liquid — nor animal, mineral, or vegetable, for that matter — it rose from the ground straight into the heavens and stood before them like a mountain range. Never mind its size (it overcrowded the sky), never mind its colour (it was like a blanked-out rainbow), and never mind the sounds it made (it was silent and deafening at the same time) — these features weren’t as worrying as its projection of … futility. The more its outline came into focus, the more it seemed that nothing mattered, that laughter, tears, victory, failure, love, and
hate were all the same, life and death, as well … life and death especially.

  “I don’t like this,” Adelaide whispered.

  “It smells of … nothing,” Alfonse observed.

  “My guess is,” Todrus mused, “its atoms have been involuted.”

  “Is ‘involuted’ a real word?” Gibiwink snapped.

  “Of course it is,” Todrus insisted. “It means the collapse of matter as we know it, like a bag that isn’t a bag but the empty space inside it.”

  “A bag of what?” Gibiwink demanded.

  Before Todrus could answer, the Stranger drew them to a halt.

  By now they were fifty yards away from the Pother. Unlike the usual bank of mist, which was there one moment and gone the next, the Pother was like a barrier … no, actually, like an open gate. Lewis stared into its depths. As hard as he strained, he couldn’t make out its interior, couldn’t see any trees or grass or anything. The roots of his hair tingled like crazy, as if they were hooked up to an electrical socket.

  “We’ll need a rope,” the Stranger announced. “One long enough to bind us together.”

  “We didn’t bring one,” Lewis answered. “Can we just hold hands?”

  “We need a rope,” the Stranger repeated, “with knots that will hold no matter what. If one of us slips for even an instant, he’ll never come back. And I mean never.”

  “Let’s search our manuals,” Adelaide suggested as the group shivered at the Stranger’s words. Opening her belt, she took her booklet out. “Let’s see. Refrigeration, relaxation, remembering,” she read aloud from the index. “Ribbon, riches, here we go, rope. We’ll need a drop of polyalienamethylene, a pinch of alienamoxocin, and a pentalienachlorophyll pill.”

  “Here they are,” Alfonse and Lewis said, producing three vials between them.

  “You need to hurry,” the Stranger advised. “The mud is getting thin.”

  Their guide was right. The mud reached past their thighs. The frozen layer was only six inches thick, and below it the leeches were massing together. Some were battering the barrier to break it up faster.

  “Let’s make that rope quickly!” Adelaide said with a shudder.