by Various
She tightened the strap on her helmet. Then, gripping the sword with both hands, raised it above her shoulders and stepped into the open. Cutterflies, disturbed from the endlessly diligent task of dissecting slabs of fallen masonry, rose from their work to flutter around her head on glassy slithers of wings.
“You’re late,” she called to the rabbit.
“The queen wants me to fetch your heart.” Its voice grated in the dreadful manner that Alice found annoyingly common in all machines. “I’m going to have to take your head to get it.”
“You’re welcome to try, Mr. Rabbit,” she said.
The rabbit produced a watch-shaped object from the pocket of its armored waistcoat, pressed down on the winder to set the centrifuge in motion, and held out an automated paw. The watch rose a foot or so, hovered for a moment, and then spun toward her at breakneck speed, vicious circular blades protruding from its circumference.
Alice waited ’til the watch was almost upon her before she swung her sword with all her might and batted the dreadful spinning missile right back to where it had come from. The rabbit crouched, ready to leap. But it was not quick enough. The wildly gyrating object exploded in a blinding flash of blue.
“Howzat!” Splinters of metal and tufts of imitation fur showered down onto Alice’s protective headwear.
As the smoke cleared something became dislodged from the exposed girders of what had once been the upper floor of the ruins and fell with a deafening clatter into the blast-charred remains of the white rabbit.
Alice approached with caution and tapped the object gently with her boot. It rocked back and forth. She picked it up and sniffed. The smell reminded her of the coppery residue that always seemed to cling to her palm whenever she handled the vorpal sword. It was smooth and silvery and slightly curved on one side. On the inner part of the curve were two loops through which an arm could be passed.
Sheathing her sword, Alice passed her arm through the first loop on the strange object. The second loop had finger grips around which a hand could be wrapped. The grooves of the grips were the perfect fit for her fingers. Where her thumb now sat there was a little red button.
“Curious,” said Alice.
She pressed down on the button with her thumb.
Nothing happened.
She found Hatter in his den, hunched over his workbench, soldering iron protruding from the index finger of one hand, a blighted circuit board in the other. He didn’t look up when she entered. Stamped into the leather upholstery of his back were the words:
Hypotrionic Android Technician
(Self-Recharging)
Model – TZ606
“You may have to mend the helmet you made for me,” said Alice.
“What happened this time?” asked Hatter, attention still firmly fixed on his work.
“White Rabbit,” said Alice. “Blew it to smithereens. But the helmet took a bit of a bashing from the shrapnel.”
Hatter soldered part of the circuit board.
“As soon as I get this working I’m going to need you to insert it into my head. It should prevent any further deterioration in my functionality applications before I go completely mad.”
At the mention of impending madness Hatter’s body seemed to freeze, locking his head at a slight tilt. He began to ramble in an utterly confusing and incoherent manner. “Round and round ticks the clock in an inkling. Mustard and lemon are two entirely different things, you know. Unfortunately, I seem to have forgotten why a raven is like a writing desk.”
“I found something that might interest you,” said Alice.
He had been her surrogate parent since the death of her mother, and she was now used to these increasingly frequent blips.
Hatter looked up and the madness receded. His telescopic eye retracted. The tip of the soldering iron dulled and slipped back into the sheath of his finger. He looked at the object. Furrows creased on his leathery brow.
“I can’t believe it. It can’t possibly be!”
The telescopic eye slid outward again. His head jerked forward to examine the smooth side of the object. “I never thought I’d see one of these again,” he said.
“What is it?” asked Alice, her curiosity well and truly roused.
“It’s a looking glass shield,” replied Hatter.
He seemed so elated she almost thought he was about to break into a dance.
“A looking glass shield?” she repeated.
“Vorpal swords and looking glass shields,” said Hatter. “The last weapons deployed by humanity against the tyranny of machines. Queens and their drones fell before them. The beating hearts almost won, but in the end, they were defeated.”
“This one doesn’t do anything,” said Alice. “You’d think that if there’s a button to press, something might actually happen when someone presses it.”
Hatter cast a glance at the half-repaired circuit board on his worktop.
“Perhaps I can get it to work,” he said. “Sometimes we all have to make little sacrifices.”
His telescopic eye retracted.
“You know what this calls for?” he asked.
“Tea?” said Alice.
“Tea,” said Hatter.
The Tulgey Wood was a twisted tangle of plastic-covered wires and rubber-coated cables. These were woven and interlaced through the leafless branches of a forest of long-dead petrified trees whose bark stood ghostly white against the vibrant reds and blues and yellows of the wires and cables.
Here and there one might also encounter impenetrable briars of razor wire, fortified with spiky iron railings. The Wood was the queen’s defensive perimeter, and Alice had no choice but to pass through it, in order to reach the lair were she reigned over her mechanical multitude.
“You don’t have to come with me,” she said to Hatter, who was utilizing an impressive array of cutting implements to hack a path for them.
“I think you would make slow progress without me,” said Hatter.
“Perhaps,” agreed Alice. “But when it comes to the crunch I believe I will be quite capable of assassinating the queen on my own volition. After all it’s my mother who needs to be avenged, not yours.”
Hatter sliced through another tangle of wires.
“We’ll see,” he said.
His lack of faith disappointed her. Feeling her confidence waning a little, she glanced down at the looking glass shield. “Tell me how this thing works again.”
The leather on Hatter’s face wrinkled to a grimace. She knew he hated being asked to repeat himself, but he was a patient teacher. “Once activated, the smooth surface will reflect back the electromagnetic pulses which emanate from the queen. It will cause a momentary short circuit, paralyzing her for enough time for you to finish her with a penetrating jab from the vorpal sword.”
“I know how to use the sword,” said Alice, assuredly.
“Using it as a cricket bat is not exactly textbook technique,” said Hatter.
“Some situations call for improvisation,” countered Alice.
They proceeded through the tangle.
In time they came to a dirt track of sorts, winding narrowly through the wire woven trees. Alice touched the hard brown soil. “Curious,” she said. “You’d think something passed this way on a regular basis.”
“I think that very something is watching us this very minute,” said Hatter.
Gripping the handle of the vorpal sword, Alice rose cautiously back to her feet. “A raggamorph?” she asked. She’d heard there were creatures in the wood, neither one thing nor the other, endlessly transforming from flora to fauna and back again.
“I rather doubt it,” replied Hatter, nodding in the direction of a crooked branch that overhung the path.
When Alice looked all she could see in the shadows was a wide, tooth-filled grin. “Come down from there,” she demanded. “Whatever you are. It’s bad manners to spy on people.”
The grin disappeared. Something dropped from the branch to the path. What stood be
fore them was a queer looking thing in a cat-skin suit and a cat-head hat. It struck a defensive pose, shaft of a long wooden staff clutched between cat-skin mittens, and grinned cheekily at Alice.
“The name’s Jack Cheshire.” It gave a convoluted bow. “Jack of the Borogoves. Jack the nimble. Jack the quick – scourge of giants. Stole a pig and away I ran. Kissed the girls and made them cry.”
Alice turned to Hatter.
“Is it dangerous? Have its circuits blown?”
“He’s boasting.” Hatter chuckled. “It’s what boys do.”
“A boy?” said Alice, scrutinizing the creature. “A real boy? I thought I was supposed to be the last of the beating hearts.”
“It would appear rumors of the extinction of your race may well have been greatly exaggerated,” said Hatter.
“You don’t want to go wandering around alone in the Tulgey Wood,” said Jack. “I’ll be your guide for a price. Juicy wet kisses are legal tender ’round these parts. I bet you’re a pretty little thing beneath that helmet.”
He grinned again.
Alice shuddered. She found herself counting slowly down from ten beneath her breath. Pretty little thing indeed, she thought, sorely tempted to punch his stupid nose. “We are not in need of a guide, thank you very much,” she said. “And if we were, I certainly would not surrender to paying you in kisses.”
Jack grinned in an even more inflated manner.
“Bodyguard then.” He spun his staff around in the most ridiculous fashion. “There are dreadful machines lurking around in this place. Jubjub birds and frumious Bandersnatches, not forgetting the dreaded Jabberwocky.”
Alice looked to Hatter for confirmation that these were real things and not just fantastical fictions the bothersome boy was making up. Hatter just shrugged his upholstered shoulders.
“We have no need of a bodyguard,” she said. “I’m armed with a vorpal sword and a looking glass shield.”
The boy puckered his lips and let out a loud whistle. He rested his wooden staff against his shoulder. “Boy-oh-boy. A vorpal sword and a looking glass shield. You sure do mean business. You hunting Snark or something?”
“Snark?” exclaimed Alice, growing increasingly weary of the boy’s nonsense. “I’m not hunting Snarks, or Jubbly birds, or whatever you call them. It’s the queen herself that I’m hunting. She’s going to pay for the death of my mother and all the other beating hearts she massacred.”
“The queen,” said Jack. “Well, why didn’t you say so in the first place? She killed my parents too, wiped out the whole bleedin’ Borogove tribe and left me orphaned. If it hadn’t been for the Legion of Hares I’d have been a goner a long time ago.”
“Legion of Hares?”
Alice looked again at Hatter.
“Hybrid combatants,” he said. “When humanity was on its last legs, they created all sorts organic amalgams. Hares being one of them.”
“The Legion raised me from a nipper,” said Jack. “Found me where my parents left me in the woods. If you’re going after the queen, then I’m coming with you.”
A vivid memory flashed through Alice’s mind. She saw the bright yellow flash of multiple explosions and heard the screams of terror. She recalled her mother’s hands resting tenderly on her shoulders and the urgent words that had been whispered – “Go with Hatter. He will see that no harm comes to you.”
It was the last time she had seen another living soul – ’til now.
Jack pulled off a mitten and spat on his palm.
“Deal?”
He held it out his hand for her to shake.
Alice winced.
“We may need all the help we can get,” said Hatter.
Alice took Jack’s proffered hand. Beneath the unsettling squelch of spit, his palm was warm. The metrical beating of his pulse made her heart quicken. She vaguely recalled the intimate familiarity of her mother’s touch. This was a different sort of intimacy though, almost intrusive, but somehow invigorating.
Up close Jack looked more of a man than a boy. Beneath his cat-skin suit all that climbing in trees had toned his muscles. And under the strap of his cat-head hat, stubble was sprouting on his chin. There was an odor about him that sent an odd shiver quivering through Alice.
Jack unraveled his hand.
“Steady on,” he said, a huge grin encompassing his face. “Next you’ll be looking for a kiss.”
As if. Alice scowled.
“Clean cup!” cried Hatter in a moment of temporary irrationality.
Jack dropped to his knees and set about beating a rhythmic tattoo.
“Whatever are you up to now?” asked Alice.
“Summoning the Legion,” replied Jack. “The queen isn’t going to let us walk into her lair without a fight. We’ll need an army at our backs.”
With Jack as their guide they quickly arrived at far edge of the Tulgey Wood. Ahead of them stood the ancient and crumbling edifice of the queen’s lair. A palace of sorts, with a faltering neon sign erratically flashing out the mysterious words “West Mall” before blinking out and then flickering back to life.
Beneath the neon was a gigantic version of the faded advertising poster Alice had seen in the ruins of the city – a bottle of amber liquid and the legendary Drink Mead®.
“In times gone by, this was a place for retail and commerce,” said Hatter in response to the crease that formed on Alice’s brow.
She noticed now that between the Tulgey Wood and the lair lay an odd looking humped and undulating blanket of brown fur. It must have been a mile long and a mile wide. It seemed to rise and fall, occasionally quivering and twitching in random parts.
“Horde of sleeping dormice,” said Jack. “Set there by the queen to guard her lair. If one awakens, it will awaken all the others. There are thousands of them and each with teeth of steel.”
“So what now?” Alice scanned the furry blanket for any hint of a passage through. “They’re so tightly packed that we’re bound to step on one.”
Jack fell again to his hands and knees, one hand holding onto his cat-head hat as he pressed an ear to the ground. “Help is on the way,” he muttered from the side of his mouth, and sure enough Alice could feel a dull vibration thump-thump-thumping in the ground beneath her feet. From the forest there came the echo of rhythmic chanting.
“March hares, march! March hares, march!”
Hatter nodded nervously at the slumbering assembly of dormice.
“I think perhaps the Legion would have done well to consider approaching with a bit more stealth.”
One of the creatures on the fringe of the blanket stirred and opened its mousy eyes. It blinked and yawned, revealing rows of frightful teeth. Its companions to either side shook their sleepy heads, noses twitching. Then row after row after row of dreadful dormice came awake. They raised themselves up on their hind legs, the sensors on their whiskers bristling and trembling.
“Your friends better get here fast.” Alice withdrew the sword from its sheath and held the glass shield protectively against her breast.
Jack rose to his feet and adopted a combat stance, staff at the ready. Hatter produced a pair of ferocious looking scythe-like implements from the sockets on his wrists. His leathery upholstery became taut with the tensing of his mechanisms. Alice’s pulse thumped inside her head.
The dormouse that had been first to awaken bared its teeth and chattered an algorithmic order to its companions. The horde came roaring at them in an awesome wave of fur and fangs and claws.
Alice swung her sword left and right and left again, batting away surge after surge of tiny determined assailants, slicing some clean in half, using the shield to block those who managed to avoid the blade.
“Callooh! Callay!” Jack rushed gallantly forward and tried to shake off three or four dormice that had sunk their metallic teeth into his staff. Meanwhile, Hatter entered the fray, swinging his scythes and rambling incomprehensively.
“Clean cups! Clean cups! Move along! Move along!”
The ground around her feet was filled with fallen dormice, juddering and sparking as their internals short-circuited. But still they came – too many, too fast, and too ferocious to be able to fend them off. She was bitten all over. Sickeningly warm trickles of blood from dozens of wounds ran down her arms and her legs.
Then came a blur of brown to her left.
Followed rapidly by another to her right.
Another and another and another, so fast they made her eyelids flutter.
And then she saw them. The Legion of Hares, the automated hybrid fighting machines Hatter had spoken of, armored breast plates and toughened gauntlets, long ears rampant, faces curled into venomous snarls, setting about the horde of dormice with staffs almost twice as long and double the thickness of that sported by Jack.
They may have been outnumbered one hundred to one, but they were designed for close quarter combat and their expert command of marshal arts made short measure of the dormice. When battle was done, and not a single dormouse was left standing, the commander of the Legion reached down and hauled Jack up by the scruff of his tattered cat-skin coat.
“See the trouble you get yourself into when you wander off on your own?” he said.
Somewhat bruised and bloodied, Jack pointed skyward with a trembling finger. “Twinkle twinkle,” he croaked.
Alice looked to where he was pointing.
High above the clouds, something sparkled and glistened in the sunlight.