Hylozoic (40 page)

And now, blessedly, Duxy came gliding in to save them, homing in on the beacon of Bosch's upheld brush.

“Damnit,” said Jayjay almost petulantly. “That brat Chu's in there. If—”

“Don't worry,” said Thuy. “I won't cheat on you again. Forgive me. Just like I forgive you for being a stoner.”

“I'm not a stoner anymore.”

“Then we're all good,” said Thuy, and gave Jayjay a kiss before he could start unraveling the logic.

“All aboard!” twanged Groovy. “Paradise Special takin' off!”

 

 

They piled into the manta's gaping maw: Thuy, Jayjay, the pitchfork and—after a thoughtful pause—Bosch. But Azaroth was hung up. The fat blond soldier had managed to disarm him. The stubborn, burly man had his arms around Azaroth's chest, and his knife was poised just short of their friend's throat.

Teeping out to see what she could do, Thuy found Azaroth in a curious state of elation. “This guy is nowhere,” he teeped confidently. “I've locked up his arms with my teek. That knife's not moving till I say so.”

“Come with us,” urged Thuy. “You have to get back to your aunt.”

“No thanks,” responded Azaroth. “I'm gonna take over this town. I'll marry Anja, or maybe Kathelijn, and have a lot of kids.”

“You can't do that,” teeped Jayjay, listening in. “What about the time paradoxes?”

“I'll be my own ancestor,” said Azaroth. “So what?” And now he spoke aloud, in Brabants, his voice booming and grave. “In the name of our Lord, release me!”

A sudden push from his mind sent the fat, mustached soldier sprawling onto the ground, with his knife buried to its hilt in the dirt.

“Behold, I cast off the unjust oppressor,” shouted Azaroth, smoothly raising his arms. Turning toward Duxy and her passengers, he made the sign of the triangle. “I enjoin these demonic invaders to leave, taking along our native son Jeroen Bosch to bring back images of the unseen worlds!”

As Duxy obligingly lifted off, Azaroth favored the growing crowd with a lordly smile. “I, a humble fisherman, was called here by our Lord to save your town.” He made the sign of the triangle once again. “We have nothing to fear in this new order of things. It is God's wish that everything has a soul. With me to lead you, all will be well.”

Cheers drifted up as Duxy lumbered into the sky.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

B
y
the end of the trip from Santa Cruz to 's-Hertogenbosch, Chu had known they'd end up someplace strange. For one thing, the crossing took much longer than expected. And then his teep and lazy eight memory had disappeared.

“What now?” cried Glee when this happened. “We are weak in the brain!”

“Um, it must be that we're approaching a Hibrane zone where lazy eight hasn't been unfurled,” said Chu. “I guess we're heading into their past. That would be because the Hibraners bent our timeline.” Quickly he checked that he still remembered his Knot code. Yeah, it was there in his neuronal memory, worn clean and smooth by mental fondling.

“Can't we aim toward future?” said Glee, clutching her narrow head and squinting her third eye.

Duxy seemed upset, too. She made wet gargling noises with her throat, and bucked her body as if wanting to change course.

“Let's keep going the same way,” said Chu. “We want to end up with Thuy, Jayjay, and Groovy.”

“Urgle,” said Glee to Duxy, calming her down. She'd lived so long among the Hrull that she spoke their language.

Duxy continued across the Planck sea until finally, with a sense of rounding a cold, windy corner and entering a calm, sunny lane, they emerged into the Hibrane. They were hanging in the air above a triangular town in the crotch of two rivers. With no teep connections, it wasn't easy to know precisely where or when this was.

Duxy angled beyond the town and landed by a marshy river bend. Lazy eight or not, her flight lice still worked. Stepping out of the manta's mouth, Chu happened to catch a good look at one of the lice, on the manta's lip. The critter was like a tiny blue wart, deeply rooted in the alien's flesh.

Chu would have liked some flight lice for himself—not that the Hrull or the Peng were offering to share them. The Peng birds got by with only five flight lice apiece. Blue warts wouldn't be so bad—if you could float like a feather.

But never mind that. Their jump had brought them to a pure, unspoiled land. The air was gentle, the sun sweet. It looked to be a little before noon on a pleasant summer day. Duxy drank from the river with hearty slurps, then flopped bodily in. She and Wobble began catching fish. Sitting on the bank in the lush, waist-high grass, Chu and Glee enjoyed the scene.

A road ran parallel to the stream. The passers-by wore tights and jerkins, gowns and headdresses. Sheep bleated, oxen pulled wooden carts.

“These people are big and slow,” observed Glee.

“Hibrane,” said Chu, keeping it simple. “Space and time are six times bigger here.”

A goose-faced girl with a basket of wriggly eels paused to stare at them. When Chu caught her eye and waved, she sketched a triangle in the air and hurried off. Maybe it was that Chu and Glee were one foot tall—or maybe it was the alien manta ray in the river. In this world, Duxy was still the equivalent of thirty feet across.

Letting his eye rove, Chu noticed a gallows field with putrid skeletons dangling. Corpses lay upon wagon wheels atop tall poles, their broken limbs wrapped around the spokes. The Middle Ages.

A shout sounded from the road and a heavy arrow buzzed past, splashing into the water and scraping one of Duxy's wings. The Hrull let out a strangled cry and floundered ashore, her little father in her wake. Skillfully she made her hide match the riverbank; bravely she kept her mouth open. As Wobble got inside her, another arrow flew past—or no, these were crossbow bolts. Two bowmen knelt by the edge of the road; a third soldier was striding through the grass.

Moving like hysterical speeded-up toons, Chu and Glee took shelter in the Hrull's mouth. Quickly she spiraled up above the farms. Peasants in the fields and barnyards pointed at them.

“Urg burkle,” said Duxy with the back of her throat.

“Urgle,” repeated Glee, pulling her voice down into her neck. “Arb urgle gubble goo baam.”

They found a quiet place beneath the flowering trees of an apple orchard, and Duxy's skin took on the appearance of blossom-strewn grass. Everyone was hungry and cranky, but there wasn't any food nearby.

Duxy told Glee that she wanted the pushers to carry her away from this horrible world right away. Wobble agreed.
Chu told Glee to tell the Hrull they had to stay here until they'd found the others. Duxy spitefully told Glee that nobody was getting any gel until they were out of here.

“I don't give a shit about that gross stingray gel,” Chu told Glee. “Tell Duxy I'm sick of her bossing us around.”

“We have to reason with her, Chu,” said Glee wearily. “I myself will need gel very soon.”

“Why not kick the habit like I did?” said Chu coldly. “It wasn't all that hard.”

“I'm not you,” said Glee, glaring at him with her third eye. Her anger boiled over now, and she grabbed his arm with both hands, painfully twisting his skin.

“Let go!” whimpered Chu. Glee's grip seemed unbreakable. She was stronger than she looked.

“You help me with Duxy,” hissed Glee. “Or else.”

“Um—maybe I should find some food?” he suggested.

“Do that,” said Glee, her eyes like three coals.

So Chu managed to steal a goose for them to eat. He found the fat fowl in a barnyard abutting their orchard. The farmer and his family could be seen haying in a distant field. Chu's Lobrane speed and strength stood him in good stead for capturing the quarrelsome goose, who was nearly as big as him. While he was at it, he bagged three eggs.

After they'd all eaten, Duxy relented and got Glee high. Chu was comfortable just staring into the sky. It was pleasant, lying beneath the blooming trees and watching the long day wane. Life without telepathy and lazy eight memory wasn't so bad. Like Jayjay and Thuy before him, Chu formed the thought that, even without lazy eight, the things around him were alive. It was just that he couldn't talk to them yet.

Be that as it may, without telepathy, finding his friends might be hard. Perhaps tomorrow, he and Glee could sneak into the town, which was in fact visible from here, a hive of
stone. But for the moment neither of them had the energy. The last few days had been taxing. As night fell, they stretched out to rest on Duxy's resilient wing.

Duxy dozed off, and Chu could easily have fallen asleep, too, but Glee, energized by the gel, was in a talkative mood. She quizzed Chu about the Hibrane versus the Lobrane—seemingly the concept was unknown in Pepple. She told him more of her past, and about her travels across the stars. Over and over she returned to the topic of finding Groovy.

“Do you think he is really in this town?” she asked, staring at the moonlit spires and the lantern-hung walls. “Tell me everything you know.”

“I've only seen him indirectly,” said Chu. “I teeped him at a lab in San Francisco. He seemed hyper.”

“This is Groovy! That's him!”

“And I picked up some information from Jayjay. Jayjay says Groovy sold out Earth to the Peng.”

“Silly guy,” she said, as if it were some harmless prank. “Maybe he doesn't understand the danger. Our aristos have never let our Peng get out of control. They—hush!” Her eyes widened and she pressed herself flat on Duxy's wing.

Now Chu heard the noises too: the jingle of an armed squad of men. A torch flickered at the far end of the apple orchard. For a crazy moment he thought the farmer had called in soldiers to root out the goose thief. But the soldiers weren't here to help the farmer. Far from it. They were here to burn down his house and his barn.

Terrible screams split the night and then, more terribly, broke off. The flames leapt up in an ecstasy of destruction. Duxy awoke, frightened and ready to flee. Glee grunted and gurgled in the Hrull tongue, convincing the big manta not to break cover.

“If we fly off wild in the dark, we maybe don't find this
town again,” Glee said, once Duxy had settled down. “I am so sorry for those people on the farm.”

“Me, too,” said Chu, meaning it, and marveling that he'd learned to care about strangers. Life was painful and, in the same measure, sweet.

When the marauders had gone, he crept through the dark orchard to see if he could help the farmer and his family. But they didn't answer his low calls. Feeling like a wretched scavenger, he drank a crock of milk that he found in the sole remaining structure, a stone springhouse.

And then Glee wanted to talk a lot more. She was saying that maybe she really
was
ready to kick the gel. In the end, he didn't get properly to sleep until the moon was nearly down.