Read The Garbage Chronicles Online
Authors: Brian Herbert
Tags: #Humor & Entertainment, #Humor, #Satire, #Literature & Fiction, #Genre Fiction, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #science fiction, #Humor & Satire
“That so?” Brother Carrot said, showing mock interest.
“We could use a ride across the desert,” Javik said. “Isn’t that right, Prince?” he added, looking at Prince Pineapple with a teasing smile.
“Uh, yes,” Prince Pineapple said uneasily.
“You want to be in my army too?” Brother Carrot asked, looking at Javik.
“Thanks, but no. I’ve had my share of combat.” He rubbed the scar on the bridge of his nose.
“I don’t need volunteers anyway,” Brother Carrot said. He looked at Rebo. “Thanks for the offer.”
“Sure,” Rebo said.
“The ride is yours,” Brother Carrot said. He turned and stepped up the ramp, adding, “Umfira ti-ta.”
The language mixer on Javik’s pendant beeped. He shook it, scowling at a red trouble light on the device. The light blinked green. “What did you say, Brother Carrot?” Javik asked.
“Come aboard,” Brother Carrot said, waving expansively with one arm;
The language mixer was working now.
As Brother Carrot led them up the gangway, Javik held back and said to Wizzy in a low tone, “What do you read on this carrot guy? Is he a friend?”
“No signal received,” Wizzy replied. “I tried, but there don’t seem to be any brain waves.”
“Vegetables have no brains,” Prince Pineapple muttered out of Brother Carrot’s hearing range.
“There was no signal from you, either, Prince Pineapple,” Wizzy whispered.
“There’s something wrong with your apparatus, then,” Prince Pineapple huffed.
Javik suppressed laughter.
“Enemies of the king!” Brother Carrot said as he reached the deck of the ship. “So many enemies!” He broke into singsong: “A foe of King Corker is a foe of . . . Oops! That didn’t work, did it?”
In the captain’s cabin, Brother Carrot introduced the group to Captain Cucumber, an amiable dark green chap who didn’t say much. The captain smiled a lot, deferring often to Brother Carrot when questions were asked.
Javik watched Rebo and Namaba move to a corner at one end of the long cabin. There they rested on their haunches and listened intently while the others talked.
Brother Carrot was a dominating figure. When he rested his frame on a spindly-legged sea couch, the couch’s legs bent. “We have thirty freedom ships like this,” he said proudly.
“Imagine that!” Prince Pineapple said.
Javik thought the prince’s tone was patronizing, but Brother Carrot seemed not to notice.
“For the past week,” Brother Carrot said, “we have sailed the desert sea, learning its treacherous ways, charting deadheads and the like.” He smiled, and his black button eyes glowed as he looked at Javik. “Quite a few of your Earthian gar-bahge cannisters are buried in the sand out there. They make navigation tricky.”
“I can imagine,” Javik said humbly. He and Prince Pineapple were seated on oak side chairs.
“My army of thirty thousand men crosses Dusty Desert tomorrow,” Brother Carrot exclaimed.
“But King Corker has no idea,” Prince Pineapple said, leaning forward with his eyes open wide in astonishment.
Brother Carrot laughed, and his laugh filled every corner of the room. It was boisterous and surprisingly good-natured for a man having his extensive responsibilities. “Your King Corker has never had any sort of an idea.” he quipped.
Prince Pineapple smiled. “True,” he said. “Oh, so true! Decision Coins are his crutch.”
Brother Carrot removed his cap and brushed dust from it. “Prince Pineapple,” he said. “My sources tell me you have been in disfavor with the king for several months now.”
Prince Pineapple scowled. “Your sources are correct,” he said. “But should you divulge military secrets to me? The disfavor story might be a ruse.”
“King Corker can do nothing now, even if he knows. Events have been set in motion. Big events. My carrot men are fierce fighters, you know. Each is better than twenty-five of the king’s royal guardsmen . . . those fat, drunken slobs.”
“Your brethren are well known for their strength,” Prince Pineapple said. Suddenly he raised his rear end and reached in his back pocket, pulling out a rather mangled helicopter beanie. “Thought I’d lost this for a moment,” he said, noting that the yellow plastic rotor had been broken from his sitting on it.
“Too bad,” Javik said. “You broke it.”
“This just adds to its value,” Prince Pineapple said. “Honor prevented me from breaking it intentionally, of course. But the way it happened was quite acceptable.”
Javik watched the prince don his beanie.
Brother Carrot’s eyes flashed ferociously in Prince Pineapple’s direction. “You think of my carrot people as good slaves,” he said. “But I’ll free them. I’ll free every last Vegetable in captivity.”
“Good luck to you, sir,” Javik said.
Brother Carrot ranted for several minutes now, saying something about a powerful Fruit Doom bomb that he was going to use against King Corker. Javik tried to ask him about the bomb on two occasions, but each time was unable to get in a word. Presently, Brother Carrot looked at Javik and asked, “Where are you folks going?”
“Can you drop us off at the edge of Icy Valley?” Javik asked.
“I’d be happy to,” Brother Carrot said. His eyes continued to flash from his anger over the Vegetable enslavement. “But I don’t recommend that way. Go farther west, to the meadow-lands. The way is much easier there, and there are many quaint Vegetable villages.”
“Uh,” Prince Pineapple said, groping for words. “The Earthian here wants to go a different way. He has been sent to check on the gar-bahge situation.”
“I see,” Brother Carrot said. “Very well, then. I will take you to Icy Valley.”
“This Fruit Doom bomb,” Javik said. “What is it?”
Brother Carrot darkened. “A terrible thing,” he said. “But I must use it to prevent further battle casualties, you see. It will shorten the war.”
“How does it work?” Javik asked.
“Classified,” Brother Carrot said, smiling thinly. He sat back and focused his eyes on Javik.
This is not a suitable occasion to use my death stare,
Javik thought. He looked away.
CHAPTER 11
Nothing worth attaining is ever easy. If it seemed easy to you, you’re not there yet.
One of the heretic, anti-Job Support thoughts banned by Uncle Rosy
“Get under way!” Captain Cucumber shouted, speaking into a brass, wall-mounted tube near Javik. The captain read from a chart spread across a dark-stained table: “Heading, forty-eight degrees, twenty-six point seven minutes north latitude, one hundred five degrees, fifteen point four minutes west longitude.”
Javik heard running feet on the deck overhead, and the voices of mates barking instructions to the crew. Soon the schooner began to move. Then it picked up speed, and wind could be heard howling through the rigging. It was a creaky ship, and it built up a cadence of noises as its balloon tires carried it across the dusty wasteland.
“Your Fruits call my people the Vegetable Underground,” Brother Carrot said, looking at Prince Pineapple with a bemused smile. “But that’s a misnomer. We are not underground. Nor are we rebels. The Vegetables are a different people, a sovereign nation. We would live in peace with King Corker, but he insists on enslaving my people.”
Prince Pineapple rose nervously and walked with some difficulty to a porthole, holding on to bolted-down furniture and handrails as the ship pitched. Through a haze of dust and sand he saw that they were riding the face of a dune, rising along the sandy giant at a sharp angle.
“Hold on!” Captain Cucumber yelled.
The
Freedom One
powered over the top of the dune and headed down the other side. Prince Pineapple felt acceleration.
“Quite a ride, eh?” Brother Carrot said.
The dunes in the distance looked like great ocean waves to the prince. He recalled a trip across the Purple Sea when he was a child, a vacation cruise with the most important pineapples of the day. Those were better days.
Seated on the floor in the corner, Rebo was watching a fly crawl along the floor. It jumped over a ridge in the pegged wood, then took a big hop toward Prince Pineapple.
Seeing the fly out of the corner of one eye, Prince Pineapple smashed it with one foot. “Miserable fruit fly!” he cursed.
Brother Carrot snickered.
“Now why’d you have to do that?” Rebo asked.
“Because I hate fruit flies!” the prince thundered. “That’s why!”
“Poor little fellow,” Rebo said. “He couldn’t have harmed you. Not a big strong pineapple man like you.”
Prince Pineapple looked away haughtily, peering out the porthole again.
“It’s a survival thing with him,” Brother Carrot explained. “Fruits are trained from infancy to kill fruit flies. Slaves are always leaving them on my ship.”
Wizzy flew to the couch and set down on a cushion next to Brother Carrot. “I see you keep many Fruit slaves,” Wizzy observed, looking up at the carrot man’s ruddy, orange face. “Only moments ago, however, you were criticizing King Corker for the same practice.”
“This thing you introduced as Wizzy,” Brother Carrot said, looking calmly at Prince Pineapple. “What is it, precisely?”
Before Prince Pineapple could answer, Wizzy piped up, “I’m a little comet, Your Excellency, from far across the universe.”
“I know nothing of comets!” Brother Carrot exclaimed, proud of his ignorance. “You are strange creatures . . . all of you.”
“Come here, Wizzy,” Javik said. “Leave Brother Carrot alone.”
Brother Carrot placed a large hand on Wizzy, saying, “I’ve decided to answer your question, little fellow. The Fruits took the first slave. We merely retaliated.”
“But where does it stop?” Wizzy asked. “And who can be sure which side took the first slave? You have firsthand knowledge of this?”
“Really!” Brother Carrot said haughtily. “This is a truth which my people have always known. How dare you question our ways?”
Javik snatched Wizzy away before the argument worsened. “My apologies, sir,” Javik said. “The little fellow here is not overly bright. We’ll explain it to him later.”
“Put me down!” Wizzy said.
“Okay,” Javik said, placing Wizzy on a side table. “But don’t ask any more questions.”
“That’s right,” Brother Carrot said, glaring at Wizzy. “You’ve got a lot to learn.” Brother Carrot sat back, seeming to realize for the first time how angry he had become. His face broke into a wide smile. The boisterous, friendly laugh returned.
“I’m going topside,” Javik announced, stepping cautiously across the deck as the ship rocked. “Is that okay, Brother Carrot?” he asked, lunging for a dark-stained railing on the two-step staircase leading to the door.
“It’s a mite dusty up there,” Brother Carrot said. “But go ahead.”
“I’ll be back soon,” Javik said. “I want to see how this ship works.” As his foot touched the first step, he caught Namaba’s gaze. He heard the wind outside. The ship creaked.
While Javik watched, Namaba rose from her haunches and loped to his side. She kept the gaze of her soft red eyes on him as she moved.
Javik stepped back and drew his service pistol. “Get back over there,” he snapped.
“I want to talk with you,” she said. “Alone.”
Looking beyond her to the corner, Javik saw Rebo sitting on his haunches there. Rebo’s expression was troubled. “All right,” Javik said to her. He motioned her ahead of him.
In the corridor outside, Javik slid the cabin door shut. With the pistol, he motioned to the right.
Namaba led the way down the long, dark-stained corridor, loping on three legs in the Morovian way. Bright brass light standards clung to the walls, casting yellow light on Namaba as she passed. Javik smelled linseed oil.
At the end of the corridor, Javik motioned Namaba aside and swung open a heavy door leading to the deck. The door squeaked noisily. Hesitating, he watched dust swirl along the deck and heard the crewmen and their overseers shouting back and forth. The ship attacked the face of a fresh dune, throwing a thick cloud of dust and sand across the deck toward Javik. He slammed the door shut.
“We’d better stay in here,” Javik yelled, raising his voice to be heard over the noise outside. Feeling something in his eye he tugged at the eyelid.
Namaba looked at him with sparkling, innocent eyes. “I don’t care where we go,” she yelled. “But I need to talk with you.”
They moved down the corridor to a quieter place. With his gun still drawn, Javik looked intently at her. She was taller than he, and easily twice his weight, with light brown hair around her face that shone golden in the light of a nearby light standard.
“What is it you want?” Javik asked, blinking to clear his eye.
“Why did you bring us?” she asked. “Just to have Rebo carry your water? Is that all? We can’t survive without food.”
“Maybe I didn’t think it out too clearly,” he said, his voice wavering. He stared at the floor.
“Well it’s high time you did,” she snapped. “Our lives are at stake.”
Javik stared past his pistol barrel at the pegged oak deck. He heard Namaba chug-breathing, and saw the base of her hairy forepaw on the deck. He did not look up, feeling unable to meet her gaze.
“We have to eat,” she said. “You can’t leave us to die somewhere along the trail.”
Slowly, Javik raised his gaze to meet hers. “I haven’t done you any harm,” he said. “There was no food for you back there.”
She looked away. Then: “There are animals in the woods of this planet. We could hunt.”
“You mean kill something and cook it?” Javik asked, his face twisted at the revolting thought.
“You have a thunder piece. I assume it kills.”
‘“I couldn’t eat that sort of food,” he exclaimed. “It would have to be processed, blended, strained, and stabilized first.”
“You’d eat it,” she said, “if you had no choice.”
“I’ll share what little food I have with you,” Javik said.
“The contents of your pack are but a snack to us,” she said, glaring at him. “You’re just stumbling around, aren’t you? Do you expect to find a restaurant out here, with nice clean plates and tablecloths?”
Javik considered gaining the offensive by criticizing her for stealing his food from the ship. But that was history and unchangeable. Her voice carried an unmistakable scolding tone, but had an underlying softness that intrigued him.
God help me,
Javik thought,
but, I think she’s attracted to me.
It was inevitable. Women just had to get close to him.
In the captain’s cabin, Prince Pineapple stood at a porthole with Wizzy hovering at his side. The ship was surfing across the face of a dune wave, pitched at such an angle that the prince had to hold a brass wall handle.
“Your Captain Tom doesn’t trust me,” Prince Pineapple said. “That’s why he took my nutrient kit.”
“It does give him a degree of control,” Wizzy said.
“You agree with what he did?” The words were clipped, angry.
“Not necessarily. But I can see why he feels as he does. I have read his thoughts. He believes you want the Magician’s Chamber for yourself, that you will do anything to gain power.”
“How preposterous! Wherever did he get such an idea?”
“He saw something he didn’t like in your eyes. You rarely meet his gaze. And he heard the wrong inflection to your voice. Insincerity was the word he used in thought.”
“What sort of evidence is this?” Prince Pineapple gazed at Wizzy until Wizzy’s cat’s eye focused on him. Then the prince looked away.
“A commander needs no evidence. He is responsible for his mission and for the welfare of his party. He makes decisions.”
“That sounds like an army training manual excerpt,” Prince Pineapple observed tersely.
“Not entirely,” Wizzy said. “I’ve seen something of this as well. Any observant being can see the nervousness or guilt in your eyes. It’s in your mannerisms, too. You seem . . . uncertain.”
Prince Pineapple shook his head in dismay.
Can it be?
he wondered.
Do others see something I’m not aware of myself? No. I can’t believe it.
While the prince thought, Wizzy gave advice on what he should do to get back in Javik’s good graces. This struck Prince Pineapple as peculiar, considering Wizzy’s own shaky status with the leader of their expedition. The drone of Wizzy’s voice was starting to give Prince Pineapple a headache.
“Leave me alone,” Prince Pineapple said, pushing Wizzy away from the window.
During his next soil-immersion period, Lord Abercrombie searched for monopoles diligently, trying to find the subatomic particles that allegedly were causing him so much trouble. They were nowhere to be found. But Lord Abercrombie knew they were there. He tried magically inducing two rockslides, a flood, and a forest fire, all without the tiniest hint of success.
If I ever find a pack of those little buggers,
Lord Abercrombie thought,
God help them!
After a while, he turned his attention to activity on the planet’s surface, using his billions of visual and auditory sensors. He saw the
Freedom One
crossing Dusty Desert. It made him angry.
Prince Pineapple wants to replace me,
Lord Abercrombie thought.
Add him to my list of enemies. Right up at the top with the monopoles. And Brother Carrot with his army of blithering Vegetables. I’ve always worried about him. Can’t forget Javik, either. He’s Uncle Rosy’s emissary.
Furiously, Lord Abercrombie pulled himself out of the hole. “They’re all against me!” he muttered, blowing dirt off his wardrobe ring. After mentoing the white stone on the ring, a dry shower cleaned every pore on his fleshy half. Using the turquoise stone next, he watched and felt a white caftan with a blue scroll sleeve thread its way over his half body. A black satin slipper wrapped itself around his foot, and a thistle half crown attached itself to his skull.
“I can see some of my enemies,” he said. “I hear them, too—plotting against me and against my Corker allies. But what can I do? Hardly anything while buried. One tiny rockslide is the grand total of my magic.” He kicked a tuft of dirt. The dirt crumbled. Moments later he stood before an instrument panel in the Disaster Control Room. “Three of the bastards on one ship!” he said, his voice reflecting fury and frustration. “Maybe I can get all of them at once this way . . . if those monopoles stay out of my way.”
He touched a green console button, then slammed down three adjacent brown toggles. “Sector one-one-six,” he said, speaking into a microphone. “Three hundred k.p.h. winds . . . from the southwest, heading two-eight four.”
“Confirmed,” a computer voice reported.
Meckies at stations around the room tapped keyboards to coordinate the attack.
“Don’t fail me,” Lord Abercrombie said, coaxing the old equipment.
“Two fifty,” a meckie reported.
Lord Abercrombie closed his eye and prayed softly.
“Three hundred, sir,” came the next report. “Approaching the desert sailing ship. Impact estimated at four minutes.”
“Hot damn!” Lord Abercrombie exclaimed.
“All systems working,” another meckie said.
“I’m going into soil immersion,” Lord Abercrombie said, turning to leave. “I want to enjoy this firsthand.”
“Trouble, sir,” a meckie said. “That reverse rain again.”
Lord Abercrombie leaned over and moaned, “Oh no!”
“Equipment shorting out, sir.”
Sparks flashed from all the consoles in the room.
“So close,” Lord Abercrombie said, feeling ready to cry. He straightened and barked a command: “Shut down all systems!”
Hurriedly, the meckies did as they were told.
Abercrombie stepped back as the console near him continued to spark. At times like this he felt like giving up on the Realm of Flesh. But Magic offered no more prospect of success.
The rolling whine of an emergency siren sounded from the tunnel outside their door, along with the loud whirs and clanks of approaching meckies. Soon the room was full of meckie tenchnicians, searching for a loose piece, a pulled wire, or anything else that might have caused yet another failure.
But Lord Abercrombie sensed this search would do no good.
This planet is cursed,
he thought.
Someone has made it uninhabitable for beings like me.
“Hit ‘em with anything we’ve got left!” Lord Abercrombie shouted. “Try wind, earthquakes, anything!”