The Garbage Chronicles (34 page)

Namaba and Rebo made attempts top. But now the sign split into four pieces, with one in front of each of them.

“Do not be alarmed,” an omnipresent voice said. “I am attempting to help you.”

“Who said that?” Javik asked, startled.

The quartet backed away from the sign pieces, gathering together a short distance back.

The sign pieces drew themselves together again.

“Many months ago,” the voice said, “Lord Abercrombie sent his meckies to the gazebo. They switched the paths around. You need to move over two paths to your left.”

“You are not Lord Abercrombie?” Prince Pineapple asked, one eyebrow lifted inquisitively.

“Certainly not. I am a magician’s helper, left here aeons ago to watch over the area. This is a galactic park, you know. I’m sort of a park ranger, you might say.”

“You are invisible?” Namaba asked.

“No more than you, dear. I am the beautiful rock to your left.”

Namaba looked down and saw two medium-sized agates on the ground. She touched one. “Is this you?” she asked. The rock was smooth and sun-warmed.

“Certainly not! That is a common agate. I, on the other hand, am a history stone—a repository of all the legends and data concerning this quadrant of the starfield. Now Abercrombie is washed up, rejected by the Realm of Magic.”

They gathered around the stone and looked down at it. This rock looked no different from any other in the vicinity. It was about the size of Javik’s hand, yellow ochre in color.

Prince Pineapple felt a rush of excitement at the thought of Lord Abercrombie being rejected by the Realm of Magic. For the first time the prince consciously considered the possibility of stepping into Abercrombie’s place. Before this he had felt only generalized anger, a desire to throw Abercrombie out. Now he felt something entirely different. He wanted to be lord.

They were right about me,
Prince Pineapple thought, looking at each of the others.
They saw it in my eyes.

Javik looked at him.

Prince Pineapple looked at the talking agate and asked, “How do we know we can trust you?”

The agate laughed, its voice seeming to come from all around. “You don’t. But then, what choices do you have?”

Javik lifted the stone and stood up with it. “I could toss you in a ravine,” Javik said. “There’s one just over there.” He nodded to indicate direction.

“I could place barriers in your way to prevent it,” the agate said. “I’ll tell you what, though. If you want to take this trail, go right ahead.”

“You won’t stop us?” Prince Pineapple asked.

“No. But do you really think that would be wise, Prince Pineapple? Do you, Namaba?”

“It knows our names!” Namaba said, surprised. She looked around.

“Someone around here knows our languages, too,” Rebo said.

“This could all be Lord Abercrombie’s doing,” Prince Pineapple said. “We’ve all recharged. He knows everything about us now from the connection.”

Namaba wrinkled her hair-framed face into a frown. “I think my yenta is working again,” she said. “It tells me we should trust the agate.”

“You’re certain?” Javik asked. He leaned over and put the stone back where he had found it. “We don’t have much to go on,” he said, rubbing his tongue across his lower lip. The lip was chapped.

“I think I agree,” Rebo said. “This agate might have threatened us, or tried to bluff us with its magic. It didn’t do either of those things.”

“Do you mind if we continue on this trail a little ways?” Namaba asked, leaning over the agate, “and then make our own decision?”

The sign disappeared. There was no response other than this.

Namaba loped ahead to where the sign had been, then passed beyond. “Let’s take the other trail,” she said.

All agreed, and they set off across a field of rock. Here they encountered occasional long-stemmed yellow flowers that had six round petals apiece. Javik picked a flower and used a piece of twine to secure it to Namaba’s mane. “This will replace the ribbon you lost,” he said.

Glowing bright pink with a yellow tail, Wizzy skirted the base of the white cliff, following the three-dot trail markings. He flew above the blue lake, which narrowed to a ribbon of water, then paused at the beginning of the precipice trail. From there he passed the cliff dwellings of the strawberry people. Three of them ran out to watch him as he flew by.

Wizzy was a good deal larger now than he had been, and his translucent tail extended a good five meters behind his nucleus. This must have been quite a sight for the outcast strawberry people, especially following so closely on the heels of the episode with Javik’s party.

Wizzy left the strawberry people in the wink of a cat’s eye. He swooped low over the Moha now, passing through the opening in the cliffs. This agitated the Moha, and it waved its tentacles wildly. One tentacle passed harmlessly through Wizzy’s gaseous tail.

Reaching the eight folding paths, Wizzy nudged them open. In doing this, he clumsily destroyed the gazebo with the fire from his nucleus. Fortunately, a foresighted magician had treated the cloth paths with flame retardant.

While the gazebo burned, Wizzy checked each path. Quickly he located the one with three-dot markings. Streaking along this path, he reached the dirt area so rapidly that the magical agate did not have time to warn him.

“Wait!” the agate called out. “Not that way!”

But Wizzy was so far uptrail that he did not hear the agate.

With Prince Pineapple trudging ahead and Rebo bringing up the rear, Javik and Namaba walked beside one another holding hands. At first the lovers found this difficult to do, owing to the markedly different cadence of their steps. Namaba’s gait was more of a lope, with her head bobbing up and down, while Javik walked erectly and smoothly in the Earthian manner. After a kilometer or so, they found a middle ground, with Namaba moving more smoothly and Javik herky-jerking it.

“We’ll be married in Moro City,” Namaba said. “My minister can do it.” The light brown fur on her mane was gold-tinged from the sunlight.

“Where would I work?” Javik asked, squinting. “Is there a Moravian Space Patrol?

“We have an Air Guard,” she said. “But Moravian ships are more primitive than yours. And we have nothing to compare with the technology in your wardrobe ring.”

“That’s not technology,” Javik said with a wink. “It’s magic.”

She smiled.

“I don’t mind if the place is a little backward,” Javik said. “Just as long as we’re together.” He thought about how sappy his words might have sounded to him once. But it struck him that the really important things in life were sappy.

Catching up, Rebo said, “It won’t be easy for you on Morovia. I’m not saying that out of jealousy. Most folks will be afraid of Tom.”

Namaba’s eyes flared. “They can all go to Morovian Hell.”

“It’s easy to say that,” Rebo said. “But you’d better think it over carefully. They’ll think Tom is a freak.”

“Then I’ll make my living touring the planet,” Javik said flippantly. “We’ll make enough money off freak shows to build a rocket and get the hell out of there.”

“We’re not doing any sideshows,” Namaba said. “You’re no freak. A Moravian on Earth would face the same situation. You’re different, that’s all. We’ll prove to people that different is not bad.” She squeezed his hand tightly. “We’ll make them understand,” she said. Her lips were a thin, determined line.

“Good luck to both of you,” Rebo said. “Maybe I can help, when we all get back—if the Dimensional Tunnel works out the way we hope.”

Namaba glanced back at Rebo and saw sincerity in his eyes. They glowed a soft shade of red.

“Say,” Rebo said, looking at Namaba. “Do you remember Jamaro? Remember how he came back all deformed after the Hoka Wars?” His expression became troubled as he realized he had placed himself into a hole.

“Jamaro returned with only two legs,” Namaba explained, glancing at Javik.

“Pretty horrible, eh?” Javik said.

“I used a bad example,” Rebo said, biting nervously at his lower lip. “I was just thinking I could work with those kinda guys—you know, in therapy.”

Javik thought of Sidney.

“Sounds fine, Rebo,” Namaba said. “You’ll do fine. All of us will!”

“We have wars on Earth, too,” Javik said. “I was good at that game. Seems like a long time ago, though.” He reflected upon the Atheist Wars, when he and Brent Stafford swaggered across half the star system. “Hell, I’d be a young general now if I’d been able to keep my nose clean.”

Seeing Namaba looking at him curiously, Javik forced a laugh. “Guess I’m pretty funny, eh?” he said. “Someday, Namaba, we’ll be gray-haired, sitting in rockers on our front porch. A little Moravian kid’ll be sitting on the steps, and I’ll be starting to tell a war story. You’ll say, ‘Not that one again!’ Or maybe you’ll smile softly and leave, knowing I’ve changed the story with each telling, making more of myself than there really was.”

“Anything worth saying is worth exaggerating,” Namaba said, nodding her head. “That’s what Grandma used to say.”

“Sounds like your grandpa told his share of tall tales.”

Namaba laughed. “Maybe that little Moravian kid will be our grandchild.”

“That’d be somethin’,” Javik said. “Yessir. That’d be some-thin’!”

Engrossed in the conversation, Javik suddenly realized they had fallen far behind Prince Pineapple. He could just see the top of the prince’s helicopter beanie beyond a rise in the path. Then Prince Pineapple turned and ran back toward them. When the prince’s face came into view, Javik saw that he was shouting something. The words were lost in the wind.

“Looks like he’s found something,” Rebo said.

They picked up their pace and moments later found Prince Pineapple standing over a pile of sun-bleached bones.

“A Yanni tribal burial ground,” Prince Pineapple said, brimming with excitement. “With long goat bones in a triangular pattern.”

“There’s a significance to that?” Javik asked.

Prince Pineapple looked full in his face with the expression of a scolding Freeness Studies instructor. “Triangle . . . three dots.”

“Oh, sure,” Javik said. “A magical sign. What do you think it means?”

“It’s a sign that we’re close,” Prince Pineapple said.

“Speaking of signs,” Namaba said, pointing uptrail. “I see another one.”

As she spoke, a wooden sign was rising slowly from the ground beside the trail just a few meters ahead. When it was all the way up, she saw it rested on two legs and was red with white lettering,

Javik walked up to it and read. It was printed in English:

DIMENSIONAL TUNNEL 2 KILOMETERS

Javik stepped aside so Rebo and Namaba could read it. Now it changed to Moravian. When Prince Pineapple read it, the printing became Corkian.

“Three languages again,” Javik said.

They set off, and soon were out of sight of the sign. Minutes later they heard rapid footsteps approaching from downtrail. Turning their heads, they were surprised to see the sign running after them. Two arms had sprung from the edges of the signboard, and its legs had big, clumpy feet. Jumbled letters were shaped in the form of a cherubic, smiling face.

As Javik’s jaw grazed his boot tops, he watched the sign run by and plant itself in the ground a few paces uptrail. The sign’s arms folded in and melded with the board. The facial letters formed English words. the feet disappeared, leaving two rigid board legs planted in the ground. Here is the message Javik saw:

DIMENSIONAL TUNNEL 1 KILOMETER

Approach at own risk. Strong galactic currents.

They continued on their way. A few minutes later the sign again rushed past. This time it planted itself in front of a large flat stone and began to glow like a New City neon sign. There was a new message:

DIMENSIONAL TUNNEL

LAUGH TO ENTER

They searched the base of the flat stone, looking for a tunnel or a doorway. Seeing nothing, they looked at one another and shrugged.

“Guess we’d better laugh,” Prince Pineapple said.

So they laughed.

And laughed.

And laughed some more.

Their laughter echoed off the rocks, trees, and shrubs around them. They laughed so hard that the sign broke into uncontrollable giggles. Its lettering became a muddled, unreadable mess.

With tears in his eyes, Javik saw two humanlike puffy white clouds drop feet first from the sky. They were not very large as clouds go, being perhaps twice as tall as Javik. But they were quite muscular. Ceremoniously, with stern expressions on their puffy faces, they took positions on each side of the giant slab of stone.

“It’s under the rock!” Prince Pineapple said.

Javik wiped tears from his eyes and cheeks.

Using its little finger, one of the clouds lifted a corner of the slab and peeked under it. “Oooh!” the cloud squealed, dropping the slab. “A big worm touched me!”

“Oooh!” the other cloud said.

“Oooh!” the sign said. And the sign jumped completely out of the ground, landing in a clump of bushes.

Now the clouds leaped high in the air and were carried off by the wind. Soon they had floated out of sight.

The sign crawled out of the bushes and ran downtrail. Soon it was gone too, leaving the travelers in a most bewildered state.

Just then Javik heard a faint little chuckle. He didn’t know where it came from. Looking at the solemn and confused expressions of his companions, he knew they hadn’t done it.

You must realize that this was perhaps the tiniest chuckle in the Aluminum Starfield. It might have been trapped beneath a pebble and then kicked free by someone’s foot. Or maybe it was simply a slow echo, having just completed its bouncing journey from surface to surface.

Whatever the source, it was just enough of a chuckle to complete the required amount of laughter. As Javik looked at his companions, he became aware of a creaking noise. It came from the large slab of rock.

“It’s moving!” Namaba exclaimed.

Sure enough, the stone was lifting like a megalithic hatch, creaking higher and higher until it fell over the other way on its top. It might not have creaked so much if only someone had been there to oil its magical hinges. Unfortunately, there was a decided shortage of magician’s helpers in this part of the universe.