The Garbage Chronicles (7 page)

“Nothing, Captain,” Evans said. She was holding tight to her chair with both hands, trying to mento the thruster rockets. “No response at all.”

“I’ll bet there’s dust in the thruster tubes,” Wizzy said. “Now the main engines are sputtering too.”

The ship vibrated badly. It rocked to port, dipped its nose, and plunged.

“Going down fast, Captain Tom,” Wizzy said.

“I can see that, for Atheist’s sake,” Javik snapped.

“Altitude fourteen thousand, two hundred meters,” Mother reported. “Thruster tubes blocked. Manual correction required.”

“Can’t tell up from down,” Javik said. “Too much damned dust.”

“It’s a magnetic storm,” Wizzy said, glowing red from the red star crystal in his nucleus. “A remarkable battle between the planet and its atmosphere.”

“Wonderful,” Javik said. He grimaced. “Now we know what it is.”

“Eleven thousand, six-fifty,” Mother said.

Seeing that the rusty dust particles were thinning out, Evans said, “I think we’re dropping below the storm.”

“It’s moving overhead,” Wizzy said, looking through a porthole.

“Checking ship’s functions,” Mother said. “Still no thruster power. One main engine out.”

The
Amanda Marie
rumbled roughly, then fell silent.

“Damn!” Javik cursed. “There went the remaining engine.”

Mother confirmed this, then gave the altitude: “Seventy-two hundred meters.”

Evans pounded on the instrument panel. “No CRT, accelerometer, or artificial horizon.”

“And the para-flaps didn’t go out,” Javik said. “Aren’t they automatic on this ship?”

“I think so,” Evans said. She mentoed the flaps.

“Manual operation required,” Mother said.

“I’ll try ‘em,” Javik said, releasing his safety harness. He crawled aft along the corrugated metal deck to midships. There he grabbed a large black plastic wheel which was supported by an oblong pedestal. The surface of the wheel was abrasive to provide a gripping surface. Javik horsed with it, but it didn’t budge. He cursed.

“Can you get it?” Evans asked.

“No.”

“Thirty-nine fifty,” Mother said.

“Get over here, Wizzy,” Javik yelled. “Can you help me with this goddamned thing?”

“I’ll try,” Wizzy said. He alighted on one side of the wheel and clamped on with magic suction. With the two of them straining at it, the wheel finally broke free and moved. Then it stuck again.

“Where are all your wonderful powers now?” Javik asked, wiping his brow.

“Three thousand,” Mother said.

“Unfortunately, they are inconsistent,” Wizzy said. “One moment I feel super, and the next.. .well, quite weak.”

“What about now?” Javik asked. They resumed pushing and pulling.

“Not good,” Wizzy said. He fell to the deck, short of breath.

“Get up,” Javik said. He gave the wheel an angry, mighty push. It moved. He pushed it again, and it moved freely. Now Javik spun the wheel.

“Starboard flap’s out, Captain,” Evans said, sighting along the prismatic porthole at her side. Glancing at the porthole on Javik’s side, she added, “Port flap’s out too.”

Javik felt the
Amanda Marie’s
nose rise as the para-flaps took hold. The ship continued its descent, but much less steeply.

“Eighteen hundred,” Mother said.

Javik looked out a midships porthole and saw a para-flap undulating gracefully outside, like the wing of a great bird. He checked the other flap. It was functioning perfectly too. Para-flaps were massive and white, with scalloped arches on the trailing edges and flotation cups on the undersides. They were awe-inspiring when viewed from the ground, and Javik recalled seeing a sky full of them once, with the sun setting beyond the Rosenbloom Mountains.

Those were good days,
he thought, recalling the camaraderie of the corps.

“Fourteen hundred,” Mother said.

Javik snapped to awareness. He returned to the command chair, asking, “What do you see, Evans?”

“Long gray strips,” she said. “Maybe an airfield. We don’t have a heck of a lot of choice.” She pressed a yellow lever on her console to drop the landing gear.

Javik breathed a sigh of relief as he heard the gear pop down and lock into place. A green landing light flashed on at the center of the instrument panel.
Thank God,
he thought.

“Looks peculiar down there,” Wizzy said. “Don’t see any planes or rockets.”

“Below a thousand,” Mother said. “Final descent.”

“I see ground vehicles,” Javik said, watching streams of blue and pink flame streak along the gray ground strips.

“Primitive jets, sir,” Wizzy said. “Jet-powered cars, to be precise.”

“They’re staying on the gray strips,” Javik said. “So we’ll land off to one side.”

The
Amanda Marie
vibrated.

“Encountering turbulence,” Evans said. “Rough glide.”

“I know, I know,” Javik said. He guided the steering toggle with one finger, hesitant to mento it.

The
Amanda Marie
hit an updraft, carrying it hundreds of meters from the gray ground strips. They crossed a heavily cratered area and approached a lightly wooded section where Javik saw pale green trees that resembled Sumerian pines.

“Up, baby,” Evans coaxed, mento-adjusting the para-flaps.

The para-flaps fluttered desperately, carrying the ship just over the treetops. Now Javik could see a group of colorfully dressed people in a clearing. When the
Amanda Marie
was less than a hundred meters above the clearing, Javik noticed that the people below appeared to be wearing odd costumes—some were dressed like apples, others like oranges, bananas, watermelons.

“They’re all dressed like fruit,” Javik said.

“Not the bananas,” Wizzy said. “Technically, the banana is neither fruit nor vegetable. More accurately, it can be categorized as cereal.”

“Useless information,” Javik said.

“Not to a nutritionist,” Wizzy said.

Javik scowled.

The ship caught an updraft and rose momentarily. Then it dropped again.

“Hold on!” Javik yelled.

Javik and Evans braced themselves as the
Amanda Marie
bumped to the ground rather ungracefully. Javik felt a compression pain in his lower back. He rubbed it.

The ship rocked to one side on the ground, falling against one of the para-flaps. Then it righted itself. Javik heard the drone of electric motors as the para-flaps returned to their compartments.

Evans breathed a sigh of relief. “We’re down,” she said. “In one piece.”

“I sense that our troubles have just begun,” Wizzy said.

Javik mentoed the circular exit hatch without feeling any pain. The hatch unfolded from the center out like a camera orifice, revealing distant pine trees seen through dusty air. He smelled grit.

“Hmmm,” Wizzy said as dust enveloped him. “Fine dry particles from a complex topsoil sediment, variable in texture . . . part crystalline, part disintegrated planetary mantle.”

Javik shook his head as Wizzy went on to analyze the dust in its most minute detail.

A cacophany of cheers arose from outside, followed by the excited, unintelligible voices of many people. Rolling to the open hatchway, Javik commented, “They’re dressed like trick-or-treaters.” He felt the ship rock.

“What was that?” Evans asked.

Wizzy could be heard in the background, analyzing the entire climatological history of the planet, based upon the particles of dust adhering to the clear agate dome over his eye.

The
Amanda Marie
rocked again, then went back the other way. Leaning out of the circular hatch and looking to one side, Javik saw the edge of a mound of the colorfully dressed natives.
Now, why would they climb on top of one another like that?
he wondered.

The ship rocked once more, and this time it continued going over, in the direction away from the mound of natives. Javik had the answer to his unspoken question: They were toppling the ship!

“Going over!” Javik yelled. “Hold on!”

Wizzy buzzed by Javik and flew out the open hatchway.

The
Amanda Marie
fell on its side in a thunderous crash, slamming Javik and Evans against the interior walls. Then the ship began to roll over and over, gradually picking up speed. This created pandemonium inside, as Javik and Evans tried to get handholds on wall brackets, console bases, chairs, and anything else that was bolted down.

“Why are they doing this?” Evans wailed. She clung to the magna-scope base.

With considerable difficulty, Javik crawled to his command chair and tried to pull himself into it.
If I could just strap myself in,
he thought. But he was not able to get off the deck. Hanging on to the chair, he heard laughter outside and strange words which almost sounded Latin. He decided the language mixer pendant around his neck was not working properly.

Outside, in the afternoon light of three synchronized suns, Wizzy flew unsteadily over the
Amanda Marie. He
was much like a tiny bird who had not yet perfected the art of flying. Below, people dressed in tattered fruit costumes pushed the ship, causing it to roll along a dusty, bumpy surface. Chanting phrases which Wizzy identified from his data banks as Corkian legalese, they guided the ship to a wide path, lined along each side with red, yellow, and blue cylinders which had been partially buried and propped upright.

AmFed garbage cannisters
_t
Wizzy thought, glowing red as he continued to use his data banks.

Through the windshield and portholes of the
Amanda Marie,
Wizzy got glimpses of Javik and Evans clinging for their lives inside. Over and over the ship rolled, down the center of the path.

“Only one thing to do,” Wizzy said to himself. He dived toward the people.

As Wizzy neared the throng, he realized they were not humans, and they were not wearing costumes. They were Fruit people, men and women, dressed in shabby, ill-fitting three-piece suits and suit dresses of varying colors and patterns. Each sported a tarnished gold chain across his waistcoated belly, and carried a worn briefcase in the hand which was not being used to push the ship. They looked distinguished to Wizzy, in a peculiar sort of way. He veered off just before hitting them.

The creatures swatted at Wizzy with their briefcases and ducked out of the way. Some yelled ferocious epithets in legalese. They continued pushing the ship.

“This is our chance, lawyers!” Wizzy heard one yell in a high-pitched, squealy voice. “Lord Abercrombie will favor us after such a large offering!”

From his ever-handy data banks, Wizzy pinpointed the language as one of seventeen Corker dialects, a variety which had been sprinkled generously with Aluminum Starfield Latin.

Offering?
Wizzy thought.
What terrible rite is this?
He tried to pick up energy waves from the lawyer creatures’ brains, but got nothing.

Wizzy dived at the creatures again. Again, they swatted at him and yelled epithets. After seven passes like this, all without success, Wizzy felt extremely tired. In a last-ditch burst of energy, he placed himself on the opposite side of the
Amanda Marie
from the creatures. Using all his strength against that side of the ship, he attempted to stop the crowd from rolling the ship any further.

For a fraction of a second, Wizzy thought he felt the ship hold. But then he realized he was slipping down along the riveted skin of the craft. It rolled over him, followed by hundreds of thunderous, trampling feet. Wizzy was kicked to one side of the path.

By the time Wizzy had picked himself up from the dust, he was behind the mob of Fruits and quite out of breath. Above him on each side towered the red, yellow, and blue garbage cannisters. He tried to fly, but did not have sufficient energy. So he scooted as quickly as he could off the path and up a little knoll overlooking the action.

Upon seeing where the ship was headed, Wizzy squealed, “Oh no!” Below him and perhaps a hundred meters ahead of the tumbling ship, Wizzy saw a huge, gaping hole in the ground.

“Wait!” Wizzy screamed. Panic-stricken, he scooted and fell down the knoll. “I’ve got to stop them!” he exclaimed.

The
Amanda Marie
hit a smooth downslope and picked up speed, leaving the Fruit lawyers running along behind. Some fell in their anxiety and were trampled by their cohorts.

“No!” Wizzy yelled. “Stop!” He scurried as fast as he could, but this was not nearly fast enough. He knew it was too late. The ship was outrunning everyone.

The
Amanda Marie hit
a bump at the edge of the precipice, then tumbled into the black, cavernous hole and disappeared. Wizzy felt an empty pang in the center of his nucleus.

Ahead, Wizzy saw the lawyers reach the edge of the precipice. The thunder of their feet subsided. They encircled the hole, looking down into it. As Wizzy caught up, he heard them chatter excitedly.

“Favor us, Lord Abercrombie!” they wailed. “Favor us, oh mighty Lord!”

Wizzy darted between the Fruit-lawyers’ stubby legs and around their briefcases, soon reaching the edge of the hole! Looking down, he saw only blackness. It made him sad, extremely sad. This was a new emotion to Wizzy, and he did not understand it.

I want to feel better,
Wizzy thought. So he laughed boisterously for several seconds. This did not help.

“End our suffering, Lord!” the Fruit lawyers moaned.

Wizzy leaned over the edge to get a better view, clinging there with all his remaining strength.
It worked the last time I laughed,
he thought.
Why don’t I feel better now?

He felt himself shaking, and wondered if this was caused by yet another emotion. Then he realized it was the ground that was moving, not him. He jumped away from the hole.

The Fruit lawyers cried out in terror, bemoaning the fact that Lord Abercrombie still was not pleased with them. Earthquakes were a bad sign. They ran for cover in the nearby piney woods, leaving Wizzy alone by the hole.

Shortly before this, Lord Abercrombie lay far below, immersed in the soil. It was nearly time for him to leave the Realm of Magic once again, returning to his half existence in the Realm of Flesh. Fear tore through him. He wanted completeness, either in magic or flesh. But he could not decide between the realms.