They had spears with rock tips and short knives made of wood and stone, but nothing made of steel, iron, or bronze. I wondered how they even survived on the same planet as the Wendigo. I also observed that they didn’t wear any clothes other than the occasional belt with a leather pouch on it. Some of them had crude bone bracelets and necklaces, and I wondered what these little guys carried in their pouches. Did they have money or were the pouches for medicine or maybe food? I was starving, and the thought of food made me feel all the worse. I had been living off Bar-E bars, which weren’t doing my colon any favors.
I was expecting them to take me to their leader. Imagine my surprise when they threw me in a wooden cage and walked away.
The cage wasn’t much. It looked like it was made of a woody variety of vines and was lashed together with other vines. The room had one exit with two guards standing near it. I noticed that one of them also had a universal translator around his neck.
“
Hey, you!” I called to the nearest Magnoculous.
He marched over. “What do you want?”
“
Don’t I get a trial or something? I want to talk to your leader.”
“
You had a trial before the leader, and it was he who put you in here. Now you stay here.”
I groaned. “Look, I didn’t know he was your Grand Poobah or whatever. Can you bring him back here?”
“
I cannot bring him anywhere. He is the leader, and we follow him.” The Magnoculous looked around conspiratorially. “You’ll probably get off with good behavior in two years.”
“
You’re going to keep me tied up for two years?”
“
Relax. There’s a stone right over there. If you are skilled, you can probably get the ropes off in a few hours.”
I realized for the first time that I shared this cage with a small skeletal body, and in his boney hand was a stone. “What happened to that guy?”
“
He only made it a few hours.” The guard turned around and walked back to his post.
I had to admit that I had been in worse situations this week, but that wasn’t saying much for my week. I did have to wonder what did in this little fellow after so short a stay, if the guard could be believed anyway. I scooted over to the skeletal Magnoculous, took the rock from his boney little fingers, and started working on my rope. The guards watched me with polite interest. It only took me twenty minutes to get free of the ropes and get stabbed in the chest with a spear. I think the little guy stabbing me was a little surprised when I rolled my eyes and pulled the spear out of my chest.
I took his spear away and broke it over my knee. “Be nice! I’m not going to hurt you.”
He shouted in a language I didn’t understand, but I was willing to bet that he was either calling for help or that he was really angry about having his stick broken. Moments later other guards charged into the room.
My initial attacker backed up as other guards advanced on me with their spears pointed warily at me. I walked to the cage door, shook it a little, and then lifted the whole cage up. There was no floor to the thing, and so I held it up at waist level. It was clearly meant to hold much littler folks. I tipped the cage over in a heap behind me.
The little pricks then stabbed me a good thirty times, but I only took their weapons, broke and then discarded them. I started walking down the hall determined to find the Poobah. I could do this all day, but if it came to it, I’d start hurting them. I was going to try the most peaceful way first, though. I’d like to think of it as passive resistance, sort of like a sit-in but you get stabbed more. Luke Skywalker never had to put up with this shit, I thought.
“
Halt!” a voice commanded from behind me.
When I turned around, the Grand Poobah himself was pointing his spear at me. “There you are. I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” I told him.
“
I will not allow you to hurt my people or take our livelihood.”
I sighed. “Look, buddy. I don’t want to hurt anybody.” I pointed at the host of other little guys around him that used to have longer weapons. “I didn’t hurt these guys, did I?”
The Grand Poobah charged me. I sidestepped him but he stabbed me on the way by. I grabbed his spear, broke it, and tossed it aside. His quills flared and he charged at me again with his teeth bared. He was a brave little guy, I thought as I popped him in the nose with my fist and he went flying. He left a few little quills in my skin.
“
Seriously. Stop it before I really do hurt somebody,” I said as I plucked out the quills.
The Poobah shook his head for a moment. He looked dazed, but I didn’t think I had hit him that hard.
He stood shakily to his feet. “Surrender yourself!”
“
Look, dude. I could kill your whole village, but I only want to get off your planet and get back to mine.”
He charged me and I grabbed his arm, spun him around with a joint lock and forced him to the ground.
I twisted his arm a little more. “Say Ewok!”
He groaned and struggled for a moment. “Ewok,” the Poobah finally grunted. I let him up, and he seemed utterly defeated.
“
Is there any way I can buy or trade for the Tritium?”
He shook his head. “We need it for light.” He indicated the green liquid flowing down the walls and in the etched grooves on the floor.
“
Oh.” I realized for the first time that they didn’t have any other source of light in these hallways.
The Poobah looked up. “There is one thing you could give us that we would trade the Tritium for.” He looked hard into my face.
“
And that would be?”
“
Freedom.”
He had me stumped there. “Hmm. Freedom from what?”
“
From the darkness. We want to live under the suns again, like our ancestors before us.”
“
How do I do that?”
“
Help us defeat the Wendigo that have driven us into hiding.”
“
Is that all? It took everything I had to kill one, and that was largely by luck. I doubt I could kill off all of them.”
“
You don’t have to. We will defeat them if you bring us the weapon we need.”
“
Look, buddy. They heal just like me, and they are bigger and stronger than I am—lots bigger and stronger. I don’t care if I give you the biggest rocks and sticks on the planet, you aren’t going to kill them.”
“
We don’t need more rocks.” He gestured around himself at the stone walls and ceiling. “We need the venom that they fear.”
“
They fear a poison?” I ask skeptically. I knew that most poisons had virtually no effect on me. At worst, I might get a mildly upset stomach. I obviously didn’t know the limits of the Wendigo, but their regenerative ability seemed, if anything, greater than mine.
“
There is a breed of snake with a venom so toxic that it can even kill the Wendigo.”
“
Snakes. I don’t really like snakes that much,” I said.
“
Well, if you want to buy the Tritium, that’s what you need to bring us. We’ll need you to find a hundred Spearback Vipers.”
“
Poisonous vipers? And just a hundred? How am I supposed to carry a hundred venomous snakes back here?”
The Poobah snapped his fingers and a small Magnoculous brought a satchel forward. “This will hold a hundred baby Spearback Vipers.”
“
Okay. Well, at least they are small. What do they look like and where do I find them?”
The Poobah walked to a wall and pointed a picture etched in the wall, a little Magnoculous riding on the back of a giant hooded snake with a row of large sharp spines down its back. “We used to ride them and breed them, but when people like you came here, they hunted the snakes for their poison and killed all they found. Then the Wendigo grew strong and we were forced to hide in holes and caves. I don’t know if any of the Spearbacks survived, but if they did, maybe they can be found near our former homes. Come with me to the map room and I will show you the location of our ancestral homes.” He strode off down the corridor with all the other little Magnoculous following him.
I stood for a moment longer looking at the depiction of giant snakes, and then I followed the Poobah, too.
Chapter 20. Max
“
Hey, Miranda. I have good news!” I said over my com link.
“
You found the tritiated water?” She sounded happy.
“
Yes, and lots of it.”
“
Great! We’ll be down to get you in two minutes.”
“
Hold on. I don’t technically have it yet.”
“
Why not?”
“
Well, it is owned by porcupines, and they need me to bring them some toxic baby snakes.”
“
The who need you to do what?” she stammered.
“
It’s a long story. Let it suffice to say I’m delayed and will call when I have the Tritium.”
“
All right, but we’re running low on oxygen, food, and fuel.”
“
Then there’s no time to waste. Max out.”
“
Miranda out.”
The Magnoculous had shown me to a narrow exit I had to crawl through that led to a rock shelf thirty feet above a pile of very sharp boulders. I would have asked how they expected me to get down, but none of the little cowards followed me into the light.
I could make out the crumbling remains of an ancient road under the jungle vines. The plan was that I would follow this road to the giant toxic snakes armed with my wits, a towel, and a fairly sharp rock. All-in-all, I was doing better than I did on most missions. I usually didn’t have a rock. According to the Magnoculous, the Wendigo preferred to be out when the largest of the suns was set, and so I chose to leave in the morning as the larger of the two suns was rising.
I felt hungry as I worked my way down the steep cliff wall. I hadn’t eaten since Miranda fed me the Bar-E bars. The Magnoculous had offered me some fungus, but I wasn’t quite that hungry yet.
I slipped and fell the remaining ten feet, breaking my ankle, and limped along as it healed. Without the metabolism boost pills, it would take a few minutes to really feel better. The jungle of vines was thick, but I found I could walk under most of the foliage. The small vines weren’t difficult to push through, but they obscured my vision and made me a little worried that I was going to walk headlong into something with a large enough bite to swallow me whole.
I eventually came to some large black lumps, roughly the same size as me, that really stunk. There were bits of green shells in them, and when I poked one these misshapen lumps with a stick, I discovered it was soft and even smellier after I poked it. The smell reminded me of methane. I didn’t know what the lumps were, though.
I followed the road for miles. Clicking and crunching sounds emanated from the jungle on all sides, but I didn’t see any creatures. The wind was damp and carried the smell of decay.
A snort much too close to me made me turn around. All four of my hearts skipped a beat at the sight of a giant green chitinous bear-like creature sniffing the air a few feet away. Then he lifted his head high and let out a deafening roar. Other roars echoed from nearby.
I didn’t bother with my sharp rock. I ran, climbed, and jumped through the jungle, trying to follow the road as best I could, but the primary objective was to keep away from the monster chasing me. I came to a bridge that had collapsed into a chasm and swung over it on a vine, realizing too late that I had missed my opportunity to do a Tarzan call.
When I landed triumphantly on the other side, I looked back at the bears, which weren’t even slowing down. They leapt the distance I had swung over and were at my heels as I bounced from branch to branch above them in the vines. One grabbed my pant leg and tore a chunk of cloth loose, but I didn’t so much as stumble. I knew to fall would be to die.