That was about all I had time to wonder. Dad had got the ship on a straight course again.
Unfortunately, that course had us racing directly toward a collision with a solid stone wall.
CHAPTER
4
Gone with the Wind
DUCK! THOUGHT SEYMOUR.
We dove for the floor, where we hid our aching eye under our front paws.
To our astonishment, Dad began to laugh.
We looked up. The stone wall was opening in front of us, the hole in the center expanding the way the iris of your eye does when you go into a dark place. The ship shot through the opening with, oh, inches to spare.
I wanted to ask Dad if he had known that was going to happen. But Snout was focusing all his attention on Selima Khan, and couldn’t or wouldn’t speak for me.
Your dad probably figured the gas had to go somewhere, pointed out Seymour. I did, too.
Yeah, right, I replied. Like I don’t know what you’re thinking.
We were in another tunnel now, but it was long and straight—which was just as well, since we were still moving far faster than we should have been. At least this tunnel didn’t seem to be spasming.
“We have now left the beast,” announced my father. “However, we are still underground.”
A few miles later the tunnel curved upward. The curve grew more abrupt; soon we were traveling straight up.
“Not long now,” muttered Dad.
He was right. Seconds later we shot into the open. It was early evening, and seven or eight of the planet’s tiny moons were riding high in a purple sky. As Dad maneuvered the ship, I could see we had come out through something that looked like a volcanic cone. It reminded me of my science project—the one the aliens had partially eaten when I first met them.
Soon the Ferkel was traveling alongside us.
“Quite a ride, Ah-rit,” burped Phil over the radio.
“I long to fill your lives with adventure,” replied my father, sounding as if he had actually enjoyed it. “Follow me, please; I want to check on something.”
It wasn’t long before we could see the Mentat on our viewscreen. The home and school of the Mental Masters, the Mentat was a gigantic tree so big its base would cover six football fields. From this trunk, which is several hundred feet high, grow dozens of wooden towers, some of them stretching up for miles.
According to Snout, the tree of the Mentat is the biggest living thing in the galaxy. It had also been our prison when we were locked away in its roots for our crime of ignoring orders from Galactic Headquarters so we could go after BKR. We had escaped with the help of Selima Khan.
My father was the founder of the Mentat. I realized now that he wanted to be sure it had survived the beast’s attack of indigestion before we moved on.
It had . . . but not without damage. Cracks laced the surface of the long root-road that led from ground level to where the tree-towers began. Three of those towers had split at their base and were leaning out at crazy angles—one of them seemingly held in place only by the branch-bridge connecting it to its neighbor. Repair crews were already at work.
Dad sighed. “It will stand,” he said.
* * *
We flew on, finally landing on the far side of the planet. The moment we touched down, Snout got my father to help him carry Selima Khan into the Ferkel, which had a much more sophisticated sick bay than the Jean. They placed her on one of the healing tables, then switched on the blue light. Snout sat beside her, still focusing his own energy on her as well.
Madame Pong helped Seymour and I limp up onto another of the tables. She gently washed out our aching eye, then turned on the blue light.
I had asked Madame Pong about those lights once.
“Oh, your body has tremendous healing powers,” she had replied. “The blue lamps simply enhance and accelerate the natural process.”
However it worked, it took only about an hour before both our eye and our shoulder were feeling completely better. Once they were all right, I thought to Seymour, Come on. I need to get something.
With Edgar clinging to our back, we trotted along to my room—though it wasn’t going to be my room for a while now, I thought bitterly, since the Ferkel was going to leave us behind. Seymour didn’t wear clothes, so there wasn’t much in the room I actually needed. What I wanted was the ring Madame Pong had given me. That, and a book called Secrets of the Mental Masters, which had come from Snout.
The ring was right where I had left it. But Seymour’s stubby blue paws were clumsy, and it was hard for us to put it on.
I wish you had fingers! I thought sharply.
And I wish I had my body all to myself! he replied, equally sharply. That was enough to shut me up. Mom had always taught me to be gracious when I was a guest, and, like it or not, at the moment I was a guest in Seymour’s body.
The book was even harder to deal with than the ring, since Seymour was basically a six-legged animal and didn’t have anything that really qualified as arms. Not having a mouth, we couldn’t carry it that way, either.
How do you creatures get along most of the time? I asked, breaking my vow not to criticize almost as soon as I had made it.
Most of the time, replied Seymour icily, we chiblings manage to bond with an intelligent, fully functioning creature. It is a symbiotic relationship. We do things for them, they do things for us. Most of the time we do not have that other creature actually sharing our body with us. Most of the time that creature carries its own weight.
That pretty effectively put me in my place. But it didn’t solve the issue of the book.
Finally we went to look for Elspeth.
“Hi, Roddie,” she said, when we walked through her door. “Hi, Seymour. Wasn’t that a cool ride? I especially liked the part when the ship was going end over end. Did your ship do that, too? It was tons cooler than anything at Disney World.”
It figured that Elspeth would like something where real death was a possibility.
“Oh, I forgot you can’t talk,” she said. Her voice was sweet, and I knew she hadn’t forgotten at all. She just liked to grind it in. “Did you want something?”
We trotted to her door, then back to her, then back to her door again, pretty much the way my dog Bonehead does whenever he wants to go outside.
“You want me to follow you?” cried Elspeth, clapping her hands.
She knew perfectly well what we wanted. She was just having a good time pretending she was the star of some old animal movie or something. I half expected her to say, “Good girl, Lassie. Now, go get the sheriff and let him know we need help!”
Finally we got her to follow us to my room.
“Now, what could you possibly want in here?” she asked—ignoring the fact that we were practically pounding the book with our front paws.
“Goodness, what could it be?” she said, tapping her chin as if she was thinking. I was pretty sure she was thinking—thinking how else she could bug me. I was getting ready to take back all the nice things I had accidentally thought about her in the last month when Seymour said, Too bad we couldn’t have left her in the belly of the beast.
Oh, she’s not that bad, I replied—which annoyed me, since I didn’t really want to say anything nice about Elspeth at all at the moment. I just didn’t like other people bad-mouthing her. After all, she was my cousin. Bad-mouthing her was my job.
“The book?” she cried suddenly, as if it hadn’t been obvious for the last five minutes. “Is that what you want, Roddie?”
We nodded our eye up and down.
“Well, why didn’t you say so?”
I wish we had a freeze-gun, thought Seymour.
And a trigger finger, I added, having decided I didn’t care what he said about Elspeth.
* * *
All too soon it was time for the first of our separations. Grakker and Phil stood in front of the Ferkel and solemnly shook hands (or paws, or leaves) with each of us.
Snout was the last to say good-bye to t
hem. “Farewell, my captain,” he whispered, embracing Grakker. To my surprise, Grakker hugged him back. “Farewell, faithful friend,” he growled. “Be well until we meet again. That’s an order.”
As for me, I never know what to say in situations like this. So for the moment, I was actually glad that I didn’t have a mouth.
Grakker and Phil climbed into the Ferkel. The rest of us, including Selima Khan, climbed into my father’s ship. Our plan was to take Selima Khan back to the other side of Planet Mentat, where she would continue to do whatever it was she had been doing for my father—some kind of spying, from what I could make out. Then we would leave for Kryndamar, where Elspeth, Snout, Madame Pong, and Seymour and I were going to wait while Dad and Tar Gibbons went looking for BKR.
We landed in front of a cave. Selima Khan said a quiet farewell to each of us, pausing longest in front of my father, who bent his neck until their foreheads touched. They stood that way for a moment or two.
“Farewell, Ah-rit Alber Ite,” murmured Selima Khan at last. “May your journey be successful.”
She turned to leave the ship. As she did, Snout positioned himself beside her. She looked at him for a moment, then shrugged and nodded.
They left the ship together.
I glanced at my father.
“Flinge Iblik will be back soon enough,” he said.
Indeed, it wasn’t more than five minutes before Snout stepped through the ship’s door. He was silent, and I was sorry to see that his long face was drooping.
“Geez,” said Elspeth, “what’s wrong with you?”
Sometimes it was useful to have her around, since she would ask the kind of questions my mother had trained me not to. It didn’t do any good in this case, though. Snout merely shook his head and said, “It’s a personal matter.”
Dad took the controls, and we headed for Kryndamar.
* * *
One of the reasons Madame Pong had suggested Kryndamar was that it was fairly close to Planet Mentat. Personally, I would have been happier if she had chosen someplace farther away, because the trip there was going to be the last time I had with my father for a while. (“Maybe the last time ever,” whispered a nasty voice at the back of my brain—not Seymour, this time, but my own fear speaking to me.)
Even at the speed of light, which no starships are able to reach, another star system would be years, if not centuries, away. But by jumping between dimensions, our ship was able to cross great distances in short times.
Like a day.
I didn’t sleep at all during the trip. Seymour and I stayed by my father’s side, asking him questions when Snout was there to interpret, just enjoying his company when he was not.
It seemed as if only hours had passed before we completed our last dimensional jump and Dad announced, “There she is, Rod. Your new temporary home. Kryndamar.”
Ahead of us floated a lovely blue-and-green sphere.
“I think you will like it here,’ said Madame Pong, who was standing behind me. “I selected Kryndamar both because it was within easy travel distance and because it is largely uninhabited. However, it is also extraordinarily beautiful. In fact, it has been designated as one of the treasures of the galaxy—which is one reason it is largely uninhabited. No one is allowed to settle here, and while some vacations are permitted, they are highly limited. All in all, not a bad place to hide from BKR.”
* * *
We landed at the edge of a beautiful lagoon. The sand of the wide beach was a delicate pink. The air (Seymour and I breathed through our skin) was as sweet as any I had ever smelled. Clear green water lapped at the shore.
The beach, which was about twenty-five yards wide, ended at a forest. Even though the air was still, the leaves rustled and moved constantly, sighing and murmuring as if their hearts were breaking. Water dripped from the tips of the leaves. I wondered why, since it wasn’t raining, until Madame Pong, murmuring to herself, said, “Ah, the weeping forests of Kryndamar.”
We unloaded our supplies from the ship, including some inflatable shelters, a box of clothes Elspeth had had the ship create for her, and a portable food synthesizer.
Then it was time for Dad and Tar Gibbons to go. Those final good-byes were hard. I still couldn’t believe that having finally found my father, I was going to lose him again. True, he was only going away so he could try to recover my body from our enemy. But the fact that he was going without me at his side made me feel as if I was going to explode with anger, sorrow, frustration, and who knows what else.
“Come on, Rod,” he said. “Let’s take a walk.”
We wandered along the beach, Dad and Seymour and I. Edgar rode on our shoulder, cooing and chittering to himself. Snout stayed behind, so that we could be alone, which made it more private, but also meant that Dad had to do all the talking. After a while we sat and stared out at the water. I liked the sound it made as it lapped against the shore.
Dad picked up a handful of sand and let it run between his fingers. “Rod, I want you to know that I will do everything I can to get your body back. But I won’t make cheap promises, and the truth is, I don’t know what’s going to happen. All I can promise is that I will try, and that I will not rest until we are together again.”
He moved around so that he was looking into our big eye. “I wanted to be done with all this, son—to just stay home with you and the twins and your mother. But the world doesn’t always let us do what we want.”
I nodded.
Dad nodded back. Then he put his arms around the silly blue body that I shared with Seymour and hugged us tight.
* * *
We walked back to the ship in silence. Night had fallen, and three huge silver moons were riding low in the black sky.
The formal farewells were made, but Dad and I had already had our real good-bye. Even so, I had one more shock when Tar Gibbons came to me and said, “My krevlik, when you pledged yourself to me, you vowed absolute obedience until your training was over. You have been a faithful student, and it grieves me greatly that there must be a break in that training. But that is the way things are. Because of this break, I must release you from your pledge.”
No! I thought, so upset that Seymour and I reared back on our hind legs.
The Tar raised a finger. “Warrior Science tells us that to fight the tide is to drown. When we meet again, if we meet again, I will gladly accept you as my krevlik once more. Until then, you must be free to learn from others.”
The Tar kissed me on both cheeks, then turned and followed my father into the ship. I blinked away a tear as I watched them disappear through the door.
Our little group—Madame Pong, Snout, Elspeth, and Seymour and Edgar and I—stood on the sand and watched the Jean fly away.
Behind us, the trees of Kryndamar wept and moaned.
CHAPTER
5
Water Boy
THE FIRST NIGHT WE SLEPT on the beach. The air was warm and sweet, and it seemed a good place to be. Using foot-long sticks, Madame Pong and Snout set a perimeter ring around us.
“What good will those do?” asked Elspeth scornfully.
“They will alert us to intruders,” said Madame Pong.
Elspeth snorted. “By the time an intruder is that close, we’ll be cooked meat if it wants to do something to us.”
“You misunderstand,” said Madame Pong. “The sensing range of the sticks extends outward from where we place them. We’ll know if anything comes within a hundred yards of us. Does that make you feel better, dear?”
If I had had a mouth, I would have smiled. Elspeth likes to be called “dear” about as much as I like it when she calls me “Roddie.” I suspected Madame Pong knew that, too; she seemed to save the name for whenever Elspeth was being particularly obnoxious.
Elspeth had ignored what I thought was the more important question, namely, “What kind of intruders are you expecting?”
Seymour and I tapped at Snout’s leg, indicating we wanted to make contact. Once the connection was ope
n, I asked my question. Though Snout could have answered himself, he relayed the question to Madame Pong, so Elspeth could hear the answer, too.
“We’re not expecting any, Rod,” said Madame Pong. “But it’s always better to be prepared. Occasionally vacationers venture here, as I mentioned. There is also the possibility of other exiles, such as ourselves, and while vacationers are not likely to be hostile, other exiles are. Then there are . . . oh, you might call them oddballs, I guess, beings who just don’t fit in wherever they happen to be, and so rove the galaxy, looking for a home. Now, the chances of any of those stumbling upon us are quite small. But then, what are the chances that we would be here?”
“What about animals?” I asked, again via Snout.
“They should be no problem,” said Madame Pong smoothly. “Unless”—and here she shuddered just slightly—“unless we should happen to be in the path of a worm migration.”
“A worm migration?” asked Elspeth in astonishment.
“Imagine a billion worms all going the same place at once,” said Snout solemnly.
Edgar eeeped in alarm.
“So what’s the problem?” asked Elspeth, sounding a little less confident than usual. “I mean, how fast can worms move?”
“Fast enough,” said Madame Pong.
“Will they eat us?” asked Elspeth, looking at the ground nervously.
Madame Pong laughed. “Of course not.”
Elspeth relaxed. “Then what’s the problem?” she repeated.
“Slime,” said Snout. “They’ll slime us.” He yawned. “Good night, Elspeth. Sleep well.”
He took out his sleeping pocket—a piece of fabric about the size of a man’s wallet that gets a couple of hundred times bigger when you expose it to air—and gave it a shake. In a minute or two it was ready. After taking off his cape, he climbed in.
“Look at that sky,” said Madame Pong quietly.
Seymour and I looked up. Beside us, I could hear Elspeth gasp.
The sky was extraordinarily clear, and a fourth moon had just slipped above the horizon. Turning our eye to the right, we saw a vast curtain of rose-colored light rippling against the blackness.