3
It took her less than five minutes to figure out how to work the hoverboard. On the front half of the board were four narrow pressure-sensitive plates spaced around the spot where you placed your foot. Pressing down on these plates determined your direction. The foremost one moved you forward. The ones on the left and right made the board turn in those respective directions. The rear one moved you backward. The front and rear ones also determined your speed. The longer you kept your foot on the forward plate, the faster you’d go. To slow down, you applied pressure to the rear plate. Keep it pressed down long enough and you’d stop. Keep it pressed even longer and you’d start going backward.
There were two similar pressure plates at the rear of the board, one in front of and one behind the place where your other foot went. These controlled the board’s height, the front one making it rise, the rear one descend. The length of time you held one down determined how high or low you’d go.
While it took her only a few minutes to learn how to work the board, actually mastering the art of using it was another matter entirely. She kept mixing up the pressure plates, or not activating them fast enough. She hit trees. She tumbled into bushes. At times she wondered if the hoverboard would succeed where Skippy and Oscar had failed, and be the death of her.
As she practiced, she bore ever southward, staying close to the edge of the ooze, since she knew it originated next to the clearing. And while the first half of her trip was an endless succession of wipeouts, bruises, scratches, and outpourings of profanity vile enough to shock a pirate, during the second half, as she started to get the hang of it and her foot started manipulating the controls more and more automatically, she found that she was rather enjoying the whole thing—the wind cooling the sweat on her brow, the smooth fluidity of the board’s motions as she wove around trees and bushes, and most importantly the joy of having mastered it, of having power over this thing that reduced your own wearying workload. A few times she even laughed out loud as she sped along.
When the ooze-lagoon narrowed to a mere fifteen feet across, indicating she was about three hundred feet from the clearing, she stopped the board and got off. Tucking the board under her arm, she crept forward to the bushes at the edge of the clearing and peered through them.
Klaus von Klaus stood in the center of the clearing, staring west along the path down which the Marauders had come. His arms were crossed, and his mouth was curled up on one side in a sort of irritated, impatient grimace.
Taking a closer look at the clearing, Maggie saw that the heap of organic stone that had been Granite was gone. Only a coating of dust and a few pebbles remained.
Then she saw dark stains on the ground in several places. Obviously blood. But whose? Some of it was green, which meant it probably belonged one of the more physiologically abnormal Marauders, but the rest was red and could be anybody’s. And where were the bodies?
She felt a sick sensation in the pit of her stomach as she realized the Marauders must have won the battle. Otherwise, Klaus would not be standing here now, presumably waiting for Skippy and Oscar. She had to find out what had happened to Adam and the others. And the best way to do that, of course, was to ask Klaus.
Looking around, she found the spot where the edge of the woods was closest to Klaus—a spot about twenty feet west of the ruined shed—then made her way there. Next she headed a hundred feet straight back into the woods, hoping all the while that Klaus didn’t move too much. She set the hoverboard on the ground and hunted around for a large rock. When she found one—once again, it turned out to be a piece of Bob—she returned to the board, pumped the plate that made it ascend until it was about three feet off the ground, and then put the rock on the forward‑acceleration plate.
The board shot forward, gaining more and more speed as it approached the clearing. Dagger drawn, she raced after it.
When the board was about ten feet from the clearing, she faintly heard Klaus’s voice over the whir of the board’s motor: “Dere you are! I vas vondering—”
The board shot through a bush and into the clearing at forty miles an hour, and Klaus’s next words turned into a yelp, followed a moment later by a meaty thud. The board’s whirring stopped and Klaus screamed.
When Maggie burst into the clearing, Klaus lay on the ground, curled in a fetal position with his hands clamped to his crotch. His face was bright red, and a high-pitched wheeze was coming from his throat like air escaping from a balloon. The hoverboard lay beside him.
He was so immersed in his pain that he didn’t realize she was there until she knelt beside him and placed the edge of the dagger to his throat.
“What happened to my friends?” she said.
Klaus’s eyes bugged out at the dagger and he cried, “Ahh!”
“Tell me!” she said, pressing the blade down hard enough to break his flesh. A bead of blood appeared on the edge of the metal and gleamed in the mid-afternoon sunlight.
“De big man und de little girl—dey vere taken inside, taken prisoner. M has plans for dem. De stone man got blowed up, und de big katze got his head cut off by de Grottle.”
Maggie gasped at this last bit of information. Even a god would have trouble healing a severed head.
“What about Freud?” she said.
“De zychologist?”
“The robot! What happened to the robot?”
“Vhat robot?”
Maggie wondered what had become of Freud. Now that she thought about it, she didn’t recall seeing him during the battle. For that matter, she hadn’t seen him since they crossed the log. Where had he gotten to?
“How do I get inside to rescue them?”
Despite the dagger at his throat, Klaus snickered at her. “You can’t, silly girl. Every vay inside is guarded by at least two armed men. Und each entry point has an alarm. De men are instructed to set off de alarm at de first moment of trouble. No vun can break in. No vun.”
Maggie pondered this and wondered if there was any way she could use Klaus to get inside. Probably not. The Marauders weren’t the type to swap hostages, and it seemed like wishful thinking of the worst kind to hope that Klaus might know of some secret entrance unknown to the other Marauders.
Klaus rendered the whole question moot, however, when, seeing that she was absorbed in her thoughts, he drew a small knife from the top of his boot and tried to plunge it into her neck. The instant she saw his arm shooting up toward her she reflexively whisked her dagger across his throat.
He stiffened and gurgled much as Skippy had done. Momentum carried his arm forward, however, and the knife jabbed her left shoulder.
She bit back a scream and rolled away from Klaus’s corpse, one hand clutching her bleeding shoulder. Great. Another knife wound for her collection. And the first aid kit, which had been in Adam’s backpack, was probably inside Yoyodyne. At least her thick shirt had kept the knife from penetrating too deeply.
As she lay there on the ground, she felt her exhaustion returning as the adrenaline rush wore off. She was of no use to anyone in this state. She needed food. Sleep, too, but she didn’t have time for that.
She staggered into the woods behind the shed, sat down against a tree trunk, and ate some pork and dried fruit from her backpack. The food only increased her tiredness, and before she knew what was happening, her head sank back against the bark and her eyelids slid shut…