Multiverse mashup omnibu.., p.15
Multiverse Mashup Omnibus, page 15
“Get them to safety, Jed,” he said.
“I will.”
He winked at me. “I should have kissed you when I had the…”
The bark swallowed up his mouth. His eyes widened and the top of his head shook as he struggled for breath. I renewed my efforts, hammering at the tree with my fists, but it was no use. In an instant all I could see was the top of his head and his silver hair, and a moment later even that was gone. The tree looked exactly as it had before, completely undisturbed.
I stood there, resting my forehead against the spot where my friend had been taken.
I punched the tree, three times, hard, then took a deep breath. I looked at the broken iron blade in my hand, the only sign that he was ever there. I shoved it in a pocket, straightened up and carefully turned around. The kids were watching in horror. I waved to let them know I was all right.
Then the trees started to shake.
“Oh, sh—”
The tree dropped out from under me and I fell to the ground. I grasped frantically for the trunk to slow my descent but I landed hard. All around me the fake trees were sucked into the earth, and the nearby branches whipped at my head as they dropped past. I rolled over, curled myself up as small as I could, and covered my head with my hands. One limb gave me a good wallop on the thigh but otherwise I escaped relatively unscathed. After a few seconds, I was lying in an open stretch of field, with no sign there had ever been a small artificial grove all around me.
I rolled over and lay flat, stretching out my arms and legs.
“Ow.”
I had landed on my butt, and my back was killing me. I felt something wet, most likely one of my cuts opening up again.
“Jed!” I wasn’t sure who was calling my name. One of the kids. Several of them, probably.
I lifted my arm and gave them a thumbs up, then let it drop back down. “Five more minutes, Mom.”
“Jed, we’re coming to you!”
“No!” I sat up and the world tilted. “No, stay put! I’m okay, I’ll come to you. Give me a sec.”
I put one hand on the ground and slowly got to my feet, groaning just quietly enough that they wouldn’t hear. I stretched out my back and winced. Nothing broken, but it hurt like hell and I really, really wanted to throw up.
“Plenty of time for vomiting later, Jed,” I said to myself. “Get with the saving.”
I looked at the long stretch of grass between me and the kids. The tree hadn’t swallowed me, so maybe the Broadcasters wouldn’t let me die so long as they thought I held the artifact they wanted.
One way to find out. I marched straight for Astrith, who was standing at the head of the pack. I wasn’t particularly careful, not bothering to test the ground before stepping on it. She put her hands to her head in frustration but didn’t say anything. In a few seconds I reached them safely. I was either right or lucky, and I had no way to know which.
She punched my shoulder. “You could have been killed, you idiot!” She threw her arms around me. “Poor Valerian! I’m so sorry!”
I ignored the agony her hug was causing and patted her back. “Yeah.” I broke away and addressed the crowd. “Plan’s the same. Everybody follow me through this next stretch. It should be clear where it’s safe to walk and where it’s not.”
Astrith pointed at one of the propulsion devices, lying exposed on a patch of dirt. “Watch out for those mines. During the explosion I saw some of them go off more than once. Triggering them didn’t make them safe.”
“Good to know. At least we can see them now. Let’s move out.”
We were down to sixteen, after losing Grahs, Daffyd and Valerian. I was determined that sixteen of us would cross that finish line, somehow.
I shook my head. Even to myself, I was making empty promises. I’d save as many as I could. That was all I could ever do.
The safe patches and the sections with mines were narrow towers of dirt surrounded by deep chasms. They looked as if they could topple over at the slightest whisper, but they were steady and secure without even a wobble. They had survived Valerian’s spell ripping off their top layer of turf and the resulting explosions, so it wasn’t surprising that they were sturdier than a thin column of dirt and rocks had any right to be. Still, it was tricky going, and I was hoping none of the kids were afraid of heights. If they were only a few inches high this would have been nothing, but the sheer drops at either side into who-knows-what at the bottom added a psychological component that could make anyone lose their nerve.
I steeled myself and stepped onto a barren patch of dirt. It jutted out between two open pits, and directly ahead was a launch mechanism, but an easy jump forward and to the right led to another safe patch, and a slightly longer, but still manageable, jump led to yet another. I picked the way across and the Contestants followed, one by one.
We made good time, and I heard some chatter from the kids as their hopes and spirits rose. I called out the occasional warning when heat or cold or toxic fumes spewed forth from a pit we’d have to jump over, but otherwise I stayed focused on keeping us moving.
Before too long we reached the end of the section cleared by Valerian’s spell. There was a large patch of dirt just before the greenery resumed, enough for Astrith, Doric, Ryoh and Phillin to join me.
The five of us looked out over the remainder of the Gauntlet. Thirty feet of plastic grass was all that stood between us and safety. Just beyond that the ground became gray paving stone, broken up in a large mosaic pattern. There was a wide gap in the center of the far wall, where a long road climbed up to the city of Hedon. From here I could see up the hill to an ornate metal gate sealing the city in, and the rest of the world out.
“So,” Phillin said. “What now?”
“Now,” I replied, “I’m open to suggestions. My plan involved Valerian blowing more stuff up.”
Doric crouched down. Just in front of us was another mine, and he peered closely at it without touching it. “This looks like one of the ones that launches whoever steps on it into the air. I don’t think it’s got fire or acid or anything. Maybe we could…”
He trailed off. We looked to a spot just to the side of the path to the city, where Daffyd’s body still lay.
“Sorry,” Doric said, standing back up. “That wouldn’t work. Dumb idea.”
Ryoh reached up and patted his head. “Hey, give yourself a break. You’re thinking. That’s an achievement all on its own.”
The day before, Ryoh’s comment would have started another fight, but Doric just smiled. He gave Ryoh a friendly shove. “Jerk.”
“Trinna’s good with mechanical stuff,” Astrith said. “Her County is where most of our engineers come from. Maybe she can take a look at it, see if she can make it safer, somehow.”
“I’ll swap with her,” Phillin said. “Trinna!”
Phillin shouted instructions at the group, beginning the complicated process of leapfrogging Trinna, who was a ways back, to the front to join us, while he moved to an empty spot.
While we waited, Ryoh put his hand in his pocket, then touched the necklace around my neck. “I know what you’ll say, but what if we…”
“No.”
“But it’s the last time we’d have to…”
“No, Ryoh.”
“Jed,” Astrith said. “Don’t you have any way of using the necklace safely? Bring something here to help without tearing a hole in the world?”
I shook my head. Without examining the artifact I had no way of knowing how it worked, but it wouldn’t have registered on the Crossroad’s monitors if it were safe to use. Nothing cataclysmic had happened so far, but that could change if Ryoh kept using it.
But I didn’t say that. I had already given way too much information away to our eavesdroppers. Instead I raised another objection. “Even if I could, it wouldn’t be right. We can’t abduct someone against their will and drop them into a deadly situation, just to save our own skins.”
Astrith nodded. “You’re right. Sorry.”
Ryoh went pale. I don’t think he had thought of what he had been doing in that way. He took his hand out of his pocket.
Trinna landed on our platform and we adjusted to make room. She had recovered from my little moral lesson earlier, and some of the defiant fire had returned to her eyes. “Phillin told me what you wanted,” she said. “I’ll take a look, but I can’t promise anything. Our training was about keeping the machines the Counties need for farming and mining up and running, not Gauntlet mechanics.”
“Just do your best,” Astrith said. “Maybe you can lessen the pressure.”
Trinna crouched down to better inspect the machine, but I put a hand on her shoulder to stop her. “Wait.”
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to touch it until I know…”
“Just give me a second.”
Astrith’s idea was understandable but it wouldn’t work. Even if Trinna could get the mine to launch someone with less force, they’d still travel thirty feet through the air and land on stone.
I got down on my knees and looked at the mine. There was a circular metal barrel on top, a foot in diameter and a foot and a half deep, with a thin wire mesh stretched across it. It was mounted on a gyroscope that let it rotate up and down and in any direction. Below the mount were the inner workings – there was no control panel, just tubes and gears and nuts and bolts. I didn’t know enough about the technology of this world to do anything with it.
“Don’t decrease the pressure,” I said to Trinna. “Increase it. Get as strong a blast as you can. Can you do it?”
She bent down even further, until her eyes were level with the ground. She squinted at the machine, and reached out a tentative hand at the machinery in the base. She pushed aside a black rubber tube and I winced, but there was no blast of air.
“Yes,” she said. “Most of this stuff is meant to dampen the blast. Should be easy to max it out.” She sat back. “It’ll be like a bazooka, though. The air will blow anyone who steps on it apart.”
“That’s what I’m counting on. Go ahead. Do you need anything?”
“You don’t happen to have a screwdriver on you, do you?”
“Actually…” I felt in my pocket and pulled out Valerian’s iron blade. “Will this work?”
She took it from me. “I can make do. Now tell everyone to shut up so I don’t get distracted and blow my hands off.”
I stood up and let her get to work. Astrith obviously wanted to ask me questions, but I shushed her so as to give Trinna the quiet she had asked for.
The blonde engineering apprentice made short work of the mine. After a few minutes, and some colorful swearing, she sat back and slipped the makeshift screwdriver into her own pocket – I didn’t protest, she had earned it. She stood up and brushed her hands together.
“I think I did it.”
“You think?” Ryoh asked.
She shot him a nasty glare. “You want to try, rich boy?”
“I’m sure it’s perfect,” I said. “Thanks, Trinna. Okay. Next bit. Everybody back up. Move onto the safe patches, and nobody stand directly behind the mine.”
The kids at the rear retraced their steps, jumping back a few spots to clear room for Astrith, Doric, Ryoh and Trinna. I stayed put until they were clear, then got down on my knees again and reached for the mine.
“Careful, idiot!” Trinna shouted. “The mesh across the top of the barrel is the trigger. It’s supposed to go off if someone steps on it but shaking it too much might do it too!”
“Thanks, dear,” I shouted back. “I know what I’m doing.”
I sort of knew what I was doing. I knew what I wanted to happen, but I wasn’t entirely sure I could get it to work. I reached for the gyroscope under the barrel and very slowly and very carefully pivoted it. With some coaxing and lots of quiet mutterings of, “Please don’t go off please don’t go off please don’t go off,” I managed to tilt the cannon forward until it was pointed directly ahead, level with the undisturbed ground between us and the finish.
I breathed a sigh of relief and sat back on my haunches. “Okay, now for the tricky part.”
I flinched as some dirt around me flew into my face, but it was just Doric jumping next to me. The jolly tan giant wore a goofy grin.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey. What are you doing?”
“Helping.”
“Help by getting back to a safe distance.”
He shook his head. “I already know what’s going to happen. You’re going to set that off, and it’s going to have a crazy recoil, and you’re going to go flying, and I’m going to catch you.”
“In your strong, manly arms?”
He made a disgusted face. “Please don’t flirt with me. I’m eighteen and you’re a hundred.”
“I am somewhere between twenty-five and twenty-eight, I am almost positive, but that’s irrelevant because you’re taken, right?” I nodded towards Astrith and Ryoh, who were watching with concern, just out of earshot. “Taken twice over, maybe?”
He sat down next to me in the dirt. “You really want to gossip right now?”
“I need to get my heart rate down before this next bit, so yeah, why not? I don’t need the details, curious as I am, but the three of you are good? No more fighting?”
He grinned. “I don’t know about that, but yeah, we’re good. Astrith laid down the law. And…uh…I guess she made me see some of Ryoh’s…better qualities.”
“Like his pretty little face?”
He blushed. “Shut up. Have your hands stopped shaking yet so we can get on with not dying?”
“I think I’m suitably distracted from the stupidity of what I’m about to do. Sure I can’t convince you to go back with everyone else?”
He shook his head. “Someone has to save you while you’re saving us.”
“All right, then, at least move out from behind the barrel. I don’t think they intended for this to fire this hard, so something might blast out the back.”
He scooted until he was crouched on his hands and knees on the opposite side of the apparatus from me. “How are you going to set it off?”
“That’s a good question.” I turned around and peered down the side of the large column of earth we were sitting on. It was mostly solid dirt but there were rocks sticking out here and there. I reached down, got a grip on a good-sized stone, and managed to dislodge it. Soil trickled down into the bubbling black ooze at the bottom of the pit.
I crouched down next to the mine. “Everybody brace yourselves!” I yelled.
I threw the rock into the wire mesh covering the barrel.
I have done many, many stupid things in my life, but triggering an air cannon of unknown power while I’m squatting two feet away from it has to rank pretty high on the list.
The boom was deafening. Dirt exploded into the air around me, blinding me, and I felt something fly across my cheek, cutting it open. The force knocked me out of my squat and I tumbled backwards. My butt hit the ground but my head and shoulders hit open air and I started to slide into the pit.
Strong hands grabbed my feet and stopped me before I could fall into the noxious goop at the bottom. I flailed a bit but Doric’s grip didn’t falter and I was able to use my abdominal muscles, which are mermaid-certified magnificent, to crunch my upper body to safety. I grabbed Doric’s arms and butt-walked away from the edge of the pit.
I coughed a few times, then got out a, “Thanks!”
“What?”
“I said thanks!”
“Are you saying thanks?”
“Yes!”
“What?”
The dust was settling and I could see the result of my plan. The ultra-powerful burst of air had triggered all the traps in a direct line from us almost all the way to the finish line. It was a narrow path of pits, mines, and safe patches, only wide enough for one person at a time, but it looked like there was a clear way across. It ended a couple of feet before the finish line – close enough to jump. Maybe.
I touched my cheek and my fingers came away red with blood. The mine had shattered – the barrel was blown apart, the rubber tube was scraps, and the mount was in pieces. I was lucky that only my cheek had suffered. I looked Doric up and down, but he seemed none the worse for wear. He had been lying almost flat, not stupidly squatting like me, so the worst of it had probably sailed right over him.
Astrith joined us, followed quickly by Ryoh. They helped us to our feet.
“Are you all right?” Astrith asked. At least, I think that’s what she asked – my ears were still ringing.
Doric nodded, and I said “I’m good!” a little louder than I intended.
“It worked!” Ryoh said, inspecting the damage to the terrain.
“Of course it worked!” I huffed. “Never doubted for a second. Come on, we’re in the homestretch, let’s get moving.”
I stepped over the now-harmless mine. In front of us was a pit, and then another mine – this one was connected to a tank filled with green liquid, but there was enough open space around it for two people to stand safely. I jumped across, then took a slight running leap across the next, wider pit, onto an empty tower of dirt. I didn’t wait for the kids to follow – they were all well aware of what to watch out for by now, and I wanted to get everyone across before the people watching figured out some new way to kill us.
A couple more hops, skips, and jumps, and I was standing on the edge of the cleared path. It was maybe seven or eight feet to safety. There wasn’t much run-up room, but I knew I could jump it easily enough. Doric and Trinna and some of the other, larger kids, too. Astrith, Ryoh, most of the rest – probably not. Kud wouldn’t get half-way.
Astrith landed next to me and saw the problem immediately. “We could risk it. Jump as far as we can, run the rest.”
I shook my head. “You’ve seen the real layout here. Way more mines and pits than safe spots. As soon as somebody’s made it, the rest are dead.”
“So…” She saw the look on my face and shook her head. “Please don’t say it.”
“We’re going to throw you.”
“Oh, Prime help us.”
“Me and Doric. We’re just gonna hurl you over like a sack of potatoes.”
“That’s paving stone on the other side.”
