TWENTY-FOUR

Slow Boat to the Land of Snodd

When I awoke, the sun was up, by not by much. I had been disturbed twice in the night, once as a Tralfamosaur herd moved through noisily and again when Ignatius found that a cucumber-size flesh-eating slug had been sucking on his toe as he lay asleep. He screamed and dislodged it, which was a relief to the rest of us who might have had to help him.

I unbolted the door of my pod and looked cautiously out. A ground fog had crept in; it would offer good cover for a Hotax attack, so we would need to remain vigilant until the fog cleared. I folded up my bedroll, tidied the pod, collected my belongings, and then signed my name in the visitor’s book before descending the pole to get breakfast going, all the while keeping a wary eye out.

The half-track had been shoved a few feet sideways, presumably by a clumsy Tralfamosaur, but aside from a small piece of bent armor plate, no damage had been done. There were snork badger footprints aplenty, and here and there were the shiny trails of flesh-eating slugs. If we wanted to earn a few moolah, we could have scraped up the trails and sold them to any glue supplier, as slug slime is that gooey substance you find in glue guns.

“Ook?” Ralph appeared from the brush seemingly unharmed by his night out in the open. He would have been used to sleeping with dangerous creatures all around him, even though most of the nasty creatures he could have known would have died out by the end of the Pleistocene.

“Sleep well?” I asked, and he stared at me.

“G-ook,” he said. I think he was trying to learn to speak. Or relearn, at any rate. “L-ook.” He showed me the flint knife he had been making.

“May I hold it?” I asked, putting out my hand. After looking at me suspiciously for a moment, Ralph gave me the knife. It was well balanced, with a carved bone grip in the shape of the half-track. The blade was finely curved, dangerously serrated, and so thin it was almost translucent. I smiled appreciatively and handed it back. He gave an odd half smile and placed the knife in a large ladies’ handbag he must have found somewhere, then hung the bag over the crook of his arm.

“Jennifer,” I said, pointing at myself.

“J-ookff,” he said, then pointed at himself and said, “R-ooff.”

“You’re getting it,” I said with a smile, then nodded as he pointed at various things around the campsite and tried to name them. A small part of what had once been Ralph’s brain was attempting to speak through an Australopithecine voice box.

“Hfff t-Ook,” he said, pointing at the half-track. After a while he settled down by himself, practicing pronunciations and eating some beetles he’d collected.

I had noticed with dismay that Perkins’s and Addie’s pod ladders were still down, indicating that they’d not returned during the night. Ignatius’s ladder was also down, so I checked his pod—it was empty. I found a few slime trails and oddly shaped footprints at the base of his pod-pole, but no evidence of Ignatius. It was not until I went to search for a fireberry to cook breakfast that I found him. He was huddled—wedged might be a better word—in one of the wooden rowboats we had seen dangling straight up due to thermo-wizidrical fallout, tethered to earth only by a frayed rope tied to the jetty. Ignatius was alive, awake, and staring at me with a shocked expression.

“Are you okay?” I called.

“No, I am not okay,” he said. “Several large creatures, two small ones, and a slimy thing tried to eat me in the night.”

“That’s an uneventful night in the Empty Quarter,” I said. “Didn’t anyone explain the dangers before you came out here?”

“No, they did not,” said Ignatius in an aggrieved tone. “They said this experience would be like the most amazing and enjoyable danger-fest known to man.”

“And—?”

“They said it would be like it—not actually it. You all must be stark staring bonkers to want to be out here. I’m going home.”

“Fair enough,” I said, glad to be rid of him. “You can pick up a G’mooh when we get to Llangurig tonight.”

“I’m not going a step farther. You can call me a G’mooh as soon as you find a pay phone. It can come and get me.”

G’mooh was an acronym for Get Me Out of Here, the universally accepted name for a fast-exit taxi, which guarantees those who have lost their nerve a speedy way out of the empire. The G’mooh drivers are usually battle-damaged ex–tour guides who stop at nothing to return their passengers to safety. It’s expensive, but few haggle.

“Okay,” I said, “if you want to stay out here on your own, but I’d not . . .”

I was distracted by Ralph lolloping up the jetty; when he reached us, he stared up at Ignatius huddling in the vertically moored boat.

“Go away, monkey boy,” said Ignatius. “Go on, shoo.”

But Ralph did not shoo, and instead flicked the taut rope that anchored the rowboat with an inquisitive forefinger. He looked up at Ignatius. “No mmnk . . . boy.”

“What did he say?” asked Ignatius.

“I think he said he wasn’t a monkey boy.”

Ignatius laughed. “Well he is—that much is obvious—and a nasty piece of genetic throwback to boot.”

Ralph frowned, rummaged in his handbag, and brought out the razor-sharp flint knife. Without pausing, he sliced cleanly through the rope that tethered Ignatius to the ground. The rowboat, with Ignatius in it, began to rise gently in the morning air.

“Ralph!” yelled Ignatius, suddenly panicking. “What in—!”

“Wait there!” I said. “I’ll throw you a line!”

I ran to the half-track and rummaged in the toolbox for a length of cord. By the time I found one, Ignatius was about twenty feet above me, drifting east. I tied a wrench to the end of the line and readied myself to throw it to him.

“It’s okay!” he yelled excitedly. “The wind is taking me toward the border. Cancel the taxi; I’ll be home and safe in an hour or two!”

“Hang on, Ignatius!” I had seen civilians try to use magic for their own ends enough times to know it could go horribly wrong. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”

“Nonsense!” called Ignatius happily. “By the time the magic wears off, I’ll be home and dry.”

“Wait!”

But I was too late. The rowboat was drifting faster as the breeze caught it, even bumping against Curtis’s pod-pole as it went past. Curtis popped his head out to see what was going on, and was surprised to see Ignatius drifting by.

“I’m off for home,” said Ignatius. “Join me?”

Curtis said he wouldn’t but wished him well; they agreed to meet up at a bar in London sometime when all of this was over. Their voices roused the princess and Wilson, who also wished Ignatius well but probably, like me, were fed up with him. The rowboat rose until it met its maximum levitation of about six hundred feet, and continued to drift in the direction of the Cambrian border.

Now that everyone was awake, they came down their pod-poles. The fog had dispersed and the risk of Hotax attack lessened, so we all washed in the lake while we swapped notes about the night’s noises, terrors, and close calls, then sat down to a breakfast of coffee and bacon and eggs. By the time we finished, Ignatius and his rowboat were a distant dot in the morning sky.

“I’ve just had a thought,” said the princess. “I mean, aren’t there anti-aircraft batteries along the border?”

“That’s just for aircraft coming in,” said Wilson. “They’d have to be either crazy or vindictive to shoot at anyone leaving. Wouldn’t they?”

And as if to prove that Emperor Tharv’s orders to his military were just that—crazy and vindictive—we saw puffs of anti-aircraft fire explode around the small dot. It was a slow-moving target, and Ignatius didn’t stand a chance. There was a large explosion, and we saw a few bits fall to earth, trailing smoke.

“That was bad luck,” remarked Curtis without a shred of compassion. “Should have stuck with us—or taken a parachute.”

“I trained in the navy,” said Wilson, “and the first thing you learn is that parachutes are not generally required while boating.”

“Ook-ook-ook,” said Ralph, with a slight curling of the lip that I took to be an early-hominid smile.

“Do you think Ralph planned all that?” asked the princess.

“I’m not sure Australopithecines can plan,” I said, “but you never know.”

As soon as we had given Ignatius a minute’s silence as a vague sort of respect, I said, “Okay. This is where we are: Addie went to rescue Perkins last night and told me that if she didn’t return, she was dead. It’s now nine o’clock. I say we wait until midday before assuming the worst. After that, we head off toward Llangurig. Any objections?”

There weren’t, of course, and we settled down to wait.