by Jay Lake
“Sir pug is my employer, and I owe him loyalty."
“Freshmeat, you don't listen well...” the security wolf began. Elroy spun a left snap kick that landed on the wolf's scrotum. Spinning through the kick, Elroy grabbed the staff as it tumbled from the shocked wolf's thumbed paw, following on to catch the next security wolf across the forearm.
The second wolf screamed as its ulna shattered. Elroy shoved the iron tip of the staff into the second wolf's chest, pushing it back into the banyan, before whacking the groaning first wolf alongside the head to keep it down. He turned to help Wiggles, only to see the pug with his jaws locked on the inner thigh of the third security wolf. That wolf shook Wiggles free and leapt on the pug, just as Elroy brought the staff down with a resounding thwack on the back of the wolf's head, pulling his blow so as not to kill.
Panting with adrenalin and relief, Elroy used the staff to lever the unconscious wolf off Wiggles.
“Sir pug, are you well?” he gasped.
“That bastard son of a beast smashed my phalanges,” screeched Wiggles. “I fear I cannot walk, and more wolves are certain to come from the fore of the train."
It was terribly rare for a human to handle an Animal so, but Elroy scooped up the pug as his own breathing settled to a manageable rhythm. “Then this would be a fine time to remember where a maglev station might be."
He fled into the jungle, carrying the iron-shod staff in one hand and Wiggles in the other. Elroy mumbled a prayer of thanks that he had not maimed or killed the security wolves.
* * * *
They crouched in an understory deadfall on the jungle floor, listening for sounds of pursuit. The old rotted trunk was surrounded by large, flat leaves fallen from above, each the size of a serving platter. The leaves decayed with a gentle sugary smell.
Elroy's fear had been replaced by a rising sense of anger—at the situation, at the wolves, at Wiggles. “By the Cattle of the King, what was that ambush? My masters took my vow not to strike in anger, and already I am in default. I am paying dearly for your wage, sir pug."
“A moment, please,” said Wiggles. “Allow me to collect my thoughts. You do fight very well for a peasant boy from the Texas jungles."
Elroy folded his hands and made a constrained bow within their sheltering greenery. “My spiritual masters practice an aggressively strenuous form of ethics. Now tell me, what brought the security wolves down on us?"
“Flaming Sword,” said Wiggles. “The ones who cast me out. They guard the secrets of the Gardens of Sweet Night."
“The constabulary of your Lord Liasis?"
The pug drew himself to his feet with a groan. “The secret police, perhaps. Ancient tradition holds that a flaming sword bars the gates of the Garden of Eden, namesake of one of the Gardens of Sweet Night."
Elroy examined the staff. “I would expect the secret police to carry the fiercest of weapons."
“Not here, on the surface. It is forbidden by both common sense and the Mutual Contract. They expect no sharp resistance here. They will not make that mistake with us twice."
In the distance they heard the scream of the land train's steam whistle, long blasts in groups of three. Wiggles growled, his ears laid back flat. “They launch the search, as if we were dangerous brigands. Damned canids."
Elroy examined the jungle around them. His mind and body were calm again. “Well, then we must find your maglev station quickly. I presume it is hidden underground, or I would have heard of such a thing before.” Elroy paused, working through his line of reasoning. “A maglev must use a lot of energy, and something that old would not be well shielded. Do you have a means of locating that kind of energy leakage?"
Wiggles looked surprised. “Excellent thinking, friend Elroy. You have been better tutored than I had hoped. I do have something like that, but to my embarrassment against all propriety you must again carry me. My foot paw pains me sorely."
Elroy scooped up the pug. “Show me the way.” He trotted through the green-shadowed depths of the jungle floor, Elroy harboring regrets.
* * * *
“Ware tigers, friend Elroy.” Wiggles’ voice was muffled against Elroy's shoulder.
“Surely you mean wolves?"
“No, I scent felids. Large beasts, not Animals. I understand that Panthera tigris sumatrae have become naturalized here in Texas."
“A wonder to behold, I am sure,” Elroy replied, wondering how Wiggles could scent the difference between a beast and an Animal, “but I am ill equipped to stand off something larger and less foolish than your flaming wolves."
“If a tiger appears, I am confident you will think of something."
This stretch of jungle floor looked much like any other to Elroy, with dangling lianas and scattered deadfalls. Butterflies strayed down from the high canopy, drifting through isolated shafts of green-tinted sunlight.
After a time Elroy voiced his thoughts. “Between the tigers and the wolves, I worry if we will emerge from this jungle intact."
“Regretful you took my pay?"
“No.” Elroy surprised himself. “The wolves attacked without warning, and offered no legal authority. Further, your money earns my way toward starting a family."
“Surely a thought worth a Justiciary penny.” Wiggles gave another of his odd laughs. “Put me down here, please.” He began snuffling around on all fours in a spiraled circle in the loam, limping to favor in his left foot paw.
“Here.” Wiggles’ voice carried from behind another banyan tree. “Bring that stick you have been carrying."
Elroy stepped around the tree to see Wiggles digging into the loam, scattering leaf mold and dirt behind him. He could hear Wiggles’ thumbed paws scraped on something solid. The pug backed out of the hole, then stared up at Elroy. Elroy noticed the flowered waistcoat was as clean as it had been when he first met Wiggles—a sign of smart matter, although Elroy had never actually encountered the stuff.
“Open it,” suggested Wiggles.
Elroy peered into the hole. A metal hatch cover lay exposed about eight inches below the jungle floor, a large handle inset within a rounded recess. Elroy reached down with the iron-shod staff, levering it against the handle. He leaned with all his strength.
The handle did not budge.
“Harder,” snapped Wiggles. Elroy noticed the pug's hackles were rising. He thought he could hear the distant echo of the steam whistle.
Elroy leaned against the staff, pulling with his entire weight, until his feet almost left the ground as the staff bent back.
The roar of a tiger startled him greatly.
The hatch handle screeched as it slid across the rounded recess. Elroy and the staff collapsed on Wiggles’ dirt pile as Wiggles bounded to the sprung hatch and tugged at it with his thumbed paws.
The tiger roared again.
Elroy grabbed the hatch, pulling it wide open as Wiggles dove down the hole. Elroy tossed the staff after Wiggles and swung himself into the hole to the sound of a startled yelp from below. As he pulled the hatch cover closed, he saw the green eyes and tufted face of a Sumatran tiger peering in at him.
Wiggles’ encouraging words echoed up from the darkness below. “Don't worry. It's the smallest species of tiger in the world."
* * * *
A Magnetic Journey of Conscience to Flower Mound
They stood in a dimly lit hall, high-ceilinged and quite large. The echoes of Elroy's feet scuffling on cracked tile carried some distance. The whole area had a musty, oily smell, overlaid with the cool damp common to subterranean spaces. Vague reddish light from hidden sources obscured much more than it revealed.
Wiggles thumped his tail. “Excellent."
“Yes?"
“This was the Denton station. It is long out of commission as there is no town here anymore. The line still runs through it straight to our destination, however. I have already summoned a service car for a trip to Flower Mound, which you call New Dallas."
“So this is the maglev,” whispered Elroy.
<
br /> “Well, the station anyway. You will see the train soon enough."
They waited on a concrete bench in the silent dimness. Wiggles whimpered periodically from the pain in his paw. After a while Elroy realized their mistake.
“What will happen when the wolves discover the hatch?"
“First they will discover the tiger, I suspect.” The pug snorted. “But in any case the dirt will have taken care of things by now. It isn't very bright, but it knows its job."
“The dirt?” Elroy realized Wiggles was an absolute oracle of lost technology. “Was it nanotechnology?"
“Exactly. Moderately intelligent nanodirt. It is self-restoring. That's what I looked for. We use it in the Gardens of Sweet Night. I have a detector sensitive to its signature."
When the maglev service car finally arrived, its running lights brightened the station. Elroy saw tall vaulted arches, cracked murals on the wall, and a row of long-shuttered shops. Tiny pairs of eyes gleamed in the shadows by the tunnel mouth.
The service car itself was an almost featureless polished wedge much different the steam-driven iron trains that Elroy had seen all his life, quiet as a stone. Elroy added disappointment to that day's catalog of emotions.
* * * *
“Flower Mound.” Wiggles stretched, shaking out his fur while licking his nose. “The lotus is a flower of great significance, symbolizing purity and divinity. These days people call this place New Dallas, but it is built on a most spiritual foundation."
“It is only New Dallas, sir pug, not the Vatican Aresian."
They stood in the Flower Mound maglev station. Similar in design to the abandoned Denton station, it was well lit, dressed stone walls bearing sculpted metal light fixtures. A tile mosaic floor supported scattered travelers seated on concrete benches or reading wall posters. The shops here were long-shuttered, too.
Elroy had left the iron-shod staff in the service car, as it seemed too conspicuous to carry through the station. He grumbled. “I walked all the way to the Glass Mountains while this world beneath could have carried me in comfort."
“But you were free every step of the way, yes?"
More free then than he was now, Elroy realized. “Are we much closer to the Gardens?"
“We are until the Flaming Sword picks up our trail,” said Wiggles darkly. “Those wolves had no reason to carry nanosensors out there, but it won't take them long to reason out where we went. We must move onward and upward. Support me by clasping my thumbed paw, please. It would be a scandal for me to be seen riding in your arms."
Elroy extended a downward hand. “First, I suppose, we must find a way out of this station. Surely they do not employ a secret ladder here?"
* * * *
“I am embarrassed to say that I feel enslaved by your wages.” Elroy clutched the two Justies the pug had just given him, filled with a sense that he had surrendered control of his fate.
Wiggles smiled. “Freedom. An ideal of some concern to you. Consider that the meanest felon digging a ditch in restitution to his lord is a free man. He may place his mattock thusly or so at his own choice, bend or stand as he wishes."
Elroy leapt to the flaw in Wiggles’ proposition. “Yet he is in chains, undeniably bound, his actions constrained."
“Those chains are of his choosing,” said Wiggles. “The felon chose his crime, with the ditch as consequence. When I offered you service, you chose to join me. The Justiciary pennies in your hand and the pangs in your conscience are consequences. You are of course at liberty to resume your original journey."
They sat on a bench in the Gamelan Garden, a park in the center of New Dallas, just off Simmons Road. Wiggles had demanded rest in a cultivated park. He had declared Gamelan with its orchids and fleshy vines and vast bromeliads the palest imitation of the Gardens of Sweet Night, but still balm for his injured soul.
Elroy shook his head, studying the coins in his hand. “I will stay.” He did not want to admit it, but Elroy was becoming fond of Wiggles.
“Caring is a surrender of freedom. You may see that I am trapped by my love of the Gardens, that this lovely Odontoglossum hortensiae so reminds me of.” The pug sniffed at a pale, fleshy flower, his tail wagging. “Flowers are the mothers of insects, you know."
“Did they name it Flower Mound for the orchids that grew here?"
“Goodness, no.” Wiggles laughed, his tail slapping the bench. “In those bygone days, what grew here were dryland plants such as prairie grasses, pecans and mesquite."
At Elroy's puzzled look, Wiggles added, “You know. Prosopis glandulosa. A nitrogen-fixer that anchored the boundaries of prairie.” The pug rubbed his left foot paw with a thumbed paw. “My foot is sore hurt, friend Elroy."
* * * *
Speaking the Language of the Sky
They stood in a line at the base of the mooring mast that towered above them, a slender blade of white metalloceramic stabbing into the sky toward the great bulk of the airship Child of Crisis. Elroy had seen dirigibles cruising above the trees all his life, as the usual airway from New Dallas to Monterey ran over Pilot Knob. He had never been close to one.
Elroy craned his neck to study the gondola at the bottom of the airship. It was doubtless quite large, but still appeared miniscule against the bulk of the gasbag. “I've never ridden the air before."
“To do so down here is of no comparison to the Gardens of Sweet Night."
“My experiences pale next to yours, sir pug,” Elroy snapped, “but leave me the joy of what little I have to call my own."
“Peace, friend Elroy.” Wiggles squeezed Elroy's hand, his small thumbed paw dry and stiff. “I did not mean to offend."
“Next load! Group six!” A red-faced young woman, her skin much paler than Elroy's woody brown complexion, shouted from the boarding doors at the base of the mast.
Wiggles checked his chits. “Let's go.” The two of them shuffled through the hatch on to a small elevator with a number of other passengers. Behind them, Elroy saw the line of waiting people and Animals through the closing hatch.
The elevator hummed almost below audibility. Wiggles had warned Elroy about the sensation of being pushed down while the little car climbed the inside of the mooring mast. “I wish there were windows,” Elroy whispered.
The car suddenly lurched, shaking in its rise. From the conductor's shocked gasp, Elroy gathered this was not part of the usual ride. They stopped for a moment, then began moving up again.
A bulging man with a thick, burred Mississippian accent sounded panicky. “And what would that have been?"
The conductor picked up a small handset from her control panel and listened. The car shuddered upward, much less smooth in its motion than before. Elroy could hear a deep groaning through the walls of the elevator.
They staggered to a stop and the doors hissed open to reveal a tiled floor about waist high to Elroy. The conductor dropped her handset. “There is a problem down below. The airship is casting off for its own protection. Please remain calm and stay in the elevator car."
“Flaming Sword,” whispered Elroy. If they stayed in the elevator, the wolves would come for them, endangering the other passengers. He had to get away, to protect himself and everyone else. Elroy scooped Wiggles up in his arms like a beast and pushed toward the open doors.
“Here there, boy.” The man with the Mississippian accent grabbed Elroy's arm. Elroy spun, swinging his elbow into the Mississippian's chest with a prayer for forgiveness. He had no time to reason with the man. Elroy miscalculated his blow and felt ribs crack.
“Moment of Inertia,” Elroy wept through clenched teeth. “May the Little Brothers forgive me.” He hopped one hip up onto the ledge that was the floor outside, and rolled out of the jammed elevator. The conductor plucked at his heel, but he ignored her.
The massive bulk of the Child of Crisis filled the sky above Elroy. Ahead of him it stretched into the distance, the shimmering metallic bulge of the airship's gasbag dropping below his view. The boarding platform at t
he top of the mast was about four meters square, while a slender spire arched up above him to meet a set of lines depending from the airship's nose. A narrow gangway about three meters long led to the open hatch of the gondola underslung along the forward curve of the airship.
Two sailors in crisp blue uniforms were unfastening the gangway from the open door, preparing to drop it loose. Wiggles whimpered as a series of explosions echoed up from the ground below. The platform swayed beneath Elroy's feet. There was no time for thought. He sprinted toward the gangway, screaming, “Wait, wait for us!"
One sailor looked up, the gangway's release chain slack in her hand. The other yanked his chain, causing the right side of the gangway to drop away from the hatch while the chains on the left took its full weight.
Elroy raced over the edge of the boarding platform onto the sagging gangway as the other sailor belatedly released her chain. Elroy pushed off as the gangway fell away, straining into the jump with Wiggles tucked firmly under his left arm. As he fell, Elroy reached forward with his right. It was like running the trees in his home jungle, only far more deadly.
The gangway tumbled away beneath his feet to swing from the boarding platform, revealing perhaps a hundred meters of empty air between Elroy and the flagged paving stones of the airfield. His fingers missed the hatch coaming, then grasped at the swinging chain as the second sailor hauled it in. Elroy caught the chain, but his body swung forward with the momentum of his jump and smashed against the gondola wall. Wiggles yelped, muffled by his arm.
As Elroy swung back on the chain, spinning over the airfield, he saw the boarding platform falling away from him. He realized the dirigible had cast off and now rose into the sky. People from the elevator were helping the bulky Mississippian on to the platform, while the conductor waved her fist at Elroy. Far below, he could see a fire at the base of the mooring mast, with figures struggling around it.
