“Hey, you stopped us, buddy!” Cal reminded him. “This map you’re hawking. How much is it?”
“Nothing. It’s free,” the map man replied. Before he’d reached the final word, he was back to watching the palm-sized device.
“Free? Seriously?” Cal spluttered. “Awesome! We’ll take six.”
Loren shot him a sideways look. “Why six?”
“In case we lose five,” Cal said.
“How are we going to lose five maps?” Loren asked, then she remembered who she was dealing with. “Yeah, sure. Let’s take six.”
They waited for the map man to respond. Meanwhile, several dozen Ziggy Stardust-era David Bowies swerved around them and walked on by.
“Hmm?” asked the map man, after a while.
“Jesus, what the fonk is that thing? What are you looking at?” Cal asked, reaching for the device.
The man whipped it away, his face twisting in rage. “Don’t touch it!” he hissed, and Cal caught a glimpse of movement on a little round screen.
Cal held his hands up to calm the situation. On his shoulder, Splurt rippled.
“No! Still no with the head thing,” Cal warned, shooting the blob a stern look.
“Here, take the maps,” yelled the map man. “Take all of them!”
A bundle of papers were thrust against Cal’s chest. “Take them! Now you can be the map man!”
“What? No, I don’t want to be the map man,” Cal said. He shot Loren a pleading look. “Don’t let me be the map man.”
His protestations went unheeded. The (now former) map man’s eyes had drifted back to his screen, and his expression had slackened off to the point of being almost completely vacant.
“Take them all,” he mumbled. Then, leaving Cal with the maps, he shuffled off and was soon carried along by the passing crowds.
“What a weird guy,” Loren remarked.
“Yeah, we map men are a quirky bunch,” said Cal, unfolding one of the maps. “I mean, who the fonk has a round TV? Why is that a thing?”
“Why wouldn’t it be a thing?” Loren asked.
“Because we see in rectangles,” said Cal, smiling just a smidge too patronizingly for Loren’s liking. He snorted. “I mean, it’s not like our eyes see things as…”
He looked around them, his eyes rotating in their sockets. After a few seconds of this, they both widened in surprise. “Holy shizz… This changes everything,” he whispered.
“Cal,” said Loren.
“Huh?”
She pointed to the bundle in his hands. “The map.”
“Oh! Right. Yes. Sorry.”
He stole another wide-eyed look at the city around them, then opened up the map.
Cal spent the next few seconds solemnly regarding the page.
He turned it over and checked the back.
“Blank,” he sighed.
“What do you mean?” asked Loren, leaning in.
“I mean it’s blank.”
Sure enough, Loren saw that Cal was holding a rectangle of featureless black paper. “Did you check the other side?”
“This is the other side,” Cal said. He flipped it back. “That’s the first side.”
“There’s nothing on it,” Loren pointed out.
“I’m aware there’s nothing on it,” said Cal. “That’s what I said. It’s blank.”
He was about to fold the map up again and check one of the others when a pale green light illuminated just below the surface of the paper.
“Wait… Hold up. Something’s happening,” he said.
The light brightened. Another light appeared beside it. Then a few more. At first, Cal thought they would form the outline of the city. The terrible realization of what was actually happening hit him just a fraction of a second too late for him to put a stop to it.
“Hey there, pardner!” said the smiling face that now filled the page. “I’m Perko, your friendly animated assistant! Where would you like to go today?”
“Kill me,” Cal sobbed.
“You asked for… Suicide Booths!” chirped Perko. “Is this correct?”
Screwing up the page, Cal tossed it into the air, then kicked it on the way down. He and Loren watched as it went sailing above the pedestrians, before becoming impaled on a particularly well-gelled head of spiky hair.
“Fonk it,” Cal said, tossing the rest of the maps over his shoulder. “We’ll figure it out.”
Twelve
An hour later, Cal and Loren returned to the ship to find an alarm blaring and smoke billowing along the corridor. They also found Mech stomping out the last remnants of a fire in the kitchen.
“What the hell happened?” Cal demanded, as Mech frantically extinguished the last of the flames with a giant metal foot. “What did you do?”
“This wasn’t me!” Mech barked.
“Kevin? What happened?” asked Loren.
“I’m afraid I don’t really know, ma’am,” Kevin said. “I was trying to teach Mistresses Mizette and Tyrra math, when things went rather… awry.”
“Awry?” said Loren. “In what way?”
“In an ‘everything caught fire’ kind of a way, ma’am,” Kevin said.
“That sounds awry, all right,” Cal confirmed.
“It was most unexpected, sir. Everything had been going so smoothly until that point.”
“Until the point that everything spontaneously caught on fire?” asked Cal.
“Precisely, sir.”
Cal and Loren looked Mech up and down. His lower half, like most of the kitchen, was blackened with soot, and his face was all knotted up in anger. One of his feet glowed faintly red where it had been standing too long in the flames.
“You, uh, you know we have a fire extinguisher, right?” said Cal.
Mech’s jaws ground together. “What?”
“We have a fire extinguisher. It’s literally right there on the wall.”
Mech’s eyes very slowly followed Cal’s finger.
“No,” he grunted, after spending quite a long time staring at the bright red cylinder fixed to the wall beside the replicator. “I did not know we had a fire extinguisher.”
“Loren made us get one,” Cal explained. He put an arm around her shoulder and squeezed. “She’s so safety conscious!”
“You couldn’t have fonking told me?” said Mech.
“I mean, it’s bright red, we screwed it to the wall in a prominent position and it has ‘Fire Extinguisher’ written on it in big letters,” Cal replied. “So, I didn’t think we really had to… But sure. Make this our fault, if it helps you feel better.”
He gave Loren a final squeeze, then directed his attention back to the ceiling. “Are Miz and Tyrra OK?”
“Yes, sir. They are both fine. They ran out around the time the fire started, and are taking cover in Mistress Mizette’s room.”
Cal’s brow furrowed. “Taking cover? That doesn’t sound like them.”
“Wait, Kevin,” Loren began. “When you say they ran out around the time the fire started, was it before or after?”
Kevin’s reply came hesitantly. “I’m not… I’m not really sure, ma’am. I was rather caught up trying to break down the mathematical formulae involved in faster than light travel, and had come across rather an interesting problem.”
“What kind of problem?” asked Mech.
“Well, I ascertained that it’s impossible. Faster than light travel, I mean. It’s completely preposterous. It can’t be done,” Kevin said. “This led me to conclude that none of this is real, and that we’re living in a simulation created by some higher intelligence that…”
He fell silent for a moment.
“Wait, no. I forgot to carry a six,” he said. “Everything’s fine.”
Cal puffed out his cheeks. “Well, we sure dodged a bullet there.”
“Anyway, sir, I was working through the problem, pointing out some of the more fascinating aspects of string theory when everything caught fire and they ran away. It was most peculiar.”
“Did they say anything?” Cal asked.
“Before or after they left, sir?”
“Well… before. Obviously before.”
“Not really, sir. Mistress Mizette did request that I open the door a few times.”
“Wait, what do you mean?” Cal pressed.
“Well, I’d invested rather a lot of effort in putting that presentation together, sir,” Kevin told him. “And I felt it only fair that everyone stuck around and listened until it was finished.”
Cal, Loren, and Mech exchanged glances. Splurt, meanwhile, watched protectively over Loren.
“What did Miz say exactly?” asked Mech.
“I believe it was something along the lines of… ‘Kevin, open the door, or I swear I will set this place on fire.’”
Cal nodded. “Right. And then everything caught fire a moment later?”
Kevin let out a gasp. “Wait! You don’t think…? No! You don’t think Mistress Mizette had something to do with this?”
Cal sighed and jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. “I’ll go talk to her,” he said. “You guys do what you can to clean up in here.”
“What? Why the fonk should we clean up?” Mech barked, as Splurt hopped from Cal’s shoulder onto Loren’s. “Miz should be the one who cleans this shizz up. She made the mess.”
Cal patted him on the arm. “Yeah, good luck with that,” he said. “You want to be the one to tell her?”
Mech’s fingers bunched into fists. He muttered quietly, then uncurled them again.
“Fine. We’ll clean up. But I ain’t happy about it.”
“Your dissatisfaction is noted,” said Cal. He made a show of scribbling something in a small notepad cupped in his hand, then leaned closer to Loren and whispered, “Look. There’s nothing here. I’m just pretending to write it down,” just loud enough for Mech to hear.
“I hate you, man,” Mech said to Cal’s back, as Cal turned on his heels and left the kitchen.
“Noted,” said Cal, scribbling on his imaginary pad again. “And look, I’m even underlining it.”
Most of the smoke that had been filling the corridor had now drifted out through the open hatch at the back of the ship. A series of extractor fans had gobbled up the rest of it, and there was only the faint tang of charcoal in the air as Cal made his way back along the corridor to Mizette’s room.
He was about to knock when the door slid open, revealing a petulant-looking Miz, and an only marginally less petulant looking Tyrra. Miz was standing very close, and Cal was forced to lean back so he could meet her eye.
“Like, it wasn’t even our fault,” Miz said, before Cal could say anything.
“It’s—”
“He was, like, holding us hostage, or whatever.”
“Yeah, but—”
“I totally warned him what would happen if he didn’t let us out.”
“No, I know—”
“So, don’t even try to blame this on us. It’s all Kevin’s fault.”
“Well, I mean—”
The door slid closed between them.
A moment later, it opened again.
“Oh, and math is so lame.”
The door slid closed again. Cal stood in silence, feeling like a boxer who’d just taken a flurry of unexpected punches to the head.
“Well, that told them, sir,” Kevin remarked.
“I think they’ve learned their lesson,” said Cal. He leaned closer to the door and raised his voice. “I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed.”
“Ugh! Whatever,” came the reply.
Cal straightened, looked the door up and down, and nodded. “Yeah. I think they learned their lesson.”
The door opened again as he started to turn away. Mizette poked her head out, darted her eyes in both directions along the corridor, then lowered her voice.
“So, like, is it serious?”
“The fire? It could’ve been serious.”
“No. Not the fire. You know what I mean.”
Cal had to confess that contrary to what she might believe, he had no fonking clue what she was on about.
“You. And her. Is it serious?”
Cal half-smiled, caught off-guard. “Seems like an odd time to ask.”
“Is it? Are you going to get, like, married or whatever?”
“Married?” Cal spluttered.
Mizette was staring back at him with absolute sincerity, the door held closed behind her head to stop Tyrra hearing her.
“No!” he said, his voice rising half an octave. “No, of course we’re not going to get married!”
“Oh. So it’s not serious, then?” Miz asked.
“Well, I mean—”
“Not, like, serious serious?”
“Well—”
Miz’s eyes shone, wide and trusting and hopeful. Cal shuffled on the spot, willing the floor to open up beneath him.
“I mean, I guess not,” he said.
The look of relief on her face spurred him on. “Not serious serious, no. It’s just…”
“Fun?” Miz guessed.
“Yes! It’s fun.”
“Not serious?”
“Not serious serious,” Cal confirmed.
“OK,” said Miz. She looked him up and down, slightly salaciously. Behind her, Cal saw her tail wag. “Good to know.”
She stepped back and the door closed between them. Cal waited for a moment in case she opened up to quiz him some more, but then heard the murmur of Miz and Tyrra talking together, and decided his role in the conversation was probably over.
Tiptoeing back along the corridor, Cal peeked around the kitchen doorframe to make sure nobody was watching, then scampered past before he could get roped into helping with the tidy-up.
Once safely by, he made for the bridge, then stopped just inside the doorway.
Liquid spurted ineffectually from a single sprinkler head on the ceiling. There was no pressure to it, and it drizzled fat blobs of water in a dotted vertical line below it like a shower head in a cheap roadside motel. Albeit without the imminent fear of being murdered.
Unfortunately, unimpressive as the spray was, the sprinkler head was positioned directly above Cal’s chair. Water pooled in his seat, going plink-puhplink-plink as the drops continued to fall.
“Well,” Cal sighed, putting his hands on his hips. “Isn’t that just awesome?”
The Grumptch threw himself at the chainlink fence. His leathery palms felt a tingle from the electrical current that surged through the fence, but the thick skin insulated him enough that he was able to hold on. He scrambled up, the fur on his neck standing on end, blood oozing through the cracked shell on his back.
Arms that—according to the news, at least—had torn innocent people limb from limb burned from the effort as he heaved himself up toward the jagged top of the fence, and the assortment of blades and pointy things welded to the frame. This was going to hurt. A lot.
Still, it was better than the alternative.
A Plasma blast scorched a hole through the metal beside him, spurring him on.
“No, no, no, no,” the Grumptch sobbed, heaving himself up toward freedom, toward salvation. Toward a fonking big nail that passed through his palm with a pop, forcing a scream through his jagged piranha-like teeth.
From not too far back in the darkness of the alleyway, he heard the sound of approaching footsteps, and the whine of a weapon charging.
Plasmoid was coming.
Locking his teeth together, the Grumptch kicked and scrabbled up the fence, his skin snagging and tearing as he dragged his weight over the top.
He yanked his hand sharply, and the nail came free with a sickening schlurp. From the other side of the fence, he found himself staring right down the throat of Plasmoid’s cannon as it ignited, and knew there was no time to climb. No time to wait. No time to do anything but kick back from the fence and surrender himself to the arms of fate.
He launched himself backward just as the top of the fence erupted, showering hi
m in fragments of molten-hot metal. He was almost grateful for them as, for a moment, they took his mind off the fall, and the fact that he was about to hit the—
He slammed onto the pockmarked street with enough force to crack the shell on his back. Pain exploded down his spine as all the soft, fleshy areas that were never designed to be uncovered were suddenly exposed to the cold night air.
No time to fix it. No time to lose. No time. No time.
The Grumptch rolled onto his front and, and somehow found the strength to immediately launch himself to his feet. The alleyway was long and narrow, and Plasmoid was an excellent shot. She’d missed him deliberately those last few rounds, he had no doubt about that. It added to the drama. The viewers loved it.
The point was, in this alleyway, she could shoot him any time she wanted, and there was a whole lot of alleyway left before he reached the end.
And what then? He’d lost his Preypad, so he had no maps, no route markers, no idea where he had to go. He’d once seen an episode where someone had dismantled a Hovercam and built a new Preypad from the parts, but the Grumptch wouldn’t have the first clue where to start, even if he could catch one of the drones.
No, brainpower wasn’t really his strong point.
But he was not without his talents.
Throwing himself sideways, the Grumptch smashed through the wooden wall of the building beside him. Cannon-fire flared along the alley as he stumbled into a large rectangular room.
No, not a room. ‘Room’ wasn’t quite accurate. It was a space. It was an area of a building that might, with some work, eventually become a room. The walls and floor were bare and untreated. Wires hung from the ceiling and poked through holes in the skirting.
There was no furniture, or even a suggestion that furniture might feature in the space’s immediate future.
It didn’t have much, but what the not-yet-a-room did have was the one thing the Gruntch had hoped for.
It had a door.
He hobbled for it, leaving a trail of viscous clear fluid that oozed from his broken shell, and a spattering of blood from his many, many assorted wounds.
How long had they been chasing him? Four hours? Five? When had he last stopped to catch his breath? When had he last rested? When had he last done anything but run and hide and fight?
The Hunt for Reduk Topa Page 11
