The Garbage Chronicles

by Brian Herbert

  * * *

  Namaba was just completing her recharge when she noticed Rebo loping toward them from uptrail.

  “You’ve got to see this,” Rebo shouted. “It’s just up the trail.”

  “What’s up the trail?” Namaba asked, handing the folding shovel and barbed cord to Javik.

  “You’ve got to see it,” Rebo said.

  “You’re not making any sense,” Javik said.

  Prince Pineapple stirred from his nap and sat up. “What’s all the commotion?” he asked.

  “Come with me,” Rebo said, almost too excited to speak. He pulled at Javik’s arm.

  “All right, all right,” Javik said. He secured the nutrient kit to his belt.

  “Wait,” Prince Pineapple said, rising to his feet. “I need a recharge.”

  “Hurry,” Rebo said. “No one will believe this.”

  Javik tossed the nutrient kit to Prince Pineapple. “Make it quick, Prince.”

  While Prince Pineapple recharged, Javik mentoed the lean-to and pads. With a crisp snap, they popped back into the tiny yellow cube. Javik replaced the cube in a side pocket of his survival pack. Seeing an empty bio bar wrapper in the pack, he tossed it out on the meadow.

  After Prince Pineapple was allowed an abbreviated recharge, they all went with Rebo. The meadow sweltered in the afternoon heat of three Corkian suns. Soon Javik was perspiring again. Waves of hot air danced ahead of them, blurring features on the white cliff.

  At the rear, Prince Pineapple complained about the shortness of his recharge. His bag of junk clattered as he walked.

  Rebo ran ahead, then waved and called for the others to hurry.

  “Rebo’s gone mad,” Javik said. “His brain is sun-baked.”

  “I’ve never seen him like this,” Namaba said.

  “We’d better catch him,” Javik said. “And make him lie down in the . . . ” Javik stopped in mid-sentence. Rebo had disappeared!

  “Where’d he go?” Namaba asked.

  “Magic!” Prince Pineapple said.

  They heard Rebo’s voice now, but could not see him. It seemed to come from the trail just ahead. But the meadow was perfectly flat here, with no places that might conceal Rebo’s large body.

  “Rebo!” Namaba shouted. “Where are you?”

  “A little ways up the trail. Keep going.”

  They walked cautiously, following Javik. He took each step with care, testing the ground before committing the weight of his body.

  “There is magic in this meadow,” Prince Pineapple said.

  “Hey!” Namaba said, running into Javik’s back.

  He had stopped suddenly in front of her. “My foot!” Javik said. “Look at it!”

  Namaba saw the back half of his foot. But the front was gone. When Javik pulled his foot back, she saw it in its entirety.

  “An invisible barrier,” Javik said. He reached back and took Prince Pineapple’s bag of junk. While the prince protested, Javik threw the bag forward. It disappeared, landing somewhere with a loud clatter.

  “Quit throwing things at me,” Rebo said, still unseen. “That darn near hit me!”

  Javik took a deep breath and stuck his face through. There was no physical sensation at all. He saw Rebo standing on a piece of white shale at the base of a towering cliff. Above, the sheer face of the escarpment was profiled against a deep blue sky. The scene was so awesome and so surprising that Javik felt a shortness of breath.

  “Don’t hold back,” Rebo said.

  Javik stepped through, followed by the others. A series of “oohs,” “aahs,” and “wows” followed,

  “I told you it was magic,” Prince Pineapple said. He found his sack of trash and swung it noisily over one shoulder.

  “We were getting close to this cliff all day,” Rebo said, “but didn’t know it.” He touched a triangular dot pattern on the cliff at his side, then pointed to Javik’s left, where a trail ran between the cliff and the edge of the meadow. “More dots that way,” Rebo said.

  “We might have given up and turned back,” Javik said, scratching his head. “And it was here all the time.”

  “What do you think, Prince?” Rebo asked. “Did the magicians create that illusion, or was it Lord Abercrombie?”

  “I don’t know,” Prince Pineapple said. His black button eyes squinted as he stared up the face of the cliff.

  “How far up the trail did you go, Rebo?” Namaba asked. The yellow and black polka-dotted ribbon fell from her mane and fluttered away in the wind, unnoticed by her or the others.

  “Not far,” Rebo said, “Moha should be ahead, whatever that is.”

  “Moha,” Prince Pineapple said, feeling a chill run down his back. “Something is coming back to me. A Moha is spoken of in one of our epics. It is a fearsome thing—a terrible monster.”

  “It would have been nice to know this earlier,” Javik said, staring at the prince with his hands on his hips. “Don’t suppose we have much choice now, though. No way to cross that bog again.”

  “What sort of monster is it?” Namaba asked.

  “I don’t know,” Prince Pineapple said. “Didn’t pay much attention to epics in school. It destroyed a Fruit army, I think.”

  “It is best not to hesitate,” Rebo said, recalling his gang warfare days. “Sometimes the thought of a thing can be more terrifying than the reality.”

  They set out along the trail at the base of the cliff, looking for three-dot markings.

  With the decision to commit himself, Lord Abercrombie changed rapidly. His fleshy half disappeared entirely. His mind became more expansive, capable of deeper, more significant thought. He was the planet Cork now, more than ever before. His face became the face of the planet that was exposed to the heavens.

  With his visual sensors, he looked out upon the grays and blacks of night on one side of Cork. On the other side, he observed varying shades of color, from sky blues to the oranges, reds, and yellows of dawn and sunset. He told himself he was thinking about important things. Cosmic things.

  I have a comparatively large planet, he thought. Some are bigger than mine, but most are smaller. Earth is smaller!

  The comparison with Earth made him happy, for it seemed to him that he was more important now than Uncle Rosy or any other Earthian. It was a territorial thing: The guy with the most turf was superior.

  Maybe this can be a stepping stone to something greater, he thought, A method of conquering other worlds could occur to me.

  He rubbed the plates of two continents together to relieve an itch. It was an automatic movement, and it surprised him.

  Hmm, he thought. Think I’ll try that again. He rubbed the continents together again in just the same way.

  I’ll bet I can wipe out Brother Carrot now, he thought. And Prince Pineapple, too! I might have done it earlier, if I hadn’t been afraid to commit myself.

  But this prospect did not appeal to him very much. It seemed beneath him, a trapping of his former self. Besides, with Abercrombie soil-immersed, the chamber entrance leading down from the surface of the planet was sealed.

  A major planet does not concern itself with fleas, he thought.

  So Lord Abercrombie concentrated on more important matters. On the night side of his planet, he saw deep space, with more stars and bright planets than all the grains of sand in his deserts. He wondered who out there might be plotting at that very moment to invade his territory via the Dimensional Tunnel.

  I can’t seal the damned thing, he thought. Anyone entering the Dimensional Tunnel from another planet could land on my doorstep. Uninvited. Well, go ahead and try. I’ll give you one hell of a fight.

  His paranoia raged anew, but on a much larger scale than before. He recalled having laughed at the foolishness of his own fears when he thought he had seen the Big Picture. His laughter roared across the surface of the planet then. But nothing seemed at all funny to him anymore.

  A cloud of silver meteorites passed near Cork on the dark side, and Lord Abercrombie could see
that they were going to miss him by a good fifty thousand kilometers.

  This way he thought, wanting more bulk for his surface.

  But the meteorites went on their inconsiderate way, leaving a space trail of sparkling silver embers.

  When the embers had died out, a flash of orange lit up the blackness of space. Something was approaching at high speed, growing larger and more brilliant with each passing second. Lord Abercrombie’s joy overflowed, like the anticipation of a spider about to ensnare a tasty fly. It was a large orange ball, bearing down on him.

  Nice meteor, he thought. Come a little closer.

  Seconds later, Lord Abercrombie blinked his visual sensors. Wait, he thought. It’s getting too big. My God! It’s huge!

  He began to wonder who was ensnaring whom.

  The orange fireball became so bright that Lord Abercrombie could not keep his visual sensors open. At the last moment the fireball turned and went the other way. When Abercrombie next looked, through slit-wide sensors, he saw a great orange comet, with a long, translucent tail that stretched across the sky in a graceful, orange thread of light.

  The comet swung around to Abercrombie’s daylight side and headed toward him again. Again he was forced to close his visual sensors in the brightness. Abercrombie felt the comet sear through his atmosphere. He smelled sulfur and waited for the impact. Strangely, he felt no heat on his surface.

  Sidney the comet swooped over Bottomless Bog, then returned and hovered there. The cadmium yellow outline of a face appeared across his flaming orange nucleus. Sidney smiled gently.

  Be patient, Wizzy, he thought, looking down on the bog tenderly. A million years is but a moment. You’ II be free someday, my son. Then you’ll do wondrous things.

  Lord Abercrombie tried to open all his visual sensors, but repeatedly was blinded by the brightness of the Great Comet. The comet irritated him. It hovered in his face like a giant, fat mosquito, and he had no arms with which to swat it.

  Lord Abercrombie searched his surface until he found a bank of visual sensors he could keep open. As chance would have it, these sensors were on decaying plants floating just beneath the surface of Bottomless Bog. He peered through the murky water of the bog, using the water as a fleshcarrier uses sunglasses.

  He saw the smile on the face of the comet now, and it seemed to be smiling directly at the sensors he had open. It knows I can’t do anything, Abercrombie thought. It’s laughing at me.

  Lord Abercrombie created a hurricane. It was quite a powerful hurricane, and it broadsided the comet, bringing with it a gathering of cumulonimbus clouds. This did not bother the intruder at all. The comet continued to smile.

  It thinks it’s superior to me, Abercrombie thought, fuming. It’s prettier, more mobile.

  Now Abercrombie built formations of towering, anvil-topped clouds around the sides of the comet. Bolts of lightning lanced into the comet. Thunder roared across the sky. Abercrombie attacked until he felt fatigue. Again, this did not faze the comet.

  It must have a weakness, the frustrated planet thought. But what could it be?

  Lord Abercrombie considered letting loose a torrential downpour on the comet. But he felt rock weary, and the thought of such an attack seemed ludicrous to him. The fireball was so immense that only part of it was in the planet’s atmosphere; much of it extended into deep space.

  Just before the appearance of the comet, Prince Pineapple insisted on another recharge. The charge he had received earlier that afternoon had been short because of all the excitement generated by Rebo. It needed augmentation, and he selected a spot along the trail at the base of the white cliff.

  Prince Pineapple closed his eyes and went into a trance during his recharge, as he was wont to do. It was at the height of this ecstasy that the Great Comet appeared in the sky over this side of the planet.

  When the sky flashed orange, Javik and the Moravians covered their eyes and dove for the ground. Namaba cried out that the sky was on fire.

  “I don’t think so,” Javik said, unable to look. “My guess is that it’s a comet or a big meteor. And it’s awfully close.”

  They heard the pounding of thunder in the distance and wondered if this was the end for them.

  Lord Abercrombie wanted the minerals, gases, and other materials in the comet. With them he would be infinitely larger, infinitely more powerful. A force to be respected in the universe.

  I must move out of orbit, he thought, if I’m going to make any sort of a showing in battle. Why isn’t the comet attacking? Is it teasing me?

  Lord Abercrombie tried to move his planet out of oibit. “Uuumph!” he grunted.

  Cork did not budge.

  Now that would really be something, he thought. To move around wherever I want, whenever I want.

  The thought of this so appealed to him that he tried again. Over and over he tried. But Lord Abercrombie did not budge one centimeter out of orbit.

  Maybe I just need to try a little harder, he thought.

  So he concentrated every bit of energy he had. The nutrients on Cork’s surface began flowing to his core as Lord Aber-crombie called upon diem for support.

  These nutrients are mine, he thought. No more sharing them with fleas on my surface!

  Sidney the comet focused his attention on the meadow of scarlet flowers. He saw Javik covering his eyes and prone on the ground at the other end of the meadow, at the base of the white cliff.

  My lifelong friend, Sidney thought. May good fortune grace your steps.

  It troubled Sidney that Javik would have to die comparatively soon, limited as he was by the frailties of flesh. Sidney wished he could offer Javik the longer life of a comet or perhaps a small star so that they might spend more time together.

  But it was only a passing thought, one of those space dreams that magical comets are known to have. Sidney looked back down at Bottomless Bog.

  Lord Abercrombie felt the nutrients of living forms surge into his core. He was absorbing entire flowers, small trees, and shrubs, along with many Fruits and Vegetables who were recharging at that moment. Many of the hardier flowers on the planet held out against his gluttony, as did most of the large plants.

  With one foot in the ground, Prince Pineapple was at the height of his recharge. It was that euphoric point where all the juices from the soil flowed at full force through his pineapple veins. With his eyes closed, he leaned back on both elbows and savored the moment.

  Then he screamed. “Eeeeah! Eeeeah!” The skin on his exposed foot stretched nearly to the breaking point. Something powerful was pulling at it! He tried to open his eyes, but a blinding fire across the sky prevented it.

  “Help!” Prince Pineapple shouted. “For God’s sake, hurry!”

  Javik followed the sound and crawled to Prince Pineapple’s side. “What’s wrong?” Javik asked. Shielding his eyes, he squinted to look at the prince. A cluster of flowers within Javik’s narrow range of vision disappeared into the ground with a loud fwwwp-pop suction noise. He heard the pops of suction all around and saw the ground color lighten.

  Prince Pineapple did not respond. He was unconscious. But his bare foot was moving sporadically, jerking like a bodily limb consumed with the throes of death.

  I’ve got to get him out of there, Javik thought.

  Flowers were disappearing beneath the surface at a furious pace now, leaving all the ground that Javik could see denuded.

  Javik pulled on Prince Pineapple’s arms. Then he realized that his hands were stuck to the prince. He could not pull them free and could not get Prince Pineapple out of the hole.

  “It’s got me too!” Javik yelled. “Knock me away, somebody! Use that survival pack I left on the rock!”

  Since Namaba was closest, she felt with her eyes closed until she found the pack. Then she felt Rebo’s firm grip on her arm.

  “This is my duty,” Rebo said. He took the pack and crawled rapidly over to Javik. Keeping his eyes closed, he swung the pack until it struck Javik.

  “Harder
!” Javik screamed.

  Rebo gave the survival pack a mighty swing, knocking Javik free. Prince Pineapple remained stuck to Javik, so he too was knocked away from the hole.

  “It’s . . . the end of the world,” Prince Pineapple said, rolling on the ground and moaning. He was short of breath.

  “I think we’re okay,” Javik said, catching his breath. “If that’s the comet, it’s probably over the bog where Wizzy was lost.”

  They spoke without opening their eyes, like people in a dark room.

  “You mean it’s Wizzy’s dad?” Namaba asked. She squeezed Javik’s hand.

  “That’s what I’m thinkin’,” Javik said.

  “I was almost recharged,” Prince Pineapple said after a while, beginning to breathe regularly. “Something started pulling on my foot… sucking on it. I might have been pulled underground.”

  “We’re even now, Rebo,” Javik said. “You’re no longer indebted to me.”

  “My obligation did not end when I saved you,” Rebo said. “That is not our way. It is a lifelong thing.”

  A furious rhythm came from the meadow now, drowning out all conversation.

  Fwwwp-pop!

  Fwwwp-fwwwp-pop!

  Fwwwpop-da-dee-pop!

  Fwwwp-pop-ditty-pop-ditty-pop-pop-pop!

  In the next instant, the ground rumbled. Then everything fell silent. The sucking sounds stopped, and there seemed to be no life in the vicinity other than their own.

  Lord Abercrombie exploded out of his immersion hole, bouncing off the rock ceiling of the cavern. Dirt flew everywhere.

  His scream echoed through the passageway. “Eeeeah!”

  Abercrombie floated back down in slow motion, supported by a parachute of magical air. His naked body was different now. It still was partly magical and partly fleshy. But now it was a mixture, with splotches of skin next to empty spaces . . . a knuckle here . . . a knee there . . . both thighs . . . two hands but only one arm . . . the top of his skull . . .