by neetha Napew
“Bugger the lot o’ you!” The pirate folded his wings over his chest. “Do what you will with me. I’m not frightened of you.”
“Cute.” Cruz forgot about the parrot and turned his attention back to Jon-Tom. “You, I’m not so sure you’re cute. More like a problem.”
“Look, let’s just forget about the trained leopard and I’ll let bygones be bygones, okay? I didn’t know this was your house and I’ll be glad to pay for the food. I had to do something. My animals were starving. And I’ve got to try to catch the others before they’ve gone too far.” He took a hopeful step toward the far door, grunted as Cruz shoved the business end of the sawed-off into his belly.
“Your pets’ll just have to wait, compadre. You don’t need so many animals anyway. Why don’t you hitch a ride with us? We’ll drop you at a phone and you can call the local animal shelter.”
“Oh, that’s not necessary. I don’t want to cause you guys any trouble.”
“No trouble at all.” Cruz gestured with the shotgun. “We’re ready to leave right now. See, we just stopped for a few minutes to pick up some luggage we have to deliver up north. Chicago. We don’t mind company.” His expression darkened. “Out back now. Bring your animals with you if you want.”
“What about my stuff?” He gestured toward the backpacks and weapons.
Cruz walked over, picked up the ramwood staff, then Mudge’s longbow. “Check ‘em out, Manco.” The other man obediently went through both packs.
“Cleen.”
“Okay, you can have these.” He tossed both packs to Jon-Tom, who caught them gratefully. “These other toys,” and he admired Mudge’s short sword as he held it up to the light, “I think maybe we keep with us. I know a good pawn shop in Chicago.” He grinned. “Payment for your ride, no?”
Under watchful eyes Jon-Tom, his friends and Kamaulk were herded out back of the empty garage and into a waiting truck. With all the noise and confusion attendant upon the pirates’ earlier arrival he hadn’t heard it drive up. It was a U-Haul with a fourteen foot bed. The back end they scrambled into was filled with cheap household furniture. He frowned. Furniture movers didn’t usually travel with heavy artillery. Cruz secured their weapons in a steel footlocker.
“Go on, all the way back.” They obliged. The metal door was rolled down and locked. Jon-Tom heard the click as it was latched from outside.
There were no windows, but the truck had been heavily used and there were a couple of spots where roof and walls didn’t quite meet. Starlight was visible through the cracks. At least they wouldn’t suffocate. The truck lurched backward, then started forward, picking up speed. Heading down the dirt road that led away from the house, no doubt.
He smelled Weegee close by. “Is it all right to talk now, Jon-Tom?”
“What do you mean, is it all right to talk now?” Kamaulk sounded at once puzzled and bitter at the hand fate had dealt him. “What are the two strange humans going to do with us?”
Jon-Tom ignored him. “It’s okay to talk, Weegee.”
Cautious made a disgusted noise. “Your world not very hospitable, man. Doen think I like it much. Is always this violent, people throwing thunder and lightning at each other?”
“No. We just got lucky.”
“That’s right, mate, Lady Luck loves travelin’ in your company, she does.” Mudge was working his way back to the rolling door. “If they take us too far from that place we’ll never find our way back.”
Mudge, you don’t know the half of it, Jon-Tom thought worriedly. The one named Cruz had mentioned Chicago. They couldn’t go to Chicago. No way could they go to Chicago. They had to get back to the Cave-With-No-Name.
“You’re all frightened.” Kamaulk’s tone dripped contempt. “Even you, man, in your own world.”
“You bet your green feathered ass I’m frightened.”
“Pagh! You should prepare to meet your fate with dignity.”
“You meet your fate with dignity, buttbeak. Me, I’m goin’ down kickin’ an’ screamin’. Hey, wot ‘ave we ‘ere?”
“Where?” Jon-Tom could barely make out the silhouette of the otter. Mudge was fumbling with a large oak trunk.
“Somethin’ in ‘ere smells peculiar. Luv, ‘and me my pack, would you? That’s a good lass.” Weegee passed his backpack over. Mudge fumbled inside, removed a couple of small bits of metal and went to work on the trunk’s lock. Jon-Tom didn’t see the point of it, but at least it kept his companions’ minds off their incipient demise.
The trunk produced a pair of Samsonite suitcases, also locked.
“Can you make a little light, mate? These locks are new to me.”
Three matches remained in Jon-Tom’s back pocket. He struck one alight, held it close to the latch of the first suitcase. Mudge leaned close, squinting.
“Bloody tricky clever, this design.”
“Can you spring it?”
The otter grinned at him in the matchlight. “Mate, there ain’t a lock in any world that your bosom buddy can’t figure. Just give me a minim to think ‘er through.”
The match burned Jon-Tom’s fingers and he flung the stub aside, lit a second. “Only one match left, Mudge.”
“Don’t matter none, mate. I can work it by feel.”
“You always could,” said Weegee, and the otters shared a not so private giggle.
Two minutes of quiet, intense work remained before Mudge had all four suitcase latches sprung. He opened the first. Jon-Tom leaned forward.
“I can’t see a damn thing. What’s inside?”
“Nothin’ much, mate. Just some plastic bags full of funny smellin’ stuff. Maybe a better whiff.. .”and he used a claw to slit one of the plasticine sacks. As he did so he leaned forward and sniffed deeply.
Someone must have lit a fire under all his toes because he suddenly leaped off the floor of the truck and fell backward over a crushed velvet sofa.
“Mudge—Mudge, you okay?”
“Okay? Okay? Okay ain’t the word mate. Weegee m’luv, have yourself a sniff, but just a bitty one.”
Curious, she did exactly that and let out a whoop as she jumped halfway to the roof.
“Hey, what is that stuff? Take it easy, you two. We don’t want to let our friends up front know what we’re doing back here.” He had to forcibly keep Mudge away from the open suitcase.
“What is it? I’ll tell you wot it is, mate. That there is pure stinger sweat, that’s wot it be. More than I’ve ever seen in one place. More than ever were in one place. It explains a lot to me. I expect ‘tis worth as much in your world as in mine.”
“Stinger sweat?” Jon-Tom frowned, thought hard. He didn’t have to think too hard.
Shotguns. Business in Chicago. Stop to pick up some luggage. Clear bags of funny smelling stuff.
“What color’s the powder, Mudge?”
“Why, ‘tis white, mate. Wot other color would it be?”
“Christ.” Jon-Tom sat down in a conveniently close-by chair. It bounced and rocked as the truck fought its way down the dirt road but his mind was on something other than the smoothness of the ride. “It sure does explain things. This whole deal: the van, the furniture, it’s just cover. Those two guys are coke runners. Two suitcases full of cocaine. Jesus.” He got out of the chair and against Mudge’s protests shut the suitcase. They they checked its mate. It was just as full. He lifted first one, then the other.
Allowing for the weight of the suitcases, he estimated that between them they contained between eighty and a hundred pounds of pure uncut “stinger sweat.”
“I need you thinking straight, Mudge. That stuff will mess up your head.”
“I know, mate, but wot a delightful mess.”
“Jon-Tom’s right,” Weegee admonished him. “Besides, you told me you were going to stay away from thosesuch temptations.”
“Aye, luv, but blimey, a whole case full!”
“Keep an eye on him,” Jon-Tom instructed her. “Mudge has a good heart, but where temptations are co
ncerned he’s weak.”
“Weak? Like ‘ell I’m weak. I can resist anythin’ if I put me mind to it.”
“It’s your nose I’m worried about you putting to it.” He tapped the suitcase. “If I left you alone with this for five minutes you’d snort your brains out. Everyone needs to be sharp if we’re going to get out of this.”
“And ‘ow might we be goin’ to get out o’ this, your magicship?”
“I want to go home,” said Cautious suddenly. “Back to sane world.”
“So do I. I mean, I want to help the rest of you get home.” What did he want, he asked himself abruptly? Did he even know?
“Hey, I can hear what they two fellas saying up front.” Cautious was leaning against the front wall of the truck.
“Impossible,” Jon-Tom said. Then it occurred to him he was arguing with a raccoon, a creature who could hear a beetle crossing a dead leaf thirty feet away in the middle of a forest. Trying not to make any noise, he and the two otters clambered forward to stand close to their masked companion. They waited silently, hardly daring to breathe while he listened.
Finally Jon-Tom couldn’t stand it anymore. “What are they saying?”
“They laughing a lot. Talking about what they going to do when they get to a place called Vegas.”
“Vegas? Las Vegas? I thought they said they were going to Chicago.”
“Won’t you ever learn anythin’ about life, mate?” Mudge shook his head in the dim light. “Why should they tell us where they’re ‘eadin’?” It made sense, Jon-Tom mused. Logical destination, empty interstates, plenty of loose cash for making big deals, and people visiting from all over.
“Quiet,” said Cautious. After a minute, “They talking ‘bout us now.”
“Us? You mean, the rest of you?”
“Yeah, they going to sell us. To zoo or something like whatever that be. Sure they can get lot of money for us.”
A pair of five foot tall otters, an equally big raccoon and a parrot that could swear a blue streak certainly would tempt any zoo or circus director, Jon-Tom thought.
“What about me? Are they saying what they’re going to do with me?” He could see Cautious’s eyes glint in the darkness.
“They ain’t going to sell you. Ain’t going to let you go, neither.”
“I thought as much.” That’s why they hadn’t worried about the possibility of him finding their cocaine shipment. If by some miracle or an otter he stumbled across it, he wouldn’t live long enough to tell anyone about it. They’d dump him along some lonely stretch of desert road, between Flagstaff and Las Vegas would be a likely place, and the buzzards would do their autopsy long before the Highway Patrol.
“We’ve got to break out of here. Even if they decide to let me go I’m damned if I’ll see my friends sold to some rotten sideshow.”
He could visualize Mudge and Weegee stripped of their clothing, put on display in a glass cage in a Vegas casino, poked and probed by double-domed researchers and callous zoologists. See the amazing talking otters! See the giant talking raccoon!
On the other hand, if he didn’t get lonely for their own kind, Mudge might do rather well living in the lap of luxury surrounded by gambling and liquor. Best not to mention such a possibility to his impressionable and occasionally mentally erratic friend. Certainly Weegee wouldn’t opt for such a life.
Would she?
An answer to his unasked question took the form of soft sniffling from nearby. “Mudge, I don’t like this world. I want to go home.”
“So do I, luv, so do I. Mate, you’ve got to do somethin’.”
With these confessions in hand he felt better about his chosen course of action.
“Mudge, they think they’ve locked our weapons away from us. Have they?”
The otter bent over the steel footlocker. “Give me three minutes, mate.”
Actually Mudge was wrong. He needed four. Once they were rearmed Jon-Tom ordered everyone to move to the back of the truck.
“That way those guys up front won’t hear me spellsinging.”
“Spellsinging, fagh!” Kamaulk rocked back and forth atop a dresser. “Don’t expect us to believe in that, har. That’s a feeble joke you’ve been fooling people with all along.”
“Believe in what you want to believe in, Kamaulk. The rest of us are getting out of here.”
“Think you that? Well, on the off chance you may be right...” he turned and started hollering toward the driver’s compartment. “Hey you humans up front! Your captives are preparing to—mmmpff!”
Using a couch for a trampoline Cautious had landed on the parrot in a single bound. Mudge gave the raccoon a hand subduing the spitting, snapping parrot. Kamaulk’s intent was clear enough: he’d hoped to secure his own freedom by spoiling their attempt to escape. Jon-Tom almost felt sorry for the bird. He had no idea what kind of world he’d stumbled into. Much of the furniture was secured with rope and they soon had the pirate bound and gagged to a chair.
“That takes care o’ ‘im.” Mudge turned to look grimly up at Jon-Tom. “Now let’s take care o’ us, mate. If you can.”
“Everybody keep close together. I’m not sure what’s going to happen if this works.” As they crowded tight against his legs he let his fingers fall across the suar’s strings, wishing desperately it was his trusty duar instead. One good solid spellsong. That’s all he needed from his store-bought instrument. Just one hefty spellsong.
Nothing for it but to begin.
“Hang on, everybody. I’m going to try and sing us home.”
“That means you’ll go back with us, mate.” Mudge looked up at him. “Wot about you? You wanted to come back to your own world more than anydiin’. Now you’re ‘ere.”
“Shut up, Mudge, before you talk me out of it. I’m not going to stand for having you and Weegee and Cautious doped up and treated like a bunch of freaks.”
“Well, if ‘tis good dope....”
“Mudge!” Weegee looked up at Jon-Tom. “Why would anyone want to do that to us, Jon-Tom?”
“To find out why you’re intelligent. To find out why you can talk.”
She shuddered. “This world of yours is a horrible place.”
“Not horrible, really. There are some good people in it, just as there are bad. It’s not all that different from your world.”
“Hush now,” Mudge told her, drawing her close. “Let the man concentrate on ‘is spellsingin’.”
Jon-Tom sang beautifully, softly. His voice and the dulcet tones of the suar rang through the truck. He sang until his throat was raw and his fingers were numb as they rumbled over rough roads and smooth. And nothing happened.
They were on a highway now. The truck hardly vibrated and their speed had increased. He finally gave it up.
“I’m sorry. Not surprised, but sorry. Clothahump told me time and again it wasn’t easy to bounce people from one world to another. But I had to try.”
“Don’t take it too ‘ard, mate. Maybe if you ‘ad your duar....”
“I’m not sure it would make any difference. I’m not sure magic works in my world.”
“Dull place then. Don’t worry about Weegee and me. We’ll make out all right. Won’t we, luv?”
“Sure. We’ll manage.”
They wouldn’t, he knew. If they kept silent whenever anyone else was around they might be able to slip away to freedom one day. But what kind of freedom would that be? The freedom to roam an alien world, cut off from others of their kind, unable to go home? Fugitives in a strange land. “I hear a new sound.” Cautious pressed his ear to the rolling door that sealed the back end of the truck. “Some animal is chasing us.”
Jon-Tom frowned. “Dogs maybe.” On the highway? They were doing at least fifty. “Is it still there?”
“Coming closer. Screaming steady-like.” Screaming? Then his eyes got very wide. “Police siren.”
“Local cops? Crikey, that’s bloody wonderful.”
“Not if they see us.” He was thinking rapidly. �
��If they do they’ll want to haul us all in as material witnesses, and that only if they’ve a lead on these guys as dealers. If not, they’ll probably just let ‘em go. Maybe the truck has a taillight out or something. We’re sure not speeding. No, we’ve got to get out of here fast.”
The siren was clearly audible now. The truck slowed, pulled over onto the shoulder. “Be quiet. I want to listen.” He climbed onto a desk and leaned close to one of the cracks in the roof. He could just hear one of the patrolmen ask Cruz for his license. Then the words, “Open it up” and Cruz replying politely but tensely, which was to be expected. “Hey, what’s wrong, officer? We haven’t done anything. You said we weren’t speeding, and there’s nothing the matter with our truck.”
“It’s not that, buddy,” Jon-Tom heard the cop reply. “Routine inspection. We’re looking for undocumented aliens.” Jon-Tom hadn’t thought of that possibility. He wondered how someone checking on the presence of undocumented aliens would react to the sight of two giant-otters and a five-foot-tall raccoon. Probably not what the patrolman had in mind. No immigration law would allow for Mudge and Weegee.
And just like that the old Genesis song popped into his head. He immediately launched into the first stanza, not caring if Cruz or the cops or anyone else overheard. Mudge and the others packed themselves tightly around him as he sang, wishing Phil Collins was there to back him up with voice and drums.
“Hey, eets no fun, bein’ an illegal ayleeun....”
“Come on, pancho, open it up.” The patrolman stood impatiently next to the back of the truck. Cruz was fiddling with the lock, taking his time and wondering how he was going to explain the presence of ‘a kidnap victim. They could always insist he was just some crazy hitchhiker they’d picked up. Maybe he’d just take his animals and split, glad to get away.
“Really, officer, I don’t know what kind of shape our stuff is in back here. My poor Consuela and I packed for days and days. If everything has shifted it’s all going to fall out.”
“We’ll help you pick it back up.” The patrolman sounded tired. He also had the build of an ex-linebacker and was in no mood to coddle suspicious characters at two in the morning. Cruz knew he’d stalled about as long as he could. “Open it, or we can open it at the station.”
