Alistair stared at Bombo in shock. “That’s how Captain Haley did it in the book,” he said. “Now I don’t know what to do.”
“We’re being boarded!” Stuyvesant shouted. “All hands, abandon ship!”
“Abandon ship?” Bombo said. “That’s an odd phrase to use in the inky blackness and oxygen-less void of space.”
Mome Wraiths began to materialize all over Ops. The weapons officer stood and shot one with a laser pistol. The shadow exploded with a shriek, but it was too little, too late. A swarm of Mome Wraiths converged on the officer, stretching their claw-like hands toward the doomed man. His frightful screams tore through the room as the shadows enveloped him. Within a few seconds, he had become a Mome Wraith, screeching like all the others and slithering toward Bombo and Alistair.
“Come on,” Bombo said. “Time to get out of here.” He grabbed Alistair and dragged him toward a swishy door. Above the door were stenciled the words Escape Pod. The door swished open and they barely made it inside before a host of Mome Wraiths swarmed them. One creature reached its shadowy hand into the pod just before the door swished closed, severing the Mome Wraith’s hand. It lay twitching on the floor for several seconds before it melted into nothing and disappeared.
The escape pod had a small round window that allowed the two writers a momentary view of the raging battle for the Operations Center. Stuyvesant, brave and heedless of the danger, was still fighting, shooting Mome Wraiths and narrowly dodging the reaching hands of other shadows, but it was only a matter of time. In the seconds before the escape pod launched, Bombo and Alistair watched in horror as Stuyvesant’s laser pistol failed.
Weaponless, the first officer dodged one Mome Wraith, leapt over a railing, and grabbed the ceremonial sword that was mounted to the wall. Stuyvesant unwrapped the American flag from the blade and draped it over his shoulder, never letting it touch the ground. The sword gleamed under the fluorescent lights of the space station as Stuyvesant used it to chop an approaching Mome Wraith in half.
At that moment, the escape pod’s thrusters fired and Bombo and Alistair were propelled into space. The Alamo-02 receded in the distance, and the battle that raged inside receded too.
Bombo and Alistair turned to one another. “Did you see that?” Bombo said. “He must have had some kind of fencing training. That was awesome.”
“We’re idiots,” Alistair said. “That was the vorpal sword.”
Bombo stared at Alistair. “The ceremonial sword that was on the wall?”
“The vorpal sword,” Alistair said.
“That’s quite a leap,” said Bombo. “Why would the vorpal sword be on the space station? It doesn't even belong in this story.”
“Neither do the Mome Wraiths or borogoves,” Alistair said. “The worlds of the Legendarium are bleeding together.”
“This is exhausting,” Bombo said. “I could really use a donut.”
“We have to get back to the station,” said Alistair. “We have to recover the—”
Before he could finish, the space station Alamo-02 exploded. Orange light flashed across the faces of the two men as they realized that their mission had failed. Stars began to wink out all around them, and their escape pod drifted through a darkening void as the evil living shadows engulfed the universe.
Chapter Four
The Face of the Deep
They drifted through the void.
* * *
Back in the real world, in the world where you are reading this story, a tsunami of changes crashed over the space-time continuum.
Martin Luther King, who should have been inspired by Russell Benjamin’s Beyond the Stars series as a young man, had now never read it—and so was never elected as the fortieth president of the United States. Instead, he was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968.
The peace treaty between Israel and Iran moderated by Jimmy Carter in 1988 was never signed.
Russell Benjamin, instead of being the first African-American to win both the Nebula and Hugo awards, went mad in 1953 and was committed to a sanitarium for the rest of his life.
A hundred thousand other changes rippled up and down the timeline. Life for some; death for others. Dreams fulfilled; dreams shattered. The changes were systemic, and you’ll never know what the original world was really like. Sorry.
* * *
They drifted for what seemed like an eternity, and in truth, millennia did pass unnumbered as Bombo Dawson and Alistair Foley floated through the darkness.
They talked because there was nothing else to do.
“These emergency rations are running low,” Alistair said. It was perhaps five days into their odyssey. It was also, perhaps, five hundred years. If time is meaningless in the Legendarium, it is both tedious and confusing in an escape pod with Alistair Foley and Bombo Dawson.
“I wish there were donuts,” Bombo said. “I’d do anything for a donut.”
“You ate all the freeze-dried ice cream,” Alistair said. “You could have at least saved me one package.”
“I’m starving to death,” Bombo said. “I’m wasting away to nothing. Look at me. My space coveralls are just hanging on my gaunt and emaciated frame. This is an emergency.”
“You haven’t even lost a pound, Bombo. We’re floating through the emptiness of a ruined universe. Alone. In an escape pod. Together alone, Bombo. This is my own personal hell.”
“And yet, I’m probably starving, which is the real issue at hand,” Bombo replied.
“If you die,” Alistair said, “I’m going to eat you. I want you to remember that.”
“There won’t be anything left to eat,” said Bombo.
Alistair rubbed his temples. His head had been throbbing for hours, or centuries, or millennia. “Of all the people to be stuck with… lost in the vacuum of space… why did it have to be you?”
“You’re not exactly pleasant company yourself,” Bombo said. “I wish there was something here to read.”
“I have an e-reader on my smart phone,” Alistair said, “but the battery died back in Wonderland. “It kept searching for signal.”
“I highly doubt that there is anything on your Kindle that I would want to read,” Bombo said.
“That’s probably true,” said Alistair. “I doubt your taste in literature is that refined.”
“Please,” said Bombo. “My taste in books is way better than yours.”
“You don’t like Russell Benjamin,” Alistair said.
“And you don’t like Lewis Carroll,” said Bombo.
They stared at one another, mentally drawing up sides in the contest of one-upmanship that was about to follow.
“What about Tolkien?” Alistair said.
“He’s okay,” said Bombo. “I don’t like fantasy. I thought we covered that.”
“Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman?” Alistair asked.
“You’re joking, right?”
“Stephen King?”
“Hate him, although his time travel book about the Kennedy assassination was at least interesting.”
“J.K. Rowling?”
Bombo stuck his index finger in his mouth and mimed throwing up.
“Vonnegut?”
“Love him.”
“Well, that’s a relief. Salvatore?”
“Who?”
“R.A. Salvatore.”
Bombo chuckled under his breath.
“Dayton Ward? Kevin Dilmore?
“They write Star Trek novels,” Bombo said.
“Right. Do you like them?”
“They write Star Trek novels,” Bombo said again.
“Moron,” Alistair whispered.
“What was that?”
“Nothing. How about James A. Owen?”
“Um.”
“Hugh Howey?”
Bombo smiled. He knew Hugh Howey personally. Together, they had saved London, and perhaps the entire world, from a zombie apocalypse. “I love his work,” Bombo said.
Alistair nodded enthusiastica
lly. “Me too. I didn’t want to like the COTTON Omnibus, it being self-published and all, but after I read it, I had to admit that it was brilliant.”
“What’s wrong with self-publishing?” Bombo asked.
“There’s so much potential for crap,” Alistair said.
Bombo shrugged. “Same with legacy publishing. The cream rises to the top,” Bombo said.
“I suppose that’s true,” Alistair said.
“When was the last time you were in a bookstore, Alistair?”
“I go to bookstores all the time.”
“How would you rate most of the books in the last book store you visited?”
“A tsunami of crap,” Alistair said, nodding his head. “But the cream rises to the top.”
“And probably none of them were self-published,” Bombo said. “There’s crap everywhere, but still we find what we want to read. You know, we have dozens of tools that we use every day to decide what we might like. The indie world is no different.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Alistair said.
“Since we’re apparently going to drift through this empty universe until we starve to death,” Bombo said, “would you mind answering a question?”
“Go for it.”
“What was it about Anne Askew in the Tower that you hated so much that you decided to give it such a terrible review? I mean, your opinion was not remotely in line with the vast majority of readers of every possible stripe. I mean, everyone has their own opinion, but really: one star?”
Alistair paused thoughtfully. He had never before come face to face with the victim of one of his scathing reviews. “I think it was the stream of consciousness,” he said. “I really don’t care for that style.”
“I can dig that,” Bombo said, “Did you like the characters? The plot?”
“Those were fine,” Alistair said. “Truthfully, the book wasn’t that bad. It’s just…”
“Just what?”
Alistair averted his eyes, unable to look Bombo in the face. “I guess I was jealous,” he said.
“Jealous? Of what?”
Alistair gazed through the escape pod’s portal into the abyss. The abyss also gazed into him. “Do you remember when Thornton Wilder said that he’d read my book?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve been sending it out to literary agents for three years,” Alistair said. “I have a pile of personal rejection letters, each one telling me how much they love my book and that they wish me well finding someone to represent it.”
“That sucks,” Bombo said. “But what agents want and what readers want are often very different things. Publishing has gotten top-heavy. In many cases it isn’t agile enough to track with what readers want to buy. Have you ever considered self-publishing?”
“No,” Alistair said. “I mean, yes. I mean, I’ve thought about it, but who would ever read it? How would I market the book?”
“Indie publishing really isn’t about trying to make a book a bestseller, Alistair. It’s about the art of writing. It’s about finishing the work and making it as good as it can possibly be. Then it’s about publishing it and letting readers decide if they want to buy it. Besides, Hugh Howey is just one of hundreds of other successful authors that have done all right with self-publishing,” Bombo said.
“That’s different,” Alistair said. “He’s an outlier.”
“Thornton Wilder and Leo Tolstoy seemed to like your writing,” Bombo said. “What are the chances that War and Peace would ever be published by a mainstream publisher today? Close to zero? But two of the greatest authors in history liked your work! That should be an encouragement to you.”
Alistair smiled slightly. “Yeah. Maybe you’re right.”
“I mean, I’m absolutely going to give it one star no matter whether I like it or not,” Bombo said, “because you’ve been such a tool—but maybe it could find an audience. Stuck in a drawer somewhere… it never will. And you’ll never know unless you try.”
Alistair sighed. “I guess I owe you an apology,” he said. “That review was pretty crummy of me.”
“You can say that again,” Bombo said.
“Maybe I should revise it,” Alistair said. “If we ever get back.”
“I don’t think there’s much chance of that happening,” Bombo said. “Besides, I don’t think anyone reads your blog.”
“Has anyone ever told you that you’re an asshat?” Alistair said.
“Lots of folks,” Bombo said. “My wife tells me at least once a week.”
“You’re married?”
“Why do you sound so surprised?”
Alistair stared out the porthole into the nothingness of the void. “I don’t know. It seems like everybody has somebody except me.”
“You sound like a country and western song,” Bombo said.
Alistair growled. “I hate country music.”
“Shocker.”
“Are you happily married?”
“Yep.”
“Your wife isn’t a psycho or something?”
“She’s a communist and a vegetarian, although she denies that first thing… just like a good communist would do.”
“Oh,” Alistair said. “Well, that makes me feel a little better.”
“But she’s smoking hot, and I know she loves me.”
“How do you know?”
“Have you seen me?”
“You have a point. She loves you.” Alistair sighed a deep, pathetic, look-at-me kind of sigh. “I had a girlfriend up until about two months ago,” he said.
“She dumped you?”
“How did you guess?”
Bombo shrugged. “A hunch.”
“She was… so… beautiful.” Alistair wiped at his eyes.
“Hey man, there’s other fish in the sea.”
“I don’t know,” Alistair said. “I think I’m done with women.”
Bombo backed away from Alistair, creating as much space as humanly possible in the tiny escape pod. “Cut off that stupid ponytail,” he suggested. “I’m sure there’s someone out there who could tolerate you. Have you tried online dating?”
“You’re such a—”
The small craft was rocked by a violent jolt, and both writers were thrown across the escape pod. They landed in a pile, arms and legs akimbo, as their transport crash-landed onto something solid. When the pod had skidded to a stop, a deafening silence settled over the pod as Bombo and Alistair just looked at one another, wide-eyed and not at all sure what might happen next.
Wherever here is, Bombo thought, here we are.
Chapter Five
The Pugilist
Bombo was the first to his feet. He staggered across the debris that now covered every square inch of the escape pod, and finally reached the door.
“Wait!” Alistair said.
“Wait for what?”
Alistair climbed to his feet and dusted himself off. “What’s the plan?”
“I plan to open this hatch,” Bombo said.
“But you don’t know what might be out there,” Alistair said. “Maybe we crash-landed on the Mome Wraiths’ home planet or something.”
Bombo smirked at Alistair. “You know I love you, right?”
Alistair scowled. “Of course not.”
“Exactly,” Bombo said. “So then you’ll understand why I’m going to open this hatch no matter what’s out there.” He pulled a lever and blew open the escape hatch. There was a hissing noise as the pressurized air of the vessel whooshed into the atmosphere outside. Bombo was relieved, and a little nervous, when he saw the white light that signified their passage into another world.
“Foley,” he said, “come on, let’s get out of here.”
The creative writing teacher was now standing with his back against the wall of the escape pod. He was breathing dramatically in through his nose and out through his mouth.
“What in the world are you doing?” Bombo said.
“Hyperventilating,” said Alistair.
; “We don’t have time for that.”
“You’re telling me!” Alistair wheezed with each word, and it took every bit of willpower Bombo had not to grab the great fool by the shoulders and shake him. But that would probably just make the situation worse.
“There’s another world being threatened,” Bombo said. “Maybe we can save this one.”
“And maybe we can let it die, just like Beyond the Stars!” said Alistair. “Who knows what kind of changes have occurred to the timeline now? And it’s all our fault!”
Bombo grabbed the smaller man by the scruff of the neck and dragged him toward the hatch. “There’s nothing we can do about that now,” he shouted. “But if we stand around here doing nothing, even worse things might happen.”
“But—”
Bombo slapped Alistair across the face. Alistair’s mouth fell open, and tears welled in his eyes. “I can’t believe you did that,” he said, shocked. “No one has ever slapped me before.”
“Too bad,” Bombo said. “Maybe if someone had taken the time to scold you once in a while you wouldn’t be such a prig. Now come on, we have a world to save.”
“Fine,” Alistair said, “but if you ever hit me again, I’m going to take you down.”
“You could try,” Bombo said. “Besides, I could probably use a smack now and then too.”
The writers stepped through the light and emerged inside a poorly lit saloon. The walls were brick, the floorboards scuffed and worn, and there wasn’t a single window in the place. An oak bar dominated one corner of the room, and pub tables filled every available space. The place was filled with people, all laughing and carrying on, blissfully unaware that their universe was on the verge of extinction.
The first thing Bombo noticed as he stepped into the saloon was Alistair’s clothing. Only a moment before he’d been dressed in the dark blue coveralls of the Alamo-02 space station, but now he wore a brown suit that looked like something out of the 1920’s. Bombo looked down at his own clothes and found he was wearing a gray suit of similar design. “I don’t know how the Legendarium works,” he whispered, “but I like these threads a lot better than the last ones.”
LEGENDARIUM Page 6
