Return To Lan Darr

by Anderson Atlas

  The volcano’s top explodes. The ground shakes violently.

  Laura jumps to her feet and so does Alice. The lava river will cover the entire mountainside in minutes. Laura won’t be able to survive it.

  “Go! Save yourself!”

  “I can’t!” Laura screams, but she can and needs to. Both of them don’t need to die. Laura backs away from the river and from Alice. “I’m sorry. I would save you if I could.”

  “I know.”

  Laura flees from the coming eruption.

  Chapter 24

  The Great Vanishing Act

  The Hubbu drops Rubic and Allan in familiar Earth woods. The sun is directly overhead, noontime, and the mountain road is nearby and loud with traffic.

  Rubic pushes Allan over full, green ferns and around thick, straight tree trunks. Allan reaches out and touches the rough bark of a pine tree. He hears the pine needles crunch under his tires. “I love Earth,” he says.

  “So do I. I know what’s around the corner,” Rubic says, taking out his cell phone. The battery is dead so he returns the phone to his pocket. “We’re firmly at the top of the food chain too.” Rubic plucks Jibbawk’s damaged white backpack off the back of Allan’s chair. “There a phone in here?” He digs through the contents. “Jibbawk has some strange stuff.” Rubic holds up the goggles and replaces them. He inspects the white ball that emits the hologram of the terrain and puts it back. “We can sure use this stuff. There’s lots of Hubbu pollen too. We can go back and forth whenever we want.”

  Allan smiles. “Good. I may need to go back and get some proof to bring to school. Then I’d clear my name.”

  “Sounds like a plan. Just, how about we make a pact?” Rubic says seriously, looking Allan in the eye. “NO going alone. You got to take me with you. It’s just too dangerous unless we’re watching each other’s back.”

  Allan shakes Rubic’s hand. “Deal.”

  They emerge from the woods and wait on the shoulder of the road for the next car. “We have to find Laura now. That’s all that matters.” Allan says.

  “What do you think happened to her?” Rubic wonders.

  “I’ve been thinking about that. I think if she was taken up here, it has to do with me. It has to do with the Hubbu somehow.”

  “That’s a leap of logic. She could have been followed by a creep. Ambushed from the side of the road.” Rubic raises his hands as a pick-up truck approaches.

  “But that would be a coincidence, a big one. I don’t like that.” Allan is oblivious to the approaching truck. His job is to locate Laura. Whatever it takes.

  “I agree it’s a big coincidence. But no matter what some people say, coincidences happen. They just do.”

  The truck stops and the window rolls down. “Hey, buddy,” Rubic says. “We need a ride to town. I’ll give you two hundred bucks to get us there as fast as you can.”

  “Shoot, hop on in,” the driver says. He’s got a full and very long beard and a hat with a round motor oil logo on it.

  Rubic lifts Allan into the king cab and puts his chair in the truck bed. Rubic sits up front. “Thank you.”

  “Don’ mention it. Where you from?”

  Rubic chats with the guy until he drops them off in front of Rubic and Allan’s house. Rubic hands the guy two hundred dollars and pushes Allan up the ramp to the front door. “You know, if an abduction is too much of a coincidence, that can only mean one thing,” Rubic says.

  “What?”

  “That someone else knows about the Hubbu flower.” Rubic unlocks the front door and pushes Allan inside. The house is quiet, oddly quiet. Dust hangs in the air, having been undisturbed for days, and the trash stinks of rotten food. Cups and mugs from the police officers decorate the countertop and breakfast table, and the munchies Rubic and Allan snacked on the night before Allan’s disappearance still sit on the side tables in the living room.

  Allan feels the comfort of home for only a moment before guilt and worry overwhelm him. “The flower lady had the Hubbu plants. Morna’s Flowers and Odd Things. But she didn’t know what the flowers really were.”

  “Let’s call her anyway.”

  Rubic sits at an antique desk, opens his laptop, and gets the number for the flower shop. He dials and the phone rings and rings and rings. “She’s not answering.”

  Allan takes out the goggles that Jibbawk used to see Hubbu signatures and tries them on. The view through them is tinted red. He looks toward his bedroom and sees a faint purple glow where his closet is. “Wow, these things can see through walls!” He takes the goggles off.

  “It’s how Jibbawk found the house.” Rubic taps the tabletop.

  “Maybe a wholesaler knows where there are more flowers,” Allan says, though he’s not sure why a wholesaler would sell such valuable flowers.

  The front door crashes inward.

  Six heavily armed S.W.A.T. members burst into the house with automatic weapons, full armor, and laser sites. “On the ground! Hands on your head!” an officer roars.

  Allan throws his arms into the air. “Whoa! What’s going on?”

  “Down on the ground, NOW!”

  A couple laser lights land on Rubic’s chest and a few on Allan’s. Rubic falls to the ground fast. “Don’t shoot! We’re unarmed. My nephew can’t get out of his chair.”

  The lasers vanish, and an officer lunges to Rubic and grabs his hands. In a fluid motion, Rubic’s arms are twisted to his lower back and cuffed. Rubic is pulled off the ground and forced into the back of a police van. Allan is set carefully next to Rubic and buckled in.

  Rubic holds up his cuffed hands to the grate that separates the back of the van from the front. “Are cuffs really necessary? What did I do wrong, guys? Don’t you think S.W.A.T busting down my door was a bit much? You could have knocked.”

  The officers don’t answer. The van pulls into a garage, not under a police station but a S.W.A.T. building. The tiny sign on the door says ‘Public Safety Office,’ and all the cars are unmarked.

  The officers lead Rubic and Allan to an office with a table and two chairs. The office walls are slate gray and undecorated.

  The officers make for the door.

  “Hey!” Rubic yells. One officer turns around before exiting the room. “Come on. Can you take off the cuffs? Unless you charge us with a crime, I’m pretty sure we shouldn’t be treated like criminals.” The officer sighs and removes both the cuffs from Rubic’s and Allan’s wrists. “Thank you,” Rubic says sincerely.

  A little while later a detective enters with a folder and a cup of coffee and sits down. “Hello, Mr. Westerfield, Allan.” He sips from the cup. “I’m Detective Vannays.” He’s a thin man with a shaved, square jaw and carefully styled brown hair.

  “Can you tell me why we’re treated like thugs?” Rubic asks.

  “I’m sorry about that. My officers were under orders to bring you in. You disappeared four days ago when you were ordered not to leave town. To top it off, when you got back into town you didn’t notify us that you found Allan. Don’t you think that looks a little suspicious?”

  Rubic rubs his eyes and sighs. “I guess. I just found Allan on the mountainside, and we were just about to call in.”

  “I see.” Vannays writes in his folder. “Your computer was open to a website for Morna’s Flowers and Odd Things, and your phone has her number on your call list. Don’t you think that’s a little strange also?”

  Rubic rolls his eyes. “Yes, I think that is strange. But it is all explainable.”

  “Morna’s shop was broken into a few nights ago. There was a struggle and Morna is missing. This happened after the police left you in your home, unattended. Starting to see the same picture we see, Mr. Westerfield?”

  Rubic lays his hands on the table palms up. “Look, I didn’t do anything. I just found Allan…”

  Allan speaks up, “I told my uncle I’d bought some flowers there. That was it. We thought Laura might have gone there looking for me.”

  The detective sips casuall
y, sets the cup down, and turns it slowly clockwise, keeping his eyes on Rubic. “Then, someone breaks into a wholesale flower distributor and trashes the place. The same night. Also strange, no?” He sips again then spins the cup. “Now, the kicker is, a traffic camera captured Alice driving her jeep to the university and someone, who looks an awful lot like Laura, is sitting in the passenger side. Though the photo shows the passenger’s head down so we can’t get a clear image. You know Alice, right?” The detective glares at Rubic, never breaking the stare.

  “Yes, the woman who had the laboratory in the dam,” Rubic answers.

  Vannays leans over the table. “Not too surprised to hear her name, are we?”

  “Yes, I am. I thought she’d be long gone.” Rubic looks at Allan.

  Allan’s eyes are as wide as they get. “I’m pretty shocked too.” They both turn back to Vannays.

  Vannays pounds the table, spilling hot coffee all over the top and startling Rubic and Allan. “You’re not telling me something! I’m trained to know when people are lying to me! Spill it, boys, or you’re going to jail.” He glares at Allan. “And juvy isn’t handicapped accessible!”

  “Juvy is a government building and has to be ADA compliant,” Allan retorts.

  “That attitude goes over real well with the gangbangers in lockup,” Vannays says, leaning forward and glaring at Allan.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Rubic says calmly.

  “Our officers believe they found Alice AND Laura at the university where Alice works. But are Alice or Laura in custody? No! So where are they? Where’s Mrs. Domley?” Vannays’s eyes bulge, turning red, and a vein in his neck fattens and thumps. “The officers will testify that Alice and Laura were in that laboratory. However, they escaped without a back door or open window!” Vannays laughs like a crazy person. “Sounds like they just vanished, doesn’t it?”

  Rubic and Allan stare at each other.

  “Six guys all saw the women standing there in their infrared scopes, then they weren’t. The place was empty of any warm bodies. Are they all crazy?”

  Rubic folds his hands in his lap. “I think I need to contact a lawyer.”

  Vannays pushes his chair from the table and stands. “Good. Now I know you’re guilty as hell.” At the door Vannays turns. “You’ll tell me what you did with Laura and her mother. You’re the one key that doesn’t fit. You were gone that night. The only one unaccounted for. I will get the answers I seek. I always do.” Vannays slams the door shut behind him.

  Rubic grabs Allan’s hands. “They’re trying to pin this on me.”

  “Laura used the Hubbu!” Allan says, processing the news in his tired brain. “We have to go get her. She’s all alone on Peebland!”

  “Mrs. Domley might be with her. She won’t be alone,” Rubic says, trying to calm Allan down.

  “Mrs. Domley wasn’t with Laura and Alice at the University. Only Laura and Alice used the Hubbu. She’s alone on Peebland with Alice.”

  Rubic shakes his head, “They’re going to take me to jail, kid. Laura and her mother can’t wait for me to post bail.”

  A realization comes to Allan, and his nerves relax. “I have an idea. Let’s freak them out.” Allan says with a steely confidence. “Let’s go get Laura. Now. We’ll do a vanishing act for Vannays’s cameras.”

  “They took Jibbawk’s backpack. We don’t have any pollen.” Rubic runs his fingers through his hair.

  “Oh, but we do.” Allan digs into his pocket and pulls out five pouches. They’re filled with Hubbu pollen. “Asantia gave these to me.”

  Rubic snatches the different colored pouches and hugs them. “You just saved my butt, boy! And Laura’s.” He ruffles Allan’s hair.

  Rubic tucks the pouches into his pockets, keeping the purple one in his palm. He pinches some purple pollen, sits on Allan’s wheelchair armrest and sprinkles the pollen over their heads.

  They leave the police station behind in a quantum moment while waving to the video cameras.

  Chapter 25

  A Hundred Flapping Wings

  Allan and Rubic fall backward and land on the black, glassy stones familiar to Peebland. They stare faceup at the planet’s rings that arch across the entire star-studded sky. Allan’s mouth falls open. A sliver of pink brightens the horizon, coloring the edge of the rings with yellow light. The rest of the sky is dark black with silvery, glowing rings and a million, billion stars.

  Rubic smiles from ear to ear. “Guess you weren’t here at night, were you?”

  Allan shakes his head, still unable to speak. A shooting star arches across the rings and burns in the atmosphere, as if punctuating how perfect the sight is. Allan doesn’t want to move. He’s reminded of how he felt when he saw Lan Darr’s three sliver moons.

  “Let’s get moving, though. The night is full of creepy things.” Rubic sits up and surveys the area. He stands, pulls Allan’s chair upright, and fixes Allan’s legs so they’re sitting on the footrests. They’re on top of one of the sand dunes at the base of the volcano. The rolling hills and their reflective stones glimmer like mounds of diamonds. Allan remembers that he collected three rather large gemstones when he was here last. He can’t wait to give one to Laura as a gift.

  Rubic eyes the dark valley nearby. “We have to watch out for these huge armor-plated, dinosaur-like creatures that can knock us out with sleeping trumpets. Oh, and the lightning storms are wicked fierce.”

  Allan isn’t listening to Rubic. He’s focused on finding Laura. She’s alone and scared. He calls out to her in his mind. Of course there is no reply.

  Back when the police burst into the house, Allan had stashed Jibbawk’s goggles behind his back. They’re still there. He situates them over his eyes, adjusts them to fit with two different straps, and looks around. “Oh my God,” Allan says.

  “What?” Rubic says, this scenario feeling oddly familiar. “Can I just look through the thingies? Jibbawk never let me.” Allan hands over the goggles. Rubic takes them and, like a child who wanted a turn with a toy, looks satisfied. He puts them on.

  “Halfway up the volcano and to the right of the lava river,” Allan says. “See that color? There’s a purple glow.”

  “That’s where Laura arrived.” Rubic takes off the goggles and starts to push Allan over top of the sand. “We have to hurry. That volcano can complicate things.”

  The volcano rumbles like a grumpy giant. A lava ball pops from the top and lands on the side.

  Rubic pushes hard on the chair, but the wheels dig in and drag in the sand.

  “Let me use my motor,” Allan says, thumbing the dial, and his chair speeds over the sand. “Yeah! Like this!” Allan calls out.

  Rubic keeps up even though he sinks in the sand with every step. “I’m having deja vu! Last time I was doing this I was with Jibbawk!”

  “What was Jibbawk like?” Allan asks.

  Rubic shrugs. “An asshole. But he was trying to look like a good guy the whole time, so it wasn’t too bad.”

  Allan’s wheelchair battery dies. He flicks the switch off then on again. “Come on! Not now, please.” He flips the switch one last time, but the power is all used up.

  Rubic looks through the goggles again. “I think I see someone lying down over by the lava. I think it’s Laura. I don’t know how to zoom in with these things.”

  Allan takes the goggles but can’t zoom with them, either. “Let’s keep going. We’re close.”

  “It’s probably three miles, maybe more.” Rubic estimates, looking up at the apex of the volcano.

  The ground rumbles. Lava balls belch into the night sky and splash on the mountainside, sending glowing embers and molten rock in all directions.

  Allan looks through the goggles. “Why is she so close to the lava? She’s got to move!” He wants to scream her name, or reach through a wormhole and snatch her from danger.

  Rubic puts a hand on Allan’s shoulder. “I’m going ahead. I want you to stay here.”

  “No way. That’
s my friend up there.”

  “Allan, I know you like to do things yourself, and you are damn good at it. Look at how you’ve gone across the galaxy, travelled so far in a wheelchair!”

  Allan eyes fill with tears. “I have to save her. She can’t die. She can’t leave me ever again!”

  “Sometimes in this life we need the help from those that love us. I can get up there so much faster if you stay here.”

  “I’m going!” Allan starts to roll toward the mountain.

  “Stay here! I don’t want to get Laura out of the path of molten lava only to see you surfing down on it.”

  Allan doesn’t stop.

  Rubic grabs the chair handles and tugs them. “You’ve got to let me help you. I need you to listen for once in your life!”

  The battle of wills lock horns, but eventually Allan stops and lowers his head.

  Rubic starts hiking up the mountain. He turns back. “I’ll get her. I promise!”

  “I know.” Allan watches Rubic hike off at a pace he’d never seen Rubic go before. “Get her, please,” he mutters, knowing Rubic can’t hear his voice. It’s more like a prayer.

  #

  Rubic runs, walks, and runs again. He’s moving as fast as he can. His lungs heave and his heart pounds. He believes the volcano will wait for him, but it won’t wait for long.

  Rubic reaches the more solid ground of the mountain and wants to kiss the gravel. His feet don’t sink as much, and he’s able to jog faster. He goes around a huge black stone protruding from the ground and jogs to a cliff side. After climbing the warm rocks, he finally sees the lava river. It’s a hundred yards away. As he approaches the lava, the breeze shifts and hot air hits him with an unexpected force. Sweat percolates through his skin, but that doesn’t stop him.

  The volcano doesn’t wait. It explodes like a geyser. A hundred lava rocks launch into the air like a firework grand finale. It throws so much red-hot lava into the air the entire side of the mountain soon will be flooded with the fires of hell. Contrary to what his gut screams, Rubic runs toward the lava river.

  “Laura!” he yells. He calls out her name again, but gives up. He’s breathing too hard to project his voice over the rumble and hiss of the lava river.