“The elected leader of Atlantis?” Cordelia asked. “Like, the president?”
“Why, yes,” Democritus said politely. “You seem confused. Why does this unsettle you?”
“Well,” Cordelia explained, “where I come from, it would be very strange to see an elected leader out and about all alone without a huge entourage and security detail.”
“Why would I need security?” Democritus asked. “I should be free to explore my own world the same as any other citizen of our great city.”
“Aren’t you worried that someone could hurt you?” Cordelia asked.
“No, of course not!” Democritus said, horrified at the mere thought. “Why would I be?”
“Where I’m from, not everyone agrees with the elected leaders,” Cordelia said. “So the presidents of countries never get to go anywhere without, like, at least two dozen bodyguards since there are a lot of people who would kill them if they got the chance.”
Democritus’s eyes went wide. “How awful!” she said. “The people were the ones who elected me. Why should they want to hurt me? Even the citizens who voted against me recognize that not accepting democratic results is not accepting democracy at all. Your world sounds terrible! In Atlantis, the only thing we truly fear is the Forbidden Zone, home of the dreaded Iku-Turso.”
Adie and Cordelia both perked up at the mention of the Forbidden Zone. They knew that this was the place they needed to go in order to find the Worldkeeper. But Democritus spoke again before either of them had a chance to ask about it.
“But enough small talk; we are nearly home!” Democritus said, pointing through the clear walls of the submarine.
Cordelia had a hard time turning away from Democritus’s huge smile. There was something about it that seemed almost too friendly. Why would the leader of Atlantis be so nice to complete strangers from another world? The politicians in Cordelia’s time and place didn’t trust anyone outside their inner circle. So Democritus’s kindness didn’t feel entirely real to Cordelia.
Eventually she managed to pry her eyes from the woman’s smiling face, remembering that they were traveling into the depths of the ocean inside a 360-degree-view submarine. She’d probably already missed out on all kinds of awesome sights.
Cordelia looked down and gasped. Adie went rigid beside her and grabbed Cordelia’s hand. She squeezed it so hard, it almost hurt. But Cordelia was too awed to feel any pain; instead her eyes filled with the reflecting lights from the dazzling underwater city below them.
“Holy-moly,” Adie said beside her.
Cordelia repeated the sentiment using a slightly different word selection.
The Lost City of Atlantis was both beautiful and haunting, a spectacular underwater world of unimaginable expanse and splendor. A hive of millions, perhaps even billions, of glowing multicolored bubbles was built into the side of an underwater mountain range covered with sea life and vegetation never seen before by human eyes. The intricate, glowing buildings each sparkled with their own magical illumination.
Some of the shimmering buildings underneath them were as small as a two-bedroom house. Others were several times larger than the huge sports domes that football teams like the Indianapolis Colts and New Orleans Saints called their home fields. Collectively, it was a nearly unimaginable sight—so spectacular that Cordelia’s eyes darted around feverishly, almost incapable of taking it all in.
As the ship descended, the true scale of the city became even more apparent. It made Cordelia feel like a squished bug stuck to the bottom of someone’s shoe.
“Well, this is definitely the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen,” Adie said.
“And we’ve seen a lot of amazing things today,” Cordelia reminded her.
“Welcome to our home,” Democritus said, smiling. “The great city of Atlantis.”
Somewhere, far away, just outside a fictional version of the city of Aswan, Egypt, Brendan Walker didn’t feel all that surprised that he was going to finally meet his grisly end underneath an old, honking jeep on some dusty desert road. He’d been face-to-face with his own mortality enough times the past few days that he merely closed his eyes and waited for the impact.
Instead of blunt-force trauma, however, he received a mouthful of sand as the jeep swerved around him at the last moment. He opened his eyes, coughing, and spun around.
A middle-aged guy was behind the wheel, and next to him a small boy stood up in the passenger seat and looked back at Brendan. He shook his fist and screamed at him as the jeep sped away, the last of his shrill words faded away in the blowing sand.
“. . . standing in the middle of the road, you idiot . . .”
“I . . . was . . . try . . . ,” Brendan said, unable to form a complete sentence, his throat filled with clumps of sand.
But they wouldn’t have heard him even if he had been able to speak, since the jeep had already disappeared into town.
Brendan tried to breathe out but the sand in his throat made it nearly impossible. Water. That was his first priority. He’d already needed a drink in this insane heat, but now the mouthful of sand and dirt clinched it.
He trudged on, this time off to the side of the twin tire ruts that passed for a road. His steps were more sluggish in the loose sand, but it was probably better than getting run down by another car.
Brendan reached the city on the river desperate for water. He barely noticed the people wearing robes and headscarves staring at his odd clothes. Brendan didn’t notice cars sputtering by on the cobbled roads, didn’t notice that they were from the fifties or so. All he noticed was the small market near the riverbank. He saw people there in tents selling fruit and pottery and blankets. And best of all, he saw a massive canteen slung across a support post of the tent nearest to him.
He ran his sandpaper tongue across the cracked glass that his lips had become. Everything else faded away. Even the intense sun and heat became secondary. It was just Brendan and that canteen, alone in a sandy, hot room. He stumbled toward it, not seeming to make any progress with each step.
But he was covering ground. And in just a matter of minutes he had reached the canteen. He grabbed the strap and pulled it off the post. He unscrewed the metal lid and started guzzling the contents without even stopping to sniff it. It was maybe not the cleanest, tastiest, coldest water, but at that moment Brendan didn’t care. His lips and mouth soaked it up like a sponge. He had nearly drained the half-gallon canteen in a single chug, when a hand grabbed his wrist so hard he dropped it, spilling the last few drops onto the thirsty road.
“Thought you could steal my water, thief?” a gruff voice shouted.
Brendan locked eyes with his assailant. It was a middle-aged Egyptian man wearing traditional desert clothes. The man’s eyes were on fire, and Brendan looked around nervously for help. A small crowd began to gather around the tent at the commotion.
“No, I wasn’t trying to steal it,” Brendan said. “I was dying of thirst. . . .”
“Thieves are not tolerated here!” the man screamed. “You must be punished severely!”
“No!” Brendan shouted. He tried to pull away, but the man’s grip was like a cyborg’s.
The man turned and addressed the growing mob.
“This boy stole my water!” he shouted. “He must pay for it the usual way!”
The angry mob cried out in approval. A small part appeared in the masses as a huge wooden box the size of a three-feet-deep kiddie pool was dragged into the clearing. It had a lid like a coffin.
“What is that?” Brendan asked.
Nobody replied. Instead, someone from the crowd shouted, “Throw him in the thief pit, Fadil!”
“No!” Brendan shouted, realizing that something called a thief pit coming from Denver Kristoff’s demented imagination couldn’t possibly be pleasant.
This was met with more cheers of approval from the gathered people. Two men stepped forward and pulled off the heavy wooden lid. Even amid the loud cheering of the crowd, Brendan heard hissing. Seve
ral black and brown snake heads poked up above the edge of the wooden box. The thief pit.
“Oh no, please!” Brendan screamed. “Please . . . I wasn’t trying to steal. . . .”
Fadil grinned and dragged Brendan closer to the wooden box. He easily hoisted Brendan into the air, giving him a perfect view of at least a dozen snakes slithering around inside the box. It looked like a coffin because it clearly was going to become one for him very soon.
“Throw him in!” someone shouted.
“Thief!” cried another.
Fadil grinned at Brendan and held him out over the wooden pit. The snakes hissed and writhed in anticipation just several feet below.
“This is what happens to those who steal my things,” Fadil said.
“Noooo!” Brendan screamed, but he knew it was too late as Fadil’s grip on his shirt and pant leg loosened.
“Fadil! Stop!” a voice from the crowd shouted.
“Why?” Fadil said, whirling around, still holding Brendan. “He’s a thief! Why should he not be punished like all other thieves?”
“Because it was simply a misunderstanding,” a man with a smooth British accent said, stepping forward.
He was around forty and had a thin, impeccably trimmed black mustache. He wore a black three-piece suit with a matching bowler hat. His black oxford dress shoes looked as if they alone cost more than Brendan’s entire wardrobe. The man carried a leather messenger bag slung across his shoulder. If Brendan didn’t know any better, he would have sworn the man was British royalty.
Brendan felt like he recognized him from somewhere. Then he saw the young boy standing next to him. He wore ratty canvas pants and a white shirt with dirt stains spread across the front. He held up his chin as if he were challenging everyone there to a fistfight, in spite of being almost a full foot shorter and at least two years younger than Brendan. He recognized the boy right away; he was the one from the jeep. These were the two jerks who’d almost run him over!
“Misunderstanding?” Fadil said, finally setting Brendan down, but still keeping a firm grip on his shirt collar. “The canteen was in his hand! He was drinking from it! I saw it with my own eyes!”
“He didn’t know it was yours,” the Englishman said. “Here, accept this as payment for your troubles. You can buy ten canteens with it. Just release the boy.”
He tossed several gold coins at Fadil’s feet.
“Why do you care so much about this ugly little boy?” Fadil asked.
“Hey . . . ,” Brendan protested, but nobody paid any attention.
“He is my new assistant,” the Englishman said. “He just arrived and clearly does not know the rules here.”
“Very well, you have a deal,” Fadil said, finally releasing his viselike grip from Brendan’s shirt collar. “But I don’t want to see this boy near my things again.”
“I’d only go back there if I wanted to get cholera or listeria,” Brendan said defiantly, straightening out his clothes.
Fadil ignored him as he bent down to scoop up the three gold coins on the dirt at his feet.
“Come along now, boy,” the Englishman said to Brendan. “We have much work to do. Remember?” He motioned for Brendan to follow him.
Brendan nodded and followed the Englishman and young boy as they walked briskly out of the market, cutting through the dispersing crowd. Eventually, they stopped behind a building just up the hill from the riverbank market.
“Thank you for saving me,” Brendan said. “Who are you, anyway?”
“My name is Sir Dr. Edwington Alistair Forthwithinshire III, Esquire,” the Englishman said. “Professor of human studies and archaeology at Oxford.”
“Sir, Doctor, Edward . . . wait, can you repeat that? I think I’m going to have to write it down,” Brendan said, struggling to remember it all.
The man laughed. His laughter was somehow even more charming than his accent.
“Such are the pitfalls of being a doctor, lawyer, and knight. You may simply call me Sir Ed if you wish,” he said. “And this is my assistant.”
“My name’s Jumbo,” the small boy said, eyeing Brendan suspiciously. He did not have an accent like the man. He looked Egyptian, but spoke perfect English.
“Okay, uh, Sir Ed and Jumbo, so why did you guys help me?” Brendan asked.
“Because I have a feeling we’re both here for the same reason,” Sir Ed said.
Brendan looked at him, not sure how to respond. Was he looking for a Worldkeeper as well?
“What makes you say that?” Brendan asked hesitantly.
“When Fadil dragged you into the middle of that crowd, something fell out of your pocket,” Sir Ed explained, reaching into his bag.
Brendan’s eyes went wide. The Journal! He was supposed to guard it with his life, it was their only hope of saving Fat Jagger and his own world from certain destruction at the hands of the Wind Witch. And he’d lost it taking a drink of water! Except, he hadn’t. The Journal was still packed firmly into the back pocket of his jeans.
That’s when Sir Ed pulled out Brendan’s Nazi treasure map.
“I found it rather startling that you would possess such a thing,” Sir Ed said, grinning.
“Oh, that? That’s really no big deal,” Brendan said quickly.
“But it is a big deal, a rather big deal indeed,” Sir Ed said, reaching back into his bag. “Because how else would you explain this?”
Sir Ed pulled another folded sheet of paper from his bag, and Brendan’s jaw dropped open. Sir Ed’s copy was a little bit more tattered and worn, but the resemblance was unmistakable. Sir Dr. Edwington Alistair Forthwithinshire III, Esq. had an exact duplicate copy of the lost Nazi treasure map!
Hundreds of miles away, in an alien jungle on Planet 5X, three huge flamethrowing robots surrounded a duo of space rangers and Eleanor. Green flames burst from the robots’ right arms and engulfed the trapped space explorers.
Eleanor Walker had never really wondered what it would feel like to be melted by strange green alien fire. But she was about to find out. Or, she would have, if the green flames spewing from the three UWOs’ flamethrowing hands didn’t pool off to the sides at the last second, melting the plants and trees all around her and her new friends.
“Force field has been activated,” Rodney said calmly.
“Force field!” Eleanor shouted, even as the green flames continued to deflect away from them. “But you just said a second ago that we were all going die!”
“Had I finished my sentence,” Rodney explained. “Then you would have heard that such fatal probabilities were calculated without the use of—”
“Not now, Rodney!” Zoe shouted as she pointed her ray gun at one of the massive UWOs and fired. Concentric rings of red laser beams blasted from the end of Zoe’s weapon, expanding as they moved away. The beams hit the huge UWO and it shuddered and vibrated like it was going to explode. The robot went rigid and tipped over backward, crashing into the alien forest with enough force to knock Eleanor on her butt.
Zoe and Deke somehow stayed upright and continued firing their ray guns until all three UWO’s were lying on several acres of crushed forest foliage, dead or disabled or whatever it was that their sci-fi laser pistols had done to them.
“Eleanor, let’s go,” Zoe said, holding out a hand. “We’ve gotta get out of here before more of them show up. Follow us.”
Eleanor nodded and grabbed Zoe’s hand without hesitation. She followed Zoe and Deke through the strange alien forest. After a few minutes, they finally emerged from the thick bed of odd plants into a rocky desert covered in craters and smooth black buttes and cliffs. It would have been terrifying if Eleanor were alone. The polished black formations were jagged and uninviting, as if she were stepping into the mouth of a carnivorous planet. But with her new friends at her side, the crater desert was actually sort of cool, almost beautiful.
They ran around the edge of a massive crater with pushed-up sides almost as tall as a small mountain. A spaceship with red fins and a h
uge jet engine sat just beyond a jagged outcropping. Several beeps and buzzes emitted from Zoe’s intercom speaker, and a section of the spaceship opened up and stairs folded down.
Eleanor followed them inside. The interior of the ship was cold and futuristic in a way, but, like the rest of the space explorers’ appearances, there was something gaudily vintage about the whole thing. It was covered in warm pastels and smooth, simple-looking computers with large, red-knobbed levers and bright, basic lights. This particular novel had clearly been written long before Eleanor’s time.
“That was a close one, Zoe,” Deke said as the door closed behind them. “I thought we were dead.”
“But we still didn’t get what we came for!” Zoe fired back. “We need to find that little alien.”
“Why do you need to find him so badly?” Eleanor asked.
“He has something of value,” Zoe said, cartoonishly throwing a finger into the air like she just had an amazing idea. “Something we desperately want.”
“What’s that?”
“His heart.”
“His heart!”
“Yes,” Zoe said. “His heart is a very special because he’s the last of his kind. It’s worth over a million InterGalactic credits on the Gray Space Market.”
“And how will you . . . how do you get his heart?” Eleanor asked.
“We will slice it right out of his torso,” Zoe said, making a cutting motion with her hand.
“Are you serious?” Eleanor asked, feeling a sick twinge in her stomach.
She had really liked Zoe, respected her strength and confidence. But being able to cut someone’s heart out, even if it was an alien species, was not something a heroic or moral person would do. Zoe was obviously just a cold, heartless bounty hunter who only cared about money.
“And what does this alien look like?” Eleanor asked.
“He’s very small, like a child,” Zoe said. “He flies around in a metal sphere. Have you seen him?”
Eleanor was too shocked to respond at first. Zoe was talking about Gilbert! The alien they were hunting was the same strange little being that had saved their lives twice. He was with Brendan, and now Zoe wanted to find him and cut out his heart!
Clash of the Worlds Page 18
