by Robert McKay
For a few seconds, Alice pondered just leaving. Then, the more she thought about it, the more she realized that she did need more information; even wrong information told her something. “If you were me, how would you go about finding one of the queen’s ships and getting off this planet?”
“Oh, good question. You can do some thinking after all. I’ve made up my mind to like you, Alice,” said the cat. The rest of his head disappeared, leaving only his grinning mouth.
“Aren’t you going to answer my question?”
“Some day, I may, if it suits me.”
“Well, this has been an extraordinary waste of time,” said Alice with a sigh.
“Quite extraordinary indeed, thank you, Alice.”
“You’re welcome,” Alice said automatically, her manners getting the best of her. That annoying cat was most certainly not welcome. She started to tell him so when she realized that his grin had disappeared along with the rest of him.
CHAPTER FIVE
Once the cat was gone, Alice did a bit of thinking on her own and found her way back to Bandersnatch Boulevard. From there it was just a short walk to The Red Palace.
The place was a massive tower, looming over the rest of the buildings around it. Considering the high-tech landscape of the Wonderland she’d seen so far, the fact that the palace was a skyscraper shouldn’t have been a surprise. It just seemed strange that a real queen existed, but she didn’t live in a proper castle. The massive glowing sign at the top of the building left no question though.
Come see the Red Queen battle for dominance in the croquet match of the century, only at The Red Palace!
Hordes of people flowed in and out of the doors, chattering excitedly. Alice approached slowly, looking for signs that would direct her to where the ships were kept. She had no desire to watch the queen play croquet. As she approached she heard a strange popping noise, and then a whole chorus of them.
“The Red Palace has the best girls.” Pop. Pop. Pop.
“Clean girls.” Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop.
Men and women lined the sidewalk in front of The Red Palace, their arms outstretched to the people passing by. Mostly they were ignored, sometimes they were shoved.
Alice had seen beggars before, when she went to the capital with her father. It was never a pleasant sight. Usually she would ask her father for some money and would give it to them along with a smile. They rarely smiled back, but when they did, it made her day.
This time she didn’t have any money to offer them, so she decided to at least give them a smile since they were being treated so badly. Once she approached though, she realized they weren’t beggars at all. Their outstretched hands weren’t empty, waiting to be filled. Instead, they held small cards with colorful pictures on them.
“Girls. All shapes, sizes, colors.” Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop.
The popping was them flicking the cards to get people’s attention. It was surprisingly aggressive for such a small noise. By the time she realized her mistake, she was too close to avoid them. As she walked by, a dozen hands held out cards for her, pulling them back just before she walked into them. She was able to ignore the first six or seven. Eventually, the incessant popping pulled her attention to their hands and before she could look away the card was in her hand.
It was the size of a standard business card, glossy black with a naked woman sprawled across it. A phone number was written across the top in bright pink. On the back were written various services that Alice didn’t understand with a price next to each one.
She stared at it blankly for a moment, not exactly sure what to make of it. It didn’t make any sense. Why were there random people out on the street, handing out small pictures of naked women? Then it clicked. These women were selling their bodies…for sex. Alice looked around hurriedly, concerned that someone would see her with the card, that she would be in trouble. She could feel her cheeks burning. Nobody paid her the slightest bit of attention, including the people handing out the cards.
She stuffed it in her pocket, determined to find a trash can to dispose of it. The sidewalk was already littered with the lewd cards, but she couldn’t compound her guilt over having taken the card with littering as well.
“Some pirate you are,” she berated herself, heading for the main doors of the building. “You read about men on pirate ships going ‘wenching’ all the time. You know what it means, but you practically wet yourself just because you got handed a card with a hooker’s number on it. You’re not a child any more. It’s time you started acting like it.”
Inside, a wall of sounds assaulted her ears. People cheered and groaned from every direction, accompanied by the sounds of bells, electronic beeping, and the clatter of coins. The air was thick with smoke that tickled the back of her throat and made her cough. To her right was a huge room full of machines. People stood in front of them, pressing buttons or pulling handles. They fed them coins and occasionally coins spilled out of the bottom into a metal tray. It took her a moment to realize what they were. Slot machines. To her left was another room, just as large, but full of green tables with people around them, playing cards.
The Red Palace was a casino.
Alice almost turned around and walked right back out the door. On Nedra you couldn’t gamble until you were eighteen years old, and even then, her parents had taught her that gambling was something only the weak-minded did. Thoughts of her parents disapproval pushed her forward. If her parents didn’t approve, then maybe she should give it a try. After all, they didn’t want her to be a pirate, either.
“Shouldn’t they check your ID before they let you just walk into a casino?” asked Alice of no one in particular.
“If you’ve got money, the red queen doesn’t care if you’re in diapers,” barked someone passing by, their breath smelling heavily of liquor and cigarettes.
Directly in front of her was a bank of elevators with large signs next to them. That seemed like as good a place as any to start. She briefly entertained the idea of asking someone where the ship docks would be, but discarded it after thinking about her encounter with the cat.
One of the signs next to the elevator indicated airship parking was on the tenth floor. Perhaps she could have her ship and be on her way within the hour.
Alice stepped off the elevator into an area that was very similar to a parking garage, just much taller. Ships of various shapes and sizes were positioned throughout the massive space. It took up an entire floor of the casino. It would probably take her the better part of an hour to search the whole area.
“Well, nothing for it but to get to looking around,” she said to herself, sighing heavily.
Her mind drifted to the adventures she planned to have as soon as she had her ship. The first one, obviously, would be finding a crew. In the great pirate adventures, the captain always put in at a known pirate port and headed to a tavern. There were always men hanging about in taverns, waiting to find a ship to set sail on. It probably wouldn’t take too much asking around to get someone to point her toward someplace with disreputable pirate types in this city. She could probably just go back down to the casino floor and ask three or four people.
That made her smile. If there was a place that was ripe for pirating, Wonderland was it. All she had to do was find her ship and get to it.
After a few minutes of wandering she came to an area that was fenced off. Placed periodically, were large signs in the shape of blood red hearts proclaiming: Keep out! Property of the Red Queen.
Alice stepped close and peered through the metal mesh. There were dozens of ships beyond the fence. One of them had to be The White Rabbit. She walked hurriedly along the fence, scanning for a way through. The top of the fence was four meters in the air and covered with lots of nasty looking razor wire, so that wasn’t an option. Rounding a corner brought a gap in the fence into view, but there were two crazy looking guards standing in front of it.
Each guard was wearing what looked like armor out of a fantasy story: helmets, c
hainmail, gauntlets and various other pieces that had hard to pronounce names. They paced around, clattering loudly, large long-handled axes resting on their shoulders. The craziest part was that their bodies were almost perfect rectangles with only the smallest notch out of the bottom for their legs, and they were nearly flat. Alice was a thin girl and they were easily half as thin as she was. On the front of their armor was painted the design of a playing card. One was a two of hearts and the other a four of hearts. If their weapons and armor hadn’t looked so wicked, Alice would have laughed out loud.
Thankfully they were a hundred or more meters away and her area of the parking garage was rather poorly lit, so they likely couldn’t see her. Just in case, she ducked back around her corner and watched them with one eye poking around the fence for much longer than was strictly necessary. Their heads and arms looked human enough. Their bodies looked as if someone had simply smashed them flat in order to make them resemble playing cards. As to be expected from someone with a smashed body, they didn’t look at all very happy. Once she’d had her fill of gawking at the guards, she peered down the length of fence and spotted a small gap between two poles. It was very narrow.
She paced down the length of fence and kept one eye on the guards, thankful for the poor lighting. It would be a tough squeeze, but if she could just get inside, she was sure she could get her ship outside through one of the large openings in the side of the building that the ships passed in through.
Alice sucked in a deep breath and pushed into the gap. She had a moment of panic where she thought she would have to shout for help from the guards to get back out of the fence. After a lot of wiggling and some pretty nasty scrapes, she popped through and tumbled to the concrete floor.
CHAPTER SIX
The ships in the queen’s special section of the docks varied greatly. Most of them were much more ostentatious looking than The White Rabbit, but as far as Alice could tell, none of them were alive. One small ship looked like it was designed to carry a single passenger and was very sleek and sharp. It was strikingly familiar. Alice was certain that she’d seen something like it before. Once she got close enough, she spotted a Nedran flag on the nose of the craft. It was a Talon! One of the brand new fighter ships designed to fight off the Colarians. It didn’t make any sense for it to be in the red queen’s collection, but there it sat, looking beautiful and deadly. It was tempting to try to take a look inside, but Alice reminded herself that she already had a ship and she could be caught by guards at any moment.
Just when her nerves started to get the best of her and she was about to head back through the gap in the fence, The White Rabbit came into view at the back of the garage. To Alice he looked sad and lonely. She knew just what to do about that.
“Hello, Rabbit,” said Alice, trying to keep her tone down.
The White Rabbit didn’t respond.
“Are you sleeping, Rabbit?” she asked, wondering if he was actually able to close his eyes, if in fact the clear spots on his rabbit-like face actually were eyes.
Still, The White Rabbit said nothing and made no move to indicate it knew of her presence. It was still hovering off the ground, so being asleep didn’t seem likely.
Alice stepped closer and wrapped gently on the ship’s white hull with her knuckles as if she were knocking on a door. “Are you in there, Rabbit?”
“Now that’s just a ludicrous question,” snapped Rabbit. “Of course I’m ‘in here’. If I weren’t I would literally have to be out of my mind. Hmph.”
“Then why didn’t you respond when I spoke to you before? Were you asleep?”
“No, I wasn’t asleep. I don’t sleep, not that it should concern you,” hissed Rabbit. “What should concern you is the fact that I’m not happy with you and I was choosing to ignore you until you decided to go wrapping on my hull and asking the stupidest question I’ve ever heard. Now, kindly go away and leave me to my boredom.”
“Please, keep your voice down,” whispered Alice. “I don’t want to get caught in here. Those guards out there didn’t look to be very nice people, if they were people at all.”
“You mean you didn’t even get permission to come back here and talk to me?”
Alice looked all around her, her eyes peeled for any movement. Rabbit’s voice was still unreasonably loud, but she didn’t want to ask him to keep quiet again. It just seemed to make him more angry. “I had no intention of just coming back here to talk to you, I planned on taking you out of here. Somehow I didn’t think that the queen would think too highly of me stealing a ship right out of her own palace.”
“Right you are on that account.” Rabbit laughed. It was a strange whistling snort that made Alice smile, even if it did seem to be at her expense. “But what makes you think I would ever leave this place with an intolerable brat such as yourself?”
Alice took a step back, her brow furrowed in confusion. “Why would you say such a mean thing to me?”
“Because you are treating me like property,” sniffed Rabbit, sounding wounded.
“But, I don’t understand. You are property,” said Alice. “It clearly even says so on the signs around this very spot.”
“Just because the queen says I’m her property and treats me as such, doesn’t mean that I am. I am a person, just the same as you, and I will not tolerate children who think they can give me a name and then claim they own me. At least the red queen can provide me with a proper shelter to keep me out of the wet even if she does threaten to have me beheaded from time to time. Could you provide me with such a thing?”
“Well, I hadn’t thought—”
“Of course not,” chided Rabbit. “You hadn’t taken the time to think about how I might feel about being stolen and made to serve your purposes instead of my own. How typical.”
“I—I’m sorry,” stammered Alice. Her head turned down to the floor and her cheeks burned with shame. “I just got carried away. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I think you’re a very lovely person. You deserve much more than to have to serve a mean old woman who threatens to cut off your head.”
“You don’t think that I know that? If it weren’t for the tracking device I would have struck out on my own a long time ago.”
“I could try to help you get rid of that,” said Alice cautiously. “It’s the least I could do for treating you like property.”
“Hmmm,” said Rabbit, as if he were thinking very hard. Alice could tell that he was being coy because he wasn’t sure if he wanted to forgive her. “Very well. I doubt you’ll be able to help, but I’m willing to let you try.”
“Halt!” came a shout from just down the row of ships. One of those strange looking card men was charging toward her, his axe waving menacingly. “Halt in the name of the queen!”
“Run,” hissed The White Rabbit.
Alice bolted down the row of ships, turning as soon as she was out of sight of the guard. She turned left a couple of times, hoping she could circle back to The White Rabbit. She was certain he’d forgiven her and would help her out of this mess if only she could get back to him. Her heart was hammering in her ears and her breath was coming in ragged gasps.
There was no way to escape the fenced in area. She only had two options: hide, or get on a ship and fly out. A shout came from just off to her right, so Alice turned left again. How could they be tracking her so well? She hadn’t seen a guard since the first one charged at her. Then, over her puffs of breath, she realized she could hear the loud clacking of her hard soled shoes hitting the concrete floor. They were as good as a homing beacon. Alice skidded to a stop, but overbalanced herself and tumbled forward. The floor rushed up to greet her, but the impact never came.
Strong arms lifted her to her feet, none too gently. Alice shook her blonde hair out of her face and found herself staring at a chest decorated to look like a five of hearts. “By the authority of the queen of hearts, you are under arrest and will be jailed until her majesty reviews the charges against you and passes sentence.”
Alice reached for the sword at her waist. “Not if I have anything to say about it,” retorted Alice, drawing her sword. Before the guard could react, she slashed out and whacked him in the shin. The blunted blade didn’t draw any blood, but it was plenty heavy enough to cause pain.
Alice crowed in triumph and ran the other direction, the guard shouting obscenities behind her. Adrenaline surged through her veins, giving her an extra burst of speed. Maybe she would actually get away and find her way back to The White Rabbit and off of this mad planet.
Maybe not.
At top speed Alice plowed into another card guard that jumped out in front of her. They went down in a tangle of limbs, mostly Alice’s. His were too short to really get tangled. They weren’t, however, too short to grab hold of her and shake her sword loose from her hand. It tumbled to the concrete floor with a metallic clatter and took Alice’s hopes of escape with it.
A few moments later the other guard arrived, limping slightly. Alice grinned while the other guard manhandled her to her feet. The limping guard stepped forward and viciously swung the metal club he carried at her ribs. Pain exploded through her chest like nothing she’d ever felt before. That wasn’t any ordinary club. She’d taken her share of falls and even broken a rib before on a particularly nasty one. The pain was terrible, but so very different from the bite of that club. It clawed through her body like a rampaging animal, bent on destroying everything in its path. All thought was impossible. The world was a red-hot blur. Her vision blurred with hot tears and her ears ached from a piercing shriek.
After what felt like an eternity but was probably only a few seconds, the strange clawing pain of the club’s magic dissipated, leaving only the dull ache of its relatively weak physical blow. She would only have a bruise for a couple of days. Alice found her mouth was open and her throat was raw. The shriek hadn’t been something caused by the club’s magic, it had been her own howling voice.
