CHAPTER 23
In which Reggie talks some sense
When Colonel-Admiral Reginald T. Pusslegut opened his eyes, all he saw was white. Where am I? he wondered. He had no answer to the question, but he was certain of one thing: For the first time in a long time, he felt well rested. Absurdly well rested. It felt extraordinary!
A bracing breeze whistled over his body. To anyone else, the wind would have been numbing, but it didn’t bother Reggie at all. He was a bombastadon. He was built for the cold.
He rolled his head to either side. White. Everything was white.
Could it be?
He sat up. A blizzard of fluffiness fell from his epaulettes.
“Snow!” he cried aloud. “Extraordinary!”
Groaning to his feet, he saw he was inside an icy cave. He walked to its mouth and peered out.
Instantly, he recognized his home, the barren wilds of Antarctica. He was near the foot of Mount Codrington in Enderby Land (a lovely vacation spot this time of winter).
But how had he arrived here? He vaguely recalled nodding off in a wondrously comfortable chair. Perhaps he was still sleeping. Yet if this was a dream, it felt more real than any of the others.
Just to be certain, he raised his arm and pinched the loose, blubbery skin above his elbow.
“Ouch! Indubitably not a dream.”
Perhaps if he could locate some of his old comrades, they could explain what he was doing here. He was about to set off across the vast ice field before him when he stopped.
There was a sound from behind him, a faint noise like the chipping of ice. He turned around, but the cave appeared to be empty. Then he spotted something: a block of blue ice in the back corner. It appeared to be trembling.
Reggie braced himself for an earthquake or a glacial collapse, but he realized it wasn’t the ground that was shaking; it was merely that single block of ice.
“How curious,” he muttered.
He wandered into the cave, and after only a few steps, he saw why the ice was palpitating in such an odd fashion. There was something frozen inside it. When Reggie bent down to see what it was, he couldn’t believe his eyes.
It was Bildorf and Pib, those two insufferable hobmongrels. Somehow, they had gotten themselves stuck inside a cloudy block of ice.
“What are you two doing in there?”
Frozen in a block of ice the way they were, they couldn’t answer Reggie’s question. All they could manage was to judder the ice block back and forth.
“I suppose you’d like me to cut you out of there, is that it?”
This question provoked a good deal of juddering.
“Very well, you silly things.” Reggie drew his ceremonial saber and, with a growling roar, swiped it clean through the middle of the ice, narrowly missing the two hobmongrels within. They emerged howling and blue with cold, icicles dripping from their whiskers.
“Oh! Thank-you-thank-you-thank-you-thank-you-thank-you-thank-you!” cried Bildorf.
“What he said,” added Pib.
Reggie returned their farcical gratitude with a curt bow. “You’re very welcome—I suppose. Now please, stop hopping about like that, quivering like a pair of fools. You’ll cause an avalanche.”
“How can we stop?” cried the pair of practically hypo-thermic creatures. “WE’RE FREEZING!”
“Are you? Feels quite nice to me.”
“That’s because you’re a . . . you’re a . . .” Pib pointed a shivering finger at Reggie’s face. “A whatever you are!”
“A bombastadon, madam.”
“Yeah, one of those.”
“Pah! I would have hoped you two could at least identify my species by now, in light of all your incessant belittling of me, but evidently that was too much to ask.”
“Listen,” said Bildorf, “you didn’t happen to bring any tea and biscuits with you, by any chance?”
“I regret I came bearing no such comestibles. In fact, I was on my way to fetch some tea and biscuits myself when I spotted that wonderful chair.”
Pib sighed. “Can’t you tell the difference between a chair and a teleportation device?”
“Ah, I see. So that’s what it was.”
“Only it doesn’t work very well,” said Bildorf. “Everything you put in it gets sent to Antarctica. See?” He pointed to a pile of sock monkeys in the corner of the cave. “They’ve been testing it all week.”
“Sent to Antarctica, you say?” Reggie tapped one of his tusks thoughtfully. “Is that a problem?”
“Yes!” said the hobmongrels. “IT’S FREEZING!”
“Oh, stop whining. Perhaps this will help.” Reggie picked Bildorf and Pib up by the scruffs of their necks and stuffed them both down the front of his uniform. “There. Hopefully that will keep you warm—and quiet.”
“Actually, yeah,” said Pib. She wound herself into the woolly hair on Reggie’s chest. “It’s quite nice in here.”
Bildorf agreed. “Though I could do without the smell of pickled herring.”
“Sorry,” said Reggie. “I may have spilled some of my dinner.”
“So now what?” Bildorf asked. “How are we supposed to get home?”
“Simple,” said Reggie. He exited the cave and set off across the ice field. “We’ll just have to find ourselves an arachni-mammoth.”
“Please,” said Pib. “Could you talk sense for once?”
“Madam, as a soldier and a gentleman, I make a point of only speaking sense. It is my duty.”
“Oh, brother.”
“Which is precisely why I suggest an arachnimammoth.”
“What is that even supposed to be?” asked Bildorf.
“A big, woolly, eight-legged pachyderm, of course.”
“A hairy elephant with eight legs?”
“Indeed. Frightfully fast! They can cross a whole continent in a matter of hours! Terrific swimmers too, make no mistake! Riding one of those, we’d be back in no time.”
The two hobmongrels stuck their heads out through the neck of Reggie’s uniform.
“You honestly expect us,” said Pib, “to believe such a creature exists?”
“Of course I do!” Reggie continued doggedly lumbering across the ice. “They’re quite common in these parts. We ought to stumble upon one at any moment.”
Pib scoffed. “Sounds about as ridiculous as ‘bringing peace to the vast wastelands of Antarctica.’”
“Which I did,” said Reggie. “The proof is all around us. Look how peaceful it is.”
“There’s nobody here,” said Bildorf. “You might as well tell people you brought peace to the moon.”
“No, that was someone else.”
“Once,” said Pib. “Just once, I would love to hear you admit that it’s all hot air, that 99 percent of everything you say is complete—”
She stopped.
She couldn’t speak because of something she saw. Something coming across the ice field toward them. Something big and very fast.
It was exactly as Reggie described it: a huge, eight-legged woolly mammoth with a spider’s abdomen, clomping elephant’s feet, and not one but two blubbery trunks!
“Ah, here’s one now.” Reggie spit on his paws and rubbed them together in anticipation. “You’d better hang on tight. Could be a tad bumpy at first.”
The two hobmongrels gripped tight to Reggie’s lapels. They watched in terror as the arachnimammoth came storming straight for them, trumpeting through its woolly trunk.
BAROOOOOOO!
Just when it seemed about to trample them to death, Reggie leapt to one side and grasped hold of one of the beast’s coiling tusks, swinging up to its back in a single elegant arc.
“Wooaaaah! Whoa there, my tremendous friend!” Reggie whispered a series of clicks and clucks into the arachnimammoth’s ear and the creatu
re was instantly soothed.
“I don’t believe it,” said Pib.
“Me neither,” said Bildorf. “But it’s happening.”
“Now then,” said Reggie. He deftly steered the great beast in a slow circle. “Which way is north?”
Before Reggie could regain his bearings, a whole stampede of arachnimammoths came thundering across the ice field. On the back of every one were bombastadons, all dressed in the same military regalia as Reggie, complete with medals, polished buttons, and ceremonial sabers.
They were such a fearsome and imposing sight that both hobmongrels dove back into Reggie’s uniform to hide.
When the army of bombastadons saw Reggie standing in their path, they all came to a crashing halt, kicking up a squall of snow and ice. When it settled, a young bombastadon cantered forward on his arachnimammoth.
“Colonel-Admiral Pusslegut? Is it really you?”
Reggie snorted. “Who else would you expect to find in a place like this?”
“We all heard you’d been killed in the battle of Elephant Island.”
“Pah! Takes more than the melting of a few ice caps to do away with old Reggie!”
“Evidently, sir.” The young soldier’s eyes moved down to Reggie’s chest. “Though I must say, it seems perhaps you’ve . . . changed.”
It took Reggie a moment to realize that with the two hobmongrels stuffed inside his uniform, it looked like he had grown a pair of lumpy breasts.
“Ah, yes—I mean, no! I mean . . . these aren’t what you think they are. These are merely my, uh . . . er . . .”
Bildorf and Pib popped out of Reggie’s collar.
“We’re his friends,” they said.
“Friends?” asked Reggie.
“Any friends of the colonel-admiral,” said the young bombastadon soldier, “are friends of ours. Isn’t that right, gentlemen?”
There was a booming roar of appreciation that echoed for miles across the ice. When the cheering finally subsided, the young soldier up front led all the rest in a solemn salute.
“Sir,” he said. “It is a great honor and privilege to finally meet you.”
Seeing this—a whole army of Antarctic bombastadons, their rigid paws pressed to their foreheads in a profound show of respect—Bildorf and Pib were overcome with emotion. They couldn’t help but do something they thought they would never do, not in a million years.
They looked up at Colonel-Admiral Reginald T. Pusslegut and they saluted him too.
CHAPTER 24
In which Elliot and Leslie attend the wrong shareholder’s meeting and the Chief muses on alternate means of production
It was casual Friday at DENKi-3000. The creatures had tinkered with the machines all through the night, but none of them worked properly. The final shareholders’ meeting was later that afternoon, and the creatures had nothing to present. Worse, no one had heard anything from Elliot’s uncle.
Leslie and Elliot decided they would return to the Abstractory. Perhaps if they selected fresh new essences, the devices would work properly. They met in the forest of Bickleburgh Park and used Reggie’s GPS to open the entrance. Just as they turned toward the Creature Department, however, Elliot stopped.
He was gazing into the other tunnel, the one into which the ghorks had fled. Facing it, with daylight streaming in from the entranceway, Elliot saw a glint of light on the floor of the cave.
“What is it?” Leslie asked him.
Elliot didn’t answer. He took out his electric pencil, peering into the shadows through its telescopic lens.
“We shouldn’t go that way,” Leslie warned.
“I know, but . . .” Elliot took a few steps into the tunnel. “It’s okay. There’re no ghorks. See?” He held up the GPS to show her.
Leslie followed him into the tunnel and saw he was right. There was something there: a DENKi-3000 ID badge on the ground. Elliot recognized the photograph instantly.
“Uncle Archie!” Elliot started down into the cave. “What if the ghorks have taken him? We’ve got to bring him back somehow.”
“Shouldn’t we get the others?”
“They won’t come. They’re too scared to come down here.”
“What about Reggie?”
“It’ll be okay,” said Elliot. He held up the GPS. “As long as we have this.”
“I don’t know. . . .”
“It’s my uncle. I have to find him, and we’ve got to bring him back in time for the meeting.”
The tunnels under DENKi-3000 were a maze of shadow and stone, illuminated by the fluttering phosphorescence of luster bugs.
They moved deeper, and the little green dots that represented ghorks on the screen became more and more numerous. Soon, they had to duck into alcoves or tiptoe into dead-end caves to avoid roving groups of ghorks. They kept expecting—and hoping—to see Reggie, but there was no sign of him.
A quiver of brightness began to glow around the next bend. The luster-bug light hit the wall in ripples, casting shadows that washed over the stone like gentle ocean waves.
Leslie stopped.
“What’s that?” She pointed to a pool of darkness on the wall: a solid, moving shadow. “There’s something else in the tunnel.”
Elliot checked the GPS. “Definitely not a ghork,” he said.
It certainly wasn’t. This thing was much bigger. Its bulky shadow rose up on the wall facing them.
“If it’s not a ghork, then it must be Reggie.” Elliot was just about to take a step forward when Leslie grabbed his arm.
“No,” she whispered. “Look at the shape of it.”
Leslie was right. The shadow was all wrong. Reggie stood with an imperiously straight back; this creature, however, had the posture of a gorilla. There was also the matter of its tail. Reggie didn’t have one. The beast casting the shadow, on the other hand, had a long, thick tail that swished and slithered like a python.
They hid themselves behind an outcrop of rock and waited for the creature to pass. Only it didn’t. It turned down another tunnel and the shadow faded.
“I’m beginning to understand,” Elliot whispered, “why nobody wants to come down here.”
Again, they moved toward the wavering light, and it wasn’t long before they found themselves on a ledge overlooking a truly vast cavern.
It was as big as a football stadium. Hanging from the roof was a great glass dome so full of luster bugs, the huge space was nearly as bright as day.
The floor of the cave was laid out with prim rows of chairs. Seated in every one was a ghork. There were hundreds of them. They all sat facing a stage at the far end of the cavern (the scene bore an eerie resemblance to the DENKi-3000 shareholders’ meeting).
Elliot shuddered. There was something particularly chilling about creatures as nasty and thuggish as ghorks being organized in such a regimented way.
The five ghorks they had already met lumbered onstage and were greeted with cheers from the crowd. At last, they were followed by none other than . . . Monica Burkenkrantz!
They took seats behind the long table onstage, sitting in silence. Everyone seemed to be waiting for something.
Suddenly, an image appeared on a massive screen behind the stage. It was the silhouette of a man’s head and shoulders. His face was lost in shadow, and even though it was impossible to tell who he was, every last ghork erupted in wild cheers.
“Quazicom forever!” cried one of the ghorks.
“Hail to the Chief!” cried another.
The Chief.
Whoever he was, he held up a hand to silence the crowd.
“Thank you,” he said. “No need for applause.” He had a dry, loose, gravelly voice, but his words came with honeyed warmth that made it pleasant and almost seductive. “I’d like to start by welcoming the soon-to-be president of DENKi-3000, Ms. Monica Burkenkrantz, as well
as some more familiar faces. The heads of the five tribes: Grinner, Iris, Wingnut, Adenoid Jack, and Digits. And of course, welcome to all of you—the loyal shareholders of Quazicom International.”
A thunderous roar rose from the crowd as the ghorks let out a cheer for themselves.
“Shareholders,” whispered Leslie.
Elliot could hardly believe it. “The ghorks are behind Quazicom.”
The Chief cleared his throat. “Ahem! For some time now, we at Quazicom have been expanding our operations with the acquisition of firms from around the world. We targeted these companies because they all share the same unusual traits. First, they created products unlike anything else out there. And second, the origin of these products was always a closely guarded secret.”
On the stage, Monica Burkenkrantz was nodding to herself.
“Of course,” the Chief went on, “we know the secret, don’t we?”
There were boos, hisses, and jeers from the ghorks.
“Yes,” said the Chief. “Creature Departments.” He held up what looked like a speckled blue robin’s egg. It was a wireless breath mint. “Products as good as this ought to be Quazicom products—and they will be, very soon.” He popped the mint into his mouth.
More angry cheering from the ghorks.
“This is why a collaboration between Quazicom and the ghorks is such a fruitful partnership. We at Quazicom will take over DENKi-3000’s technology and you ghorks—well, you’ll be running all our new Creature Departments.”
The crowd clamored with shouts and claps and fists drubbing at the air.
“They’ll be working for us!” one of them shouted.
“We’ll make ’em our slaves!” screamed another.
On the screen, the Chief sighed. “You know, I’m almost jealous. Among us human folk, slave labor went out of fashion many years ago.” He sighed wistfully. “Those were the days. . . .”
High in the darkness of the cave, Leslie and Elliot backed away from the ledge.
“Creature slaves,” whispered Elliot. “That’s what’ll happen when Quazicom takes over.”
The Creature Department Page 18
