by Garth Nix
“Interesting, most interesting.” Aleksandr nodded. “Very well. You may consider yourselves members of Project Thunderclap — provisionally, of course, subject to review prior to the event.” He indicated an aide-de-camp standing by the doorway. “Marjorie here will provide you with identity tokens and give you the tour. Be sure,” he said, with a pointed glare at Jaide, “that you touch nothing and interfere with no one. You will be called upon when needed. That is all.”
They stood, and Marjorie, a skinny woman with dark hair pulled back in a bun, waved them through the flap of canvas that stood in for a door.
Jaide expelled a deep breath. They had made it. So far, her plan was working.
Marjorie led them along a narrow hallway full of bustling people, explaining to them as they went to get their tokens. “The tokens mark you as members of the Project and give you access to the proper interior of the tent. Anyone who’s not a Warden or a member will just see a circus tent, a circus tent that’s closed so they can’t get in. And even if they do get a look somehow, they’ll just see sawdust and stuff. The Evil has spies everywhere. We can’t be too careful.”
She took them to a small room, like a sick bay. The tokens were coin-size metal badges that were permanently affixed to their scalps, so that their hair would fall over them, hiding them from view. Jaide rubbed at hers, unnerved by the new, alien bump. It didn’t hurt or even itch, but when she tugged on it a sharp pain went through her skin right into her brain. If there was a traitor in Project Thunderclap, there was no way he or she could remove the token and give it to someone else.
Jaide wondered if she qualified as a traitor. Perhaps she did. She certainly had no intention of letting Aleksandr’s plan proceed without a hitch. Stefano didn’t say anything, but she could tell by his burning gaze that he was thinking the same thing.
Next came the tour. Marjorie was brisk and perfunctory, showing them through the labyrinthine halls of the tent — which seemed much bigger on the inside than it ought to be — naming each room they passed with very little explanation.
“Mess,” she said. “Sick bay. Orderly Room. Quartermaster. Ironmonger.”
Jaide did her best to memorize it all, but soon became overwhelmed. This was a much bigger endeavor than she had imagined. Without Marjorie, she would have quickly become lost.
Then, over the banging and clanging of industry, she heard a familiar, strident voice rising up in protest.
“My theories require no explanation at all,” it declared, “being perfectly evident in the workings of nature. Your contraptions, on the other hand, are inexplicable to the extreme! Just look at this device. Is it a window or a painting? It cannot decide, and until it does I’m afraid it will not make any kind of sense to me, or to anyone sensible. Take this computational confounder away and bring me a scribe with a reliable quill! Then we will begin to make progress.”
Jaide hid a smile. Professor Olafsson hadn’t changed one bit.
She stopped and turned her head, using her ears to determine where the sound of his voice came from. There was a door just along the hallway with a four-pointed star painted on the canvas. That was the place.
“What’s over here?” she said, pulling away from Marjorie and heading in that direction. If she could just make sure it was him, everything would be much simpler.
“Jaidith!” called a voice from behind her. “What are you doing here?”
She stopped and turned on the spot. “Dad?”
Hector was hurrying down the hallway. He looked furious.
“I came as soon as I heard,” he said. “Kleo told us you were checking the wards, and then Aleksandr called to get our approval. He says you’ve volunteered. What on earth are you thinking?”
Jaide cursed Aleksandr. She hadn’t thought that he would check with her parents.
“I … that is, we wanted to do something to help,” she said, which was technically true, but she didn’t think technicalities would matter if he found out what she was really doing.
“You, too?” Hector asked Stefano.
Stefano swallowed, then nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said in exactly the tone he had used with Aleksandr.
Hector took Jaide by the arm, and although her Gifts twitched, she let herself be pulled down the hallway. She didn’t want her father to know what she was really thinking, and if he saw the Professor he might guess.
“I understand that you’re upset, Jaide, but this isn’t going to fix anything.”
“Isn’t it?” she said for the benefit of the people around them. “Jack is gone. Lottie is gone. How many other people are we going to lose before The Evil is stopped?”
“Yes, that is true, but —”
“And you’re helping, too, aren’t you, Dad?” she said. “You’re a volunteer as well?”
He rubbed at the back of his neck, and she saw clearly through the hair there a token that matched her own.
“Well, that’s true, too, but —”
“So what’s the problem? You’ll be here to keep an eye on me, and together we’ll get rid of The Evil forever.”
She smiled her most winning smile.
He sagged. Hector could never stay angry at his children for long.
“All right, but you’ve got to come home now. Your mother is beside herself, as I would be, too, in her shoes. She wants to take you with her to Scarborough tomorrow morning, and it’s all I can do to convince her that you’ll be much safer here, inside the wards, than you would be out there. You, too, Stefano. Come on. It’s been a long day, and you have a long day ahead tomorrow.”
For a moment Jaide’s mind was empty of anything but the plan.
“Just school and soccer practice, and I can skip those if they need help here.”
“You’re forgetting the Examination,” Hector said. “The third round may be the worst of all, and you’re not getting out of it that easily.”
Jaide and Stefano exchanged a look of shared surprise.
“The worst of all?” Stefano croaked.
“Seriously?” Jaide said.
“Yes, now get a move on before your mother turns up in the helicopter.”
Hector led them out of the tent to where the old family car was waiting for them by the oval, Jaide’s Gifts stirring nervously for the first time since Stefano had stolen her power.
Jack!”
Tara’s voice was accompanied by the high-pitched ringing of steel. Jack ducked and the sword swished over his head, missing him by a hair.
“What are you doing?” He spun to face her, raising his improvised bone-scimitar. He didn’t want to use it, even if she had been turned Evil, but he had to defend himself somehow.
“Look.” She pointed at his feet, where something twitched in the sand, cut neatly in half by the impossibly sharp blade.
He squatted to look at it more closely. It was a bug with six wings and way too many legs. A long stinger curled and uncurled from its head. It had four eyes, and all of them were glowing white. As Jack watched, they flickered and went out. The stinger stopped moving. The thing was dead.
“Yuck,” said Kyle. “Where did that come from?”
“It was right above you, Jack,” Tara explained. “I thought it was going to bite your neck.”
Jack stood up and brushed himself off.
“I’m glad you saw it,” he said. “Thanks.”
“Do you think there are more out there like that?” asked Kyle, sweeping the sky with a nervous gaze.
“Let’s not stick around to find out,” said Tara, pointing at the structures ahead. “Onward!”
They resumed their march across the sand. It was less a march and more of a trudge, Jack reflected, even though he did feel slightly less heavy in the realm of The Evil. The sand was too soft to properly walk on, and they were getting tired and very thirsty on top of the dozens of aches and pains caused by their crash landing. But their destination was slowly getting closer. Jack was certain now that the shapes ahead weren’t mountains, as Kyle had suggested.
They were lumpy and cylindrical, lots of them all joined together and bulging up out of the earth, with dark openings that looked like doors or windows dotting their sides. They could have been buildings, but they could equally have been giant anthills. Jack didn’t know which possibility made him more anxious.
Either way, he and the others needed to get out of the bright daylight. One of the suns had set, but a third one, the hottest of them all, had taken its place. The only shade he had was that beneath his hat. The huge number of bones sticking out of the desert sand was testimony to how often things died here. Not all of the bones were of giant beasts. A lot of them were human-size, but nothing at all like human skeletons.
Kyle and Jack fell in behind Tara, who was setting a brisk pace in the lead.
“Did you see the bug’s eyes?” asked Kyle. “It was Evil, wasn’t it?”
Jack nodded. “That’s how it looked to me.”
“Do you think everything’s Evil here?”
“I guess so. Except for us, and maybe Lottie, if she really is here.”
He had begun to wonder about that, now that he had seen the place. If it was all like this, dry and dead, it would be a miracle if anyone had survived for so many years. And thus far there had been no sign of her. Cornelia was still missing. Jack hoped she was faring better than they were.
“Does this mean The Evil knows where we are?” Kyle asked.
Jack hadn’t wanted to raise that possibility. Any small part of The Evil was connected to the rest, so whatever the bug had seen, the rest of The Evil knew it now, too.
“I think we should save our breath for keeping up with Tara,” he said.
Kyle grunted and put the umbrella up again. As they passed over a stony surface, he reached down and picked up two pebbles.
“Here,” he said, giving one of them to Jack. “Suck on it. It’ll stop you from feeling so thirsty.”
Jack warily put the stone in his mouth. It was hot and tasted like ash.
“You learned that in Scouts, too?” he asked.
“Yes. Here’s hoping it’ll work on an alien planet.”
* * *
They killed four more bug things before they reached the base of the “city.” Two were Evilflies, as Kyle dubbed them, with scissorlike pincers. He smacked one of them out of the sky with his oar. Jack burned the other. Another consisted of a long wormlike thing with dozens of legs that rose up hissing from the ground in Tara’s path and that she squashed before it could bite her. She called it an Evilpede. The last looked like a small tumbleweed that had rolled across their path, and hadn’t seemed alive until it had unfolded in front of Kyle and tried to grab hold of his leg with razor-tipped, twiglike legs. Tara sliced the “Evilweed” into bits, revealing two Evil eyes at its heart. Several Evilweed flocks lurked in the distance, shadowing them, but none had approached any closer, perhaps warned off by the death of the first.
Behind them, the black cloud was looming larger and more threateningly than ever.
“We made it,” Kyle gasped as they staggered toward the base of the nearest “building.” There was one opening at ground level. Jack headed for it without hesitation.
Tara pulled him back. “Shouldn’t we at least check to see what’s in there first?”
“I can see just fine,” he said. “The light’s bright enough. There’s nothing waiting for us.”
“Maybe you can see,” said Kyle, “but it’s pitch-black to me.”
Only then did Jack realize that his Gift had returned, which was a surprise because he was normally least powerful during the daylight, and here, with three suns, there might never be full dark. It was also surprising because he hadn’t stopped to wonder if his Gift would even work in the Evil Dimension. If he had, he would have assumed it wouldn’t have worked, with the rest of the Wardens so far away.
That was a relief. But his friends would remain in the dark if they went any farther, reliant on him to guide them around.
“Grab some branches,” he said, pointing at one of the dead trees they had passed. “They look like they’ll burn. I’ll light them and then you’ll be able to see.” One of the items he had retrieved from the sand was a yellowing magnifying glass that focused light much more intensely than a clear one.
His friends did as he suggested, Tara hacking at several thick limbs with her sword, and Kyle putting them in the pockets of his enormous coat. Jack lit two, and when the brands were burning with a crackling, red light, they went inside.
What they found was a vast space crisscrossed by ramps and landings with few level floors. It looked more grown than built, and there were signs that it had once been inhabited by something very much like people … so it wasn’t a hive for giant ants. There were seats and tables carved into the walls, and several knobby things that might have been tools scattered on the uneven floors. Of the owners, there was no sign.
Several levels up, in the cool heart of the vast structure they found a chamber filled with living plants, where condensation dripped down tall, funnel-like rock chimneys into narrow channels that led from planter to planter. It had once been a garden, perhaps a farm, but now it was a jungle, containing hundreds of drooping, thick-stemmed plants that looked more like cactuses than trees. Some had thorns, some flowers. Bulging, brightly colored fruit hung rotting everywhere they looked.
The smell was awful.
“But water, that’s good, right?” said Jack.
“If we can drink it.” Tara ran her fingers along one of the gutters and used the droplets she collected to barely dampen her lips. She made a face. “I’ve tasted worse. But there’s not much of it.”
“It’s all around us.” Kyle went scurrying between the planters, looking for a particularly fat stem. “Tara, cut this one, right here.”
As Tara approached with her sword, the plant began to twitch and rock, bringing branches down in an attempt to enclose them.
“Stop that!” Kyle bashed it with the burning brand. The tree hissed and growled. “Stop being so Evil!”
“You are trying to chop it down,” said Jack, unsure why he was defending a plant growing in the realm of The Evil. Maybe because it was powerless and couldn’t help if The Evil had taken it over.
“Not chop it,” said Kyle. “Tap it.”
He put his finger where he wanted Tara to use the sword, and she drew the tip along its skin, revealing thick, green flesh that dripped moisture.
“Now drink,” he said.
“Are you sure it’s safe?” Tara asked.
“No, but we have to drink, and plants like this filter out all the bad stuff. Who would put plants that didn’t in their home, anyway? If you want to, though, we could find a pot and boil it —”
“No, it’s okay.” Tara bent over and took a deep sip from the weeping plant. “Mmmm, it’s sweet.”
They took turns, and when the flow began to lessen, they went to another plant. Around them, the jungle clicked and swayed, and Jack knew their presence wasn’t welcome. When Tara declared that they had to move on as soon as they were full, Kyle complained about being tired, but Jack knew she was right.
“We’ve seen plants and bugs,” he said. “There could be much worse out there.”
“If there is, why hasn’t it attacked us?”
“I don’t know. Because it’s getting ready?”
“I’m not sticking around to find out,” said Tara, picking her brand up from where she’d stuck it in a planter’s black soil.
“But where are we going to go?” asked Kyle.
“Let’s take a look. There must be a window around here somewhere.”
They wound their way through the jungle until they saw a gleam of daylight in the distance. It was a window, and they crowded up to it to see what lay across the desert, if anything lay there at all.
“Uh-oh,” said Tara.
Jack’s stomach sank. An army of Evilweeds, Evilpedes, and Evilflies was massing at the base of the “building,” rolling, crawling, and flying in from all directions to fo
rm a semicircular wall that was already several yards deep. Sickly white eyes gleamed from every one of them. Many of the creatures had merged to form larger agglomerations — creatures as large as dogs with six legs, shapeless blobs that extruded tentacles to roll themselves along, even two-legged monstrosities with multiple heads and arms. Insect limbs clicked and chattered as the host assembled.
“I’m sorry,” Jack said.
“Sorry about what?” said Tara.
“Sorry you’re here. You shouldn’t be caught up in this. Even if we can escape The Evil here, we’ve still got to get home before Project Thunderclap does its thing. If Jaide and I hadn’t ever come to Portland —”
“We wouldn’t be having this much fun,” Tara said fiercely, slapping the flat of the sword into the palm of her hand. “Ouch,” she added.
Kyle laughed, and said, “Yeah, this is way better than school.”
“Do you think it’s daytime back home, too?” asked Tara. “That’s what I think.”
“It’s always daytime here. Maybe that means there’s always school. No wonder The Evil’s so grouchy.”
Jack forced a smile. He suspected his friends’ jokes were intended to make him feel better, and was grateful for it. Tara might not be faking her new bravado, but he knew Kyle was as nervous as he was. Kyle’s gaze kept flicking back to the window and the view outside.
“Looks like The Evil is going to wait us out,” said Jack. “It thinks it has us trapped.”
“Doesn’t it?” said Kyle. “Eventually we’ll need food, and not even my scoutmaster could tell me anything about which alien plants are safe to eat.”
“I’m not giving up,” said Tara fiercely. “They’re only bugs.”
“Yes, but there’s lots of bugs,” said Kyle, swallowing. “How are we going to fight a planet full of them?”
“With our brains,” said Jack. “We have three heads to The Evil’s one … err … I guess it has a lot more, technically, all joined together. But we’ve got smarter brains.”
“And we have all the stuff we collected from the wreckage,” said Tara, jingling her sack. “Don’t forget that. The Evil will rue the day it messed with us.”
