“That ain’t all I’m goin’ to drown!” The Brulumpus boosted him back onto the raft, where he glared at the singer. “Let’s endeavor to stay clear of performin’ parasites, shall we?”
Jon-Tom sighed. “It didn’t engage his attention very long anyway. Don’t worry. I’m just getting warmed up.”
“Huh!” Mudge sat down and began wringing out his cap.
The flea circus gave Jon-Tom the idea of trying to sing up something to infect the Brulumpus, but everything he could think of was more likely to afflict himself and Mudge than it was a mass of already corrupting ooze.
So he concentrated on continuing the cornucopia of randomly interesting objects. He produced a model ship that ran by remote control, a clavier a lumieres from an old Scriabin concert, a stack of Playboys, a coal scoop, a rocking horse. None held the attention of the Brulumpus for more than a moment or two, and the space around the raft was beginning to resemble the back room of a Salvation Army store. Jon-Tom’s confidence was starting to slip.
“Isn’t there anything I can conjure up that will interest you more than we do?” he asked plaintively.
“Of course not,” rumbled the Brulumpus. “How could there be, when I can have everything you can bring forth and still keep you?”
That sent Jon-Tom staggering. He hadn’t thought of that. Slow the Brulumpus might be, but it also had an instinctive grasp of the obvious.
“Oi, we didn’t think o’ that one, did we, spellsinger?” Mudge taunted him. “We’re so clever, ain’t we, spellsinger? We ought to ’ave thought o’ that one first, oughtn’t we to, spellsinger? Now me, I finds you duller than a dead rat, but this ’ere blob o’ barf ain’t nearly so discriminatin’ in ’is company. So it appears as ’ow we’re stuck, wot?”
“There’s still the first thing I thought of. Like I told you, this is all warm-up. Though,” he admitted, “I never thought of that last argument. Now I’m not so sure it’ll work. See, this thing I have in mind is designed to appeal only to a true moron, and now I’m afraid the Brulumpus may be more than that. Anything too complex would go by him without having an effect, but anything too simple won’t interest him as much as we do.”
“Well, you’d better try it, mate, wotever it be.”
“I’m going to,” Jon-Tom assured him. His fingers touched on the strings of the duar.
Mudge had listened to some strange lyrics fall from the lips of his friend the spellsinger, but none as bizarre as those which now poured forth in a steady stream. They made no sense, no sense at all, and yet he could feel the power attendant on them. Strong spellsinging for certain, just as Jon-Tom had said. He waited anxiously to see what the music would bring forth.
Once more the drifting ball of lambent green light appeared before Jon-Tom. Yet again a strange new shape appeared in its center and began to take on solidity and form. It was utterly different from everything that had preceded it. It bore no resemblance to the grandfather clock, or the toy boat, or the rocking horse, though it did somehow remind Mudge of the thing Jon-Tom had called a food processor.
Only this thing wasn’t dead. It was noisily, vibrantly alive. Or was it? Mudge blinked once and saw through the illusion. No, it wasn’t alive. It merely cloaked itself with the appearance of life. It generated illusions of life, but in reality it was full of zombies.
The fascinated Brulumpus leaned forward to stare at it, kicking up small waves at its sides. Multiple eyeballs slipped round to focus on the thing Jon-Tom had called up. Jon-Tom had matched intelligence to materialization perfectly. The Brulumpus ignored them as though they were no longer there.
Mudge found himself gazing dazedly at the box full of cavorting zombies. He could understand the Brulumpus’s fascination. This was some magic! He tried to make sense of what the zombies were saying and could not, yet somehow their shouts and cries held him as if paralyzed. He couldn’t pull away, couldn’t turn his eyes. It was locking onto him tightly now, taking him prisoner just as it had trapped the Brulumpus, those strange, soothing, challenging, frenetic zombies who at the moment were assaulting him verbally and visually… .
“Double your pleasure, double your fun, with doublegood, doublegood, Doublemint gum!”
Another zombie appeared, and his tone was as ponderous and lugubrious as that of the Brulumpus. All the weight of the world was on the poor zombie’s shoulders as he stared straight out at Mudge and said, “Do … you … suffer … from … irregularity?”
Something was tugging urgently at Mudge’s arm. He blinked, to see Jon-Tom staring anxiously down at him.
“A minute, mate,” he said, not recognizing his own voice. “Just a minute. I ’ave to listen to this ’ere message. ’Tis important, see, and I … I…” He paused, licked his lips.
“You what, Mudge?”
“I was just learning ’ow to save me kitchen floor from unsightly waxy yellow buildup. Blimey, and I don’t even ’ave a kitchen floor!”
“Come on, Mudge. Fight it, don’t let it get to you.”
He dragged the otter toward the raft. Mudge fought weakly.
“But, mate, wot about the ring around me collar?”
“Snap out of it, Mudge!” Jon-Tom slapped him a couple of times, then shoved him toward the other paddle pole. By pushing against the paddles, they managed to slip off the side of the now rock-steady Brulumpus and back into the water. They pushed and pulled on the poles for dear life, and the otter slowly regained consciousness.
“Bugger me for an alderman,” Mudge finally breathed, “wot were that ’orrible magic?” Behind them the Brulumpus was fading under the horizon. It lay utterly motionless in the water, staring at the screaming, cheerful, demanding box which had rendered it instantly comatose. From its back blared a few last energetic words of farewell.
“Youuuu deserve a breakkkk todayyyyy!”
“Jon-Tom?”
“What?” He continued to dig at the water, wanting to put as much distance as possible between them and the part of the swamp that called itself the Brulumpus in case, just in case, the magic failed.
“I’ll never criticize your spellsingin’ again.”
“Oh, yes you will,” Jon-Tom said with a grin.
“Nope, never.” Mudge raised his right paw. “I swears on the best parts o’ Chenryl de Vole, Timswitty’s slickest courtesan.” He eyed the trail the raft had left in the water and shuddered. “It ’ad me, too, mate. Sucked me right in without me ever knowin’ wot was ’appenin’. Bloody insidious.” He looked back at his companion as they both ducked some dangling moss. “Wot does you call the mind-suckin’ little ’orror?”
“Commercial television,” Jon-Tom told him. “I think that’s all that it’s going to play. Twenty-four hours nonstop ’round-the-clock.”
“It’ll be too soon if I never see anything like it again.”
“I only hope it doesn’t burn out the Brulumpus’s brain,” Jon-Tom murmured. “For a pile of ooze, he wasn’t such a bad sort.”
“Ah, mate, that soft ’eart will be the end o’ you one o’ these days. You’d smile on your own assassin.”
“I can’t help it, Mudge. I like folks, no matter what they happen to look like.”
“Just keep in mind that most of ’em probably don’t like you.” Jon-Tom looked thoughtful. “Maybe I should sing another few jingles, just to reinforce the spell.”
“Maybe you should just paddle, mate.”
“See?” Jon-Tom smiled at the otter. “I told you you’d start criticizing my spellsinging again.”
“It ain’t your spellsingin’ I ’ave a ’ard time with, guv. ’Tis your voice.”
The argument continued all the rest of that day and on into the next, by which time they were confident they’d passed beyond the Brulumpus’s sphere of influence. Several days later they received a pleasant surprise. The landscape was changing again, and so was the climate.
As far as Mudge was concerned, the lessening of humidity was long overdue, as was the appearance of some real dry land. T
he Wrounipai began to assume the aspect of tropical lake country instead of near-impenetrable swamp. Islands rose high and solid above the water, from which accumulated scum and suspended solids were beginning to disappear. Instead of pooling aimlessly around trees and islets, the water began to flow steadily southward. Currents could become rivers, and rivers gave rise to commerce. Civilization.
They could not be too far from their destination.
And then, as had happened on more than one occasion, growing confidence was dispelled by an unexpected disaster.
On calm water beneath a windless sky, the world turned upside down.
Jon-Tom was thrown into the air, legs kicking, arms thrashing. He hit the water hard and righted himself. But as he started to swim for the surface, something grabbed him around the ankles. He felt himself being dragged downward, away from the fading light of the sky, away from the oxygen his burning lungs were already starting to demand. He couldn’t see what had ahold of him and wasn’t sure he wanted to. The harder he kicked and pulled with his arms, the faster he seemed to be going backward. Down, straight down toward the bottom of the Wrounipai. His lungs no longer burned; they threatened to explode alongside his pounding heart.
The last thing he remembered before he started to drown was the sight of Mudge off to his left. A far stronger swimmer than himself, the otter was also being pulled bottomward by something powerful, streamlined, and indistinct.
The nightmare of drowning was still with him when he rolled over and started puking.
As soon as he’d cleared his lungs and stomach of what felt like half the Wrounipai, he sat up and shakily took stock of his surroundings. He was sitting on a mat of dry grass and reeds that had been placed atop a floor of tightly compacted earth. Diffuse light poured through the curved, transparent dome overhead. It looked like glass but wasn’t.
Off to his left, Mudge stood examining one wall of the dome. In front of the mat was a pool of water which lapped gently at the packed earth. The water was very dark.
Sensing movement, the otter glanced in his direction. “I was beginnin’ to wonder if you’d ever come around, mate.”
“So was I.” He climbed unsteadily to his feet. “I think for a minute there, there was more water inside me than out.” He coughed again. His mouth tasted of swamp and his guts were throbbing.
“Where are we?”
“We are in somebody’s ’ometown, mate,” the otter informed him glumly, “and I don’t think you’re goin’ to like the somebodies.”
“What do you mean?” Mudge’s words implied familiarity with their captors, but Jon-Tom had nev- er been in a place like this in his life. At least, not that he could recall.
The otter beckoned him over. “’Ave a look at this stuff.”
Jon-Tom moved to join him in inspecting the wall of their transparent prison. As he ran his fingers over it, he saw it wasn’t glass, as he’d initially suspected. Nor was it plastic. Actually, it was slightly sticky, like a clear glue. He had to yank his fingers clear of the wall. A portion of it stuck to his nails and he had to rub the stuff off on his pants.
Something else: his pants were dry. That meant he’d been unconscious for several hours, at least.
The wall did not run or drip. As for the source of the dim, rippling light, that was instantly apparent. The dome rested on the bottom of the lake. The Wrounipai was overhead, and the surface, Jon-Tom estimated, was a good sixty feet out of reach. He couldn’t be certain. He wasn’t used to judging the depth of water from below.
He turned back to the wall. “I think it’s some kind of secretion.”
“You mean, somebody went and spit it up?”
“In so many words, yes.” He waved his hand at the ceiling of the dome. “This is all organic, not manufactured.”
A recent memory made him stare down at the otter again.
“You said this was somebody’s home.”
“Oi, that I did.” Mudge led him across the chamber and had him look out the other side of their prison.
The dome rested on a gentle slope which fell off sharply just beyond the structure’s outer edge. A profusion of similar buildings occupied the lake bottom another fifty feet further down. Their architecture- was unfamiliar. All were simple in design and devoid of visible ornamentation. Shapes moved slowly through and among them.
Jon-Tom recognized a few of the shapes, and the small hairs on the back of his neck stiffened as some of the most unpleasant moments of his life came back to him in a rush.
“I told you, you wouldn’t like it,” Mudge murmured.
Jon-Tom moved as close to the wall of the dome as he could without making contact with the sticky material and stared into the depths. Despite the dim light there was no mistaking the identity of their captors.
Plated Folk.
XI
THEY DIDN’T BELONG HERE, in these warm, tranquil waters so far from their stinking home in the distant Greendowns. The Plated Folk were the builders of the implacable insect civilization which he and Clothahump had helped to defeat at the battle of the Jo-Troom Gate not so very long ago. This wasn’t the Greendowns, and Clothahump had said nothing about the possibility of encountering any of them on the way to Quasequa.
Therefore Clothahump himself knew nothing of their presence here. That was a disquieting thought. It meant that in all likelihood, neither did anyone else in the warmlands.
“This is crazy. What are they doing so far from their homeland? A colony of them wouldn’t be tolerated by the locals.”
“I agree, mate. Any self-respectin’ warmlanders would run the ’ard-shelled bastards all the way back to that cesspool they call ’ome. If they knew they were settling in to stay in their own backyards, that is. But think about it: this ’ere’s pretty empty country, and these oversized cockroaches are all underwater-dwellers. Ain’t nobody goin’ to raise the alarm over a bunch o’ invaders they can’t see.”
“It’s hard to believe that they haven’t been seen by a few hunting parties out from Quasequa or some other town.”
“Maybe they have been seen, mate.” Mudge’s words were short and clipped. “Maybe them that sees ’em ends up down ’ere like us, and maybe they never gets ’ome to tell anyone else about wot they’ve seen.”
Silently, they turned back to the wall and stared out into the poisoned waters. Jon-Tom saw waterboat-men paddling along on their backs, their eyes cast forever downward. Dragonfly nymphs were nursed along by water tigers, and water beetles of every imaginable shape and size swooped gracefully above the buildings of the colony.
If it was a colony. They had no proof of that yet.
“You think they have any contact with the capital of the empire at Cugluch, or could this be an isolated, independent community?”
Mudge scratched at his whiskers. “I couldn’t say for sure, mate, but while you were lyin’ there ’alf-dead, a couple of ’em came in to check on us and did something that doesn’t make me feel any too confident about our future.”
“What’s that?”
“They took your duar.”
That was bad, Jon-Tom mused, very bad. “Maybe,” he suggested lamely, “they were just curious about it.”
“Right,” agreed Mudge sardonically. “They’re just a bunch o’ bug-eyed music lovers and they likes to collect instruments. Maybe they’ll also want you to play a solo for ’em later, but I wouldn’t count on it. They spent too much time examinin’ it and starin’ at you and whisperin’.”
“What are our chances of breaking out of here?” Jon-Tom stared up at the faint, twitching point of light that was the distant sun. “This bloody wall’s as solid as iron, mate. There’s only the one way in and out, and I don’t think we’ll be makin’ a swim for it anytime soon.” He drew Jon-Tom over to the pool of water that was visible just inside one section of wall. “See, I don’t think we’d get very far.”
Drifting just below and outside the entrance to the dome was a terrifying marine form. The giant water bug was at least eig
ht feet in length. It hovered in place like an armored submersible, displaying open mandibles big enough to snap off an arm or leg with a single bite.
Jon-Tom nodded to himself. “So we don’t take any casual baths.” He looked past the guard. Something much smaller was moving toward them through the water. He found himself backing away. “What’s that?”
Mudge didn’t budge. “Air delivery.”
The three-foot-long beetle had hind legs twice the length of its body, each covered with dense, flexible hairs. Upon reaching the entrance to the dome it pivoted in the water until its hind end was facing the opening. Between its back legs was a thin silken envelope full of air. It backed toward the entrance and kicked once.
The silk envelope split. There was a giant blup, water sloshed over Jon-Tom’s feet and then receded, and a sudden wash of fresh air hit him like a spring breeze. The beetle swam away.
“They do that regular,” Mudge informed him, “which is why the air in ’ere ain’t gone sour on us yet.”
“That’s thoughtful of them.”
Mudge turned and began nervously pacing the hard-packed floor. “Wish I could say the same for the rest o’ their manners. I ain’t so sure I’d prefer not to suffocate.” After completing half a dozen circumnavigations of the dome, he stopped in front of the entryway again.
“Now I know I’m faster than that big bastard, if I could just get past ’im.” He let the thought trail off. “Trouble is, I’d probably do it in pieces.”
Jon-Tom moved back to the reed mat and sat down. “I never saw them hit us.”
“Neither did I, mate, until it was too late.” He pointed toward the giant water bug floating placidly outside their prison. “That hunk of armored vomit came up underneath us and dumped us in. His smaller relations were waitin’ to drag us down ’ere.” He looked over at his companion.
“When they dumped us in this ’alf bubble, your face was all swoll up like a lizard’s bladder. I thought you were a goner for sure. They did a little dance on your back and pumped about ’alf a gallon o’ water out o’ you, then gave up and left. After a couple of minutes you started groanin’, then fell asleep. I wiped the drool off your face and figured I might as well wait and see if you woke up. That was yesterday.”