[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.He became aware of a change.Cool air rushed across his body, and he was no longer in the clear outer ring of the great spiral.Now he flew headfirst through a wide, black tunnel, with Namaba still holding fast.Up, he thought, judging from the pressures on his body.A blinding flash of light forced his eyes shut.He lapsed into unconsciousness.When he awoke moments later, Rebo found himself face down on a dirt surface with his front leg bent to one side.Namaba lay behind him, still grasping his ankles.From the aches in his body, it seemed to Rebo that he and Namaba had been through an eternity together.Namaba let loose her grip on Rebo and pulled herself up.When Rebo saw her terrified expression, he felt it must be a reflection of his own: a grimace with wide-open, burning eyes that flitted nervous glances in all directions.She was breathing hard, with intermittent gasps.He heard her steam engine heart chug, and felt his own doing the same.Rebo felt his chest swell and drop irregularly.A great tenseness climaxed inside him and released, leaving him limp and drained—a deep weariness such as none he had ever before experienced.It was worse than the time he had run from the police for two hours with no opportunity to catch his breath.Steam came out of Namaba’s ears.That was a faraway place, Rebo thought, looking around at the terrain, they were on a wide, dusty path, with the marks of many feet on the powdery surface.Lining the path were cream-colored upright cannisters which had red, yellow, and blue markings.He remembered seeing cannisters like them before.Two had landed in Moro City the year before, right in the middle of Nelson Park.The police had arrived quickly to take the cannisters away, and Rebo had never heard of them again.In the low light of dusk, the gaze of her red eyes met his.He followed her gaze to the edge of a cavernous black hole that was around twenty meters to Rebo’s left.He surmised that they must have traveled through it to reach this place.“Where do you think we are?” Namaba asked.The question seemed ridiculous to Rebo.How could either of them know?Rebo felt perspiration forming on his hair-covered body.Rising to all threes, he removed his club jacket.He became conscious of a stream of opposites during the moments of his journey: freezing and heat, cleanness and filth, seconds like aeons, speed and tremendous, painstaking slowness.As he set the jacket on the ground, he felt his breathing become slower and more even.Namaba’s terrified expression changed to one of curiosity.Beyond the cannisters she saw that they were in a large clearing, surrounded by a thick forest of pine trees.Their jutting heads moved in unison to watch a white glider plane fly gracefully over the opposite side of the clearing.The plane disappeared below the treetops for a time.Then it rose once and dropped again, not reappearing.Rebo focused on a tall metallic cylinder on the opposite side of the clearing below the last sighting point of the glider.At the coo-roo-coo of a bird, he turned his head.In the piney woods behind them, a big-beaked green bird was perched on a tree branch.The bird flapped its wings rhythmically.I am a murderer, Rebo thought.He became angry at the thought.I don’t need to think of such things! They are of no consequence to me! He recalled chiding Namaba often for letting her conscience get in her way.Namaba was saying something, but Rebo did not hear the words.When he became aware of her, she was pointing across the clearing at the big cylinder.“Let’s see what it is,” she said.Minutes later, in fast approaching darkness, they were ransacking the Amanda Marie, tossing gear and supplies all over the cabin and out the open hatch.“Odd food,” Rebo said, biting into a chocolate bar, wrapper and all.“I don’t like the covering.”“I don’t either,” Namaba said.She removed the wrapper from her candy bar and discarded it.“Better this way,” she said.As they reached a frenzy of consumption, fine, steamy mist poured from their noses and ears and their steam engine hearts purred at peak efficiency.Soon particles of food were escaping from the pores of their skin in the form of dark brown, powdery waste products.It was so dark now that they could barely see their way around the cabin, even with the aid of their glowing red eyes.They lay their bloated bodies down on the corrugated metal deck and went to sleep.CHAPTER 7One of my great disappointments lay in the decadence of the Corker ruling class.Debauchery seemed imprinted in their Fruity souls.Comments made by Felix the Magician after abandoning CorkWhile waiting for the castle’s main gate to open, Javik looked beyond the old prunesayer to the Corkian sunset.The sky along the horizon was color-splashed, with a craggy ridge of clouds there resembling mountains.They glowed pastel pink, imitation mountains with dirty blue bases.Seconds later, like a chameleon, the range had become dirty white and silver.As voices called out from the guardwalk above, the sky and its clouds changed to dark gray.“Who goes there?” a guard asked.Prince Pineapple identified himself, then said to Javik with a smirk, “They can see me clearly, but always call out like that anyway.Consummate idiots!”The heavy wooden gate cranked up, creaking and straining as it went.When it was fully open, Javik saw the mechanism behind the gate: large stone gears and ropes pulled by zucchini men slaves turning a wheel on the walkway above.As the prince strode briskly into the castle, two Corker guards greeted him, saluting with a touch of their right thumbs to the center of their foreheads.Prince Pineapple duplicated the gesture.“This way,” Prince Pineapple said, looking down at his smaller Earthian companions.He hurried them across a gold-inlaid, white slate courtyard.The courtyard had a well in the configuration of a six-pointed star at the center, with a star-shaped frame of tomato and green bean vines surrounding it.A marble-floored corridor beyond that had, at every doorway, two Corker guards holding electric sticks.They stood nearly motionless, moving their moist purple mouths only a little to suck at grain alcohol tubes.Rounding a corner with the prince, Javik focused on elegant carved double doors directly ahead.“The king’s court,” Prince Pineapple said.The doors swung open as they neared, activated by rubber supermarket-door pressure pads at their feet.The court was full of Fruit people of every variety, chattering idly in a crescendo of idiocy
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]