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something syndrome? You having flashbacks about the pyramid, Christopher? You seeing ob-
sidian knives?"
"Ignore them." April smiled at Estett. She took the knife from Jalil's hands, lifted the book up
off her lap, and handed both to the Coo-Hatch. "Deal," she said.
It took the Coo-Hatch an hour. They took our little campfire and began blowing into it with
their needle mouths. Out of rucksacks and their pouches came various bits of lumpy-looking
material, stuff that could be dirt clods for all I knew. They worked. Banged. Blew. Collected
water in a little trench they dug from the stream.
April found what may have been, could have been a Coo-Hatch female. She went off and had
some girl-talk time. David and Jalil and I just moped and watched the Coo-Hatch and won-
dered how our lives had brought us here.
After a while, and with gray light beginning to outline the treetops above us, the Coo-Hatch
handed the knife to Jalil, still warm to the touch, along with a lot of warnings like, "Don't test
it on your finger or you'll be counting in base nine, you idiot human." Or words to that effect.
Then they took off, the big Grouchos, the little Tinkerbells; they just walked into the woods
carrying a high-school chemistry textbook and reading it by the light of the gray dawn.
We were alone.
April looked grim.
"What's up?" I asked her. She shook her head. "I was talking to the Coo-Hatch. They're here
like us. I mean, they didn't ask to be here, they were carried here by some god of the fire and
goddess of the ore or whatever, it was hard to make sense of. Anyway, it was a century ago.
They've been trying to find their way back to their own universe ever since. Talking about
their families and all, their villages, their forges and mines and so on. They're lonely."
"Trying to get out of here for a hundred years?" Jalil asked.
April shrugged. "That's what they say. There are seven groups of Coo-Hatch wandering
around Everworld. A hundred years. They can't get back. Stuck here."
She was acting tough, but there were tears in her eyes and she was swallowing too much.
April wanted to go home. So did I. In about ten seconds I was going to bust out crying, too.
"That doesn't mean we're stuck here," I said, doing my best heroic, "never say die," "on to the
summit!" voice.
I looked to David for support on that, but David's face was carefully neutral.
Of course, I thought. That's good news for the glory dog. David never wanted to go home.
"A hundred years," April said.
"Yeah."
Jalil opened the knife very, very carefully, as we'd been warned. He found a sapling maybe
two inches thick. He cut it once, with an effortless movement, almost a flick of the wrist.
With a second reach-around cut, the sapling fell.
"Well," I said. "We have the Magic Toenail Clipper of Power! We have Ex-freaking-calibur.
Let us go forth and conquer."
CHAPTER XXIV
"I'm starving. I'm thirsty," I said.
"Yeah, well, talking about it every five minutes, that'll make it better," Jalil said.
We were on the beach again. Out of the jungle. Standing there. Just standing. Lost. Confused.
Depressed, Mad. Mostly mad.
The Coo-Hatch story hung over us. A hundred years they'd been trying to find a way out of
this universe, this bubble in a bubble, this pocket of madness.
If they couldn't get out, how were we going to get out?
The reality was setting in. There might be no way out. This might be it. This could be our
lives now. A few hours in the real world and a lifetime here.
From the start of it all we'd kept going on adrenaline, and then relief at having escaped the
obsidian knife. But we were tired. Past tired, all of us. And more lost than any four humans
have ever been before.
The sun was up and with it the heat and humidity. If we stayed on the beach, our unprotected
faces would blister. If we went back into the shade of the jungle, the bugs would eat us alive.
Fear, hunger, thirst, heat, hopelessness, and a simmering, undirected anger that was all the
hotter for having no clear target, I was ripe for a fight. David had worn out my last remaining
nerve.
An explosion had to come. Sooner or later. We were up against the decision of what to do,
and I knew, knew, knew what David wanted. Knew it and was determined to stop him, and,
while I was at it, to haul him down off his throne for good. The jumped-up junior general, I
wasn't taking that anymore.
If I were a more mature person, a better person, I'd have tried hard to avoid a fight. But that's
not me. I was OD'ing on the rage that grows out of fear. I wanted to hit, to hurt, to scream and
threaten and flail around like a toddler having a temper tantrum. I was trapped and powerless.
Helpless.
"I am starving," I complained. "It s a toss-up as to which I want more: a drink or a meal. Both
would be nice. Isn't there supposed to be fruit on the trees in the jungle? Palm trees with
coconuts or bananas or whatever?"
"We're well within foraging range for the Aztecs in the city back there," Jalil pointed out.
"They were thin, as you might have noticed. Hungry. If there were fruit on the trees, they'd
have picked it, probably did pick it already. You'd probably have figured that out yourself,
Christopher, if you'd quit whining long enough to process a thought."
In a millisecond I switched gears from being ready to kill David to being ready to kill Jalil.
"Don't piss me off, Jalil, just don't, okay? Because I am plenty pissed off. You aren't going to
like what happens next if you keep it up. Fair warning."
Jalil glared at me, his mouth twisted with bitter anger. "You know, I'm here in the nuthouse
with crazy killer gods and alien steel salesmen and alcoholic Vikings and cannibal Aztecs,
and despite all that, the biggest pain in my butt is some big, dumb cracker. Now, why is that?"
"Cracker? Now it's racial stuff? You want to start throwing words around, Jalil? Jalil, what's
that, Muslim for  "
"That's it, all over," David said, stepping in between us. "You shut up." He pointed a finger in
my face.
That was it. The fuse had burned all the way down.
"Hey, maybe you need to figure out which side you're on, David!" I yelled. "You want to
throw down with me to save the 'brutha'?"
At the same time Jalil was yelling, "Back off, David, I don't need the Hebrew army to help me
deal with this racist piece of  "
David emitted a short, harsh laugh, put up his hands, and backed up. "Forget both of you."
After that it was just me and Jalil yelling, shouting, chest-pushing, shoving.
"You want to do this? Let's do it!" I yelled, my face an inch from Jalil's.
My hand went to my ax. Jalil's was on his long dagger. Face-to-face, the two of us. Sweat
popping out of tight skin, eyes bulging, lips stretched over bared teeth, chests out.
"You know what?" April said to David. "Let them fight. The three of you, it's all you know
how to do. So here's the thing, you two fight, then David fights the winner." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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