Jack James and the Call of the Tanakee (20 page)

One of the technicians answered. “Sir! We’re correlating and encrypting the data right now.”

“That won’t be necessary!” Argus rose from his chair and, using the O/A’s power, hovered above ground. Jack knew something was wrong, and willed himself into the air to challenge. Argus reacted quickly, sending a robust bolt of energy and knocking Jack down, dislodging the Eteea machine from his grip. Argus flicked his wrist and drew the Amber Machine to his hand.

“Argus! What are you doing!” Amelia tried the same thing Jack had tried, and once again Argus got the jump on her, tossing her aside with a furious burst from the O/A, while snatching her machine.

“Argus! No!” the commander stood frozen, his eyes wide.

“Shut UP!” Argus sent a purplish-blue bolt of lightning at him, pushing him back several cumbersome steps. He fell motionless.

“NO!” Amelia started for her father. Argus put a quick end to her advance.

“Nobody move!” he pressed the holographic display, and the whole compound seemed to explode in red lights and emergency sirens. Within seconds, several soldiers rushed in, each one confused and agitated.

“They’re all traitors!” Argus implicated everyone in the room, even the scientists and technicians, saving a last, accusing gesture for Jack and Amelia. “They just tried to take over the Eteeans by attacking the commander.”

“He’s my father!” Amelia screamed. “Why would I want to harm him?”

“This is ridiculous!” Liz shouted.

“Indeed,” Teresa kept her keen eye on Argus. “Can’t you people see this boy is a fraud?”

The soldiers seemed even more perplexed. Argus set them straight.

“You all saw Amelia quarreling with her father. She hates him, and she tried to start an insurrection. She got Jack to come to her side…along with his family and that storytelling witch. Take them all into custody!”

The technicians and scientists murmured at each other over the turn of events. Rory stood and challenged Argus’s claim.

“But that’s not what happened!” she countered. Argus let a blinding flash of light loose from the O/A, hitting her in the chest. She fell onto her desk, unconscious, but not before she hit a command on her work screen, closing the holographic display—the children’s locations, names—all pertinent data removed.

“What did you do!” Argus shouted. “What did you do!”

“She must have coded the data with quantum cryptography,” Ben said. “You won’t be able to get your hands on it now. That was what you wanted all along, wasn’t it?”

The soldiers failed to act, tilting their heads in confusion.

“Don’t listen to them,” Argus directed confidently. “Take them all to the detention level—the scientists too…they’re all in on it!”

Jack took three steps toward his foe, and that’s as far as he got. In a blinding flash and roar of thunder, Takota appeared, aiming a suspicious look at his former friend.

“What’s going on?” Takota demanded. “Argus? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he said. “But Jack and his little group are all traitors, and I’m locking them up.”

“That’s not true!” Jack was desperate. It showed in the way his voice cracked. “Takota,
he’s
the traitor! He wants to destroy us, can’t you see that?”

“All I see is a liar, a cheat, and a scoundrel,” Takota’s upper lip curled in anger. He nodded to the guards. “Take them away.”

“You won’t get away with this, Argus!” Jack shouted as two armed men forced him to the door.

“Oh, no?” Argus taunted. “What are you going to do about it? I’ve got your machine. I’ve got your protector. And soon I’ll have all the data on the Children I need.”

“For what, Argus!” Amelia demanded. She too was being led out to the hallway. “Say it! What do you plan to do!”

TWENTY-NINE

“YOU KNOW, YOU’VE got a really nice place here,” Takota said. Davos remained motionless, aside from his living, undulating hair. But that was always in motion. “I mean it, really. So light and bright. But this fog, what’s that about?”

Silence.

“Come on, Davos. We’re here together. We might as well be civil and talk to each other. Why is this place filled with steam all the time?”

Davos exhaled angrily.

“This is the cloud empire of the Nagas.”

“Cloud empire? I’ve heard about this place. Heard it was only a myth.”

“You heard wrong,” he chuckled. “Just like you get most everything else wrong.”

“Oh I do?” Takota said. “Then why are you here right now? Seems like I did something right the first time we met. You didn’t do so well then, did you?”

“Listen here, you little parasite,” Davos became a mass of black serpents and glided to the cage in one slithering clump, reforming into a human in the matter of a second. “I could’ve destroyed you,” he snapped what were clearly artificial fingers. “Just like that. But I wanted to play with you a little.”

“Play with me? I played with
you
. I’m the one who could have easily destroyed you, and you know it!”

“Why you little…” Davos got close and stared into Takota’s eyes. Suddenly, his jaw dropped. His chin drooped with drool. His shoulders fell. He leaned and sighed heavily. Then he snapped straight and shook his head. “You sneaky little beast!” he shook his head again, his long locks, made to pass for hair, tossed and twisted like the living snakes they were. “You almost got me with that silly little hypnotic power you have,” he shook his fake finger. “But it won’t work. I’m too smart for simple tricks.”

“You’re right,” Takota agreed. “You’re too smart. Too smart.”

Davos lifted his chin.

“Absolutely,” he puffed his chest in a clear attempt at imitating the human expression of pride. “My intellect is far superior to any human…or Tanakee.”

“It’s not even close, right?”

“There is simply no comparison between my capacity of knowledge and that of lower beings.”

“So it wouldn’t do me any good at all to try escaping, would it?”

“Tiny creature, you amuse me. To think you would even consider escape shows how intellectually inferior you are.”

“Really?” Takota did his best to appear innocent. “I wouldn’t know, because my miniscule mind can’t even comprehend what you’re saying.”

Davos stared as his living strands of hair drifted about, watching intently. A hundred pairs of little, beady eyes pointing at Takota.

“Are you making fun of me?” his voice became thunderous. “Because no one makes fun of me!”

Takota crossed his arms.

“Seems to me the queen takes quite a lot of delight in having a laugh at your expense.”

Davos slithered to the giant archway with its magnificent view of the clouds.

“That is none of your concern,” he pouted.

“Maybe so. But it sure is your concern. I’ll tell you what…if I were you, I’d be pretty upset about her chastising me the way she does. Especially when you have the better mind. I don’t know if I’d be able to put up with that for very long.”

Davos remained silent for a spell. Then he sighed and rotated toward Takota. Something in his eyes. Something Takota had never seen in him—confusion.

“I
am
more intelligent than her, aren’t I?”

“Oh yes,” Takota agreed vehemently. “From the first moment I met her, I knew you were the smarter one.”

“You did?” Davos moved closer quickly. “What did you notice? Tell me everything!”

“Well, I…” Takota batted his lashes. “No I can’t say it. You’ll tell the queen, and then I’ll get into trouble.”

“No I won’t,” Davos got even closer. “I won’t say a word. Just tell me what you meant. Why do you think I’m smarter than the queen?”

“No,” Takota sulked, looking at his feet. “I couldn’t. If she found out, she’d—”

“She won’t find out,” Davos leaned so close his pseudo-nose, faked and formed to look human, touched the impervious cage wall. “Just tell me why you think I’m smarter!” his eyes wide, every one of the slender serpents in his dreadlocks pinpointed Takota with a steady glare. “Tell me!”

Takota locked stares with Davos. One by one, the serpentine beasts on his head relaxed, wavering and listing at odd angles. Davos blinked again and again, then stood quickly and stepped back.

“The eyecatcher again…you SNEAK!” he blinked some more. “You almost got me that time!” then he laughed, his humor deadened by the dense air. “But you didn’t, thank Essinis.”

Takota nodded in defeat.

“Like I said, you’re too smart for me.”

“Exactly,” Davos waved his counterfeit human hand. As he did, the cage door opened with a hiss. The whole time, Davos stared into empty space. “You’ll never best me, so you might as well save your energy and not even try.”

Without speaking, Takota slipped through a small opening and tiptoed to the foggy floor.

“I’ll show that wife of mine,” Davos said, unaware of Takota’s movements. “I’ll show her she can’t order me around anymore. I’ll show her it’s
my
time to rule, because I’m the one with the best ideas, not her! I’m the mastermind behind this plan. I’m the one who conceived it! And because of me, it will succeed!”

“Oh…yeah,” Takota said cynically. His words startled Davos. “You’re a
real
genius.”

As Takota made the dimensional step from the Nagas cloud empire, he saw Davos, shaking madly and looking at the cage, then at Takota.

“What the..! What happened!” he glanced at the empty cage again. “How’d you get out! What did you do!”

“I didn’t do anything,” Takota blinked away. “You did…bye, bye!”

“NOOOOOO!”

QUEEN NEERA DIDN’T exactly enjoy being underground. It was too much of a reminder of her species’ past, when the Nagas were much simpler, much less evolved. In those bleak days they were relegated to caves and dark, forbidding places where no other living creatures dared to venture. In those bleak days before Essinis. For Essinis, she agreed to follow her son deep down to the Eteean subterranean stronghold called the Black Pyramid, where she could oversee the final, decisive step in her plot to eliminate the Children of the Blue Crystal and their pesky Tanakee protectors once and for all.

“So everything is under control?” she queried nervously.

“Yes, Mother,” Argus yawned.

“We have the base secure? All the soldiers and scientists are locked away?”

“Yes, Mother.”

“And the Eteea machines? They’re destroyed, right? Especially the O/A. That needs to be eliminated immediately.”

“It’s being taken care of, Mother,” Argus couldn’t have been more apathetic about her apprehension.   

“Excellent work, my son,” the queen placed her hand on Argus’s shoulder. “I knew you’d succeed where your father had failed.”

“I’m not my father,” Argus oversaw the computer as it worked on the decryption. “You should know not to compare me to him by now.”

“So I should,” she agreed. “How long until we decipher the data on the Children?”

“Not much longer,” Argus kept a close eye on the progress. “Almost at fifty percent done now.”

“Good, good,” she forced a breath. “I don’t think I have to tell you about the urgency behind this operation. We might have the Eteean base secured, the humans in lockdown, and the Tanakee incarcerated. But there’s no telling how long before the other Tanakee protectors from the Lost Tribes will come out of the woodwork. If that happens, our jobs become much, much harder.”

“That won’t happen,” Argus looked at Takota, or what had been passing as Takota. In actuality it was his dimensional duplicate, conjured from the multiverse. “Thanks to this little fellow, we have the upper hand. Right, Takota?”

The Takota double smiled at his master.

“I won’t let you down, True Soul. No matter what.”

“You see, Mother?” Argus beamed at her with pride. “Everything’s fine. We’ve got it all under control.”

“Yes,” she paced several steps. “I still can’t shake the feeling something will go wrong. As long as your father is involved, there’s a chance.”

As she finished speaking those fateful words, a spherical current of red splashed into existence. Davos appeared in his fiery Essinis sphere’s wake, dark serpents, substituting for hair, whipping about his face wildly.

“We’ve got a problem!” he announced with bated breath. “Takota’s escaped!”

“Escaped! How could this happen!” the queen was furious.

“That’s not important,” Davos tried to deflect the blame. “The important thing is to find him immediately!”

“You fool, Davos! How can we find him now? He knows we’re after him! He knows our plans! Where did he go!”

THIRTY

“ENOLA, ARE YOU still feeling sick?” Ayita asked for the hundredth time. And for the hundredth time Enola said, “I’m fine, dear. Don’t worry about me.”

Jack knew Enola’s request would be impossible to obey. Everyone was worried about her. Her illness, whatever it was, seemed to be getting worse. And being in those tiny holding cells wasn’t helping matters.

“Jack, we’ve got to do something,” Amelia said through the wall.

“I know,” he answered, “Can you or Ayita get any kind of messages? Using Eteea…can you see anything at all?”

Amelia faltered, clutching her neckline.

“I-I’ve been trying for an hour, now. I’m not getting a thing from Eteea.”

“Me neither,” Ayita said.

“When I get outta here, I’m gonna get that Argus Cole!” Cheyton shouted. Jack heard a loud crash. “Ouch! Why can’t we blink out of here, anyway?”

“It’s the fluctuating polarity of these cell walls,” Ben stated. As always, he was working on a solution. That’s what Jack loved about his dad most. Constantly looking for answers, even during the most stressful of times. “They’ve done a good job of containing the omnidimensional field. And it’s my fault too. I helped them,” he sounded depressed, and that made Jack depressed. “I helped them do all of this. I didn’t think they’d use my technology against me, against us.”

“Don’t blame yourself, dear,” Jack heard his mother in the cell beside his. “How could you have known?”

“How could any of us have known?” Enola asked from yet another cage.

“It seems none of us knew,” Jack heard Teresa next.

“
I
knew,” Amelia’s voice lowered in shame. “I knew all along Argus was a Nagas.”

A gasp rolled through the cell block. Jack was probably the one most in shock.

“How could you!” his voice bounced on and on down the metal corridor.

“Jack!” his mother chastised.

“No, Mom!” Jack insisted. “I’m serious. I’ve had a bad feeling about Argus all along, but I held my tongue because Amelia said he was all right. She said he was a good guy, someone we could trust! Why, Amelia?”

Silence. Nobody spoke for what seemed like forever. Jack wanted to ask again, but he heard Amelia weeping, and his heart melted.

“I’m sorry,” he begged. “Please don’t cry. I didn’t mean it.”

“No,
I’m
sorry,” she sniffled. “I have a confession to make, Jack, everybody. A terrible confession. I did say Argus was trustworthy, but I wasn’t telling the truth.”

Another gasp rolled through the modern dungeon, this one even louder.

“You have to let me explain,” she continued. “The first time I set eyes on Argus, I knew something was wrong. His spirit clothes were so similar to Jack’s. But they weren’t real. I could tell. They looked real, very real, and they almost convinced me. But I saw they had no dimension, no depth. Like a TV screen. Flat. Right then, I knew what he was, but I had to put it out of my mind. I was worried he’d be able to read my thoughts, and he’d know that I knew. So I forced myself to forget. Then I decided to keep my enemies close, as the saying goes. So I became his best friend, to keep tabs on him, or so I thought.”

She stole a breath and swallowed, clearing her throat. It took a lot of courage, Jack thought, to say what she was saying.

“I didn’t see this coming,” she continued. “I-I lost my eagle feather somewhere, and ever since then, I haven’t been able to get a good read on anything.”

“Your bald eagle feather?” Jack said. “What’s that got to do with this?”

“I’m still not sure, but like I told you before, I feel like it gives me something. It grounds me to Eteea. And ever since I lost it, my premonitions have been nonexistent.”

“I bet Argus stole it,” Cheyton said.

“You’re probably right,” Ayita agreed. “I should’ve seen this too. But the strangest thing. My premonitions stopped at about the same time.”

“Your Eteea powers are tied to Amelia’s,” Teresa said. “All of your powers are tied to the Children.”

“And now that Argus has the locations of all the other Children around the world, there’s no stopping the Nagas from eliminating them,” Amelia said.

“There’s still time,” Jack disagreed. “If only I could talk to Takota.”

“Someone mention my name?”

The voice boomed so loud throughout the metal tunnel, Jack had to cover his ears. Then he closed his eyes, nearly blinded by a flash of mottled brownish light outside his cell in the hallway.

“Takota!” he ran to the metal door. “I knew you’d come to your senses and rescue us!”

Takota stood firm, his mouth rigid, in his eyes a hatred that made Jack halt in his tracks.

“Takota, no!” he begged.

More stony silence.

“That’s not Takota,” Cheyton said flatly. “Not the one we know, at least.”

“Sure I am,” Takota’s tone sounded different. “I’m Takota, just as much as you’re Cheyton,” he turned to another cell, “Or just as much as you’re Enola, or Ayita, or Pud. I’m one of you, remember? The Tribe of the Teddy Bear?”

“You are NOT one of us!” another heavy crash made the walls shake. It was Cheyton, throwing himself against the magnetized barrier. “You’re an imposter!”

“An imposter?” Jack repeated. “That can’t be!”

“It is,” Cheyton said. “It’s one of Takota’s dimensional doubles.”

“How do you know?” asked Amelia. Cheyton sniffed loudly.

“I just know.”

“It
is
one of his duplicates,” Ayita said.

“If so, then what happened?” asked Pud. “Why is this Takota so different than ours?”

“They must have gotten Gert’s help again,” Teresa sounded distraught unlike Jack had ever heard her. So gloomy. “They probably cast a spell to extract this Takota and spoiled his mind, brainwashed him.”

“You’re all lying!” the fake Takota shouted. “You thought you could plot against Argus and take over the Eteeans…well, you’re too late!”

As he stalked the cells, the phony Takota looked behind his back quickly. Then he snapped straight. Then left. Then right.

“You seem nervous,” Jack said. “Expecting someone?”

“I’m not nervous,” he scoffed. “Not at all.”

Then, with a brilliant flash and a resonant
Boom!
there were two Takotas, standing feet apart, facing each other down.

“YOU!” the first one shouted. Side by side, Jack could scarcely tell them apart.

“Hello,
Takota
,” the new Takota answered cynically. “It’s time we send you back to your own dimension.”

“That’s not gonna happen!” the first Takota twisted and contorted into a swirl of light, then
Poof!
only one Takota was standing there again.

“Where’d he go?” Pud asked.

“He ran away like the coward he is,” said Cheyton.

“Takota?” Jack had to make sure. “Is that you? Is it?”

Takota remained silent. He pressed a button on the wall and the door to Jack’s cell slid open. Takota came toward Jack, step after step, looking more determined, more serious with each stride. Jack began to wonder. It looked like the old Takota. Then again, he could have been wrong, terribly wrong.

“Takota!” the others yelled.

Jack had nowhere to run. Backed into cold, solid rock. Facing the most fearsome warrior in the known universe. Sure, Takota was the size of a stuffed animal, and looked in every respect like a teddy bear. Underneath that fuzzy, little exterior lurked the power of Eteea, raw and unparalleled. And he was coming closer.

Finally, Takota stopped a foot or two from the boy, breathing heavily, a firm message to anyone who dared get near.

“Takota?” Jack squeaked.

Without warning, Takota leapt and landed in Jack’s arms, hugging him so tight he wheezed. Then he laughed and the others let out their relief.

“Takota!” Ayita headed the chorus. “I knew you’d make it!”

Jack brought him out to the corridor and Takota presented each and every one of them a determined look.