Mercury Revolts (24 page)

Eventually they came upon the
cabin, which turned out to be a mansion compared to Mercury’s now-obliterated
hovel. The place was so well-camouflaged,
though,
that
Mercury didn’t realized he was looking right at it until he was less than fifty
feet away. It was a multi-leveled structure with an irregular, tiered roof that
seemed intended to mimic the jungle from above. Knowing Balderhaz, the visual
aspect was only one small part of the structure’s camouflage. He’d probably
constructed the place with sound absorbing walls and heat signature dampeners,
as well as some kind of device to hide any fluctuations in the interplanar
energy levels that his work might cause. If Balderhaz didn’t want to be found,
he was going to make damn sure he wasn’t found.

Which made it
all the
stranger that Perp seemed to know exactly where he
was. Was this some sort of elaborate trap to lure Mercury into Michelle’s
clutches? After all, Balderhaz had been working for Michelle up until not too
long ago, when he disappeared. There were rumors that he had gone rogue and was
hiding out somewhere on the Mundane Plane, but maybe that was just a cover
story. Maybe he was still working for Michelle.
Or, worse,
Tiamat.
Was Perp leading him into a trap?

Mercury paused, regarding the
structure. No movement was visible inside. The place appeared deserted.

Perp stopped in mid-air when
he realized Mercury wasn’t following. “What is it, Merc?
Something
wrong?”

“Nah,” said Mercury, and
continued after Perp. If he couldn’t trust Perp, then he might as well pack it
in.

Perp fluttered up to the door
of the building. He knocked three times, paused, knocked twice more, paused
again, and knocked six more times. “Secret knock,” he said.

Mercury nodded
enthusiastically.

The door suddenly swung open,
and a man with a long beard and long, dirty hair appeared. He wore nothing but
a loincloth that appeared to have been constructed from a paisley necktie and
Christmas-themed bath towels. “What are you doing out here?” he cried. “Get
inside!”

Perp and Mercury hurried
inside and the man slammed the door. The interior of the building appeared to
be one big room, filled with tables and benches that were covered with vials,
beakers, microscopes, stacks of paper, books, computers, various electronic
components, and hundreds of other random items.

“What’s wrong?” asked
Mercury.

“Why?” asked the man. “Didn’t
you want to come inside?”

“Well, yeah,” replied
Mercury. “But—”

“Then nothing’s wrong,” the
man said.
“Hi, Perp.
Who’s Mr. Longshanks here?”

“His name is Mercury,” said
Perp. “He’s a friend. Mercury, Balderhaz. Balderhaz, Mercury.”

“We have the same name, but
backwards!” exclaimed Balderhaz, gripping Mercury in a hug.

“No, it’s not…” Mercury
started, but when Perp cast him an anxious look, he dropped it. Balderhaz
showed no signs of intending to let him go.

“It’s, um, nice to meet you as
well,” said Mercury.

“It’s like meeting my twin
brother for the first time,” said Balderhaz. Mercury felt something damp on his
chest and realized that Balderhaz was weeping.

“Yeah, it’s pretty great,”
said Mercury, patting Balderhaz on the back. “I’m familiar with some of your
work. The Balderhaz
Cube, that
was some impressive
stuff.”

“Get ahold of
yourself
, man!” said Balderhaz, pulling himself away from
Mercury.
“Uh-oh.
Where’s Marcus Aurelius?” Balderhaz
was scanning the interior of the building.

“Marcus Aurelius?” asked
Perp. “The Roman Emperor?”

“No,” said Balderhaz. “Marcus
Aurelius the white-headed capuchin monkey. He floats sometimes. Ah, there he
is!”

Indeed, Mercury saw that
about eight feet overhead, just below the peak of the vaulted ceiling, a
capuchin monkey was floating. The monkey seemed mildly irritated but not really
surprised, like someone who had just gotten a parking ticket for parking three
feet too close to a hydrant.

“What are you doing up there,
Marcus Aurelius?” demanded Balderhaz. He turned to Mercury. “It’s really not
his fault, you know. I broke the laws of physics.”

“You did what?” asked
Mercury.

“The laws
of physics.
I accidentally broke
them a while back.”

“Isn’t that what we do
whenever we perform miracles?” asked Mercury.

“Eh? No, no. We
bend
the laws of physics. They always snap back. Not this time, though. This time
they’re broken.”

“But… you can fix them?”

“You can be assured that if
anyone can, I can!” exclaimed Balderhaz.

Suddenly the monkey squealed
and fell to the ground. It landed on all fours, shrieked at Mercury, and ran
off.

“Does he just do that at
random?” asked Perp.

“What, fall?” said Balderhaz.
“No, the falling is perfectly ordered and natural. It’s the floating I can’t
predict. What can I do for you boys?”

“We need to break someone out
of Possum Kingdom,” said Perp.

“Possum Kingdom!” cried
Balderhaz.
“The Toadies song?”

“That’s what I said!”
exclaimed Mercury.

“The secret underground
prison,” said Perp.

“Oh!” said Balderhaz. “That’s
good, because there’s no escaping that Toadies song. I’ve got just the thing.”
Balderhaz dived under a table and began rooting through a cardboard box that
appeared to be filled with Circus Peanuts. After a moment he produced something
that looked like a hair dryer and handed it to Mercury.

“What is it?” asked Mercury.

“Anti-Balderhaz
Field Gun.
It temporarily cancels
out the effects of a Balderhaz Cube within a limited range. I make them out of
hair dryers. Try it.”

Mercury pointed the gun and
pulled the trigger, releasing a blast of hot air.

“My mistake,” said Balderhaz.
“That one’s still a hair dryer. But imagine, instead of hot air, a sort of
invisible magic field being released!”

Mercury released the trigger
and examined the device. “How does it work without being plugged in?”

Balderhaz frowned at him.
“You just saw a floating monkey, and it’s the battery-powered hair dryer you’re
having trouble with?” He went back to the box and found another device, which
looked identical to the one Mercury was holding. “Here.”

Mercury took the gun and
handed the hair dryer to Balderhaz. He pulled the trigger, but nothing
happened.

“Aha!” cried Balderhaz. “See?
I told you.
Invisible magic field.”

“If you say so,” replied
Mercury.

“We can’t really test it
here, because I don’t have a Balderhaz Cube.
Ironic, right?
Everybody’s got one these days except old Balderhaz. But what it does is
,
it cancels out the effect of a Balderhaz Cube in a conical
pattern, extending about fifty feet. It creates an anti-no-miracles zone,
allowing you to manipulate interplanar energy even within a Balderhaz field.
They’ve undoubtedly got a Balderhaz Cube in Possum Kingdom, to prevent the
likes of you from doing what you’re planning on doing. But with this baby, you
can perform all the miracles you like, as long as you’re standing more-or-less
directly in front of the gun, and you’re between twenty-eight and fifty-two
feet away.”

Mercury regarded the gun
dubiously.

“You’re sure this one isn’t a
hair dryer?” asked Mercury.

“Did it blow any air when you
pulled the trigger?”

“No.”

“Then it’s not a hair dryer.
Or the battery’s dead. But I’m pretty sure it’s not a hair dryer.
Anymore.
Uh-oh.
Where’s Pliny the
Elder?”

“Pliny the
Elder the white-headed capuchin monkey?”
Perp ventured.

“No, Pliny the Elder the albino
boa constrictor.”

Chapter Thirty-one
 

Near
Possum Kingdom State Park, west of Dallas, Texas; August 2016

Mercury
and Perp approached the fence in near complete darkness. They had been mostly
hidden by a few scraggly trees until they got within about fifty feet of the
fence, but now they were completely in the open. They’d watched from the trees
long enough to determine that there were two guards on duty, walking the
perimeter of the fence at regular intervals. The outside fence was roughly square,
about 300 yards on a side. Centered inside the fence was a small concrete
building that presumably concealed the entrance to the cave. Next to the
building was a thirty foot pole with an array of spotlights angled in several
different directions, lighting up most of the yard inside the inner fence. The
plan was to break through the fences, take out one of the lights, and then
sprint to the building before they were seen.

“I don’t like this,” said
Perp.

“What’s not to like about
breaking into a secret underground prison in the middle of the night?” asked
Mercury.

“I’m serious,” said Perp.
“It’s too obvious. There’s no way they aren’t going to be ready for us, even if
that hair dryer thing works. We have no idea who or what’s inside that
building. What if Michelle’s got angels standing guard?”

“You think she’s got angels
to spare?”

“To guard
Tiamat and God-knows-how-many other demons?
I think she could spare a few.”

“Ugh,” said Mercury.
“Alright, back to the trees.”

They crept back under cover.

“So now what?” asked
Mercury.

“Well, it’s a cave, right?”
said Perp. “There have got to be other ways in.”

“I don’t know,” said Mercury.
“They’ve got a pretty big area fenced in. What if the cave only extends inside
that area?”

“Could be,” said Perp
thoughtfully. “But I get the impression it’s a pretty big cave. There could be
side tunnels that reach outside that area.”

“Alright, then,” replied
Mercury. “How do we find one?”

Perp smiled.
“Trial and error.”

“Ugh,” said Mercury again.
“Sounds incredibly boring.”

It was incredibly boring.
Worse than the Toadies’ second album, even. They walked along the edge of the
Balderhaz field, occasionally attempting to levitate a small twig or pebble to
gauge its strength. The boundary of the field lay some distance outside the
outer fence, where the light from the spotlights didn’t reach. It was unlikely
they’d be spotted in the moonless dark, but when a guard came within a hundred
feet or so, they would lie down until the threat had passed.

Perp’s theory was that the
fences were mostly for show, and that the real barrier to anyone trying to get
in or out of the prison was the Balderhaz field. Well, that, and several
hundred tons of sand and rock. When Perp saw what he identified as a “promising
spot”—using criteria that were a complete enigma to Mercury—just inside the
Balderhaz field, he would stand some thirty feet away from Mercury and aim the
hair dryer at Mercury while Mercury harnessed interplanar energy to drill a
small hole in the ground. The idea was that if the cave extended underneath
them, eventually he would reach an air pocket and he would feel a sudden
decrease in resistance.

It seemed like a good idea in
theory, but Mercury wasn’t cut out for what he called “mind-numbing manual
labor.”

“Can’t we just storm the building?”
he whined. “This is literally the worst job I’ve ever had. And I had to sit and
watch Job scrape his boils with pot sherds for six weeks.”

“Focus, Merc!” snapped Perp.
“If we want to get your terrorist friends out of prison, this is how we’re going
to do it. I never promised it was going to be exciting. It is, after all,
boring work.”

“If you make that joke one
more time,” said Mercury, “I’m going to pull your wings off.”

“To get rid of garbage
disposal odors,” Perp retorted, “drop in a cut-up lemon, some salt and a few
ice cubes.”

“Super helpful,” grumbled
Mercury.

Finally, when Mercury had
burrowed almost twenty feet down on his sixteenth hole, he felt something give.

“Hey!” he exclaimed. “I think
I’ve got something!”

“Shh!” whispered Perp, pointing
to a guard heading their direction. The two huddled on the ground, not moving,
while the guard strolled by, waving his flashlight lazily around in front of
him.

“OK, dig it out,” said Perp.

Mercury harnessed as much
interplanar energy as he could to weaken the bonds of the rock, turning it to
sand and levitating it out of the way, while Perp kept the hair dryer trained
on him. Mercury was making the hole just big enough for them to climb through,
but as he got ten feet or so down, it was all he could do to keep the sand
moving.