Steemjammer: The Deeper Truth (2 page)

Chapter 2

THE REST OF THE FISH

A tall man with a bulbous nose and bright blue, slightly bugged-out eyes shook the iron bars of his cage. Deetricus Steemjammer, Will’s onkel (
uncle
), had been hit on the head, kidnapped, and locked in the back of a dark, damp cave. He wasn’t sure how long it had been, because he couldn’t see any daylight, but it felt like a week.

Even worse, he hadn’t been left any food. He thought he’d heard someone enter the cave, but now he wondered if his mind was playing tricks on him. Hunger was beginning to weaken him in body and spirit. Then, he heard footsteps.

“When I get out of here,” he managed to shout, “I’m going to make you wish you’d never been born!”

The twin of Will’s father, Deet had been born twenty minutes after Henry. They were identical except for a few details. Deet wasn’t quite as tall, and though it didn’t have Angelica or Klazee’s strength, his sandy hair went in all directions. He kept it short, so it resembled the haircut known on earth as a flat-top.

“Hoy!” he shouted. “You hear me, verraader?”
Traitor
. “Even with me locked up, you’re still too much the lafaard to show yourself!”
Coward
.

He was so angry with himself. How could he have let that craven, weak-minded fool, Marteenus, catch him? Caged like an animal - it was humiliating. At least there was a tiny spring in the back, where he could get cold, clean water to drink.

He had no idea how much time had passed but guessed it was early Tuesday morning. The handful of nuts he’d had in his pocket had gone quickly, and though he’d managed to catch and eat a few bugs, it wasn’t enough.

Was Marteenus really there in the dark cave, he wondered, or was his famished mind playing tricks on him? Then, the little man appeared, carrying a lamp and waving a basket of food. He wore a bright green coat with long tails and had kinky, red hair that swirled over his head and shot out about a foot to the left.

Deet scowled. Though a first cousin, Marteenus Steemjammer Skelthorpe had betrayed the family and gone over to the Rasmussen side. Eleven years ago he’d stolen a verltgaat machines and opened a world hole in the middle of Beverkenfort, the family’s main base, allowing the Raz to come through and conquer it.

“Cousin Deetricus,” Marteenus said disdainfully, “I’d hoped to find you in a more cooperative mood. Your brother, by the way, seems happy to let you die.”

“As is proper,” Deet growled. “I deserve worse for letting myself get captured by a zwakzenink like you!”
Imbecile
.

Marteenus laughed off the insult. “It doesn’t have to end so grimly for you. Help me access the verltgaat machine, and I’ll set you free. I only want to go home.”

Deet’s reply was so full of Dutch cursing that Marteenus, in spite of himself, winced.

“Apparently not,” he said. “You’re looking thin.”

“Vorden optgezet.”
Get stuffed
.

“Oh, I will, thank you.” Marteenus took a huge bite of bread, smacking as he chewed. “Mm, delicious!”

“May you choke on it!” Deet growled. “I’m not lifting a finger for you.”

“No matter. I’ll get what I want in the end. Beverkenhaas seems to be empty. Surprised? I think your brother and his family may have had a little mishap. The smoke coming out the top threw me for a bit, but then I remembered automatic wood feeders.

“That won’t last forever, and when the smoke stops, I’ll be sure no one’s there. Then, I’ll just walk right in, and my eleven-year nightmare ends. The world hole machine will be
mine
!”

He smiled, but Deetricus remained stone-faced.

“Really?” Marteenus goaded. “You have nothing to say to that?”

“Goot,” Deet huffed.

“Good?”

“Go on in. I don’t care. At least I never have to see your rat-spleen of a face again!”

Marteenus pretended to be hurt, finding the man’s forced bravado amusing, and then grinned snidely.

“You
want
me to go in, don’t you?” he said. “Thank you, Deet. You’ve betrayed yourself. I take this to mean the place is trapped. I’ll have to be doubly careful.”

Deet grunted, but privately, he felt better. He didn’t know of any traps except for a pit, which wasn’t really going to stop anyone. Henry’d been too scared of harming the children to properly secure Beverkenhaas.

At least, Deet thought, the fear might delay the wicked little man. Marteenus would waste time searching for traps that weren’t there, and maybe Henry would catch him. He wondered what his wife was thinking, also his daughter, nephew and niece. Were they all right?

“My brother terrifies you,” Deet challenged. “You can’t hide it.”

“Yes,” Marteenus said, “I admit it freely. I barely escaped your father in the battle. Now Henry’s De Groes Steem Maester.”
The Great Steam Master
. “I don’t ever want to face him.”

“When the smoke stops, know that he allowed it. He’ll be waiting for you.”

Marteenus felt a chill run the length of his back. The mere thought of Hendrelmus charging from the shadows set him quivering.

His terror reminded him of something: a little item he’d stolen from a house and hidden away for the day he might actually develop the nerve to use it. He opened a chest and began rummaging.

“I’ve learned something interesting,” Marteenus said, regaining confidence. “You know that peculiar quirk we carry, how any of us born in Beverkenverlt can’t use electric gadgets?”

He held up a lantern battery for Deet to see. There was a blackened hole in the top from an old explosion.

“That hurt,” Marteenus continued, rubbing a small white scar on his forehead. “Anyway, my fascinating discovery is that the limitation we have here with electricity doesn’t extend to booskroyt.”
Gunpowder
.

He lifted an object out of the chest and held it for Deet to see. Made of chrome-plated steel, the six-shot pistol gleamed ominously in the dim lamp light.

“In our world, it would just fizzle,” Marteenus said, “but here, it works quite well.”

He aimed it at his cousin and pulled the trigger. Deet winced, but there only came a sharp
click
. The hammer had fallen on an empty chamber. Marteenus cackled at his cruel joke while he opened the cylinder and loaded it with six bullets.

“Think I’m bluffing?” he said.

BAM! He shot into the back of the cave, and the bullet pinged harmlessly off the rock wall. Aiming the smoking barrel at Deet’s chest, he cocked the hammer.

“I really ought to,” he said menacingly.

His finger closed on the trigger, but he merely lowered the hammer and put the pistol in his pocket.

“No, this is for dear Cousin Henry,” Marteenus sneered. “I wasn’t sure if I could do it earlier - really shoot him. Now I know I can.”

Deet shook the locked cage door in frustration.

“No one will find you,” Marteenus said, grinning nastily. “This cave’s on a mountaintop accessible only by airship. Years from now, some mountaineer will stumble upon your bones.

“They’ll wonder what happened, how someone could have left another human being to slowly starve to death. And they’ll remain ignorant. I’ll be in B’verlt, enjoying my reward. Good bye, Deetricus Steem-failure.”

Marteenus strolled out of the cave, whistling a jaunty tune. When his back was turned to him, Deet took an object from his pocket and threw it with all his might.

It was an egg-sized rock he’d managed to loosen from the spring that morning. If he killed Marteenus and then starved to death in the cage, he didn’t care. At least the little monster would be dead, too.

The rock hit Marteenus squarely on the back of the head with a sickening
thud
. The little man fell onto the floor of the cave, but he got up, dazed and angry. Gingerly touching the back of his head, a red smear stained his fingertips.

“That’s all you got?” he sneered. “See? Your so-called goot steem’s drained away and gone. Your time is over, all of you. Think about that while you die.”

***

“This is getting complicated,” the white-haired man, Ron Norman, murmured to himself as he climbed up his mother-in-law’s basement steps.

It was Tuesday morning. He looked out the window at the peculiar house across the street where the space aliens lived, having disguised themselves as human children with rather bizarre hair. How beings capable of interstellar flight could make such a trivial mistake bothered him, but he thought maybe they were too advanced to notice such small details. Even stranger, they seemed to have gone away. A few days earlier, they’d left a note in his mailbox asking to feed their animals, and he hadn’t seen them since.

They’d also left him a small, clear gem which the local jeweler in the town of Bellevue, Ohio, said was a diamond of remarkable quality. She’d recommended a jewelry store in Cleveland, so he’d gone there in a rented car. To his astonishment, the man handed him $85,000 cash. Then, he understood what the gem was for: the aliens intended him to use it to cover his expenses. Obviously, they had no idea what chicken scratch and hay cost – that, or they had an awful lot of diamonds.

Ron thought about the robot attack last Wednesday night. He and his wife, Waverly, had left their cars parked in the driveway, and afterward, they wouldn’t start. They’d had them towed, but the mechanic hadn’t been able to get them to start, either. Furthermore, the wiring in the house still wouldn’t carry a current, but new, battery-powered appliances he’d recently bought did work.

At least Waverly had been content to remain exiled in the basement. The aliens had seemed perturbed because she’d called various county agencies to report them, thinking at the time they were truant children. He’d promised the aliens he’d keep her out of sight if they agreed not to destroy the planet. Having just dropped off a sack of things she’d need, he hoped to keep her happy.

“Ron?” she called up the steps. “It’s so damp down here. Isn’t there something you can do?”

“They’re delivering a generator today, dear,” he said. “I’ll get a dehumidifier as soon as I can.”

“Thank you.”

Heading out to the street, he marveled at what he’d just heard.
Thank you
? It’d been 20 years since she’d been nice to him. The aliens’ beasts, he reflected, must have truly terrified her.

He knew it wouldn’t last. In a few days she’d convince herself nothing had really happened, that other-worldly creatures hadn’t chased and tried to eat her, and she’d revert to her usual self. The only thing he could do, he realized, was to enjoy it while it lasted.

Strange, he thought, the fifty-foot smokestack that served as the aliens’ chimney had stopped emitting smoke. It’d been belching black smoke ever since he and his wife had arrived. This seemed somehow ominous to him, though he couldn’t think why.

“Sir?” a friendly female voice startled him. “I’m glad you’re back. There’s this weird noise.”

Startled, he glanced around.
Pink pickup
truck?
Who was this tall young woman approaching him
?

“Mr. Norman?” she said. “Are you all right?”

“Oh, Jenny!” he said, remembering. “I’m fine, thanks. Please call me Ron.”

A few days earlier, after reading the aliens’ note, he’d resisted going over there, because not all of their livestock was
livestock
. They had a pair of fiendish, birdlike other-worldly creatures that were bright purple. The things had chased him and his wife before they narrowly escaped. Even stranger, the note said he had to feed them – of all things –
herrings
.

Fearing what the aliens might do if he didn’t obey their instructions, he’d eventually summoned the courage to creep up on the place where the monsters lived – inexplicably shaped like an igloo - and shut the wooden door. As he’d hoped, the aggressive creatures were inside. From their scuffling, he could tell they were trapped. Still feeling overwhelmed, he’d asked a neighbor to drive him into town so he could rent a car and seek out help.

He knew nothing about livestock. At the feed store he’d spied a notice on the bulletin board: “Farm girl saving up for college, willing to do chores for pay.” He’d borrowed a phone to call her.

That afternoon Jenny Knox, five-foot-eleven with long pigtails and worn denim overalls, had arrived in a big pickup truck with oversized tires. She said her older brother had given it to her for her sixteenth birthday. He wouldn’t need it, as he’d joined the Marines and gone to the Middle East. She’d hand-painted it hot pink to suit her tastes, while adding American flags and “Semper Fi” decals to honor him.

To Ron’s relief, she’d taken the job and gone straight to work. It turned out that he hadn’t neglected the animals too badly, that nothing had starved to death. The goats still gave milk, and all the livestock had settled down after some food and soothing words.