The Last Protector (30 page)

And then, with a long, slow sigh, she rolled off him and looked back up at the stars.

"Something wrong?” he asked nervously.

"Yeah,” she said. “Whatever happens at Alpine Lake, come Saturday your business here is finished, and you and Jape will be leaving. And here I am falling for you...” Her voice was somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “Do I have great timing, or what?"

Scrornuck, having no idea what to say, wrapped his arms around her and held on tight. He could feel her body quivering. “Maybe things will work out.” The words seemed hopelessly inadequate.

"I don't see how,” she said, and a tear rolled down her cheek. “Oh, I'll miss you so much..."

Scrornuck felt something vibrating gently against his left leg—the grip of the Setron, lying where he'd left it. He reached out with his foot and flipped the instrument into the air, deftly catching its fretboard in his left hand. Keeping his arm around Nalia, he wrapped his right hand around the grip and played a soft, romantic ballad, humming wordlessly along with the tune. He let the instrument suggest the sounds, and it gave him something rather like a kazoo combined with a slightly off-key flute. Nalia seemed to like it, especially in the bridge portion, when the machine guided his fingers so that the sound split into several voices that swirled around her before joining together for the sweet final chorus. As the last notes faded, she was relaxed, comfortable and ready for a good night's sleep. Wordlessly, she got up and headed for her tent. But before she did she gave him one last kiss, a kiss that forced him to spend the next several minutes thinking very hard about cold showers.

"No!” Nalia's voice roused Scrornuck from his light slumber. In a heartbeat he was on his feet, and in another heartbeat he was crouched at the door to her tent, sword held at the ready.

"Nalia, I'm here—what's wrong?” He saw no dangerous animals, no bandits, nothing threatening her at all.

The tent flap opened, and in the moonlight he saw tears in her eyes and a look of intense fear fading away on her face. “It's okay,” she gasped, “it's okay.” She struggled to bring her breathing under control. “I just had a nightmare."

He put the sword away and sat cross-legged on the grass. “Want to tell me about it?"

She caught her breath and nodded. “I've had it before. It's always the same: I'm about nine years old, living with my family in a tent a lot like this one. I'm out in the meadow playing with some of my friends when some big silver birds pass overhead. They're making a sort of humming noise, not like anything I've ever heard, and something like smoke is coming out—but instead of floating up into the sky it's falling down around us. It smells sweet, like flowers. And then, a little later, I'm in the middle of our village and suddenly, all at once, people just burst into flames and burn up.” She covered her eyes at the thought. “They fall, and they roll, but their arms and legs start smoking and sizzling and...” Her voice cracked and she buried her face in his chest.

He wrapped his arms around her reassuringly. “It's okay now, you're awake."

She took a deep breath. “It's just so horrible—my parents, my grandparents and uncles, the really small children—when it's over, there's nothing left of them but little piles of ashes."

"And nothing happens to you?"

"Nothing, not to me. But my older brother's burning up like the grownups, and the shrieking from the babies...” she stopped, took a deep breath, wiped her eyes again. “And when it's over, I'm standing there in the village with these piles of smoking ashes around me, all alone—and then I wake up.” She looked up into his eyes. “I've had it so many times, and it's always the same. I'm starting to think it must mean something."

"Maybe it just means I put too much pepper on the steaks."

"Maybe.” She slowly relaxed and yawned. “Anyway, I'm sorry I woke you up."

"That's what I'm here for, to protect you."

"Thanks.” She half-smiled. “I'm not sure what that sword can do to protect me from bad dreams, though."

"Let me show you!” He jumped to his feet and extended Ol’ Red's blade to a preposterous length. Waving it like a madman, he danced around the tent, jumping clean over it a couple times, screaming, “Begone, evil dreams! Away with you, demons of nightmare! Taste the wrath of my sword, things that go bump in the night!” After a minute or so he bowed graciously and knelt before the tent. “Milady, I can assure you that all nightmares in the vicinity have been slain, and you may sleep peacefully."

She smiled, took his hand and held it for a moment. He gave her a polite little goodnight kiss, and within a few minutes she was fast asleep.

Scrornuck, on the other hand, found himself unable to doze off. His mind was filled with questions about the future. What would he do when this mission was finished? Nalia had fallen for him, he'd fallen just as much for her, and he'd like nothing better than to settle down in this lovely world with the first woman who'd ever loved him back. And he could, because Jape had released him from his promise.

The question, he realized, was whether he could release himself.

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Scrornuck floated in nothingness, a disembodied spirit between the blue world below and the black sky above. He'd slept since the battle over Roswell, the most perfect sleep he'd ever experienced. Now he wondered if he was awake, dreaming, or perhaps dead and on his way to heaven—assuming, of course, that heaven was his destination.

Though the Hitchhiker had disappeared, Scrornuck was not alone. His new companion sported short brown hair and a small goatee beard inside the fishbowl-like glass helmet that topped his puffy blue coveralls. Scrornuck quickly came to think of him as the Blue Man.

An ungainly assemblage of cylinders, spheres, and blue-black panels appeared in the distance and slowly drew closer. Bits of wrinkled gold foil clung to its streaked and flaking white paint, and as it slowly rotated, a faded insignia came into view: a red flag, with five gold stars and a crescent design in one corner.

Scrornuck and the Blue Man drifted toward a small sphere at one end of the machine. A fat blue finger pressed a button, and a hatch opened slowly. They floated inside, the door closed, and after a minute Scrornuck's companion removed his helmet and sniffed the air cautiously. They explored the interior of the craft, eventually finding a small, brightly lit chamber whose walls were filled with controls and screens covered with unfamiliar symbols.

"Which one of these buttons gets this thing moving?” The Blue Man's voice carried a tone of urgency, and a glance out the window showed Scrornuck why—another craft approached, smaller and sleeker, spitting little puffs of steam from orifices in its sides as it moved into position to dock. The Blue Man was a pirate, trying to commandeer this ship before its owners returned.

Scrornuck focused his attention on the signs and screens, doubting he could do much; his Gift helped him to pick up spoken language quickly, but even so it took hours, not seconds, and he'd had little luck with written languages. To his amazement, he found he understood the complex symbols, each of which represented a complete word or even a phrase, as if he'd been reading them all his life. Which one would get this vessel moving? There it was—that rectangular yellow button. Guided by Scrornuck's thought, the Blue Man pressed the button, and a moment later a dull rumbling surrounded them. The approaching ship veered off, and a singsong voice wailed from a loudspeaker...

"Coffee, coffee, I need coffee!"

Scrornuck opened his eyes and saw Jape fumbling around the entrance to his tent, searching for caffeine. “In a minute, boss!” he called, jumping to his feet to get the coffee brewing. Jape retreated to his tent, muttering.

As the coffee warmed and the sun rose, Scrornuck trimmed his beard—with his sword. Ol’ Red's blade formed a six-inch razor, which he rather casually pressed against his neck, scraping off errant hairs and shaping the beard to create the illusion of a heroic chin.

"Isn't that a bit dangerous?” Nalia asked, watching nervously as he flicked the blade across his Adam's apple.

Saying nothing, he extended the blade a bit further and dragged it across his neck as if trying to slit his own throat. She gasped involuntarily, but the blade never so much as scratched him. “Ol’ Red's my friend,” he said, drumming his fingers along the edge of the blade. The faintly glowing fibers jumped and wiggled to avoid cutting him. “He'd never hurt me.” He looked at her, and then at the fibersword, and then back at her. “I wonder..."

She took a nervous step back. “Don't you even think—"

Too late; he swung the sword in a great arc that should have taken her head clean off. She felt only the slightest touch, as if an insect had walked across her throat.

Scrornuck grinned. “I think he likes you."

She slugged him.

"Mmm, that's good,” Jape murmured, sipping his coffee.

"It's mud,” Scrornuck said. “Now
this
is good!” With a flourish, he produced three steaming plates of perfect
huevos rancheros.
“The store didn't have the really strong chilies, so the salsa's a little bland. But I think you'll like it."

Nalia dug in. “Mmm, this is great!"

Jape watched her eat. “I hear you had a nightmare."

She nodded. “I've had it every now and then since I was a kid, but it was really bad last night."

"A recurring nightmare? Sometimes they have meaning. Can you tell me about it?"

"I guess.” She described her vision of silvery birds releasing a sweet-smelling mist, and the people around her suddenly bursting into flames and disappearing.

Jape listened carefully to her story, and then shrugged. “I don't see any immediate meaning."

"Speaking of dreams,” Scrornuck piped up, “I had an interesting one this morning, just before I woke up."

Nalia looked up from her breakfast. “Really? I didn't figure you slept deeply enough to dream."

"You can dream with one eye open."

"Good students can dream with both eyes wide open,” Jape said. “I got through grad school that way. What were you dreaming about?"

"It wasn't exactly a dream—more like a memory. Something that happened a few years ago."

"Did it involve a trip to the moon?"

"Yeah. How'd you know?"

"You've been telling Nalia your life story ever since we got here. It makes sense you'd be dreaming about the next part."

"I suppose; but I still have a feeling it's trying to tell me something."

"Then let's hear it,” Jape said, draining his cup. “But first, can you give me a refill?"

The ungainly space vessel disappeared into the blackness behind Scrornuck as he glided silently over a dead gray landscape of low mountains and plains peppered with round craters. While he still had no sensation of a body, he knew he was somehow part of a small, spidery machine, an awkward contrivance of tubes and cylinders, some shining in the brilliant sun, others dirty and dark. He turned slowly, seeking some sign of color, but saw only an unending panorama of gray beneath the black sky.

The landscape slid by more quickly as the machine descended, and suddenly color appeared: a dome of violet-white light, miles across, completely filling a small crater. Small lightning bolts jumped silently into the sky from a surface that churned as if alive. A flat-topped peak protruded from the very top of the dome, as if skewering it.

Scrornuck perceived sound and vibration, as blue-and-white flame erupted below him. The machine slowed, made a graceful circle around the dome and landed in a cloud of dust, between two small peaks on the crater's rim.

A great bolt of lightning snaked through the cracks of the crater rim and struck the machine. He heard a sound like thunder and saw flying shards of metal as the machine disintegrated around him. Then he saw nothing but violet light, followed by darkness.

He came to and got up slowly, taking a deep breath, feeling like the wind had been knocked out of him. Breath? Yes—he again had a body, with arms, and legs, and lungs. He was clad in his familiar kilt, and Ol’ Red, the wonderful sword, hung from his belt. Taking another deep breath, he shouted, “Hello!” at the top of his lungs. There was no answer, but it felt good to make noise.

Where was he? Inside the dome, it appeared. He stood on a featureless plain of drab gray dust, under a sky of uniform lavender-gray punctuated by occasional bolts of silent lightning and thin, ragged, gray clouds. A few tiny bits of black, rather like dirty snowflakes, blew by on the wind.

Bewildered, he sat upon a small boulder to contemplate. His body, he knew, lay in tatters within the silver disc. Therefore, this must be the afterlife. The drab landscape bore little resemblance to the Heaven described by the churchmen. Nor did it match their descriptions of Hell: where were the demons, the fire and brimstone, the eternal torment? He heard no screams of agony, merely the faintest distant moaning, as if a vast choir were expressing mild discomfort. If this was indeed the Inferno, it seemed something of a light-lager version.

Seeing no point in sitting any longer, he headed toward the source of the moaning. It was a long, dull walk—if anything the dome was larger on the inside than it had looked from above. As he walked, he encountered a few people, wandering without any discernible destination or hope. They spoke a strange, singsong tongue, and to his surprise he found himself understanding as if he already knew the language. Something, it seemed, had turned his modest talent into a truly wondrous Gift.

Though the people were tight-lipped, their few words confirmed that the dome was a place of punishment. But as Scrornuck probed further, their “crimes” sounded more like what his faith defined as virtues: opposing slavery, refusing to worship an emperor who declared himself divine, resisting that emperor's decision to make war on a neighboring people.

After a timeless time spent wandering through the endless nothing, he began to wonder if in fact he'd found the most subtle torment of all—no demons, no fires, no tortures, just unrelenting boredom. He decided to act, and set his eye on the central mountain. He'd seen that the peak stuck through the dome, and according to Dante it should provide the way out. If not, perhaps he would meet the judge who had sent him here, and demand the opportunity to plead his case. With a whistle on his lips and a spring in his step, he set off.