Waybound (19 page)

Mr. Pynch's lumpy face sagged into a frown as he pocketed the donated gauge. He slumped to the ground beside the Waypoint and held his aching head in his mitts.

Dollop wandered through the night, clutching his salathyl prong tight, though he had given up trying to use it.

The vine-strangled swamp had thinned out to naked wetlands that were identical everywhere he turned. Rotten trunks huddled like grave markers and knots of coastal kluttlefisk clicked their shells shut as he trudged past. The ground had gone from spongy red to sickly pale mud, as if all life had been leeched from the ore. Flux mixed with vesper in bubbling amber tide pools, the thin, cloudy liquid separating from the heavier silver muck at the bottom.

His mind was tangled with fear. Frantic thoughts assaulted him, and not all of them felt like his own. There was something eerie out here. Not holy like Makina but…other. And yet somehow it was connected to him.

Shapes shifted in the mist and coiled on the surface of the tide pools. He looked down with a dull realization that he was sloshing through one of the ponds. Thick bubbles swelled like boils around him before bursting with languid pops.

He was sinking. The mud rose to his waist. His mind was blank. He couldn't remember a prayer, couldn't think to resist.

Now it was up to his chest.

So this is how it all ends? All alone…

Amber mud filled his mouth.

Sinking into nothingness.

It sealed over his head.

All went black.

And yet…

He was aware. Still breathing.

Dollop checked himself—all his pieces were still in place.

He rubbed his bulbous eyes until the space around him resolved. The salathyl prong lay discarded at his side. He found himself in a huge black cavern beset with millions of tiny, luminous fragments—a twinkling starscape of turquoise and emerald. The lumpy walls looked wet and curdled, with a ceiling of knobby stalactites drooping over an underground lagoon. The mirrored liquid depths glittered with glowing flecks. He rolled to its edge and looked at his shimmering reflection.

A hundred eyes blinked back at him, wide with curiosity.

Dollop spun around.

As he did, something scuttled out of sight.

He heard echoing footsteps, saw a shadow disappear into a light-speckled niche in the wall. A giggle warbled.

Dollop was alert, but somehow not afraid. He wandered further into the cavern, following the movement. Voices spoke in high, excited tones.

“I-it's okay,” he hollered. “You—you can come out.”

The voices quieted. A splash came from behind him.

“My na-na-name is Dollop.”

“Dollop,” repeated a dozen playful voices.

He spun around but saw only a ripple in the lagoon.

“Dollop,” chimed another voice. He spun again.

Inches away from him was a glistening amber eyeball. It was not attached to a face but blinked and shifted on a long stalk that wound out of sight.

He stared back at it.

Movement shuddered up the stalk. In a blur, bits of rubbery metal whisked forward, forming a mouth to accompany the eye.

“Hello, Dollop,” the mouth said.

“Hello, Dollop,” repeated a dozen voices.

Behind him, scores of disembodied mouths attached to flexible stalks smiled back, sprouting from the lagoon like a bouquet of grinning flowers. Several of the mouths folded together, shuffled their pieces, and arched out to join the eyeball. The disjointed parts rearranged themselves to form a hand.

It motioned for Dollop to follow.

The hand led him to a glorious cathedral-like cavern lit by a cosmos of glimmering mineral flecks and surrounded by curtains of vesperfalls. Orange streams cascaded from the vaulted ceiling to mix with the churning flux in a magnificent amber lagoon.

Extending out from the pool was an amorphous assembly of shifting body parts, a wriggling riot of color and shape.

Gently, it reached out to Dollop, a mass of cheerful eyes, singing mouths, and waving hands. Individual faces formed and dispersed like ashes. The mass undulated and pulsed, countless arms stretching toward Dollop and then retracting, a thousand millipede legs forming and re-forming to hold the column aloft.

“Hello, Dollop,” sang a chorus, a thousand voices strong.

“Who…” he said so softly he could barely hear himself. “Wh-wh-what are you?”

But something inside of him already knew.

He was befuddled by a sense of familiarity. His gaze darted from eyes, to mouths, to faces, all unique and yet somehow all one. He tried to get a handle on how many mehkans he was talking to, but they appeared and vanished into the joyful chaos so rapidly that he couldn't pinpoint any individual for long.

“We are Amalgam,” sang the chorus.

With a soft clatter, the pieces fanned open and expanded, cascading up and out—a hundred arms and hands spread wide as if to embrace an ecstatic Dollop. Because among the smiling faces, dozens were identical to his.

“Welcome home.”

D
awning suns lit the corrugated walls of the sea cave, refracting off the flux in prismatic patterns. A family of silver-and-white mehkans frolicked in the tide, pistoning their bowling-pin-shaped bodies with endearing squeaks. They bobbed like buoys, bounced off one another, and zipped across the surface.

Last night, after an hour of trolling around the islands, Micah had discovered this little cave. It was a good hiding spot, with an entrance that no one would notice unless they drove right past it. But the flux was shallow, and in his haste, Micah had struck the bottom. After ensuring that the Sea Bullet didn't have any major damage, the exhausted kids had called it a night.

Micah took the first watch, so now Phoebe was on duty, though she suspected he had slept a good deal longer than she had. She would never be able to relax on a boat (especially one with a Foundry agent imprisoned below deck), but at least her discomfort kept her keenly on guard.

The whist was the only thing that could calm her. Phoebe had retrieved it last night after Micah shut off the engines, and she marveled at how its supple folds silenced everything. This was a mehkan wonder the Foundry had not yet exploited. She yearned to pull the hood down and lose herself within it, but not while she was on watch. Micah would kill her.

Her restless stomach gurgled. She needed to eat something, but the thought of another Wackers bar made her want to gag. Phoebe rose from the bucket seat and shook the tingle from her legs. She wandered to the sheltered helm and searched the panels embedded in the black walls. Most were filled with reams of files and instruments she didn't recognize, but one was carefully stacked with steel boxes. Each contained a metal bottle marked
H
₂
O
and a stack of foil pouches labeled
SCM
.

“Self-Contained Meal,” Micah yawned, climbing up from the engine room behind her, rifle at his back. “Military rations.”

She tore into a bag and grimaced. “Smells like cat barf.”

He took the pouch from her and pulled its activation tab.

“Self-heating cat barf,” he corrected, reading the label. “Turkey stew with garlic flatbread. Score! I'll pack some for later.”

He tossed the flatbread to Phoebe. It was salty and dry, but she washed it down with water.

Micah scarfed down the steaming contents of the pouch.

“So now what?” she asked halfheartedly.

He ignored her while he gobbled up his barf stew and shuffled through the boat's cabinets.

“Yoo-hoo…” she prodded.

“Bingo!” he chuckled with his mouth full.

Micah turned around with a laminated booklet. He strutted to the steering wheel and unfolded a naval map on the console.

“Check it,” he said, chewing noisily. “We're probably right around here. Smack dab in the…looks like the ‘Mirroring Sea.'” He slurped another mouthful and gave the map a flick. “And there, blammo! Just like the fat man said.”

Phoebe saw that he was right—to the east lay a stippled area labeled ‘The Talons,' just as the Agent of Tongues had described.

She inspected the map further. “Why is that whole area crossed out with red lines?”

“Probably a radio dead zone,” he guessed, sucking up the last tidbits of his stew. “Out of signal range or something.”

“That wouldn't matter much to us, now would it?” replied Phoebe, gesturing to the destroyed radio.

“Better safe than sorry,” he said with a shrug.

“We need to ask Gabriella before we mess anything else up.”

Micah's face pinched up. “How 'bout we keep ol' Foundry McStrangles out of it, huh?”

“That's a human being down there.”

“A hostage,” he corrected.

“You can't keep treating her like that.”

“Like what?” Micah shot back with a grin. “Like she's dangerous? Like she might try to kill me or somethin'?”

“We need her help.”

“What makes you think we can trust her?”

“What makes you think you can get us to Rhom?”

“Got us this far, didn't I?”

“I mean in one piece,” she sighed, crossing her arms. “Or did you forget that you wrecked the boat last night?”

“Not wrecked.
Parked
. Didn't want it to drift.”

“I'm no sailor,” she said with a snide laugh, “but I'm pretty sure that's what an
anchor
is for, Cap'n.”

Micah's smirk flattened.

A silence stretched between them. She regretted her little insult. He stared her down, and she held it as long as she could.

“Sorry, that came out wrong. I'm just saying…I meant—”

“Fine. Let's go pick Foundry's brain, if it'll make you happy,” he said, tossing his empty food pouch and wiping his mouth.

“Really?”

“But not a word to her about what we're doing. We ask the questions, got it?”

Phoebe nodded.

Down they went with Micah in the lead. He popped on his rifle light and approached the lavatory. He took a breath and whacked aside the pipe they had set up as a barricade. Micah whipped the door open, then leapt back and readied his aim.