Author: Douglas A. Taylor
Category: Suspense
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Chapter 10
Wizzit evidently decided that we had spent enough time listening in on Shelley's conversations, because he stopped playing those, although he told us he was recording them in case they were needed in the future. He did keep the map going, though, so we were able to follow her progress all the way to somewhere in or near Denver. The little Shelley-dot stopped moving at that point, and Wizzit explained that she was being taken to some sort of underground facility. About half an hour after that, he announced that her belt had been breached and had destroyed itself.
We had been starting to feel pretty good about matters up to that point, but the news that Shelley's belt was gone cast a cloud over the rest of the day. It really brought home the fact that she was no longer one of us, that she was never going to be a Prime again. Dinner was a gloomy affair. It was Padma's turn to cook. She made something with curry and chicken, and I think there was a chutney involved also, but I couldn't have told you how it tasted.
The monster alarm rang bright and early the next morning, and for once I was happy to hear it. It would be nice to have something -- anything -- to keep us from sitting around worrying about Shelley. "Padma will have to be the spokesman today, kids," Wizzit said from the overhead speakers. "Monster is attacking a village in southwestern India. You might have to do some theological tap-dancing on this one, Padma."
"Theological tap-dancing?" Padma asked me when I met her in the weapons room. "What does that mean?" Even though she was Prime Indigo now, she was still the lowest-ranked Prime, which meant that she was tasked with gathering up everyone else's weapons before a mission. I was there to pick up the sais I had laid aside the day before.
"I think he means there might be some religious problems with this monster," I said with a shrug. "I've got Toby's hammer and my stuff. Do you have everything else?"
She nodded, and the two of us raced back to the common room where the others were waiting. Mike looked around as we passed out the weapons. "Everybody ready? Good. Remember your new colors, everyone." He squared his shoulders. "Prime Red, activate!"
"Prime Orange, activate!"
"Prime Yellow, activate!"
"Prime Green, activate!"
"Prime Blue, activate!"
"Prime Indigo, activate!"
I felt everything go hazy around me, and then we were standing in a narrow alley between two rows of low-roofed houses. A steady rain was falling, although with our force shields on, there was little chance we would get uncomfortably wet. "Indigo, take point," Mike said.
"Will do," Padma responded before I could say a word. I frowned, but then I remembered: I was Prime Blue now; Padma was the new Indigo. She squeezed past me and led us out into a slightly wider street.
"Monster is off to your right," Wizzit said helpfully.
"I see it!" Padma called out. She began running forward, and the rest of us followed. "It is right over . . . oh, this is too much!"
Ahead of us, the street broadened out into what was probably the village square, an open area containing some food stalls and a few vendors selling clothes and pottery. In the center was the monster, or at least what I assumed was the monster. The figure was mostly man-shaped, except that it was probably nine feet tall and had an elephant's head. Oh yeah, and arms. Too many arms. More than three, anyway, but fewer than five.
Padma was ahead of us, running straight at the thing and shouting something angrily in one of the Indian dialects she speaks. No one seemed to be paying her any attention; everyone was staring dumbstruck at the giant creature. As I watched, it grabbed someone's cart, raised it high over its head, and threw it down on the ground again, smashing it to flinders.
"It's definitely hostile," Wizzit informed us. "You can go ahead and attack it any time."
Padma stopped in front of a dark-skinned man wearing a pair of dirty white pants and nothing else. They exchanged a few words, and then Padma nodded and began running forward again, yelling at the top of her lungs. She got a better response this time; people began running away from the elephant-headed monster. I couldn't make out anything she was saying, except that I heard the word "Ganesha" a lot.
"Indigo, what's going on?" Mike demanded. "What are you telling them?"
"Feh! This monster is made up to look like Sri Ganesha, the Lord of Obstacles," Padma said, sounding pretty darned ticked off. "It took a moment for me to figure out which dialect they speak here, but now I am telling everyone that it is not Ganesha, but a demon who is trying to trick them. I am pretty sure they believe me, because he is not acting like Ganesha would. Ganesha does not attack people or destroy their things; it is not . . . er . . . not his style, I guess you would say."
I recognized the monster now from the little figurine I had seen on Padma's desk in her bedroom. (Not that I have spent a lot of time hanging out in Padma's bedroom, mind you, but I've visited her there a time or two.) I had heard the name Ganesha before, something about him being the god of luck, but I didn't know much about him besides that. This "Lord of Obstacles" bit was a new one on me.
"They aren't going to get mad at us for attacking this monster are they?" Mike asked. "We don't want this to turn into a religious battle."
"No, I don't believe so," Padma replied. "Perhaps I had better attack first, though. And . . . I will say part of the Ganesha Sahasranama out loud as I do so. It is a -- a song praising Ganesha."
"I think this is what Wizzit meant by theological tap-dancing, Indigo," I told her.
"Yes, Blue, I believe you are right." She began chanting something in a loud, sing-song voice, and then she raised her axe and swung it at the monster. About a foot away from him, it stopped dead in a shower of sparks. "What is this?" she exclaimed in surprise.
"Let me help you!" Nicolai ran forward, and the two of them aimed a double-strike at faux-Ganesha's head and legs. Same result; both of their axes were stopped about a foot away from the creature by some sort of invisible force field. The fake Ganesha-beastie made a sound that might have been laughter. He did some sort of whirly motion with two of his arms, and suddenly I heard Padma and Nicolai cry out as they both were sent spinning away from him.
I expected to see them spill to the ground, but they didn't. Padma was slumped to one side, leaning in mid-air as if supported by some unseen wall. Nicolai caught himself and yelled, "Hey, what is going on? I can't move!" I turned to look at him; at the moment, he resembled nothing so much as a mime performing "The Box". His hands were spread out, pushing against something that none of us could see. As I watched, he turned in a complete circle, feeling around himself the entire way. He appeared to be encased in an invisible cylinder about four or five feet in diameter.
"Indigo!" Mike shouted. "Indigo, respond! Are you all right?"
Padma was shaking some cobwebs out of her head; she pushed herself upright. "I'm a little shaken up, but otherwise I am fine." She, too, pressed outward at invisible walls that seemed to be holding her prisoner. "This . . . this is not good!" She sounded worried.
"Steady on, Indigo!" Mike told her. "This is not the time to get claustrophobic."
"No, it is not that," she assured him. "It's just that this is more like what the real Ganesha would do. He is called the Lord of Obstacles for a reason. People pray to him to remove barriers between them and their goals, but he can just as easily put barriers in their way."
"Barriers, huh? Great. That's just great," Mike said. "What a perfect time for Enclave to start getting savvy to local culture in order to make us look bad."
Padma shook her head. "It may not be such a disaster. Look." She pointed to where fake-Ganesha was tearing apart a small cookshop. "People are not stupid; they can see and think and reason, and even here they have heard of the Primes. But it might be best if we can defeat this monster sooner rather than later."
"Right. Then let's the rest of us have a go at him, shall we? Orange? Green?
Blue? Are you ready?"
"Wizzit, are there any Zoinks around that we need to worry about?" I asked suddenly.
"Nope, not a one. I detect another alter nearby, but no Zoinks."
"An alter?" Mike repeated. "So it's not Lily?"
"Nuh-uh. New guy, never encountered him before. Having a hard time zeroing in on him."
"Should we let someone stay back to handle this other one?" Trina asked.
"It's your call, Red," Toby said.
"Um . . ." Mike took a quick look around. "No. We need to deal with this monster first and decisively. We'll deal with that other alter if and when he pokes his nose out."
"You got it, Red!" I said with more enthusiasm than I felt. If it were me, I would probably have left someone back, but it wouldn't be cool to start questioning Mike's judgment on his first outing as Prime Red. I circled around in back of faux-Ganesha, who was lumbering toward his next target, and Trina and Toby spread out as well. "Say the word."
Mike set himself. "Now!" he shouted, and then he charged.
They say that forewarned is forearmed, and this Ganesha guy was definitely four-armed, so that must mean that . . . nah, skip it; I won't go there. That joke is too lame even for me.
Regardless, something must have tipped off ol' Elephant-boy that something was up. We Primes can move plenty fast when we want to, and we were running full-tilt toward him, but somehow he had us all scouted. He swirly-waved one of his arms at each one of us, and the next thing I know, I'm crashing into some sort of invisible barrier at top speed. Didn't feel too swift, let me tell you. I heard Trina cry out and Mike grunt in pain.
By the time the stars had cleared from my vision, I was encased in the same sort of see-through cylinder that had been holding Padma and Nicolai. I could see Toby trying to push his walls apart. He's probably the strongest of us all, and his arms are definitely the longest, so I just watched him struggle for a while, reasoning that if he couldn't get out by sheer strength, then I surely couldn't.
"I can't bring my axe into play," Nicolai was saying. There was a dull thud as he rammed the haft of his weapon against his wall. "There's not enough room in here to get a good swing going."
"I don't need to swing," Trina said grimly. She leveled her blaster, aiming point-blank at the invisible wall in front of her.
"Inadvisable, Orange --" Wizzit started to say, but for once he was too late. Trina pulled the trigger.
I don't think I've seen such a dazzling light show since last Fourth of July. Unfortunately, it was all at Trina's expense. Rather than destroying the barrier which held her, her blaster shot bounced straight back, ricocheting back and forth across the tube faster than the eye could follow and striking Trina with every pass, until it spent all its energy and died away.
"Orange, are you all right?" Mike demanded.
"Orange seems to be mostly unharmed," Wizzit informed us. "Just stunned."
Stunned would be the word for it, all right. Trina was lying in a crumpled heap at the bottom of her tube; I heard her groan once. I saw Padma look down at the blaster she held in her hand. "I was about to try the same thing," she said, carefully putting it back in its holster, "but now I don't think I will."
"I've got something I've been itching to try," Mike declared.
I looked at the sais in my hand. They were shorter than Nicolai's axe, and might be more effective against the invisible wall around me, but there was something else I wanted to try first. Tucking the sais into my belt, I pulled out my sap gloves and slid them onto my hands. I set myself in a riding-horse stance a foot or two in front of the barrier and began punching one-two, one-two as quickly as I could.
"Indigo!" I yelled out. "Do you have your boots with you?"
"I think so. Why?"
"Maybe you can kick your way out."
"I'll give it a try." Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Padma rummaging around in the pockets of her battle vest for the pair of slip-on boots she had made for herself. Like my sap gloves, they have our anti-Enclave tech built into them.
I could see Mike set himself and mutter, "Here goes nothing!" I grinned, because I thought I knew what he was about to do and why he was doing it.
I have mentioned before that as one's associated prime number goes down, certain things become easier. And when you get to be Prime Red and your number is two, the only even prime, they become almost intuitive. What Mike was going to try, I figured, was to blow his wall apart using something we call a shock wave. It's a cool-looking trick that Prime Reds (or is that Primes Red?) like to pull out of their back pocket every now and then. I had managed to generate one once, under extreme duress, but as far as I knew, Mike never had. This was going to be his chance to prove to himself that he really was Prime Red.
Sure enough, his red force shield seemed to pulse, and then it shrank in on itself for about two seconds. Finally, it exploded outward with a small boom. When things settled down, Mike was moving about unencumbered; his shock wave appeared to have destroyed the barrier around him. Unfortunately, there would be a price for that. Mike's force shield, except for the blurring and the voice modification, would be essentially useless for the next ten minutes or so while it recharged itself. I wondered whether he remembered that.
My own technique -- punching -- appeared to be doing me some good. I was seeing occasional sparks, and the area immediately in front of me -- the spot my fists kept hitting -- was starting to turn an opaque white. Ten punches, twenty, thirty, and then on the thirty-seventh punch I felt something give. Another ten, and my fist actually went through the barrier. There was a blizzard of sparks all around me, and the wall sort of crumbled to pieces after that.
I looked over at Padma. She had donned her boots and was trying an experimental sidekick. The shower of sparks that resulted was stronger than from my punches; the force from it knocked her up and back, slamming her against the other side of the cylinder.
"Looks like it's doing some good, Indigo," I encouraged her. "You should be able to kick yourself out of there in record time."
Padma shook her head to clear it and climbed to her feet. "Not if I knock myself silly in the process. But perhaps if I try . . . this!" She sprang at one side of the cylinder surrounding her, her leg outstretched. I saw the explosion of sparks from the kick, and then she was thrown backward again.
But get this: Instead of letting herself get bashed against the opposite wall for a second time, she kicked at it with her other foot. There was another shower of sparks, and again she was thrown up and back. She kicked out again, and then again, going back and forth through the air across the invisible cylinder, each time getting a little bit higher. By the time she got about ten or twelve feet into the air, suddenly there was no more cylinder, and she spilled out over the top. She managed to catch herself, turn a somersault in midair, and land neatly almost at my feet.
I clapped my hands. "Nice work, Indigo. Just like in a video game," I said warmly. "Now let's see about freeing the others."
"Thanks, but that won't actually be necessary," came Toby's amused voice from directly behind me.
Startled, I whirled about. "G-Green! How did you get free?"
Toby shrugged. "I had Wizzit teleport me out. It was Yellow's idea. I'm surprised you didn't think of it yourself."
I heard Mike laugh. "Leave it to Yellow come up with a clever strategy," he said. He nodded at Padma. "Nice bit of footwork, Indigo."
Padma mock-curtseyed. "Thank you very much, Red."
I chuckled. Now that he mentioned it, teleporting out did seem sort of obvious. "Good thinking, guys." I looked around. "So, where's Orange?"
"Taking a breather at HQ. The blaster shot knocked Orange for a loop."
I pulled my sais from my belt. I could see Toby and Nicolai moving toward the other side of the monster, weapons at the ready. As I watched, Toby took a swing with that giant ham
mer of his; it rebounded from fake-Ganesha's invisible shield with a crash. Nicolai followed that up with a blow from his axe. "Now what?" I said to Mike. "Another full-on assault?"
"Got a better idea?"
"Umm . . . no."
"I might." Padma had drawn her blaster and was looking at it speculatively. "The walls of my barrier were between three and four meters tall. I bet Blue could throw me that high."
"Green could toss you higher. Hang on a sec," Mike said, discerning what she had in mind. Raising his voice, he called out, "Green, get over here and help Indigo! Blue, you and I will go help Yellow keep that monster busy while they get ready!"
"Will do, Red, only you'd better sit out for a while after that shock wave."
"What? Oh, damn, you're right. I'll, uh, go along to supervise, then."
I ran over to attack the monster with my sais. The good news was that he seemed to realize now that we could easily escape any prison he could put us in, because he didn't bother encasing me in one of his invisible cylinders. The bad news was that he quickly found a way to be much, much more annoying. I hadn't gone more than five steps when I ran smack into an invisible wall that was only waist-high. I flipped over it and landed on my butt, damn near breaking my neck in the process. Behind me, I heard Mike start to laugh. I turned my head to deliver a stinging retort, only to see his top half run into a similar invisible barrier while his legs kept moving forward. He fell flat on his back, the impact sending up little splashes of water from the rain-soaked earth.
I cautiously rolled over to where Mike lay, trying to avoid any other hidden barriers. "You okay, Red?"
He groaned. "Never better." He rolled to his feet, and after a moment, I did the same. "Maybe we'd, uh, better go a little more slowly, though."
I grinned. "Caution is my middle name."
We carefully picked our way over to the monster. It took what seemed like forever before I got close enough to start using my sais. I probably looked silly the way I took slow, cautious steps, holding my hands in front of me like a blind man. I know Mike did. It's what I had to do, though; I managed to locate and avoid four or five of Elephant-boy's barriers that way.
Fake-Ganesha simply stood in place, laughing at our attempts to attack him. I didn't go for the giant, two-handed blows the way Nicolai was; my sais weren't built for that. They're mainly effective for short, stabbing attacks, so that's what I did. Lots and lots of short, stabbing attacks in between Nicolai's heavier blows, generating lots of sparks and hopefully keeping faux-Ganesha's eyes off of what Toby and Padma were doing.
I had seen Trina and Shelley pull off this same kind of maneuver countless times, but Toby and Padma had never tried it before, so I was curious to see how well it would work. I managed to circle around so that I was opposite to where they were, and I had drawn the monster's attention with me. Toby bent down and formed a stirrup with his hands; Padma stepped into it, and he flung her up high. As she flew over top of the Enclave beastie, Padma aimed her blaster carefully and sent a single shot down almost directly on top of faux-Ganesha's head. He let out a trumpet blast of anger as the shot struck his long, elephantine trunk.
"Good shooting, Indigo," Nicolai said as Padma landed near me.
"Toss me up again, Blue," she said excitedly. "I want to shoot him some more."
"Not a good idea, Indigo," Mike declared. He was momentarily obscured by sparks as he slammed his club home against the monster's shield-wall. Looked like his shield was back up to full strength. "Our little friend here is getting cute with his barriers. I'd hate to see Blue toss you head-first up into one of his little walls and break your neck."
"But . . . there is no other way to get to him. What can we do?"
A peal of thunder sounded as if in answer to Padma's anguished question, and it suddenly began to rain much harder. There was a flash of light behind Toby, and suddenly a tangerine-glowing figure was standing there. "Good to see you back, Orange!" I called out. "Ready to join the fight?"
"I thought Wizzit was going to put you in a healing coma!" Mike exclaimed.
"There was no need," Trina said. "My blaster shot hurt quite a lot, but mostly it just drained the power from my force shield. I was watching the battle while it recharged. It is back to full strength now, and so am I."
"Are you sure, Orange?"
"Yes, Red," she replied stiffly. "I'm sure."
"All right," he said doubtfully. "Then get busy and help us break down the wall this thing has built around itself!"
Trina drew her triple-blaster and took careful aim, but then she stopped. "Maybe is not necessary. We just need to be patient."
We all looked down at where Trina was pointing. About an inch of water was standing inside fake-Ganesha's protective tube. "If we can keep him bottled up here long enough," she said, "the rainwater will fill up his chamber and drown him. And if he seals it up tight, then eventually he will suffocate."
Oddly, she said all this out loud, rather than Prime-to-Prime. Fake-Ganesha looked down at his feet and drew back, as if he suddenly felt panicked, but then he started waving his arms in that swirly motion, and the rain abruptly stopped. Looking up, I could see that he had formed an invisible roof over us. The drumming of the rain was almost deafening. I could even make out the domed shape of the roof by tracing the path of the water sluicing down it.
"Great idea letting him know that, Orange," Toby said sarcastically. "Now he's just put up an umbrella over us all."
"Good," Trina muttered to herself. To the rest of us, she ordered, Prime-to-Prime, "Keep attacking him! Keep him distracted from what I am doing!"
I went to work with a will, slashing and jabbing with my sais and generating one heck of a spark show. Beside me, Padma was swinging her axe as if she were trying to chop down a tree. I tried to keep an eye on Trina without actually looking at her, if you know what I mean, but she seemed to be just looking up at the sky. After a minute or two, I heard her murmur, "Yes, that's it," and she gave that little satisfied nod, the way she does when she has just perfected one of her sketches. She raised her blaster so that it pointed almost straight up and let loose a series of rapid-fire shots.
It was the fanciest bit of trick-shooting I ever saw. Her blasts rebounded twice off the interior of the roof that fake-Ganesha had erected and then went down at an angle into his protective tube. And just like when Trina had accidentally shot herself, these shots zinged back and forth across the tube, striking faux-Ganesha with every pass. She kept at it, sending bursts of energy ricocheting down onto the monster. He must have eventually realized where they were coming from, because he soon dissolved the roof over our heads. Rain began pouring down onto us once more, and Trina's triple-blaster shots started shooting straight off into the sky.
Padma clutched my arm. "Indig-- I mean, Blue, pick me up! I want to try something."
I shook my head. "Nuh-uh. You heard what Red said. No more throwing with this guy."
"I don't want you to throw me; just pick me up on your shoulders. Quickly, before Ganesha realizes what I am doing!" Puzzled, I made a stirrup with my hands and let her climb up until she was standing atop my shoulders. With our Prime-enhanced strength and balance, it wasn't all that hard to do. "Now move over to stand beside his wall!"
She flattened herself against Elephant-boy's invisible cylinder and reached up as high as she could. "Oh, I am not tall enough! Blue, let me stand on your hands and push me up as high as you can!"
I complied. Wobbling a little, Padma stretched up again, and this time she was able to catch hold of something. As I watched, she scrambled up and perched herself on what was probably the lip of the invisible cylinder. Then, after taking a moment to make sure of her balance, she swung her legs over and dropped down inside, right on top of faux-Ganesha's head. Sparks flew as her anti-Enclave boots made contact with the monster's cranium. She jumped up, then came down again with al
l her weight, making more sparks.
Mike shook his head, muttering, "Nutters! I'm team lead for a bunch of nutters!"
Toby said with wry amusement, "Is this that theological tap-dancing that Wizzit mentioned?"
Padma laughed delightedly and began dancing a jig on fake-Ganesha's head. "Yes, exactly! I -- oops!" She had been reaching out to steady herself on the walls of an invisible cylinder that suddenly was no longer there; Elephant-head had dissolved his protective shielding. Off-balance, Padma tumbled to the ground. In a flash, Nicolai was at her side, pulling her away from the monster.
Trina and Toby reacted immediately. Trina knelt and began shooting rapid-fire at the monster's face, while Toby struck him in the belly with a giant roundhouse swing of his oversized hammer. Mike ran up to attack, and I was about to join him when I heard a peal of crazy-sounding laughter that seemed to echo all around us.
"What's that?" Mike exclaimed as all our heads jerked up simultaneously.
On a sudden intuition, I asked, "Wizzit, have you located that other alter?"
"It is nearby," Wizzit replied, "but hard to nail down. It seems to be bilocating."
"Bilocating?" Padma repeated. "I don't know what that word means."
"He means that it's in two places at the same time," I explained.
"Very clever --"
"-- Professor Smarty-pants!"
Two odd-looking figures suddenly came into view. They were wearing identical sets of clothes, a tunic and trousers decorated with a red-and-black diamond pattern. Their faces were pure white, as if they were wearing makeup, with black spikes painted above and below the eyes. Garish red lipstick created huge, grotesque smiles on their faces. They were nearly indistinguishable; the only difference was in the two-pointed, court jester-type hats they wore. One was red; the other was black.
"Clowns," Toby muttered in disgust. "I suppose it had to happen sooner or later. Have we ever had to fight clowns before?"
"Not that I recall," Trina replied.
"Not twin clowns, at any rate," Mike said. He laid into the Ganesha monster with his club. "Blue, keep an eye on 'em. Yellow and Indigo, over here, if you please."
"Will do, Red." Nicolai and Padma rushed to attack faux-Ganesha. I drew my sais and stepped warily between the newcomers and my teammates. Enclave does some goofy stuff at times, and these two (literal) jokers appeared to be among the leading citizens of Goofy-ville, but that didn't mean they were harmless. Sometimes the goofier-looking the critter is, the more dangerous it turns out to be.
"We are the Harley twins --"
"-- and you are destroying our monster!"
"We don't like it!"
"We don't like it very much!"
Red-hat seemed to be the one who spoke first, I noted. That might mean that he would attack first as well, or it might mean the opposite. Having no way of knowing, I eyed both of them carefully, waiting for either one to make a move. "I'm sorry you're unhappy," I said cautiously, "but we're the Primes. Destroying monsters is our job."
"But not our monsters!"
"Our monsters are cleverly made, not stupid like the other ones!"
"Yes, definitely not stupid. Go fight some stupid monsters and leave ours alone!"
"Yes, leave him alone!"
Wizzit said, Prime-to-Prime, "Blue, if you can bear to tear yourself away from their witty banter, we're ready for the final strike."
"On my way." Not taking my eyes off the two clowns in front of me, I backed quickly toward the Ganesha-monster. "Say when."
"When!"
I turned, and all six of us attacked fake-Ganesha simultaneously. Our weapons, tuned by Wizzit, disrupted his Enclave enhancements, and he disappeared in an explosion of sparks.
"Pooey!" said Red-hat. "He's dead!"
"Double-pooey!" said Black-hat. "He's deader than dead." And with that, the pair of them vanished.
Mike straightened and looked around. The people in the village seemed to understand that the danger was over now and were coming out from wherever they had hidden themselves. "Indigo, do you think you need to say anything before we go? We want to leave everybody happy if we can."
"I suppose I could say a quick prayer of thanks to the real Ganesha. Would that be okay?"
"Whatever you think is best," Mike replied.
Padma stepped forward and said a brief something. When she finished, Wizzit teleported us home.