D. MacHale - The Merchant of Death

Uncle Press didn’t say anything. He just watched me and waited for me to get my act together. But with all the confusing information that had been so rudely input into my poor little skull, all I could squeak out was a single, simple question. “Why?”

“I told you. There are people here on Denduron who need our help,” he said slowly, as if to a little kid, which made me even more angry.

“But I don’t know these people!” I shouted. “I don’t care about them. I care about me. I care about getting me home. What is it about that, you don’t understand?”

“I understand perfectly. But that can’t happen,” he said firmly.

“Why? What’s so important about these people? And where is here anyway? Where is this…Denduron?”

“That’s hard to explain.”

“Try,” I said. I was getting fed up with all the mystery.

Uncle Press sat down on a rock. I took that as a sign that he was ready to start helping me understand things.

“We are far from Earth, but this isn’t a different planet in the sense you’re thinking. It’s a territory. Like Earth is a territory.”

“Territory, planet, what’s the difference? It’s just words.”

“No, it’s not. If we had a spaceship and blasted off from here and went to the place where Earth is, it wouldn’t be there. At least not the way you know it. When you travel through the flumes-”

“Flumes?” I repeated.

“That’s how you got here. Through a flume. When you travel to the territories through flumes, you’re not just going from place to place, you’re moving through space and time. I know that’s hard to comprehend, but you’ll get it.”

I was not so sure I wanted to get it. Maybe it was better to stay ignorant. I looked at Uncle Press and for the first time it hit me that this guy wasn’t the person I thought he was. I always knew he was a mysterious character, but now he was way more ozone-esque than I could ever have imagined.

“Who are you?” I asked. “Really, you’re not a normal guy.”

Uncle Press smiled and looked down. Somehow I had the feeling that this wasn’t going to be an easy answer either.

“I’m your uncle, Bobby. But I’m also a ‘Traveler.’ Just like you are.”

Another new word. “Traveler.” I didn’t want to be a “Traveler.” I wanted to be Bobby Pendragon, point guard on the Stony Brook basketball team. But that life seemed pretty far away right now.

“So if we’re not on Earth, why is it like Earth? I mean, I can breathe and there’s snow and normal gravity and all.”

He answered, “All the territories are pretty much like Earth, but not exactly.”

“You mean, like the three suns here?”

“Good example.”

“And those weird yellow stone things sticking up out of the snow?”

Suddenly Uncle Press got tense. “Where? Outside? How many are there?”

“Uhh, I don’t know. Ten. Twelve.”

Uncle Press shot to his feet and started pulling off his coat.

“We gotta go!” He dumped his coat on the ground and hurried to the far side of the cave where there was a pile of dried branches. He started pulling at them.

“What’s the matter?” I said, confused and more than a little worried.

He turned to me and raised a finger to his lips to “shush” me. He continued pulling branches off the pile and spoke quietly, as if not wanting to be heard.

“Quigs,” he said.

Uh-oh. Quigs. Not a new word. I hated that word.

“Those aren’t quigs. Quigs are like dogs, right?” I asked hopefully.

“Depends on the territory,” he whispered. “On Second Earth they’re like dogs. Not here.”

“So what are…quigs?” I asked, but I wasn’t really sure I wanted to know.

“They’re wild animals that are special to each territory,” he explained. “Saint Dane uses them to keep the Travelers away from the flumes.”

There was that name again. Saint Dane. Somehow I knew he’d factor back into this equation. But how was it possible for a guy to “use” a wild animal to do anything? Before I got the chance to ask, Uncle Press pulled off the last branches to reveal a jumble of fur and leather. Animal pelts. He then started taking off his shirt.

“We can’t wear Second Earth clothes in this territory. Put these on,” he said as he lifted up a nasty looking piece of skin.

“You gotta be kidding!” was all I could say.

“Don’t argue with me Bobby. These will keep you warm.”

“But-”

“No buts. Hurry!” He said this in a stage whisper. He really was afraid of the quigs. I figured I should be too, so I started taking off my clothes.

“Even my underwear?” I asked, horrified at what the answer would be.

“They don’t wear boxers on Denduron,” he said, which is exactly what I didn’t want to hear. This was going to be uncomfortable. I followed Uncle Press’s instructions and dressed in the leather and fur. There were even leather boots that were kind of soft, which was good because they didn’t wear gold-toe sweat socks on Denduron either. As we took more of the clothing off the pile, something else was slowly revealed. I picked up one last furry pelt, and saw a two-man sled! It looked sort of like the sled you see in Alaska for sled dogs, but there was nothing modern about this thing. The runners were slats of wood, the sides were made of branches, the seats were woven out of some kind of cane, and the steering mechanism up front was fashioned out of huge antlers. Fred Flintstone would have been proud. But there was something else about this sled that made me nervous.

Lashed to either side were long, deadly-looking spears. The shafts were carved from smooth tree branches. The tips were made of hammered-out metal and looked surgical sharp. The tails had some sort of feathers attached for stability. As crude and low-tech as the whole rig was, these bad boys looked pretty lethal. They hung on either side of the sled like prehistoric sidewinder missiles, ready for launching.

“What about your gun?” I asked hopefully. “Can’t we use that on the quigs?”

“There are no guns in this territory,” he answered, then stopped working for a moment and looked me dead in the eye. “We can only use what the territory offers. That’s important. Remember that. Okay?”

“Yeah, sure, whatever.”

He then shoved something into my hand. It was a small, carved object that hung from a leather cord. It looked like…

“It’s a whistle,” he said, reading my thoughts. “Keep it handy.”

I wanted to ask why, but at this point it didn’t really matter. I just hoped Uncle Press was as good with a spear as he was with a gun, because a little whistle sure as heck wasn’t going to protect us if things got hairy. I followed orders and put it around my neck.

“You ready?” he asked.

“No,” was my usual reply. Though honestly, I was. I felt a little like a caveman, but the strange clothes fit me fine. Where they were too big, I tied them tight with leather straps the way Uncle Press showed me. I was actually pretty comfortable. The only bad thing was I really wished I could have kept my underwear. There was going to be some major league rash action going on here and they probably didn’t have talcum powder on Denduron either.

Uncle Press started dragging the sled toward the light and the entrance of the cave. I helped him pull.

“When we get the sled in the snow, hop on and sit in back,” he instructed. “I’ll get us going and steer from the front. If we’re lucky we’ll be gone before the quigs wake up.”

“What if we’re not lucky?” was the obvious next question.

“We can’t outrun them. Our only hope is to get one of them.”

“Get? Define ‘get.’”

He didn’t. We were at the mouth of the cave. Uncle Press looked at me.