Dandelion War Jaye Michael & Levanah Greene Chapter Five Frontal Assault

 

 

If you know both yourself and your enemy,
you can win a hundred battles without jeopardy.

 — Sun Tzu, The Art of War (c. 512 BCE)

 

As we reached the edge of the tall grass I motioned Beryl off to the right side while I took the left, knowing that she was well aware of our need to assess the situation from as much concealment as we could arrange.

I crawled through the grass to as close as I could find without revealing myself, but could see no one on the road leading back into town, other than the remains of what must have been a bandersnatch on the sidewalk, about three blocks down, surrounded by the debris and scorch marks typical of HE/goop explosions. You can always tell, because the magnesium in the goop mixture leaves behind a white residue that covers everything, and the explosive, of course, blows stuff up. If that bandersnatch was Gumball, somebody was going to be in a world of hurt.

I crept back toward better cover and made my way over toward Beryl. She had binoculars, which I admired, probably left over from her former HC kit. I’d seen some in one or another of the department stores, but hadn’t been thinking of reconnaissance at the time. I waited patiently until she’d wriggled her way back to cover before speaking to her. “I saw nothing untoward,” I said quietly, “but clear signs of some sort of engagement. One of those missiles went off in the middle of the road we left from and killed a bandersnatch.”

“Same here,” she said, “except I didn’t see that. If they follow normal procedures, they’ll hightail it back home as quick as they can.”

“That’s my guess as well,” I replied, “in which case we ought to try and intercept them on their way out of town, since they might have taken some of our people prisoners.”

“Flanking?” she said.

“I think so. I’ll take the right hand, since I explored it thoroughly when I first arrived, and left a cache of missiles. I’ll take the launcher as well, since I think I can travel with it quicker than you can yet.”

“Will do,” she said, and headed back the way I’d already checked out.

I had a bit of time to spare, waiting for her to get into position, so I tried to focus on feeling where Gumball was, and everyone, which I hadn’t tried before. I wished that I’d thought to bring a tarot deck along, because I found the cards useful in meditation, since I could pick and choose those that felt most appropriate to my purpose, and then try out different relationships between the pieces of whatever puzzled me. Trump eight, Strength seemed most appropriate, the complement to trump one, the Magician. Both cards represent spiritual power and relationships, but the Magician implies ‘power over,’ while Strength is more like ‘power with,’ which is how I felt about Gumball and his friends. Then I rifled through a mental collection of the cards, but my attention was quickly caught by the five of swords, which shows a reversal or usurpation of power, possibly associated with deceit or unethical conduct, which seemed almost perfectly congruent with the present situation. ‘Well, treason is what you make of it, isn’t it?’ I thought. ‘When the system is corrupt, and oppresses those it rules over, we have a duty to rebel in pursuit of greater liberty for all. The close proximity of water, though, implies that the solution lies in the unconscious.’ I reached deeper and felt a stirring. ‘The Queen of Cups! I’m on the shore of an ocean, contemplating the depths, symbolized by the covered chalice I hold in my hands as well as by the deeper waters before me.’ I tried studiously to ignore the fact that it also represented nurturance and motherhood in all its many ramifications. Time enough to think about that later, since I was bound to act now. ‘Times and tides…, ebb and flood…. Go with the flow,’ I thought.

Then I heard a click from Beryl, and became the wave.

I was across the gap between the tall grass and the nearest house in two and one half seconds. I know, because I counted, and I could see Beryl out of the corner of one eye, not much behind. I was aware of her even as she disappeared around the corner of the house and we started running toward the other edge of town, listening carefully for any signs of their party, whatever it consisted of. I stopped for an instant to pick up a crossbow, a quiver of bolts, and a small satchel of missiles I’d stashed some time ago, part of the remainder of my salvaged horde, plus some of those I’d ‘liberated’ from the Citadel crew who’d been ambushed and transformed, one of whom was now the lovely Beryl and almost as dangerous as I was. I hoped that the other members of our little gang were being cagey, as we’d practiced, but was still worried about Chert, who was still working on choosing a less revealing name. ‘Well, they say that the prospect of hanging concentrates the mind wonderfully,’ I thought, so I sincerely hoped that Chert had been inspired by mortal fear to dissembling creativity.

We hadn’t been running for more than five minutes before we heard women’s voices cursing — bless their clever hearts — still invisible, but no more than a block or two ahead.

I put on a bit more speed, trusting Beryl to do the same, and managed to set myself on a side street in time to see Beryl run past on the next street over, stop, and then come down the street toward me. We couldn’t actually risk using the missiles, at least not until we’d sussed out their relative positions, but we could certainly focus their attention.

At a nod, we both poked our heads around the corner long enough to get off one quick shot each with our crossbows, and then we both took off back the way we’d come, so as not to be there when they came to investigate. I was pretty sure that their effective force would have been diminished, since I knew that I’d got my target in his kneecap and he was hors de combat. I suspected that Beryl had managed the same general effect, but it didn’t matter in the long run.

As we ran back down the side streets, I pondered my next move. Seeing a metal staircase affixed to a building, I came to a sudden decision and leapt up to catch the railing at edge of the bottom of the stairs, which ended well above street level. Swinging over, I went up three flights — making as little noise as possible, but not too careful, because I knew that the suits made hearing anything other than the radio a bit dicey — and lifted the window there, breaking the lock in the process. I looked down at Beryl and shrugged, leaving the next decision to her, since I was soon to be out of touch.

She waved a half-salute and ran back the way we’d come, trusting me to get their attention while she got herself into position.

I climbed in, finding myself in what appeared to be a residence, since there was a bed, a dresser, and some sort of video display. I wasn’t all that interested, though, and quickly opened a door on the other side of the room, finding myself in a hall. I chose a direction at random, seeing that there was a turn at either end of the long hall, ran down and around the corner, finding myself in another hall lined with identical doors, all of which had numbers on them. I chose 405, kicked through the door when I found that it was locked, then found myself in another room looking almost the same as the other, except there was a different picture on the wall.

I wasn’t interested in anything other than the window looking out on the street, so I ran over to it and looked cautiously down toward the street. This side didn’t have a stairway, which suited me perfectly, since I had a clear view of six Horticulturists in suits looking around, two on the ground, with our women behind them, who were in turn guarded by two guys in suits with flamethrowers pointed at my friends.

That ticked me off, so I unlocked the window, opened it quitely, and shot the two guards with two quick bolts through the back of their kneecaps. They wouldn’t be walking away from this, no matter how the fight went overall.

They must have made some sort of noise on the radio, because their number one turned around, saw me, and raised his own rocket launcher.

I made a quick decision and shot him through the throat with another bolt, since I didn’t want him burning down my city, and figured that losing the boss, plus the two invalids, might make the rest of them easier to intimidate.

It didn’t work the first time, since another guy raised his flamethrower, but I shot him too — not quite as fatally — through his right shoulder, and noticed that Beryl had hit him from behind with another bolt through his knee, so he dropped as well.

In the meantime, our girls had handily grabbed the rocket launchers from the backs of their former guards, so by the time the rest had finished turning back to see what was happening, they found the situation somewhat changed.

Four of their party of ten were on the ground, and obviously in no position to get up, although three of those were still visibly alive. The six still walking were faced with a small gang of credible opponents — their former prisoners — right in front of them, two of them armed with the most powerful weapon in the HC inventory, and one looking down on them from very good cover, also armed, with another armed assassin somewhere behind them. Wisely, they decided that discretion was the better part of valor and ostentatiously dropped their various weapons, including two rocket launchers, then raised their hands.

Keeping the crossbow aimed directly at one of them, held now with one hand, I gestured toward my own head, tapping it, then pointed at the six of them.

They were fairly quick to understand, removing their helmets and dropping them on the ground, so I called down to them, “I accept your surrender. Step away from your weapons and lie face down on the road; someone will be with you shortly.” Then I called down the street, a little louder, “Beryl, if you have a bit of the good stuff handy, try dosing up the dead or dying guy and we’ll see what happens. It may not be too late to save him. I’ll stay up here to pick off anyone with a mind to break their parole. Do you guys understand?”

They nodded, looking a little pale. Not that I blamed them; one minute they’re sitting on top of the world, with a new source of food, possibly important prisoners, and the prospect of a triumphant return; then the next, ignominious defeat at the hands of a couple of women, painful injuries to some, and horrendous blows to each and every one of their masculine egos to put the final flourish on their utter and abject failure. The poor dears. I almost felt sorry for them.

“Then sit tight while my companions see to your wounded and dying. I’ll wait here, just in case….”

 

 

It didn’t take that long, but I got a little bored perched up in a window, so when they were all nicely bound I took a bit of rope from my duffle, lowered my stuff to the ground — not wishing to test the deceleration limits of the HE missiles — and swung my legs over the ledge. I quickly manoeuvred until I was hanging from the ledge by one hand, then dropped heavily down to the street. The soles of my feet hurt a little, since I was wearing plain walking shoes rather than combat boots, but I was otherwise raring to go.

I picked up my stuff and walked over to where Beryl was working on their leader, who now had his helmet off so I could see his face.

I pressed my tongue against my lower teeth as I struggled to control myself with truly mixed emotions. It was my father, the man who’d raised me; the man who’d betrayed my mother to his superiors and then stood calmly by when she was thrown to her death; the man who’d sent me out into the world to die; and here we were, our rôles in life reversed. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

 

 

Beryl was giving him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, and I was very glad that it was her and not me, so I watched until he coughed up blood and started breathing on his own; she’d evidently spat some cheese into his mouth — a sovereign remedy for most things that ailed one — and then kept him alive long enough for the stuff to begin its work of healing.

She looked up at me and responded to my curt gesture, backing away from him.

“Well, Captain, ill-met by moonlight, I see.”

He looked up at me, incomprehension flooding his face.

“I imagine that you must be finding it difficult to speak just now, so I’ll keep my questions simple. Did my officers fail to identify themselves to you? Nod your head if so, otherwise, consider yourself under arrest for mutinous assault on a superior officer, disobeying a legitimate order from a superior, treason, and whatever else I can think of between now and your formal court martial.”

He blanched, obviously frightened, but didn’t dissemble, for which I had to give him credit; he might have been a cruel and heartless taskmaster, a callous martinet, and an all-around first-class jerk, but at least he was honest.

“You engaged” I said, “in a firefight with my immediate command, and in the process murdered at least one of our liaisons with the plant kingdom; were any others of them harmed?”

He shook his head and one of the others spoke up, “Begging your pardon, Ma’am, but the rest of those monsters ran away somehow. we chased them, but when we turned a corner they were gone.”

I felt an immediate sense of relief, but schooled my features to dispassion. “Who fired the missile which burned him alive?”

“I did,” he answered, “begging your pardon, Ma’am, but ‘him?’ ”

“Him,” I said, “and all of them very helpful, until you came along.” I included his companions with a dismissive gesture.

“I don’t understand, Ma’am,” he said.

“No, I suppose you don’t.”

 

 

I had two of the women escort our prisoners off to the same holding area I’d had set up for the foraging party I’d sent back to the Citadel, since we already had a latrine dug. Before they left, I let them know that they were on their honor to refrain from trying to escape, since they were being held by their own forces, not an enemy, and had neither the duty nor the right to return to their own outpost. Another benefit of being an officer’s child was that I wasn’t completely hopeless as a barracks lawyer. I’d been drilled on military history, customs, and deportment since I was very young, so it was ‘in my bones,’ so to speak.

My father was still unable to speak, so he wasn’t in any position to argue. I wasn’t worried about them in any case, since two women would be more than enough to handle them, now that the men had been disarmed.

As soon as they’d marched off, I talked with Beryl about the Castle. “They must have exploited everything worth taking in the town they were using as a larder for them to have chanced setting off into the unknown,” I theorized, “so they’ll be back.”

In which case, shouldn’t we pay them a visit with a couple of our modified missiles?

“I’d like to avoid that until we’ve had a chance to put some of our transformative cheese into their food supply. The ærosol is too chancy, since it will hit the people who work outside — that is, the lowest on the totem pole — before it affects the ‘upper classes,’ so I’m afraid of setting off mass murders amongst the general populace before the transformations hit the officers and makes the maintenance of ‘purity’ moot.”

Beryl thought about this for a minute and then said, “Let’s go find Gumball and his remaining friends. All we need is a plausible ‘delivery’ of the food to the area outside the gates, and if we’re ‘killed’ before we make the actual gate, someone will be sure to haul in our leavings.”

I stared at her in awe. “What are you these days, a mere Major? Remind me to bump you up to Colonel, at least, or perhaps a Brigadier. In fact, take your pick; the pay’s the same, either way.” I grinned for both of us, since our notional ‘army’ paid no salary at all.

“Oh, Brigadier, of course,” she said cheerfully. “Brigadier Beryl has a pleasing sound, while Colonel Beryl sounds like a tongue-twister gone bad. Young children would challenge each other to say it three times fast and then laugh when it got mixed up with ‘cannibal,’ or something equally silly.” Then she looked at me sideways and said, “On the other hand, ‘Cannibal’ Farquhar sounds bloodthirsty as hell, and might enhance my fearsome image.”

“Let’s do both, then,” I said laughing. “As a Brigadier, you’ll obviously have been a Colonel at some time in the past, and that’ll give us the opportunity to spin fantastic tales of adventure and derring-do for you. Colonel ‘Cannibal’ Farquhar and the Curse of the Swamp Thing, or maybe ‘Cannibal’ Farquhar in the Caves of Despair…. We’ll make a fortune off the serial publication rights alone!”

“Why do I have to be the heroine in all of them? What about ‘Star’ Sapphire and the Deadly Encounter? In fact, I think we should have a whole line of titles aimed at different tastes. So far, we’re ignoring the romance marketplace entirely! We could have my stories be adventure stuff, and then have yours be breathless kisses and mushy whispers in the dark! We’ll split the main genre markets between us and clean up big time! I can see it now; ‘Star’ Sapphire Meets Her Match, followed by Star’s Rendezvous, and then Fifty Shades of Blue, to match your eyes. We could even come out with a clothing line as well, with a ‘hook’ like that.”

We both laughed at that, as children do, letting go of the oppressive fear that had dogged us during our own pursuit of our friends and allowing pure joy to reënter our lives and suffuse our spirits.

“But before we can retire in luxury on the proceeds of our book and clothing sales, we have to find our other friends,” I said. “I can still feel their terror, although they feel safe where they are, deep underground. Let’s go a little uptown, where there’s a shop I know of.”

Beryl looked puzzled, but was willing enough to follow my lead as we jogged off toward an eclectic little bodega where they had all sorts of spiritual supplies on offer, from candles to herbs, and from books to tarot cards to altar supplies.

It was relatively nondescript, a tiny little store well off the major boulevards, but it stood out from the rest because of a notable lack of ostentation, the only real clue to its nature being an odd symbol woven into a circular window pieced together with individual shards of stained glass above the narrow entry door. After quite a bit of searching through the library, I’d discovered that it represented the eye of the Egyptian God Thoth, a Moon deity who was associated with wisdom, justice, the sciences, and writing, a heavy burden for one God to carry.

Beryl was intrigued as we walked through the door into the dark interior, although it was too dark to see much at all. “What is this place, anyway?”

“It’s called ‘The Witches’ Familiar,’ but it sold all sorts of stuff, from what they called ‘yoga mats,’ to various herbs, to ‘occult supplies,’ one of which we’re looking for right now.” I rummaged around behind one particular counter, the general layout of which I remembered from exploring it before my flashlight gave up the ghost. “Here they are!” I said. “Let’s take a couple of them outside.”

We walked out to the sidewalk again, into the sunlight.

“Here we have a deck of tarot cards,” I explained, holding one of the Rider-Waite decks out to her. “It’s a meditative tool that represents a compilation and juxtaposition of many different Western mystical traditions. I have another back at my hotel room, but these particular decks are commonplace, and it’s the one I know the most about, so it’s the one I use.”

Beryl took it, but looked puzzled, which made sense, since I’d never told her about them before. In fact, I’d only discovered their existence through the library, when I’d been searching for some sort of explanation for what I was experiencing with the Bandersnatches, but especially Gumball. The whole notion of being aware of things one couldn’t see with one’s eyes or feel with one’s hands was so completely contrary to the Horticulturist worldview that I’d kept it a close secret, even from my resurrected companions, but after our recent talk, I wanted to share my thoughts about the cards, so I began, “They were invented, I think, as gambling tokens, almost like dice or dominoes, but much more complicated, and since gamblers tend to be a superstitious lot, they quickly became associated with fortunetelling and ‘luck,’ then ‘fate,’ and then other imponderable qualities and things. They’ve been around in one form or another for more than fifteen thousand years since their beginnings in ancient China, but soon became so popular and standardized that one could find them all around the world. At some point — sources disagree on this — they began to be used as memory aids, possibly springing from the use of the same technology to produce what were called ‘devotional cards,’ pictures of various Gods, Goddesses, Saints, and so on, all of whom had very clear associations with any of a wide range of ideas, and one can, in fact, find packs of ‘divination’ cards with depictions of Gods and Goddesses — even Saints and Saintesses — in this very shop.”

“Surely you don’t believe in fortune-telling! That’s…!”

I looked at her owlishly, ducking my head a little to partially hide my smile. “Not at all, although I believe you were going to say something like ‘silly women’s superstition….’ I believe in solving problems as quickly and decisively as I can. The cards are a stylized method of examining and thinking about a lot of possible outcomes very quickly and picking the one that seems most likely. Think of them as a primitive ‘data processing computer,’ like we had before the War, but with a completely manual interface powered partly by the psychic powers of the user’s mind, something like an abacus, only far more versatile.” I paused to stare at her. “If one has ‘extra-sensory’ powers — and it’s very clear that at least the two of us have experienced something way outside the realm of ordinary experience and perception — why not make use of a tool which has been refined for just that purpose over a thousand years or more?”

She started to open her mouth, then closed it.

“Exactly so,” I said smugly. “Now watch and listen.” I quickly opened my new package and rifled through it, looking for the three cards I’d examined mentally before I ran after our captured sisters. “You can look at the same cards from your own deck, if you’d like, but please don’t touch mine. I understand from at least some of the books I’ve read that it’s a bad idea to allow other people to touch your cards, although I suspect that at least some of the problem is psychological, like having someone grab your toothbrush by mistake in the washroom. Even if they don’t stick it into their mouth, it makes you feel a little icky when you put it back in your own mouth.” I shook my head, remembering more than a few times experiencing exactly that scenario back in the Barracks, and a few interactions that were far more disquieting. Anyway, here’s the first card I thought of, Strength, which shows a woman embracing a lion, a type of large carnivore we don’t have around these parts any more. The interesting thing about the card is that the lion seems to be smiling at her, and there’s a mathematical sign above her head that represents infinity, an utter lack of boundaries. That sign is seen on only one other card, The Magician, whose posture represents the first principle of alchemy, ‘As above, so below!’ and demonstrates the interconnectedness of all things. The woman in the Strength card represents the same principle, and wears the flowers that the magician points to as a girdle on her own body, showing that she herself is fruitful, that she and the animal share the same essential nature, and that both she and the lion embrace each other in a loving and mutually-supportive relationship.

“Like you and Gumball!” she cried out, struck by sudden enlightenment.

“Indeed,” I said. “Exactly like Gumball and I. If we were to create a modern tarot, a woman and a bandersnatch embracing might evoke the same feelings and ideas that this card is meant to carry, in part that when a woman is centered in her own power, she is capable of almost anything and has nothing to fear, but the symbolism doesn’t end there. The Strength card also represents the Hebrew letter ‘tet,’ the ‘serpent,’ which refers — indirectly — to the Shakti power that lies at the base of our wombs, the Goddess power of giving birth and creating new life, the so-called ‘Kundalini’ power that has the potential to open us up to the entire Universe in a spirit of love and generosity.”

“Shakti?” she asked, succinctly. “Kundalini?”

“Those are the ancient Sanskrit terms, but the mere names don’t really matter, because the whole point of naming them is to allow yourself to think about them and learn to evoke and control them, just as we’re trying to learn how to fully utilize our connection to the bandersnatches.” I reached out to lightly touch her hand with one finger. “When I touch you, for example, don’t you feel something there that wasn’t there when you were just a man, something both more powerful and more intimate? If I touched you in exactly the same way with a stick, wouldn’t you be instantly able to tell the difference in perception? It’s the same way that we can touch the bandersnatches, but we can feel the life inside them somehow, where we couldn’t have done so in quite the same way before.”

“Okay,” she nodded, but still unsure. “But what do these cards have to do with any of this?”

“In every religion or philosophy, there are visible symbols that somehow concentrate the essence of particular beliefs — or facts — within that system. So a Roman Catholic might feel a certain power associated with a rosary, or a crucifix, beyond the mere materials used to make it. These things become infused with a higher, or at least more particular, meaning than the physical object might seem to imply. In Sanskrit, these sorts of visual representations are called ‘yantras,’ which means exactly an ‘instrument’ or ‘machine,’ and are purported to offer both a shorthand method of focusing the attention and of bringing about certain spiritual experiences.”

“So your ‘Strength’ card both depicts a feminine method of relating to the larger universe and a method of creating an awareness of that relationship inside yourself!”

“Exactly!” I said. “The infinity sign above the woman’s head symbolizes that power, I think, and shows that she’s particularly aware of it when she’s touching another living thing, but the ancient philosophers had identified the source and ultimate center of that power as arising from the base of the spine, essentially the womb, and as essentially feminine, the force of creation itself and the agent of every movement or change.”

“And we’re looking to mobilize that power to help us find our friends!”

“Just so. While it may be ‘chance’ that led me to select that card, it was also luck, because it was exactly what I needed. Whether or not it’s some sort of weird prophecy or magic, it’s what I want, so I can use it as a tool to help me in my quest.”

“Okay,” she said, nodding. “So what comes next?”

My next card was the Five of Swords,” I pulled it out to show it to her. “Notice the subtle imagery, which shows a windswept landscape of threatening clouds on the shore of an ocean, with one individual looking at two others — one of whom seems distracted, whilst the other appears to be grief-stricken — while behind their backs he’s taken possession of all the swords. Taking that image as a clue to further thought, I instantly realized that we’d been betrayed or defeated in some sudden manner, and that we needed to act quickly or we’d lose everything. The ‘storm’ was upon us, and we needed to recover the initiative.”

“Which we did!” she said.

“We recovered. If you think of us as being represented by the two figures on the shore, we turned around and saw the theft of our metaphorical ‘swords,’ and so were able to recover the initiative by instantly responding in a coöperative manner. You’ll notice that in the image, the two figures are preoccupied with their own problems, so if we’d been looking for guidance, it would have been there, but it’s not a prescription, just a graphic depiction of a problem common to similar situations, more of an emergency checklist than a ready-made solution.”

“Okay,” she said. “I can see that, but did you draw another card? What did it say?”

I laughed. “It didn’t say anything; it’s just a piece of cardboard, after all is said and done, but it contained a powerful suggestion.” I held out the card I’d picked. “It was the Queen of Cups, which depicts a woman at the peak of her power. She’s sitting on her throne at the very edge of the great ocean which stretches out beneath her feet. In fact, she already has one foot in the water, and her robes may, or may not, be wet, which instantly reminded me of the story of King Cnut of Denmark and England, who is said to have demonstrated the limits of merely human power by setting his throne at the edge of the sea, where it was quickly inundated by the incoming tide. Since she’s already wet, it shows that she’s no Goddess, standing aside from Earthly limitations, but an ordinary woman with great responsibilities. She’s holding a cup in her hand, but it’s covered, which suggests that the gift she carries is hidden, certainly from others, and perhaps even from herself, because it’s guarded by winged figures like the Cherubim which guarded the Arc of the Covenant in the Bible. Exactly what that means is a mystery, although it may be that she herself carries the Holy of Holies within her very being, but it’s a conundrum, as invisible to our everyday perceptions as the depths of the sea are hidden from our sight.” I paused, then added, “All-in-all, it seemed like a very good omen.”

Beryl thought about that for a long moment, then said, “So the ‘answer’ is inside us, but it’s also out in the world.”

“Something like that,” I said, smiling. “Ain’t nothin’ easy. Let’s go find Gumball and his friends. I’m sure they’d like to see us.”

“But how do we do that? I can feel them hiding, just as you say, but I can’t tell where they might be!”

She was a little agitated, as might be expected, since I was in the same boat, but hoped that together we might work it out. ‘Two heads, they say, are better than one…,’ I thought.

“In the Sepher Yetzirah — an ancient book of spiritual philosophy — the Hebrew Letters, and thus the Tarot Trumps, since they’re psychically equivalent, are assigned three-dimensional directions.” I quickly picked out The Hermit, The Chariot, The Moon, and The Devil and fanned them out. “These four cards represent the cardinal directions, but beneath the surface of the Earth.” I indicated each in order, “North, East, South, West.”

She looked at them, puzzled.

“If I’m right,” I explained, “these will help us to focus our unconscious awareness of their location into tangible knowledge. Just think of our friends, then think of the directions shown by the cards, now choose one.” I presented them again, “North, East, South, West. The Hermit, The Chariot, The Moon, or The Devil.”

After hesitating, she reached out and pointed toward The Moon card. “This one?” she said, more than slightly unsure of her selection.

“Can you explain your choice?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “It just looked… right for them, somehow.”

I smiled. “It’s the same one I would have chosen,” I said, “and I’ve been thinking about these things longer than you have, so it seems clear to me that we share more than a simple ‘infection.’ First, of course, is that the card looks right to me as well, but also it’s the right direction for other reasons. We’re visual creatures, and pictures can… resonate… with our intuition more easily than words sometimes. That’s why churches and other holy places more often than not have symbols on or in them, prominently displayed, instead of a bunch of written words. There’s an old saying, ‘A picture is worth a thousand words,’ so that deck of seventy-eight cards you’re holding is worth at least seventy-eight thousand words. Not a full-length novel, but at least a novella, maybe more, because the information in it is very densely packed, with many layers of meaning piled on top of each other.”

“What did you mean by ‘the right direction’ exactly?” she asked.

“Well, quite a few things, actually, which is the advantage of thinking in pictures. First, the two parties of foragers we know of came from the east and from the west, so it seems likely — after our mutual insight — that the bandersnatches might have been worried about those directions. Second, and perhaps most important, the bandersnatches are somewhere between plants and animals. They obviously have leaves, so photosynthesis is going on, but they move around and have teeth, so they obviously eat things as well, and are ‘animals’ at least in the sense that they’re filled with intelligence and volition.. If you were a plant, which direction might you lean, considering that we’re in the northern hemisphere?”

“South? Toward the Sun?” she said hesitantly.

I positively beamed. “Too right!” I said, then added, “but the card itself is right, too! The ‘Moon’ in the card is a very curious affair, half Moon, but half Sun, and it seems to be raining some type of energy on the ground, and certainly the bandersnatches live comfortably both in and out of sunlight. Further, the dogs, or jackals, whatever they are, seem frightened, so they could easily stand in for our bandersnatches.”

“But isn’t that just chance?”

“Of course it is, but part of intuition is being open to suggestion. Almost any card might have led us in the same direction if we thought about it long enough. It’s like the ‘babble effect’ one hears sometimes in a crowd of people. Everything is jumbled, but then you’ll hear something that’s suddenly coherent and realize that it’s pertinent in some way you hadn’t even thought of. The only thing that’s changed for us, for those who’ve gone through the complete transformation, is that we’re sometimes hearing other voices from other rooms.”

“It’s really real, then?” she asked.

“It is,” I said, wrapping her hand in mine. “Shall we be on our way? With two of us paying close attention, we should be able to find and rescue our frightened friends very soon.”

She smiled. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“Hey, Babe!” I grinned. “We’re all we’ve got right now, the first true citizens of a brave new world.”

We started walking south, toward the Sun.

 

 

Gumball and company were lurking to the south of us, and were very glad to see us, although they had to be coaxed out from under the foundations of a very large bank. It took the both of us looking around in all directions — I was convinced that our perceptions worked both ways, and that the bandersnatches were as aware of us as we were of them —and talking to them to convince them that we were completely alone before they finally roiled up out of the pavement like green bubbles out of a pot of very thick soup. As it turned out, it wasn’t all that hard to find them, once we were walking in the right direction, because they’d made a hell of a mess out of the street and sidewalk when they’d finally ducked underground to hide.

They were like children sometimes, as naïve as toddlers, who are convinced that they become invisible when they cover their own eyes. I couldn’t help but smile.

Of course, they were a lot bigger than the average toddler, so it’s a good thing that they were generally quite cheerful, because I’d hate to see one in the midst of a childish tantrum.

On our way back, the five remaining bandersnatches — including my precious Gumball! — were so happy that they caromed around the street like a bunch of hooligans, so I had to have strong words with them before they broke too many plate glass windows. Whatever it was that the stores and offices contained, it wouldn’t be much improved if the rain got in, so I wanted to keep our new city as nice as possible.

To distract them, I tried to hold an image of the warehouse we’d discovered with the garden supplies and convince them to go look for it, so they could do something useful with their enthusiasm.

Well, they all thought that was a great idea and were off like a shot, rolling down the road like giant tumbleweeds.

“You know,” Beryl observed as we walked along behind them, “it’s curious that your round friends are so friendly toward humans. Since we stopped trying to kill them, the dandelions sort of ignore us, but these creatures seem awfully anxious to please, for some reason. Is it your charming personality?” She smiled to let me know that it was a joke, because I tended toward intensity sometimes.

“Nah,” I assured her. “Gumball and his friends — or at least their distant ancestors — have been living close to human beings for many thousands of years. The ancient inhabitants of the Americas actually cultivated them for their nutritious seeds, so they’ve been bred to thrive in close association with people.”

“Really? They don’t look anything like the plants we see on the sides of canned food, or at least none that I can remember.”

“I saw one once, a close relative anyway, but it was on a bottled alcoholic drink called a ‘mint julep,’ all of which were confiscated by one of the top officers. Anyway, the mints are typically aromatic plants used for flavoring, mostly, but these had particularly nutritious seeds, and not much scent at all. I looked them up in the library, but they’re called ‘Salvia hispanica,’ — one of a large number of examples of a subtype of the mints called ‘sages’ — that the ancient native peoples called chian, which meant ‘oily,’ referring to the oil that the Nahuatl people extracted from the seeds. I don’t know exactly when they started moving around, but I did find one reference to people keeping them as pets even hundreds of years ago, so it must have happened a long time before the present day.”

Beryl looked at me and shrugged. She was obviously unimpressed with origin stories. I could partly sympathize, since the present was hard enough to handle on its own without worrying about exactly how it got that way.

‘Oh, well,’ I thought. ‘You can’t win’em all.’ “Anyway,” I said, “that’s enough theory for now. Let’s get going on the new prisoners, then work on neutralizing the Castle, now that we’ve recovered some of the key players on our team.”

 

 

“I’m not looking forward to this,” I said, as we walked back toward the eastern suburbs.

“What? Facing down your father?”

‘Harry’s Name! How does she do that?’ “Yeah, but mostly going back to dealing with what looks like a perpetual revolution against every hive of Horticulturists on this continent, and then probably the world. I hadn’t gone quite so far in my thinking to imagine that all this —” I gestured to include the known universe “— would be my life’s work.”

She smiled at me and said, “Well, it beats knitting, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t know, Beryl…,” I mused aloud, “…that old rocking chair is starting to sound pretty good to me now, just sitting by the fire and knitting sweaters by the yard….”

She looked elaborately puzzled. “I don’t think they measure sweaters by the yard, dear. Perhaps you’re thinking of scarves.”

“They will my sweaters,” I said with misplaced confidence, seeing as how I didn’t actually know how to knit. ‘How hard could it be?’ I thought. ‘Surely there’ll be a book on knitting in the library….’ “Remind me to learn how to knit,” I said. “Now that I think about it, I used to see women knitting all the time, back at the Castle, so it might be an excellent enhancement of our cover story.”

Gumball and company chose that moment to find us, so of course we had to make a detour to share their moment of triumph. It wasn’t far out of our way, since the garden supply warehouse was on the eastern side of town, and we really ought to have a few spares on hand, since they were so handy when we wanted to move large quantities around, and we were bound to leave at least one more of them behind when we delivered food to the Castle, which we had to do in any case, and very soon, since we already knew that they were desperate. Sending a Captain out to lead a foraging expedition was simply unheard of. That’s what Looies were for.

 

 

My father was on suicide watch by the time we left, later that same day. I had to give him credit for that, because he’d seen himself as threat to others as soon as he’d noticed the changes, and had instantly tried to escape, running straight toward the dandelions in hopes that they’d kill him before he infected his men. Unfortunately for his plan, by then the changes had gone far enough — they were amazingly quick after any sort of major injury, almost as if the dying body recognized the benefit and embraced the changes — that the dandelions no longer perceived him as a threat, and so did no such thing. Coral — Chert had finally chosen a name — had told me that he was actually chasing the reapers around trying to throw himself on their razor-sharp fins when she caught him. Go figure. Not that I’d forgiven him for my mother’s death, of course, but still….

 

 

It was a sunny day, not too hot, with a hint of breeze to keep us comfortable as we walked toward the Castle, following the traces of a path my father and his squad had trodden through the grass on their way out. I finally got to see the famous ‘town,’ the one I’d missed completely, but it wasn’t much. It looked a lot like the suburbs of the city, but had a water tower and a tiny main street with a few shops and a restaurant spaced out along exactly three blocks and that was it, except that it was actually called ‘Main Street.’ I guess they’d had to convince themselves. Everything moveable had been ‘salvaged,’ of course, including the copper wire and plumbing in the walls, even under the floor, so it didn’t look anything like the sort of place you’d actually want to live in. I vowed then and there not to ever allow that sort of vandalism in our city.

Beryl was obviously thinking something along those same lines, because she suddenly said, “You know, from the viewpoint of human civilization as a whole, the ‘salvage’ expeditions look a lot more like pests.”

“Yeah,” I said. “This was obviously a lovely little community once. I don’t suppose that the former residents would appreciate what’s been done to it.” A lot of the destruction seemed wanton; every window had been broken, for example, or at least every one I’d seen so far, and quite a few of the houses and shops had been blown to smithereens and burned by what must have been HE missiles.

Beryl sighed. “It’s so much more obvious here than it was back in the city…, I suppose because the swath of destruction encompasses the whole town instead of just one neighborhood. It’s embarrassing to think that I was a part of it.”

“Yeah, well,” I said, “if we’d either of us really excelled at the military mindset, I don’t suppose that we would have been sent out on punishment details to teach us a lesson, so it’s kind of fitting, don’t you think, that those who chafed most against the whole Horticulturist enterprise are those who aim to bring it down entirely.”

 

 

Copyright © 2000, 2001, 2002 Jeffrey M. Mahr — All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2012-2013 Levanah Greene — All Rights Reserved