Cineverse - Bride Of The Slime Monster Part 14

He coughed rather loudly. Both Piers and Katrina turned to look at him.

Roger spoke quickly: "Storg gnurden Captain Crusader. Minsky smeltzny va-larie?"

Both Piers and Katrina stared at him, open-mouthed.

This was not quite the reaction Roger had been hoping for. His eyes slid down to the subt.i.tle before him: YOUR SISTER HAS DOG BREATH. AM I CAPTAIN CRUSADER?.

Piers turned to Katrina. Roger was too upset to listen to what the haggard man was saying. He couldn't help himself, though. He had to read the subt.i.tle.

HE HAS MET YOUR SISTER.

Katrina's reply was angry. Once again, Roger didn't really listen, but only read:I HAVE NO CONTROL OVER HER PERSONAL HYGIENE.

But then Katrina turned to Roger and smiled. The expression changed her face. Her whole countenance opened up, and the years fell away. Sunlight seemed to be reflected in her eyes. Roger realized that, before this misery descended upon her, she had been rather pretty.

"Blorfen," she urged. "Inka minka mensky smelten." come, the subt.i.tle explained, I will take you to my sister.

Roger nodded, a gesture she seemed to understand. He was glad Katrina had forgiven him for his first blundering attempt at their language. Perhaps, given a little more time, he might find some way of communicating with this pair. He had to, if he was to discover where he was, and where he should go in his search for Captain Crusader.

The computer, after all, had programmed his ring to lead him to the Captain's most likely whereabouts-perhaps not this bleakly symbolic place, but certainly a world nearby.

Katrina rose from her pew. She fussed with her hair in a broken shard of mirror that she pulled from a worn leather bag. She seemed so much happier than before.

Roger felt a heavy hand on his shoulder. He turned to see the frightened face of Piers.

"Mensky valarie," he whispered urgently. "Urken blur-geon gesundheit.''

Roger's heart almost stopped when he read the subt.i.tle: HER SISTER HAS BEEN DEAD FOR A LONG TIME.

Piers nodded when he saw Roger's concern. He made a slas.h.i.+ng motion across his throat, the sort of gesture that meant the same thing in any language.

Roger swallowed sharply as Piers faded back into the shadows.

Katrina hummed happily to herself as she put her mirror away. She fingered something at her belt-something black that looked like the hilt of an object whose hidden part would be very sharp indeed.

"Blorfen," she told Roger. "Sharpen slashen kooten!"

come, the subt.i.tle rea.s.sured. you will join her SHORTLY.

She reached out to take his hand, presumably to lead him to his death. Her other hand still held onto the black hilt. Roger glanced behind him, but Piers seemed to have dis- appeared.

For a second, Roger felt there was no escape.

But he wasn't trapped. He had his Captain Crusader Secret Decoder Ring. So what if he didn't know where he was? So what if he didn't have the slightest clue to the whereabouts of Captain Crusader? If he stuck around here, there was a good chance he would very shortly be dead.

He pulled the ring from his pocket and twisted it violently.

"See you in the funny papers!"

Nothing happened. The ring didn't work.

Only then did Roger realize how foolish he had been. This ring hadn't been designed to help him find Captain Crusader. Far from it. This ring had been made by the renegade computer VERA, a machine programmed by the minions of Doctor Dread, no doubt to strand him somewhere far away from Captain Crusader, a spot on the most distant edge of the Cineverse, from which he could never return. By using this ring at the Inst.i.tute of Very Advanced Science, he hadn't escaped Dread's plans; he had played right into his hands!

Katrina grabbed his wrist. For one so frail, she was surprisingly strong. She dragged him from the church in a matter of seconds.

"Minsky mensky smertzen bludengutsen!" she cried pa.s.sionately.

MY SISTER WILL BE SO GLAD TO HAVE COMPANY, the subt.i.tle read.

Katrina yanked the blade from her sash.

"Gerenden undsmashen!" she screamed. "Chopen hacken slashen gooshen!"

Roger didn't read the subt.i.tle. All he could see was the knife.

^ ^ 12 ^ ^

"DEADLY COINCIDENCE!".

"Gripes!" Big Louie exclaimed. "Is this guy everywhere?"

Delores managed to nod. She had difficulty even moving her head. She had begun to think of this whole thing as inevitable. The Slime Monster was omnipresent. He was one with shadow-every shadow. Wherever there was darkness, there was slime.

"Good," the monster remarked from somewhere within the lightlessness before her.

"It will be so much easier, once you surrender to the inevitable."

Delores didn't know what to say. Instead, she s.h.i.+vered violently in the island heat.

"So few people have taken the time to get to know me," the monster remarked. "They don't understand the purpose of my slime."

"Purpose?" Zabana demanded. "Slime not have purpose. Slime is slime!"

"See?" The monster sighed. "It has been that way throughout the Cineverse. But with Delores by my side, I know it would be different."

Delores tried to get control of herself. She had never actually seen this monster, after all. Perhaps it wasn't as bad as she imagined. s.h.i.+vering in broad daylight, jumping at the approach of shadows-this was no way for a hero to act! She was tumbling into some kind of slime-induced shock.

No, she couldn't let her revulsion control her life. She had to approach this whole thing dispa.s.sionately, like she had been taught in Hero School, especially in Narrow Escapes 301. After all, what would life be like with a slime monster?

She envisioned an existence surrounded by slippery goo; swimming in a lake of viscous mush. She imagined it would all be rather like living in a mucous membrane.

Her stomach lurched as bile rose in her throat. She wished, as soon as she had thought of it, that she could forget that a.n.a.logy.

That's when Officer O'Clanrahan stepped between Delores and the shadow.

"I'm sorry, boyo!'' the policeman interjected. "It's soundin' to me like you want to put this little lady in jeopardy. And where there are women in jeopardy, where there are wrongs to be righted, where there are dangers to be overcome-that's where you'll find Dwight the Wonder Dog!"

"Bark, yip, arf!" Dwight agreed.

"Dwight would like to remind you, even though you lurk in darkness," Louie explained, "that Wonder Dogs have exceptional night vision."

"Yip, bark, arf!" Dwight emphasized.

"But you misunderstand me," the voice replied softly. "Monsters are always misunderstood."

Zabana nodded his head in agreement. "Is Law of Cineverse!"

"Exactly," the slime creature agreed. "Delores has nothing to fear from me. I do not want to destroy. I want to create!"

Create? Delores started to s.h.i.+ver all over again.

"Wait a second, here, missy," Doc rea.s.sured her coolly.

"This slime fella has a slippery tongue. I think my years as a crusading frontier lawyer might come in handy here. Would you mind, Mr. Slime, if I asked you a few ques- tions?"

"My friends call me Edward," the monster replied.

"Edward?" Doc asked in surprise.

"Exactly," the monster answered darkly. "Not Ed, and never, ever Eddie. Edward."

"Well, Edward," Doc continued smoothly, "we here are all friends of Delores, so, naturally, we are concerned for her welfare."

"I would never harm her welfare," the monster insisted.

"Certainly not," Doc hastily agreed. "But I'm afraid we worry about other parts of her as well."

Delores forcibly shook herself. This was ridiculous. She was ignoring a prime tenet of Hero School, and-rather than acting-allowing herself to be acted upon. She had to force her imagination to stop running in its unpleasantly squishy direction, and stand up to this thing.

"What if I don't want to go with you?" she demanded.

The monster's answer was the epitome of calm: "Then I will wait."

"Wait?" She laughed, her anger rising now that she had found her voice. "You'll have to wait an awfully long time!"

"Perhaps," Edward the monster allowed. "Sooner or later, you will come to me."

Officer O'Clanrahan allowed his hand to rest meaningfully on the nightstick at his belt. "You're awfully sure of yourself, boyo!"

"Eventually, all is slime," was the monster's only reply.

"I hate to break into this cross-examination," Louie said, "but don't we have a Cineverse to save?"

"It is true!" the village elder added helpfully. "Our visitors, along with an unspeakable something hiding in the shadows, have reached the pinnacle of Wakka Loa, a tourist highlight of our island paradise! The unparalleled view of the ocean from this great height is truly breathtaking, as our guests search for-"

"Hey, dad," one of the islanders interrupted. "Don't rush things here, huh? This is the most interesting plot we've had on this island since I can't remember when!"

"Save the Cineverse?" the monster asked. "I did not realize you were on a mission."

"Of course not!" Officer O'Clanrahan exclaimed between gritted teeth. "All you were concerned with was your inhuman l.u.s.t!"

"Inhuman l.u.s.t?" Edward repeated, horrified. "No, it's much more aesthetic than that.

Oh, why must we monsters be misunderstood?"

"Is Law of Cineverse," Zabana repeated.

"Well, wait a second here," Doc clarified. "Do you mean that, since we are on a mission to save the Cineverse, you will give up your pursuit of Delores and let us go on our way?"

"No," the monster answered, "Delores is still mine. But perhaps I will come along."

Somehow, Delores did not feel all that rea.s.sured by this turn of events.

"Yip! Arf arf! Bark!" Dwight added.

"Dwight says it's high time he got to sniffing out the last known whereabouts of Captain Crusader,'' Louie translated.

The others quickly agreed, and followed Dwight around the final bend to the pumice plateau where Delores and all her friends had almost been sacrificed not so long ago.

There, in front of her, were the three tables where she and the others were to be strapped. Her throat felt dry as she looked at the nearest of the altars, that stone tablet table-top equipped with a central drain hole to dispense with any extra blood-blood that would then run straight down through crevices in the mountain, right to the heart of the thirsty volcano!

"Bark! Yip yip! Arf!" Dwight announced.

"He asks that you all step back and give him room,"

Louie illuminated. "He has to pick up Captain Crusader's scent."

Everyone quickly moved to the perimeter of the plateau as Dwight put his nose to the ground and began to sniff.

A couple of the islanders, one male, one female, sidled back over to the Slime Monster's shadow.

"Are you sure we couldn't convince you to stick around?" the fellow asked the lightless s.p.a.ce.

"Yeah!" the woman added. "You're the best plot device we've seen in ages!"

"Sorry-" the monster began.

"We'd let you menace our women for hours," the man promised.

"Of course," the woman remarked regretfully, "you'd have to be sacrificed to our Volcano G.o.d eventually-"

"But we promise we'd make it worth your while!" the man concluded.

"I apologize again, but it is impossible," Edward replied firmly. "For a long time, ever since I can remember, I have thought that slime was my destiny. Now, however, I know differently. My destiny is slime, and Delores."