THE NEXT MORNING at my office I was busily sorting things out in preparation
for the great experiment when Al_the_chia walked in. I looked up and blinked.
His hair was obviously uncombed, his coat wrinkled, and the general look on
his face showed that he hadn't been kidding when he said he wouldn't be sleeping
until he found this Lupe tribe. I began to feel sorry for him, and found myself
hoping he'd find his missing Lupes and be happy about it.
"Hey, wake up!" I greeted
him.
He failed to smile at my little
joke. "Hi MonoKeras. Are we ready to go?"
"Yep, I've got everything
laid out here. Got your paint brush?"
"Uh-huh". He took it out and
gave it to me.
I laid it down in the middle
of my desk, positioning it carefully between the wands and diagrams that I'd
drawn. "Ohhhkkk... stand back and let's see what we can find."
Al stood back and I carefully
began initial start-up of the apparatus. "There are sparks flying between the
three wands arranged in a semicircle around the paint brush," Al muttered.
"Yeah, I..." I glanced up
and realised Al was talking into a tape recorder. Oh joy, I had his full attention.
Now I'd have to concentrate while that penetrating gaze and muttered narration
continued. Oh well, there wasn't any other way to do it besides just tossing
him out. I'd realised yesterday that he had a talent for totally missing anything
he didn't care to know about.
"The sparks are climbing,
forming a half shell between me and the paint brush. Now they're descending
into the paint brush.... a line of green light is connecting the paint brush
to some Lupe hair- it looks like Mystery Island Lupe hair.... PIFFLE!... a shower
of sparks just shot into the air and through the roof of the room. MonoKeras
looks a bit tired...."
I sighed. "MonoKeras is a
bit tired. Mind turning that off? The show's over for now."
Al switched the recorder off.
"What happened? Did you find them?"
I fought back the desire to
ask him what he thought, since he'd just recorded it all. "I traced the magical
connections back, and it looks like it's going to be tougher than I thought."
"Piffle! Why's that?"
"Well, you're right when you
said that there are connections to models somewhere- but the whole cord of possibilities
goes straight to the Rainbow Pool."
"They're in the Rainbow Pool?"
I shook my head. "Possible,
but I don't think so. This looks like a redirection- a control if you will."
"A... what?"
I grinned slightly. "What
I mean is the Rainbow Pool is the key holder of all these lines- all of the
possibilities flow into and out of it. This paint brush," I tapped it, "is connected
to the Pool, and then the Pool will have the connections out to the models,
wherever they are."
"Well why are we waiting here?
To the pool!" Al shouted.
I winced. "Just what I was
about to suggest. Let me put things up here..."
I quickly and expertly sorted
my equipment into my briefcase, racking the wands first, making sure the paint
pots were safe in their containers, and placing my key magical items in their
own shielded sections. Al was pacing the floor again, muttering abstruse comments
about Lupes and their habits. I think he was figuring out how well they'd hold
up under the torture he imagined them to be in. I rolled my eyes as I locked
the case shut.
"OK, Al, we're all set...
oh wait..." I grabbed a silvery tube out of my desk drawer and slipped it into
a coat pocket. "Right, let's go."
I found myself trotting behind
Al as he charged down to the Rainbow Pool. We left behind more than a few startled
and upset glances from other pets that got pushed out of the way. I muttered
a few apologies, but I couldn't slack my pace or Al would've totally left me
behind. He was panting as he reached the edge of the Rainbow Pool. "Lights above,
Al," I said, "I've got a legendary speed rating, and you taxed me. Where did
you learn to run like that?"
"Huh? Oh... practice. When
you're a Chia whose main study is Lupes, you learn to run really fast. But that's
not important! Let's get this done before any other Lupe is sacrificed to those
heartless demons!"
"Right, right," I murmured.
"Just clear me out a space here."
"Here? At the edge of the
pool?"
"Yes," I hissed, "or didn't
you notice we can hardly move now for the press of the crowd here?"
"Oh, yeah... OK MOVE IT, PEOPLE!
IMPORTANT WORK GOING ON HERE! BACK UP! THAT MEANS YOU SIR!"
I slipped behind Al as he
continued to shove and shout at everyone. I think he attracted more attention
then he got rid of, but at least he was pushing open a clear space to work in.
After a bit it got big enough that he couldn't hold it all out himself, so he
pulled his Cobrall out. "Here, Fluffy, make yourself useful and keep them away
from over here."
Fluffy seemed more than happy
to crawl around the edge of the now quickly widening circle, hissing a bit and
once striking at someone's toes. I grinned as I heard the terrified scream and
decided to add my baby fireball, Sun Pegasus, to the fun. I opened his tube
and balanced him on my hoof. A bit of wordless communication passed between
us and he slid off my paw and began patrolling the opposite side. Al bumped
into him, coming almost nose to nose. I can't truly use that phrase, though,
since Chias don't have much in the way of a nose. For a second, I wondered if
he was going to lose it, but after his eyes got back to normal size, Al just
jotted something down in his notebook and proceeded to keep on ushering other
pets away.
I now had a good sized space
marked out by my guardians, so I opened my case, took out a paint pot, and drew
a magical circle around me- a three quarters circle that ended at the banks
of the Pool. A bit of magical energy gave me both a magical and sound barrier,
and I sighed in relief as the noise level dropped considerably. Now to work.
The wands to form the energy initialiser came first, followed by the diagrams
to control the flows. The Lupe hair came at the bottom, the paint brush in the
middle, and the scrying glass was held in waiting to one side. Hopefully I'd
need it.
I glanced over my shoulder
to find the crowd had thinned noticeably. Al seemed to be arguing with a Chia
cop. I shrugged. That was his worry now. I turned back to my own work and let
out a deep breath as I plunged my focus into the front energy barrier. The response
was a perfect flow. Guiding it back up and over to the middle of the assembly,
I carefully energised the paint brush and let the connections begin to highlight
themselves. Before the flows could destabilise, I anchored the connection into
the Lupe hair. The energy flowed out along the Lupe creation line of the brush
and I followed it into the Pool like I had before. But this time, instead of
just disappearing, I managed to gain my goal and hit the creation network itself.
I eyed the sky above me, which had filled with dark crimson lines arcing in
almost every direction. A careful twist on my lead in managed to send a small
pulse of energy into the net. It took about thirty seconds of nerve-wracking
tickling, fumbling with the unseen net below like a burglar picking a lock before
I managed to highlight the line I wanted. I held the sigh of relief in for later,
and very slowly and carefully tapped the object of my quest. My scrying glass
was between my hooves now and I held it above me, gingerly guiding it close
to the line of sight between me and the link that lead to my target. I let my
eyes glaze as I carefully unfocused my concentration and let the energy flow
through the glass. It clouded over as the magic seeped into it, and I let it
drift for a while. You can't hurry these sorts of things, I've found. A bit
of nudging made things clear and I let loose my sigh of satisfaction as the
tuning snapped into focus.
I suddenly winced at a mental pain that rapped at the back of my mind. Quickly
locking the glass, I turned around to find the Chia cop trying to get through
my barrier. Al was in the background, angrily gesticulating, although having
your hands cuffed makes that rather hard to do. I groaned. Apparently things
hadn't been going as well for everyone else. I double-checked my apparatus to
make sure I'd managed to deactivate everything before I let the shield go.
"OK, you, clear this junk
out of here before I run you in," the cop growled.
"Why, officer, I didn't know
anything was wrong."
His yellow skin began to flush
with anger. "Didn't know? You create some sort of freak show with this guy here
and your pets, and then expect me to believe that?" He began to walk towards
me as he glared into my eyes.
I backed up. "Uh, officer,
I wouldn't step on that if I were..."
His foot came down directly
on the pile of Lupe hair. I gritted my teeth as he let out a huge screech and
began to hop up and down on the other foot, holding the burned one in his hands.
"...you," I finished.
"Get this mess out of here!"
he howled.
His cry was a bit too late.
I'd already begun putting stuff up. I didn't even have to empty my magical sink,
since the cop had so kindly done it for me. By the time he'd recovered, I had
everything cleaned up, Sun Pegasus back in his tube, Fluffy in Al's pocket,
and the whole group of us out of the square.
"Piffle, piffle, piffle,"
Al muttered.
"What?"
"THIS!" He yelled, raising
his handcuffed hands.
"Oh, that." I grabbed the
cuffs and pulled them off. It's a little trick that's partly magic, partly knowledge
of how those cuffs work. (After all, the cops and I are working colleagues of
a sort. I've used those cuffs myself a few times, although normally Sun Pegasus
is more effective when it comes to holding suspects.) I waited for him to be
surprised by my feat, but I was disappointed.
Al just put his freed hands
in his pockets and slumped. "Now we'll never be able to rescue them."
"What makes you say that?"
"Well, I mean, you didn't
have time to find out anything."
"Who says?" I pulled out the
scrying glass. "Look at this!"
His attention was suddenly
riveted to the bottle I held. "Is that..."
"Yep. I tapped the line to
the models for the island Lupes That's the place it leads to."
Al squinted through his own
glasses. "That looks like a volcano of some sort..."
"Sure does. I even know which
one it is--look closer."
I was glad the glass didn't
fog up from hot breath, because Al practically had it under a microscope. "Hey!
I do too! What are we waiting for? LET'S GO!"
I shook my head at his single-minded
determination. "Right. Techo Mountain, here we come!"
To be continued... | 
