Chapter Three (Unfinished)
Bryan was shocked, but only for a minute. He had almost forgotten the probability of betrayal, and cursed himself now for carelessness. This had been completely and utterly predictable. It wasn’t a surprise, from these two, but if anything he would have expected it from the mercenaries. He looked over at them, and Mary followed his gaze.
“Glik, Glak, get their stuff,” she ordered.
Bryan was quickly losing his cool, but he forced himself to put on a mask of calmness. “You forget that I am the one paying them,” he said evenly.
“Not for long,” said Paul. “Double,” he murmured at the mercenaries, who quickly aimed their weapons at Bryan and Aaron.
“Triple,” Bryan countered, and they switched to aim at the captors.
“Quadruple. Not on the original amount, either. On Dr. Gilmore’s triple.”
“Octuple that,” Bryan snapped, beginning to panic. “Plus tax and interest and anything else you want.”
“Oh, forget it, you can have them if you’re going to be so pathetic about it,” Paul relented. “We still have you in our power. And it is still time for you to leave.”
Bryan was relieved, but only for the moment. He had been bluffing, none too convincingly either, and had no way of paying the dividends he had just promised, even in the event that his wallet somehow refilled itself. The mercenaries would have his head for that. And Paul obviously knew it.
He risked a glance at Aaron. What was his problem? Ever since he decided to tag along, he hadn’t done a single useful thing, just stolen the spotlight and annoyed everyone. Well, there was that issue of escaping the tomb alive, but other than that, he hadn’t been much help at all.
Fortunately he had just remedied that situation. In less than an eyeblink, before their captors had any time to react, he had drawn his own weapon, apparently from his swim trunks, which included a very conspicuous and suddenly armed short-range grenade launcher, and had it pointed straight at Bryan’s head.
“I think your watch is a little fast,” he said.
They were at a standoff. If Paul or Mary fired, Aaron would still have time to pull his own trigger, and there would be no way for them to move out of the grenades’ range before everyone involved was in the same shape as the mud still dripping from their clothes. And they could see in his eyes that he could bring himself to do it too.
Slowly, Paul’s lips curled into a smile, betraying none of the anxiety he now felt.
“You are willing, then,” he said, “to destroy the artifacts?”
“Yes,” said Aaron.
“NO!” screamed Bryan.
Aaron stared at him. “Come on, dude,” he said, “this gold crap is a dime a dozen now. There’s plenty more where it all came from, y’know?”
“Please, it doesn’t matter,” Bryan insisted, tears coming to his eyes. “They’re all valuable, all clues to the past.”
“And these cretins are going to take them!”
“So be it!” Bryan began to gesticulate wildly like a lunatic. “At least they’re with the university! At least they will be going to science!”
“That’s one theory, sure,” Paul muttered.
Aaron glared long and hard at Bryan. Then his eyes softened. “I once thought as you do,” he explained quietly. He cleared his throat as his eyes began to tear up. “When my great-grandma died,” he began, “we all got to choose something from her house before they auctioned it off. Sort of a remembrance thing, obviously.
“I chose a little statue. It was an old bearded sailor with a pipe sitting on a tree stump by the seashore, with a dog sniffing his pants, and his arm was around his little blonde son who was looking through a telescope to the horizon. I loved it.
“Then, on the way home, I broke off the little boy’s thumb. Looking it over, it was then that I realized that the statue had been in absolutely perfect condition, until I clumsily ruined it. I was distraught. I knew my great-grandma hated me.
“Then,” he said, his voice barely audible, “about four years later, I realized something else. It made a very nice bookend, and when you turned it to the right angle, it captured the sailor’s rugged jawline perfectly, and you couldn’t even notice the missing thumb.” He smiled triumphantly as his story came to a close.
Bryan stared at him incredulously. “What has that got to do with anything?”
“Nothing,” he said, “now that I think about it. But it’s great to get it off my chest.” He lowered the gun. “I suppose we’ll do it your way, and give these poor folks an advantage, since they’re up against such an awesome guy as me.”
“Thank you,” said Paul. “Now get to your bloody ship, and we don’t want to see you return.”
***
Incredibly, they were allowed to keep their weapons, and fortunately Aaron’s ship was only a short hike away. It was a large silver, needle-shaped spitfire, with a set of six wings splitting off from the back; engines to the rear, incredible guns to the front. Another set of weaponry was mounted under the nose, in front of the cockpit and the boarding ramp which led up to it.
“Don’t worry about a thing,” Aaron assured Bryan as he raised said ramp and rushed in to switch on his ship. Lights came to life all over the bridge, and a low, steady hum began to emanate from all sides. “As soon as she’s up in the air, we’ll blow them off the map.”
“Aaron.”
“Right, right, the artifacts. Sheesh.” Aaron flipped a few switches as his ship began to rise. “Lucky I came along, though. I imagine they would have just left you in that bloody godforsaken hole.”
“I imagine,” said Bryan.
“We can get the authorities, though –”
“Too much paperwork. I’ve had enough to last three lifetimes, and look where it just got me. Besides, people already doubt my sanity. Who’s to say they’ll believe me?”
“Clearing the atmosphere,” a female voice cheerily reported.
“Thanks, doll, I knew I could count on you,” said Aaron. He grinned at Bryan. “Great ship, she is. I call her the Angelic Avenger.”
“Please, Aaron, I just want to get some sleep,” said Bryan. “Does she have any spare bunks?”
“Well, let’s see.” Aaron thought for a moment. “I’m not used to having guests, but there might be one to the aft of starboard that’s not full of crap right now –”
“Never mind,” said Bryan. “This’ll do fine.” He leaned back in his snug form-fitting copilot’s chair, upholstered in some sort of unidentifiable leather, and closed his eyes. Sleep was what he needed. Perhaps he could forget everything that had happened. Or perhaps he could dismiss it as a bad dream, as though reality and subconsciousness had switched places. Yes, that was a perfect idea! For the rest of his life, he would simply pretend that dreams were real, and vice-versa. Maybe his dreams weren’t always perfect, but at their worst they sure beat his situation right now.
“I was expecting it all along,” Aaron insisted.
Bryan sighed. Apparently this louse wasn’t willing to let the matter drop after all. “I should have been,” he admitted. “Paul and I go way back. And he’s never been a friend of mine.”
“One of those ‘since high school’ things, huh?”
“Elementary. Kindergarten.” Bryan shook his head and grimaced at the memory. “The day we met… I had just found a Susan B. Anthony dollar in the sandbox. And he took it. He took it, Aaron, and the teacher said –”
“Woah, easy dude, you’re slobbering,” said Aaron, offering him a tissue.
Bryan sighed. “When the university decided to send him and Mary along with me, I agreed. Why shouldn’t I have? You need more than one professor on this sort of expedition, after all, especially with me as admittedly biased as I am, to make sure everything’s legit, nothing faked, it all comes in as found. And since they had spent most of their lives speaking out against all my ideas, it stood to reason that if they said there was in fact a tomb there, then there was in fact a tomb there.” He sighed again. “My life sucks.”
“Wonder who employed them,” said Aaron, “and how they’ll explain it to the stuffy blokes at Sternweld.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Bryan said. “They leeched off my research and ruined my life. That’s all. And now,” he confided in a low undertone, “I haven’t a shilling towards the exorbitant sums I promised our mercenary friends here. I’ll be broke and then they’ll kill me anyway, you understand?”
“Where are they, anyway?”
“Marveling at the high-tech bathrooms, I’d wager. But you’re missing the point, Aaron. They. Are. Going. To. Kill me. I have never been so serious in my life. And now I haven’t done a worthwhile thing with it.”
“Well if you’re done moping,” said Aaron, “and if you want to get enough money, and then some, and get back at those jerks into the bargain, I could let you in on something I figured out that shakes the whole situation up quite a bit.”
“Why not?” Bryan mumbled.
“Okay. So, you remember that plaque I was obsessed with?”
“How could I forget? Nice bit of surfing, by the way.”
“Thank you. Now, do you remember what was written on the front?”
“Beats me, and I’d need the rest of my notes to translate it anyhow. Something along the lines of ‘Dragator protect our beloved King,’ I’d expect.”
“You’d expect.” Aaron grinned smugly. “So would I. But I learned more than you’d expect, all those years ago, going through those documents. I actually memorized the Shindoor language.”
“Oh? You?”
“And you thought I was a bum, right? I knew it could come in handy to not need to carry a key for it all the time. And I was right, right? Would you like me to tell you what the plaque says?”
Bryan sighed. “Hit me with it,” he said. The sooner they were done with this ridiculous game, the sooner he could get to sleep.
“All right.” Aaron rubbed his hands together in anticipation. “It says – are you ready for this? – it says, and I quote, ‘Blessed am I, who hath through thee, achieved my immortality.’”
Bryan was clearly unmoved.
“Did you like how I even made it rhyme?”
Bryan shrugged. “Sure, that was neat.”
“But don’t you realize what it means?”
“Sure. It means that because he has been discovered by whoever is reading the plaque, he will be taken out and shown to the universe, gaining even greater fame and value, and as such gaining an immortality of sorts.”
“No.” Aaron shook his head excitedly. “No. You know why? Because the last trap, the one you set off like an idiot, was designed as such that it might destroy the body. Of course the coffin would be open, leaving it exposed, because that’s part of how the trap went off in the first place. And there is no way, no freaking way, based on everything I learned about him with you, he would let that happen; no matter who was in his tomb. He was much too vain.”
“All right,” sighed Bryan, “and what do you think it means?”
“I think it means exactly what it says,” said Aaron, leaning in excitedly. “I think he’s running around, immortal somewhere. And if I can get the plaque back, I’ll prove it too.”
Bryan shook his head. “That’s absurd,” he said. “Let it go, Aaron. The find of the century is ruined. That’s all there is to it. I’m willing to accept it, and I’ll even get on with my life in a while. Come on.”
Aaron shrugged. “Suit yourself,” he said. He got up to stretch his legs and put the ship on autopilot. “I’ll just go tell Glik and Glak that they won’t be getting their hefty paycheck after all, then.”
Bryan shuddered. He could already feel two pairs of cold, calloused mercenary hands on his neck, applying pressure, increasing it ever so slightly, prolonging the agony, until he had drawn his last breath. It would suck while it lasted, he realized, but then it would be over, and he’d be better off, wouldn’t he? What did he have to live for anyhow?
But then... if Aaron was on to something, not that Caldwok was immortal, but something, what then? He could not only stay alive, but make an incredible comeback. He’d show those crooks what Bryan Gilmore was made of. At the very least, it would buy him some time.
“Okay,” he said, “I’ll bite. What do we do?”
“Well first,” said Aaron, walking back to his captain’s chair, “we do a quick computer search.” He flipped a switch, and a small monitor popped out of the control panel. “Angel, sweetie, do a search for recent tidbits about the discovery of Caldwok, please.”
“Certainly,” she purred. “Your wish is my command, O Great One.” Aaron trembled with delight, and goosebumps shot up his arms. He turned to see Bryan frowning at him.
“You don’t date much, do you?” he asked.
Aaron was about to say something witty in reply when the computer chirped and results flashed across the screen. “Here you go,” she said. “Will there be anything else, master?”
“Just warm up the Jacuzzi,” he said with a wink. “We can discuss things more comfortably there.” His flirtatious smile suddenly sprouted into a real one, and he turned to Bryan once again. “There,” he said. “I might’ve guessed.”
“I can’t read without my glasses,” Bryan reminded him.
“And so the suspense builds up! Would you believe the merchandise has been sold to none other than…” he started a drumroll on his armrest, “the richest stinking hombre this side of the Milky Way… Mr. Zaggatopipopulous!”
Bryan caught his breath. “Mr.... Mr. Zagga... Zagga...”
“Mr. Zaggatopipopulous,” Aaron corrected. “Surely you’ve heard of him.”
“Heard of him? Well of course, I – that is – I mean – well why do you think I’m stuttering, dagnabbit? Mr. Zaggatopipopulous! We’re screwed!”
“Hey, chillax, man, it could be worse. Could be Captain Moonbeard, after all.”
“This is hardly any better!” Bryan insisted. He sighed yet again, resigned to his fate. “All right,” he said, “we’ve done a quick computer search. What good does it do us? What’s the next step?”
“I thought you’d never ask,” said Aaron gleefully. “Next, we sneak into his fortress and steal the plaque.”
Not for the first time that day, Bryan couldn’t believe his ears. For all his faults, could his former student really be resorting to thievery, even from such a man as Mr. Zaggatopipopulous?
“Why can’t we just look at it, take some pictures?” he asked hesitantly.
“You’ll understand when we get it,” said Aaron. “There’s more to it than I told you. Why else would we be going after it?
Next: Chapter Four (Unfinished)
“Glik, Glak, get their stuff,” she ordered.
Bryan was quickly losing his cool, but he forced himself to put on a mask of calmness. “You forget that I am the one paying them,” he said evenly.
“Not for long,” said Paul. “Double,” he murmured at the mercenaries, who quickly aimed their weapons at Bryan and Aaron.
“Triple,” Bryan countered, and they switched to aim at the captors.
“Quadruple. Not on the original amount, either. On Dr. Gilmore’s triple.”
“Octuple that,” Bryan snapped, beginning to panic. “Plus tax and interest and anything else you want.”
“Oh, forget it, you can have them if you’re going to be so pathetic about it,” Paul relented. “We still have you in our power. And it is still time for you to leave.”
Bryan was relieved, but only for the moment. He had been bluffing, none too convincingly either, and had no way of paying the dividends he had just promised, even in the event that his wallet somehow refilled itself. The mercenaries would have his head for that. And Paul obviously knew it.
He risked a glance at Aaron. What was his problem? Ever since he decided to tag along, he hadn’t done a single useful thing, just stolen the spotlight and annoyed everyone. Well, there was that issue of escaping the tomb alive, but other than that, he hadn’t been much help at all.
Fortunately he had just remedied that situation. In less than an eyeblink, before their captors had any time to react, he had drawn his own weapon, apparently from his swim trunks, which included a very conspicuous and suddenly armed short-range grenade launcher, and had it pointed straight at Bryan’s head.
“I think your watch is a little fast,” he said.
They were at a standoff. If Paul or Mary fired, Aaron would still have time to pull his own trigger, and there would be no way for them to move out of the grenades’ range before everyone involved was in the same shape as the mud still dripping from their clothes. And they could see in his eyes that he could bring himself to do it too.
Slowly, Paul’s lips curled into a smile, betraying none of the anxiety he now felt.
“You are willing, then,” he said, “to destroy the artifacts?”
“Yes,” said Aaron.
“NO!” screamed Bryan.
Aaron stared at him. “Come on, dude,” he said, “this gold crap is a dime a dozen now. There’s plenty more where it all came from, y’know?”
“Please, it doesn’t matter,” Bryan insisted, tears coming to his eyes. “They’re all valuable, all clues to the past.”
“And these cretins are going to take them!”
“So be it!” Bryan began to gesticulate wildly like a lunatic. “At least they’re with the university! At least they will be going to science!”
“That’s one theory, sure,” Paul muttered.
Aaron glared long and hard at Bryan. Then his eyes softened. “I once thought as you do,” he explained quietly. He cleared his throat as his eyes began to tear up. “When my great-grandma died,” he began, “we all got to choose something from her house before they auctioned it off. Sort of a remembrance thing, obviously.
“I chose a little statue. It was an old bearded sailor with a pipe sitting on a tree stump by the seashore, with a dog sniffing his pants, and his arm was around his little blonde son who was looking through a telescope to the horizon. I loved it.
“Then, on the way home, I broke off the little boy’s thumb. Looking it over, it was then that I realized that the statue had been in absolutely perfect condition, until I clumsily ruined it. I was distraught. I knew my great-grandma hated me.
“Then,” he said, his voice barely audible, “about four years later, I realized something else. It made a very nice bookend, and when you turned it to the right angle, it captured the sailor’s rugged jawline perfectly, and you couldn’t even notice the missing thumb.” He smiled triumphantly as his story came to a close.
Bryan stared at him incredulously. “What has that got to do with anything?”
“Nothing,” he said, “now that I think about it. But it’s great to get it off my chest.” He lowered the gun. “I suppose we’ll do it your way, and give these poor folks an advantage, since they’re up against such an awesome guy as me.”
“Thank you,” said Paul. “Now get to your bloody ship, and we don’t want to see you return.”
***
Incredibly, they were allowed to keep their weapons, and fortunately Aaron’s ship was only a short hike away. It was a large silver, needle-shaped spitfire, with a set of six wings splitting off from the back; engines to the rear, incredible guns to the front. Another set of weaponry was mounted under the nose, in front of the cockpit and the boarding ramp which led up to it.
“Don’t worry about a thing,” Aaron assured Bryan as he raised said ramp and rushed in to switch on his ship. Lights came to life all over the bridge, and a low, steady hum began to emanate from all sides. “As soon as she’s up in the air, we’ll blow them off the map.”
“Aaron.”
“Right, right, the artifacts. Sheesh.” Aaron flipped a few switches as his ship began to rise. “Lucky I came along, though. I imagine they would have just left you in that bloody godforsaken hole.”
“I imagine,” said Bryan.
“We can get the authorities, though –”
“Too much paperwork. I’ve had enough to last three lifetimes, and look where it just got me. Besides, people already doubt my sanity. Who’s to say they’ll believe me?”
“Clearing the atmosphere,” a female voice cheerily reported.
“Thanks, doll, I knew I could count on you,” said Aaron. He grinned at Bryan. “Great ship, she is. I call her the Angelic Avenger.”
“Please, Aaron, I just want to get some sleep,” said Bryan. “Does she have any spare bunks?”
“Well, let’s see.” Aaron thought for a moment. “I’m not used to having guests, but there might be one to the aft of starboard that’s not full of crap right now –”
“Never mind,” said Bryan. “This’ll do fine.” He leaned back in his snug form-fitting copilot’s chair, upholstered in some sort of unidentifiable leather, and closed his eyes. Sleep was what he needed. Perhaps he could forget everything that had happened. Or perhaps he could dismiss it as a bad dream, as though reality and subconsciousness had switched places. Yes, that was a perfect idea! For the rest of his life, he would simply pretend that dreams were real, and vice-versa. Maybe his dreams weren’t always perfect, but at their worst they sure beat his situation right now.
“I was expecting it all along,” Aaron insisted.
Bryan sighed. Apparently this louse wasn’t willing to let the matter drop after all. “I should have been,” he admitted. “Paul and I go way back. And he’s never been a friend of mine.”
“One of those ‘since high school’ things, huh?”
“Elementary. Kindergarten.” Bryan shook his head and grimaced at the memory. “The day we met… I had just found a Susan B. Anthony dollar in the sandbox. And he took it. He took it, Aaron, and the teacher said –”
“Woah, easy dude, you’re slobbering,” said Aaron, offering him a tissue.
Bryan sighed. “When the university decided to send him and Mary along with me, I agreed. Why shouldn’t I have? You need more than one professor on this sort of expedition, after all, especially with me as admittedly biased as I am, to make sure everything’s legit, nothing faked, it all comes in as found. And since they had spent most of their lives speaking out against all my ideas, it stood to reason that if they said there was in fact a tomb there, then there was in fact a tomb there.” He sighed again. “My life sucks.”
“Wonder who employed them,” said Aaron, “and how they’ll explain it to the stuffy blokes at Sternweld.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Bryan said. “They leeched off my research and ruined my life. That’s all. And now,” he confided in a low undertone, “I haven’t a shilling towards the exorbitant sums I promised our mercenary friends here. I’ll be broke and then they’ll kill me anyway, you understand?”
“Where are they, anyway?”
“Marveling at the high-tech bathrooms, I’d wager. But you’re missing the point, Aaron. They. Are. Going. To. Kill me. I have never been so serious in my life. And now I haven’t done a worthwhile thing with it.”
“Well if you’re done moping,” said Aaron, “and if you want to get enough money, and then some, and get back at those jerks into the bargain, I could let you in on something I figured out that shakes the whole situation up quite a bit.”
“Why not?” Bryan mumbled.
“Okay. So, you remember that plaque I was obsessed with?”
“How could I forget? Nice bit of surfing, by the way.”
“Thank you. Now, do you remember what was written on the front?”
“Beats me, and I’d need the rest of my notes to translate it anyhow. Something along the lines of ‘Dragator protect our beloved King,’ I’d expect.”
“You’d expect.” Aaron grinned smugly. “So would I. But I learned more than you’d expect, all those years ago, going through those documents. I actually memorized the Shindoor language.”
“Oh? You?”
“And you thought I was a bum, right? I knew it could come in handy to not need to carry a key for it all the time. And I was right, right? Would you like me to tell you what the plaque says?”
Bryan sighed. “Hit me with it,” he said. The sooner they were done with this ridiculous game, the sooner he could get to sleep.
“All right.” Aaron rubbed his hands together in anticipation. “It says – are you ready for this? – it says, and I quote, ‘Blessed am I, who hath through thee, achieved my immortality.’”
Bryan was clearly unmoved.
“Did you like how I even made it rhyme?”
Bryan shrugged. “Sure, that was neat.”
“But don’t you realize what it means?”
“Sure. It means that because he has been discovered by whoever is reading the plaque, he will be taken out and shown to the universe, gaining even greater fame and value, and as such gaining an immortality of sorts.”
“No.” Aaron shook his head excitedly. “No. You know why? Because the last trap, the one you set off like an idiot, was designed as such that it might destroy the body. Of course the coffin would be open, leaving it exposed, because that’s part of how the trap went off in the first place. And there is no way, no freaking way, based on everything I learned about him with you, he would let that happen; no matter who was in his tomb. He was much too vain.”
“All right,” sighed Bryan, “and what do you think it means?”
“I think it means exactly what it says,” said Aaron, leaning in excitedly. “I think he’s running around, immortal somewhere. And if I can get the plaque back, I’ll prove it too.”
Bryan shook his head. “That’s absurd,” he said. “Let it go, Aaron. The find of the century is ruined. That’s all there is to it. I’m willing to accept it, and I’ll even get on with my life in a while. Come on.”
Aaron shrugged. “Suit yourself,” he said. He got up to stretch his legs and put the ship on autopilot. “I’ll just go tell Glik and Glak that they won’t be getting their hefty paycheck after all, then.”
Bryan shuddered. He could already feel two pairs of cold, calloused mercenary hands on his neck, applying pressure, increasing it ever so slightly, prolonging the agony, until he had drawn his last breath. It would suck while it lasted, he realized, but then it would be over, and he’d be better off, wouldn’t he? What did he have to live for anyhow?
But then... if Aaron was on to something, not that Caldwok was immortal, but something, what then? He could not only stay alive, but make an incredible comeback. He’d show those crooks what Bryan Gilmore was made of. At the very least, it would buy him some time.
“Okay,” he said, “I’ll bite. What do we do?”
“Well first,” said Aaron, walking back to his captain’s chair, “we do a quick computer search.” He flipped a switch, and a small monitor popped out of the control panel. “Angel, sweetie, do a search for recent tidbits about the discovery of Caldwok, please.”
“Certainly,” she purred. “Your wish is my command, O Great One.” Aaron trembled with delight, and goosebumps shot up his arms. He turned to see Bryan frowning at him.
“You don’t date much, do you?” he asked.
Aaron was about to say something witty in reply when the computer chirped and results flashed across the screen. “Here you go,” she said. “Will there be anything else, master?”
“Just warm up the Jacuzzi,” he said with a wink. “We can discuss things more comfortably there.” His flirtatious smile suddenly sprouted into a real one, and he turned to Bryan once again. “There,” he said. “I might’ve guessed.”
“I can’t read without my glasses,” Bryan reminded him.
“And so the suspense builds up! Would you believe the merchandise has been sold to none other than…” he started a drumroll on his armrest, “the richest stinking hombre this side of the Milky Way… Mr. Zaggatopipopulous!”
Bryan caught his breath. “Mr.... Mr. Zagga... Zagga...”
“Mr. Zaggatopipopulous,” Aaron corrected. “Surely you’ve heard of him.”
“Heard of him? Well of course, I – that is – I mean – well why do you think I’m stuttering, dagnabbit? Mr. Zaggatopipopulous! We’re screwed!”
“Hey, chillax, man, it could be worse. Could be Captain Moonbeard, after all.”
“This is hardly any better!” Bryan insisted. He sighed yet again, resigned to his fate. “All right,” he said, “we’ve done a quick computer search. What good does it do us? What’s the next step?”
“I thought you’d never ask,” said Aaron gleefully. “Next, we sneak into his fortress and steal the plaque.”
Not for the first time that day, Bryan couldn’t believe his ears. For all his faults, could his former student really be resorting to thievery, even from such a man as Mr. Zaggatopipopulous?
“Why can’t we just look at it, take some pictures?” he asked hesitantly.
“You’ll understand when we get it,” said Aaron. “There’s more to it than I told you. Why else would we be going after it?
Next: Chapter Four (Unfinished)
