. . .
They break into Amelia’s study. They burst open the secret compartment in her desk. It’s an open secret! They heave out one of the brown paper packages at the back. It’s tied up with string.
Jane rips off the string. She opens the package.
“It’s a veritable pharmacopeia of pills and alchemical substances!” declares Tom Friedman.
“Jackpot,” smugs science adventuress, Jane.
. . .
Swiftly they boil water in the bright copper kettle. They mash up woolen mittens, Mouser’s whisker, and the petals of the rose in a big glass bowl. They throw in ingredients from the package at random.
“It’s important to use drugs responsibly,” Jane says, breaking one pill in half before adding it to the bowl.
“And only as a doctor directs!” Linus confirms.
They pour boiling water over the mix, on the theory that space princess assassin nannies are basically like doctors.
“Well,” says Jane.
“Well,” agrees Tom.
“It’s a marvelous immortality elixir!” Jane says. “Bottoms up!”
. . .
“. . . ladies first,” says Tom, after a moment.
They stare at the lumpy mix for a while.
“I don’t need it,” says Linus. “I mean, technically.”
“Give it to Edmund!” Jane declares. “He’ll eat anything.”
“Can eat anything,” says Edmund. “Can.”
Jane makes faces.
“And it’s not even tested,” Edmund says. “It’s not like I’m a hunger singularity. I just have wolf-gut. It’s like cat-gut, but wolfier.”
“Fine, whatever,” says Jane. She picks up the mixture. She hefts it to her lips.
. . .
The door to the study slams distractingly open.
Maria is standing there. She has patched her space gun back together with duct tape and umbrella glue. It is blinking red in its unhappiness but it is stable. It is set halfway between the mundane and the sacred; between mortal death and a blast of holy light.
It isn’t whining. It’s already chimed.
This gun is ready to disburse all sacred death and endings.
“I wouldn’t drink that,” says Maria, “if I were you.”
Jane looks at her.
“Once you’ve been an immortal for five hundred years,” says Maria. “Heaven would send a terrible finger to destroy you. And if you survive that, Jane, even if you survived, it’d send a terrible fire and wind to destroy you another five hundred years after that. There’s a reason there aren’t many Taoist immortals around, Jane. It’s the casualty rate!”
. . .
Jane hesitates. “I don’t want Heaven to destroy me,” she admits.
Linus glances at her.
“I know, I know!” she says, flailing one hand in his direction and almost spilling the Marvelous Immortality Elixir. “But I don’t!”
“That’s quite all right,” Maria says. “You won’t have the chance.”
She pulls the trigger.
B…
. . .
Then, finally, lowering her head, Maria manages, “You’re not dead either.”
“I guess I’m a Taoist immortal,” Jane says.
“You can’t be a Taoist immortal!” claims Tom. “You’re a girl!”
Maria fires again. A rippling wave of holy death splashes off Jane’s chest.
“You are a Taoist immortal,” Tom exclaims.
. . .
Maria doesn’t bother charging the gun. She just fires it, again and again. The red light blinks infra-red, then ultra-red, then finally a furious gun-wroth carmine. Her umbrella fumes with its agonies. A beeping sound arises from it, escalating ever higher in pitch until it is an unholy shriek to counterbalance the spiritual glory of the holy setting of the gun.
“No!” cries Maria. “No! I will not! I will not be the space princess assassin that never killed anybody! Die! Die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, why. won’t. anybody. Ever. Just. Die?”
“There were all those people in the other houses in our neighborhood!” says Tom.
“It’s all your fault, Jane!” cries Maria. “They will come for you. They will kill you. They will raze your world, Jane! The Fan Hoeng will destroy you. You, you, you. This world, all to end you!”
She is howling. She is broken. She sinks to her knees. She holds her umbrella up above her head. Then, even though it is indoors, she opens it.
The gun explodes.
There is dust, and there is rubble, and the ceiling falls.
. . .
It takes a while for them to sort everybody out. Linus is bleeding pretty badly, because there was a lot of holiness in that boom. Tom used a science escape, of course, but he’s still got some serious being dizzy going on. It isn’t until they’re all there with Mouser curled up on Jane’s stomach muttering mews that she sits up and she realizes, “Edmund! My God, Edmund! Did he get out?”
“It’s OK, Jane,” says Edmund.
He crosses his legs. He sits down beside her. He gives her the kind of look that only somebody whose heart is in a wooden box can give.
“I ate the death,” he says. “I ate the holiness. I bound myself a little tighter to the wolf, and the wolf to me; and now I am hungrier, now I want to eat you all, I mean, just a little. But I won’t. Because eating people is wrong.”
He hiccups just a tiny bit of the sacredness of death; and somewhere in the waft of it is the sound of an angel’s trump.
“Oh, Edmund.”
. . .
Jane blinks away her tears. She pulls herself over to sit against a tree. A tree-house bulks invisibly overhead.
“I’m sorry I tried to get you to drink the Marvelous Immortality Elixir,” she tells him.
He pats her head.
. . .
“Well,” Jane says. She grins gamely at all of them. “They’re going to destroy the world to get at me.”
“Yeah,” Edmund laughs.
There is a silence.
“I guess that means I can be a full member now,” she says. “Huh? Right?”
Linus’ face falls. Tom’s face is stricken.
There’s a silence.
“Of course,” says Edmund, after a bit.
Linus nods.
“. . . Yes,” Tom finally admits.
. . .
“I’m so sorry,” Tom says, wretchedly.
He’s crying for some reason. He’s probably just happy.
Rubble shifts and crunches.
“Oh, Jane, I’m so sorry!”
And that is the end of things for the house on Doom Lane; although the Doom Team would still meet, and have its science adventures,
for a little while to come.
Sponsors
Today's
STRANGE ENCOUNTER ...
Toad_Dotted_NoBG
