CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

Bargains

 

            Chaos thought it over. How brave was a Solarian? He had no way to gauge Josh’s resolve. It was a good deal. He’d have both Fractal and the Solarian. He’d won! “Agreed,” Chaos victoriously sneered.

            “Just let me say good-bye to Emily,” Josh said.

            Josh turned and, to Tempo’s surprise, took her face, which was Emily’s face, in his hands. He kissed her full on the lips. Josh was trying two things he hadn’t tried before: kissing Emily Kinicki, and purposely sending a complex thought telepathically to Tempo. His thoughts held a plan. Tempo’s eyes were held open wide by both of Josh’s purposes. She had to force herself to think straight.

            Josh then turned and strode into the torture chamber through the shattered doorway.

            When Denso growled, “We can’t leave them here!” Tempo touched both Denso and Spindle on their arms.

            “We are outmaneuvered,” she said aloud, but it was a deception. At that same instant, Tempo transferred Josh’s plan telepathically to them, and they acquiesced. Tempo, Denso and Spindle hit their burn bands and were gone.

            Chaos grinned in victory and made the mistake of removing his blades from Fractal’s throat. Josh placed his hand on bloody Fractal’s shoulder. It was Josh’s arm where his burn band lay hidden under his long shirt sleeve.

            “Are you all right?” Josh asked of the bloody, semi-conscious Fractal, who looked up through swollen eyes.

            “What have you done?” Fractal rasped.

            As Chaos stepped around the chair to take possession of his new prisoner, Josh hit the activator button hidden under his sleeve. It had been preset by Starla to return Josh to the Forbidden Zone and the entrance to the command center. Josh’s hand was firmly gripping Fractal’s shoulder. The portal of fire enveloped both Josh and Fractal. When Josh vanished, the big Kolomogoron evaporated right out of the clamps holding him down. Chaos desperately slashed at the disappearing image. His blades were aimed at the fading form of Fractal’s throat. Not at Josh, for Josh was of value. Chaos was too late. The blades passed through nothing. Chaos paused a moment, standing there in the empty room. His mouth twisted in hate. His wrath grew so that his eyes became the reddest they’d ever been. He clenched his claw-tipped fists and let out a horrendous scream!

            Josh and Fractal flew through the burn tube, together. Fractal, drifting in and out of consciousness, had been badly beaten and slashed by his own brother. This sibling rivalry was a beauty, and it had implications that could affect—existence!

            Josh thought of the Antonio brothers, twin boys whose fights and arguments were legendary around Josh’s school. The Antonio brothers actually seemed to be proud of their squabbles and their loathing for each other. Still, there were times when they seemed to care, seemed to beat their hate and treat each other like—well, brothers. Like the time Tony broke his arm, and Frankie did his chores for him, or the playground fight when a bigger kid picked on Frankie, and Tony jumped in. The two of them thrashed that big bully. Fractal and Chaos made the Antonio brothers look like angels. Fractal and Chaos had each voiced their intention to kill the other. The Antonio brothers had threatened that, too, but they didn’t mean it. Josh was sure Chaos and Fractal truly did. This time, it had been close for Fractal. He was weak, and bleeding from several angry gashes.

            “You’re pretty cut up,” Josh said above the roar inside the multi-colored burn tube, a little sick to his stomach.

            “Tempo will heal me,” Fractal muttered, dazed.

            Josh knew, however, that there was damage deep inside the big Kolomogoron—damage that no amount of the Tempo’s healing powers could cure. How did it come to this?

            “Your brother,” Josh ventured, “why didn’t he kill you when he had the chance?”

            “He now wishes he had, I am sure,” Fractal smiled with broken lips. “Don’t you see? The decoy of the Huen invasion was all part of his plan. He did it to capture me.”

            “To get your burn band.”

            “And to set a trap.”

            “A trap?”

            “For you. Chaos counted on our—friendship to lure you in. That’s why Chaos did not kill me. He wanted you.”

            Josh swallowed hard. He’d almost forgotten how Chaos wanted Josh’s brain. How can you forget a thing like that, Josh asked himself?

            “Fractal, if they get hold of me again. You know, like they did in Frobenius. What exactly will they do? Yank my brain out by the roots and hook it up to some computer?”

            “Nothing so ordinary,” Fractal responded his unintended humor, causing Josh to smile in the face of it. “They will use the same technology they invented to supply Chaos with his mesmer eyes. Only their mesmer room is much more powerful. They will turn you to their cause. Like they did the Zebulon scientists. It will be permanent.”

            “You’re immune to his eye trip, aren’t you?”

            “Yes.”

            “How do you do it?”

            “I think of the hate,” Fractal said, curling his lip as the hate reminded him of its reasons. “I occupy my mind with it. It is the one thing more powerful.”

            The prismatic walls of the burn tube suddenly began to flutter. The colors jumbled slightly.

            “Wha-wha—?” was all Josh got out.

            “The burn’s corrupted!” Fractal shouted. “We must not touch each other!”

            They had been touching when Josh activated the tube, so they were still in close proximity. They tried to drift apart, but the tube began to buckle wildly. The roar inside the dimension burn changed pitch. Its normally precise twisting motion became warped, and flashed intermittently. The change in the tube’s dynamics caused Fractal and Josh to tumble wildly, preferring to bash into the walls than into each other. Since one could not advance nor drop back during a burn, they remained tumbling dangerously beside each other. They hit terminus violently and Josh was knocked out.

 

                        *                       *                       *                       *                       *

 

            Josh came to in his sleep chamber with Emily Kinicki’s hand on his shoulder, just her face in view. But which Emily was it? How could he find out without blowing it?

            “Uh, how long have I been out?” he said.

            “Awhile,” was all Emily said.

            Brief, concise, like Tempo speaks.

            “Fractal?” Josh asked, worried.

            “My ‘mother’ is healing him, or something. This white light came on and blood started moving around. I had to get out of there! It was, like, real icky!” the girl groaned.

            Josh smiled. Whew! he said to himself, Could there be any doubt? Josh sat up and quickly looked to see if she wore a burn band and a purple bathing suit—just to be sure.

            “Your big green friend was hurt a lot worse than you,” Emily went on. “The big light bulb says—“

            “Light bulb?”

            “You know. The super smart beach ball thingy.”

            “Ah, Starla.”

            “Yeah, anyway, the big light bulb says the green guy has to go first. Of course, my mother agrees. She is sooooo easy! I was, like, But what about Josh? And they were all, He’ll have to wait. I mean, what kinda friends are they?”

            Josh smiled again, as Billy came running in.

            “Man, you shoulda seen it, Kinicki!” Billy blurted. “Fractal was all like that, then your mom—the morph, she, like pulled all his wounds right out of him. And there were some doozies! They all just—went away! Then your mom, I mean, the morph. She gets all the same wounds on her! Same ones! Then those go away! I’m tellin’ you, she was badical!”

            “I’m sure she was all over it,” Emily sighed as though a miracle were a mirage. “So,” Emily said, close to Josh’s face, “this Tempo. What do you two do when she’s—me?”

            “Uh, nothing,” Josh weakly replied.

            “Yeah, and handbags don’t need to match,” she replied.

            Josh looked at her quizzically.

            “That’s just a joke, kinda. A saying. We—me and the girls in school? We make up, you know—cool sayings we hope will catch on and sweep the world. The ‘matching handbags’ one. That one’s mine,” she said proudly.

            For a moment, Josh thought it was a goofy idea, then he reconsidered. It was actually kind of touching. Emily and her pals, though a total clique, wanted to leave their mark, a mark in the form of a phrase that defined them. Consider it: to be the one that thought up ‘Get a helmet!’ or ‘That’s not my dog!’ Josh thought, They must feel legendary! Then Josh thought about Starla, whose people invented the dimension jump, yet still didn’t get credit for it.

            “So really, you and Tempo—” Emily asked, with the dead on stare of a jealous girl who was taking no prisoners.

            To Josh’s relief, Starla floated in the open doorway.

            “What were you thinking?” Starla scolded, pulsating its most emphatically. “I told you: Never burn out of an enclosed structure, especially those constructed of minerals. It can distort the burn tube! You did not come in contact with each other inside the corrupted tube, did you?”

            “No. What would’ve happened?” Josh asked.

            “You might have come back with Fractal’s head and he with yours!” Starla said. “It was fortunate that you came back at all!”

            Denso helped Tempo, in the form of Emily’s mom, into the room. She was weak from absorbing Fractal’s injuries.

            “Tempo insists on joining with you in the healing exchange,” Starla dryly noted. “To see if you have any internal injuries she needs to heal. Because Fractal had so many wounds to absorb, Tempo’s feeling a bit debilitated.”

            “Tired,” Josh offered.

            “She’s inorganic,” Starla corrected. “We don’t get—tired. Merely energy depleted.”

            Tempo settled heavily onto the floor at Josh’s bedside. Her eyes were Emily’s mother’s eyes, and they were tired, as tired as the real Mrs. Kinicki’s must be by now, with her daughter vanished along with two other children of Wheatland, Kansas. Tempo went to touch Josh, but he recoiled involuntarily. Having only seen the real Mrs. Kinicki but a very few times, he was almost as uncomfortable around her as was Emily. Reading his thoughts, Tempo evolved herself from Mrs. Kinicki into the synthetic Emily. Her eyes, younger, but still tired, looked into Josh’s. She smiled weakly.

            This time, the real Emily recoiled. “Oh, no! She’s me again!” Emily wailed, and she ran out of Josh’s room.

            Tempo, in the form of Emily Kinicki, reached out to Josh and he welcomed her touch. The white light that magically emanated from the therapeut enveloped them both. Though Denso, Starla and Billy were looking on, it was easy for Tempo and Josh to talk privately. Her touch not only healed, it connected them telepathically.

            “You have no injuries,” Tempo said in pure thought.

            “Good,” he said back the same way. He was getting better at talking with her like this. He liked it.

            “You are strong. Healthy,” she telepathically said.

            “Not as strong as you,” he replied the same way.

            “Fractal was bleeding while the two of you were inside the corrupted tube,” she continued telepathically. “You didn’t come in contact with him, but you contacted some of Fractal’s blood. It became part of you.”

            “I’ve got Fractal’s blood in me?” Josh yelped out loud.

            This caused Denso and even Starla to react alarmed, and Billy to just whisper, “Whoa.”

            “A very small portion,” Tempo said aloud for all. “It will do no damage. Fractal’s blood seems to have bonded with your circulatory system quite proficiently.”

            “Organic beings and their simplistic circulatory systems,” Starla sighed. “If only you poorly designed organic sacks of protein could see, and even comprehend, the complexities of my internal machinations.”

            “Did you just sigh?” Denso blinked in mock surprise. “Hey, everybody! Starla just sighed! How very organic of you, Starla! You aren’t the cold unemotional ball of spectral light we’ve all come to know and love.”

            “Yes I am,” Starla dryly replied.

            But neither Josh nor Tempo heard any of the exchange. They were talking telepathically about deeper things.

            “It was very brave, what you did, rescuing Fractal with a dimension burn. I should have warned you about burning out of that place. But I was—distracted.”

            “My kiss?” Josh thought, then he was totally embarrassed, for he never meant for her to hear it.

            “Your kiss,” she honestly replied inside his head.

 

LOOK FOR CHAPTER 24: “DUTIES”

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