Andrew Huff and the Pool of Lost Souls XIV

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“Well at least they didn’t kill us,” said Rex hopefully.

“At least not yet. When that whale decides that Anne is not the same Anne as the Anne he knew, then he will be killing us,” Ghyslain said despondently, “they took my light saber. I hate it when they take my light saber.”

Cinnamon had had Jasper towed out of the room, codex afloat besides him, and we were left alone to listen to the roaring fire, contemplate a profile of Queen Victoria, and ponder our fate.

“We may still have a chance. Anne – can you lift the medallion I’m wearing out from underneath my robe?”

I closed my eyes and concentrated. I could feel it – it was some sort of strange metal.

“I feel it,” I said, “but I don’t know if I can lift it. Why can’t you do it?”

“I’ve spent years training my force skills to avoid incoming objects like axes and knives and shit. I do the instinctual-deflect thing. I don’t have the sensitivity to move small items I can’t see. No one does but you Anne – you’re a natural with the levitation stuff.”

I took a deep breath and tried again. I felt the medallion, let myself stop wanting it slip upwards, sensed my lack of desire conjure forth a force from a sympathetic universe, released my will even further as I felt a bubble of non-ego doing what I wanted it to on it’s own accord. At least that’s what I felt. Everyone else just saw the medallion inch up above Rex’s robe and flop face-up onto his chest.

“Well that’s handy,” said Lessig, eyeing the amulet.

It was a small, silver-colored disc with a large, multifaceted red jewel set directly in the center. The metal felt strange in my mind – half plastic and half titanium. Engraved in the silver base encircling the jewel were a series of messages written in different alphabets, some of which I recognized and some of which I didn’t. The english language part of the engraving read ‘in case of emergency press red button’.

“It’s a gift from an old friend who owes me a favor. I think getting us out of this mess would count. The only problem is, he won’t owe me the favor for another two hundred years. Or, depending how you look at it, he’s owed it to me for the past forty million years. Frankly I’m a little curious to see what will happen. But its probably our best bet.”

“Forty million years in the past?” asked Andrew, eyes widening in the way eyes only widen when your timeline of the universe owes more the Genesis than Stephen Hawking, “you’re not one of these atheists who believe in this newfangled ‘evolution’ idea, are you?”

Rex sighed deeply.

“Christians. Anyway, Anne – could you do me a favor and press the big red button?”

I closed my eyes and concentrated. I knew it would be harder than moving the amulet before. I concentrated, gave the button a good wallop.

“Gah! Christ Anne, I asked you to push the amulet, not give me CPR. Less is more, you see what I’m saying?”

“I can’t do it,” I said forlonly.

“You can do it,” said Rex, more gently now, “remember the toast in Kashgar? Remember that night on the volcano? The only thing that’s keeping you from doing it is this crazy idea you’ve got that you can’t. Now, try again.”

I took a deep breath and did my best to try to slip out of my own head. I felt my mind drift into that uneasy waiting room where dreams come to take you away to sleep with a gentle, insistent pull. I felt my future memories swirl through me – blurred vagaries of long falls into emptiness, my ears filled with blue blood, a bald barking dog, the clicking of some jewelry I remembered once, long ago…

I was shocked back to reality by the small steady whine coming from Rex’s medalion, which was now flashing red.

“You rock Anne,” said Rex softly, smiling at me. I could feel the way he would have toussled my hair affectionately if we weren’t well, you know, in chains in a secret British safe house in the middle of nineteenth century central asia.

We all waited, not knowing what to expect.

“Now what?” asked Lessig

“Uh… now we wait,” said Rex, “It’ll take Commander Plaza a while to get here. He hangs out in a secret hide out just north of Tashkent.”

“Tashkent?!” exploded Andrew, “Tashkent is a three day camel ride from here!”

“Oh don’t worry,” said Rex, chuckling, “Commander Plaza ain’t riding a camel.”

At that moment an alarm sounded – a very old-fashioned claxon like a real hammer hitting a real bell, really loud.

“That must be him now,” said Rex with satisfaction, crossing his arms in a point-proven sort of gesture – or at least crossing them as well as he could while in shackles.

We waited a few more moments and then a group of about six asian men with shaved heads and dressed in grey monk’s robes ran through the room, stopped for a second to stare at us, and then ran on.

“This ‘Commander Plaza’ is a Chinese monk?”

“That wasn’t him. What the hell’s going on here?”

At that moment there was a deafening crack as the wall across from us exploded into a thousand particles. Out of the billowing clouds of ash and vaporized dust emerged an amazingly gigantic figure of a man. He floated three feet above the ground, the air beneath his feet rippling with heat and whining with the sound of the jet engines in the soles of his mighty combat boots. His body itself was composed of metallic, bulbous armour that tapered off at each joint. Although originally smooth, the armour was now pitted with nicks, bullet scratches, and laser beam burns. In one hand he held the largest and most impressive gun I’d ever seen – a massive weapon with a four foot long barrel that was at least a foot across. In the crook of his other arm was a small, white dog that wouldn’t stop barking. Perched at the top of the massive body, a small human-sized and vaguely Fillipino looking head protruded from the top of the armor.

DO YOU REQUIRE EUTHENASIA SPACE MARINE? boomed out the man’s voice, while he pointed his massive rifle at Rex’s head.

“Er… hello. No, actually. I was wondering if you could just maybe free my friends and I?” asked Rex unctiously.

THERE IS NO SHAME IN DEATH ON THE FIELD OF BATTLE. THERE IS ONLY SHAME IN CAPTURE BY THE ENEMY. YOUR GLANDS WILL BE REUSED TO FURTHER THE GLORIOUS GOALS OF THE IMPERIUM said the man as the dog in the crook of his arm continued to bark. His head swiveled to look at the dog for a moment and then swiveled back to fix on Rex.

POPPY WANTS SNACKIES. SNACKIES FOR POPPY. SNACKIES FOR POPPY!! DO YOU HAVE SNACKIES FOR POPPY?

“Poppy?” I asked Rex under my breath.

“Poppy – the immortal interstellar Lake Land Terrier,” clarified Rex under his breath to me before directing his attention back towards the others, “Umm… it might really help things along if we could give Poppy a snack, folks. I kinda have a continuing need for my glands, if you see what I’m saying.”

“Er, I have half a tuna sandwhich in my pocket,” said Lessig to the man before us.

The dog began barking particularly shrilly and straining out of Commander Plaza’s arm towards Lessig.

YOU ARE NOT A SPACE MARINE. HOW DID YOU ACQUIRE THE REMOTE DISTRESS BEACON? asked the man, temporarily ignoring the dog and refocusing on Rex.

“I am in fact a Staff Sergeant of the Third of the Fifth Imperial Fusilliers and was created a Pasha by the Sultan himself.” said Rex, sounding slightly hurt.

IF YOU ARE A SPACE MARINE THEN WHERE ARE YOUR ARMOR AND COUP-CLOAKS?

“Oh yes, well, that’s a bit harder to explain. See I won’t be all of those things until a hundred and twenty years from now, at which point we’ll travel back millions of years of time… uh… hey, what are you doing…?”

Rex was now smiling ingratiantingly and sweating visibly as Commander Plaza’s eyes narrowed with suspicion and he brought the barrel of his massive weapon to rest lightly on Rex’s left temple. God knows what he was about to do then, since Commander Plaza’s attention was distracted by Poppy’s barking rising to a fever pitch. The dog was now focused on Lessig, who had managed despite his manacles to pull half a tuna sandwhich out of his robes and was waving it enticingly back and forth in front of Poppy while making cooing noises.

SNACKIES FOR POPPY! SNACKIES FOR POPPY! Roared Commander Plaza, aiming his gun at Lessig.

“Not much honor in that, Commander Plaza,” said Rex quickly, “What sort of space marine steals food from helpless earthlings to feed his Lakeland Terrier? I’ll tell you what – why don’t you free us, and in return we’ll give Poppy the tuna sandwich.”

Commander Plaza’s head swiveled to Rex, Poppy, Lessig, and then back to Rex again. There was a massive series of explosions, and the next thing I knew, I was rubbing my newly-freed wrists while I watched Commander Plaza soar to the top of the room and feed half a tuna sandwhich to the dog clutched in his arms.

“Before you go!” yelled Rex, “Just remember this – in one hundred and twenty years from now when you find a younger version of me tied to an unholy underground altar beneath the streets of Spanish Harlem about to be sacrificed to a super-intelligent twenty-foot albino alligator with a Mexican accent named Luther remember: I told you so!”

PERHAPS WE SHALL MEET AGAIN said Commander Plaza as he screamed out the smoking hole he had used to enter a few minutes before NOW POPPY NEEDS TO MAKE POOPIE. POPPIE FOR POPPY! POOPIE FOR POPPY! he yelled as he flew away into the distance.

“Well,” said Rex, standing up and dusting himself off, “that was easy, huh?”

* * *

While we were still trying to get our bearings, two more large explosions rocked the room. We swayed back and forth, grabbing onto furniture like extras from the Old Star Trek trying to look convincingly discombobulaed by the lousy special effects meant to convey the trauma caused by the direct hit of a Klingon photon torpedo strike.

“What’s going on?” shouted Ghyslain over the furor.

“I don’t know,” said Rex, “but first things first – we need to find our weapons.”

If there’s one thing that a Jedi can find easily, it’s their light saber. Those things glow in our force-sense HUD about as large as a 747. We ran down a hall and were just about there when we ran smack dab into Trevor, the Mennonite secret agent.

“Trevor, what are you doing here?” asked Rex, bewildered, “We were supposed to meet you in Tashkent!”

“Evil… grey robes… really bad… really really bad…” panted Trevor, obviously out of breath.

“Slow down, slow down – what’s going on here?” asked Lessig.

“The source of ‘Chinese contamination’ that Norbu was going on about – we found it. There’s dozens of them. They’re fighting him… in the next room… I tried to get them to sit down and talk it over…”

“Where?”

Trevor led us down the corridor. As we approached we heard the sound of voices growing ever louder as we approached.

“One thing about Norbu,” said Trevor, grinning, “you can always hear where he is…”

We entered an enormous, column lined room. In front of us was a massive pitched battle. Four of the grey-robed monks were locked in mortal combat with Norbu Rinpoche. The entire place was filled with the echoing roar of their screams as they attacked one another – “Dragon tail sweeps the sea!” and “King Kong Buddha Fist!” – As they richochetted off the wall and flew at each other in best Jet-Li wire-work style, a more quotidian battle raged below. A troop of British soldiers in – get this – actual red coats formed a small infantry square in the center of the room, where they desperately fought off a massive mob of seedy-looking hired bad buys. They looked determined, but their haggard looks and blood-stained uniforms hinted at their frayed nerves and physical exhaustion. But while I took all of this in in an instant, the one thing that drew my attention more than anything else was the large padlocked chest on one side of the room – Ground Zero for our sabres. Ghyslain ran over and yanked on the lock.

“Damn these Jedi-strength locks!” cursed Ghyslain, kicking the chest angrily.

The alarms were still sounding, the explosions more frequent, and all hell seemed to be breaking loose. I was about to ask Rex what we should do, when the sound of a voice from the doorway behind me sent shivers down my spine.

“You!”

It was Cinnamon. She had just pushed her way out of the center of the British infantry formation and was heading directly towards us. Her chest heaved with exertion, and her eyes shone with a fatal manic energy from beneath bangs drooped over a head bent low in exhaustion. Her dress was in tatters now, and her hair in scraggily disarray. Soot and blood covered her face, and her now-familiar sewing notions holster was wrapped around her waist. It was disgusting – after what was obviously prolonged periods of combat she should have looked all grungy and nasty from all the blood and gore. But basically it just made her look like deeply determined and sexy in a deadly sort of way like the girl in La Femme Nikita (Anne Parillaud and not Bridget Fonda, thank you very much) after the fight in the restaurant. I mean honestly.

“You!” she exclaimed, “You’re behind this aren’t you! Who are your friends? How did they know you were here?” she spat furiously at us over her shoulder as she turned back to rally her men. At that moment the room was flooded with yet another massive wave of turban’d and scimitar’d bad-guy cannon fodder. Before we could protest two men armed with sickle-shaped knives came at her from behind. In an instant she turned to face them, hands flashing to her waist. It wasn’t until they began slumping to the ground, dead, that I realized there were two knitting needles in their backs.

“Fix bayonets! To arms!” screamed Cinnamon, diving into the fray with her men.

I know that a paragraph ago I said that all hell broke loose, but trust me – this time all hell really broke loose. Ghyslain and Lessig clawed crazily at the locked chest. Rex moved between me at the fight in a futile attempt to keep me safe from the roiling maelstrom that filled the room. And Andrew – Andrew walked slowly and deliberately into the fray.

“What are you doing?” I exclaimed, grabbing him on arm, “you’ll be killed!”

“I can’t let them kill her!” he said simply to me.

“But you can’t do anything about it, Andrew! They’re outnumbered three to one! You’ll be killed!”

Andrew took my hand slowly off his arm, gave it a sad squeeze, and then smiled sadly at me.

“You know Anne – I honestly don’t know if my life would be worth living if it didn’t involve chasing Cinnamon around.”

My mind flashed back to that night in Kashgar, before we traveled back in time, when Andrew and I sat on the porch of a house at the edge of field. I remembered watching him watch the stars, and the tired, dead look I had seen on his face.

“You know what Andrew,” I said, squeezing his shoulder, “I don’t think it would be. Good luck. We’ll be in to help as soon as we can.”

Andrew waded into the fray, pushing his way past the Red Coats and taking Cinnamon’s hand in the center of the infantry square. He drew his pistol and, back to back, they tried desperately to turn the tide of battle.

I ran over to Lessig and Ghyslain, who sat scowling at the locked chest. Lessig was poking at it with a pencil.

“We need that chest open now,” I said as forcefully as I could.

“The lock is a snap to pick,” said Lessig, examining it, “the mechanism is centuries out of date for me. But I don’t have any tools. Goddamn it.”

“If you don’t get your weapons back then we’re all dead.” shouted Rex, losing his Jedi diffidence.

I felt my eyebrow arch incredulously as I watched Lessig poke at the lock, “You know how to pick locks?” I asked skeptically.

“I’m sorry,” said Lessig, firing off his retort with Menckenesque sang-froid, “did you just ask a lawyer if he knew how to steal?”

“Well would this help, then?” I said, nonchalantly producing the spare needles my older self had given me.

“Good god – they ought to do the job. Where did you get them?” said Lessig, putting two in his teeth and using another two to jimmy the lock.

“It’s a long story. I thought they were meant for Cinnamon, but maybe they were meant for yo-”

At that point the lock clicked open and Lessig threw back the top of the chest. I didn’t even realize I had reached for my lightsaber and the next thing I knew it was back in my hand. I heard the familiar flame-on sound of Ghyslain and Rex making their sabers live.

“Oh man, I am so ready to be hating on playas,” enthused Rex, practically glowing with an energy that I didn’t entirely like.

We were about to dive in when there was a sudden rush of wind and nine more grey-robed figures literally flew into the room, landing ready for battle in all sorts of elaborate kung-fu poses.

“Shaolin monks!” exclaimed Rex, “just like in the movies! Wow – cool. Hey guys, why are you fighting the good-guy Tibetan monk? You need to help us fight evil and stuff.”

“I should have known,” shouted Cinnamon, “you are in league with them!” Cinnamon leapt sideways out of the way of one of her attackers, landed, rolled, and reached back towards her hair. Silver flashed, and the next thing I knew, a knitting needle was an inch away from one of the monks’ eyes – caught firmly in his hand.

“Hmph,” sniffed the monk, “your kung-fu is no match for me.”

He lobbed the needle back her way. Cinnamon tried to dodge, but wasn’t fast enough. She screamed in pain as shot into her left arm – exactly where her heart had been an instant before. She shrieked in pain and collapsed into Andrew’s arms.

“You’re supposed to be good guys!” exclaimed Rex.

“They are not ‘good guys’,” said a strong voice from behind us, “They are my employees.”

A man wearing an Abraham Lincoln suit stepped out of the shadows. The monks immediately moved to form a protective cordon around him. In a very significant plot development, he had the Codex of Lost Souls in one arm.

“Who are you?” exclaimed Andrew protectively.

“I? Why, I am Klaus Epps – the future messiah. And you are about to die.” he said, laughing with a sort of manical gusto that left no doubt in my mind that we had finally found The Big Bad Guy.

“Not so fast, Epps!” shouted Trevor, straightening himself to his full height, “Your mad dreams of apocalypse will never come true! Give up these vain fantasies and return to the community so we can, you know, forgive you and stuff.”

“Vain?” Boomed the man impressively, brandishing the codex, “Mad? Impossible? How impossible are my dreams with this in my arms? How little you know about the true power of this codex, Trevor! With the Pool of Lost Souls under my control, my prophecies will become reality!”

“And we’ll become immortal,” said one monk, licking his hand and running it lewdly over his shaved head, “and the only thing better than being a renegade evil Shaolin monk is being an immortal renegade evil Shaolin monk!”

“I knew I was awakened from my hermitage for a reason,” spat Norbu with a stereotyped fury that I knew was babel-fish induced, “you are bastard betrayer monks! I must defend the honor of my kung-fu style!”

“Fume as much as you like Norbu,” expostulated Epps grandly as if he was, in a moment of bad-guy hubris, about to reveal his entire secret evil plan to us, confident in our imminent demise, “but in a mere eighteen hours the pool of lost souls will once more surge to the surface of this planet, and I shall achieve immortality!”

“Wrong dude,” said Rex, trying to be as deadly serious as anyone with a strong Californian accent could be, “like, we’re the Pool of Lost Souls.”

“You?” scoffed Epps, “who told you that? Jasper? Do you really take that over-blown haddock seriously? The thing wear a hat with a rubber band around it, for Christ’s sake! No – The Pool of Lost Souls is just that: the waters of eternal life which percolate to the surface of our planet only once every twelve decades. Slowly, the sunken city of the ancient ones works its way up to us amidst fire and smoke, as was foretold in – ”

“Wait a sec,” I asked, “fire and smoke? You mean like volcanos?”

“Well,” said Epps, scratching at his chin momentarily, “yeah. But more importantly, the ancient Temple of the Lost Souls where I am fully prepared to carry out the eldritch ceremony which – ”

“One hundred and twenty years?” I pressed, “does this volcano emerge in a desert?”

“We’ve been tossed from one emergence of the pool to another,” said Rex, putting the pieces together, “from that volcano in the Taklamakan to now, when the pool rise again. Surely Valenti meant to use the pool for his own purposes! What could be better than an immortal lobbyist arguing for immortal copyright terms? And now, with the pool rising again…”

“That would explain my presence,” said Lessig grimly.

“But only if we’re the pool of lost souls – the people whose destiny is the plaything of the codex,” I pointed out, “if the pool is really a pool…”

“Silence!” screamed Epps, furious that his expositional monologue had been interrupted, “That’s funny like funny ha-ha, but unimportant. Imagine what you will, but I know the location of the emergence, and I have the codex. You cannot long survive against the overwhelming forces I have weighed against you – even you Jedi cannot prevail against the monks of Shaolin when they attack in force. Fare well, Rex Masterson – may your death be slow and painful!”

With that Epps turned away sharply, the tails of his Abraham Lincoln suit swirling menacingly about him, and marched down the hall, a small group of monks his bodyguard. There was a moment of stillness as the remaining monks and Epps’ hired hands stared at us across the room. Then a man with a scimitar charged forward and in one instance all hell broke loose.

“After them!” shouted Rex, turning a double sommersault in the air and landing in the entrance of the passageway through which Epps had escaped. With a few strong strokes of his saber he had cleared a path through the crowd, joined by Ghyslain.

“Anne – come on!” shouted Rex, gesturing to me.

“But Andrew is – ” I began, looking desperately at the rising tide of humanity weighed against him as he and Cinnamon fought desperately on.

“We’ll take care of them!” shouted Trevor, taking Lessig by the hand, some how still remaining jovial, as he and Norbu began wading through the enemy and towards the small, embattled group of British shoulders.

“But – ” I protested.

“Now Anne! That’s an order!”

With great misgivings I turned away and left Andrew and Cinnamon to their fate. We followed the dark passage upward, ever upward. Ghyslain poured on the speed and I felt Rex’s stride quicken as well, fueled with a Force whose flavor verged too much on obsession for my liking. I put my head down, let myself relax, and tried to let the force pull me along. But Rex and Ghyslain were in another place – a place where desire muddied purity and achievement tainted intent. I couldn’t – or didn’t want to – keep up.

“Rex…” I panted, running as fast as I could, “I can’t…”

He cursed, grabbed my hand, and made me run faster.

The next thing I knew the ceiling above me had dissolved into night sky. We were outside now, in the courtyard of a private estate. Our stride broke abruptly as Rex and Ghyslain dove into crouch, rolled, and sprang up with live sabers and barred teeth. The three of us faced four Shaolin monks who were fighting a rearguard action – Epps’ coach was already rattling away into the distance.

“Attack!” shouted Ghyslain, leaping into the midst.

“Get them, Anne!” shouted Rex, juking to the left, spinning, and coming down hard with a strong over-hand attack.

“But…” I began. Just then I felt my body involuntarily roll to the ground and away to my left a split second before a fist came smashing down where my head had been a second before.

Before me, a really evil looking Shaolin Monk waggled his tongue lewdly and aimed a kick right at my teeth. I did a hand spring up, leapt sideways to avoid him, and came down with my lightsaber live. I was going to feint and come at him from my off-handed side, but the next thing I knew I was dodging first to my left and then to my right as two quick punches came right at me.

“Rex… help… please…” I said, struggling to catch my breath, shooting my hand in front of myself to deflect a punch to my solar plexus.

“Get them Anne! Get them! Kill!” I heard his shout over the thrum of his lightsaber.

The monk came in low with a kick to my shins. I staggered backwards, wincing and feeling tears coming to my eyes. Jedi feel things before they happen – that’s why we have such great reflexes – and I felt myself crying before the kick even landed. But my body was in molasses – too sluggish in the present to avoid what I knew was going to come. A second after I registered the pain of my shin splitting, I had jumped backwards, and only then did he actually make contact.

The world turned into a lightning wide blur. I felt myself on the ground, twisting and turning to avoid blows. Three feet away, I could smell the image of my windpipe shattered beneath the monks imagination of his foot and my throat. I rolled away, got back on my feet, and limped backwards.

“Hmph,” said the man dismissively, “Why do I have to kill the apprentices?”

“I’ll show you what it means to fight,” I said, wiping the sweat from my brow and trying to sound brave.

“The only thing you’ll show me is how you die,” he said, shuffling in as if to come in with a high kick and then putting in a syncopated step and nailing me again in my injured shin.

Everyone has a point where desperation overwhelms them – when your inmost self lapses into infancy and, in an attempt to deny the unfair world around you, begins crying for its mother. Being an adult means pushing that point as far back as you can, and Being a Jedi means pushing it back even farther – making distant that point where emotion takes you over and turns you into its automaton. For fourteen of the sixteen years of my life I had been trained to seek a silent calm place in the welter of emotions that overwhelmed me when the world threatened to snuff me out with its extremity. Now I tried desperately to cling to that inner calm, to make the remaining shard of strength within me grow into something large enough to hang a plan on. But I just couldn’t do it. He was stronger than me, and both of us knew it. And no matter how long it took, he was going to corner me, cripple me, and then kill me. And no one on earth would do anything to save me – not Rex, not my father, not Andrew, not anyone. I had faced death before, but never at a time when I was able to so clearly realize what it meant to die.

I fell to the ground and tried to stand again, thinking to run away. But my leg was dead to me now, unmoving and unmoveable. I grabbed it in my hand and tried to make it pull me up, but all I felt were waves of pain. I slowly, awkwardly used my other leg to lift myself up. The monk just watched and gloated.

Then I heard a sound behind me. I turned to see a horse-drawn carriage come tumbling to a stop before me. A door flew open and a man in a dark suit appeared, grabbing me by the arm.

“Anne! Get in!” he yelled.

And I did.