Cineverse - Bride Of The Slime Monster Part 15

"Yip, bark bark, yip!" Dwight declared excitedly. His tail wagged energetically as he danced around a spot behind the sacrificial tables.

There, wedged in a crack in the hardened lava, was a single, small bongo drum-one of the drums that Captain Crusader, in his guise as the Secret Samoan, had used to communicate with Wakka Loa!

"So this was the last place Captain Crusader was on our world?" Delores asked.

"Yip yip!" Dwight agreed.

"And you can follow him to the next world he visited?" Delores added.

"Bark bark!" Dwight a.s.sured her.

"Well, what are we waiting for?" Louie asked. "Let's go Captain-hunting!"

"Very good." Delores waved to the others to gather round. "It's time to travel."

"I will follow, in my own way," the Slime Monster declared from somewhere in his shadow.

Delores decided she had to ignore the amorous creature's intentions. They had to locate Captain Crusader and save the Cineverse. Any personal considerations would have to wait until all the cosmic perils were dealt with. But she had a more immediate problem.

"How do we set the ring?" Delores asked with a frown.

"Bark bark. Yip, bark!" Dwight replied."You'll have to hand him the ring," Louie explained with a nod to the canine. "The Wonder Dog will hold it in his teeth and turn it with his tongue."

Delores did as she was asked as her companions gathered around her to form a human chain. Louie hooked a hand around the Wonder Dog's collar.

"And so, once again, our visitors reluctantly leave our island paradise-" the village elder began.

"That's it?" one of the islanders demanded.

Others picked up on his anger.

"You're just going to let them go?" another added.

"You're the village elder!'' one of the lovely young maidens reminded him. "Aren't you going to do anything?"

"Oh, yes," the elder hastily added. "I see what you mean." He turned to Delores and her n.o.ble band. "Pardon me. Would you like some Coconut Krispies for the trip?"

"No!" the first islander wailed. "We are doomed to a life of plotlessness!"

"Now, now, it's not as bad as all that," the elder counseled. "Maybe-um-we could get them to quickly profane something before they leave. That sort of thing really only takes a minute, after all, and we could pretend the volcano wasn't quite so dormant-"

"I'm sorry," Delores said with finality, "but we really must be going."

Dwight wagged his tail agitatedly. He looked like he wanted to say something but couldn't with the ring held between his teeth.

"So we're trapped," the first islander replied glumly.

"Wait!" one of the maidens objected. "Why can't they take us with them?"

"Sure," another of the islanders added. "Then they could profane something at their leisure!"

"Not a bad idea," the elder admitted. "If we, upon our island paradise, are out of plots, why not travel to those far distant lands where we might find some more?''

But Delores shook her head firmly. "It cannot be done. As much as we would like to help, we cannot bring you along. I am transporting so many already with a single Captain Crusader Decoder Ring, I'm afraid we would overload if we added any more." She glanced down at the dull silver ring in her hand. "It may be the key to the universe, but it's only made out of cheap plastic, after all."

"Don't you worry none, fellas," Doc rea.s.sured the islanders. "Your island is not the only place that's suffered 'cause of Doctor Dread. Things have changed in the Cine verse, but our mission is to change them back, or to make them even better than before! Jumpin' Jehoshaphat! Before long, you'll have too many plots to even think!"

"Very well," the elder replied with a sigh, resigned to his fate. "So our contented visitors leave this happy isle, refusing to take so much as a Coconut Upside Down Cake along for their-"

"See you in the funny papers!" Delores yelled. The blue smoke took them away.

"Yip, yip, yip! Bark, arf!" Dwight started in before the smoke had a chance to clear.

Delores found the Captain Crusader Decoder Ring-now a little wetter than before- back in her hand.

"We're getting close!" Louie explained. "The heroic scent is particularly strong.

Captain Crusader has spent a lot of time here!"

Delores tensed. She always had this trouble when she was stuck in this thick blue smoke. The lack of visibility alone couldn't help but make one apprehensive. Where exactly was here! If it was someplace where Captain Crusader spent a lot of time- where he was particularly needed-it might be even more dangerous than all the other places they had already visited.

And that brought up another question she hadn't had time to ask herself: What would they do if they actually found Captain Crusader? So much had happened in the last few days that they really had had no time to plan a definite course of action-or even to ask some of the obvious questions that arose from this situation. The Change seemed to be speeding up. Whatever the exact nature of Doctor Dread's sinister plans, they seemed to be working. Shouldn't Captain Crusader, by his very nature, be aware of this? Shouldn't he already be fighting the good fight without being sought out and asked to help? What if he had fallen under some world's spell, like Doctor Dread in Bunnyland? What if Captain Crusader was missing because of some secret that only the hero among heroes was privy to?

What if-Delores thought with a cold suddenness-what if Captain Crusader knew where she could find Roger? With all their recent battles and narrow escapes, she had tried to push the man from Earth out of her mind. But Roger meant more to her than she had ever dared admit. She had to find him somehow-anyhow. But how could she?-if to search for Roger, she had to ignore the very destiny of the Cineverse.

Delores shook her head. There were no answers. Better to concentrate on this new world, and the clues to Captain Crusader's whereabouts.

She heard the sound of the ocean. Had they never left the South Sea Island Paradise?

But no, there were any number of Cineverse worlds where the sea played an important role. Perhaps, when the smoke cleared, they would find themselves on a pirate galleon, or on some huge luxury liner, a Grand Hotel of the seas. But there was another sound here, besides the breaking waves-a musical sound. Delores frowned.

Was it an electric guitar?The smoke blew away. They were on a beach somewhere, full of bright sand and sun, surrounded by men and women, most of them in bathing suits that had been out of style for twenty years.

"Hey!" one of the men yelled. "You're not Roger!"

Roger? Delores was speechless. Her Roger? Well, how many Rogers were likely to show up in the middle of a cloud of blue smoke? Could it be? She remembered how, only a moment ago, she hadn't wanted to think about him, she was so sure he must be dead. Either that, or he had been trapped back on Earth, unable to reach Delores or the Cineverse ever again!

But this changed everything! If he had come to this ocean-side world, that meant that he was not only alive, but had found some other means of traveling around the Cineverse!

One of the other men, a large, hulking fellow dressed in black leather, mumbled something sinister. He held something in his hand that looked like a switchblade.

"No, we are not Roger," Delores said, hoping to defuse any particularly difficult situations. "But we are friends of Roger."

The mumbling man put away his knife. Delores breathed a sigh of relief.

He picked up a tire iron instead. He mumbled something to the group of toughs immediately behind him. They reached into pockets, pulling out chains, bra.s.s knuckles, and two-by-four planks. Delores was amazed by the size of their pockets.

"Wait a minute!" she called to the a.s.sembled leather-suited gang. "We don't need to fight!"

The gang all laughed at that.

"If we have to fight, missy," Doc drawled, "we fight.

Least it's somethin' we know. There's worse things in the Cineverse."

The gang started towards them.

"Hey, Bix!" one of the bathing-suited fellows called. "Don't you think it's time for a song?"

^ ^ 13 ^ ^

"EVEN MORE FLAMING DEATH!".

"Slashen kooten Wooden gooshen!" Katrina demanded.

It was only when Roger forced open one eye that he realized he had had them both closed. Katrina smiled at him.

In one hand she held the knife.

In the other hand she held the cheese.

Roger glanced down at the words that hovered around her waist.

YOU SHOULD EAT, the subt.i.tle read. WE HAVE A LONG WALK AHEAD OF US.

It was a large slab of yellow cheese, with small holes, and an aged, crumbly texture.

'' Slashen?'' Roger repeated.

you should eat, read his subt.i.tle.

She nodded, cutting into the cheese.

"Kooten gooshen?" he added.

a long walk ahead, the letters read this time.

Roger almost laughed. He had completely misunderstood the import of Katrina's speech. He had imagined, foolishly, that whatever language she was speaking had some similarities to English. He should be careful, especially on a world burdened by rampant symbolism, in making any a.s.sumptions at all.

He accepted a slab of cheese. Katrina reached within the folds of her dress and retrieved a half-filled bottle of red wine. Roger uncorked it and took a swig. That was a problem with gallivanting around the Cineverse - you never had time to eat. It was only now that he realized how hungry he was.

Katrina walked a few paces down the worn path to a stone bench at the far corner of the church. She sat, and Roger followed, sitting at the bench's other end. He accepted another piece of cheese, and another swig of wine.

"Valerie smertzen gnoogen splooshna!" Katrina remarked as she cut another piece for herself.

Roger glanced over at the subt.i.tle: MY SISTER LIVES BY A LAKE.

Roger frowned. The cheese went down hard as he swallowed. But she had definitely said "lives," and not "died." Perhaps he had somehow misunderstood what Piers had been trying to tell him. Heaven knew, he could have run afoul of some colloquial idiom in the local language. Who knew how precise these subt.i.tles were, anyway?

Roger had already misinterpreted Katrina's actions once. Now, sitting with her on this bench, sharing cheese and wine, she couldn't look more unthreatening.

Roger looked up in the sky. There didn't seem to be any symbolism at all up there on this side of the church, only an endless expanse of white. It was true, Roger admitted: that endless sky could be considered bleak. But, with a full stomach and a proper frame of mind, it could also be considered peaceful.

Dr. Dee Dee Davenport had called him "incredibly lucky," and he supposed that he was. After all, he had visited maybe a dozen worlds in the Cineverse, many of them fraught with peril, and had escaped every one without a scratch. Maybe, Roger considered as he chewed, it was also a stroke of good fortune that had brought him to this Art Film world. This was the first place he'd been in the Cineverse where he could really pause and think.

He thought for an instant about the stranger with the blue-smoke cigar-the Plotmaster. He wondered if that mysterious figure had anything to do with his arriving in a contemplative place like this-if, indeed, he was being manipulated by this strange figure-manipulated along with everyone else in the Cineverse.

But too much contemplation, without facts to back it up, got Roger nowhere. No matter what the Plotmaster's plans were, Roger had to act for himself. He couldn't stay here, no matter how peaceful it seemed at the moment. He had to find Captain Crusader, save the Cineverse, figure out the riddle of the Plotmaster-and rescue Delores, if Delores was still rescuable. And that was just for starters.

A few minutes ago, his Captain Crusader Decoder Ring had failed to work, and he had panicked, blaming the failure on Professor Peril's tampering with the computer at the Inst.i.tute of Very Advanced Science. But, now that he thought about it, there could be other reasons for that failure. What if there wasn't something wrong with the ring itself, but in the way he had used it? He was in a different place, with different rules, and a different language. What if-for the ring to work-he had to say "See you in the funny papers" in the native tongue?

Of course! It only made sense; at least as much sense as Professor Peril having enough foresight to get the computer to sabotage his ring. Maybe he could get off this world after all!

But how could he learn to say "See you in the funny papers" in the local lingo? Roger thought back to other movies he had seen, and how people who didn't speak the same language managed to communicate. They somehow managed to act out their wishes, didn't they? He glanced at Katrina, and she looked curiously back at him. Roger would somehow have to reach her through sign language.

He pointed to himself. "Roger," he said.

Katrina pointed to herself and repeated her name. So she had the idea!Roger pointed to his eyes and said the first word he needed a translation for: "See."

Katrina pointed to her own eye and said "Snortz!"

Roger eagerly looked at the subt.i.tle.

eye, it read.

Roger sighed. This wasn't going to be easy. He had to be more demonstrative. He placed his index finger along his temple. He first pointed to his eye, then shot the finger straight ahead, as if it were a ray of light.

"Ah!" Katrina replied in sudden comprehension. "Gleeba snortz!"

pointing next to your eye, the translation read.

Roger wished he had played more charades in his life. How could you come up with sign language for one of the senses? You see with the eye. What could be simpler?

Surely, in a world so fraught with symbolism, Katrina was bound to make the connection. He shook his head and repeated the index finger move.

"Ah!" Katrina gave a how-could-she-be-so-stupid chuckle. She added triumphantly: "Snortz felten zubba-zubba!"

That sounded a little long to be "see," but perhaps it was colloquial. Roger looked hopefully at the subt.i.tle.

RIPPING YOUR EYE OUT AND THROWING IT A GREAT DISTANCE.

No. There had to be some other way to get his message across. Roger also didn't like the violent subtext of Katrina's suggestion. He thought again about Piers's fearful remarks concerning the dead sister.