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As it turned out, Finnie did not need a weapon. I learned in that moment that Finnie, herself, was a weapon. Not just her fingernail; that was only the most obvious thing about her. Her every sinew, muscle, bone, and thought, was weaponized and ready to deal with whatever danger she encountered.
She pulled the creature's index finger as high toward her head as she was able. I held my breath. There were now three fingers around her slim, perfectly formed waist, and I could just see the hairy thumb. With one smooth, terrifying motion, Finnie snapped the finger back. She did not snap it back as far as it would go. She snapped it back farther than it would go; much farther. She nearly tied that finger in a knot, and I know we all heard the loud pop as something deep inside fractured.
The beast shrieked, and opened his ape-like hand. Finnie dropped to what would have been the floor if the house were upright. Her gown billowed delicately about her, and she landed crouched on one leg, the other poised behind her. She looked ready to spring in any direction.
She did not pause for me to examine her pose more closely, although that would have been okay with me. Instead, she put us into action.
"Come on," she said, "That's one upset monster out there."
The beast's roars progressed instantly from screams of pain to howls of fury, and the walls began to shudder from his blows. One-handed, I guessed.
"I agree with you, Finnie," Niles said, "And I think King Kong may actually be on his way in. Let's vacate the premises, post haste."
There was one other window at the far end of the room we were in, and we ran for it. I dodged a few pictures and sconces on the wall, and there were numerous pieces of ruined furniture. Niles, however, was correct; the gorilla, or giant bear with ape-like fingers, or Bigfoot, or whatever it was, was on its way into the building. It ripped the far wall apart, and shoved its ugly face through the opening, snarling and gnashing its teeth. Every second another bit of house came hurtling toward us, and it was clear he would be in with us, or us out with him, in a few twinklings of an eye.
Finnie was in the lead, and I was close behind her. Her gown moved like a cloud around her perfect form, and in any other circumstance, it would have been a pleasure just to watch her run. As things were, it was hard to take the time to appreciate the finer things. Splice and Niles were behind me, and Niles was having trouble. I could not tell if he twisted his ankle, or if he caught his foot in something, or if he simply lost his boat-shoe.
He fumbled on his knees, and cried, "Leave me! Oh, dash it all, please don't; is what I mean!"
Finnie paused at the window and motioned me through. I pulled it sideways, which should have been up, and climbed out. There was about a five-foot drop into a tangled jungle of vines and creeper. Splice was right behind me. I waited for Finnie, but Niles fell through first.
"She threw me!" he complained, "Finnie just jolly picked yours truly up, and threw me!"
I heard fabric tearing, and Finnie dropped beside us. She carried the curtain from the window.
"What's that for?" I asked.
"I really like this pattern."
Somehow, we had been transported from the dry, desert wastes of the Swarm-dimension, to a hot, humid jungle. The politically-correct, fashionable term may be rain-forest. But this was a jungle, plain and simple. It was an impenetrable forest, not a pleasant land full of charming people living in harmony with their environment, singing morning songs with parrots and munching on those insects whose poisonous secretions only exist to cure human diseases. It was a jungle; and although I sensed the presence of a sun, somewhere, it was so dark we could barely see the trunks of the giant, slime-covered trees. A thousand eyes stared from the undergrowth in any direction, but as soon as I managed to focus on them, they vanished. I heard a thousand sounds I had never heard before, and any one of them, alone, would have been enough to move the rating of a PG-13 movie to an R. They were ghastly. And behind us, but closing the gap, was a seventeen-foot tall beast with a broken finger who wanted to discuss the matter.
Finnie wrapped the curtain around her waist. It certainly looked much better on her than it did on the window, but it was not the time for such things. She tucked it in before running.
A few days before, a hundred-yard run would have made me shamble along like a zombie before I was halfway to the finish line. Several times after I had turned thirty, I decided to start jogging. One or two trips out usually finished me. I always found my lungs burned and I couldn't pull enough air in, and the next day my body refused to cooperate when I tried to run again. Now, I adopted a ground-eating lope, almost wolf-like in its efficiency. Finnie ran a few paces ahead of me, and it was not until I realized that the soles of her feet were perfect in every respect, and just as beautiful as the rest of her, that it dawned on me that she was not wearing shoes. Still, she moved through the jungle swift and sure, her feet striking the earth lightly, hardly leaving a trace. And Splice, I found, could do more than fix computers. Maybe a seventeen foot tall monster is a better motivator than I expected, but she certainly was having no problem keeping up with me. Niles struggled, but only because of his clumsiness and the lose of a shoe in the turned-over house.
"Oh, I say!" he cried, and tumbled again. I glanced back. Niles struggled to his feet. He was covered with mud and muck, and had some greenery caught in his hair. He looked a bit like Bacchus after a very wild night.
"Are you alright?" I called.
"Oh, just smashing, Ishmael, smashing. Smashing into everything, right?" He shook his head.
"Is that thing still behind us?" Splice panted, and risked a glance over her shoulder. I looked back as well. The jungle was quiet. It did not appear that we had lost King Kong, at least for the moment, so perhaps it was safe to slow down and get our breath back.
"Finnie, what do you think?"
Finnie stopped and checked the draping of her curtain. She had a way of carrying herself that would make a barrel look good, so it was not surprising that the curtain accentuated her figure and the remains of her gown. She pulled one straggling bit of material into place and studied the jungle behind us.
I rested with my hands on my knees, panting. Niles leaned on me and waved, unable to speak for the moment.
"If he's not behind us by now, I don't think he's coming," Finnie said. "We can probably walk for a little ways. Can you move?"
I straightened. "I'm good." Niles only nodded, although his wheezing slowed down.
"Do you know where we are, Finnie?" I waved vaguely around, meaning the entire dimension. I didn't see how anyone, even with GPS, could pinpoint our location.
She nodded as she walked. Niles and I caught up with her, and although Finnie set a fast pace, we were able to keep up, and Splice patted Niles on the back. Finnie was able to speak without huffing and puffing, and her stamina impressed me almost as much as her perfect legs. Almost.
"I think I was here once before, which means your father's theory is probably right. The decision-trees aren't unidirectional; they turn back on themselves and meet again."
Splice interjected, "Like gears."
Finnie nodded again. "Yes. Thanks, Splice, for making it so clear. And stop glaring at me, that's just rude. Gears. So they come around again, and again. If we were able to plot their time-frames, you could ride through the multiverse at will. That'd be cool."
I had a reputation at the bank of always having a one-track mind. Like a lot of reputations, it wasn't entirely fair, but at the same time, there was a bit of truth in. Well, maybe a lot of truth. I was a bit of a perfectionist, but a sloppy one, if there was such a thing. It was this facet of my mind that insisted on keeping track of things, and the thing that most needed tracking was how much time we had left. I asked Finnie.
"A little less than eighteen hours," she answered. "And we need to get some rest, or I'm not going to be any good to anybody. Aren't you tired, Niles?"
"Finnie, I don't remember being so tired as I am now. You know, a chap doesn't like to complain, but the long and the short of it, that I'm just all in. Completely beat, old bean. And all this tommyrot about dimensions and gears is making my head spin. I'd like a toddy and a warm bed, and it doesn't look like we'll get either of those soon. There's only jungle ahead, behind, and dash it all, to either side. How do we even know we're going the right way?"
Finnie's face took on a hard, steely look. Her face, although already perfect in proportion and every particular, became stronger and more determined. She had a cute, almost chipmunk-like chin, and it jutted out at moments that made my heart flutter like a hummingbird in a blender.
"Niles, it's no wonder you were kicked out of six colleges."
"Seven; Finnie, you're forgetting Harvard. I was only a student for that one afternoon, but one must admit that the experience should count for something."
"Right. Now, don't interrupt me again or I'll be forced to do something painful to you."
Niles, wisely, did not interrupt Finnie again for the next thirty seconds. "Now, it's no wonder you were kicked out of more than six colleges. When was the last time you saw a two-story, stucco house, laying on its side in the jungle?"
I realized what she was driving at. "You don't. It's out of place, so it must not be from this dimension. The gears are meshing whenever we see anything out of place."
Finnie squeezed my hand. "You really can be a smart cookie, Ishmael. It's a shame those hit men are going to take you out."
My heart sank faster than the stock market on a sub-prime mortgage day. I had forgotten. Bertram's prepaid hit men would be waiting for me when we returned to the Base, and they were very, very good at their work.
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