Author's note: Cut toward your buddy, not towards yourself. You can buy the completed book at Amazon, B&N, and Smashwords. To paraphrase Finne, "And who wants to do that, anyway? "
The jungle was hot, humid, and full of exotic life. I was uncertain how we would find anything out of the ordinary in all the greenery, or how we would recognize it if we did. If it had to be the size of a house for us to notice, anything smaller was bound to miss our attention. Long before, I learned tricks to finding things, depending on what I had lost, and where it happened. There was the very effective 'retracing your steps.' I simply returned to the last spot the item's location was definitely known, and moved forward in space and time, until the point in time and space at which the item was lost. I merely reached down, and picked it up. This method was productive when looking for car keys in the living room, but was of less use when searching for out-of-place things in the midst of a jungle located in another dimension.
"How are we going to recognize anything out of the ordinary?" Niles complained. "I've never been in such an extraordinary place in my life. That tree, there. That's just a smashing, out-of-the-ordinary piece of tree, if one asks me. It's very high, don't you think?" He pointed up into the foliage.
I squinted. In the dim light of the understory, it was very difficult to see in any direction for any distance, especially straight up.
"Well, I'd guess it's two hundred feet," I said.
Finnie's gaze followed my indicating index finger. "That is a tiger balm tree." She sighted up her perfect arm, angling just so. "It's roughly 84 meters in height; say three hundred and fifty years old. It's a fairly old specimen, boar beetles will have it dead within six years, and there's a nest of ant monkeys about half way up."
Even Splice was impressed. "How do we know you're not just making that up?"
"You don't, except about the ant monkeys. That stuff falling in your hair is their dung."
Splice shrieked and jumped away from the tree. At that moment, there was a wet smack and a loud pop from somewhere off to our left.
Finnie dropped into her ninja crouch, the curtain parting in all the right places to allow her to lower her perfect body close to the earth and hug the ground. I envied it.
"Get down, and follow me!" Her voice was an order, and we all obeyed.
We ran in a half-crouch for a quarter-mile, pushing through the tangle of wild ginger, poinsettias the size of wheelbarrows, and bright pink bananas only the size of my pinkie finger. We tumbled down a moist, soggy hillside and fetched up against a large, dripping boulder at the edge of a slow moving stream about three feet wide. There was no path anywhere to be seen, and I knew we would never be able to find our way back to the house, even if we wanted to go back there.
Finnie stopped.
"I say, Finnie, what sorts of creatures are those ant monkeys back at that rather large tree? If they can fling their dung with that much, well, one hates to use such a vulgar term, but with such, shall we just say, gusto, they could be rather quite dangerous."
I looked at Niles. I thought, is this guy for real? Can anyone really get through life so clueless and inept? The answer was clearly yes, as he stood blinking before me.
"Niles, that was not ant monkey dung, or any other sort of dung. It hit the side of the tree, so it came in horizontally." I thrust my arm out, illustrating the point.
"Quite, quite. I had not considered that, what with not wanting dung on the old bean. Not dung, you say? I wonder what it was, then. It certainly made a wallop, what?"
Splice offered her expertise. "Someone shot at you, stupid. A high powered round, from a long way off. That's why we heard the bullet smack the tree, and then the pop of the gun. Simple ballistics and common sense tells me there's a sniper in the jungle, with a powerful rifle and an extraordinary scope."
Niles chewed on the information for a moment. "Sniper, you say? One doesn't like to consider there could be snipers taking potshots and such at the old bean. They're bound to hit something, sooner or later. Most of the snipers I've known are jolly good shots, if they have a moment to draw a bead."
Finnie eased herself back against the boulder. "It must be one of Bertram's hit men. He warned us they wouldn't give up."
"Bertram?" asked Niles.
I nodded. "Very pleasant fellow, very polite. He put out a contract on me, and it seems they're still trying to fulfill it."
"Good work ethic, that, but one could hope they were a bit less dedicated. Selfish, I guess. Still, there it is."
Splice walked the entire way around the boulder, and returned to where Finnie leaned back against it. I watched Splice with some interest. She circled the rock once, examining it closely, running her hands over its rough surface, and humming to herself. I had been listening to Niles, and keeping an eye on Finnie, so now I forced myself to pay attention to Splice. Finnie's perfection was such that a pink-haired girl, complete with tail, twisting around a rock in the middle of a jungle was unable to engage my full attention. It was not Splice's fault; it was all Finnie's doing.
"This rock is weird," Splice announced.
Finnie leaned forward, away from it. "What do you mean?"
"I mean weird. I think it's humming."
I put my ear to the rock. It was wet and I had a weird sensation that something would crawl into my ear, lay eggs and eat my brain, but I ignored it and pressed in. She was right. All the time I thought Splice was humming, it was the rock. The hum was a steady, low sound, like very precisely calibrated machinery running. I listened for a moment, and moved to a new spot. The hum was still there, the same pitch, the same volume. Niles leaned against the other side.
"By Jove, she's right! Now why would a rock hum?"
"Because it doesn't know the words," Finnie answered.
I laughed. Splice smiled, caught herself, and frowned. Niles just looked puzzled.
Finnie leaned forward on the rock and looked above it. "That was a joke, Niles. And who doesn't get it? You, that's who. But I think Pinkie here is right. This rock is humming, and that is out of the ordinary. This could be what we're looking for."
I looked at the rock with new interest and a certain respect. This rock enjoyed the good fortune of having had Finnie lean on it in both directions. No wonder it hummed. It was probably happy. Finnie was already feeling around, her beautiful hands quick and sure. She touched here and there on different bumps and reached into crevices, looking for something, anything, that might function as a triggering mechanism. Niles cocked his head, and began a search on his side; Splice was already doing the same. I stepped back.
The other technique I had learned for a search began with a step back. I tried to look at the whole picture, the entire scope of the situation, and then zero in on any area that looks interesting. The rock was just a rock, about eight feet high. There were enough hand-holds and jutting outcrops that a beginning rock climber would be able to scramble to the top, but I thought it would be past my skill level. The other three in our little party continued to search the base and as high as they could reach, but there were no shouts of discovery. Minutes ticked by, and sweat rolled down my neck, past my shirt, and into my pants. It was unbearably humid, but I also had the moist, tickling sensation that a cross-hair was being trained on the back of my neck.
"Boost me up," I said to Niles.
"What?"
"Boost me up. I want to look at the top."
Niles looked doubtful. "I think you might be a little on the large side for me to assist you."
"Oh, get out of the way, Niles." Finnie cupped her hands. "Jump on," she said.
I hesitated. I didn't want to put my muddy shoes on those perfect hands.
"Come on." She glanced back. "I have a feeling our trail has been found."
I stepped into her cupped hands and she flung me upward. The strength in her perfect shoulders was unbelievable. I caught the edge of the rock as I soared by it, and almost over to the other side. Finnie was beside me in a instant. We crouched together; there was barely room for the two of us.
"Niles changed his mind about helping?"
"Who needs Niles? Not me, that's who not."
I dropped my eyes from hers, and there it was. Jutting out of the rock was a dial, marked with the numbers from one to eighty. I hesitated for a moment, and then twisted the dial. Sixteen. Just past thirty-three. Then the whole way round, and stopped at forty-five. Back to the left, and stopped at seventy-eight. Record speeds, I thought. There was a click, and the line of a door appeared around the edge of the rock. We moved back to open it.
"Come on up," I called to Niles and Splice. "We've found the way in."
Author's note: You're still there? Tuck your chin and dig in; the end is almost in sight. You can follow me on twitter, but you can't like my Facebook page because I'm Facebook-free! For more information, see http://lostowl62.wix.com/erickflaig. Thank you for your support!