Jasper Dash and the Flame-Pits of Delaware (9 page)

Drgnan stumbled—the walls beat in and out around him.

Weasel Chops growled, “Think about this, kid, next time you decide to make alphabet soup with only the
Z
s.”

Stone—in front of his eyes—the flagstone floor—and Drgnan couldn't move his arms—could feel the gangsters grab him—lifted—his head swung—he tried to fight—couldn't… move his… hands.…

Help!
he thought.
Where is… help?

Jasper! Jasper Dash!

Drgnan's old friend… best friend… Drgnan had gotten Jasper out of all kinds of scrapes: yeti—a lake of fire—attack ostriches—big gum… all sorts of… Yes, Jasper… Jasper Dash… Where… where was he?

And with his final waking breaths, Drgnan sent his mind out roving—spinning above the hurtling mountains, the frigid air, the billowy clouds… across the states, labeled as to capital, major rivers, imports and exports… across the nation…

To where Jasper Dash sat, staring at an opponent in the Pelt gymnasium…

HELP! JASPER DASH, I NEED YOUR HELP!

And then falling… darkness…

Drgnan Pghlik, brave young monk of Vbngoom, slept soundly.

It was not every day a wall collapsed at the Dupontville Fine Excellent View Stay Hotel.

It was every other day. The people who worked there were used to it. After a few days, most of the guests were used to it too.

“New balcony, honey,” said one tourist to his wife through a hole in the wall.

She was in the bathroom on the john, reading a knitting magazine. “Nice,” she said. “I never knew you could see the gutter factory from here.”

“Yeah,” said her husband, getting out his camera. He looked at the factory through the lens. He twiddled with some settings. “Autumn light on smokestacks,” he muttered, “you ain't getting away from me now.”

Meanwhile, the wreckage down below moved. A few pieces of concrete slid to the side. A door banged open. A cloud of dust puffed into the air.

Jasper Dash, Boy Technonaut, poked his head out and surveyed the wreckage. He was wearing a pith helmet.

From below him came a voice.

“Jasper?” said Katie. “Jasper? Am I alive?”

“I believe so,” he replied. “Or if we are in Heaven, there are more mules than I imagined.”

There were about four mules standing and looking at the pile of concrete and metal, wondering if there was anything there worth eating.

“Jasper?” said Katie's tinny, echoing voice. “Jasper, can we make an agreement to never, ever, ever use the Gyroscopic Sky Suite again?”

“I don't think we have to worry,” said Lily, sticking her head out next to Jasper's. “It's crushed.”

“Well, at least something good came out of this,” said Katie, pulling herself out of the capsule, covered with brown dust. She slapped
at her shirt and pants to get the grime out.

“Dash it all,” said Jasper. “I guess we'll have to check into the hotel in the normal way.”

“Ah,” said Katie sarcastically. “You mean, instead of being fired from a rocket-launcher into the side of the hotel and having explosive clamps blow up and make a new doorway, we might just, I don't know, walk in and say, ‘I'd like a room, please?'”

“Exactly,” agreed Jasper.

“Well, that's a novel idea,” said Katie.

“Sometimes, Katie,” he replied, “new situations call for new solutions.” He was already hopping down the chunks of concrete. Jasper wasn't very good at noticing sarcasm. And he was at his happiest after explosions.

Lily reached down and grabbed another pith helmet and scrambled after him, tottering on rubble. Katie shook her head and followed.

A secret policeman dressed in a suit too short for him and an old Tyrolean hat watched them go. He flipped open a little notepad and began writing.

Katie, Lily, and Jasper walked into the lobby of the hotel. There were some plastic chairs to sit in, most of them turned toward the wall, and a fountain that hadn't worked for years.

“Hello,” said the proprietor, a paunchy man in a soccer shirt and flip-flops. He then spoke rapidly in a language Lily had never heard before that sounded like it might have roots in Eastern Europe, the planet Krypton, and a rock tumbler.

The three kids didn't know what to say.

In English the proprietor said, “You are not speak Doverian? You speak English?”
*

The kids nodded.

“Okay, okay,” said the man. “Welcome to Dupontville Fine Excellent View Stay Hotel. I can get you a room?”

“Yes, please, sir,” said Jasper. “One room with three beds.”

The proprietor nodded. “Come, follow. Follow, follow.” He took some keys off the desk and led the three kids up a flight of stairs. The hallway above was dark. There were rooms with numbers on the doors and a sound of rushing water. Lily was a bit worried about the sound of rushing water. She wondered when the ceiling was going to collapse.

The man rattled the keys in the lock of one room and threw the door open. “Very nice room,” he said. “Very nice.”

They looked in.

“Three beds,” he said. “Television, chair, five coat hangers. Yes?”

“It's missing a wall,” said Katie.

“Very nice view. Very nice view.”

“Maybe we weren't specific enough,” said Katie. “We'd like a room with three beds and at least four walls.”

The man nodded and led them up another
flight of stairs. Here there was a light, but it flickered off whenever the wind in the broken window blew the dangling electrical cord back and forth through the puddle. He let them into another bedroom.

They looked around for a minute. There were three beds, four walls, and six coat hangers. Katie and Lily checked out the bathroom. Jasper went to the window and squinted out, calculating the sight lines for snipers.

“New bathroom, all modern amenities,” said the proprietor.

“We'll take it,” declared Jasper.

“There's a goat in the shower,” said Katie.

“Very new goat,” the man said. “Very good, nice goat.”

“Yeah,” said Katie, “but I don't think—”

Jasper asked gravely, “Do we have to feed it? Because if yes, I think you should take some off the nightly rate.”

“Okay okay,” said the proprietor. “I feed goat. If you stay long, you shave goat three times a year.”

“It's a bargain, sir,” said Jasper, holding out his hand.

They shook on it.

“Very good,” said the proprietor.

Lily had walked over to one of the beds and pulled back the covers. “Um,” she said, “this isn't a bed. It's four spies curled up with pillows on them.”

“I am the foot of the bed,” announced one of the spies.

“Look here,” said Jasper. “That's just not right. We demand a real third bed.”

“Okay okay,” said the proprietor. “No spies. Cot instead by tonight. We will put up cot here.” He spoke in rapid Doverian to the four spies. He jerked his thumb. Three of them got up and shamefacedly filed toward the door.

“And you,” said Jasper to the last one.

“I cannot move,” said the spy. He stayed hunkered on the floor.

One of the men by the door said, “Mrglik, his leg is fall asleep.”

“We will have Mrglik remove,” said the proprietor. “No problem, children. No worry.”

“Gone by tonight?” said Jasper.

“Gone by tonight. Okay?”

“Fine.”

“Okay.” The proprietor smiled and nodded. “Good. You need anything—tea, coffee, sheet, room service, police—you just say so near the painting of friendly clown here.”

“Thank you.”

“Speak slow, though, please. Sometimes it not work so good.”

So they had a room for the night. Now it was time to go out and find a guide—and explore the ancient and exotic streets of Dover!

Lily's first real view of the city was overwhelming. So many things were happening at once that she couldn't take it all in: Goats wandered in the mud and broken blacktop of the street, and chickens, too, strutting in the dirty bushes, and three-wheeled cars swerved around stray dogs and honked, and there were schoolkids dressed in tunics and smiley-faced masks, and men with baskets of roots, and bicycle carts painted red and green and yellow, in the backseats of which women in tiaras and lipstick reclined and yelled into cell phones. Blond barbarians, mercenary warriors from Hazzard Landing, from Broadkill and Slaughter Beaches, shoved their way through the crowds, swords strapped to their oiled backs,
while priests of mystery religions peered out from behind their veils and crept into alleys. There were girls in their
blrga-
shirts and
pochbtvms
, traditional dress of Dover (
see illus.
), buying snacks from an old man with snakes around his shoulders. Old women almost bent double stumbled along with broken televisions tied to their backs with twine. Cattle lowed. Sheep bleated. Cologne salesmen walked to and fro with huge atomizers, puffing scent on men who staggered under burdens of bricks, and ladder peddlers carried their wares on their head, nearly knocking down tall men every time they looked both ways to cross the road.

Lily was thrilled by all of it. She couldn't take it all in. It was like breathing with her eyes. She didn't always like what she saw, but she was glad she was seeing it.

“What language are they speaking?” asked Lily.

“Doverian,” said Jasper. “It is deuced hard to learn. I do not mind telling you that the pronunciation is the absolute dickens. Since the beginning of the Autarch's despotic rule, the state has been too poor for many vowels.”

“Do you speak it?” said Lily.

“No, I'm afraid not. I was silent for that year in Vbngoom. But I know it is a language of great poetic beauty.”

“It sounds like someone being kicked off a cliff,” said Katie grumpily. “And I mean a cliff with metal railings.”

They walked through the muddy streets. In the shadow of the huge, blackened concrete towers, mules pulled carts, and people had made fire-pits, where they cooked meat and noodles for sale. Laundry dried on electrical wires.

One of the tusked, six-armed warriors of far Lumbrook stood lolling against a wall, rattling one of his many hands around in a bag of Doritos. He watched lazily as they passed.

The city of Dover had sparkled, Jasper
explained, before the coming of the Autarch. But he stole from the poor to give to the rich; and now there were many things broken, and few things whole.

The three stopped to get some lunch, sitting on huge pieces of concrete and drinking noodle slurries out of old margarine containers. Though the surroundings were grim, the food was very cheap and was tasty, too.

“What are those spoons on some of the rooftops?” asked Lily.

“Those aren't spoons,” said Jasper. “They're an ancient form of transportation in this state. Vaultapults. Commuter catapults. You get into one, an attendant points you in the right direction, pulls the vaultapult back, and sends you flying to the roof of the right building.”

“That seems kind of dangerous,” said Katie.

“People here are used to it by long custom,” said Jasper. “Still, it is not easy to land without harm. It takes a keen eye, a quick leg, and springy ankles. I used the vaultapults occasionally at Vbngoom, but they still worry me. For example,
I hope that I shall never have to use vaultapults during a high-speed chase by night over the rooftops of Dover.”

“So that's what I saw on top of that model the Delawarians were selling to Mr. Lecroix from the museum,” said Katie.

“Indeed,” said Jasper. “Humble though that model may be, it is one of the few representations of Vbngoom and was made by a great master in the art of scissors and taping.”

They each slurped more noodle slurry and picked up cabbage with their tongs, looking up to the patch of sky between buildings as bodies hurled through the air from catapult to catapult, some dragging bundles of cloth, baskets of candles, or sheep with them as they flew. It was a fascinating sight.

Just as they were finishing their meal, they heard a cry of, “Look at the little dears!” It did not sound very Doverian. They glanced up to see a woman dressed in jeans, duck boots, a head scarf, and a brand-new
blrga-
shirt. She was peering down at them. She had clapped her
hand to her throat and was saying, “Poor little things… Little Delawarians. What's—your—name? Do—you—speak—English?”

“I am Jasper Dash, Boy Technonaut.”

“My—name—is—Lisa—Buldene. I—am—from—New—York—City.” More to herself than to Jasper, she said, “Poor thing. It looks like no one's given you new clothes since 1943. Here,” she said, reaching into her bag. “Take—some—candy—bars.”

“Great,” said Katie. “Thanks.”

“While we appreciate your kindness,” said Jasper, “we cannot possibly accept a gift of candy while our toothbrushes are buried under so much rubble.”