If the bot had had any hands, it would have rubbed them. “I have been waiting a long time to hear that,” it said, and took over control of the vehicle.
Something was happening to the beautifully inlaid little box in Caballine’s hand. It seemed as though a tiny thundercloud was roiling inside there. The thing vibrated like a beehive, but there was absolutely no sound. But there was something, a feeling that set her teeth on edge and made her eyes water, as though invisible nails were being dragged down a mental blackboard.
Crazy, I know, but that’s how it feels.
She flung the box away from her, but not before the tiny thundercloud flowed from the container and coated her hand. The box rolled beneath the coffee table—a petrified giant flat toadstool that Holly had once called so stereotypical it makes me want to scream—and it lay there emitting whatever it was that had set Caballine’s nerves on edge.
“What is it, darling?” she turned to ask the little ARClight, but it lay dead on the floor, a tiny wisp of smoke curling from its head.
The box did that, she guessed. Whatever this thing was, it hadn’t come from Foaly, because it felt somehow wrong. And now the wrongness was on her hand. Caballine was not in any way a skittish centaur, but she felt a premonition of danger that almost buckled her legs.
Something bad is about to happen. Even worse than all the bad things that have happened today.
Many fairies would have fallen to pieces under the weight of such ominous circumstances, but if the universe expected such a reaction from Caballine Wanderford Paddox Foaly, then the universe was about to be surprised, for one of the characteristics that had drawn Foaly to his bride-to-be was her fighting spirit. And she did not sustain this spirit with the power of positive thinking alone. Caballine had achieved the level of blue sash in the ancient centaurian martial art of Nine Sticks, which included the head and tail as weapons. She often worked out in the LEP gymnasium with Holly Short, and indeed had once accidentally kicked Holly through a rice-paper wall when the image of an old boyfriend had suddenly popped into her head.
Caballine trotted to a locked tall cupboard in the bedroom and instructed it to open. Inside was her blue sash, which she quickly draped across her chest. The sash would be of no practical use if attackers were on the way. What would help was the long whippy bamboo pole next to it, which whistled as it cut the air and could, in the right hands, skin the hide from a troll’s back.
The texture of the pole against her palm soothed Caballine, to the point where she felt a little foolish standing there in full Nine Sticks regalia.
Nothing bad is going to happen. I’m just overreacting.
Then the front door exploded.
Foaly’s navigation system drove like a maniac, cackling with a glee that Foaly could not remember programming into it. And even though Foaly was consumed with nightmarish visions of Caballine in the clutches of fire-breathing goblins, he could not help but take notice of the devastation that streaked by the window—clouds of thick smoke, and flares of orange and blue flame blurred by the van’s manic speed. LEP officers picked through rubble and wreckage looking for survivors, and smoke pillars rose from a dozen familiar landmarks.
“Take it easy,” he said, slapping the nav-bot. “I won’t be much use to Caballine if I arrive dead.”
“Chill, old dude,” said the tiny bot-head. “It’s not like you’re going to be much use anyway. Caballine knows Nine Sticks. What are you going to do? Throw a keyboard?”
Old dude? thought Foaly, wishing now that he had never given the bot an experimental personality chip, wishing even more that the chip did not have his own personality. But the bot was right. What was he going to do? It would be tragic indeed if Caballine were killed trying to save him. Suddenly Foaly felt like an aquaphobic lifeguard. Was he bringing anything of use to this situation?
The nav-bot seemed to read his mind, which was impossible; but Foaly resolved to patent it just in case he had accidentally invented a telepathic robot.
“Play to your strengths, dude,” it said.
Of course, thought Foaly. My strengths. What are my strengths? And where are they?
They were, of course, in the back of the van, where he stored a thousand half-finished and quasi-legal experiments and replacement parts. When Foaly thought about it, he realized that there were things in his truck capable of blowing a hole in the time stream if they ever bumped together, so he had decided long ago not to think about it, as the alternative was to clean out his van.
“Keep driving,” he instructed the nav-bot, wriggling out of his harness and backing across the small bridge that linked the cab to the rear carriage. “I need to look in the back.”
“Mind your head, dude,” said the bot gleefully, a second before hurtling over a humpbacked bridge outside of a pixie dental care facility built in the shape of a giant molar.