We weren’t in a room—we were in a large, clear, circular tube that looked like part of the biggest hamster habitat in the galaxy. This went around what looked like a huge ball of water. And what was on the other sides of the tube was also water. Black water. There were things in the water—things I couldn’t make out, but they gave off a very dangerous feeling. It was like being in one of those shark experience exhibits, where you walked through the tube and the sharks swam around you. Only it was about a thousand times bigger and far more menacing.
Tried not to look down. Failed. Yep, they were under us, too. Joy.
But I saw more than the black water and whatever was lurking inside it. There was actually plenty of light—lights, or things that gave off light, were somehow floating throughout the hamster habitat we found ourselves in—and I could see tubes like we were in that ran all through this area.
The squirrels were moving about inside the tubes, as were the horses and elephants. Couldn’t spot my men and hoped it was because they were out of view, versus captured by Grumpy or Dopey, or worse. The platforms raised and lowered in tubes. So that was why the elevators here had no sides—they didn’t need them.
And around every tube was the black water.
There was more, though. Some sort of light refraction that seemed to happen when the lights hit the black water. Algar’s second song on my playlist suddenly made sense. Better late than never. “So that’s how he’s doing it. He’s using the reflection of the water here to help him keep his illusion going.” But why would a powerful superconsciousness need to do that?
Examined the elephants that had just been “turned on” and were out of their bin. They weren’t cute anymore. Neither were the horses. They appeared to have been squished down somehow, to make them smaller, with no attention paid to aesthetics or comfort. The squirrels, on the other hand, were all big, human-sized, and it seemed as though they’d been stretched out in order to achieve that. But all them were deformed in a way that looked painful.
The rabbits I could see, however, still looked like rabbits, and I could see more than just Peter and SuperBun, because rabbits were racing around in the tubes, too. The rabbits still being normal was presumably why I’d been able to talk to them but none of the others. Not that I’d tried with the horses but, looking at them, chose not to bother with the attempt. They weren’t organic beings anymore, not really—none of them were.
Felt really bad for all the horses, elephants and squirrels. They were Earth animals originally and Dopey had stolen them and then turned them into unnatural things, definitely against their wills. Because he could.
Rage was building, and that was good, but I needed to know what to do and who to do it to. “Why did the water sprayed on us make our weapons stop working but not hurt us?”
Peter replied that he wasn’t sure, but that was why SuperBun had had our android taken away—so the water wouldn’t harm him. The water didn’t hurt organic things, as far as Peter knew, but machines it destroyed somehow.
In a galaxy as varied as the one we were in, this didn’t shock me all that much. We had an entire race of people who mentally connected and talked to computers and metals from birth. Why not have water that destroyed machinery but didn’t hurt organic life? If it truly didn’t hurt us, for which I felt the jury was definitely still out.
Before I could ask another question, Dopey ran into the room. “Why are you still here?”
“Um . . . I’m resting?”
He made the exasperation sound, ran over to a bin, grabbed a couple of elephants and some horses, and shouted at the squirrels to keep on spraying.
My music changed to The New Pornographers’ “The Body Says No” which made me pause. I was sure that the animals’ bodies had all indeed said no, but why would Algar be reinforcing that? I’d figured it out, and I kind of presumed he knew, since he was big on having songs repeat when I wasn’t catching the clues.
“What does Dopey, or, Lord Dupay actually look like?” I asked Peter, very quietly.
He shuddered, but showed me.
Shuddered right along with Peter. Because Dopey did actually look like Santa. Only, not all of Santa. Because there wasn’t a full person there.
CHAPTER 37
DOPEY WAS HALF OF A SANTA, cut down the middle, in a ragged way, as if the two sides had pulled away from each other and ripped, which was exactly what I figured had happened.
He spun back toward me. It was worse looking at him from the front. “You need to leave. The men with you were smart and followed me. Why not you?”
“I’m a rebel, me.”
“Suit yourself!” Dopey ran out of the room. As Evil Geniuses went, he needed a lot of work to make the grade. Then again, what he’d done to the animals might qualify him into the League, if only in a Junior capacity.
The squirrels kept on super soaking the animals in the bins. There were still a frightening number of bins left for them to bring to life. Had a feeling that even if I tried, the squirrels, elephants, and horses weren’t going to come with me.
“Was Dopey always half a person?” I asked my Rabbit Interpreter.
No, he hadn’t been. He and Grumpy had been as one, and then they’d had their fight and ripped each other apart. Literally.
Always nice to be right. “How did SuperBun get his powers?” I asked Peter carefully.
He showed me the water. SuperBun had fallen in when they’d first arrived on this world, before the tubes had been inserted and it was all grass on top. Dopey had saved the rabbit just in time, but that had enhanced his natural animal telepathy greatly.
“They’re fighting over the water on this planet? Dopey and Grumpy, I mean.”
Peter didn’t know. He just wanted to escape and, hopefully, take the rest of the animals with him. Even the monster animals, which was how all rabbits thought of them now.
SuperBun took the opportunity of, I hoped, Dopey being out of the room and also presumably not coming back this time to hop over to me and look up with an expression animals give to a human when opposable thumbs or other helpful things are required—he looked scared, pitiful, and hopeful.
Bent down and scooped him up. “As if I was leaving you here? Now, where’s my android? And my ocellar, Peregrine, husband, and friends, not necessarily in that order. And why are your brethren all chasing my people topside?”
SuperBun apologized about that. It was to get more shuttles to come down, or maybe even our ship. So the animals could escape with us. He also apologized for lying—he and his people were not native to this world, they’d killed nothing and no one, that was just the story Dopey had told him to tell any visitors to scare and impress them, and the rabbits were living in terror, not in charge. Dopey had dealt with this world’s predators, not the rabbits.
“Wow. It’s nice to know you aren’t vicious killers. It’s also kind of a pity you’re not the one in charge. You seem so much smarter than Dopey, aka Lord Dupay, does.”