The Octopus Effect (23 page)

Stunned at his ability to gasp underwater, he gasped again, though he felt terribly foolish afterward. He continued to touch the area around his throat, sure that humans weren't supposed to have multiple slits in their throats where he did. Especially not slits that rose and fell so rhythmically. It didn't take Simon long to realize what they were.

True, Gilio had only given Simon one octopus attribute—the flexibility. But Simon had touched the symbols for octopus DNA in the
Teacher's Edition of Biology,
and, as noted, Biology abilities are transferrable by touch. Simon's connection to the Books of Physics and Biology was apparently enough to allow him access without Gilio intending it. So Simon had absorbed many—perhaps all—octopus attributes, and as mentioned earlier, they most certainly had gills. And now, so did he.

Simon didn't realize the
why
of this, yet. For now he was content to focus on being alive. That and
staying
alive. More importantly, he thought about his friends. While he was at the bottom of a lake, his friends were on the surface, fighting for their lives. That would not do. He used his gravity to reverse the normal pull into a push, launching himself up through the water at three times a normal falling rate. He burst through the surface of the pond and flew high into the air.

Simon opened his mouth and gasped, sucking in air and reveling in its fresh taste. It was a delight to breathe normally again, to taste the air as it moved through his nose and mouth. He noted the peculiar sensation of his gills closing up, presumably disappearing until needed again.

Simon hovered in midair for a moment, squinting to make sense of the scene before him. Down by the lakeshore, Owen and Flangelo were facing Alysha, who was turning and stumbling toward them. Beyond them were mammoths and sabertooths lying on the charred and smoldering ground.

Simon smiled: his friends had done it! He couldn't wait to celebrate their victory and tell them about his remarkable new discovery. He shifted gravity so he was falling toward them, zooming through the raindrops that smacked against his already soaked face and body. He was so intent on reaching them that he didn't notice the
Smilodon
until it was too late; the beast was already out of the lake and pouncing on his friends.

What happened next was almost too quick for me to follow. Owen and Alysha, sluggish after all their formula use, moved too slowly, but Flangelo was a hair faster. He shoved Owen toward Alysha, placing himself between the
Smilodon
and the kids.

At the same time, Simon instinctively stretched his arms out toward the huge cat, as anyone might do when they saw something disastrous happening far away. Normally such automatic reactions were futile, but Simon Bloom was far from normal.

He felt the result instantly; the gravitational pull around the sabertooth changed, yanking it back from his friends. Even so, Simon wasn't in time; the beast's claws raked Flangelo's shoulder and side, tearing through his clothes and his skin. Simon followed through with gravity, hammering the
Smilodon
into one of the fallen mammoths; it connected with a thump and lay still.

It would only be much later that Simon would realize he hadn't actively triggered his gravity control; he'd reached out with his arms and the formula had somehow responded. An important detail . . . but for later.

That moment, however, Simon focused on getting to Flangelo as soon as possible. He tore through the air and landed by the bleeding man's side just as the startled Alysha and Owen caught him midfall.

Simon stared at the bright red of the wound, almost hypnotized in his horror. True, the injury would have been much worse had Simon not stopped the
Smilodon
, but the damage was done. He had to do something! But what?

Simon felt a mental flash from his backpack, still on the ground where he'd dropped it when the mammoth had knocked him into the lake. The flash was a message from the Book, tucked cozily inside during the entire battle.

The apple
, was all it said, but that triggered memory flashes for Simon. The apple with a bite missing. Ralfagon chewing. The apple whole, as if never bitten. Simon whispered the words of his space-time formula, focusing on an image of Flangelo as he was before the attack.

Flangelo was sagging in Owen's and Alysha's arms when the four gushing claw marks began to ripple like the surface of the storm-smacked lake behind Simon. Before his startled friends' eyes, the slashes shrank and the blood flowed in reverse. The red stains on Flangelo's and Owen's clothes and the spatter on the ground rose up into the air and returned to Flangelo's body.

After a moment, the blood and wounds were gone: not healed so much as never happened. Simon had moved time backward around Flangelo's wound, making it so it never happened. Even the rips in his shirt were gone. If someone were to look at the sabertooth who'd attacked Flangelo, they'd find the blood gone from its claws . . . though it would still be unconscious from Simon's gravity-attack. As with the apple at Ralfagon's office (and with Sirabetta at the end of the last Chronicle), the time-reverse was highly localized to its target.

Simon exhaled in relief, and Flangelo stared at him with an amazed expression. “What . . . what happened?” he chirped weakly.

“Simon!” Owen shouted with relief. “You saved him!”

“And you're okay!” Alysha added.

Simon might have looked okay, if rather soggy, but in truth he was far from it. His mind was reeling. The last few days' events had already been fairly stressful physically, mentally, and emotionally. But the last five minutes took things a bit too far.

“I think that's enough for today,” Simon said. And then he passed out, dropping to the muddy ground with a plop.

Owen, Alysha, and Flangelo rushed to Simon's side.

Owen was closest; when he reached Simon, he knelt into the mud and did his best imitation of a TV-drama paramedic. He checked Simon's pulse, listened to his breathing, and pried open his eyelids to check his pupils.

“Well?” Flangelo asked. “What's wrong with him?”

“How should I know? I'm not a doctor,” Owen said. “But he's alive.”

Alysha knelt beside Simon, too. “Look, if you got smacked around by a giant mammoth, drowned in a lake, and then miraculously healed a sabertooth wound, you'd need a nap, too.”

“Not healed—undid,” Flangelo said, pointing at his undamaged clothes. “Maybe that was too much for him, though.”

“He's got two Books on his side and a ton of power,” Alysha said. “There's probably nothing that can stop him. He'll wake up when he's ready.”

Flangelo frowned. “I hope you're right. But if being in the Union has taught me anything, it's that even the weakest can hurt you and the strongest can get hurt.”

Owen looked around at the mammoths and sabertooths scattered across the smoldering ground. He noticed several pairs of eyes staring out from the tree line and remembered the many other types of megafauna they'd seen before. “Maybe we should go someplace safer to talk about this?”

“Is there a place we can hide out?” Alysha asked Flangelo.

“Normally I'd say there were plenty, but I don't know what might attack us.”

“What about those huts we passed over in the desert?” Owen asked.

Flangelo nodded. “It's worth a try. Shame to backtrack, though.”

“More of a shame to get eaten,” Alysha said. “Dealing with Sirabetta will have to wait until Simon recovers.”

“You're right. Follow me,” Flangelo said. He looked around. “And hurry.”

“If we want speed, let's just fly with Owen's velocity,” Alysha said. “No offense, but he can move us much faster than you can go.”

“Wow, lightning rod,” Flangelo warbled. “Did you just say ‘no offense'?”

“What happened to ‘hurry'?” Owen asked.

Owen and Alysha put on their backpacks and gave Simon's to Flangelo to wear. The kids grabbed Simon's arms and Flangelo put his hands on Owen's shoulders; Owen used velocity to lift them, and his octopus camouflage kept them hidden. They soared into the air, keeping high above the ground to avoid any further danger or bad weather. They soon reached the border of the desert and landed outside one of the huts.

“What's the deal with these?” Alysha asked. “Can't you make nicer homes?”

“You'll see,” Flangelo said, “so long as we can find one that's empty.”

Owen closed his eyes and concentrated on sensing velocity. He pointed to a hut. “That one. I can't sense any movement inside; it's either empty or everyone's asleep.”

“Wait here,” Flangelo chirped. He shifted to sparrow form and flew around the hut. He changed back to human form and entered. A few moments later he came out and waved to the kids.

Moments later Alysha led the way while Owen used velocity to float Simon into the hut. It was, to put it mildly, quite nice. It was considerably larger on the inside; they'd walked into something the size of a small trailer made of mud and found they were in something the size of a spacious, well-decorated one-floor house.

The temperature was perfect, but it took my link to my Chronicle subjects to fully appreciate this. To Flangelo, it was like the climate in a shady, slightly moist forest. To Alysha, a big fan of tennis, the air resembled the fading warmth of late afternoon on a sunny day. For Owen, happiest parked in front of his television, there was a slight chill to the air and a flat, still quality to the room that basically screamed naptime.

In other words, rather than adjusting the room to the inhabitants' needs, the hut was adjusting each inhabitant's body to make them feel comfortable. Quite a neat trick.

Flangelo walked up to a large window on the wall opposite the door. He tapped the side of a large black box beneath the window; the box unfolded like a flower's petals. Something vaguely like a steering wheel formed, and Flangelo tapped the center. He touched his foot to a raised rectangle on the floor, and the entire hut jerked forward.

After that initial sense of movement, there was no indication that they were going anywhere. Only the window-view of barren ground and windswept dunes whipping by made it clear that they were crossing the desert.

Flangelo talked to the kids over his shoulder as he drove the hut. “There are things like these in a few other biomes, too; they're all very cozy inside. Some Order members live in the midst of nature, some have real houses like Gilio's. Almost nobody lives in these cruisers; they're mainly for comfortable travel.”

“And Biology formulas make them possible?” Alysha asked.

“I'm sure Gilio got Ralfagon and some folks from the Craftsmen's Guild to change the space inside of them and make them move around.”

“Why do you need these when you have the water-teleport things?” Owen asked.

Flangelo looked away from the window, and for a moment, the hut veered wildly to the side. He quickly turned his gaze back to the window and spoke over his shoulder. “The pools go between biomes, not within them. Places like the forests or mountains don't have these cruisers; they can't exactly fit between trees or boulders. But for the tundra, the polar region, the grasslands, and especially the desert, they're essential.”

A few minutes later, Flangelo parked the cruiser-hut behind a large sand dune; he tapped the center of the steering wheel-thing and turned away from the window.

“We should be safe here. There aren't many animals that would or could look for us here. I'd like to see a mammoth try to cross the desert.”

“I wouldn't,” Owen said.

“We'll keep an eye on the view-port, just to be sure,” Flangelo said.

They helped Simon drink some water, and he opened his eyes. “What happened?”

“You passed out,” Alysha said. “Right after you did something incredible.”

Simon smiled. “That space-time formula's not bad, huh?”

“Very not bad,” Flangelo said. “Thanks for saving my life.”

“And thanks for saving ours,” Alysha said to Flangelo. “If you hadn't stepped in front of that sabertooth . . .”

“Okay, okay,” Flangelo said. “Let's not get gushy.”

“Looks like you got the plasma working,” Simon said to Alysha.

She smiled and nodded. “I'm not in a hurry to try it again, but yeah. I guess we all kinda kicked butt.”

“How did you do that whole not-drowning thing?” Owen asked.

“That sort of happened underwater,” Simon said. “I might have a few more tricks,” he said, thinking of how he threw that last sabertooth. “If I can figure them out.”