H2G2 Storytime III: From Prussia with Love. Part L
Created | Updated Aug 16, 2006
Daltmooreby was stood in a field of wheat through which a breeze blew interesting mandelbrot fractal patterns.
Yelena was ahead of him dressed in a white linen blouse. Her course black hair was blowing backwards in the wind as she was tieing a flower to her button.
The wind was getting stronger, daltmooreby stood at the centre of a whirling funnel cloud of chaos and ringing in his ears like tinnitus the closer he walked toward her.
bangThe crack of a gunshot!
The sky darkened
Yelena was gone
...a distant memory of a voice saying "It's nothing personal" echoed around ...
Daltmooreby awoke with a start gasping for breath. His hand reached immediately for his shoulder he knew to be dislocated from where he'd fallen onto the tracks.
"nnnargh" he screeched trying to right himself panting with the effort and limped over to the side of the tunnel and leant up against the wall and counted down from 10 before violently jerking his body around putting pressue aginst his useless limb and forcing the shoulder joint to realing inside his body with a snap.
The pain was incredible and Daltmooreby droped to his knees wincing and taking deep ragged breaths.
Through gritted teeth and though the disheveled and matted strands of his fringe, several inches lower than was feasible, his eyes just visible in the gloom Daltmooreby hissed, "*huuu*....*huuu* ...Vandeveer....*huuu*."
Arthur wiped some grease from his chin with his sleeve.
"That hit the spot."
"mmnfph bnff ib" X mumbled half-way through a fried egg.
Arthur ignored the lack of ettiquette his partner was currently displaying and turned back towards Ody.
"About your father..."
"Can't we talk about something else?" The archeologist said glumly.
"Perhaps your right. Did you find anything else in these crates?" Arthur asked, gesturing to the scattered boxes strewn around the crash-site.
"Not much to be honest. The food containers were stored up near the front so they'd split open - hence breakfast" - he indicated the smouldering remains of the fire.
X looked up smiling and rubbed his belly.
"Other than that it's a real mixture. There's a tonne of tennis rackets back here", pointing to a collapsed heap of broken crates.
The one you are sitting on has sunglasses in. Arthur looked down his temporary seat was indeed stamped "Goggles"
"X..." Arthur said, a suspicion forming in his mind "just do some recon will you further up the tunnel see if there's a way out."
"Sure thing" X said picking a seared bit of bacon rind from the pan and tossing it into his mouth and set off at a jog.
Arthur watched his partner dissappear into the gloom and pulled back his sleeve and adjusted his watch so the face came free revealing a compass. The needle was behaving oddly pointing up towards the glass.
"Hmmm." Arthur said thoughtfully and replaced the clock face.
"What is it?" Jamila asked.
"I wonder." Arthur said distractedly and stood up to leave.
"Tennis rackets" he muttered to himself and wandered off.
He walked back into the wreckage of the carriages and found yet more crates lining the walls. He spent a while searching for something to smash open the crates with and eventually settled for a piece of broken piping. It took several blows to smash open the timber frame and once he'd opened a wide enough hole, Arthur reached inside. His fingers closed around something fiberous and soft.
"Ah-ha." he said to himself and pulled out what appeared to be a large fuzzy flocked grey caterpillar. Holding it under one arm he left the train carriage and emerged back in the clearing where Ody and Jamilla were sitll sat puzzled at what he was up to.
He held up his find and brandished it to the group.
"It's a fur coat" Ody said.
"Indeed." Arthur smiled.
"Why would those cult figures bring fur coats with them if they were goign to Egypt - you'd boil" Ody objected.
Because they need them where they are going and so will we." Arthur said the certainty of his deduction forming in his own mind.
"and where are we going?" Jamilla asked.
"There are only two place in the world I know where a compass needle will point vertically - and only one of those where a compass weight is incorectly balanced."
"Where?" Ody pressed.
"We are near the magnetic poles of the planet - and seeing as this compass - " he held up his arm "was weighted to point North rather than South. I can conclude only one thing. That we are travelling under Antartica."
"Snow shoes. ("oooh..." Ody said) fur coats, snow goggles, tinned food - it all fits." Arthur announced proudly.
Just then X came jogging back into camp.
"I've found a ladder - looks like there is an escape hatch and a way out."
Daltmooreby found what he was looking for about a half-mile further up the tracks. Lying in a crumpled heap was the form of Von Trapp.
Daltmooreby waded through the dark and pressed two fingers against the man's jugular.
"Still alive then." he spoke monotonally, neither interested nor dissapointed.
Friedrich Von Trapp looked down, He was carrying a frog in his hands as he crept down a long dark tunnel devoid of description. He was distantly aware that he had his hair again, and for a reason he couldn't determine, he was wearing leiderhosen.
The tunnel seemed to extend ahead of him like a dolly-zoom snatching away the distance between him and....The Nun.
She was dressed in pure white and had a bonnet, the perspective raced towards him she appeared huge looming over him like cliff-face. In a rush of realisation he realised what he was here to do. He was 14 years old and was going to put a frog in her pocket....
He held out the frog gingerly - the nun heard she turned around - it was Daltmooreby! His ragged lips and whispy stubble, the marsh water breath... Freidrich recoiled and dropped the frog.
"I..." he gasped in stricken attempt at explanation.
He felt stubby he figner close around his right shoulder looked around and there was Andrei Sreka in a crisp Schutzstaffel uniform and a stripped pinny, carrying a silver tray loaded with cakes.
Von Trapp started to snarl "I've always hated...."
Then The Nun spoke, as the cracks of doom opened up overhead and light spilled in...
"SO YOU'RE STILL ALIVE THEN...."
and Freidrich Von Trapp woke up very badly injured.
Arthur, X Ody and Jamilla stood at the base of a long ladder staring upwards. They were all wearing the thick arctic gear recovered from the crashed train. Their snow shoes were bound to their backs.
"Goes up quite a way doesn't it?" X remarked as the rungs approached vanishing point. Suspended high above them was a distant rectangle of white light seeping through a hatch.
"X you take point. Next Ody and Jamilla, and I'll keep a watch on our six." Arthur said looking urgently both ways down the dark tunnel as if expecting an ambush.
A chill silence made him focus back on the group.
"In English?" said X
"Just climb." Arthur said shaking his head.
X placed on gloved hand on the metal rung and began the long ascent.
Arthur watched Ody and Jamila follow his partner and placing one hand upon the ladder's rung and took one last sweeping glance around the tunnel.
"So we survived a train crash and I survive being shot in the back and loosing Anna. I wonder what else will I have to endure before this is done?" A moment passed and Arthur recalled a passage form a book he'd read long ago. "After all" , he mused, "long is the way, and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light." and he began to climb.
