"Time's up," said Greta curtly.
"Yes!" exclaimed Francine and Arthur in unison. They had little idea what they had just agreed to—all they knew was that the alternative was death, or worse.
Greta finally smiled. "Excellent," she said with satisfaction. "Hold out your hands."
As soon as they did so, Guida reached forward and tapped each of their palms. What happened next didn't hurt, but Arthur and Francine found it disturbing nonetheless. The skin of their palms started to bubble and twist, settling into a shape not unlike the braid-like pattern of the unicorn horns. Arthur carefully ran his finger over the swelling, which ran from one side of his hand to the other. It felt warm, not unlike natural flesh.
"What is it?" asked Francine as she slowly closed the fingers of her right hand over the strange mark.
"The Mark of the Horn," Guida explained. "It emits a magical signal that will allow the Sentinels to locate you and lead you to safety when the demon draws near."
"Will it go away?" Arthur wanted to know.
"Without so much as a scar," Guida told him. "The mark is invisible to all except those who are marked."
Then Greta flicked her fingers at Arthur and Francine, and the subterranean chamber went completely dark. By now familiar with the routine, they each took one of Greta's hands and followed the girl up the earthen ramp toward the surface. They spoke not a word until they reached level ground; although the singing of birds was again audible, their eyes were still veiled by total blackness.
"What about D.W.?" Arthur ventured to ask. "She really misses you. Can she hide in the caves with us?"
"I'm afraid not," he heard Greta say. "We only select two children out of each region."
"Then she'll die," Arthur realized to his dismay.
"We can't save everyone," Greta said glibly.
----
"Come on, Prunella," urged Alan, who was clutching Putnam's Opticron device in his outstretched hands. "Aren't you even the least bit curious about how the other half lives?"
"No," replied the rat girl with a grimace. In Prunella's attic, Beat and Dudley watched the exchange between the two with amusement.
"It would be educational," Alan claimed.
"I'm happy the way I am," Prunella shot back.
"You'd have a more powerful brain."
"Three words. You. Need. Therapy."
"Three words. Boys'. Locker. Room."
A light went on in Prunella's head.
The black cords and visors of the Opticron device seemed to writhe in Alan's hands, calling to her, tempting her, entrancing her with their snake eyes. What was she passing up?
"Don't listen to him," Dudley cautioned her. "Being a boy is torture."
Only for a day, she thought.
"Fine," said Alan arrogantly. "Maybe Fern would like to give it a spin."
What if it really worked?
"I'll see you at Mickie's," Alan goaded her as he shuffled toward the stairway. "Look for the poodle girl with the red hairbow."
There were much worse boys she could be...
"Alan, wait," she blurted out.
----
Mickie Chanel, the classmate of Alan and Prunella whose family had purchased the Crosswire mansion, had graciously offered the use of her spacious living room for a meeting of the friends and acquaintances of Dr. Rick Portinari, a.k.a. Grobblitz the Time Enforcer from the planet Kron. A substantial crowd was expected, so the Chanel servants had filled the room with comfortable plush chairs.
Muffy, whose feelings toward Mickie had progressed from bitter jealousy to grudging admiration, stood at the fore as one of the organizers. When Portinari arrived, openly flaunting his alien appearance, she was among the first to welcome him.
"I just can't believe it's true," she said somberly, shaking the scaly green hand. "I never pictured Augusta as the destroyer-of-civilizations type."
"Neither did I," said Portinari as several of the guests took flash pictures of him.
"I can recommend some lotions for that dry skin of yours," Muffy went on, but the alien had moved ahead to greet Mickie.
"Omigosh," gushed the excited aardvark girl. "A real live alien. This is, like, so totally cool. I know I shouldn't say 'like' and 'totally', but I don't know how else to express what I'm feeling right now."
Every chair was filled, and many guests stood against the walls, marveling at the strange creature that had visited their planet. For the moment they forgot that Portinari/Grobblitz had descended from the skies as a harbinger of doom. The crowd included Maria Harris and her daughter Nadine, the good Augusta twin, April, Odette, Dudley, Buster's mother Bitzi (reporting for the Elwood Times), and everyone from Mrs. Krantz' fifth-grade class except for Van and Binky. Arthur and Francine were seated together, each cautiously examining the braided mark in the other's hand. Alan and Prunella were among the last to arrive, and were forced to stand. Their friends noticed that they behaved rather oddly; Alan walked stiffly and uncomfortably, while Prunella spent her time gazing at the other girls' dresses, as if wondering how she would look in them. They frequently whispered to each other.
"It's not as bad as Dudley makes it out to be," said Alan to Prunella. "But sometimes I feel like I'm suffocating in these jeans."
"The dress feels nice against me," Prunella responded. "I need to explore that aspect further. On the minus side, I can't do square roots in my head anymore."
Beat and Dudley, who were sitting down, made eye contact with the pair and smirked knowingly. As Portinari began to relate his tale to a stunned crowd, Beat mused on the great significance of this occasion. A being from another world is standing before me, she thought. Contact with extraterrestrial intelligence has finally been made. To think that Putnam nearly threw everything away before this moment. I must study this creature's brain.
"The U.S. government believes it can stand against any threat," Portinari told the audience. "At least that's what it wants the people to believe. But the Alliance fleet had ten thousand times the firepower of the U.S. military, and it couldn't make a dent in her."
Bitzi raised her hand. "Then why not take your case to the United Nations?" she asked the alien.
"The U.N. has little real authority, and is widely mistrusted," was Portinari's reply. "Even if the Security Council passes an evacuation resolution, many people in this country and others will see it as a move to abolish their sovereignty."
After fielding a few more questions, he gave place for the Augusta duplicate to speak. "I come from a long line of alchemists," she recounted. "Over the centuries we have learned how to manipulate good and evil as if they were physical substances." She held up a flat, polished, marble-green object. "The stone you see in my hand possesses magical properties. It can bring out the good in a person's nature, in such a way that the person becomes incapable of lying or harming others. Rick has offered to assist me in the manufacture of a larger stone—a stone powerful enough to bring my twin back to the side of good for a brief period of time."
"How brief a period?" asked Maria Harris.
"Difficult to say," Augusta answered. "A second or two, if we're lucky. She's absorbed a tremendous amount of evil."
"That's not very comforting," April interjected.
"I'm not trying to comfort you," said the rabbit woman.
The other ideas proposed to save Earth from Dark Augusta's rampage fared no better. Arthur and Francine held their peace about the unicorns, while Prunella, hiding out in Alan's body, said nothing about the risky plan she was secretly pondering.
The lecture ended after about two hours, and the audience broke up into huddles, the largest of which thronged Portinari and bombarded him with questions. Muffy, finding that her short stature made it hard for her to see or hear the alien, wandered away to chat with her girlfriends.
"All this talk about the end of the world makes me want to go shopping," she told Mickie.
"Me, too," the aardvark girl replied. "I've always wanted to try dressing up like a goth. Since we're all going to die, maybe now's the time."
The two girls approached Prunella with their proposal. "Want to go to the mall with us tomorrow morning?" Muffy invited her.
"Uh, that sounds like fun," said Prunella/Alan, delighted at the chance to investigate the female shopping urge through first-hand experience. "When we're done at the mall, can we go to the klezmer festival at the downtown plaza?"
"The what festival?" asked Muffy.
"Klezmer," Prunella explained. "Jewish band music. It'll be great. Three bands are coming."
Muffy and Mickie stared blankly at each other.
"It's the end of the world," Prunella reminded them. "Try a new type of music."
"Uh, sure," said Muffy, nodding uncertainly.
As she and Mickie strolled off, Alan gently elbowed Prunella's ribs. "You are gonna have so much fun," he said excitedly. "Muffy and Mickie know all the best clothing stores. I wish I could be you."
"What are your plans for tomorrow?" the rat girl asked him. "Not homework, I hope."
"Nope," Alan replied. "Something better."
----
Dense gray clouds were beginning to fill the sky as Arthur, wearing a fake white beard, stood at the railing of an enormous wooden ship. Through the door of the vessel entered two zebras, male and female. They would be the last to board, as the rains were about to descend. The two Yeti who had hurried back to their house to retrieve a forgotten piece of luggage were out of luck.
As Arthur tugged on the chain to pull up the ramp and seal the ship for its voyage, a frightened voice called to him. "Arthur! Don't leave without us!" Holding the chain steady, he looked to the ground and saw D.W., who was clutching a Mary Moo Cow doll in her arms. Her parents were also there, laden down with Kate, Pal, and a few suitcases. All three wore robes of primitive cloth.
"Ahoy there!" Arthur called to them. "What kind of animals are you?"
"We're aardvarks," D.W. yelled back.
"You don't look like aardvarks," said Arthur, peering carefully at them. "Your noses are too small. Besides, I already have two aardvarks. They were the first to come aboard."
"You can't leave us here!" D.W. wailed.
Deaf to his sister's pleas, Arthur started to pull on the chain again. The door creaked as it rose, and was soon locked shut. As if on cue, the clouds began to spew out rain and thunderbolts.
Arthur's last words to his family as the water rose around their ankles were, "In the event of a worldwide flood, the drowned person next to you can be used as a flotation device."
Seeking to escape the pouring rain, he descended to the lower decks to make sure his animals were healthy and well-fed. What he saw shocked him. In all the stables, where there should have been horses, sheep, elephants, and giraffes, there were unicorns. Every last animal had been replaced by a unicorn.
"I don't understand," said Arthur. "The unicorns chose not to board the ark."
One of the unicorns started to laugh wickedly. "Fool! Did you think we would only send two of our number, when we had the power to take over your ship entirely?"
"But...this is wrong!" Arthur protested. "What about all the other animal species?"
"Who cares about them?" the unicorn sneered.
"AAAARGH!" cried Arthur, jerking himself into a sitting position. He was in his bed, in his pajamas. He couldn't believe what he had done to his family, let alone his dog, in his nightmare. A crash of thunder sounded far away, as tiny raindrops tapped the windows; he hoped it wasn't a sign of impending doom.
He gazed down at the mark on his left hand, which no one else other than Francine had seemed to notice. It seemed unjust to him that the unicorns should lay exclusive claim to their underground shelter, and allow the bulk of humanity to perish. True, they had built the caverns in a time when the world's population was smaller, but that didn't answer the question of why the unicorns would value their own lives more than the lives of humans. Did they think a two-thousand-year lifespan made them superior?
----
The next morning was Saturday. For the most part life proceeded normally in Elwood City, although a few still barricaded themselves inside their houses, expecting an alien assault at any moment. Prunella/Alan accompanied Muffy, Mickie, and Fern to the mall, and blissfully lost herself in the world of girl clothes. It was a pleasant diversion, yet at the same time, she recognized that a body and brain like Prunella's were wholly unsuited for a scientific career. "The Opticron is still in the trunk, in the attic, where I stowed it," she told herself over and over.
Her counterpart, Alan/Prunella, was also in the attic, though not in a trunk. He sat on the floor in a lotus position, eyes closed, breathing slowly, almost completely motionless. The awkwardness of a boy body made it hard for him to achieve a state of utter relaxation, but he persevered nonetheless. Before him lay a sizeable wooden frame with occultic symbols carved into it. A lit candle rested on each of the four corners.
He opened his eyes and gazed upon the frame. The path ahead would be fraught with peril, but his assumption of a new face and identity would make things easier. He marveled that he hadn't thought of the idea before.
"Spiritus Mundi," he intoned.
The space within the frame started to ripple and glow. A burst of fireworks emerged from it, illuminating the whole attic. All at once there was a figure hovering above the frame—a small anthro-Pomeranian girl wearing a pink dress and a dark scowl. Pickles.
"Who are you?" she demanded.
"I'm Alan Powers," replied Alan/Prunella nervously. "I'm a friend of Prunella's."
The evil Pomeranian glanced about. "Ah, yes," she mused. "I remember this place. And I remember Prunella. What mischief has she put you up to?"
"I want to help you," Alan told her.
----
to be continued