91
See part one for explanation and disclaimers. I don't own 'Dinotopia', James Gurney does. Hallmark still owns the characters and I'm still not profiting from this. Hope you're enjoying this. Still recommended for teens and up for action/violence and mild language.
Alano had never seen a 'submarine', not even a picture of one. He knew that they were off-worlder machines and that they were designed to carry people beneath the ocean just like fish. The only pictures of such machines were hidden in the bowels of the 'topian libraries, well beyond the reach of outsiders like him. So, he hadn't known what to expect when he saw the submarine that rested at the bottom of the cove.
He thought it looked like some giant metal fish---a metal fish with a hollow belly and many little teeth marks dotting it, as though a larger fish had taken bite out of it. That was probably accurate---the rumor was that, in the days when the sunstones had failed, the traitorous 'topian Cyrus had tricked Karl and Jack Scott into using Marion's pendant to power the submarine and taken them to the underwater caverns of the island, where they'd found an abundant supply of sunstones…and where Frank Scott had been stranded since the plane crash. Cyrus had abandoned the Scotts there, but not before the boys sabotaged his submarine to prevent his escape. The sub had stalled halfway to the surface and been swallowed whole by a dino-fish---along with the traitor, Cyrus.
Must have given the large beastie a belly ache for it to have spit the thing back out more or less in one piece, Alano mused. He didn't have much time to ponder Cyrus' fate. He was working against the tide and on as much air as his lungs could hold. He was among the divers who had dove from the boat Gabriel Dane had provided and swam to the bottom of the shallow waters where the sub was stuck. With the help of Dane and Le Sage's men, Alano found a few places on the sub's exterior that looked solid without being jagged enough to slice through a rope. Needing to resurface for air, it took a few tries for the divers to get the ends of four ropes secured to the sunken vessel. They finished without much time to spare. Soon the sun would set and the high tide would put this cove and the pier underwater.
Once the last rope was in place, Alano resurfaced and climbed into the waiting boat, drained by the exertion.
On the shore, the two packs were dividing their labor. Some were laying traps along the perimeter of the cove just in case some predator braved the sunstone pendant Le Sage wore and ventured too close to the camp. Others had made small fires and were cooking the afternoon meals. Dane's men, Miguel and Thomas, and Le Sage's lacky, Bertram, were tying the other ends of the ropes to a massive harness. Freefall was perched on rocks at the top of the cliffs, watching the proceedings. The pterosaur looked to be getting impatient, Alano noted. He could sympathize. The sooner this bit of business was over with, the sooner Alano and Freefall could get back to Waterfall City and spring David from the 'topian's prison.
The harness was ready to go by the time the boat returned to the shore. "I hope this bloody well works," Alano said privately to Le Sage.
"It will," she said confidently.
Together, Miguel, Thomas, Bertram, and Dane hefted the massive collar up. Alano raised his arm the way David had shown him and shouted to the albino dinosaur, hoping the temperamental scalie would comply with the command. They weren't trained pets, after all. Freefall barely obeyed David. It took a minute, but, finally, Freefall sprang aloft and glided down to the beach and landed near Alano. More than a few outsiders still gave the scalie a wide berth.
They slung the harness around the pterosaur's neck. "Here we go-it's up to you, beastie," Alano tried sounding encouraging. Le Sage and Dane's men took up positions beside the four ropes, lending their strength to the scalie's.
"Pull!" Dane shouted.
"Pull, Freefall," Alano took hold of the ropes as close as he could without risking getting the way of Freefall's powerful wings or carried off the ground when the dinosaur once again became airborne as it used the strength in its body and wings to pull.
It took a bit of work, even with the pterosaur's help; Alano was drenched in sweat, muscles screaming in protest at the abuse. Freefall was showing signs of fatigue. But, finally, the sub took its first slide from the sandbar towards the deeper water and freedom. The plan was working.
"My friends---I give you our ticket home." Dane grinned to the chorus of cheers from his pack. "Come, now, keep pulling! She's almost free. Pull! Pull together!"
"Pull! Pull together!"
The summer camp tradition-the tug-of-war between the rival cabins of Camp Tehema--- was in full swing directly above the stinkiest mud pit the camp had to offer. Fourteen-year-old Karl Scott had no intention of doing a face-plant in that disgusting mud, not after a summer of the butt-munches in the blue cabin (the 'Pirates') beating his cabin (the 'Dragons') in every camp competition…and especially not when the girls from Camp Tehema were sitting only a short distance away, watching the competition while they swam in the lake.
In particular, not while Mandy Petersen (a.k.a. the most gorgeous girl in Camp Tehema/the state/the country/the world) was watching. If that weren't distracting enough, she was also wearing a very wet camp t-shirt that clearly revealed the outline of the skimpy two-piece bathing suit she had on beneath it. That only reminded Karl of the very soft skin beneath that very skimpy bathing suit, skin he'd had a length opportunity to feel first-hand last night when they'd both sneaked out of their cabins and had a moonlight skinny-dip in that same lake---
So, of course, it had to happen---the rope jerked, throwing everyone on Karl's side off-balance. Being near the end of the line and therefore one of the anchors, he tried to regain his footing before he lost his balance altogether. That was when two very familiar feet tripped him up. Karl stumbled into the boy in front of him and the rest of the team went down like dominos. His brain warned him to let go of the rope before it was too late, but his hands refused to obey.
It was amazing how quickly the smelly mud pit came sailing up to meet him as the rope dragged the lot of 'Dragons' across the grass and into the pit. He heard cheers from the 'Pirates', but only distantly. Karl was busy noticing that the mud was now covering him from head to foot and was just as vile up close as it had first appeared. Judging from the look on Mandy's face as she watched, she agreed.
He didn't need to ask what had happened or who had tripped him up. It was some consolation that, with his face caked in muck, no one could tell that Karl was flushing bright red as he crawled out of the ooze.
Yep, there he was, Karl observed, sitting on the grass where he'd tripped---and where he'd tripped Karl after losing his grip on the rope. He didn't even have the decency to fall into the mud like the rest of the team. Not that it mattered---the slime-covered members of the red cabin were making a point of pitching mud onto him as they walked back to camp. A few grumbled, "Nice work, Scott" at Karl's brother.
"That's great, bro, thanks," Karl added. "Do me a favor? Next year, stay home!"
It was no real insult---his brother had made it quite clear that staying home for the summer would have suited him just fine. Dad was the one to insist that they both go. "Oh gee, Karl, I'm so sorry I embarrassed you in front of your flavor of the week," his voice dripped sarcasm as he looked at Karl, then at Mandy. He dragged an arm across his own face, wiping away mud, only to have more 'Dragons' dump more of the foul stuff on him.
"Karl?"
Oh no, Karl groaned. It was Mandy. She was jogging over to him, still grinning. Or, rather, he thought she was grinning---he wasn't exactly looking at her face at the moment. She used the corner of that clingy t-shirt of hers to dab at a glob of mud on his face. Okay, maybe doing a nose-dive into the slime wasn't such a total loss. "Don't feel so bad. In California, people pay lots of money for a mud bath."
Karl gave Mandy the million-dollar-smile. "Maybe you could wash it off at the waterfall this afternoon. My friends say there's a nice pool at the bottom…"
Behind her, Karl's brother stood, shook his head, and trudged back towards to the cabins, grumbling, "Oh brother…" He gave Karl a look of complete disgust as he left…
…but it wasn't Jack's face.
It was David Barrett's face.
"Karl?"
"Karl!' Someone was shaking him and he wished they'd stop. He was trying to open his eyes to see who it was, but the blue visions were stronger and tried to draw him back into his own memory. "Karl! Wake up!"
At Marion's command, reinforced by her empathic healing abilities, Karl jerked awake. He felt the blue visions trying to pull him back, but resisted with all his might. Marion and Noree were still hovering nervously nearby, but he'd been moved from the main hall of the Temple to a cot in one of the small rooms. His body felt like he'd just gotten the shock of a lifetime.
Marion sat on a chair beside the cot. "Are you all right?" she asked, relieved that he was finally conscious. He'd been under for hours now.
"Think---my teeth---are vibrating," he answered slowly.
Smiling at that, she helped him sit up. "The ritual didn't work. You both got a nasty shock from the Tohma Faiere. You've been out most of the day. Noree thinks there's still another outsider who used the stone, that's why the spell wasn't broken."
"The Tohma Faiere revealed nothing to you?" Noree fretted.
"Just…bad dreams." Karl tried rubbing the tingling feeling out of his aching fingers.
Marion and Noree's interest increased. "Dreams? About what?" Marion asked.
"Er---" No way was Karl going to tell his girlfriend that he'd been having dreams about an alternate lifetime where he was some oversexed skirt-chaser. That just couldn't be true. A nagging voice in his mind urged him to tell her about the other vision, though, about David Barrett being Karl's br—
No, that couldn't be true either. It just couldn't.
"---old camping trips, nothing to do with Dinotopia or magic rocks. Sorry."
"The ritual should have revealed what is different, what was changed by your prayer to the faith stone. Are you sure---"
"I DID NOT PRAY TO THAT DAMN ROCK!"
Noree backed up a step from the human, ruffled by his outburst. Marion admonished, "Karl, calm down. I'll speak to David if he's awake…the Tohma Faiere at least showed Karl memories, maybe David saw something that can be of use. I might be able to convince him to tell us who else used the faith stone."
"No," Karl stopped her. After what happened at Le Sage's, he didn't want her near the outsider. The idea triggered another surge of jealousy---'unwarranted' or not. At Marion's confused look, he explained, "I'll talk to him." He pushed himself off the bunk, ignoring their protests that he needed to rest. "You're right, Noree, the sooner we straighten this out and send him back to the pack, the better."
Karl should have dismissed the whole situation outright.
It was absurd. He'd read his share of sci-fi novels and this would have made a good plot for an episode of "Star Trek" or a Disney movie, but it wasn't the sort of thing that happened in real life. Then again, dinosaurs and humans co-existing on an uncharted island shouldn't happen in reality either, but here we are. Still, logic told him to reject the whole 'Tohma Faiere altered the timeline' theory, and he would have, but for one problem:
Dinotopians didn't lie. Period. Outsiders? Sure. Off-worlders? Absolutely. Even Karl had, when necessary, told a few white lies to the sometimes naïve island folk. Hell, he'd just lied by omission when he hadn't told Marion and Noree what he'd seen when the faith stone zapped him. But, born and bred Dinotopians like Marion, Noree, Rosemary, and all of them…no, they didn't lie. It went against their utopian principles, their code for living.
Therefore, if the Dinotopians said that one of their magic meteorites had changed something in Karl's life because it glowed like a traffic light at his touch, they meant it and he'd better believe it---logical or not. Certainly, Karl had seen chunks of the meteor do things that were unusual---bordering on supernatural: White sunstones that kept carnivores away from the populated areas, green rocks that attracted said carnivores like cats to cat nip, and so on. So, a blue Tohma Faiere could alter reality and one's memories of said reality? Okay, it wouldn't be the strangest thing he'd ever seen one of the meteorites do…but it would be pretty close.
Therefore, no matter how Karl turned over the situation in his mind, the conclusion was the same: Sometime and in some way, that blue rock had done something to mess with him---with his memory at best. At worst…
Karl hesitated at the door to the sanctuary chamber where the outsider was being kept. A wave of doubt crashed over him. Blue memories forced themselves once again into his mind…
"There's a real nice pool at the bottom of the falls. No one knows about it. You just get to the bend near Lark's Crossing and there's a path that leads right down to it. They won't even notice we're gone." Fifteen-year-old Karl was trying hard not to sound too desperate, but they were almost to the crossing and its detour. He was running out of time to convince Valerie Delano to ditch the co-ed hike and take a side-trip to the falls. If he didn't get alone time with her now, there'd be no more opportunities before they returned home next week. Besides, Karl knew for a fact that Jim Walker had been trying to talk Valerie into a midnight trip to Camp Tehema's boathouse.
"Sounds nice," Valerie agreed, cheeks just a bit pink. Karl was so surprised that it took a minute for him to process what she'd said.
Karl and Valerie were at that spot by the falls, isolated from prying eyes by the trees and undergrowth of the forest, roar of the falls drowning out all noises, in the middle of a make-out session that definitely had potential to go further…then Valerie had broken off their activities abruptly. She jerked away from Karl, and for a second, he wondered if he'd ticked her off or done something wrong. He tried to recall how far up her t-shirt his hands had been wandering before she'd pulled away. Had he gone too far?
Then he saw what had drawn her attention---Counselor Troy (a grizzly bear of a forty-eight year old man and butt of jokes from every 'Star Trek' geek in Camp Tehema, including Karl's nerdy brother) was standing over them. The sounds of his approach had been muffled by the roar of the falls. Better still, it looked like half of the campers who'd been on the co-ed nature hike were standing behind him. Half were snickering, half were applauding, until Troy yelled for them to "zip it". Troy stared at Karl quite pointedly until the teen realized that his hands were still in a telltale position under Valerie's shirt. He withdrew his hand immediately. Valerie was bright red.
"Scott! The nurse wants to see you back at camp. Now!" Troy barked. Karl knew what was coming even before the counselor added, "Your brother's sick." The word 'again' Troy didn't throw in. "See me when you're done with the nurse---you and Ms. Delano have tons of work to do in the mess tent for the rest of your stay with us. Move it!"
Karl remembered hoping that he wouldn't die of humiliation on the walk back to the camp---he wanted to strangle his brother first, just as soon as he stopped at the nurse's cabin and made sure that what could only have been another asthma attack hadn't finished David off…
The whole situation was like an exercise from a Philosophy class: Am I the dream of another man and if so will I cease to exist when he wakes up? If the Tohma Faiere had done what Marion and Noree said it could do, then which life was real?
This one, with Jack, Marion, and the skybax corps…or the one the faith stone had showed him?
That other world---bouncing from girlfriend to girlfriend, being the outdoorsman, the sportsman, actually being friends with his father---didn't seem plausible. Karl had never liked spending summers at Camp Tehema or dad's excursions to whatever adventurous place caught his attention that year. Karl was the geek with his nose in a book, was never into sports or competition. And being a Don Juan? Yeah, as if! If the Tohma Faiere had changed him from being those things, Karl was personally all for it.
Then there was the last image the faith stone had showed him…
"You ruin everything!" Seventeen-year-old Karl bitched.
"I'm sorry if free-climbing up a mountain with a very long drop onto very sharp rocks isn't my idea of a great vacation," his brother retorted.
"You never want to do anything Dad and I want to do! Why don't you just stay home? At least then our trip doesn't have to get screwed up 'cause of your asthma or 'cause you can't handle heights or 'cause you just want to piss off Dad!"
The tirade rolled right off his sibling. David brother didn't even look up from his book, knowing the fastest way to get Karl's goat was not to get sucked into a fight with him. Karl couldn't even see his brother's face to know if he was getting a reaction with that textbook in front of it. Dad had given up on making peace between the boys and disappeared into his own tent hours ago. "Fine with me…although it'd be tough to give up the evening belching contests and watching you trying to beat your own record for how many local skanks you can feel up in one week."
"Hey, at least I'm in the game! I'll be the closest thing you've gotten to making out with a girl is rescue breathing the Resusi-Annie dolls in CPR class."
"Is this the part where I'm supposed to get offended or try to punch you or something stupid like that?" David closed the textbook, muttered something about 'family vacations', and began throwing dirt on the small campfire.
"You know what?" Karl continued, "Read your book---spend all week in the tent if you want. First light, Dad and I are going back up the mountain. You can stay here and maybe next Christmas, Santa will bring you a backbone."
"For the last time..." His brother pointed to himself. "Jewish."
"I swear, I don't even believe we're brother sometimes---"
An angry shout came from their father's tent: "Karl and David! The two of you knock it off and get your butts to bed! Now!"
In the blue visions, it was fourteen-and-a-half years old David, no mistaking it, his face caked with mud, sitting on the grass at Camp Tehema.
It was fifteen-and-a-half years old David in the nurse's cabin following another of his asthma attacks.
It was seventeen-and-a-half years old David, looking quite fed up, with Karl in the tent.
Not David Barrett. David Scott.
It wasn't just the notion of someone who'd been a thorn in Karl's side since he'd washed up on the island potentially being Karl's brother that bugged him. It's just for that to be true…and it couldn't be, it made no sense…something more than Karl's personality had to have changed.
Someone---Karl, David Barrett, or the yet-to-be-identified-other party who'd used the faith stone---had wished away Karl and David's being brothers. Who would change that? Why? If someone had screwed with him and his family, whoever did is was going to pay for it.
The stone glowed for David and Karl.
David was wearing a skybax rider's uniform in one of Karl's visions. Karl stared at the sleeves of his own rider's tunic. Or was it his? If David was the skybax rider in that timeline, then what was Karl?
And who did Marion love?
More questions flowed through his mind: Was Karl really meant to be some horny self-centered ding-dong? Was David Barrett supposed to be some bookworm/nerd and Karl and Jack's brother? A dinotopian like them? Karl had a bitter laugh at the very idea of the obnoxious outsider trying to fit in with the peaceful island people. Most of all, why did someone change their lives so?
Did I change it just to get this uniform? To get Marion? That possibility bothered Karl more than he cared to admit. No, he would never do something that rotten…not in this lifetime or any other. Karl was sure of that.
The doubtful voice still nagged at him. What about the other Karl? The 'real' Karl? Maybe he would have. If so, Karl had even less desire to go back to that 'reality', to being that guy…
He sighed. A guy could get a migraine trying to figure this out.
Karl found the outsider stretched out on his back on a small cot, hands behind his head, staring at the clay ceiling and its saurian inscriptions, lost in his own thoughts. Barrett was pointedly ignoring the saurian guard who stood beside the door. However, at the sound of footsteps-the light gait of a human---he reluctantly turned his attention to the newcomer. Karl tried to read David's reaction to his arrival to see if the outsider betrayed any hint of what he'd seen when the faith stone zapped him. Barrett's expression was stoic, but his eyes were full of suspicion, even hostility.
His eyes are the wrong color. He's supposed to have dad's eyes, the strange thought came to Karl unbidden, and he hurriedly pushed it out of his head. Covering the lapse, he jabbed, "Thanks for keeping your pants on this time."
"I do what I can," the outsider said with forced pleasantness. He went back to staring at the ceiling. If he'd seen anything during his contact with the Tohma Faiere, he was covering it well. "Time to go get electrocuted by your lizard-woman statue again?"
"Depends."
"On?"
"Noree is under the impression that you're lying to us."
"About?"
"You used the faith stone to change something. What did you wish for?" Karl was trying to be intimidating, and failing miserably. If anything, the outsider looked amused, not intimidated.
David snorted at that. "If I were going to have a wish granted, I wouldn't waste it changing things on this island, I'd use it to wish myself off of this cesspool and go home. Think about it, Scott, do I really strike you as the type of guy who would pray to a rock?"
Well, when he put it that way…"Who else used the Tohma Faiere after you stole it from our Temple?"
Barrett grinned wickedly. "You did, apparently."
That struck a nerve. Karl's hand balled into a fist, just for an instant, before he collected his cool. "Maybe you don't get it, but I'm serious---one of your forest-crawling buddies probably used that stone to screw up a lot of lives…"
David jumped off the bunk so fast that the saurian guard advanced on the outsider. Karl waved the guard off. "You dragged me down here to your little temple and had some Godzilla statue zap me, then you locked me in this stinking cell with Olaf the Enforcer there breathing lizard breath on me…believe me, Dino-scout, I get that you're serious. Try to understand what I'm saying---" He spoke very slowly as if speaking to someone incredibly dense. "I don't know who the hell's been playing with your meteor rock. And if I did, believe me God, I wouldn't be trying to extend my stay in these lovely accommodations by keeping it a secret. I do have places to be, you know, and much better things to do."
That was true enough. Al would wait for David, and Le Sage might (might), but Gabriel Dane and Payden Boreal would take the submarine and leave David behind without a second thought, no problem. David had to get out of this 'topian prison before then or he could kiss his ride off this island good-bye.
"Then we have a problem, 'cause I don't have time to file every man, woman, child, and saurian on the island into this temple to touch the faith stone just to see who sets off its alarm. And if you don't have any idea who we're looking for, that's what I'm going to have to do. I promise you that you will wait here in this room for however long that takes," Karl warned.
David shrugged and hopped back onto the cot. He turned on his side, facing away from the skybax rider and the saurian guard. "Whatever. Wake me when you're finished."
It was another close call, but again Karl restrained himself from decking---or better still, walking over there and shaking the answers out of ---the outsider. If David Barrett wasn't going to volunteer information, maybe he'd like to try getting zapped by the temple sentinel again. "Get Noree and tell her we're going to try that ritual again," Karl instructed the guard.
Karl heard a distinct snort from the prisoner. "What?" he asked, defensively.
"You," David said. "The scalie-lovers really have you brainwashed, don't they?"
"Excuse me!"
The outsider rolled onto his back again, facing the skybax rider. "C'mon, Scott. You're an off-worlder just like me. You don't buy into all this crap a bout magic rocks that can alter reality, do you? You can tell me---I promise not to blow your secret in front of your pretty little matriarch…"
At the mention of Marion, Karl lost his battle with his temper. He was halfway across the room before he realized what he was doing and stopped. From the amusement in Barrett's eyes, the lapse hadn't gone unnoticed.
"I don't get people like you," Karl said. "You obviously got that pterosaur to put up with you, so you can't be as complete a loser as you act like. You could make a home here and instead you throw it back in----"
David laughed. "And I could wear a fancy uniform just like yours and have a baby dinosaur call me 'daddy'? Can't you just picture that?" The good humor lasted long enough for him to shake his head. Then it vanished. He sat up on the bunk. "Let's get one thing straight: This 'Jurassic Park' island is not my home. My home is back in the States with real food and television and cars and multiplexes and baseball games and, most important of all, without scalies trying to make a Happy Meal out of me! And I don't get how you can forget all that so easy if the scalie-lovers aren't using their magic rocks to brainwash you!"
"You did see something with the faith stone, didn't you?" Karl guessed…no, he knew it.
It was David's turn to falter, just for a second. Blue images swam through his head, but with every bit of willpower, he forced the images out of his mind. They might have been memories of another lifetime, like the 'topians said, or they might have been mind tricks, attempts to win him over to their way of life through brainwashing. It didn't matter either way. David wasn't interested in being a 'topian in this reality or in any imaginary alternate lifetime…especially if it prevented him from getting off this miserable island. He was going home---and home wasn't this place. He was getting out of here, heading for the sub, and making a try for the mainland just as soon as these scalie-lovers let their guard down. His only dilemma right now involved figuring out the fastest way to make that happen: Pretend to go along with their mind games or pretend not to know what they were talking about when they mentioned magic rocks and altered reality.
"I saw about a million volts of meteorite electricity rocketing towards me, that's what I saw," he said to the skybax rider, picking the latter option.
David Barrett, Karl observed, wasn't good at bluffing. His eyes gave him away. "Anyone ever tell you, Barrett, that you're a rotten liar?" Karl asked.
"Here's an idea, why don't you just tell me what answer will get me out of your charming little temple as fast as possible, and I'll tell your scalie friend that's what I saw," David suggested.
"Karl?" Noree appeared in the doorway. "Forgive the interruption, but the guard said you want to attempt the Tohma Faiere ritual again?" She was carrying a tray of food, which she placed on the table beside David's bunk.
"Hey, why not? That gem of yours has quite a punch---clears the sinuses and I think it melted a tooth that's been bugging me for weeks," David said with forced cheerfulness. He stared at the gray food-like stuff that Noree had brought. "What the hell is that stuff? No, wait, I don't want to know. There's no answer that could possibly make me happy."
Karl could see any slim hope he'd had of getting a straight answer from the outsider was gone. "We'll try again after dinner," he said to the Keeper. With that, he turned and walked out, leaving David alone in the dimly lit makeshift prison. He listened until the dinoscout's footsteps retreated down the hall, probably back to that Temple to tell the other scalie-lovers that their little brainwashing scheme wasn't working. Under the wide gap between the bottom of the door and the stone floor, David saw shadows move…the saurian guards taking up their position outside his door, David assumed, preventing the outsider from escaping before that scalie priestess could try again. Sorry, Svengali, you're not getting another crack at me.
It was now or never.
David reached into his boots and withdrew a bundle of dried, carefully selected and prepared twigs, plants, and herbs and held the tip of the bundle to the flame of the lantern that lit the room…
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