Chapter Thirty-Nine: Oh, The Irony
Jior Dawn
Don tore his gaze from Leo as his brother turned and slipped away and the stooped, white-haired man stopped before him and Mikey. His hair contrasted with his tan, islander-like completion, and his navy tunic boasted geometric decorations in white thread around the collar, hem and shoulders. The crowd of Jior, except for those holding the turtles, stepped away respectfully. He's definitely one of the elders on this Council that Saja's so scared of.
He rested his hands on a knotted wooden cane and opened his mouth. "Uzek toryena bovoto, gaboreem?" His piercing gold eyes—arrogant, unafraid, and unsurprised—stared at Don, and then at Mikey. "Metim las ilenga."
It's almost like he was… expecting us. But no one knew we were coming… Something clicked in Don's brain. Except the one who brought us here. Have we been betrayed? Or am I imagining things?
"Dude, we don't understand you." Mikey shook his head fast. "Sir," he added.
The elder's wrinkles doubled as he frowned. He spoke again, tapping his cane for emphasis.
Don kept his tone respectful. "Sir, we can't understand you." The translator would be helpful here… but for one thing, the Jior hate technology, and for another, we certainly had no intentions of needing to talk with them.
The elder narrowed his gaze. Some shuffling at the back of the crowd indicated a new arrival; another elderly man stepped forward. This one had skin a shade lighter, gray hair rather than white, and a slightly taller stature, but appeared no less ancient and venerable. The elders exchanged a brief conversation.
Don took the opportunity to speak softly to Mikey—in Japanese, out of habit. "Stay calm, Mikey. I don't think they'll hurt us. They don't believe in fighting."
The newcomer turned to them. He asked a question mildly, raising his eyebrows.
"We don't understand you, sir," Don repeated. "We don't speak your language."
Nonetheless, the white-haired elder proceeded to interrogate and lecture the two turtles for the next twenty minutes or so. Don listened for any commotion in the direction the others had fled and heard nothing; they must have successfully escaped. Leo will scout it out tonight, find us, and we'll come up with a plan. Actually, I can't imagine the Jior have high-security prison cells. Mikey and I might be able to escape on our own.
Lacking knowledge of the language, Don tuned out the syllables and instead focused on the tone and body language of the speaker. It seemed that righteous indignation filled the white-haired elder; they were intruders and had invaded sacred ground. His thin eyebrows bounced up and down as he, presumably, enumerated their many crimes.
Don also watched the growing crowd for their reactions: horror, shock, disbelief, fear, confusion, and even a touch of anger shone clearly in the villagers' faces. Mothers tucked their children behind them and held their babies close. The older children looked scared or curious.
Someone had handed his bo off to an older man, barely in Don's periphery off to his right. From what he could see, the man regarded him like a particularly disgusting insect. Someone else had relieved Mikey of his nunchakus, although it was clear he had no idea what they were.
Don's arms grew stiff. Could you speed it up, Mr. White Stickler, and go ahead and toss us in a cell? Surely you know you're getting nowhere with this.
Four more elders arrived during the rant of the first; they held a brief conference. The gray-haired elder approached again. I'll call you Gray Grandpa, unless Mikey comes up with something better, which, to be honest, he probably will.
He smiled and spoke gently, then asked a question.
Mikey and Don shook their heads in incomprehension yet again. "We can't understand you, sir."
Mr. White Stickler hobbled forward, and poked each of them in the plastron with his cane, shouting a command.
"Hey!" said Mikey, but then he chuckled under his breath as Mr. White Stickler retreated with furious golden eyes and Gray Grandpa took a step toward them. "Dude," he said. Don couldn't face him, but even in his periphery, he could see that Mikey was choking back laughter, "are they doing the good cop-bad cop routine on us?"
Don endured shouting in his face. "Yeah, I think they are." It would work better if we understood your language, Mr. White Stickler. Just accept that we're not faking ignorance, or refusing to speak, or being difficult.
Finally, the elders gave up. The white-haired elder scowled at the turtles as he issued orders and the men holding them started moving them. Nope, no confession of crimes from us today. He dismissed the crowd, but many of them followed as the turtles were frog-marched back to the center of town and before the Council Building.
Mr. White Stickler, once he caught up, turned and announced something to the crowd. He spoke the final two words slowly and with ominous conviction, and the Jior visibly recoiled. I'd bet a hundred dollars he just mentioned The Technology. That's how Saja and Taevon always said it: in capital letters, fearfully. It's definitely been used as a fear tactic to keep the populace in line for a long time.
Their captors turned them around and tugged them toward the opening double doors as the more important deduction of the elder's announcement reached Don's brain. Wait. Did he say he's going to use The Technology on us?
Leaving most of the Jior out in the square, the mismatched group of elders, strong Jior men holding the turtles, and the turtles themselves awkwardly shuffled into the two-story hall. Someone hurried to place fresh torches in the metal wall brackets, lighting the room with flames. Don spotted the older man setting his bo and Mikey's nunchaku down in a corner of the hall.
Mr. White Stickler paused to explain something to the turtles, a sickening sense of justice in his eyes. He gestured, and another assistant unlocked the second set of double doors. Their captors pushed them forward.
"Uh, Don?"
I was under the impression that this people didn't do anything quickly—are they really going to do this now? How do I get us out of this? They're hardly going to let me push any buttons!
At a command, two of the men holding the turtles reluctantly approached The Technology and pulled off its canvas cover with flair. This done, they immediately backed away from it.
Mr. White Stickler hobbled forward, patted the seat of the machine, and gestured at the turtles. He spoke again, held up two fingers, pointed at the machine, and leaned close to their faces. He was clearly enjoying his captives' discomfort and fear. Two? Two what? …This guy is a borderline psychopath, I think. I bet he's the guy who leads the Council, and who sentenced Saja for doing a good deed. I think Taevon and Saja mentioned his name.
Finally, the elder broke off and stepped around them, issuing a casual command as he left. The two men holding the turtles hurried to obey, tugging them over to a wall. A stack of crates was shifted aside—Don's heart stopped, but they hadn't seen his duffel—to reveal a black metal ring embedded in the wall. In a moment, the Jior had produced another rope and secured both of them to the ring, although he gave them enough slack to sit down or even walk a few steps.
The Jior turned their attention to the turtles' belts. They gingerly confiscated both of their shell cells and back-up knives, shuriken, Don's watch, the few compact tools Don kept on his person, and an orange bouncy ball from Mikey, who sighed at the loss. Ugh, I hope they're not going to destroy those. I've already repaired and remade several shell cells this week.
Then the one patting Don down found Don's notebook; Don's heart dropped into his feet. No! It's got my work on The Technology in it!
The Jior opened it to the first page and snorted. He turned the book to show his companion, and Don remembered that Mikey had been the one to find the then barely used, only slightly water-damaged notebook in the junkyard. He'd drawn a cross-section of a cartoon turtle head with a massive brain and labeled it 'Property of Donatello the Amazing Brain! No Touchie!' in balloon letters. What a completely innocent picture. Not technological at all. No need to inspect the rest of the pages. Nope, definitely not.
The second Jior looked a little confused and shrugged.
The first shrugged back, then tossed it across the room, where it clattered behind a barrel.
Well, that was almost a heart attack.
After a final tug on the ropes, the men left. The last one out, a man who looked younger than his graying hair might indicate, gave them a sympathetic look before the door closed and the bolts slid home.
Noise echoed in the hall outside. Dust settled. Someone had provided a single torch in the bracket of the outside wall, and its flickering light cast grotesque shadows over the room. Daylight attempted to reach the room through the two arrow slit windows.
Don exhaled a gust of air. Well. I guess they like putting prisoners in the same room as the torture device to make them nervous. This was not how I expected this mission to go. At all.
"Dude."
Don turned to face Mikey. Mikey's eyes danced with laughter.
"Mikey—"
"They just put you in the same room as a giant machine! That's hilarious!"
The irony of the situation sank in. Yes, they'd been captured, but the anti-technology, pacifist culture had thought themselves clever to enclose the intruders in the same room as their prized and misunderstood piece of ancient technology.
"You're right, Mikey," Don said, relaxing a little. "This is pretty ridiculous. They have absolutely no idea what they've done. As soon as we can get out of these ropes, of course." Oh, hey, my hands have gone numb. "I might not be much help in that particular department."
"No worries, I gotcha!" Mikey began struggling with his bonds. "I held my hands apart a little when they were tying me up—that's a trick I got from one of your spy movies, Donnie," he added with a brilliant grin.
"Of course you did." Don allowed himself a little smile in return. "That's great. Oh, we'd better keep it down, though. I'm sure there's guards outside the door, and we'd better not sound like we're happy about being in here."
"Sure thing, bro. Do you want me to fake cry?" Mikey paused to look at Don, ready to well up tears on command.
Don smiled for real. "I don't think that's necessary. Let's just stay quiet and not laugh or anything."
"Okay!" Mikey nodded fast. How does he avoid whiplash from doing that?
"Turn around. Let me see the knots."
With some verbal guidance from Don, Mikey managed to free himself in a couple minutes. He then cheerfully untied Don.
Don rubbed his wrists and slapped his hands, trying to get feeling back into them. Oh, hey, I've got some nicks on them. When did that happen? "Thanks, Mikey."
"No problem!" Mikey beamed. "What now? Are you gonna work on that thing some more? You're close, right? Do you wanna test it on me? Do you need any help?"
Whoa, slow down, Mikey. "Let's see." Don glanced around the storage room-turned-prison for something to keep Mikey occupied and out of his figurative hair. His eyes landed on the two arrow slit windows on the inside wall. "Why don't you pull a crate over to one of those windows as sneakily as you can, and spy out into the hall? I don't think they're coming back in here for a while, but it would be good to know."
"Okay!"
While Mikey eased a big crate over, Don went across the room and found his notebook. It seemed undamaged except for a new dent in its back cover. Phew. He tried to think about what he'd learned about the Technology so far. He tried to return his brain to theories on the functions of the machine.
His mind, however, insisted on muddling through thoughts and worries about the others, Saja, what he didn't know, what the Jior were planning to do with their prisoners, and when. To further inhibit clarity of thought, it had been many hours since either coffee or sleep. Don glanced at his wrist, grumbled at his missing watch, and looked instead at the daylight coming through the narrow exterior windows opposite the doors. Still early morning, maybe a little after 5 a.m. Converting that to New York City time yields… roughly 5:30 p.m. What time did we eat breakfast?
Mikey hopped down noiselessly and came over. "Okay. It looks like guards have set up camp and people come an' go through the hall sometimes, but I don't think they're coming in."
Don nodded slowly. "Good." He swayed a little.
Mikey stared at him. "Dude. Donnie, if Leo was here, he'd prolly be telling you to chill and take a break. He's not, so I will—let's just chill for a bit. It was a long night for me, and your job was way harder, bro."
"But—" I can't waste this opportunity to spend more time understanding The Technology. Saja's depending on me.
"You'll feel better after a little nap. C'mon. It'll all be okay, Donnie." Mikey tugged at Don's arm.
I guess there probably is time for a short rest. I bet it takes this village a while to do anything, especially after the upset of strangers. Don allowed himself to be pulled over to the wall with the ring and down onto a low crate Mikey slid over, so that they could sit on wood instead of cold stone.
They sat and leaned against each other, tucking their hands out of easy view of the doors just in case.
Mikey's nice and warm, especially in a hoodie… And he's so peaceful…