AN: Sorry folks, I forgot that the indentations in my manuscript would get replaced by line-skips here, which effectively eliminated the separations between the sections. Hope this is more legible.
6. Conversations
A large dirigible drifted idly above golden sands, blown by the desert winds. Tethered to one of the stubby wings that supported the engines, Wave the Swallow scowled at a notched propeller. In point of fact, her scowl was more for Jet and his idiotic daredevilling than for the propeller; that stupid stunt of his in Arambid was the reason the ship had been damaged, and the Babylon Rogues had been lucky to get out of town with their lives. But Jet, cocky as he was, refused to admit there had been any danger. The purple swallow blew her breath out in irritation and began to unfasten the propeller. "Not 'admit'," she muttered. "He refuses to see that there was any danger. Not as long as the almighty Air Master is in charge, and never mind that one of the police tanks' shots nearly sheared our control cables, and another might have broken this propeller. Oh, no, I'm sure that Jet the Hawk can fly this thing on one functional motor with no steering and half a propeller lodged in his fat head." She yanked viciously at a stuck bolt and swore as it suddenly came lose and flipped out of her fingers and down to the sands below. Still grumbling to herself, she finally got the massive blade lose and twiddled the controls on her flight belt to glide back to the dirigible's deck. Trying to maintain footing on a hoverboard while doing repair work on an undocked blimp was impossible, so she'd developed a belt that operated on the same principles. The spare blade lay waiting on the deck, with a packet of the required bolts, nuts, cotter pins and other attachments, and she selected a replacement for the lost bolt and a few other parts that looked worn. As she started to pick up the propeller, a trap door opened in the deck and a grey head popped up.
Storm blinked at her owlishly, as if trying to figure out who she was. "Oh, Wave," he said finally. The swallow waited.
After a moment she said, "What do you want, Storm?" She knew she was sometimes too impatient with other people because they weren't as smart as she was, but Storm would surely try anyone's patience. The albatross tended to think as fast as lava on a glacier, and his thoughts had the same tendency to stick to a single channel regardless of changes in the situation.
"Oh! Wave," he repeated. "Jet says get down here now! There's a message from someone, and this race thing that's challenging!"
"Tell Jet I'll be there as soon as I finish this repair. He wants to be able to leave if anyone finds us, I'm sure." Wave was flying back out to the engine as she spoke.
"Jet says, get down here now!" bellowed the albatross. "He says now, Wave; there's a race-challenging thing!"
"I said, I'll be there as soon as the ship's fixed." It didn't do any good to get angry back at the albatross, and Wave hated to waste energy, especially in the mid-day heat. Besides, Storm got a lot more excited if you were calm back to him. "And if you keep pounding on the rail like that, you'll have to report to Jet that you're the reason I'm late," she added.
"Huh?" The massive grey bird stopped mid-pound, and looked at the rail, then the swallow, in confusion. Eventually he put together a question, "You're the one who isn't coming, how is that my fault?"
"Because I said I'll come when the ship's," she paused to wrestle with a stubborn nut, "fixed. And if you break bits off that'll be that much more for me to fix, so that much longer before I'm done."
Storm stood silently, apparently trying to work that out, while Wave finished replacing the propeller. Gliding to the top of the wing, she flipped a switch to restore power to the motor and closed the hatch, then pressed another control on her flight belt that remotely activated the ship's engines. She watched the propeller spin through several revolutions at gradually increasing speed, then shut the engines down again. Returning to the deck, she released her tether (which automatically recoiled itself into her belt) and collected her bits and tools. As she descended the steps below the trap door, she heard Storm above her. Apparently he'd finished thinking. "I told you, Jet says– Hey! Where'd you go?"
"What do you want?" The light voice dripped with scorn.
"I want you to shape up and do the job you're supposed to do. Failing that, which you always do, I want you to do the job you've chosen to do. We have a task, you know, and the Master–"
"Your Master, perhaps, but not mine. I do what I choose, and when I choose. And this one has someone to help, so what does he need me for? I'd much rather explore; I've heard so much about this place."
"Because that is your role. You don't want your little - friends - to do it," the second voice, deeper, twisted with disdain for the term, "so you must take up their part."
"Yes, but," a hesitation, followed by a flicker of worry, "now that - it - has been triggered, what happens to us? When the story ends for one reader, the book goes on for the next, but when the reader is in the book . . . ?"
There was a pause, while neither individual quite looked at the other. At last the second said, "That may be resolved by the time we have finished our tasks. Whether it is or not, the tasks must be done, and we must do them. Certainly no one here can.
"And whether you 'choose' to aid this one or not, he is your responsibility now. Need I remind you that what happens in a dream fades when you wake, but what happens in real life lasts? The third-levels haven't the wit to comprehend that the damage they do may be real, but you ought to be able to understand it. What happens if the Sheeck strike too closely? And the Eelons have already knocked him down once." A shrug, and the speaker turned away. "It is my task to set them on the scent; in this world I am not certain I could call them off it, even if I wanted to. But it is your choice to amuse yourself, as always, regardless of the consequences to the rest of us. You should be very glad that we don't have to sleep." And he was gone, in a flicker of crimson light.
The one left behind growled, darted back and forth in indecision, and wheeled away to vanish in his own, golden, flare of light.
Waves splashed against the creek banks as a massive purple cat waded along the deep channel. "Come on, Froggy, the big fish should be just around the corner. You know, Mr. Knuckles says they swim all the way to the ocean and back again. Do you remember the time I found you in the ocean after you swallowed the water monster's tail? Try not to swallow anything like that again, okay?"
The large frog on the cat's head croaked, and snagged a mosquito out of the swarm of insects around the pair. Its lovely gold-mottled eyes closed as it swallowed, then it leaped into the water and swam down the stream a little ahead of its companion. After a while, the creek dropped in a short pair of waterfalls into a larger stream. Broad and shallow, the water below them churned with dozens of thrashing, copper bodies. With a crow of delight, Big the Cat jumped down among them and limbered his fishing rod. You didn't really need bait when the golden salmon were spawning; the aggressive males would strike at anything. So the violet tabby tossed out his hook again and again - usually with bits of leaf stuck on it, but sometimes bare - and the stack of gold-and-copper-scaled bodies piled up on the bank. Froggy sat on the pile and made sure that none of the fish flipped back into the water.
At length, Big pulled in a last fish and waded to shore. Bending over, the stout dokan swept the collected salmon into a bag of loosely woven vines. "Hey!" He straightened up and heaved himself out of the water. Raising his tail as he turned, he saw that a fish had bitten onto it. "I'm supposed to catch you," he scolded it as he added it to the bag, "not you catch me." Heaving the bag onto one shoulder he set out along the trail that would take him to his hut. It was longer than going up the creek, but the branches along the waterway would snag the bag and might tear it. "Fresh fish for dinner Froggy, " he said happily. "And fish to smoke, and put in that freezer that Tails brought us."
Froggy croaked cheerily, and paused to examine something that had fallen out of one of the fish. It appeared to be a small, stone jester's cap. (Froggy did not, of course, have a word for 'jester' but he had seen some in Twinkle Park once, and the image in his memory wore a hat that looked very much like the striped rock.) Picking the varicolored rock up in his mouth, he bounced down the trail after his friend.
"Here you go, Shadow. I bought you a present." Shadow managed not to jump, but he wondered how many people other than Rouge would dare sneak up on him. Sonic, perhaps. Most other people would be leery of startling the Ultimate Life-form, in case he killed them.
He looked curiously at the long flat package she'd handed him, and back to the bat. "What is it, Rouge?"
"Open it and find out."
With a faint shrug, the dark hedgehog slipped a finger under a seam of the gaudy paper and broke the tape free. Quickly he exposed the item inside. "A hoverboard?"
"Yes. They're very popular all of a sudden. I got myself one too; I thought we could learn how to use them."
"I already know." The dark hedgehog flipped the power switch on the bottom of the board and laid it down, where it hovered a few inches off the ground. "Father - Professor Gerald - used to make them, you know." He looked at the board, remembering.
Rouge watched him cooly, with just a hint of calculation in her aqua eyes. "I'd wondered. Did you notice the brand name?"
Shadow gave her another curious glance, then took a closer look at the board. He hadn't paid attention to the brand; why did she think he'd– "Interesting," he said finally. The name was as familiar to him as his own.
"That's it? 'Interesting'? That's all you have to say?"
He looked at her again. "What do you want me to say? Obviously it's some sort of plan of the Doctor's - and a bit more original than most, since this is a hoverboard and not a robot . . . . It is just a hoverboard, isn't it?"
"Oh yes. I had a couple of the GUN techs check them out, inside, outside, and upside down, and they're straight tech. But then, anything with the Robotnik Inc. brand always has been - Eggman's far too clever to get caught with anything incriminating in his legal businesses."
Shadow rubbed his chin, looking at the board thoughtfully as it floated between them. "So Doctor Eggman is pushing hoverboards, and sponsoring a big race. Not merely an advertising ploy, surely. Could he need to raise a lot of money for something?" He stepped up on the board and glided the length of the front walk, spun it on its tail and returned. "Not bad. There seem to have been some improvements in the last fifty-odd years."
Rouge snorted, amused in spite of herself. "I'd imagine so. You noticed the posters then."
"They are all over the place. They're a bit hard to miss. And the TV ads, and the newspaper ads, and the online banner ads - I think you could definitely say I've heard about World Hoverboard Cup."
Something in the bat's bustier chirped, and she fished out a small cell phone without a hint of a blush. "Agent Rouge. Uh huh. Uh huh. No. Oh, very well. Ten minutes." She clicked it off and tucked it back down. "Sorry, Shadow, I have to fly. Business, you know."
"Wait, don't you want the hoverboard back?" He held it up as she took wing.
"What? No, I told you it was a gift. Happy Birthday, Shadow."
"Happy . . ." He hadn't had a birthday - or at least thought about it - since he'd lived on the ARK with Maria. Now that she mentioned it, he realized that it was almost his birthday (or the nearest equivalent, since as an artificially created life-from he hadn't technically been 'born'). "Huh. How did you know?"
"I looked it up in the files. We'll have to have a proper party for you next year, but this was the best I could do on short notice. See ya!" With a wave she darted away on the evening breeze.
Bemused, Shadow looked back at his gift. Remembering his days on the ARK, he stepped back on and began practicing some of the old moves. He'd always preferred his hover skates, but Maria had laughed so when he did tricks with the board. She'd been forbidden to use one after falling and cutting her forehead, so she'd insisted that Shadow learn to ride them instead. And now, fifty and more unacknowledged birthdays away from her, here he was on one again.