This time, without pinching himself first, Jim woke up in yet another location. He was in a forested clearing again, but one with a small, ramshackle wooden cabin off to one side. His head ached from the aftereffects of the sleep gas that had been used on him, and as he struggled to move, he found himself tied tight to a large tree trunk that had been left standing in the clearing. He might not have been searched and stripped of all his gadgets while he was unconscious, but it wouldn't make a difference – Loveless had made sure he was immobile and that the bonds were very, very strong indeed. He felt dizzy, disoriented – and helpless.
"Ah, Mr. West, I see you're awake," Dr. Loveless grinned up at his captive foe as Jim struggled to lift his heavy, aching head. The mad doctor had traded his olive drab-and-brown hunting cap for a chef's toque, but he still had the midget rifle in his hands. He tossed it back and forth between his fingers, then held it as if he were going to shoot another dose of the gas at West's head before holding it out crosswise in front of him, smiling with pleasure on a new toy. "You know, I had the oddest idea to make it shoot out a little flag with the word 'bang' on it as well as the gas," Loveless told him. "But then I decided that would be too silly even for this place."
"Let me guess," West murmured, still struggling to clear his head. "This 'place' as you call it is a children's book of some kind." That would explain the anthropomorphic animals, anyway. But Loveless was frowning and shaking his head.
"Oh, no, Mr. West. Nothing so childish as that!" he scolded, setting down the rifle and taking up a very large chef's knife and a sharpening rod. "As you know, I abhor childish behavior! You are correct in suspecting that I've transported us into an illustration using my wondrous sonic technology. But the illustration is no mere fairy tale volume for children! It is something far, far more interesting!"
And if I refuse to take the bait, you'll tell me everything I need to know, Jim thought. Now as his headache was subsiding and something like lucidity had returned, he tried to get a better view of everything around him. Voltaire stood in the dell too, keeping watch on an enormous bubbling cauldron that Loveless had cooking over a campfire. Given the toque that Loveless had donned, and the chef's knife he was now sharpening, Jim wondered if he was about to be in hot water in more ways than one. Loveless gestured expansively with the knife at the forest all around them and continued on with his monologue, just as Jim knew he would.
"What you see here," Loveless explained, "is an entirely new portal into the realm of art! A whole new world of a sort undreamed of by our society, and discovered by me! The other side of a painting that I pulled into our own reality through the use of an experimental time machine of mine and have found a fantastic way to access!"
"In other words," Jim drawled, "you stole someone else's picture and are trying to take credit for it."
"No, no, no!" Loveless shrieked, stamping his foot down in anger and waving the chef's knife at his prisoner. "That's exactly the type of attitude I would expect you to have, Mr. West, you small-minded interloper! But you are wrong!" The little wizard wasn't just steamingly angry – Jim was surprised to see actual steam seeming to shoot from his ears in his rage. Wherever they were at the moment, it definitely wasn't New Mexico. After the steam drifted away, Loveless struck up an imperious pose, with one hand and the sharpening rod over his chest. "Dr. Miguelito Quixote Loveless is no mere thief! I am an intellectual giant, a creative genius! A-"
"Plagiarist, from the sound of it," Jim added.
Steam shot from Loveless' ears again as he scowled and glared because of the interruption. In spite of the danger he was in, Jim wondered if, with a little more effort, he could actually make flames spout from Loveless' head. That would almost be worth it.
"I'm going to ignore you now," Loveless crossed his little arms in fury, almost slashing one of them in the process, and turned his back on the agent.
One hippopotamus, two hippopotamus, Jim counted in his head, three hippopot-
"Bah!" Dr. Loveless exclaimed. "Why should I waste my time trying to explain the brilliance of my plans to an intellectual flea? To a petty government servling like yourself?"
Because you need the audience, Jim thought at him.
Sure enough, Loveless began pacing back and forth in front of his captive and explaining everything behind the current situation.
"A time machine, I tell you!" Loveless rounded on West. "Do you think that's someone else's idea? Do you think that anyone besides me could have come up with such a marvelous device? A machine capable of transporting objects from the future into our own time?"
Outwardly Jim did his best to appear imperturbable, but his inner self gave a shudder. The last thing the world needed was a Dr. Loveless with access to technologies even more advanced than his own. Or people.
"True, there are a few additional difficulties still to be worked out before the machine can be of practical use," Loveless admitted with a tilt of his head. "But I'll have time to attend to that! Time which you and your equally meddling partner Mr. Gordon can't stop me from having, now that I've found the perfect place and method to dispose of the two of you! Look around you, Mr. West!" The doctor gestured widely to their surroundings again. "Do you have any idea at all where you are? Do you think the Secret Service is going to have any idea where to look for you? Are you starting to feel afraid, Mr. West? Because no one is ever going to find you again." Loveless chuckled. "The odd painting that I drew in from the future – which is not the same as stealing! – was on a flimsy, transparent piece of material, made of a substance unlike anything we have created yet. But it could nevertheless be bent to my will as much as my fingers when traced over by my special pigments and subjected to my earlier sonic discovery. It led me to this new world! This strange, brave, new world! A world I believe you found as distracting and maddening as I first did!"
As if Loveless needed any help being maddened . . . . Jim was certainly uneasy and wondering if there was even a chance of getting a warning to Arte somehow, before Arte fell into Loveless' trap too. He could feel some of the gadgets and tools still bristling on his person, if only he could get at them . . . .
"You will, of course, have noticed some of the local flora and fauna," Loveless continued. "But you haven't made the careful study of them that I have. You cannot imagine, with that pea-sized, antiquated caveman brain of yours the sheer variety of living creatures found in this land that my study of sound has given me access to! There are more than mere talking animals here, Mr. West – there are monsters! Big, hairy ones! And witches and vampires too! Even some of the trees and the rocks seem to have a life of their own in this place! The very hills are alive, Mr. West! Alive with the sound of music! My music!"
Oh, please, Jim thought. Don't let him start singing again! Anything but that!
Thankfully there didn't appear to be a harpsichord here, or Antoinette either - only Voltaire dumbly watching the cauldron bubble as Dr. Loveless waddled over to a small trestle table, set down the knife and sharpening rod and picked up a large wooden spoon. The mad genius gave the contents of the cauldron a stir, sipped a sample of the contents, swished the liquid around in his mouth for a few seconds, considering, then smiled beatifically.
"Nearly ready!" he said to Voltaire before returning to where Jim was tied to be fit.
"Taking up a new hobby?" Jim asked. "I thought you let others do all the cooking for you."
Loveless beamed at him in a way Jim knew couldn't be good.
"Not on this occasion," he laughed. "That is normally true, of course. But the most special dishes deserve to be prepared by the most special and talented of chefs de cuisine, don't you agree?"
Jim nodded slightly, his head being the only part of him that he could move.
"It was a small matter," Loveless said, "once I realized the potential of the strange piece of artwork that I discovered – not stole! – to use one of my other inventions to enlarge it by several feet and position it in a carefully chosen location once I had substituted your engineers' real rail maps with my own. The translucent quality of the material around the edges allowed for it to be the perfect optical illusion." The doctor snickered at his own brilliance. "You and your crew didn't just fall for my trap, Mr. West! You drove that fancy little train of yours straight into it!" He smacked his lips in satisfaction. "An entirely new world before me, with a horde of monsters, witches, ghouls and goblins of every sort I can recruit for my personal army to reconquer California! And an army, as you know, marches on its stomach!"
Something in Loveless' next smile disturbed West more profoundly than anything else the doctor had said so far. The agent was about to be in hot water, all right.
He can't possibly mean . . . .
"Some say that revenge is a dish best served cold, Mr. West, but I intend to serve it positively scalding! You've made me stew time and time again with your interference in my work, but now I will make you into stew! A satisfying Secret Service salmagundi to offer up to my new and monstrous minions! You should feel honored that I will be preparing you personally! And then," he chortled to further torment his prisoner, "I'll follow it up with a Gordon goulash, or perhaps Gordon gratiné!"
Jim did not feel honored.
"You'll never get away with this," the agent vowed.
"Really?" Dr. Loveless chuckled and clapped his hands together. "I beg to differ! But you'll be the one doing all of the begging soon! Only it won't do you any good, Mr. West! Who do you think can possibly save you now?"