me?”
“Well, my standards. I guess I'm easily pleased, but still, it has to be better than dying at the edge of the desert.”
“The edge?”
“Relatively speaking. It's a big desert.”
“Wouldn't happen to be a Necklace of Power lying around here, would there?”
“No. Just sand.”
“Figures.”
Using all the force he could muster, Randall got back to his feet. “Follow me,” said the beetle, flying a couple feet ahead of him. “It's not far ... relatively speaking...”
Time passed....
* * * *
THE BUG finished with its life story. It had been born one day, flew around the desert for a while, then found Randall.
“How much further?” Randall asked.
“We're almost there.”
“I don't see anything worth not dying for.”
“Six more steps.”
Randall took six more steps.
“I'm sorry,” said the bug. “I meant miles.”
Time passed....
* * * *
“I HATE everybody,” said Randall.
Time passed....
* * * *
“HOW MUCH further?” asked Randall. Or he thought he asked it. His thoughts and his voice were getting confused.
“Six more steps.”
“I'd hate to have to splat you, bug.”
“I mean it. Six more steps.”
Randall stopped. “Bug, I can see that there's nothing around for at least a thousand more steps. And I'm not talking dinky little crippled baby steps, I'm talking huge there's-a-big-dragon-ready-to-torch-my-tail steps.”
“No, no, six more steps, I promise.”
“Bug, apparently you have some distorted view of what exactly is entailed in taking a step.” He took one step forward. “That there, what I just did, is a step. Six of those will place me in a location that looks suspiciously like it contains more of the sand that I've been walking on for three days. Now, perhaps where you come from the definition of step has been altered in such a way that six of them would result in my being transported to a location that contains something besides the aforementioned sand, but in the world that I have grown to call home, six steps aren't going to do squat!”
“You don't trust me?”
“I trust that you've entered the magical Wonder World where the concept of steps has been drastically mutated into this freakish distortion of the laws of reality, where the alien life forms that possess legs stretching across two hundred of what any non-misshapen human would refer to as a ‘step’ roam freely across the desert without worrying about shriveling up into a withered corpse because there's nothing to drink but sand!”
“I still love you, you know.”
Randall dropped to his knees. “I quit. You hear me? No more steps. No more.”
“Please don't die. Please? Please, please, please? Just a little bit further. That's all I ask.”
“What is it with you? Are you on the Population Increase Committee or something?”
“I just want my friend to live.”
Randall forced himself to stand up again and begin walking. “Five more steps. One. Two. Three. Hmmmm, still lots of sand around here, isn't there? Four. The sand hasn't noticeably decreased. Five. That's it, I'm dooooooooooooooone...”
While he rarely stretched out his vowel sounds in normal conversation, in this instance his speech pattern was altered by the fact that the sand beneath him had given way, dropping him into a tunnel. He slid down the twisting tunnel for several seconds, then dropped painfully onto a stone floor right next to a nice fluffy cushion.
“See, I told you it wasn't in the right place,” said a man dressed in a lavender robe. There were four of them, seated around a table. Randall was in a small stone chamber, containing little besides the table and walls lined with books.
“It's a spy!” shouted one of the men, standing up and pointing accusingly.
“Kill him!”
The other three men stood up and pulled daggers out of their robes. One of them took out two daggers and looked smugly at the others.
At that moment, the bug flew down the tunnel into the chamber. “Don't hurt him! He's my friend!”
The men looked at the bug, mouths agape. “I don't know about the rest of you,” said one of them, “but when a talking bug asks me not to hurt somebody, I listen.”
The other men nodded their agreement and replaced their daggers. The man with two daggers was more reluctant than the others, and made a big show out of putting both of them away.
“Please,” said the bug, “my friend needs food and water.”
“But water is precious around here,” said one of the men. He wore a name tag on his cloak that said Frederick. “If he wants us to share ours, he'll have to do without the lemon flavoring
“That's right,” said Roderick of the two daggers. “Do you want to fight about it?” he asked, reaching hopefully into his robe.
“Any water is fine,” said Randall.
Maverick picked a canteen up from the table and brought it over to Randall. Randall unscrewed the top and drank vigorously.
“Food is precious, too,” said Frederick. “If you want us to share, I'm going to have to sneeze on it first.”
“No problem,” said Randall, finishing off the contents of the canteen. The fourth man, Rick, got up, went over to one of the walls and began searching through the books. He pulled out one volume, titled
“Wrong book,” said Roderick.
“Oh, yeah.” Rick pulled out
“We need to figure out a way to keep them from doing that,” said Maverick. “Who has clean-up duty today?”
The shelf finished rotating, revealing a secret tunnel. It was lined with shelves containing all manner of food products, from bread to Hugo's Happy Ham. The tunnel continued further into darkness.
“Where does that tunnel lead?” asked Randall.
“Into darkness,” Roderick replied, with more than a hint of “duh” in his voice.
“It's a secret,” said Frederick. “A secret we are not prepared to reveal at this time, unless you should join us in our mission to assassinate the King of Rainey by crawling through a tunnel...”
“Not necessarily this one,” added Roderick, giving him a warning glare.
“Oh, right. Not necessarily this one, but a certain tunnel that leads right underneath the royal bedroom, enabling us to sneak up there in the middle of the night and slay the beast who has victimized our people for so long.”
“Which people?” asked Randall.
“Us four. The king has kept us in poverty for too long!”
“What do you mean, poverty? Look at all that food!”
