Part 44

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The rocky garden grounds led uphill to the back wall of the Cordon Wing, and the side wall of the lower two stories. The upper stories extended beyond the side wall of the lower stories by a hundred feet. But there were no visible means of support such as stilts. The only feature was a protrusion from the ceiling in the shape of a round aluminum dish with a purple glow from a small center opening.

"Bet all the really rich aliens have a garage for their flying saucers at their mansion" John looked around at the ceiling above. Chiana looked at John curiously, so he pointed up to the ceiling. "Looks like somebody got sauced, took off and parked that there flying saucer smack dab in the middle of hanger roof."

"Sauced?" Oshana asked, almost timidly approaching around John's side.

"Sauced, yeah, juiced, pickled, high as a kite, three sheets to the wind, tanked" John helpfully compounded. "With a nose like Rudolph and a tongue like a snake's ass in a wagon rut."

"Crichton" Chiana called in a cheerful way that told John he could get knocked senseless.

"Yeah baby" he replied, not daring to get any closer.

"Why" she asked "are you babbling like a Repmek hypocrite to a congregation after a Gloran Festival?"

"Just trying to keep my mind off things, my little baklava."

"Yeah?" Chiana asked, closed her mouth and looked aside, annoyed. The next instant she was pulling on the ends of the collar of his overcoat with her feet on his shins, threatening to strangle him. "Well take your mind off things after you put your mind on helping us get out of this frelling mess!" she exploded.

"Crichton" a raw, hoarse female voice called out from the direction they had just come.

Chiana hopped back off of John and both turned around to see an unbelievably emaciated lady in somewhat hip punk wear and horribly unkempt, stringy red hair walking towards him. The lady looked down at him as if he should know who she was and that he should also know she was superior. Suddenly John remembered and pointed at Chiana, who spoke at the same time John did. "Library!"

"Library?" the red headed stranger stopped where she was and gawked. "You don't remember...." she stared at the ground, crestfallen.

A warning shot glanced the red headed stranger's midsection, blowing her belt buckle apart. She dove to the ground, bracing for another shot. John rushed closer and held a hand out to stop the onrushing militia. "Hold it Clam! Guys! Pocket the heat for a minute. You all right?" he asked the red headed stranger, helping her up with one hand.

"Do you or do you not remember me?" she asked, seeming to be very annoyed.

"You had a leather lollipop?" John asked her. "You dig Harvey? Really ugly tough guy with a black leather fetish? Are we ringing any bells?"

The red headed stranger stared back at him, vaguely appalled. "I hardly believe so."

"Cool" John nodded "That'll make it easier for you to make friends with nice folk. Might want to spread the lookouts around, Clam. So, Pip?" John prompted.

"Where is she?" Koresh bluntly interrupted, glaring on Oshana. "Where is this thing you promised, Bannik, this clone?"

"Clone?" the red headed stranger asked.

"Long story" John told her and looked back at Koresh. "If there's anything alive down there-"

"-First this!" Oshana interrupted.

"First this" John agreed. "So, Pip?" John prompted again.

"No, now!" Koresh thrust a pulse pistol toward Chiana. "If there's anything alive I'll be more likely to find it sooner than later."

John glared at Koresh, but the Nebari's large black eyes were blind with emotion and ringed with tears. Chiana swallowed and nudged her head solemnly in agreement.

John looked intently at Oshana. "Does Kastara know where they'd be bakin' up these supposed clones?"

"Yes" Oshana eagerly informed them "he knows all the ways there, he can take him!" She grabbed handsful of Kastara's shirt, pulled him over and shoved him at Koresh.

"Right" John started Koresh and Kastara off away from the group "when you get it, bring it here, and we'll have Oshana do her thing when we're done with her." John shook his head watching them walk away. Koresh soon turned and looked back at Chiana for a moment. He groaned in frustration but sat down on a nearby boulder to wait.

"Hey Oshana" Chiana calmly clamped an arm around Oshana's shoulders. "H-how do we go up the drad elevator?"

"That's an elevator?!" John gawked up. "Alien abductors were Nebari?"

"Hey!" Chiana hopped up in front of John and pulled his face to look at her. "Only Nebari interested in humans is me" she gave him a quick kiss on the lips then slipped in front of Oshana. Chiana gestured down then up. "Hm?"

Oshana snapped out of a fawn-eyed adoring stare, startled with worry. "I don't know! You have to be....up there."

"Do you need up there?" the red headed stranger inserted herself in John's way. "As you do not seem to have the slightest clue of what to do, perhaps I might suggest something."

"Huh?" John asked. "Yeah we gotta get Pip 'n' Pumpkin up there, Willie."

The red headed stranger stared at the wall, gathering determination. Then she walked up to the wall, walked up the wall, walked upside down on the ceiling above, and crawled into the glowing hole.

"Ooooookay" John gawked up at her. "She saw Matrix too. Cool. Beam me up, Snootty?"

The red headed stranger's head peered down through the glowing hole. "Is this operated by controls?"

John and Chiana looked at Oshana. "Jump, and let yourself fall" Oshana called up to her, awkwardly cupping her hands around her mouth as if she never yelled before in her life.

"Wha?" Chiana craned her neck back at Oshana.

"It might work?" Oshana cringed or timidly shrugged, or a bit of both. "I saw him....do it" she stared down at her feet.

"I know.....it works" Chiana clarified to Oshana as the red headed stranger was carried down and eased onto her feet with a goofy gape.

John nodded his head at the red headed stranger. "Cool. Man that would've been great in Xanadu."

"Okay Crichton" Chiana walked up beside him "know you're thinking real hard on it, what do you think?"

"Good soundtrack, thank God. But the movie? Still can't believe they wasted Gene Kelly like that" John folded his arms and nodded his head. "It's a crime. Over twenty years since Les Girls and we get some montage featuring the worst of 70's fashion? Somebody coulda been strung up for that. They were probably too busy being strung out."

Chiana nodded in agreement, turned and walked up to the red headed stranger's side. "Ah if you want to help, go back up and find something to drop down so we can climb up." The red headed stranger turned to face Chiana and backed slightly from Chiana's close study. "Frell, you smell" Chiana observed, somehow keeping it from sounding like a personal comment. "What's your name?"

"My name is Sikozu Shanu and if you had been in the places I have been, you would smell just as badly." Chiana simply stood inches from her, staring at the light scale patterns on Sikozu's skin around her neck.

"Don't touch that, Pip, you don't know where it's been" John chimed in, more to himself.

"Wanna do it?" Chiana asked, her face an inch from Sikozu's.

Sikozu clenched her teeth, her head slightly tilted, and walked over to the wall again. "And why are we going inside?"

"No idea why you're going, sister, but I'm going in because Larran wants to. Yeah" Chiana made a nod of agreement with herself. "Well, see" Chiana followed Sikozu over to the wall, talking at triple speed "The Minister of Fekkiks, known as Larran, got into this spirit space thanks to Oshana, that's the innocent looking one over there, only she's not so helpless, she's a Stakira, that's what they do, or, that one anyway, so the three of us can go back and forth. Into each other."

Sikozu simply stared intensely at Chiana's face. Chiana stared back a moment then decided to continue with a shrug. "So, Larran wants to take me over, especially now Tannac made a Hynerian mud pot out of his eema, thinking he'll use my importance as this Sister thing to make some speech that'll make everyone stop fighting and dren so everything will fall into his hands and he'll send me up a spirit creek without a piddle-"

"Paddle" John corrected.

"-paddle, while he goes around as me and rats on the non-conformists and dren. Larran wants to use the frelling huge balcony up in front there because all kinds of people are going to be flooding back in any time now the shooting died down and he thinks this wing is the last place to make a stand and address his public, or else we'll be on the run. We gotta get in this way because some people with pulse weapons don't want anyone getting in the front way, and the original entrance to the wing is impassible. We're gonna take Oshana and I there because it may not go the way Larran thinks it'll go. So let's go."

"Before she drives you up the wall" John leaned close to Sikozu and asked to one side "did you get all that?"

"Hardly" she contemptuously grit, heading up the wall anyway.

John snapped his fingers. "Darn. Well, join the club."

Meanwhile, Chiana walked over to where the elevator had deposited Sikozu. "What if I...." Chiana wondered out loud to herself. She leapt up and let herself fall onto her back. John rushed to grab her, but before she landed on the ground, the purple disc formed under her, whisked her upwards through the air and let her slide off onto the side of the hole in the ceiling above. He could hear her little giggle of excitement. "Come on Crichton! It's fun" she nodded and beckoned him up with a scoop of her hand.

Oshana eagerly repeated it, to the same results. Seeing that, Sikozu hurried off of the wall she had started walking up and repeated it as well. Seeing the ladies peering from the hole waiting for him, John went to the same spot, scrunched his face and jumped.

"Oooow!"

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"I think we have him" Sikozu said through her teeth, straining for all she was worth with Chiana and Oshana to pull John Crichton up by a rope.

One of John's hands began trying to grab the edge of the hole in the floor. "Don't count your multiple personality disorders until he's through the hatch" John called up.

"H-hey Oshana" Chiana told the Bannik, who seemed more worried at her tender hands being hurt by the rough tapestry they'd made a rope from "We gotta get to the area Larran was trying to keep me in."

"But how do we get across?!" Oshana asked.

"What?" Chiana blinked back at Oshana. "Isn't there some sort of passage or something? I had to make a ladder with bamboo to get o-over to a, a balcony here from the balcony in my rooms!"

"I don't knooow" Oshana nearly hollered. "I-if, maybe I could find out from him...." Oshana suddenly released the rope.

"Aungh! Frelling...." Chiana started to grumble as Sikozu and herself took up the load and quickly discovered Oshana was doing most of the muscling. Sikozu grabbed a post that protruded from the floor near the hole. Chiana grabbed Sikozu's pants. Both ended up sucked out of the hole by the weight of John falling on the other end of the rope.

Oshana bit her fingers on one hand and rushed to look down the hole. Seeing the three fall, she screamed, but it soon perverted into a laugh, her eyes hardening with cruel glee.

John suddenly found himself being elevated on a translucent disc of purple, with Chiana in a tangle to his side and Sikozu tangled in the rope straddling over him. John and Sikozu stared at each other in surprise. "Frell" Chiana remarked and slipped herself over him, sliding Sikozu off. John grabbed the seat of Sikozu's pants to keep her from falling off the disc. All three tried standing as the disc neared the top.

Larran in Oshana grabbed Chiana's arm, pulling her onto the floor. With her other hand, Larran in Oshana struck the post protruding from the floor near the hole. The post sank a few inches into the floor, deactivating the elevator.

As the disc fell out from under John, he instinctively grabbed the nearest thing, which was Chiana's leg. All three began falling away from the hole. Sikozu tossed the rope up to Chiana, who wrapped it in a hasty knot around the post just quickly enough to grab the rope in her fall backward. John got a better sense of things and grabbed the rope as well. Sikozu hung by her grips on the pockets of the overcoat near John's rear. All three began to fall backward again as the rope slipped from the post.

Now that Chiana was going to fall as well, Larran in Oshana cursed and pulled the post up. The elevator reactivated at ground level and began to rise. The three landed in a jumble on the elevator disc. As it neared the top, Chiana got herself free and saw Larran in Oshana above offering a hand to help her, doubtless intending to let the elevator drop the other two again, just as soon as she had Chiana's hands.

Springing up twenty feet from the backs of John and Sikozu, Chiana high kicked a surprised Larran senseless and landed on the floor in a squat. Nodding in satisfaction that Larran, and incidentally Oshana, was disabled for the moment, Chiana helped John and Sikozu off of the elevator.

"Whew now that was a hairy round of Chutes and Ladders" John looked back at the elevator. "Here on, I'm sticking to CandyLand. So how do we get to your old pad from here now?"

"Ladders, ah" Chiana smiled smarmily at John "funny you should say that."

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