Shadows of the Future
Chapter 10
Secrets Revealed
(Explanations, rating, and disclaimers can be found at the beginning of Chapter 1.)
Electra looked around, dazed, and tried to get her bearings. She had been all ready to put their plan into action, but then...somehow...everything had gone wrong. There had been a brilliant flash of light, and--
--oh, yes. She remembered now. She'd been sold--actually SOLD!--in the marketplace, and brought by a little old man, who seemed to have some kind of miniature transporter device.
"You all right?" came a cracked voice from behind her. She turned around to see her new...owner...peering nearsightedly up at her through a pair of very thick glasses. His thick, heavy head-spines had grown almost to the ground due to his greatly advanced age and were grey and fuzzy at the tips. He looked thorougly frail, and Electra had no doubt whatsoever that she could beat the stuffing out of him with BOTH paws tied behind her back. It wouldn't do to do that in public, however, she reminded herself. I wonder how the people of this neighborhood would react to the sight of some strange woman wiping the floor with a little old man, she thought wryly. For, as much as she hated to admit it, this WAS a very nice neighborhood. They were up on a hill, with a small, paved country road curving over the horizon, nice, big, rambling, friendly-looking old-fashioned style houses lining the street, spreading shade-trees, some of which bore fruit. (And if she had realised exactly HOW scarce nature was in the City of the Stars, she would have known that her new owner was insanely wealthy.) People in brightly-coloured clothing were chatting under these trees, cooking outdoor lunches, kids were riding up and down the quiet street on bicycles, almost never having to worry about a car coming along. It was the type of place Electra wouldn't mind living in.
But she was a SLAVE!
"The first time you teleport is ALWAYS a bit disorienting," said the little old man, looking up at her. "Plus the fact that NO-one has a personal teleporter this small," he said, holding up the tiny device proudly. "Most of them are at least the size of a book. But I invented this baby myself, and I'm the ONLY one who has one. Not even the Queen knows about it! Shall we go inside?"
Why is he being so nice to me? wondered Electra suspiciously, but followed the man inside a cheerful two-story red brick house. Inside, it was even nicer--wooden furniture, soft carpets, paintings, a grand piano in one corner of the main room. Wow, she thought. Being raised in Knothole, she had never seen a personal home this large before. The old geezer's RICH.
"What do you wish me to do, my master?" She hated the words as they came out of her mouth but thought it best to say them anyway, just to be safe.
"The library is in there," he gestured to a door off to the left. "I want you to sort the books alphabetically by author's last name. I'm good at reading, but not so good at putting things away..."
"Right." said Electra, and went through the door he had indicated.
Instantly, she was in heaven.
Books. Books everywhere. Books of every imaginable size, colour, and subject. Books all over the shelves, the floor, the tables and chairs. A great big wonderful chaotic mess of knowledge and literature. A tiny voice in the back of Electra's brain told her that things were NOT as heavenly as they seemed--after all, it was her job to STRAIGHTEN this mess, and it would take her approximately forever, assuming she stopped every now and then for sleep. But she didn't care. To a literary-type person like Electra, this hideously sloppy library was paradise.
Finally she remembered to close her gaping mouth and set to work. She could hear the little old man moving about behind her through the open door and didn't want to know what an angry master would do to a slave who disobeyed, so she got to it. She only vaguely knew the basics of the Echidna language, but she felt that the studies she'd been doing of the inscriptions in the Hidden Palace and Marble Gardens areas of the Floating Island for the past two years had given her a rudimentary idea of their alphabet, at least. It didn't help that these books were in all different dialects, however--ranging from the one that was seen all over the Island to a heavily mutated one she could barely recognise as being the same language. But she kept working.
And, as she went along, her natural curiosity got the better of her and she began opening some of the books, flipping through the pictures, and attempting to read a few pages here and there. From what she could understand--and her grasp of the language was gradually getting better and better--they were absolutely FASCINATING. She spent many happy hours there--or so she assumed; she really had no way of telling what time it was--when she saw something that made her gasp.
In one of the books that was written in the older language of the echidnas, the Floating Island dialect, she saw a picture that was shockingly familiar. It was the same as the hieroglyphics on the walls of that secret chamber beneath the Hidden Palace, the room with the giant transporter that had brought them all here, the symbols that had disturbed Knuckles so badly at the time! She had always wondered what it was that bothered him so, but never had a chance to ask.
Now, however, she had the WHOLE story. Right in front of her.
In living colour photographs, only slightly faded despite their great age--she now knew that she had somehow travelled in time as well as space, because languages just DON'T change that much in only 12 years--the drama of the echidnas' last days on the Floating Island unfolded. She saw what Knuckles had seen when he was a boy--the attacking ships flying over the Island. She saw them strike at the Hidden Palace. She saw the great explosion.
And then she saw what had been happening from THEIR point of view--the scientists, in a chamber below the Palace, frantically trying to get the transporter ready in time--and failing. She saw how only MOST of the City of the Sun was transported due to the randomly fluctuating device, and how pieces of it broke off and created the ruins. She saw how the confused echidnas had arrived on this strange new world, a nearly lifeless and airless rock, and almost died immediately. She saw their desperately thrown-together tent village grow into a full-fledged city. In other words, she saw all the things that Lorinda had told Knuckles.
And, by turning the pages BACK a bit further, she discovered a little more.
The deep, dark secret that the echidna rulers had not thought it fit for the population to know.
Not ALL of the echidnas had been happy to live all alone, forever, on the Floating Island. Soem of them did not share their government's isolationist policies, and wanted to move back down to Mobius, to live among the other animals.
This apalled their racist, closed-minded government, which was obsessed with the idea of keeping the echidna blood and culture "pure". So the would-be emigrants were denied.
But they would NOT shut up, and they would NOT stop trying. They were sick of being penned up in one spot and desperately wanted to see new pastures. As the rebels--so they became--got more and more vehement in their protests, the government became nastier and nastier. Neither side would budge an inch. It wasn't long before there was shooting, tear-gassing, riots, and bombs going off in the street.
And then something happened to turn the tide for the rebels--an air force commander came over to their side and helped them build their own airplanes, using the army's own supplies, to fight against the government. The airplanes had no windows and were steered entirely by sensors that plugged directly into the pilot's brain, because the rebels wanted anonymity. They climbed into the planes, (which were built on a secret base on a nearby cloud, made using the same technology that kept the Sky Sanctuary afloat), flew towards the Island, and attacked the Hidden Palace!
Electra gasped in shock. All this time, it hadn't been LIONS that were attacking the Island, but their OWN PEOPLE! Other echidnas whose only crime was that they wanted to be free to live where they chose!
Electra jumped and slammed the book shut with a snap! as she felt something cold and hard prick the back of her neck, just underneath one of her spines. "I see you've discovered our dirty little secret," whispered the voice of the old man directly in her ear. It somehow didn't sound quite so feeble and harmless now. "There is only one thing I can do with you now..." and the thing jabbed harder into her neck.
"Please, sir," Electra began babbling frantically, "I--I didn't mean to--I just love books so much and--"
There was a strange snick sound and a loud double clank as something metal hit the floor.
And the thing in the back of her neck was gone.
So was her collar.
She turned around slowly in utter bewliderment to see the little old man smiling at her. "Yes, there's only one thing I can do with you now," he laughed. "Bring you into the club!"
"Huh?" said Electra intelligently.
"We're sort of the...'new radicals," he explained. " Those rebels in that book? They're the inspiration for our group. We're working to change our society's problems, 500 years later. Or, rather, because the time circuits weren't set properly on the teleporer that brought us here, it's the present for YOU, but 500 years later for US. Ah, I can see you're confused. Well, no mattter, the important thing is that we're out to change our world for the better. And wouldn't you agree--" here he looked pointedly at the pieces of the broken slave-collar on the floor "--that our world NEEDS changing?"
She nodded dumbly, still trying to get the idea into her head that she evidently wasn't going to be killed any time soon.
"So I work for the rebels," he grinned mischievously. "NOBODY expects a 'harmless little old man' of being an underworld kingpin, so it's perfect. I buy a slave every time I've got some money saved up, then set them free on the condition that they HAVE to join our forces. Or else I'll kill them. Once they know our secret, they simply CAN'T be allowed to walk off randomly with it, after all. You ARE going to join us, aren't you, my dear--what's your name?"
"Electra," she cleared her throat nervously, then tried again. "Electra the Hedgehog."
"Well, Electra the Hedgehog, do you solemnly swear to at all times uphold the principles of the New Radicals, through sickness and in health, regardless of rain, sleet, or dark of night, until death do you part?"
Electra had to stifle a giggle at that mangled composite oath. "I swear." After all, joining a rebel group HAD to be better than DYING...
"Then welcome aboard." He shook her hand seriously then went back to babbling. "Oh, yes, as I was saying, I always buy slaves whenever I can. I WOULD have bought all of your friends as well, but, ack! These new taxes have been KILLING me lately. So since I could only buy one, I chose you, on the basis that you seemed to be intelligent and educated. Too many revolutions have fallen apart due to the rebels having a surplus of brawn and a distinct lack of brains. Anyway, I buy the slaves, and people don't know WHAT I do with them. Some think I kill them, others think I'm insanely greedy and keep all of them--far more than I could possibly actually need. But whether they think I'm bloodthirsty or lazy, it gives me JUST an unpleasant enough reputation that people leave me alone, and never come in here. Therefore, I have as much privacy as I could ever want. Which comes in handy, in my line of work." He casually tapped a hidden button on the wall and a holographic screen appeared floating in the middle of the room. Even though it seemed totally realistic, Electra could see straight through it to the bookshelf behind. The little old man positioned himself directly in front of it. "Mole to Spider, Mole to Spider," he began. "Come in, Spider."
The screen fuzzed out momentarily, then came back with the image of an attractive young echidna woman with orange-brown fur and shortish head-spines. "This is Spider. Report."
"Permission to bring another Fly into the Web." said the little old man--"Mole", Electra supposed she'd better start calling him, as it occurred to her she didn't KNOW his real name--and he pulled her over in front of the screen.
The woman on the screen had a blank expression on her face as she scrutinized Electra, but from behind her, out of range of the camera, Electra could hear two very familiar voices.
"Electra?" came the voice of what sounded like her brother. "Is that you?"
"HI, 'LECTRA!!" shrieked a voice that HAD to be Jolt. No-one else could be THAT loud and shrill without magical enhancement.
"Sonic?" she gasped in surprise. "Jolt?"
The woman on the screen--"Spider"--turned around briefly, presumably to look at the two people behind her, then turned back to the camera. "It would appear the Flies know each other," she said with a half-smile. "Permission granted. Now opening the Web. Spider Out."
And a strange, glowing, gigantic golden ring slowly phased itself into view in front of them as the holograhpic screen disappeared, turning around a few inches off the floor. Hey, wait, this is kinda familiar, thought Electra, isn't this one of those things Sonic was telling me about--
and then she was through.
* * *
"Comfortable, my darling?" smiled the Queen, as Anansi lay back and rested his head on the tassled, purple velvet pillow she had placed across her lap.
"Very, my sweet," He smiled back up at her with those unnerving black eyes. "Just one thing, though..."
"What is it, pumpkin?" smarmed Riku-Dari, as she stroked his head-spines with one long-clawed hand.
"I'd like some grapes, if it's not too much to ask."
The Queen laughed, a deep, throaty laugh. Oh, this one is under my spell but GOOD! He'll make an excellent consort, a little puppet princeling toy, to 'rule' over half the kingdom in name only while I pull his strings. Aloud, she said, "But of course, my honey-pie. SLAVE!" She yelled, with a snap of her fingers. "Bring us a bunch of the finest grapes in the palace. And make sure they're peeled!"
"Very good, your Majesty," muttered the slave in a sarcastic tone and turned and went back inside the Palace. The two dark compatriots were reclining on a plush couch on a wide balcony up near the Palace's roof, overlooking the city. It was a lovely night. But then again, it was ALWAYS a lovely night in a place with an artificially-controlled environment. Riku-Dark continued to pet Anansi Korel--the echidna who had once been known as Knuckles--and smile over her plans. And HE didn't know even the HALF of them. Which was as it should be. After all, the instant you gave too much information to a MALE he'd always use it to mess things up. Better to keep them cute and clueless...And that was why only WOMEN were fit to rule.
"Your grapes, Your Majesty," said the slave, bringing them in on a silver platter.
"Very good, you may go." She dismissed the slave with a negligent wave of her hand. Then she picked up the grapes and examined them more closely. "WAIT!" she commanded the slave, who was just stepping over the threshhold, "Come back here!"
The slave trudged back over with the same resigned look on his face he always had. "You wish more of me, Your Majesty?"
"THESE grapes aren't PEELED!" she yelled, tossing them into his face. "I SPECIFICALLY asked for PEELED!" She rose from the couch in one smooth, fluid motion and began stalking slowly towards the hapless slave.
NOW his expression changed. He turned from his natural ruby-red to a sickly pinkish colour as the Queen got closer and closer to him. "But--but Your Majesty--I had no idea--it's the COOK'S fault, HE'S supposed to PREPARE the food, I just BRING it! Your Majesty, please, have mercy...!" and his voice cut off in a choking gurgle as the Queen's six-inch-long, razor-sharp claws raked across his throat.
Disdainfully, Riku-Dari kicked the corpse aside so that it rolled into a corner. "Oh, drat," she bemoaned, "I got a spot of blood on my dress!" Or what there was of it, anyway--she was ALMOST wearing an outfit that she said was a replica of the ceremonial armour that the ancient Warrior-Queens of Knuckles' day had worn. Anansi had never actually seen his own Queen up close when he was a child so he didn't know if they had actually dressed like this or not, but he didn't care. All he knew was that it looked RAVISHING sort of on her. The...outfit...consisted of a small tube-top that BARELY covered her ample chest, held on only by a pair of leather straps so as to not squish down her back-spines, a VERY short skirt that practically showed everything every time she bent over the slightest bit, a pair of high lace-up open-toed sandals like the ones the Ancient Romans used to wear, which allowed her to use her foot-claws in combat, a pair of high, elbow-length gloves with open fingers, an assortment of gleaming gold bracelets, and a spiked gold circlet on her head. Except for the jewelry, it was all in white leather with fancy dark yellow borders, that had colourful embroidered swirls woven into them. As alluring as this outfit was, however, there was still a small voice in the back of Anansi's mind reminding him of a time and place where NOBODY, men OR women, wore ANY clothes unless they really wanted to and there WERE no "forbidden body parts", but he ignored that little voice and shut it away.
"We'll get you a new dress, darling," he said, coming up behind her and putting his hands on her shoulders. He stared down at the corpse. "You just can't get good help these days," he clicked his tongue sadly. "What do you suggest we do to that nasty old cook, precious?"
"Well, I say we--"
"MAJESTY!" yelled a deep voice as Lord Django came rushing onto the balcony, so perturbed he nearly forgot to bow. "The rebels! We think we've found them! They're trying to break into the Launch Base!"
"WHAT?!" shrieked the Queen, going from coyly seductive to bug-eyed loon in no seconds flat. "Call all the guards! Send them all to the Launch Base at ONCE! And bring my sedan chair and a team of the four strongest slaves you can find! I've been chasing after these so-called rebel scum for years, I want to BE there to witness their final demise!!"