[Danny]

that'll do. thanks!

and now, the one mainard's been waiting for... [fanfare] Chapter 27! it's crudely written, as i had a lot of information to give out in a short chapter, so it's not a fun one to read. it explains a lot, though.

CHAPTER 27

The first thing that greeted Rettick when he regained consciousness was a familiar face.

“Volt! Are the others here?”

Volt shook his head. “They left me, and ran off to find you guys.” He indicated something behind Rettick. Rettick slowly turned to see what he was talking about. He saw the creature that had killed Lork and, he reluctantly concluded, saved his life. It seemed somehow less threatening now. Maybe it was its current lack of two-foot claws.

“What is it?”

“He’s the Vykker we were sent to find in the first place.”

Rettick stared at the so-called Vykker in disbelief. “It has a Vykker’s head, but it’s so… tall.”

The creature spoke. In contrast to its tall, powerful shape, it had the reedy, nasal voice of all Vykkers. “My body was one of the first things I got rid of. It wasn’t very convenient for life in the wild.”

Rettick thought for a while. Now that he thought about it, this creature did have the same basic shape as a Vykker. It had the same number or arms, legs, and heads, anyway. “You took the formula. You can change your shape at will, now, can you?”

Dr. Mildar nodded. “This is how my race could have been, if we hadn’t become so reliant on our technology. In reality, our arms and legs have become almost vestigial. All I really did was lengthen my limbs and tone up my muscles.”

“The claws…”

Mildar smiled, or looked like he was trying to. “I didn’t need them any more, after I had used them.”

“So you…”

“Got rid of them, yes.”

Rettick nodded, nervously. “Does it hurt?”

“It did the first few times, but you get used to it.”

There was a pause. “You rescued Volt.”

Mildar nodded.

“Saved his life. And mine. Why? For that matter, why’d you come out here at all?”

Mildar sighed. “Were you ever told how the Great Forest is ‘impenetrable’? How everything that goes in it is killed?”

Volt nodded. “People used to tell us that there was a magical spell put on it by Mudokon Shamans.”

“I never believed it, though” said Rettick, “I mean, there’s no such thing as magic, is there? It’s probably just very dangerous, although come to think of it, we survived for a long time, and we didn’t even run into any wildlife at all. Except for weak, edible things.”

Mildar half-smiled again. “You only survived because I was keeping the wildlife away. And the Crossbreed.”

“How?”

Mildar pulled an oval device out of an unseen pocket. It was a homing beacon, like the one in the scanner, only it wasn’t flashing. “It has an on/off switch. I kept leading it away when it got close. I just had… a lapse of concentration.” He drifted off, his eyes glazing over, then snapped back to reality. “Anyway, you’re wrong.”

“You mean there is a spell?”

“No, there was. And it wasn’t put there by mudokons, it was there since the beginning.”

Volt looked confused. “The beginning? The beginning of the world?”

“Not quite, but it was there since just after the continents, when the landscape started to form, and the forest grew. I’m a bit patchy on mudokon mythology, but as far as I can gather, there were these powerful, god-type beings in the world then, and they were worshipped by the early Mudokons. And Glukkons.”

Volt snorted. “Glukkons only care about profit!”

Rettick, who knew Grozit Jr, said nothing.

Mildar continued. “No, they used to be a spiritual people, like the mudokons. The change was partly the mudokons’ fault. I suppose my people were partly to blame, as well.” He drifted off again, but pulled himself back. “Anyway, that’s another story. The point is that one or two of these powerful creatures decided that they liked the forest, and saw the change that was happening to the rest of the world. They decided that the forest should remain safe, so they put a kind of ‘staying’ spell on it. It didn’t stop things from changing, but it separated the forest from the outside, in a way. Creatures and People from the outside found that they never really wanted to enter the forest for bad purposes, and even the odd ones that did found themselves unable to harm it. Your friend Greeb, for example, said that he’d always wanted to visit the forest, but that was because he wished it no harm.”

There was a pause, then Rettick realised something. “You mean you were listening in on our conversations, too?”

Mildar looked embarrassed. “Not all the time. Why, shouldn’t I have been?”

“It’s just that we have this thing called privacy.”

“All right, I’m sorry. There are more important things at the moment. To continue, those on the inside also became unwilling to leave, and things developed separately on the two sides of this invisible barrier. In fact, the glukkons got so pissed off that they actually erected a huge wall around the forest, which discouraged movement even more.”

Volt looked thoughtful. “So what happened? You said there’s no spell anymore.”

The tall Vykker pulled a flask out of his pocket, and took a swig. “One of the people who found himself drawn to the forest was a young Glukkon Executive called Grozit. He didn’t mean the forest any harm. Not at first.” He took another swig from the flask. “He came to explore during his time off, despite the warnings he received from his fellow executives. They all thought he was mad, but he didn’t care what they thought. He went deep into the forest, and discovered a set of ruined temples.

“Quite a while after the spell had originally been placed, the ‘gods’ dispersed. They were no longer needed, and legend has it that they return when they’re needed. Some died, only temporarily, others went away to far away places. Many, including one that was known to early mudokons as the Shrykull, merely vanished. At least one decided that it loved the forest too much to leave, and opted to sleep in the forest until the time came for the gods to reawaken. This god, I forget its name, lived in the temples of the forest mudokons, and slept. It was this that Grozit discovered.

“Basically, he got talking to this god, and convinced it not to destroy him. Now he realised the commercial potential of the forest, and planned to exploit it. If he hadn’t met the god, the spell would have had him killed, but he sort of converted the god to his side. He persuaded the god to let down the spell to allow exploitation of the forest, in return for which, Grozit agreed to introduce it to the Cartel culture, and share the profits. When he returned to ‘civilization’, he moved his small weapons business to near to the forest, and began the deforestation. He kept this a secret from the Cartel Central, so that it all went tax-free, and there were no competitors.”

Rettick looked unconvinced. “How do you know all of this? I thought you said you weren’t very good with mudokon religion.”

Mildar smiled. “Grozit obviously wasn’t very good at keeping secrets. When he got back, he made an offer to my labs, saying that if we helped him to exploit the forest by producing equipment to help, and by examining the wildlife for possible useful extracts, he would cut us into his profits, and allow us full research rights to all of the forest.” He took a swig from the bottle. “As you should know, there is a lot of competition between the labships, and we jumped at the chance to get ahead. We – or rather they – are now based entirely on-site. They analyse things that are brought to them, and design new traps for animals, or antidotes for poisons, that sort of thing.”

There was a long pause, while Rettick and Volt digested all of this new information. Then Rettick had a thought. “That still doesn’t answer my questions. Why did you run away, and why did you save our lives?”

Mildar sighed. “You can’t study these animals for as long as we have, without forming an attachment to them. Yes, we helped to trap them and kill them, but we were never in favour of wide-scale killing. We could see the value of the lumber trade and the meat trade, but Grozit had no idea what he was doing. The Magog Cartel has it all wrong. You don’t hunt things to extinction, then find something else to hunt, because sooner or later you’re going to run out of animals. What they should do is hunt in moderation, but allow the creatures to survive as a race. That’s what the mudokons do; they only take what they need, and leave the rest. I left because I didn’t want to see all these creatures disappear from the face of Oddworld. I resolved to stop this trade somehow, even if it meant losing my job and friends. At least I could live with the wildlife and the natives, if they’d accept me.”

Rettick and Volt waited for him to continue, but he didn’t, so Volt prompted him. “Why did you save our lives?”

“You remember I talked about the forest mudokons? Well, they still live here, millions of them. I thought that if I could get them on my side, we could take out the logging operation.”

“So what happened?”

“I sort of got on the wrong side of them.” After seeing their questioning faces, he elaborated. “When I first approached them, I pretended to be a mudokon. They found out soon enough, when I didn’t know any of the rituals, or even which one was the leader. They saw me as a threat, and attacked me. I was much more powerful than them, but I didn’t want to hurt them, so I ran away.” He paused, then looked down at the two sligs. “I want you to approach them for me, and explain everything.”

The two just stared at him, as if to work out whether or not he was mad. Volt found his tongue first.

“You expect them to listen to sligs?”

Mildar hesitated. “They are very… backward people. They have had no contact with the outside world for a long time, since before the Glukkons enslaved to mudokons. They’ve never even seen your people before, except for rumours of creatures on the southern continent, Pardos.”

Rettick held up a hand. “Wait a minute, you mean there are sligs on Pardos?”

A nod. “Living as they did before the glukkons came and captured some of them, in the trees. After the first few slave ships, the glukkons captured a queen, and never bothered coming back to Pardos. But that’s unimportant. Pardos in far away, and there are more immediate things to be done. Are you with me?”

Rettick hesitated, and then nodded. Volt posed a question. “How do you know that? I mean, Grozit never went to Pardos, did he?”

“Some of it I learned from the forest tribes before they blew my cover. Some of it I pieced together from various libraries. Vykker libraries contain a lot of little known information if you look hard enough. Even things that the Magog Cartel doesn’t want people to know about. Now, are you with me?”

Both sligs nodded their agreement.

[ April 27, 2001: Message edited by: Rettick ]