Jasper Dash and the Flame-Pits of Delaware (7 page)

And so, our heroes were off to Delaware.

Now they are at their homes, packing. Lights from passing cars slide across their bedroom walls. They have their suitcases open and are zipping up their sponge-bags. Lily and Katie are slightly at a loss as to what clothes to bring.

But before I move the scene of this gripping tale to the Blue Hen State, I need to make a couple of things clear.

Occasionally, an author will go away on a vacation for a week somewhere—someplace where the food is spicy and he doesn't recognize
all the fruit—and he'll have a really great time, and the culture will seem very exotic, and once he gets home to Ohio, or Minnesota, or Maine, he'll decide to write a novel about it all. He'll base the book on his one meager week staying at a Hilton Hotel a mile outside of the city he's describing and his reading of a few library books with names like
The Jewel in the Dagger
, or
Siberian Uplift
, or
A Cornish Country Autumn
, or Time/Life's
The Glory of Slurbostan.

And so, instead of the book being written by someone who has lived there by the side of the ruins described and has spent their life eating those little crunchy fried things, you get a book by someone who really only has a cartoon idea of what a place is like, a bungled pantomime of information about customs and foods and wacky clothes and music. There are many books of that kind, written by people who have barely traveled to the destination they write about. You can't trust them.

For this reason, to put you at ease, let me reassure you: This is not one of those books. I
didn't write this novel with a week's research and a couple of foldout brochures. I wouldn't do that to you. No, my friends, I solemnly promise: I have never once been to Delaware in my life. I can state with confidence that I am completely ignorant. I am a moron. I know absolutely nothing about the place. Everything I say is simply an uneducated guess.
*
You are not in good hands. You are in incredibly clumsy, incompetent hands.

Of course, it is important to us here at Simon and Schuster that everything in our books be entirely accurate. I would hate it, for example, if you were actually from the state of Delaware and you found some inaccuracy in my portrayal.

So, for that reason, if you do discover there is some difference between this book's portrait of the state and the reality, please write a note describing the problem in full. Send it, with a
self-addressed, stamped envelope, to:

The Governor of Delaware

Office of the Governor

Tatnall Building

William Penn Street, 2nd Floor

Dover, DE 19901

I'm sure they'll get back to you.

In the meantime, I hear the whirr of engines. Jasper Dash, Lily Gefelty, and Katie Mulligan have set off in their Gyroscopic Sky Suite. They are flying over highway, suburb, and mall.

They are headed for the jungles and mountains, the beaches and subaquatic cities, the volcanoes and ziggurats, the deserts, caverns, lost temples, and spires… of Delaware.

That morning, if the inhabitants of New Jersey had looked up from their shoe-shines, they might have seen, in the sky above them, a strange, shingled rocket supported from the bottom of a jet with a large silver girdle. This was Jasper Dash's remarkable Gyroscopic Sky Suite. It was well on its way to Delaware.

Inside, in the expertly riveted control room, our three heroes were lost in their own thoughts. They gazed in different directions: at the oxygen tanks, or the dials, or the pedals.

Jasper was full of worry for his friends at the monastery of Vbngoom, the gentle monks, but he was also glad to be going back to a place he loved, where he knew what was what and people
didn't rag him cruelly for having come up with a dandy new invention.

Lily was excited, though the only way she showed it was by jamming her fingers into the heels of her sneakers and wriggling them as she sat, hunched over, on a swivel chair. She didn't know what to expect, but she was very glad to be along for the ride.

Katie, on the other hand, was mainly irritated. She was sick of boys' pride, the way boys could be so conceited. Especially certain athletic boys named like prep schools. And she was angry that she—who had outwitted giant brains and outrun giant centipedes—actually cared what a boy thought. She was mad at herself, and bunched up her lips in frustration.

Lights on the control panel flashed softly. Jasper checked a map and called instructions into the command snorkel.

Lily asked him, “Are we headed for the monastery in the mountains right now?”

“Mountains,” muttered Katie.

“No, Lily,” Jasper answered. “The location of
the monastery is so secret that even I do not know where it lies. Vbngoom, the Platter of Heaven, is shrouded in mystery. We will have to land in Dover, often called the capital of Delaware, and find a guide. From there, we will head into the jungle. We will attempt to retrace my steps from the last time I found the monastery.”

“Jungle,” muttered Katie. She pinched a toggle switch hard between her fingers, just to have something to pinch.

“I worry, however,” mused Jasper. “There is an ancient myth that Vbngoom moves at times of trouble from mountain to mountain. Who knows where it lies now? Who knows how we shall find it?”

Jasper peered into the Oculo-Scope and made some adjustments to cranks and dials. He said solemnly, “We are passing into Delaware.” He reached over and opened the iron shutters so the girls could see out of the portholes.

They were in the shadows of the mountains. The clouds strayed between the white peaks, and the airborne Sky Suite itself was no
higher than those icy bluffs and frigid cliffs. Down below, deep in the valleys, lay forests and rivers, the haunt of panther and serpent. Lily caught sight of ruined aqueducts and vine-covered towers, ziggurat steps moldering in the lush undergrowth.

“New Castle County,” Jasper said. He sighed and laid his head against the metal wall. “We face great challenges, fellows, and great danger. Below us lies a realm of wonders and terrors, a land that time forgot, or chose specifically not to remember.” He gestured out the window to the peaks and crags. “For one hundred years, Delaware has been cut off from the other states, isolated completely as a result of its overpriced and prohibitive interstate highway tolls. For one hundred years, almost no one has gone in or come out. Only the bravest of explorers have penetrated this exotic land. We must take care not to attract the attention of the cruel tyrant who rules this state—”

Katie had been wrapping an oxygen tube around her wrist in sheer irritation for the last several minutes and now could stand to listen no
longer. “You mean the
governor
?” she demanded. “The governor of Delaware?”

Jasper said quietly, “No, Katie. Much worse than that. Thirty-two years ago, the governor of Delaware was chased out by a crazed military dictator, who now rules from Dover with an iron fist—a man known only as His Terrifying Majesty, the Awful and Adorable Autarch of Dagsboro.”

Jasper peered again into the Oculo-Scope and made some adjustments on the control panel. He said, “Recently, a few tourists have been allowed in under strict government supervision. But we don't want the tyrant's eyes upon us. He would love to get his hands on the monastery of Vbngoom, and we must make sure that he can't follow us there. If he were to find the monastery, he could force the monks to show him how they gained their sacred psychic powers. Why, then he could be even more cruel and tyrannical than he is now.

“I hope that by attaching the Sky Suite disguised to one of the hotels in the capital, we
might evade the notice of the Autarch and his goons. That way we can explore the jungle without the Ministry of Silence interfering.”

“The Ministry of Silence?!” said Lily.

“That is the name the Adorable Autarch of Dagsboro has given his spies. Beware of them. They are everywhere in the capital. Closets. Secret rooms. The tap water.”

“Okay,” said Katie, “I really am only going to say this one time. There is a governor of Delaware, there is no such thing as the Ministry of Silence, there is no way spies could be in the tap water, and there are no—hear me—no no no mountains in—”

“Behold: Dover. Capital of Delaware,” said Jasper.

Its domes and minarets lay before them, glowing gold in the sunlight amid the hanging gardens, the pleasant palaces, the spired roofs of ancient temples; in the harbor, the purple-sailed ships of Wilmington plied the waves, and the dragon-headed prows of the barbarian kingdoms to the south dipped their oars in wrinkled waters
while plesiosaurs turned capers at their sides. The Zeppelin-Lords of frosty Elsmere drifted above the city, their balloons gilded with the tropical sun, eating sherbet on their porphyry verandas. Huge tortoises fifteen feet across lumbered through the widest avenues, carrying nomads' tents upon their backs. Processions wandering through the streets glittered with gold and ancient costumery. But everything was not beautiful: Katie and Lily saw also the huge cement housing blocks looking burnt and desolate, where the hapless citizens lived in fear of their ruler. They saw the brown rivers, the broken factories, the Autarch's armies drilling on a baseball field.

They saw the lovely and the awful, the jeweled and the broken, the noble and the sad. In short, they saw Dover.

“I think,” said Lily, “we better let Jasper just tell us what's what.”

Katie nodded with her mouth wide open. “Yeah…,” she said slowly. “Yeaaaaaaah.”

Jasper was all business. “Now, fellows, time to attach the Sky Suite to the side of a hotel.
We've got to be careful. If we attract attention, it will make our trip to Vbngoom all the harder. There will be government agents everywhere.”

He spoke into the snorkel to the robot in the jet above them, calling out numbers and directions. “Adjust thirty-four point nine! Modulate to the plane of the ecliptic point oh oh seven! Prepare to disengage zirconium girdle!” He turned to the girls. “Hold on to your seats, chaps. You may recall that there is a little bump when the Sky Suite—”

“Oh no,” said Katie. “I remember.”

“Oh, gosh,” said Lily.

“Oh, wowzers,” said Katie. There was a click. “Oh, help. Oh, help. Oh—” But Katie didn't finish her sentence. Because they suddenly were falling and screaming—and their bellies were flipping around like trout in a washer—and they saw a cheap cement government hotel spiraling toward them—streaked with soot—and then—