Pandora Gets Lazy (20 page)

“Okay, Homie, we're gonna lift you off. Here, take this,” Alcie said, placing the Eye of Horus around Homer's neck. Almost immediately, Pandy noticed Homer's eyes and jaw relax just the tiniest bit, although he was still silent.

“We're gonna signal now,” Alcie said to Homer, reaching up to quickly stroke his cheek. “So when I tell you, drop your arms and duck your head. Pandy, back down the ladder a bit. You're gonna be okay, Homie.”

As they descended several meters on the rope ladders, Alcie waved her arms. The top of the pulley was moved in directly over Homer's head, the metal rods and wheels just brushing the bottom of the heavens; slowly the ropes were drawn taut over the metal wheels and the top section began to lift off.

“Okay, Homie, drop it!” Alcie cried, and Homer lowered his arms and hung his head.

“Stop at once!” came a distant shout.

At that instant, Pandy and Alcie spied the guard, returning with his captain . . . and one of the barbers.

There was some confusion on the ground, and the slaves stopped lifting for a second.

“I said stop!” came the cry again, but the guards and the barber were still out of sight to those on the ground.

Pandy saw Iole run to the slave guard and start speaking very fast, clutching her tiny shears. The guard motioned to the slaves and they began lifting the section again. Now the pulley swiveled outward, dangling the section twenty meters above the ground.

“Gods, they're coming back! Should we try to bring him toward us?” Alcie said, panicking.

“No! We can't do it, Alce. We can't reach the section,” Pandy replied.

The slaves began lowering the section to the ground as Homer hung limply over the side. As he passed Alcie and Pandy, he managed to look up and smile weakly.

“Stop this now!”

Suddenly, the section jerked to a halt as the approaching guards met the group of slaves. Without thinking, Pandy and Alcie raced as fast as their legs would take them to the bottom of the rope ladders, then they scurried down the wooden ladders.

“Who gave the order to do this?” a different guard, young but with white hair, asked the slave guard.

“That one,” the slave guard said, pointing to Iole.

“What gives you the authority?” said the white-haired guard, advancing on Iole.

“This does,” she spoke defiantly, unaware of the barber heading toward her. “We're on a mission for Atlas by direct order of his barbers.”

“What mission is this?” said the barber, striding up. “I gave you an order, did I? What order did I give you that I cannot remember? Hmmm?”

“Uh, you asked me . . . don't you recall?” Iole looked like she was going to be ill.

“This youth isn't scheduled to be removed until tonight.” The white-haired guard was now forcing Iole backward toward the base of the pulley. “What makes you so interested in him?”

“His hair,” Iole sputtered.

“I told you
nothing
about his hair or anything else, you worthless girl!” screamed the barber.

“Put him back!” yelled the guard to the slaves. “He serves his full time!”

As the slaves began to twist and pull at the ropes, maneuvering Homer's section back onto the column, Alcie, standing in the shadow of the column, grabbed Pandy's arm.

“Oh Gods . . . Pandy, what do we do?”

“This is what we do,” Pandy said softly, and trained her eyes on one of the ropes. At once, a fine stream of smoke began rising as individual fibers began to char.

“If I can just cut through one,” she said to Alcie, her irises fading, her eyes going white, “then, I think, he'll lower to the ground. The slaves won't be able to hold him.”

“Oh, sweet nectarines.” Alcie shifted her gaze back and forth from Homer to Pandy's eyes.

The white-haired guard was still advancing on Iole, his sword now drawn.

“You're a troublemaker, you are. I have no idea what little scheme you and your friends are trying to pull off, but I have complete authority to deal with troublemakers as I see fit.”

Pop!

The rope burned through and snapped, causing the slaves holding it to fall backward. One of the hooks fell loose and went hurtling to the ground. Homer was grabbing as hard as he could on to two ropes, preventing the section from toppling away from the three other hooks.

The weight was too much for the slaves on the remaining ropes; they began lowering Homer.

Iole was now pinned against the base of the pulley as the white-haired guard raised his sword. His eyes flicked for an instant over the broken rope.

“Was that part of it, huh? Disable the pulleys one by one? You're working against Atlas? Why, I wonder. No matter, I'll get that information from the other two. Do I have your blessing, barber?” he asked, not taking his eyes off Iole's face.

“You most certainly do. She's a liar . . . and replaceable!” yelled the barber.

The white-haired guard sent his sword whistling through the air toward Iole's head. Iole, at the very last second, unexpectedly dove to the ground, sending the sword right into the ropes. The sword sliced cleanly through one rope, scattering the slaves holding on to it and sending Homer's section plummeting to the earth.

Alcie screamed. The slaves screamed. The guards yelled and shoved each other out of the way; one guard pushed another into the barber, who was then propelled, screaming, directly underneath the falling hunk of baked clay. The only one who didn't scream was Pandy. Looking up, she flash heated the two whirring metal pulley wheels to a point where they became gummy without becoming liquid. As she took her gaze away, the sticky metal caught the ropes and slowed the section down enough that it landed, intact, roughly but safely.

Everyone stared at Homer (and two feet wearing Persian slippers sticking out from under the hard clay). No one moved for a second and that was all it took for the section to topple onto its side, exposing the barber (now flat as a papyrus sheet) and flinging the still-weak Homer about like a rag doll, who then began to roll down the slope and into the village.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Homer on a Roll

As the section of column headed down the slope, it rapidly began to pick up speed. Somehow it missed hitting every other standing column in the area, which might have slowed it a little. Instead, with nothing in its way and the speed increasing, Pandy knew that when it finally
did
hit something, whatever it hit
and
Homer were both going to be shattered.

“Gods!” Pandy cried, watching the section bounce down the slope.

“Tanger
INES
!” Alcie screamed as she took off after Homer. Pandy and Iole also took advantage of the disorder around them and, escaping the astounded guards, ran after Alcie.

Because it was much heavier at one end, the section was rolling fast in a wide arc directly through the main part of the village. People glanced up from their tasks at the screams and commotion on the hillside, then scattered like birds as Homer came crashing toward them.

Oddly enough, the first thought that went through Homer's mind as he started to roll downhill was not how hard the ground was each time his head hit it, but how good it felt to have the use of his arms back again. His mind, now free from trying to distract itself from the pain of bearing the heavens, snapped into focus. Quickly, Homer gathered loose rope ladders, which were flying out behind the section, whipping in all directions like snapping snakes. Holding the ropes and bringing his arms around his head, he formed a protective rope cocoon, which built on itself with every rotation, and which held him somewhat steady, although he couldn't see anything but a spinning blur. He was sure he should be nauseated, but then he remembered the Eye of Horus. And then he knocked his head on a stray water bucket and passed out.

Men dove into mud pits, women hid behind ovens or tottered on the edges of water wells, a chicken flew all of two meters and landed on a guard's helmet. A dog ran after the rolling column, barking ferociously.

Several guards, standing by a well, tried to stop the section: one had his foot mangled and another lost two fingers, but that contact was enough to skew the course of the arc and cause the section to just miss getting bogged down in mixing pit number two.

Prometheus and Hermes looked up from mixing in time to see Homer go hurtling by. Then, less than ten seconds later, Alcie, Pandy, and Iole raced after it, followed by a dozen or so guards . . . then everyone in the village who'd seen the spectacle.

Dropping their poles, Prometheus, Hermes, Amri, and Ismailil dashed into the flowing river of bodies, trying to keep an eye on the rolling column and the girls, but it wasn't two seconds before Prometheus heard Ismailil yell. The boys were too little to keep pace and had fallen to the ground, in danger of being trampled.

“Hermes!” shouted Prometheus, not caring at all who heard.

Hermes turned back, saw the boys in the dirt, and with a flick of his wrist, gently parted the crowd, forming a narrow but clear path. In no time they were gaining on Iole, then Pandy, then Alcie, who was running and screaming at the same time.

“Nectarines, get out of my way! Homie! Apples . . . apples, move! Fiiiiiigs!”

“Iole,” Pandy cried, seeing the crowd fleeing, “look where he's headed!”

“I see it!” Iole yelled back. “He's gonna be smashed to bits!”

The arc of the section, having missed everything else in the village, was now taking Homer directly toward the building inside which sat her uncle Atlas. In less than five seconds, Homer would crash right into one of the thick outer walls.

“Homie!” Alcie screamed. “Noooooo!”

The section rolled up a discarded ramp from a nearby oven and was airborne for the last few meters.

Then Homer hit the wall.

With a deafening explosion, the wall blew apart, forcing the two adjoining walls to crumble with a roar. A large section of the roof at the shattered end came crashing down, driving clouds of dust up and out. People everywhere screamed, blinded and choking, falling all over themselves. Even the guards, normally so sinister and controlling, ran in terror or just stood gaping.

Alcie didn't falter; she ran headlong into the dust and right up over the rubble calling Homer's name. Pandy and Iole followed her into the chaos, picking their way over the debris, but stopped when they came upon Alcie, standing on a chunk of wall, staring straight ahead.

The section carrying Homer had come to a full stop at last. Still intact.

Right at the feet of Atlas, who had been napping but was now wide-awake.

And angry.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Swingin'

Fortunately, and unusually, the building had been almost empty. There were no lines of slaves and no guards waiting in groups off to the side. With nothing to do, Atlas's two main henchmen had slipped out the back to eat a few lotus leaves. The explosion behind them so startled one that he turned too fast and butted heads with his comrade, knocking them both out cold. In fact, the only one in the building was Atlas himself.

With no one to prod him gently, he was startled awake and slightly confused, which always made him angry.

Seeing the far end of the building blown out, the roof caved in, and three young girls standing on top of the rubble amidst the whirling dust, his first instinct was to kick out or grab on to something hard and real.

He saw the section of column at his feet with a cluster of rope at one end, and raised his foot to stomp down on it with all the force he could muster.

Alcie screamed at the same time Pandy yelled, “You don't want to do that!”

Atlas paused, his foot in midair.

“Uh, I don't think you want to do that,” Pandy yelled again.

Atlas was unaccustomed to being spoken to in such a tone. He cocked his enormous head to one side and stared at Pandy.

“Yes I do,” he said at last. It was in that second that Pandy realized she was dealing with a gigantic baby.

“No, you really, really don't,” Pandy said.

“I don't?”

“No way.”

“Why not?”

Pandy got a little closer to her uncle. She noticed at once that his mutant nose hair, in only the few hours that she'd been in the village, had grown to a length of almost a meter and a half and was now very thick and riddled with rust red veins. She quickly took off her leather carrying pouch.

“Hold this,” she said quietly, handing it to Iole and climbing down off the rubble toward Atlas. “Uh, you don't want to do that because . . . because . . . what you really want to do is . . . is . . . find out what just happened to your hut, home . . . place! I mean, just look around. What
is
all this? You don't know, right?”

“Right!” Atlas said. “What happened?”

“Why don't you put your foot down and I'll tell you,” Pandy said, an idea percolating. She knew the hair with Laziness had to be pulled out at the root, and if she could just get close enough to his nose to grab hold . . .

Atlas lowered his leg, but his big toe bumped the column section slightly. That was all it took to shatter the hard clay. The section fell away, revealing Homer's lower half. His toga was dirty and brown, but his legs were perfect.

“What's this?” Atlas asked, bending to peer at Homer, still unconscious underneath the rope cocoon. “Is this the cause?”

“No,” said Pandy as she approached, watching Atlas's nose hair drag on the ground as he bent his head. She began wiping her hands on her toga, drying them to get a good grip. “It was your . . . your . . . guards. They're trying to take over!”

She was two meters from his face; still too far to jump for it.

“They're trying to kill you!” Alcie cried from behind her.

Pandy took one more step and was within striking distance. She leapt forward, hands ready to clutch the thick, ugly hair, when Atlas suddenly rose to his feet to tower above her.