“Ah ah ah ah!” Mack continued to cry.
And then … then he looked around. It was as if scales had fallen from his eyes, and he saw, truly saw, that he was surrounded by beards. Beards and turbans, but the turbans were rather attractive, really, coming as they did in a wide array of colors. But beards … beards were a problem.
This might as well have been the annual beard convention. The percentage of people with beards here was greater than the percentage of Civil War generals with beards. And these were not ironic, hipster beards, but full-on, glossy black beards.
Mack had slept most of the way on the plane and when he wasn’t sleeping he was playing video games on the in-flight entertainment system. (In first class they let you win all the games.) So he had not noticed that about half the men (and some of the women) on the flight had beards.
But now, as he looked around, eyes darting, breath coming short and fast, heart beating like a gerbil who’d fallen into a silo of coffee beans and had to eat his way out, he realized beards … terrifying beards … were everywhere.
The Punjab was the home office of beards!
Stefan made a grab for Mack but missed, and Mack went screaming off through the crowd, bouncing like a pinball from one nonplussed traveler to the next.
Singh said, “Perhaps your friend has jet lag?”
“Nah, he’s just crazy,” Jarrah said, but affectionately.
Stefan sighed and raced after Mack and finally tackled him, hefted him onto his shoulder, walked toward the men’s room, and as he passed Jarrah said, “Maybe a swirlie will calm him down.”
As a former bully, Stefan had a limited imagination when it came to problem solving. There was pretty much:
1) Threatening.
2) Punching.
3) Dunking someone’s head in a toilet (swirlie).
Mack was still yelling like a madman when Stefan slammed him—as gently as he could—against the men’s room wall and said, “Do I have to punch you? Or will a swirlie do it?”
Mack’s breath was coming in short, panicky gasps. But he had stopped screaming, which was good.
“Get a grip,” Stefan said, using his lowest level of threatening voice. It was almost kind. Not really, but for him.
“You don’t understand. I—I-I-I …”
Stefan let him go, and Mack, still shaking, tried to get a grip. What he gripped was the sink. He stared at his reflection in the mirror. He didn’t look good, frankly. He looked old—really, really old. He had wrinkles that looked like an aerial map of the Rocky Mountains. His teeth were tinged green. His hair was pale and wispy. His eyes were unfocused, blank, wandering randomly around like he was following two agitated flies simultaneously.
In fact, he looked exactly like Grimluk.
“Grimluk!” Mack cried. Because it was true: the reflection was no reflection at all but the familiar, astoundingly old, grizzled, gamy, quite-possibly-somewhat-dead face of Grimluk.
“I fade … Mack of the Magnifica … I weaken …”
“Oh no you don’t!” Mack snapped. “You just got here!”
Grimluk blinked. “Oh? It felt like longer. Where are you?”
“The Punjab!”
“Hmmm. I don’t know that one,” Grimluk said. “In my day we only had seven countries: Funguslakia, North Rot, Crushia, the Republic of Stench, Scabia, Eczema, and Delaware.”
“I don’t care. Grimluk, I’m trying to find Valin and solve whatever his problem is. Plus I still have to figure out who the others are. You have to help!”
“Others?”
“I only have six with me: Jarrah, Xiao, Dietmar, Sylvie, Charlie, and Rodrigo.”
“Just eight?”
“No, that’s seven total, counting me. We still need Valin and four more.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Yes. I can do basic math!”
Grimluk drew himself up with as much dignity as he could while peering out of a smeared bathroom mirror and said, “There is no need to flaunt your fancy modern learning. I fade … I weaken … I was never … good … at math …”
“Where do I find Valin and the other four?”
“Not in the same place, Mack.”
At this point Stefan said, “You’re talking to the old dude I can’t see, right?”
Stefan’s remark caused Mack to look around and take notice of the fact that three very polite tourists from Japan were taking video of what looked like a crazy kid talking—yelling, actually—at a mirror.
“I’m not crazy,” Mack said. No one was convinced.
“Valin is near, though he won’t be when you catch him,” Grimluk said. “The others … the others …”
And sure enough, the image faded, and the ancient voice—a voice so old that when Grimluk spoke, you could practically hear wrinkles—likewise faded out.
“Nooooo!” Mack pounded the mirror because now his own reflection had appeared, replacing Grimluk’s.
Grimluk faded back in. “A gate …”
“A what?”
“Golden … of … I see a pillar of orange …”
“No, no, no, none of that cryptic stuff,” Mack yelled. “We are running out of time!”
“Ants!” Grimluk cried.
“What?”
“Beware of ants!”
“I promise I will,” Mack yelled. “Now just tell me how to find—”
“I see a bridge of orange …”
“What?”
“Actually more of a … I fade … I weaken …”
“Get back here!”
“Reddish orange. A gate of gold.”
And with that, he was gone.
“Grimluk!” Mack howled.
Making a “grrrrrr” face, Mack stormed out of the bathroom, to find the others talking to Singh. Mack kept his distance. In his present state of mind, eight feet felt like the minimum beard-clearance zone. Probably when he calmed down he’d start feeling a little better about it. But right now his head was swimming and he was tired and he was on edge.
And that was when things got really bad. Because as Mack was turning Grimluk’s insane, rambling, incoherent, nonsensical, senile words over and over again in his head, a massive, glittering, impossible wall of steel came crashing down through the roof, down through the huge slanted windows, down through the vegetarian restaurant, down through the adjacent and fortunately unoccupied boarding area.
It missed Mack by nine inches and cut him off from his friends.
Ker-RAAAAASH!
Followed by, Bam! Screeeeech! Tinkle, tinkle, tinkle. And screams!
The noise was deafening. Broken glass, twisted aluminum rafters, screams, cries. It sounded like the end of the world punctuated with an earthshaking impact that hit so hard Mack felt as if the floor had attacked his feet. (He was not at his most rational, just then.)
The wall of steel had come down like a guillotine or a meat cleaver. It sliced right