The Way of the Ram Page 16

  “That’s not true. You have your clinic.”

  “I might, but it won’t drive me the way all this has. That’s where you’ll shine. You’ve been seeking peace and you’ll have it. You’ve looked to me and followed me in the times when things got rough and dangerous. I’ll look to you when there is peace.”

  Dreamer broke into a real smile. “I love you, Healer.”

  “I love you too, Dreamer. I’m looking forward to whatever life we have after this is all over and done with.”

  A brief kiss was all they had time for before the elevator’s bell chimed to announce their arrival on the eighty-eighth floor. The door slid open.

  “Good morning!” a loud voice shouted, making both sheep jump. Healer leapt off the elevator and into the abandoned office, neck tense, horns at the ready.

  “It’s going to be another cold one here in sunny Megatropolis!”

  The ram turned and located the source of the voice, a television screen hanging on the wall. The face of Charlie Chugg smiled at him in high definition.

  “Clear and breezy all day, so don’t put off that shopping trip. Just make sure you bring a jacket! I approve this message! You can trust me—am I Charlie Chugg, or not?”

  Healer’s pulse finally slowed as the TV screen went dark. He took a long breath and began to explore the office.

  “Gorga,” Dreamer said, reading the nameplate on the abandoned desk before them. A large window across the room offered them a view of something they had never seen before—the ocean to the east, on the opposite side of the Megatropolis from the plains. The morning sun hung low over the water, casting its fiery reflection across the waves.

  A brief search revealed an electronic switch on the desk, which unlocked a heavily reinforced metal door off to one side. They passed through into a sitting room.

  The plush carpet warmly greeted their feet. Directly across from them was a double door, which looked a lot like another elevator. And it was opening.

  Slowly, anxiously, Healer approached it. Dreamer was right by his side. Their eyes fell on a speaker mounted in the wall next to the elevator. It was crackling, as if someone had opened a connection but had not spoken yet.

  “Can’t say I’m happy to see you,” came that low, sing-song voice, “but I’m dying to know what spell of madness possessed the two of you to make your way up my tower. Come on up. We can have a chat and enjoy the show. It’s been quite entertaining thus far.”

  Healer knew the voice well by now. It was the voice on the phone from Swill’s memory. It was the voice from the mechanical bird to which Ponder had given her terms of surrender.

  It was the voice that had ordered the attacking clones to “clean up” Old-Timer’s burning property years ago.

  “Healer…” Dreamer whispered, “I’m scared.”

  “Me too. But no point turning back now.” Healer walked into the car with the brass handrails and red leather walls, Dreamer close behind him. The doors slid shut and the elevator glided up several feet with absolutely no sound. It opened to a long, straight hallway.

  Healer pushed on down the hall, glancing at the series of Charlie Chugg portraits hanging along the wall as he passed. The one nearest to them was in black and white, drawn crudely with thick outlines. Each successive portrait grew more refined, with slight changes to modernize the character’s clothing. The third one and on were in color, all featuring the same flat green eyes.

  The final portrait next to the far door appeared to be Charlie Chugg’s current design, with his crisp white suit, yellow button-down shirt, and green necktie. But the eyes had been painted differently, a glimmering swirl of green and yellow that Healer recognized.

  Below the last portrait was a plaque engraved with the cartoon character’s motto: “You can trust me—am I Charlie Chugg, or not?”

  Healer looked at the eyes of the portrait and back to the slogan. “Charlie Chugg, or not?” he read aloud.

  “What?” Dreamer whispered, pressing against his side.

  “Charlie Chugg, or not?” Healer repeated. “Chugg, or not? Chugg or not… Juggernaut.”

  Chapter 55

  “Healer, what are you saying?”

  “This pig has been laughing in our faces for over fifty years. Taunting sheep in public through Charlie Chugg. It’s all him. The invincible juggernaut pig that won the Canine-Avian War and keeps dogs in a state of fear. The basis for this cartoon character. The murderer of my father. Don’t you get it, Dreamer? Karkus and Optera said they would put champions of their own into our world to oppose the champion Toxid put here first. That’s Chugg.”

  Dreamer reached into her bag with a trembling hoof and produced her flower. “Father Orchid? Is this true?”

  The flower did not answer.

  “It’s on us,” Healer said. “We’ve got to get Render here. It’s the only way we can stop what Chugg is going to do to everyone.”

  Dreamer swallowed hard. “Alright… OK. I’m with you, Healer. What are we going to do?”

  “If he’s really been watching through Durdge’s eyes, he probably knows who I am and I bet he’s nursing a serious grudge. If he wants me dead, he’ll have to work for it. I’ll keep him occupied. You just find that computer and shut it off however you can.”

  “What if you’re no match for him?”

  “What happens to me doesn’t matter. Just clear the path for Render. That’s it. If you can’t do that, we’re dead anyway. Got it?”

  “Yes. Got it.”

  “You don’t look like you’ve got it.”

  Dreamer glared. “This is like when we were going up against the Megatropolis. Remember how I asked you to approach it smart? Use our bargaining power?”

  “Yeah, that sure turned out well for us.”

  “You know what I mean. Just think before you act. Going in horns-first won’t work against this pig. You know that. Find some leverage.”

  Healer took a deep breath and nodded. “Alright.” Giving her a final kiss, he turned and opened the door at the end of the hall.

  Chapter 56

  It took a minute for Healer’s eyes to adjust. The room in front of him was not totally dark, but it was close. The sun made a measly effort to get through the slatted blinds covering the pair of tall windows across from them. Other than that, he could only make out the outline of an enormous leather chair. The room smelled like metal shavings and tobacco.

  Healer summoned up his last remaining reserves of courage and stepped through the doorway, reaching back with one foreleg to urge Dreamer to stay back. She ignored him and kept close.

  Their hooves made echoing clicks on the cold tile floor. The chair creaked, and then Healer heard a sound that chilled his blood.

  Wreek.

  The grunt of a pig’s snout sampling the air.

  Wreek. Wreek.

  Healer wanted to scream and run back for the elevator, down the tower, out of the city, and across the plains. Run anywhere but here. Every fiber of sheep’s instinct in his body drove him to flee, cower, submit, hope the danger would pass of its own accord.

  But something else in him told him to stay. He rooted himself to the spot and waited for the now-familiar drawling voice to say something. He didn’t have to wait long.

  “When you get in a position like mine,” said the voice from the chair, “and your material wealth is, for all practical purposes, unlimited, first you seek out every extravagance newly affordable to you. I’ve eaten everything there is in the world to try, cooked in any method you can imagine. I’ve smoked the finest tobacco cured by the most talented masters of the craft. I’ve experienced the best wine, women, and clothing that our little world has to offer. You know what happens when your every physical desire is met in excess?”

  Healer didn’t have an answer, but the man in the chair did not wait for one.

  “It gets boring. The food and the booze all starts to taste the same. Satin and silk feel just like polyester. You wonder what else is out there. Eventually, you develop
a refined sense of appreciation for things that are truly… rare. Things that can give you that same thrill as the day you first realized you can have anything you want.”

  As his eyes got used to the dim conditions, Healer grew aware that a huge desk or table of some kind stood between him and the man in the chair. There was a thump and a rustling noise as the man rummaged through a drawer.

  “As you get older, those moments when you get an opportunity to sample some taste or sight or smell that makes you feel alive again, well, those moments grow less and less frequent. But that just means that when they come around, you never forget them. For example, I know what fear smells like. I’ve indulged more times than I care to recall in the scent of the fear I inspire in others. Like expensive dishes, I’ve gorged myself on it again and again until I’ve become numb to it. But every once in a great while, I run across someone whose terror of me seeps from their very bones. That degree of fear excites my old snoot just like my first cigar. And, just like that first cigar, I remember the scent of that person forever.”

  Healer felt his resolve draining away as it dawned on him what the man in the chair was talking about.

  “A year and change ago, my two sons came to me about a problematic old ram who was making their lives difficult. I knew which old ram they were talking about. I’d heard of him during the Great War. I was perfectly aware what that ram was capable of, and I knew that no one lieutenant of mine would be able to stand against him in single combat. So I ventured out to dispose of him myself. When he charged at me, uselessly, and I broke him, I smelled that exquisite mixture of fleece and tooth-rattling dread. It was like a rare truffle; it was the kind of memory you hold onto because you don’t know when you’ll get to taste something like that again. I thought the fear was his.”

  A scuffing sound. The tiny flame of a match leapt into view and rose above the desk. Orange ember and curling white smoke became visible as the man in the chair lit up a cigar. In the firelight, Healer could see sagging jowls, shiny tusks, a wet pink snout, and—

  —those green eyes—

  —glaring at him from the creaking chair.

  The yellow-emerald eyes that had bulged out with wrath as the pig tore the life away from Old-Timer’s body. The eyes that had haunted Healer’s nightmares for over a year. The eyes he had originally mistaken for the dull-green bovine eyes of his son, Scurvert. The eyes that had mocked him every time Charlie Chugg bounced onto a television screen or billboard, hanging over his head at primary school, the Fleece City square, and even at his own clinic. Healer’s terror won a temporary victory, and he took a step back toward the door behind him.

  “But the minute you walked into my office,” the man in the chair said between deep breaths, “I smelled it again. The fear was yours, wasn’t it? You were there that night, weren’t you?”

  Healer clenched his jaw and forced himself to step forward again.

  The green eyes narrowed. “I asked you a question, little lamb.”

  Healer nodded his trembling head. “I was there. I saw you.”

  A long drag and a relaxed exhalation blew a cloud of dark smoke in Healer’s face. “You mastered it quickly. Like being served a prime cut of meat and then having your dish taken from you after the first bite.”

  A whirring click sounded off and then the double door behind Healer and Dreamer swung shut, locking them in the room.

  “That little morsel just won’t do,” the pig continued. “As I said, I am a man of excess. So perhaps I ought to appear to you as I must have on that eventful night.”

  The chair turned and the match was tossed in a low arc towards a brick fireplace Healer could barely see. A bundle of firewood roared to life so quickly it must have been doused with accelerant. It threw dancing orange light across the entire office. Healer could see everything now: the wood-paneled iron desk, the computer he was after, the horrifying visage of Toxid hanging from the ceiling…

  …and the sneering pig in the chair, illuminated by fire just as he had been the night Healer had cowered in the shadow of his burning home while Old-Timer met his death. This close, Healer could see that he was dressed almost exactly like the animated Charlie Chugg mascot.

  His white suit coat, gold shirt, and green tie strained to contain his immense bulk. His pink lips snarled around a pair of hook-shaped tusks. The green eyes glared at Healer from beneath a heavy brow ridge.

  The sight was too much for Healer. He backed into the door until there was nowhere left to go. The pig stood up out of the chair, framed by the fire behind him, Toxid’s head above him, and a ram’s skull sitting on the desk before him. The nameplate on the desk lit up in the flickering light—C. CHUGG, CEO.

  “Charles Chugg,” the pig said, reaching a hand out over the desk as he smiled cruelly. “Pleasure to meet the both of you.”

  Chapter 57

  Healer stared, frozen in the moment. Dreamer gripped his wool and slammed her shoulder into the door behind them. Her effort came to nothing. Chugg controlled the door, and they were trapped with him.

  “There it is,” the pig said. He closed his eyes, took his cigar out of his mouth, and drew another greedy breath with a grunting wreeeeeeek. “There’s the fear. How rare to find such an absolute coward. This is magical.”

  Healer’s eyes fell on the ram’s skull on the desk. He stared at it, if only to look at something else besides Chugg for just a second. Realization came to him. He knew those horns anywhere.

  He kept my father’s skull as a trophy.

  Then Healer knew what it was that compelled him to fight his fear and stay. It was the same drive that his father had explained to him in the unearthly vision at University just before Healer had grown his own horns. It was the same force of will that had bidden Old-Timer to put his head down and rush at Chugg rather than run away. It went against everything his sheep instincts told him to do.

  It’s what makes me a ram.

  The pig was coming around his desk, coming for them. Healer stared at his father’s killer, feeling the fear melt away and the rage take its place. He understood now.

  I may lose this battle, but in doing so I may save Dreamer and everyone else.

  “Come on!” Healer shouted. He dashed forward and met Chugg in the middle of the office. With a single sweep of his hand, Chugg caught Healer and hurled him against the wall.

  The pig threw back his head and howled with laughter. “What do you hope to accomplish, little lamb? You’re not half the specimen your father was. You think you’re here for revenge? Oh, I know. You’re here to take a stand. To matter. Let me tell you something, kid. None of us matter. Not even me.”

  His bare trotters made an echoing clomp as his short legs carried his ponderous mass over to the corner where Healer lay. The sheep spat blood.

  “I’m here for my friends.” Healer coughed.

  “You refer to the lurching abomination attacking my city.”

  “I just want to take them home.” Healer fought back a dry heave from the pain in his guts.

  “So you think that Karkus and Optera will set them free once their purpose—destroying me—is fulfilled.” Chugg reached out and picked Healer up by the wool at the base of his neck, raising him to eye level.

  “That was my plan.”

  Chugg stared for a long moment before breaking into an indulgent smile. “Damn, you’re ignorant. What was your name again? Healer?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Healer, let’s have a look at what’s going on out there.”

  Chugg carried Healer behind the desk and keyed a command on the computer. The slats of the window blinds rotated, letting them see out the windows and bringing much more light into the room.

  Render was nowhere to be seen. The guns swiveled rapidly in search of it, but the skies were clear.

  “Interesting,” Chugg commented. “Perhaps it finally succumbed. I hope it suffered for its needlessly protracted murder of my son. Which reminds me, girl, I haven’t forgotten about you back there. I’
ll speak with you as soon as we’re finished here.”

  The pig took a strangling grip on Healer’s throat and brought the ram’s face close to his own. “Speaking of my murdered sons, Healer… I want you to know that your people are going to suffer all the more for your crime. They will know that they are in such pain because of what you did to my Durdge.”

  Chapter 58

  Dreamer was tucked back against the door as far as she could manage. For her part, she had taken in everything in the room once the fire had been lit. She had seen the bloodstained desk, the statue, the drain in the floor, and she had understood that this place was the rumored sacrificial altar. She could feel Toxid in this room the same way she could feel the presence of the other gods in their respective shrines. And she knew that, at least in this, Healer had been right. This pig was irredeemably evil.

  Her eyes were aglow, but she turned her face to keep Chugg from noticing. She hoped her telepathic message had reached Render through Optera’s interference.

  Lie low, dear friends. Save your strength. Healer and I have come to help.

  Having done the best she could, she took another look around the illuminated room. Something was bothering her.

  Why was he just sitting in darkness before we arrived? Even if most of the power is out, he had the windows and the fireplace.

  Then her eyes fell on something else on the desk, something so tiny it was nearly obscured by Old-Timer’s skull. Slowly, deliberately, she drew open the zipper of her satchel.

  She gripped the flowerpot with a shaking hoof, looking between her orchid and the identical one on Chugg’s desk.

  “Talking to the pig?” Dreamer whispered. “I’m your special favorite, huh? I trusted you. I thought you were greater than Optera and Karkus. But you’re a liar, just the same as your children. Well…”

  Words failed her. The anger that filled her body constricted her throat and sent a tingling surge of power to her limbs. This must be what Healer lives with.