Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIV
Chapter XXV
Chapter XXVI
Chapter XXVII
Chapter XXVIII
Chapter XXIX
Chapter XXX
Chapter XXXI
Chapter XXXII
Chapter XXXIII
The Bouquet of Spring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Pinnacle of Carnivory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Sabertooth of Opalon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Boy Wonder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Pupil of Loneliness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Author of My Existence . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Wings of Pterosaurs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Dueling Dinosaurs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Tiffany . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Young Contenders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Alchemy in the Sky . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Melodious Enchantment . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Secret Garden of Opalon . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Shakespearean Savage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
Deadly Venom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Middle Terrace of Love . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
The First Kiss . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
The Painted Cave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Blue Lapis of Opalon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
To Catch A Falling Star . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
Tangle in the Jungle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
The Vow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
The Brainchild of Witchcraft . . . . . . . . 155
Devil Himself . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
Secret Departure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
Longing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
Lives Created By A Rock . . . . . . . . . . . 175
Purple Rose of Xandria . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
A Besieged Kingdom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
Unexpected Rendezvous . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
Rescue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
Echo of the Past . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
The Year of the Dragon . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
Ambush . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
Chapter XXXIV
Chapter XXXV
Chapter XXXVI
Chapter XXXVII
Chapter XXXVIII
Chapter XXXIX
Chapter XL
Chapter XLI
Chapter XLII
Chapter XLIII
Chapter XLIV
Chapter XLV
Chapter XLVI
Chapter XLVII
Chapter XLVIII
Chapter XLIX
Chapter L
Chapter LI
Chapter LII
Chapter LIII
Chapter LIV
Chapter LV
Chapter LVI
Chapter LVII
Chapter LVIII
Chapter LIX
Chapter LX
Chapter LXI
Chapter LXII
Chapter LXIII
Chapter LXIV
Chapter LXV
Chapter LXVI
Epilogue
Supermodel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
Tournament of the Bulls . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
Planetary Redundancy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
White Buffalo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
SLR Tatiana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
The Seductress of the Dungeon . . . . . . 243
Destination Farthest Star . . . . . . . . . . . 247
Cosmos Capriccio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
Yearning of the Cutlass . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
Land of Giants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
Prince of Xandria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
Outcasts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
Baby Jon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
Silk Road of Love . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
Hyaenodon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284
Lament’s Endless Abyss . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
The Crew . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296
The White Knight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300
Phantom in the Mist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
The Plot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310
Hunter Became Hunted . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
Autumn Moon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323
A Love Before Its Time . . . . . . . . . . . . 329
Goodbye Xandria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334
Return to Opalon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 340
Through the Dark Forest . . . . . . . . . . . 348
Eyes of the Jungle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353
Tiffany and Princess Nya . . . . . . . . . . . 359
Man’s Reason to Fight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 364
Rider in the Rain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369
Mercenary of Love . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 374
The Endgame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379
Death of a Prince . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385
Journey of Hope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399
Illustrations
11. The Frolicking Cubs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
12. Monkey on the Vine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
13. The Lob Rescue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
14. The Maiden’s Song . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
15. Short-faced Bear Attack . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
16. “Wheee!” (Following the Sea Eagles) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
17. The Kronosaur Slayer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
18. T-Rex vs. Super-Croc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
19. Unexpected Rendezvous . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
10. The Gold Medal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
11. The Fist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
12. The Flying Buffalo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
13. The Seductress of the Dungeon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
14. Longing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
15. Xan vs. God of Bovine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337
16. Slingshot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 366
17. Vengeance of Sharky . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383
18. The Gauntlet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 390-391
19. The Duel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393
20. The Death of a Prince . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395
VIII: Tiffany
But to see her
Was to love her,
Love but her
And love her for ever.
—Robert Burns (1759-1796), Scottish poet
ame! Set! Match! Tiffany
Sommer!” the umpire on the high
chair announced. “Miss Sommer
will advance to tomorrow’s final
match for the championship here
at the Claymont International.
She’ll be playing against the favorite, Diana Plastina, the
number-one-ranked woman in the world.”
Taking over the microphone, a senior announcer chimed in with
practiced exuberance. “Displaying her spectacular physique in an
immaculate cambric dress, Tiffany Sommer will be the first
amateur woman ever to advance to the championship match of this
prestigious event.”
The following day, after the announcers had exhausted their
flowery adjectives in the devastating desert heat at Rancho Mirage,
California, Tiffany Sommer, the underdog, found herself battling
Ni
TIFFANY
65
for her life against the undisputed queen of professional tennis.
Her left ankle had been bothering her since the previous day’s
match. She was literally limping with each ball she chased down.
Coming from behind, she struggled in a fierce engagement after
fighting off eight championship points against her opponent in the
sixth game of the second set.
“Deuce again...Tiffany has got nerves of steel!” an announcer
shouted incredulously. “This young college grad simply refuses to
take a backseat to the world champion!”
Mary Cortez, a former champion turned commentator, spoke
with quiet urgency. “She’s matching the all-powerful Plastina
stroke by stroke, and hitting winners from absolutely impossible
positions. But I see the end is near. There is no way that an
amateur athlete can recover to beat the reigning lady’s champion of
the world at love-five, one set down.” She gasped when, as if
Tiffany had heard her comment, she fell, and stayed down.
“Can she get up to face championship point number nine?”
“I must get up,” Tiffany told herself aloud, “for I’m the most
stubborn girl east of the Mississippi, period. No, make that on
Earth.” Dragging her left foot, she stood up in agony. “When I
need the point to stay in the match or to move ahead, I simply
refuse to miss! For tennis is a game where a true champion must
master herself before dominating her opponent.”
True to her word, her determination soon put her back on the
scoreboard, and the match wore on. Having lost the first set to the
all-conquering Belorussian superstar’s big serve-and-volley game,
Tiffany won the second set, seven games to five. Rallying, she won
the first three games of the third and final set. In the end, the
demoralized world champion walked off the court and defaulted the
championship to the amateur newcomer when her antagonist hit an
outright winning passing shot from behind her left shoulder after
chasing down an impossible-to-recover and she’ll-never-get-to-it
topspin lob: Plastina’s signature shot.
Just three weeks earlier, the seventeen-year-old had graduated
from the University of California at Santa Barbara with honors and
Ni
TIFFANY
67
distinctions. She had begun her college career two and a half years
before, as the youngest freshman in the history of the nine campuses
of the UC system. She managed to show up in Rancho Mirage as
a wildcard, just for the fun of the competition, when her school let
out in June. She had not trained for this tournament. Nonetheless,
her well disciplined body and peaceful mind propelled her to success.
Exhausted but triumphant, Tiffany joined her parents, who were
watching from the stands.
“Congratulations, honey! Now that the tournament is over, we
can tell you the news. We’re sending you around the world for
your graduation present!” Captain Sommer smiled proudly.
“You’ve earned it.”
“Really? Daddy!” Tiffany hugged and kissed her parents. Then
she frowned. “Gee, Mom. That means we won’t be able to spend
any time together this summer.”
Erma replied with a knowing smile and a wink. “Sweetie, we
know you are longing for adventure, and we want you to enjoy
yourself. Your Father and I have something else to tell you.” She
paused for effect. “You’re not just going around this world. We’re
sending you on the trip you’ve always dreamed of, to visit the entire
Solar System...to journey beyond Neptune and Pluto. Don’t
worry—I’ll help you pack.”
A week later, their only daughter bid farewell to Erma and Carl
Sommer for the next fourteen months.
Tiffany winked excitedly at her shipboard roommate, Karen
Wheeler. Then she braced herself and sucked in her breath in
anticipation of the SLR Cole’s liftoff. As the countdown ended, the
Super-Luminal Rocket’s colossal team of seven engines fired,
vibrating the grounds at Vandenberg Air Force Base in Central
California amidst a fog of fuming clouds. With a thundering,
explosive roar, the ship rose off the towering launch pad and shot
skyward, leaving planet Earth behind. In a split second the SLR
exceeded the seven-mile-per-second escape velocity needed to exit
the earth’s gravitational pull.
As the ship accelerated toward the moon, Tiffany gazed out her
68
Tophero: Son of Smilodon
Ni
window, seeing only a cloudless blue sky, which steadily dimmed to
the stygian darkness of outer space. Giddy, she felt the sensation of
weightlessness. “I’ll have to double up on my daily workout
routine to stay in shape in such a buoyant environment,” she told
Karen, giggling.
As the SLR gradually flattened its course, the occupants found
themselves upside down relative to Earth.
“In space, you basically have to decide which side is up,” she told
Karen, reading the instructions on her cabin monitor. “Once you
make up your mind, your brain will adjust accordingly and function
normally.”
The girls laughed as they unclipped their seatbelts and practiced
negotiating the spacious cabin. With comical lack of control, they
often bumped against the spaceship walls or furnishings, their
bodies drifting in some unwanted direction.
“It’s so weird!” Karen exclaimed repeatedly.
“Weird but great!” said Tiffany. “I love the feeling of letting my
body go—this lovely sensation of free-floating and free-falling with
only an ultra-light touch.”
She anchored herself on a hand-bar fixed near the porthole
window. The rapidly diminishing view of the earth was glorious.
Stormy clouds blanketed the Pacific, but the largest manmade
structure on Earth—the two-thousand-mile-long Great Wall of
China—meandered clearly across Eastern Asia.
“Look, Tiffany! How stunning!” Karen pointed to the vibrant
rainbow of an orbital sunset, the celestial arc’s vivid colors
shimmering against a backdrop of deepest black.
At ten times the speed of a twelve-gauge shotgun round, SLR
Cole’s superluminal speed was hard to reckon through the windows.
Unlike the tumultuous roller-coaster ride of liftoff, the SLR now
entered a slow-motion realm where time and space appeared to be
vastly more meaningful than velocity. No comets or asteroids
whizzed by as in the movies, for the gargantuan distances within
the vastness of the galaxy separated any given objects.
With nothing to shield it, the scorching sun beat down on the
spacecraft. The excessive light and heat pouring through the
Ni
TIFFANY
69
windows made Karen uncomfortable, so she changed out of her
cumbersome spacesuit designed strictly for liftoff.
Tiffany did the same. Is it day or night? she wondered, gazing at
the awe-inspiring view. When she turned her eyes away from the
sun, she saw weak points of starshine. But without sunrise or
sunset, the perpetual noonday sun no longer signaled the earthly
time of the day.
The young women smiled as Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata”
began playing softly through their earpieces. The now-enormous
mythical sphere filled the entire window, its rugged surface backlit
by an aureole of brilliant sunlight. As the spacecraft continued to
bypass the moon, a dreamy white light delineated half of the sphere.
“Earthshine!” Tiffany breathed, awestruck.
The earthshine viewed from space was much more brilliant than
moonlight on Earth, and it cast magnificent white earth-rays into
star-studded space. The other half of the moon reflected a hue of
yellowish orange from the sun.
As the SLR’s lightning speed left the lunar capture trajectory in
the dust, Tiffany grinned at an ironic thought. “You know what?”
she said to Karen. “The folks who came to see us off are still on
the 101 freeway, fighting the traffic!”
The girls watched from their window as a woman’s soothing
narration spoke through their earpieces.
“Mars, the next planet in our passage, boasts the highest volcano
in our galaxy and possibly the deepest and widest canyons as well.
Valles Marineris is ten times the length of the Grand Canyon,
twenty-four times its width, and three times its depth. Mars has
been bone dry for approximately one billion years now. However,
it does have polar ice caps that are capable of providing moisture if
melted. Scientists also believe that other sources of water existed
in the form of permafrost inside the Martian loam. The fabled
Martian crisscrossing canals were long ago proven nonexistent. In
their place are merely chaotic chasms. Mars only has thirty-eight
percent of the gravity on Earth. This is quite a contrast to that of
our final destination, Opalon, where the gravity is three hundred
fifty-seven percent of that on Earth.”
70
Ni
“Wow!” said Karen. “We’ll weigh three hundred percent
more there!”
The roommates marveled at the abundance of pink and reddish
rockscapes strewn across the Martian surface, visible through the
unremitting swirl of a tremendous duststorm. Near the south polar
cap, they saw the “Giant’s Footprint,” made up by a combination of
two huge craters. The sightings of the Red Planet’s orbiting twin
moons, Phobos and Deimos ended their Martian rendezvous.
On her second day aboard the spaceship, Tiffany was startled to
spot a fellow passenger wearing an impeccably tailored navy blue
spacesuit who looked uncannily familiar—and as handsome as ever.
“Derek!” she exclaimed. “What are you doing here? Have you
been planning this trip for a long time? I just found out I was going
less than a week ago myself.”
“It was a last minute decision. You heard about the tragedy,
right?” Derek’s grim voice seemed out of place with his faultless
attire; but he looked ashen and careworn, as if he’d aged five years
since their last meeting.
“My dad told me. I’m so sorry about your parents. How
unthinkable, to lose them both so close together.” Tiffany tapped
the young billionaire’s bandaged left arm. “Are you okay now?”
“I’m fine. Don’t you worry about me.” He grinned, drawing on
his trademark charm.
Son of the famous space centebillionaire Thomas Cole, Derek
Cole was the most eligible bachelor around. Despite his recent
family tragedy, he emitted an aura of high society so powerful and
mysterious that just standing next to him, Tiffany thought, a girl
could feel her luck changing for the better. With storybook good
looks and the charisma of royalty, the Oxford-educated athlete had
conquered Mount Everest in his junior year at university. After
their unexpected rendezvous six months earlier, he had become one
of her most persistent suitors—until a month ago, when he had
stopped calling.
“Gosh! I’m so glad to see you here, Tiff,” Derek told her
sincerely. “What a pleasant surprise. Congratulations on defeating
Ni
TIFFANY
71
Diana Plastina. She’s a friend of mine, and says she’s scared to play
you again. Won’t you join me in the captain’s lounge for dinner?
Once a day it’s pressurized for an hour, so you’ll feel like you’re
back on Earth again.”
“I’ll be there. It will be nice to dine sitting down.” Tiffany
floated away, once again happily under Derek’s spell.
IX: The Young Contenders
O my brave soul!
O farther, farther, sail!
O daring joy, but safe;
Are they not all seas of God?
O farther, farther, farther sail!
—Walt Whitman (1819-1892), “Pioneers! O Pioneers!”
t had been six years since
Tophero returned from the
Gorge of Death. Sharky had
come into his life in the wake of
his loss of Tyra, and taking care of
the little king of lizards was just
the responsibility he needed. Raising Sharky not only helped him
to live with his sorrows, it reawakened his thirst for living and
enabled him to grow up—into a man.
From sages of ancient Greece, Phaedrus and Bias, he had
learned two aphorisms: “Seek nothing that you do not need” and
“Have everything within yourself.” Following their advice,
Tophero absorbed the philosophies he agreed with and cast into the
Zemootan River all others—those he considered useless
encumbrances and baggage from civilization. He was predisposed
Ni
THE YOUNG CONTENDERS
73
to live perfectly alone and perfectly free, on his own terms.
Tophero felt the first spatter of warm summer rain on his face
one idle afternoon, just after he completed the last of the Five
Hundred Greatest Books Ever Written. It was The Art of War by
the Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu. The tactic he had used to
annihilate Ooba’s overwhelming army was described as “borrowing
nature’s power to eliminate an insurmountable antagonist.” He
nodded in satisfaction.
As always in the cycle of seasons, the monsoons came at the tail
end of spring, and the meandering brooks adjacent to Tophero’s
cave became overflowing waterways. The stony cliffs were washed
clean of any blemish accumulated since the last cloudburst a year
ago. Luscious ferns, flowers, and plants competed to show off their
newfound colors. Creatures large and small each found their own
way to tangle with the muddy, soggy surroundings. Life went on
seamlessly, adapting to nature’s transformation.
Sabertooth cats were great swimmers. Their thick fur had longer
outer hairs to exuviate water and a short undercoat to maintain
body heat. Tophero and Kota in particular relished swimming on
steamy tropical afternoons. Even Sharky enjoyed soaking in the
cool waters of the Zemootan River after a big meal. The pampering
waters reduced the extra weight of an over-filled stomach.
As ocean overflowed to tributaries, larger sea creatures like
plesiosaurus and peloneustes chased smaller prey into the rivers
and gulped them down there. When these monstrous creatures
didn’t return to sea before the tide turned, they became stranded in
the shallow waters of the river. Thus the smilodons added fish and
amphibians to their diet. Their favorite treats from the swarming
ocean were dolphin-like mixosaurs and tuna-like ophthalmosaurus,
both tender of flesh and soft of bone.
The sea creatures put up an energetic fight even in shallow
waters, however. Their enormous strength from struggling in the
teeming seas could be overwhelming for even mature smilodons.
That was when Sharky’s big-league size came into play. His
brawny muscles consistently overcame the toughest of any
challengers from the sea.
74
Ni
After losing his baby fat and insulating feathers, Sharky had
metamorphosed into a slender, bipedal killing machine built to
move with terrifying speed. His pneumatic, air-filled bone
structure in the front half of his torso enhanced his mobility. Large
air sacs from his colossal nasal cavity continued into enormous
pockets in his cheeks, ensuring that not even the faintest scent from
any reasonable distance ever escaped him. Being stronger and
larger than a typical seven-year-old rex, he never worried about
food, for the cleverest hunter of the jungle had trained him to use
all his brawn and brain to best his enemies and prey alike.
Presently standing taller than a full-grown mastodon, Sharky
had become a perfect hunting partner. In a few more years, Sharky
would reach his adult size to become a mature, meat-eating
dinosaur genetically built to pursue and kill any prey under the
opaque Opalonian sun. Tophero knew that as his adopted son
continue to mature, he would gradually lose some of his speed, for
his muscle to total weight ratio would undoubtedly decrease. But
like a proud father, Tophero could not hide his pride in raising this
glorious combatant. His satisfaction was little different from Tyra’s
at raising her strange lemur-son into a unique, all-powerful warrior
of the jungle.
Many a time did Tophero take to his swinging vines to watch
Sharky tiptoe through the wooded glades looking for horned or
hoofed dinosaurs. Because the young tyrannosaur walked on his
three-clawed toes, he sauntered with a peculiar rhythmic bounce.
It was quite something to see him capture his targeted victim with
his thundering sprint, triggering an immense stampede of foraging
herbivores after he had caught his quarry.
Sharky’s docile temperament and his loyalty to his guardian
were even more impressive than his effectiveness as a hunting
machine. Since he had grown up primarily in the care of Koko
(now with her own four cubs), the young rex was more than
comfortable hunting with the gang of sabertooth cats. The strange
family viewed Tophero as the big brother and father figure. They
deferred to him in all respects of daily life, while he directed their
hunting activities and adored each of them with all his heart.
Ni
THE YOUNG CONTENDERS
75
Today, watching Sharky at the muddy riverbank brought a
proud smile to Tophero’s face. The tyrannosaur was growing into
a fine adolescent. On this afternoon, he had hooked his sharp claws
into the slippery hide of a struggling mixosaur. As Sharky’s
blade-like teeth ripped out a colossal mouthful of flesh, Tophero
saw the sign of his coming of age—the rex’s teeth had recently
developed lethal, chisel-shaped serrations that protected them
from breakage when biting down on the large bones of a victim.
Any lost teeth were quickly regenerated.
Before Tophero could get another glimpse, Sharky was already
before him with the body of the mixosaur in his jaws. Surprisingly,
its meat was similar to that of a mastodon. The darker cuts were
stringy and unpalatable, while the white meats were tender and
delicious beyond words. As the meal was served, Sharky started
with the internal organs and the dark meats, leaving the choicest
parts of the sea monster untouched for Tophero. But the young
tyrannosaur would get more than his share; for Sharky was
equipped to devour his meat much faster than the only sire he had
ever known.
Perhaps due to his genes, or perhaps due to his unlimited
consumption of raw meat and fresh fruit on top of his rigorous
physical training and daily hunting of huge Opalonian beasts,
Tophero became a giant in his own right. At twenty years of age,
with his tanned musculature symmetrically gleaming under the
beating sun, his mighty strength often powered him to conquer
creatures he would once have considered impossible foes—like
wrestling a wooly rhinoceros to the ground with a masterful twist
of its neck. Certainly his knowledge of the land of the dinosaurs
was unmatched by any other beasts.
The long, arduous days he spent in front of the black box,
reading and repeating whatever touched his heart, coupled with his
uncanny mimicking abilities, resulted in his unique manner of
thought-processing and speech. Perhaps he spoke English in a
strange way—his thoughts were carried out at times in modern
conversations, at times in Victorian dialogues, and at times simply
in poetic verses—how could he know? For his highly refined
76
Ni
degree of learning was an inconsequential reality for this primodial
creature of the Opalonian jungle.
“Congratulations! You are the first user to complete the entire
collection of the Five Hundred Greatest Books Ever Written!”
The pleasant female voice had spoken to him with a cheerful finality.
How long had he dreamed of that day! But with no more books to
read in the black box, his days became protracted and intolerable.
Behind his devoted relationship with Sharky, Kobu, and other
members of his family, Tophero found constant loneliness,
restlessness, and frustration. For no one truly understood him, his
desires or his needs. Hadn’t Goethe described this condition? “For
the rest of it, the last and greatest art is to limit and isolate oneself.”
Perhaps the jungle life among hunters and the hunted was
nothing more than an eternal pilgrimage to control his emotions
and conquer his archenemies....
He sighed.
X: Alchemy in the Sky
Nor love thy life, nor hate
But what thou liv’st
Live well,
The rest leave then to Heaven.
—Milton, Paradise Lost, Book I
fter politely knocking on his
boss’ door, Wolfgang Spear
found Derek Cole gazing
blankly at a thick document in
his hand.
He gently scratched the top
of his rapidly receding hairline, waiting for the younger man to
look up. “How much diamond ore do you believe is there?” he
asked. “Where on Opalon are they hidden?”
“According to my old man’s secret files, there were countless
diamonds,” Derek told his bodyguard as the huge man folded his
frame into a contoured chair. “The gems are in a cave in the
center of a subterranean jungle hundreds of feet below sea level,
which he named the mine of Uranus, for the Greek god of Heaven
and ruler of the world. He chose the name to symbolize the
omnipotent power and wealth of the mine. He wrote that the
78
Ni
Uranus Cave is at the very end of a maze-like trough, where miles
of interwoven tunnels plunge below sea level at approximately thirty degrees. Toward the end of these deeply buried tunnels, the cave
walls are populated by nothing but gigantic diamonds.”
“So that’s how your old man suddenly quintupled his fortune.
How is it that no one has discovered this treasure trove before?”
Derek shrugged. “The cave’s entrance is hidden in the midst of
a vast black forest inhabited by tyrannosaurus rex and other terrifying
carnivores. The opening is camouflaged by enormous trees and
colossal boulders; but my father reports that a giant slate of blue
lapis shaped like a Roman broadsword naturally earmarks the
entrance. The site is roughly a three-day march from a lake
located deep in this you-can-barely-see-any-daylight-black forest.
He calls it Crystal Lake, for its crystal-clear waters and the
immense quartz trees that grow all around the lakefront. The
black forest fills a large crater surrounded by mountains of granite.
He thinks the Crystal Lake is actually the opening of a deeply
slumbering volcano.” Derek nodded dreamily. “But if we can
find it, we’re talking at least several hundred million carats of
uncut diamonds.”
“Several hundred million carats?” Wolfgang silently considered
the metallic sound of these golden words. “Do we have what we
needed to mine this great fortune?”
“I believe that we do. Once we get to the bottom of the Uranus
mine, the diamonds are pretty much protruding from every surface,
according to the descriptions in the restricted files. All we have to
do is pick ‘em and pack ‘em.” Derek set aside the documents and
began to rub lotion on his pampered hands.
Wolfgang’s excited head-scratching escalated. “Since we’ll land
our ship near the lake, we only need to worry about avoiding the
giant carnivores before we enter the cave, right?”
“Not exactly. There are numerous hidden tar pits that are
dangerous as well. According to my old man’s log, he witnessed a
pterosaur die while trying to pick up a hyaenodon, which in turn
was trying to prey on a baby megatherium that got stuck in a tar pit
in the first place.” Derek shook his head. “All three creatures sank
Ni
ALCHEMY IN THE SKY
79
into the pit.”
“Do we know for sure that there are no humans on Opalon?”
“Per my father’s documentation, along with the famous
anthropologist Dr. Kolinsky’s confirmation, he had no reason to
believe so. The planet is ruled by prehistoric creatures.”
“How did you find out about all this?” asked Wolfgang. “I
thought your father was the secretive type.”
Derek grinned. “After I decided to take this trip to pursue
Tiffany, I accidentally overheard my old man’s conversation with
my dying mom about arranging a second trip to pick up more
diamonds from Opalon. I tricked my sick mom into giving me
my old man’s password to access his secret files. They contain a
full description of the trip’s confidential design.”
Figures this kid would trick his dying mother, thought Wolfgang.
“What do you plan to do with that world-domineering wealth,
once you get it?
“I’ll tell you, my old man would never listen to me. Now, he’s
merely served to strengthen the foundation of my fortune. My
plans are to—”
Derek’s expression darkened. “Who’s there?” he snapped. He
jerked his chin upward, signaling Wolfgang to look outside the
Presidential Suite.
Wolfgang ordered the suite’s portal to slide open and gripped
the arm of a passing guard. He returned to Derek with the man in
tow, dragging him by the collar.
“What were you doing out there? What did you hear?”
Derek demanded.
“Nothing, s-sir. I-I heard nothing,” replied the shaken guard.
Without a word, Derek gripped a heavy marble paperweight
and struck the guard’s face. The guard crumbled in the
semi-weightlessness. Relishing his power, Derek mercilessly struck
him again and again.
“Stop it! Derek!” Tiffany’s horrified voice shouted from the
open portal to the suite.
“Tiffany! I was just disciplining a recalcitrant crewmember.
What’s up?” Derek improvised, his violent face suddenly turning
80
Ni
concerned and kind. “I was just—”
Tiffany gave him a look of disdain and quickly disappeared.
“You shithead! Look what you made me do!” Derek struck the
guard again across his blood-smeared face.
It appeared that no amount of explaining could control the
damage done with Tiffany, and no outpouring of charm could
repair her broken trust. After several monopolizing moves failed
to acquire him exclusivity with Tiffany onboard the ship, Derek
decided that perhaps a temporary retreat would benefit a future
advance—especially given that he had more important things
to do, like discovering the largest diamond mine ever known
to humankind.
Wolfgang did his best to console his despondent boss. “You just
wait,” he told him. “I’ll bet that when you’re crowned the greatest
explorer who ever lived, with the motherload of diamonds we bring
back to Earth, she’ll come crawling back to kiss your feet and beg for
your forgiveness. Her girly purist mind will learn that only a man
who is prepared to dirty his hands can accomplish the greatest
exploits in life.”
Derek smiled dubiously. “You think so?” Then he smacked
Wolfgang’s broad back. “You’re probably right. After all, you have
the wisdom of five men, right? Do they still think that you’re five
different bodyguards?”
Wolfgang smiled and withdrew from the suite. A giant of a man
at six-foot-six and a master of disguise, he enjoyed the fact that
journalists and paparazzi who followed his handsome young boss
had at first erroneously believed that Derek had several different
bodyguards. Always keeping his origin a secret, Wolfgang often
smiled with pride when he heard the whispered stories about his
ties to the underworld and his cryptic journeys to the Mir station
on Mars with his older brother Eli following the infamous Captain
Igor P. Marose.
For two years Wolfgang had enjoyed working for maverick
space-exploration centebillionaire Thomas Cole’s wholly owned
enterprise, Space 3000, LLC. Dr. Cole, in his fifties, was a
Ni
ALCHEMY IN THE SKY
81
well-known benefactor of charities for the poor, the sick, and the
unfortunate. Well respected for his scientific accomplishments,
he had followed in the footsteps of another space billionaire, Jack
Lone, to actively seek space colonization to perpetuate
permanent human existence. His brother James had captained
the first interstellar trip he sponsored. Unfortunately, the
spacecraft crashed over the Opalonian desert in a disastrous
mission. The cause of the crash was unknown. Thomas Cole
financed another mission to Opalon three years later. This time
they landed successfully on Opalon, and Dr. Cole returned with
numerous pioneering findings.
Madeline Cole, his former-actress wife, had been an elegant
socialite. Although a cancer patient for nearly a decade, she not
only continued her fight against her own cancer, she ceaselessly
waged war against the epidemic around the world with her
presence and wealth. She was outgoing, kind, and knew how to
comfort others in adverse situations.
As to Wolfgang’s young boss Derek, four months earlier, he’d
been accused of rape, kidnapping, and battery of a young college
co-ed from Brown University. The plaintiff mysteriously dropped
all charges after certain rumored threats were made toward her
family—eased by a generous payoff.
Wolfgang chuckled repeatedly while clicking through younger
Cole’s college yearbook. “‘Thank you for your unwavering
leadership on our expedition to the summit of Everest,’” he read
aloud. “Hmm. You wouldn’t have gotten far without me to carry
you the last leg, now would you?” He clicked to another page.
“‘Starting from the pinnacle of the corporate ladder, you’re the
most likely to succeed, if you can stay out of the big house....’ Well,
they got that right, didn’t they? ‘Our hats off to the ultimate
prankster.... May your life be no longer than your ex-girlfriend’s
kitten you microwaved to a pulp.... May your eyes be no more
brilliant than her puppy’s you glued shut forever....’” He closed the
computer file. “The lad definitely has a few character flaws,” he
concluded. This was not a boy to cross lightly.
Wolfgang’s job had recently gotten much tougher, for
82
Ni
shocking news had arrived in succession, two days before SLR
Cole’s scheduled liftoff. Madeline Cole had lost her battle with
cancer and died holding Derek and Thomas’ hands. The
sorrowful father and son were attacked on their way home from
the hospital. Thomas Cole, his bodyguard, and his driver
died instantly in the attack, while Derek and Wolfgang had
miraculously survived without serious injury. Thomas Cole’s last
words to Derek were: “Beware of the mighty scepter of wealth I
bequeath you, and use it well. Otherwise, like a double-edged
sword, the wrath of this fortune shall cause you to burn in hell
with no redemption.”
No arrests were made. But hushed whispers were heard in
elitist circles that underworld bosses had ordered the execution to
blackmail the young and inexperienced Derek to include them in
the gold rush of the space program. Under a cloud of secrecy,
Derek nevertheless became the new boss at Space 3000, LLC, and
inherited his family’s entire commercial space-exploration empire
the day before his liftoff.
After the passengers and crew of the spacecraft superficially
toured the other interstellar planets as scheduled, SLR Cole arrived
at its final destination: Opalon, the planet revolving at the far
corner of the solar system—the planet giant saurians roamed, both
in its mountainous landmasses and teeming seas.
Originally, according to the published spaceflight plans, SLR
Cole was to fly over the planet for a bird’s-eye view only. But Derek
planned to touch down for six days to extract as much diamond as
Spear and three other trusted crewmembers could transport.
“Captain, go ahead and announce to the crew that we’re forced to
land instantly due to a malfunction of the navigation system, and we
will lift off as soon as the problem is corrected,” instructed Derek.
“Mr. Cole, I can’t just change the flight plan and land on Opalon
for some bogus reason!” the captain exclaimed.
Derek grabbed the captain by the throat. “Look, man, do as you
are told. If it’s a part of my plan, it’s a part of your goddamn plan too.”
The captain spoke sternly the moment Derek released him.
Ni
ALCHEMY IN THE SKY
83
“Mr. Cole, your father would never have spoken to me in that tone
of voice. I refuse to change the course of the flight, and I refuse to
put everyone’s well being in jeopardy on Opalon to satisfy one
man’s whimsical desire.”
Derek narrowed his eyes. “Listen to me very carefully, Captain.
Unless you do as I tell you, your wife and two kids’ lives are as good
as over. Kaput. Do you understand? And under no circumstances
do you radio home or alert anyone, no matter what. Everything
you’ve heard about me is true. I wouldn’t flinch if I had to bump
off all of you. Wolfgang would do it in a New York second.” He
nodded toward his looming bodyguard. “The decision is entirely
up to you, my man.”
Wolfgang moved in close to the captain.
The captain’s shoulders slumped. He spoke into the intercom,
ordering his crew to prepare to lower the eight spider-like landing
gears of the SLR Cole over the rugged grounds at the fringe of
Crystal Lake.
After circling several times, SLR Cole landed successfully on the
lakeside. There, the crew, under the captain’s direction, carried out
regular maintenance in lieu of the supposed repair activities, while
Cole, Spear, and three of his handpicked followers took off in
search of the Uranus Cave.
Derek breathed deeply, relishing the Opalonian air. Its
overwhelming purity and high oxygen content were refreshing and
invigorating. The lake was crystal clear, ringed by immense
translucent quartz trees and arching willows on the lakeshores, and
teeming with delicate water lilies and unknown species of fish. The
light perfume of the lake mingled with the unique scent of the
tropical forest. He perceived a strangeness he could not have
anticipated even at the summit of Everest.
As they marched away from the lake into the forest, he soon
saw a small herd of dangerous-looking stegosaurus grazing in a
clearing ahead, at the end of a game trail. The heavily plated
elephant-sized herbivores regarded the invading party with their
heads tilted to one side, then went back to grazing peacefully, as
84
Ni
though the Cole party did not exist. Derek held his breath as
he and his companions tiptoed around the herd without incident.
Then, sighing in relief, he continued to lead their march
toward the Uranus Mine as marked on his late father’s carefully
documented map.
XI: Melodious Enchantment
This is the female form,
A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot,
It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction,
I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more than a helpless
Vapor, all falls aside but myself and it....
—Walt Whitman (1819-1892), “I sing the Body Electric”
arlier, while entirely cast in a veil of blue
fog, planet Opalon was merely a purplish
impression of a sphere. As it loomed
bigger and bigger outside of Tiffany’s
window, previously indistinguishable
features turned into jade landmasses
emerging from the sapphire oceans and ruby clouds. Primeval
jungles, precipitous mountain chains, virgin rainforests, and verdant
plains unfolded before her. Suddenly, she felt Opalon’s 3-G gravity
hit her like a lasso as the ship entered its atmosphere. The spaceship
first jerked forward violently, then noticeably slowed and glided
irreversibly into the prehistoric wilderness.
As the spacecraft moved closer and closer to the surface, Tiffany
saw a herd of apatosaurus, their long necks outstretched, feeding on
sky-kissing sycamore trees.
86
Ni
“Incredible! Karen, look at that!” she exclaimed with the fierce
interest of a zoologist. “The closest thing I’ve ever seen was the
skeleton in the L.A. Museum of Natural History.”
“Is it for real? Or are we hallucinating?” her roommate
responded in amazement.
The two of them giggled ecstatically at the sight of the
prehistoric giants—animals that had been extinct on Earth for
more than sixty-five million years.
Tiffany didn’t lose her venturesome spirit when she heard the
announcement of the malfunctions plaguing her spaceship. So far
her trip exploring the galaxy had been fascinating, despite the dark
side she’d seen to Derek’s disposition. She realized she’d never
really known him very well. Still, she felt confused. She had seen
enough to recognize he was a bully; this deeply troubled her. On
the other hand, she was willing to consider excuses for the violent
incident she’d witnessed. Had his bad temper resulted from the
death of his mother and the tragic murder of his father? Surely he
had a right to be stressed.
She’d made many new friends during the journey, among which
Karen Wheeler and her father Paul were her favorites. Tiffany found
that she could talk freely with Karen. A twenty-nine-year-old
marketing executive from Irvine, California, Karen was all business,
while her worldly father Paul is a minister back home in
Minneapolis, Minnesota.
To Tiffany, the planet Opalon exuded an indescribable aura,
from the surreally clear lake water to the dark, mysterious
rainforests. The distant volcanic activities seemed to speak of a
land before time. Although she could not quite comprehend the
emotion, Tiffany felt a deep sense of anticipation and destiny in her
restless young soul.
Tiffany, Karen, and Paul determined to experience the dinosaur
planet first hand, accompanied by two guards, Richard Marquez
and Bruce Anderson, both armed with a laser gun. These weapons
were capable of shooting a two-inch-diameter mini-tunnel through
a large object of flesh and bones. According to a zookeeper Tiffany
knew in Baltimore, the weapon had been tested and proven on a
Ni
MELODIOUS ENCHANTMENT
87
crazed African hippopotamus.
“I can hardly walk! My God! I must have gained... I weigh a
ton!” Karen exclaimed.
“This gravity thing is truly amazing! I guess the residents here can
save their allowance on a StairMaster,” Reverend Wheeler echoed.
The 3-G gravity on Opalon made hiking an unbearable chore.
Tiffany felt she was carrying at least five times her earthly weight
with each step she took. The group stopped to rest on the radiant
lakefront, admiring the encircling quartz trees and drooping willows.
“This is paradise!” exclaimed the reverend, as Tiffany eagerly
shot photos with her digicam.
Huge, bizarrely shaped boulders near the lakeside created
numerous microhabitats for plants and animals. Tiffany noticed a
golden beetle six inches in length, sashaying down the path in front
of her while turning its head to observe her with utmost curiosity.
She observed that the great rainforest had four distinct levels. The
forest floor extended up to fifteen feet; the understory went up to
sixty-five feet; the canopy extended to one hundred twenty feet;
and finally the emergent level topped out at above one hundred
fifty feet high. Further ahead, she saw immense outcroppings of
sandstone, some of which rose above the dense jungle canopy.
Soon, the five of them lost track of their promise to the captain that
they would not venture far from the spaceship.
Beyond a turn along the curvilinear Crystal Lake, a gargantuan
boulder stubbornly blocked the distant view of the spacecraft. To
her surprise, Tiffany spotted a well-camouflaged Opalonian jaguar
eyeing them from a treetop, holding a broken tortoise shell under
its giant paw. These jaguars sure are bulkier than their earthly cousins
of the Amazons, she thought.
Jaguars were by no means the most powerful, ferocious, or
quickest among the felines. But their sinuous bodies seemed to
possess all of the necessary qualities for survival. At around five
hundred pounds, they filled out the gap between the smilodon and
hyaenodon in the food chain. They were most capable of adapting
to the ever-changing environment. When hungry, they were known
to hunt down the jaw-snapping tortoises known for their saurian
88
Ni
killing ferocity. A jaguar could crush the tortoise’s inch-thick
armor with its fearsome jaws. This one regarded them from its
treetop with unique stillness, not twitching a single muscle.
Tiffany aimed her camera. Anderson followed her gaze. Then,
with a cry of alarm, the jumpy guard fired his laser gun out of reflex.
His high-powered laser beam made a glancing hit to the jaguar’s
left front paw. Angered by pain, the snarling cat vaulted straight at
them. Shrieking in fear, Marquez and Anderson ran along the lake,
while Tiffany, Karen, and Paul bolted into the rainforest.
The jaguar didn’t seem to follow the three humans into the
black forest. Nevertheless, Tiffany, Karen, and Paul didn’t stop
running until they knew they were lost. They must have run quite
a distance, for the forest had grown forbiddingly denser and the
thick undergrowth significantly taller, so they could barely
proceed. You had to admire Earthlings’ ability to run for their lives
when their adrenaline was pumping, thought Tiffany.
Since they had only planned to take a stroll along the lakeside,
no one had brought a machete. Nor had they thought to bring a
radio to call the ship. The primordial jungle was rapidly darkening
in the late afternoon under the heavy canopy of the rainforest.
Painstakingly, the trio wobbled along until Tiffany spotted a
formation of large boulders with an opening twenty feet off the
jungle floor. “Up there,” she told them wearily. “It will serve as a
shelter for the night.”
The next morning dawned with a silken tropical mist. Tiffany
set out to explore and quench her thirst, while Karen and Paul
remained asleep. She wanted to find a souvenir of some sort from
the famous dinosaur planet for her parents, for she missed them
terribly. The beauty of the blossoming flowers captured her
admiration. A dappled butterfly landed insouciantly on the crown
of an unknown bloom, its touch so light that the morning dew
struggled and hung on to the bulb.
“What happened to my digicam?” she mumbled. “Darn it—I
must’ve lost it during the jaguar attack!”
Marveling at the inordinate age of the forest—the gargantuan,
Ni
MELODIOUS ENCHANTMENT
89
soaring trees and the great ropy vines festooning them—she
realized that not only was she thirsty; she was famished. The jungle
was dead silent, undisturbed by the presence of humankind. The
only sound Tiffany could hear was the rumble of volcanic eruptions
in the distance. No, there was something else—the faint cries of
flying retiles in the distance, eagle-like, but deeper in pitch and
louder in resonance. A droplet of dew, sprinkling her face from the
oversized fern fronds overhead, startled her. To proceed, she had
little choice but to stumble into the stygian darkness created by the
dense canopy of overgrown foliage. She began to take inventory:
beech, sequoia, magnolia, poplar, ficus, and walnut trees. The
understory was made up of monstrous ferns, horsetails, and palms.
Her clothes were soon soaked through from the undergrowth.
She would give anything for a piping hot Porterhouse steak
right about now.
Tophero was awakened by an unknown scent traveling in the
distance. An indescribable scent that was both riveting and
feminine. Feminine! What was that? He had read all about
womankind in his readings, but besides watching Koko in heat
once, he had not the faintest idea.
The greenhorn venom had worked its numbing way through his
system, and he had regained most of his strength. Now he was
eager to alleviate his dehydration and hunt for a big meal. With his
weapons strapped across his back, he set out on his safari. Swiftly
he moved through the trees; then he quenched his ferocious thirst
in a little creek. After making a kill and satisfying his hunger, he set
out to search for the exotic aroma.
The sweltering updraft kept rising to the heavens, rising toward
the pale, far-flung moon, still visible in the morning sky. But
suddenly it veered, ushering the strange scent to him—striking him
like a blow.
Coming from the midst of the forest, unexpectedly, he heard a
strange series of unknown hums. Tophero was instantly drawn
to this fascinating new series of sounds. And the words—they were
English!
90
Ni
I can feel the magic in the woods.
Is it you that makes me feel this way?
I can feel your presence,
Without seeing your face...
Your company unsettles all my thoughts,
Like the breeze of this strange land,
Awakens the world of my dreams.
Is it your heartbeat that I hear?
Tophero held his breath. What was this rippling sound like the
gurgle of the stream, the call of the pterosaurs, the cooing of
baby Sharky?
I await your touch—
The touch of your breath.
Breathe carelessly,
Breathe freely—
For you have nothing to prove to me.
We simply need to be.
The neverending rush
Of your touch
Is what love is supposed to be.
The boundless rush
Of your caress
Is what love should be.
I can feel the magic in the woods.
Is it you that makes me feel this way?
The gentle resonance of the maiden’s sultry voice was so
unknown, yet so familiar. His voluminous studies during his years
of solitude had prepared him to understand the meaning of the
song. He recognized it as a form of poetry, set to an enchanting
melody. This must be music—yes! He had read of this. He lurked
92
Ni
quietly, so as not to frighten the object of his fascination. He
wondered how the creature’s loud footfalls, for its small size,
hadn’t gotten it instantly killed in the carnivore-infested jungle.
Presently, the delicate feminine voice became so bewitching that
it stirred up his twenty years of buried yearnings for human
camaraderie. No, years of yearning for female companionship, to
be precise. He had never comprehended this emotion before, for
when Kobu turned wildly amorous toward a roving female, he
never felt any ripples in his heart for the same maiden. This, too,
he recognized from his reading, and from the lyric to the creature’s
song. Presently, he felt the sudden sorrows of Young Werther from
Goethe in 1774. This must be love.
XII: Secret Garden of Opalon
In the Spring a livelier iris
Changes on the burnish’d dove;
In the Spring a young man’s fancy
Lightly turns to thoughts of love.
—Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)
midst the splashing sunlight
sneaking
through
the
emerald-leaved
branches,
Tophero finally caught sight
of the source of the captivating
melody: a sumptuous, almost
majestic figure picking golden starfruits and crimson-speckled
passionfruits from the woods. A living poem of beauty! he breathed.
A strange creature who looks just like me!
This creature sported a kind of extreme beauty that could not
possibly be from his world. The same kind of beauty that’s best
described as a celebration of life—an eternal, magical life. For no
greater pulchritudionous shadow of a she had his eyes ever
beheld—liquid eyes, flawless skin, and that ethereal grace. The girl
was tall, slender yet curvaceous. She must be from a different pack
than his own, he thought, for her mane was as fine as spiderwebs,
94
Ni
and pale—as yellow as the starfruits she held—though longer than
his own dark mane, waving down her back and framing her fine
cheekbones. Her copious lips were sumptuous, yet full of spunk. A
lofty nose filled with character, as straight as if carved from ivory.
And those cloudless green eyes—reflecting the romantic mystery of
a bottomless lake, overflowing with emotions . . . . Tophero felt his
heart pumping.
She wore clothing; he knew the word. A safari outfit with a
long khaki skirt and high dark brown leather boots, as described in
King Solomon’s Mines. Unlike Helen of Troy’s dangling earrings
depicted by Homer, her diamond studs were much less cumbersome
and infinitely more captivating. A golden locket hung freely above
the crevice leading to her ample cleavage.
At that beauteous sight, a low growl escaped his lips and Tophero
rose up with his heart pounding in his ears, impatient to be
underway. Silently he followed in the footsteps of this graceful
form; then continued on from tree to tree to improve his observation
of the young woman. He watched as she sat on a round rock, slowly
consuming a fruit she had picked. He was entranced by the lissome
way she ate, so neatly, yet with a passion of anticipation, in many
small bites—so unlike his usual wolfing down of a starfruit in two
swallows before spitting out the sour core.
An invisible thread drew him to her without a hint of reason.
Gone was the long undisturbed tranquility in the hidden core of his
heart. She had reduced him to his most profound state of desire.
Stupefied.
Tophero moved silently, the shadow of a shadow. As she walked
into a clearing, he let the distance between them stretch, for he was
beyond shy, and didn’t want her to be aware of his presence.
Without a sound, the tip of a giant fern fluttered to the west of
her; but there was no wind, for the other ferns did not sway at all.
Tophero froze, the hair bristling at the nape of his neck. Abruptly
the underbrush to the side of her parted, and another silent stalker
came into view. With its long-limbed gallop, a short-faced bear
burst from its cover. As its voracious roar shook the ground
beneath her, the girl turned and was too stunned to run away.
Ni
SECRET GARDEN OF OPALON
95
Dumfounded, Tophero realized that he’d been bereft of all his
senses while he focused wholeheartedly on the girl. Normally he
would scent the odor of a bear from a great distance. Nevertheless,
what he saw galvanized him into instant action. His initial plan was
to distract the mighty bear’s attention from the girl. But a powerful
zephyr suddenly changed the course of his well-aimed arrow. It
bounced off the giant fangs of the snarling bear and went careening
into the bottom of a tree with a thud. With lightning speed he
placed a second arrow in the muscular mount of the bear’s hairy
back. Bellowing from the sting, it changed its course immediately
toward him. For the first time in his life, Tophero waited for the
charge and shouted in the only human language he knew, to a
living human instead of a black box: “Climb tree, quickly!”
The horrified girl looked puzzled at his appearance and at first
didn’t realize the noises he made were words, but was quick to run
toward a nearby tree—for she understood him, if not through his
heavily accented words, through his body language.
With the girl out of the way, Tophero turned to meet the
upright bear squarely. The enraged beast looked more formidable
than a whole pack of cave lions. With its long fangs bared, even
longer claws swinging, and humps of rolling muscles gleaming
under its fur, the king of the Opalonian bears looked as if it could
easily put up a fight against three smilodons simultaneously.
Tophero held his ground. The bear took several wide strides on
all fours, then stood up to deliver the first strike. If its vicious blow
landed, it would obliterate him from existence, for he had once
seen a short-faced bear crush a mastodon’s skull with a similar
strike. But he stepped skillfully out of its path and jabbed it with
his spear. Retracting his instrument, Tophero nimbly pivoted
behind the upright bear. His circling movements forced the
clumsy bear to spin its upright body on its hind legs in an unnatural
dizzying dance.
With reverberating growls and lightning speed, Tophero lunged
toward his target. He landed three more jabs to the bear’s stomach
before it finally caught up with his tactics and grazed his chest with
a fierce, lunging slash. Immediately, warm blood spilled out onto
Ni
SECRET GARDEN OF OPALON
97
his chest. But in the instant after the strike, while the cave bear’s
arms were not protecting its white V-marked chest, the injured jungle
warrior leaped off the ground and unfalteringly plunged his javelin
into the short-faced bear’s heart. The blow felt as though he had
rammed his heavy spear into the side of a cliff.
The formidable bear was staggered; it wobbled as Tophero
forcefully retracted his spear. It then tumbled backward with its
four limbs struggling in the air and bellowed in irrepressible agony.
The shrill agony of its death cries reverberated throughout the
mighty peaks of the cratered mountain ridges. After several
convulsive movements, the short-faced bear’s predatory soul perished.
Leaping atop the giant carcass, Tophero raised his head toward
the magenta sky with his jaws wide open. Then he, too, broke the
vast stillness of the Opalonian forest with the frightening, far-echoing
victory cry of the bull smilodon.
XIII: Shakespearean Savage
Think how unspeakably sweet
The taste of snow at midsummer,
How sweet a kind spring breeze
After the gales of winter.
—Asklepiados (ca. 320 BCE)
t was the exultant cry of the primeval;
the unconscious, longing roar of all
created things, declaring itself against
the presumptuous forces of nature in
one long, soulful outpouring of
unabashed mortal challenge.
The roiling of Tiffany’s stomach was erased as the magnificent
young archer of the forest turned to face her, surrounded by showy
fuchsia and white oleander blossoms, with blood dripping down his
chin. Timidly, she bowed slightly to show her respect to the regal,
muscle-bound savage standing before her.
Was this a man or a beast? He was practically naked, bronzed
to a mahogany sheen, with merely a jaguar-hide loincloth covering
his vital areas. His lithe movements reminded her of Sheeba, her
jaguar in the Baltimore zoo. She was sure he had spoken to her in
a tongue resembling English, though uttered with a heavy, growling
Ni
SHAKESPEAREAN SAVAGE
99
accent. She felt her adrenaline still racing from her brush with
violent death as her mind struggled to comprehend the rapid-fire
events unfolding on this strange planet.
Yes, she was certain she’d heard a strangely powerful voice
speaking to her, just after the zinging arrows had pierced the
snarling bear. Then this exceedingly muscular giant of a man had
leaped in front of her enraged attacker with only a primitive
weapon in his hands, apparently fighting to save her life. She
shuddered at the memory of the deep, rumbling growl of warning
emerging from the savage’s great chest. Then this brave demigod,
apparently not affected by the powerful Opalonian gravity at all,
had fought ferociously to overcome a creature twice his height and
seven or eight times his weight.
Why had he risked his life to rescue her? And why was he
standing atop his colossal conquest’s carcass, releasing that
bloodcurdling howl of triumph? How was that accursed roar
generated from his human vocal cords? Tiffany shivered in horror.
Could he want her for himself?
The savage’s powerful face was dominated by his keen, challenging
eyes. Like a personification of the carnivore he’d killed, his voice
was deep and resonated a gravelly aggressiveness. She drew back in
terror as he moved toward her, fresh blood still oozing down his
rippling chest. The row of five slashes from the short-faced bear’s
mighty front paw told the story of his courageous deed. His face
was remarkably handsome—stoic, yet boyish in its curiosity. His
emerald eyes were those of a jungle cat. His mountainous chest
and washboard stomach continued to heave from the death struggle.
Around twenty years of age, he was at least six-feet-eight-inches tall
and no less than twice her weight.
Tiffany had never seen a man who exuded this forest god’s
towering mental fortitude, physical prowess, or imposing
self-confidence. She trembled with admiration for this creature
before her, as she unconsciously brushed back her thick, disheveled
blonde locks. Suddenly she snapped out of her trance, for reality
was upon her. Cowering against the tree where she’d taken cover
from the bear, she said, “Stop! Don’t touch me! Who are you?
100
Ni
What do you want?”
To her shock, this child of Nature, this towering wild thing of
breathtakingly masculine perfection and terrifying strength spoke.
“Are you all right, mademoiselle? Tophero...at your service.
How do you do?”
The giant seemed unexpectedly awkward—as shy as a schoolboy,
and perhaps even overwhelmed—as though he had never seen
another human. English was clearly not his native language, but his
heavy guttural speech didn’t interfere with his soft-spoken manner.
“I’m...fine, and you?” She felt her back press against the
massive tree. You’ve handled a bull elephant before, and you
managed to beat Diana Plastina, the cannibal queen of tennis,
didn’t you? She took a deep breath and swiped the cold sweat off
her forehead. The great feline man had been sauntering toward
her with the quiet dignity of a king of beasts. Seeing her retreat, he
stopped a few yards away.
Up close, he was so enormous that Tiffany couldn’t help but
wonder, how did this titan of a man acquire such a modest, even
childlike demeanor? She could even see him breaking out in a
sweat to match her own. She drew herself to her full height. This
was still a man, right? She knew how to handle men. Somehow his
discomfort made her feel as if she had the upper hand.
“I’m...well, thank you,” said the barbarian. “I hope...the
inquietude...caused by the bear...did not disincline you...toward the
generous beauty...of my land.”
Inquietude? Disincline? This sounded like a line a thespian would
use on a Shakespearean stage! Yet he clearly meant to be hospitable.
The loin-clothed man nervously brushed his long hair backward,
as if imitating her gesture. Since he didn’t seem impervious to human
vulnerability, she felt somewhat less intimidated by his giant frame.
“What about your chest?” she asked. Be brave, she thought, as
she warily shifted her horrified glance toward the man of the
forest’s wounds.
“Flesh wounds. Far worse...found me after...an attack of the
hyaenodons.” He looked down at his chest with a timid but
carefree smile.
Ni
101
“It looks painful,” Tiffany said, her heart touched by compassion.
After all, this man had risked his life to saved hers. His wound
looked serious, with open flesh subject to infection. Without any
success, she desperately tried to think of a way to stop his bleeding.
Suddenly a light flashed in the man-beast’s deep green eyes, as
though he had read her mind. He dug up a pile of clay with
the tip of his spear, then applied the clay to his wounds with his
large hands.
“Now, it must therefore...perforce be better?” he said, as though
he’d ministered to his wounds for the sole purpose of putting her
at ease.
Tiffany nodded in disbelief, more so from his speech than his
nonchalant attitude toward the treatment of his bloody gores.
They stood there. She studied him. Her gaze did not prevent him
from studying her back. His poise reminded her of the majestic
ways of the big cats she’d spent two summers with in the misty
rainforest of the Baltimore Zoo.
“I’m Tophero, the son of Tyra...the smilodon. What’s your name?”
Tiffany thought he had stated his name with the gravity of
Oedipus pronouncing his claim to Queen Iocaste of Thebes, after
he’d answered the man-devouring Sphinx’s deadly riddle.
Quelling her amusement, she replied with equal gravity, “I’m
Tiffany Sommer from a country called America on planet Earth.
How long have you been on this planet? You say your mother is
a smilodon?”
Curiosity filled her as he strode back to the short-faced bear and
began cutting several large chunks of steak from its hindquarters.
The red meat looked delicious after a day without any food of
substance. The juicy starfruits had long ago passed from her body
amidst the excitement she’d experienced.
The caveman of the Opalonian jungle pondered her questions.
“It’s so fast, how you speak...and so different from my reading.” He
scratched his head. “And you probably don’t want your face licked
the way my brothers would appreciate after a near-death
experience, correct?”
Tiffany quietly nodded her appreciation for sparing her the
102
Ni
face-licking ritual.
The savage swiftly skewered the chunks of meat onto his spear
as he replied. “I’ve been here all my life. My late mother was Tyra
the smilodon, a most remarkable mother. My brothers, Kobu and
Kota, and my sister Koko, live on the other side of the mountains.”
He paused, then asked in rapid succession: “What’s the name of
this planet? Are you related to L.C. Tiffany, the Favrile glass artist
who refused to head his father’s prestigious silver and jewelry firm
in New York? How far is America from here?”
He balanced what looked like a giant shish kabob across his
mammoth shoulder.
Studying the many scars from primitive claw marks on
Tophero’s shoulders and back, Tiffany couldn’t hide her amazement.
How had this beast-man survived—so savage, yet so refined?
“This planet is called Opalon,” she answered, taking care to
speak slowly and clearly. “Although I admire Louis Comfort
Tiffany’s artwork, I bear no relation to him. My family name is
Sommer. I’m Tiffany Sommer. America is 3.6 billion miles away
from here. Your mother and siblings are smilodons? And you
speak their language? Do all the animals talk on Opalon?”
Now it was Tophero’s turn to be amused. “Smilodon is my
native language. I speak all the animal languages—but they do not
speak this English tongue. Although I look different from Tyra,
she’ll always be my mother in my heart, for she raised me like her
own cub, taught me to survive the jungle, and died defending our
family.” A touch of sorrow shadowed his piercing eyes. “Is this
America farther than the Sea of Zbi?”
Tiffany gestured skyward. “I’m sure that it’s farther than the Sea
of Zbi. It’s farther than your sun. I’m sorry you lost your mother.”
Tiffany wasn’t sure what to say next. Their simple conversation
had fully disarmed her, for she saw a side of this Opalonian boy that
indicated he was kind and good-natured.
Upon his urging, they walked away from the clearing, for the
carcass of the short-faced bear was beginning to attract carrion
eaters from the sky, the prelude to larger land carnivores and
scavengers. Walking next to him, for the first time in her life she
Ni
103
felt insignificant. She had to scurry to match his purposeful
strides, and soon was breathing heavily from the unfamiliar
gravitational pull. At the same time, however, she felt completely
secure in the company of this gentle giant, despite the terrors of
the Opalonian jungle.
She thought of Karen and Paul; they were surely worried about
her. She hoped they had made it safely back to the ship. But she
seemed to have lost all sense of direction. And deep down in her
seventeen-year-old heart, sweet infatuation was unfurling like an
insistent shoot. She didn’t want anyone interfering with her sole
companionship with this English-speaking son of Tyra, the
smilodon. She thought of Derek. Would they run into his
expeditionary group? She couldn’t help comparing the handsome
billionaire to the tall forest god before her.
“How did you learn English?” she asked. “Who taught you?”
Tophero slowed his pace to match her own. “When I was
eight years old, I found a painted cave on a cliff not far from my
hunting grounds. Inside there were many strange things, and the
walls contained beautiful murals depicting two men, a woman,
and a baby. Among them there was a talking box with more
pictures. It was from this black box that I learned to speak and
read English. From it, I knew there were other creatures that
looked like me. I’m not a sabertooth cat, nor am I a tailless
monkey. I’m a man.”
Tiffany nodded soberly.
“But in all my life, I never saw any other creatures like me until
this morning.” He paused, shy again. “That’s when I saw you.”
“You learned the English language from a computer?”
“Is that what you call it?”
“That’s remarkable. Even though you’ve had no one to speak
with, you have a wonderful grasp of the language.”
“Thank you. I’ve read five hundred books in the computer.”
“Really?” Tiffany’s fascination was approaching overload.
“What kind of books?”
“Literary classics, military histories, philosophy, poetry.”
“That’s why sometimes you speak so formally, like people from
104
Ni
generations ago. A little Shakespearean influence?”
“Perhaps. At first I didn’t know Shakespeare was a playwright.
I thought it was a way of fighting—shake a spear up and down
before making an offensive drive.”
Tiffany laughed heartily. “So you like to read.”
“As a reader, I feel very much like a traveler. Going to places
I’ve never been before, exploring the human condition and
psyche through great stories. Others’ experiences and wisdom
empowered me to better understand happiness—to make sense of
how to live, what to value, what’s real, true, and everlasting. I
found that inside, I am more than a simple cat of the forest. I’m
confident, yet I’m shy. I feel young, yet I feel old. I’m a hero to
my family, yet I’m a villain to the families of my prey. I learned
that interspersed within every dark period, there is remarkable
opportunity and hope.”
Tiffany continued to marvel, nodding without interrupting.
Now that the jungle man had found a willing listener, his words
seemed to spill from him as if a dam had burst. He clearly had no
notion of small talk. He went directly to the most profound and
personal of ideas. This was a man she could converse with forever.
Presently he led her to a deserted cavern, where they sat close to
the opening, overlooking the jungle. It was getting quite dark now,
and her stomach rumbled from hunger. “You saw me this morning?”
she asked, a slight blush rising up her cheeks.
“Yes. When I heard your song, it seemed that my heart had
stopped, for time stood still for me at that moment,” he confessed
unapologetically. “It was much like the moment Tyra died in my
arms, but it was very different, too. I felt so drawn to you when I
heard your melody. I’ve never heard anything like it before in the
jungle, so I started to follow you, hoping that I would hear you sing
some more.”
Tiffany was flabbergasted. Not only was he interested in the
deepest questions of human existence, this godlike man was so
untainted by civilization that he had no trouble showing his true
feelings honestly and plainly.
Tophero tore the bear rump into strips of steaks with his powerful
Ni
105
fingers and offered them to her at once.
Her eyes widened. “I see that there’s no reason for you not to
consume your meat raw, but I was raised on eating cooked meat,
and...” She paused, hating to complain. This meal was hard won.
Tophero looked puzzled. “You mean burning the meat in a fire?
Like the fire Nero used to burn down Rome? I saw a fire in the
forest once, after the volcano rumbled and spewed red. It was
scary. Many animals were trapped and charred to death alive,
including some of the largest and most fearsome ones. You prefer
to eat your meat like the incinerated corpses from the forest fire,
eliminating all the wonderful flavors?”
“Cooking is different from burning,” Tiffany said. “You’ve
probably read about it. And yes, I prefer to eating meat after cooking
it in a fire,” she added unequivocally, although she felt silly for her
answer. She had never questioned her eating habit before, much
less seen it as ridiculous.
“But how do you start a fire?” Tophero asked.
“Just watch.” Tiffany drew a lighter from one of the numerous
pockets in her safari outfit, and started a fire with some dry twigs
strewn at the mouth of the cave.
“RAARR!” Tophero jumped backward and snarled in fright.
“Come, come, it’s okay,” Tiffany said in a soothing voice. Fire
would be a threat to any animal, she thought, and it actually made
her like him even more for openly showing his fear.
Tophero calmed down and reluctantly strung several cubes of
bear steak on a green branch. He watched suspiciously, sniffing in
distaste as Tiffany rotated it over the crackling fire. When the
steaks were cooked, they commenced to eat. Tophero tore into his
raw bear meat with great fanfare, squatting on his powerful legs. It
didn’t take long before his mouth and cheeks were completely red
with blood dripping down his chin. Tiffany cocked her head looking
at him, then frowned with revulsion. With his giant shadow looming
behind him, the stalwart caveman squatting in the firelight was
more mysterious than frightening.
Perhaps due to her heightened appetite, Tiffany had never eaten
such great steaks. With no salt or spice to be had, the meat tasted
106
Ni
gamey and wild, as well as tough. But the freshness and the
sumptuous flavor of the bear’s rump satisfied her hunger for a
substantive dinner.
This is better than the Porterhouse I was craving, she thought to
herself, silently thanking this laconic stranger of the forest. But
soon it would be nightfall. Oh, my God, she realized. Then what?
XIV: Deadly Venom
All nature is but art unknown to thee;
All chance, direction which thou canst not see;
All discord, harmony not understood;
All partial evil, universal good;
And spite of pride, in erring reason’s spite,
One truth is clear, ‘Whatever IS, is RIGHT.’
—Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
t the end of their repast,
Tophero released a loud,
crowd-silencing
burp,
demonstrating his happiness.
Under Tiffany’s unsympathetic
stare, he knew that his gesture
must not be a part of proper human etiquette. She had so much
to teach him.
He cleaned his bloody fingers on his rump as he asked, “Tell me
about yourself, please, and your family. What’s America like?
Since your home is so far away, why did you come here? And how
did you travel?”
Tiffany daintily wiped her fingers on the hem of her skirt. “I
was born in Monterey, California. That’s on the west coast of
108
Ni
America. My father, Carl E. Sommer, is a captain in the United
States Coast Guard. That means he patrols the oceans. He moved
my family back and forth from the eastern to the western coasts of
North America before settling down in Potomac, Maryland when I
was eight years old. That’s on the eastern coast. I loved the arts
and science. When my school courses didn’t meet my demands, I
went to museums and libraries to feed my thirst for knowledge—
kind of like your studying on your own. My mother, Erma, is a
tennis champion. She comes from another country on Earth called
Norway. She taught me the art of tennis when I was three years old.”
“What is tennis?”
Tiffany drew a diagram of a tennis court in the dirt floor of the
cave and explained the rules of the game she loved.
“My mother trained me as an athlete, but she taught me the
inner, mental game, too. Once I mastered the ability to keep my
mind quiet, I became a champion in the age groups I competed in.
Beside tennis, I loved playing piano and singing. I guess you could
say that I’ve been a curious, adventurous tomboy.”
“What’s a tomboy?” Tophero asked.
“Well, it means a girl so active that she could pass for a boy,” she
said with a smile.
“I see. Then I guess you would call me a tomgirl, for I’m exactly
like you but I’m a boy.”
Tiffany replied with a hearty giggle. “It doesn’t quite work that
way. Anyway, I excelled in school and passed the college entrance
examination when I was fourteen. I went to university in Santa
Barbara, California. There I studied art history, natural history,
and zoology. I graduated six months ago. For the past two summers,
I had an internship as a caretaker at the Baltimore Zoo. A zoo is a
kind of public museum where they keep all sorts of wild animals. I
fell in love with the big cats, for their majestic demeanor. My first
summer I raised a litter of four jaguars from the rainforest
of Amazon.”
“What is a jaguar?”
With a look of surprise, Tiffany pointed to Tophero’s loincloth.
“You had to kill this magnificent creature, I assume.”
Ni
DEADLY VENOM
109
“For invading my family’s territory,” Tophero replied with no
remorse. “It was honor or death. He would have killed me or
Kobu, if he could.” At Tiffany’s sad nod, he decided it was best to
drop the subject. Jaguars were his natural enemies, but may also
have been like adopted children to her—as Sharky, also a
predator, was to him. He asked her to continue her story.
Tophero listened intently, gazing at Tiffany’s golden mane. She
looked a dream apart, and talked a nightmare apart. She related the
tale of her space journey, and how she had gotten lost earlier. He
contemplated whether they should find Karen and Paul to see if
they needed any help, but night was falling. Besides, he didn’t want
his exclusive time with her to end. She didn’t seem to mind.
Abruptly Tophero noticed she had stopped talking.
“Is the painted cave nearby?” Tiffany broke the awkward silence.
“No, it’s actually quite a distance from here,” he replied.
“Why are you so far away from your hunting grounds?”
“I was in a melancholy mood, for I had finished all of the books
in the black box. I went hunting near the Gorge of Death, looking
for a change of scenery. I had my bow and arrows strapped across
my back, a heavy spear in my hand, and the big hunting tooth
dangling at my side. I was gazing into the stream, looking at my
long mane in the water, and asking myself: Who the hell am I?
Why do I have nobody to talk to? Why does no other creature
have a mane like this? What happened to all my people?
“I recalled that not long before, I was perfectly happy, for I’ve
always been alone. It wasn’t my choice, but I didn’t have the power
to change it. So I decided that the lone hunter must march on
proudly with his chin high and chest out.”
“That’s my boy,” Tiffany said with empathy. “Go on, please.”
“The jungle was uncharacteristically serene, with only the sound
of the rumbling volcano in the background. Above and beyond the
treetops, I saw a squad of dark specks in the shape of a projectile
approaching rapidly. The dark dots told me that they were large
birds, as opposed to pterosaurs, for the latter never fly in any
meaningful configuration.
“Patiently I waited. With an arrow in hand, I readied my bow
110
Ni
to its fullest. My bow is strong, with a bowstring made from a large
grazer’s leg tendon. The great birds came nearly within my arrow’s
range. As soon as I noted the vibrant patterns on each bird, I loosed
the arrow. A large goose-like bird fell from its flying formation
before the twang of my bow had died. Just as I picked up the fallen
bird, however, I noticed a sharp shooting pain in my left calf. A
quick glance told me that a deadly greenhorn—the most
venomous snake in the Opalonian jungle, known for the horn-like
prong on its forehead—had bitten me. Since I had seen this kind
of snakebite kill animals much larger than me, I told myself to stay
calm. I then staked the greenhorn’s head into the rocky ground
with my knife.”
“Oh, my heavens!” Tiffany cried, covering her mouth.
“The wound on my leg was darkening rapidly, so I knew that I
must find a safe place to rest and let the fatal venom wear off. To
get whatever anti-venom was present in the greenhorn’s body, I
quickly cut off its head and drank the deadly snake’s blood. But I
needed to sleep off the venom like a smilodon, so I had to find a
sanctuary. I already felt the lethal dose of poison traveling through
my veins, taking its toll.
“As I searched for a nearby cave, I began to lose consciousness.
There was a roaring in my head, and my ears stopped picking up
every critical sound generated in this land. This was dangerous, for
the Gorge of Death is home to huge predatory flying reptiles. As
soon as I staggered into a clearing, a pterosaur that must have
silently followed me above the thick canopy of the upper terrace
swooped down and snatched me up, sinking its sharp talons deeply
into my shoulders.
“So that’s where those scars on your shoulders are from!”
Tiffany winced in sympathy.
Tophero nodded; the scars were of no consequence. “Before
falling into total unconsciousness, I struggled to reach for my hunting
knife, but it apparently had fallen from its sheath when the
pterosaur lifted me with a reverse dive. I felt a terrible sadness, for
my big hunting knife from the painted cave had meant everything
to me; it had become an extension not just of my body, but of my soul.
Ni
DEADLY VENOM
111
“I woke up when I felt a horrendous shock to my back. I saw I
had been dropped atop a rocky cliff, into a stony crater covered
with a layer of sun-dried buffalo grass, full of young pterosaurs.
The mother pterosaur must have been sure I was dead from the
lofty drop and continued on to gather food for her young. As the
wobbling young pterosaurs, each about the size of a goose, came to
claim their share of the carcass meat, I stood up with the help of the
spear strapped on my back and unleashed it against the hungry
offspring. I felt weak from the venom; but with my stubborn
spirit, I managed to beat off the young reptiles, climb out of the
crater, and descend the cliff.”
“Whew! Amazing!” Tiffany said. “Then what?”
“It must have been a long flight, I thought, for this part of the
jungle was foreign to me. It’s quite customary for a pterosaur to fly
across the sea, for their fifty-foot wingspan conquers distance easily.
As I looked around, I felt my exhausted legs could barely move
from the paralyzing effect of the venom. My smilodon-trained nose
told me that I needn’t expend any energy to hunt. Sure enough, as
I advanced, I spotted a hyaenodon feasting on a small buck.
“As the hyaenodon lifted its blood-covered snout from its meal
to eye the intruder, I sent an arrow through my hereditary enemy’s
open jaws, dropping it instantly. I staggered on, picked up the
barely eaten buck, and slung it over my shoulders. I recalled passing
a deserted cavern; now I needed the cave to nurse my wounds and
to recuperate.”
“Did you find it?” Tiffany asked with anxiety.
“Yes. But just as I laboriously climbed into the cave, I used up
my last morsel of energy. After merely taking a couple of bites of
the buck meat, I was overpowered by the fatal sweetness of the
venom. What I saw in the eyes of my mind reminded me of a
kaleidoscope I once saw in the black box. I seemed to have entered
the vague delirium preceding death, feeling enervated, prostrated,
and consumed. I then collapsed into a spiraling unconsciousness.
“I dwelled in the realm of senseless dreams for a long time—
perhaps days. But after I awoke the dream grew even stranger—for
that was when I smelled your alluring scent and I followed you.”
112
Ni
“That aroma was from my perfume,” Tiffany explained with a
chuckle. “On Earth it’s fashionable for some women to wear an
artificial scent.”
Tophero gave a light sniff. “I can’t imagine why. Your natural
scent is much more alluring.”
Reddening, Tiffany changed the subject. “Tell me more of your
childhood,” she asked.
“Ladies first,” Tophero said with a childlike grin.
Tiffany sighed with contentment as the fire’s embers died down.
They chatted into the night about their respective lives and major
events, until Tiffany stretched and yawned.
“I can’t believe it’s dawn already!” she said. “I would very much
like to see the painted cave where you learned English, to study the
murals of the two men, the woman and the baby. But I think I need
to sleep a little first, if you don’t mind.”
“I will take you to the cave,” said Tophero graciously. “Perhaps
you can enlighten me on certain things I failed to understand in the
cavern when I was a kid.” He stood and gave an awkward bow.
“For now I bid you goodnight, fair lady,” he pronounced solemnly.
Then he headed to the front of the cave, lay down across the opening
with his heavy spear in his hands, and slept as well—every ready to
awaken from the deepest slumber, prepared to fight upon the
slightest notion of danger.
XV: Middle Terrace of Love
Love distills
Desires upon the eyes,
Love brings bewitching grace
Into the heart...
—Euripides (c. 484-406 B.C.), Greek playwright
iffany didn’t wake up until noon of the
next day. She opened her eyes from the
sweetest slumber she’d had since she left
her own cozy bed in the suburb of
Potomac seven months ago. Her attention
was drawn to a wisp of smoke near the cave
opening. While her stomach begged her for food, she quietly
watched her unexpected travel mate preparing a refreshing
breakfast for two.
Tophero had cleverly arranged a medley of exotic fruits on a
colossal vine leaf, with several whitish-pink asparagus spears
decorating the center. He’d also gathered enough twigs for another
barbeque. She enjoyed wholeheartedly the sight of the low-carb
power breakfast displayed by her debonair host of the lost jungle.
Her feelings toward this unexpected suitor now swung between
instinctive fear of the beast and magnetic fascination with the man.
114
Ni
“You must be the greatest chef on Opalon! Thank you for being
so thoughtful.” Tiffany complimented her bizarre host with a
sunny smile, but he did not answer due to his own singing—a
slightly off-tune rendition of the melody she had sung the day before.
“You made me understand what love is,” his lyric went. “It’s the
sweetest breath of air after the long, long deluge of the monsoon.
It’s the uncontrollable feeling of gaiety to see your beloved singing in
the darkest of forests. Byron put it best: ‘I knew it was love, and I
felt it was glory.’” He sang quietly as he carefully interlaced a bouquet
of freshly cut pink and white roses. When he was done, he sauntered
her way and presented his gift to the strange visitor to his forest.
Flushing, Tiffany accepted the flowers and cradled them in her
arms, inhaling their intoxicating scent. “Thank you, Tophero,” she
said softly. “They are beautiful.”
The beast-man beamed. “Like you!”
After breakfast Tophero led Tiffany to a stream, where she
splashed her face and drank deeply of the delicious water. He
watched her protectively; then he skillfully shaved his face with the
tip of his spear once she had settled on the stream bank.
Tiffany looked on with amusement as she brushed her lush
golden hair with a small hairbrush from one of her many pockets.
“Who taught you how to shave? I didn’t know that smilodons
shaved! Perhaps this would help.” She found a dainty heart-shaped
mirror in another pocket and handed it to him after briefly checking
her own image.
Tophero stared into the mirror, marveling. Tiffany realized he
had never before seen his face as clearly.
“Like my brothers, I was a sabertooth through and through until
I discovered the painted cave,” he told her. “None of the men had
any facial hair, and I couldn’t understand why I suddenly had an
overgrowth on my face; I thought it made me look like the gibbons.
So one day when I was pondering my reflection in the stream, the
idea of shaving came to me. I had read of men who were
clean-shaven or bearded. But not until that day did I understand
what it must mean.”
Tophero gave himself a marvelous clean shave, Tiffany thought.
Ni
MIDDLE TERRACE OF LOVE
115
But his grooming didn’t stop there. He began to daub his body
with wet soil.
“Why do you do that?” She curbed her temptation to giggle
out loud.
Tophero raised his eyebrows in surprise. “To hide my naked
body,” he said, as if the answer were obvious. “The best hunter on
Opalon can’t look like a hairless man. I need camouflage, and I also
need to look ferocious and frightful to my prey.”
Tiffany smiled tenderly as she applied lip-gloss to her severely
dried lips. “Okay, I’m really scared now. Tophero—the most
feared hunter on Opalon!” Even her best efforts couldn’t prevent
her teasing tone from surfacing.
“You think hunting is scary—how would you like to learn to
fly?” The teasee turned the table on the teaser.
Tiffany jumped at the challenge. “Of course, I’d love to fly!”
She felt her energy recharged after her sweet nap and sweeter
breakfast. She let him take her into the sun-speckled jungle.
Suddenly her companion swept her off her feet, and surprising
her with a casual leap, landed atop a stout branch with perfect
balance on the balls of both feet. Then, with the easy, athletic grace
of a square dancer, he leaped from tree to tree and swung from vine
to vine, traversing the middle terrace of the tropical forest.
Tiffany gasped in delight as a troop of red-faced lemurs crossed
beneath their path. Gentle breezes caressed her face, and she took
pleasure in the perfume of countless exotic blooms—and the
muskier perfume emanating from her escort. The dizzying height
did not faze her. She thoroughly enjoyed the freedom of this new,
innovative way of sightseeing. But what she liked most was how
she nestled her body against his, her legs wrapped around his
powerful waist and her arms circling his neck. She could feel his every
breath as his robustly muscled chest rose and fell against her own.
In time she heard the refreshing sound of a waterfall. They
landed on the overgrown jungle floor, then strolled leisurely
through the dense underbrush. Tiffany saw numerous banyans,
trees that reached upward of one hundred fifty feet and spread out
over an area larger than a warehouse store on Earth.
116
Ni
Something prickled her neck. Something moving. “Eek!” she
squealed, squeezing her eyes shut. “There’s a huge spider on
my shoulder!”
Tophero laughed heartily. “It’s merely a ladybug.” He snatched
the four-inch-wide matriarch from her shoulder with one hand and
offered it to her. As she drew back in fear, he crushed the giant
maiden in his palm and threw it into his mouth.
“Oh, my Lord! You’re an original,” she sighed, aghast.
“Crunchy. Is that how you say it?” He continued to chew
without any noticeable embarrassment.
Continuing their journey along the middle terrace, Tiffany
accidently kicked over a bluebird’s nest with her foot. It crashed
below to the jungle floor. Tophero quickly retraced their swinging
to find it.
“Its left wing is broken,” said Tiffany, despairing at the sight of
the nest’s owner.
Tophero held the wounded young bluebird in his huge hands—
the kind of hands fully capable of strangling an elephant, she
thought. His stout fingers reminded her of the powerful rafters
that supported the soaring roof of the church she’d attended every
Sunday when she was a child. She held her breath, fearing to see
the fate of the ladybug repeating itself on this helpless birdie. To
the contrary, however, Tophero delicately bandaged its broken
wing with a long blade of buffalo grass, then carried it in its nest
back up into the trees, all the while whispering to it sympathetically.
He placed the nest in a fork of branches and concealed it behind a
cluster of leaves so it would be safe while it healed.
Without knowing why, Tiffany felt as though she had known
this jungle stranger all her life. He was simple in personality yet
profound in his thoughts and philosophy, she thought. Brutally
strong, yet so innocently kind. She found the lack of pretense in
his manners and actions seductive. When had any man been so
frankly, unapologetically attracted to her? In him she recognized
an antediluvian majesty. And of course he was handsome; beautiful
in the way of all of the savage and untamed creatures of nature—as
if uniting the stunning magnificence of the striped Amur tiger and
Ni
MIDDLE TERRACE OF LOVE
117
the stalwart masculinity of the dark-maned Namibian lion.
By contrast Tiffany felt she hardly knew Derek, even after a
much longer acquaintance. She even found Tophero’s throaty eating
manners and deep animalistic accent adorable in light of his
command over himself and his surroundings.
With growing rapture, Tiffany traveled with her companion
unhurriedly across the rocky mountain chains and deep into the
forbidden Opalonian landscape. What a relief to be with this wild man.
XVI: The First Kiss
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach...
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnet XLIII,
Sonnets from the Portuguese
fter crossing the pathless
profusion of granite country,
Tiffany and her virile guide
arrived at the bottom of a
giant crater wall. For dinner,
Tophero killed a hoofed animal
that looked like a nilgai, an Indian antelope. Tiffany started a fire
under the overhang of a rocky cliff, while the chef tore the fine
antelope meat into long, delicious strip steaks. They continued to
share the highlights of their life experiences cheerfully and tirelessly.
Tiffany realized they had traveled quite a distance from the
spaceship, and she worried fleetingly about what had become of
Karen and her father...what they must think aboard the ship...how
her parents would react if she were reported missing—
possibly dead. But she was having the adventure of a lifetime.
She’d get word to her family somehow. In the meantime, the
Ni
THE FIRST KISS
119
moments flew and the days stretched long as they traveled in a
timeless fashion.
On the fourth day, they came to the far side of the waterfall in
front of the painted cave. From the top of the soaring cliff near the
falls, she could see a broad ravine with frothing rapids cutting off
their path.
“I’m a strong swimmer,” she told Tophero, “but I’m not sure I
have the strength in this planet’s gravity to fight those rapids.”
To make the crossing easier for her, he chopped down a large
tree and let it fall precisely across the ravine.
“Voila! An instant bridge made just for me,” Tiffany murmured.
In the sloping mud of the ravine, she noticed enormous
footprints filled with water. If she had been alone, or with anyone
else, the outlandish footprints would have instilled the most
daunting fears in her heart. But she felt so safe and content with
her Hercules nearby that she was actually beginning to appreciate
“the generous beauty of his land.” She smiled inwardly at that
playful thought.
What would it be like to spend the rest of my life with him in this
refreshing, worry-free paradise? she wondered. The purity of the
handsome jungle man’s soul was a direct contrast to her billionaire
suitor’s cynicism. Derek’s perfect-dentistry smile appeared before
her: “Stay with me, I’ll make you happy—my future ex-wife...”
Tiffany shuddered at the thought. The slick, sophisticated
American who loved touting his victories came up short before the
humble Shakespearean savage of the primeval jungle. There was
simply no comparison. Emily Bronte put it best in Wuthering
Heights, “My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods; time
will change it, I’m well aware, as winter changes the trees—My love
for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath—a source of little
visible delight, but necessary.”
“What do you do besides read and practice martial arts from the
lessons in the computer?” she asked.
“Nothing spectacular, really. I’m afraid I live a rather
monotonous life among the great cats in the heart of the jungle. I
sieve through the overgrown silt, I scan the surrounding topography,
120
Ni
I study the spoor of passing prey and mark the scent of my quarries;
and then I hunt them down. Not so different from your summer
job at the zoo, getting a paycheck and buying a loaf of bread to eat
for dinner.”
“You make it sound so simple, like a day at the office! In reality,
you live a life-and-death struggle each and every moment of
your existence.”
A pair of butterflies danced by her in mid-air. With her slim
back leaned against his broad one, they sat resting on the side of the
serene brook.
“I never thought I’d meet someone like you,” she said, her
words accompanied by the plump of a pebble. Tiffany watched the
ripples radiate out across the mirror-like surface.
“Neither did I...”
Before he could finish, she had turned toward him and her
shapely arms encircled his muscular neckline. Tiffany felt the softly
quickening beats of his heart as he too turned.
“Love is cool like still waters running deep,” she whispered, her
eyes searchingly fastened on his.
“Love is warm like an intimate summer rain,” his eyes answered.
Suddenly a shriek and the loud flapping of wings erupted
somewhere along the small game trail, shattering the moment of
passionate discovery. Startled, yet not afraid, Tiffany retrieved
her arms.
“It’s just a red-faced lemur capturing a large bird in a midair
siege,” Tophero said mildly. He looked fleetingly disappointed at
the interruption, but Tiffany felt his patience matching her own.
They had nothing but time.
After crossing the ravine, they reached the top of the spurting
waterfall. The cataract’s magnificent downpour plummeted at least
one hundred fifty feet, deep into the overpowering mist; then it
turned into what seemed to be an inland sea, which eventually
narrowed into the Zemootan River miles away, Tophero told her.
The lofty volcanic crags in the far vista crouched like tigers and
fumed like hidden dragons.
The inland sea at the base of the waterfall was a silver looking
Ni
THE FIRST KISS
121
glass of sunlight and reflections. Overhead, soaring sea eagles
seemed to invite her to dive in. Tiffany found the mirror-like fresh
water especially enticing after several days of trotting in the tropical
rainforest. Even while traveling on the spaceship, water had been
strictly limited, never available for frivolous consumption, like a
bubble bath.
“Want to go for a swim?” she asked brightly. Before the last
syllable had left her ample lips, her companion was nearly airborne.
“Wait! I want us to go together.” She tied the bottom of her
ankle-length skirt to her waist, showing her long, tanned legs.
The young tennis champion moved before the jungle warrior,
holding his hand. From the towering cliff, the two lovebirds from
across the solar system flew into the air like a pair of mating sea
eagles. They playfully twirled and somersaulted hand in hand, like
talon-clasping air royals of the inland sea. At last, separating,
Tiffany and Tophero plunged arrow-straight into the raging
waters below.
“Wheee!” she shouted, laughing with exhilaration as she
surfaced in the chill pool, at least fifty feet deep.
“Come look,” called Tophero.
She swam to meet him in the colorless currents of the fluid
channel beneath the waterfall. The channel was lined with
vivaciously tinted river corals, some extending marvelously upward
to three times her height. Teal, white, canary, and emerald flashed
in an explosion of lights atop the effervescent reefs. Amidst the
exotic water plants, tropical fish swam undisturbed. As they
curiously darted by her, the animated color forms nibbled at her
arms and legs.
A gigantic sea turtle swam by. “Come on!” Tophero took hold
of the hard shell just above its neck and hitched a ride on its back,
encouraging her to do the same. The taxi didn’t seem to mind the
presence of its mischievous passengers at all. The gargantuan
diamondback terrapin continued its splendid journey beneath the
sparkling waters of the inland sea. As they came up to the
sunlight-filled surface for air, the gleaming pearly water droplets on
Tiffany’s mermaid mane captured her companion’s longings, and
Ni
THE FIRST KISS
123
he reached for her.
Then his expression changed. Watching his distorted face in
utter surprise, Tiffany spun around and saw a kronosaur about the
length of two great whites approaching her like a speeding javelin,
its gigantic mouth open wide. Its winglike flippers propelled it
like a soft-shell turtle, but with much greater rapidity. This giant
predator of the sea was as long as a tyrannosaur on land, but a third
of this length was its massive head, with jaws holding rows of spiky
sharp teeth.
Tiffany froze like a block of ice as the kronosaur stared at her
eyeball to eyeball from a mere twenty yards away. Swift and
powerful as a submerging great white, her forest god calmly slipped
under the water, then came up straight beneath the sea monster
before it could snap its mortal jaws on Tiffany’s supple body. She
saw that his javelin worked like a spear gun in the hands of a
professional diver. He stabbed and chopped at the monarch of the
inland sea with mighty thrusts. The beast bled tremendously from
its open belly, soaking the water bright red.
Recovering from its initial shock, the kronosaur dove toward
Tophero with deceptive speed. Before he could use the opportunity
to move up to the sea monster’s back, its deadly jaws went straight
for his left leg. He changed his direction upward and to the side as
quickly as he could; but the beast’s open jaw clamped down and
ensnared his leg just below his hip. As Tiffany screamed, she saw
her Poseidon rip his limb from the beast’s monstrous jaws, leaving
behind a large chunk of flesh from the back of his left leg.
Tophero counterattacked with the speed of light and mounted
the plunging kronosaur. Astraddle the monster as if riding a bronco,
he drove his spear through his mortal enemy’s nape and severed its
jugular from above. In a fountain of blood, the king of the inland
sea succumbed to Tophero’s insurmountable strength and agility.
Tiffany swam toward Tophero like a scared dolphin, her teary
eyes camouflaged by the wetness of the white foam. She clasped
him tightly, pressing his manly chest to her drenched safari shirt.
With his face framed by the sun-dazzled inland sea behind him, she
kissed him in a rupture of emotions. Then, terrified by her own
Ni
THE FIRST KISS
125
sensations, she immediately withdrew her lips. She loved him so,
with all her heart. She cherished him so, with all her soul. She
sensed the subject of her admiration actively learning what a kiss was,
for she felt him kissing her back tenderly, with a yearning wonder.
His lips were no less than icy at first. She felt a strange thrill at
her magical power to warm them up. She felt an awakening of her
longing—and a glimpse of the potential—for eternal happiness.
The kind of happiness she’d never tasted, never even imagined.
It made her blood broil.
The roar of the inland sea seemed muffled and far, far away now.
Her heartbeat intermingled with the sound of the roaring falls. She
wanted that powerful body to be a part of her. She wanted his
beastly scent to quench her insatiable thirst. She wanted to taste
the shape of his every muscular curve. His kisses had left her
addled, and fanciful imagination filled her with wild desires.
“I love you,” Tiffany said for the first time in her life; nature’s
instinct took over and she seductively lowered her eyelids.
“Shuura-hami’la!” Tophero seized her.
“What does it mean?” Tiffany asked, in a fuzzy trance within his
embrace.
“That’s Smilodon for I love you.” He made the shape of a heart
with his hands around her face.
She felt him fixing his eyes on her. It was but the glance of a
moment; but it seemed to last for a century as the twinkle in his
eyes seemed to capture all light sources, including the unlikely
windows to her soul.
Tiffany realized that she had loved Tophero since the first
instant she set her eyes on his giant figure back in the primordial
forest. Thus, standing in the gently lapping water before the painted
cave, she kissed his chiseled lips again and again. She let the starry
fireworks take over her consciousness as she closed her eyes in the
stillness of the rocky rivulet. She let him carry her in his arms, as
if cradling a newfound treasure, to the water’s edge.
Hugging the shadows of the hillocks, the great water-rooted
trees appeared happy, elegantly dressed in the heavy moss wigs
dangling from their branches. Tiffany felt a wash of relief that the
126
Ni
man of her dreams was taking care of her and all of her future.
With an ancient and unmovable certainty, she wanted him. She
wanted him all to herself, and for herself.
They lay down on a mammoth boulder, exhausted. But she sat
up again instantly at the thought of his bloodied leg, torn almost to
the bone. Fiercely she tore a long strip of fabric off her skirt and
tightly bandaged his injury. Then the two of them allowed the
afternoon sunlight to bake their bruised and soaked bodies dry.
XVII: The Painted Cave
...in that hurtle of united souls,
The mystic motions which in common moods
Are shut beyond our sense, broke in on us,
And, as we sate, we felt the old earth spin,
And all the starry turbulence of worlds
Swing round us in their audient circles, till
If that same golden moon were overhead
Or if beneath our feet, we did not know.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh, Book IX (1857)
efore dusk, Tophero painfully
ascended the steep cliff with
Tiffany on his back. Due to
severe loss of blood from his left
thigh, he had to push his physical
abilities to the limit before they
reached the cave entrance, some sixty feet overhead in the center of
the towering cliff.
“Welcome to the humble abode of quiet learning, peace, and
understanding,” he said wearily, nearing a total collapse.
“Look at the murals on the walls!” Tiffany exclaimed.
After ascertaining no beast occupied the cave, Tophero took a
128
Ni
moment to catch his breath; then he prepared to descend to find
dry branches for an evening fire. Serendipitously, from the mouth
of the cave he spotted a wild boar wandering below, wantonly
digging up succulent roots of various plants. The tusked bull fed
contentedly, from time to time releasing a husky grunt of satisfaction.
Tophero was not about to let his gourmet dinner escape; but he
felt so weak that he could only have ambushed such a formidable
beast from an advantageous position. Masterfully, he made a
noiseless sixty-foot downward leap toward his prey, landing upon
his quarry’s bristly back. With his powerful feet steadying his large
frame, he crushed it to the ground, breaking its back. Then he
deftly twirled the creature’s neck, killing it instantly.
Reentering the cavern carrying the wild boar on one shoulder
and bundles of dry branches tied up in thick vines on the other, he
saw Tiffany gazing at the murals on the cave walls in semi-darkness.
He started a fire with her lighter in the center of the cavern.
The flickering firelight on the cavern walls startled her from
deep contemplation.
“Are you all right?” Tophero took her hands into his own.
“It’s so poetic...and so sad.” She wiped her teary eyes and her
wet cheeks.
The young couple walked hand in hand, stopping at each of the
vivid paintings, the wall-to-wall chronicle of a powerful man, his
attentive mate, and a loyal friend. Image by image, Tiffany and
Tophero relived the forbidden saga: from the poignant moment the
three outcasts were marooned on Opalon to the joyful day of the
newborn’s arrival. From the devoted friend’s brave battle against
his jungle fever to the powerful man’s clever primordial hunting.
From the primitive day-to-day living of the foursome to the
heart-wrenching death struggle of the faithful friend against the
mother hyaenodon to save the baby. From the mighty husband’s
desperate defeat of the cave lion to his helplessness watching the
young beast disappearing with his child in her jaws. From a mother’s
heartbreaking sorrows at losing her firstborn to her inconsolable
mourning after finding the torn baby clothes in a dried pool of
blood inside the skeleton-filled den of smilodons. From their
Ni
THE PAINTED CAVE
129
soul-twisting meager existence thereafter to their tearful goodbyes
to the painted cave.
The last wall panel of the cavern was unpainted, but carried the
following inscription: “In the name of love...may hope live
forever.” In a distinctive masculine handwriting beneath, it read:
“Stomach your grief as the cloud bears within it defeat and
destruction—a fatal sorrow, known only when tempest bursts.”
“It’s sadness beyond description,” Tiffany said quietly, eyeing
Tophero’s face. “I wonder what happened to them all.” She studied
the facial features of the man and woman on the walls.
To comfort her, he let her rest in his arms while softly kissing
her eyes, the tip of her nose, and finally her lips. The two of them
were reserved during dinner. Later, after her sadness receded, she
said, “Let me take you back to Earth; we’ll find your biological
parents together.”
“Are my parents really from Earth?” Tophero asked. “You want
me to leave my family here for good?”
“I have no doubt that the tall couple in the wall paintings are your
parents and that you are from Earth,” she answered. “Together, we
could have a wonderful life. We’re young. I could play tennis and
certainly you could be the greatest athlete who ever graced the
planet. When we save enough money to come back, we’ll return for
a long visit. In the meantime, you could experience the world your
books and ideas spring from. It’s your birthright, Tophero.”
After a thoughtful moment, Tophero crushed Tiffany into his
arms. He looked into her eyes with an unspeakable gratitude.
“One word from you has lifted me from twenty years of beastly
existence. Through you I shall connect myself with a civilized life.
Through you I shall learn, through you rejoice. I’ll go anywhere
you go, live anywhere you live, for you are my life.” He squeezed
her gently, yet with all his years of yearning for a soulmate. “I can’t
wait to find out who my parents are...if they’re still alive.”
“Do you dare to ride a dinosaur?” Tophero jibed after breakfast
at sunrise. He opened the latch of the laptop.
“As long as you ride it with me,” Tiffany replied, then grinned.
130
Ni
“And as long as it’s not a stegosaurus—I don’t think I want to sit on
a dinosaur with armored plates on its back.”
“For good luck, we’ll start with a tyrannosaurus rex.” He clicked
on the icon listing the five hundred e-books.
“Mmm—why not?” Tiffany said blithely. “Nothing to it.”
Tophero caught her uneasiness, despite her attempt to hide it.
“There is nothing to it. My Sharky is tame as long as I’m with him.”
“Is your leg up to it?” she asked worriedly.
“It’s much better. I heal fast, and the mud plaster here has
medicinal properties.” He patted his leg, then pointed to the
computer with his chin. “I wanted to show you this before we go.
Here’s how I learned to speak your language.”
“You must be brilliant to teach yourself all this, Tophero,” said
Tiffany, browsing through the computer. “Hmm, registered to
Lone Enterprises.”
“The computer belongs to Lone Enterprises?” Tophero felt a
tweak of interest, but did not let it disrupt her train of thought.
Tiffany smiled, continuing to examine the black box. “How
lucky this laptop has a lifetime battery pack!” Then she exclaimed,
“And it has a music mode! I want to do something special for you.”
Her fingers flew across the keyboard, and the sound of
Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 17, Tempest, filled his ears, no, the
deepest recesses of his core. Tears sprang to his eyes as he closed
them. The mesmeric music took him to another space, another
time. Totally lost in the divine harmony, he didn’t know for how
long, he suddenly felt Tiffany’s supple lips kissing his soggy eyes.
The music had stopped. Her kisses moved lower to his lips.
Her kisses were beautiful—magical.
“Sometimes I feel like I don’t know anything. There is a whole
world waiting for me to discover,” he cried.
“You liked it?”
Her smile was so arresting, so serenely stunning that it took his
breath away. The cool touch of her golden skin even reminded him
of Tyra’s loving tenderness—the only loving tenderness he had
ever experienced until now. He felt the warmth of her love
invading and conquering his every cell.
Ni
THE PAINTED CAVE
131
“I’ve never before heard such sublime passion so eloquently
expressed,” he answered. “As though it filled up all my longing
for civilization, all the emptiness accumulated in my soul for the
past twenty years.” He paused. “If music be the food of love,
play on . . . ”
Tiffany spoke with wonder. “My God! Who could have
imagined that I would run into a devoted Shakespearean three
billion miles away from Earth!”
Her fingertips traced the masculine curves of his chest. He felt
the sudden rush of the inland sea within him, awakening years of
hunger. This hunger burst to life with the exotic smell of this
strange she-lemur. Tophero sighed.
Tiffany played Chopin’s Valse No. 6, Petit Chien, for him next.
Afterward, an enchanted Tophero applauded. “How did you do
that?” he asked.
“This laptop is equipped with an advanced technology called
music transformation mode. When I switch to this mode, the
keyboard transforms itself to a piano keyboard, with each key
assuming a predefined note. There’s also a catalogue of sheet
music, just like the storehouse of the great books. See the notes on
the screen?”
Tophero studied a series of lines and dots he couldn’t read.
“That’s amazing. Thank you for sharing your gift of music with
me.” He kissed the back of her hands, then each of her fingers.
Tiffany pulled her hands away, as if suddenly shy. “How funny
that I used to be scared of spiders and rats, and now I’m not afraid
to ride a tyrannosaur! The sky’s the limit!”
Tophero stood up with determination. “Then let’s try to find
my siblings and Sharky. I want to bid them farewell. And then—
the sky’s the limit.”
Tiffany laughed with delight. “Did I ever tell you that you’ve
got a photographic memory? You’ve picked up every word that I’ve
ever used, and used it in the exact context it’s supposed to be used!”
“I have a tireless teacher, who never gets tired of teaching me.”
Before searching for his family, Tophero took Tiffany to Tyra’s
132
Ni
grave high in the Kanji Mountains overlooking the Zemootan
River. “Here lies the only mother I ever knew, as well as my
brother Kody.”
They stood silently in deep reverence.
“Tyra saved me. She gave me life,” said Tophero. “She never
ate until I was full, she never slept until I was soundly in slumber,
and she gave me warmth when I was cold. She protected and raised
a litter of cubs alone. She made us brave hunters, and she taught
us love. She’ll forever live in our souls, for her spirit shines like an
eternal guiding light in the forbidden darkness of the forest.”
“Well said.” Tiffany sighed. “Tell me more about her.”
“One day when I was six years old, Tyra saw me looking for tasty
worms and crunchy insects in an overturned rotting tree stub.
Suddenly a disturbed greenhorn emerged. Without hesitation, she
leaped between me and the deadly snake. As promised, the
greenhorn struck her with lightning quickness. She replied by
smashing its head and trampling on its body with her lethal claws.
That night Tyra could no longer see, for the toxic venom had
paralyzed the better part of her. Pale-faced and drenched in sweat,
Tyra looked not like the brave mother I knew, but fragile
and helpless.”
“How awful!” Tiffany’s frightened eyes gazed upon the grave.
“Due to dehydration from the lethal venom, she was extremely
thirsty. I would gulp a mouthful of water from the stream, then
return to feed her mouthful by mouthful. Then I found I could
carry more water in a folded palm leaf. Until sunrise I repeated this
course to ensure her body cooled down and she quenched her
thirst. For days, the venom paralyzed her body. I recall that I
placed her huge paw on my beating heart when I slept next to her.
Often she cried out in delirium, and I reassured her with the soothing
smilodon sound.” He gave a throaty “Oo... Oo... Oo,” then
paused. “Later she told me that it was the only glimmer of hope
she’d hung onto in the dark shadows of mortality.
“After a fortnight, she recovered at last. I joyfully whimpered to
encourage her to get up off her flank. She staggered to the entrance
of the cave and miraculously regained her vision. The antibody
Ni
THE PAINTED CAVE
133
produced by her big cat’s immune system won the hard-fought
battle against the greenhorn’s fury.”
“With attentive nursing by her loyal son,” Tiffany added. She
faced the grave and spoke. “Mother Tyra, thank you for instilling
such unsurpassable abilities and indomitable spirits in my Tophero.
Thank you for rescuing this helpless man-cub from the jaws of a
beast and taking him into your family with love. Thank you for
raising him, protecting him, and educating him to survive in the
jungle world as no human mother could.”
Since Kobu and the gang were nowhere to be found, Tophero
and Tiffany spent the next three days in infinite love bliss, living in
the painted cave. Their amorous shadows graced the emerald-jade
forest, the efflorescence-filled waterside, the sun-drenched
riverbed, and their nature-crafted cozy cave.
XVIII: Blue Lapis of Opalon
I am larger, better than I thought,
I did not know I held so much goodness.
—Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
“Starting from Paumanok,” Leaves of Grass
acing unexpected hardships and
mounting dangers, Derek Cole led
Wolfgang Spear and their three
attendants on a tireless searched for
the Uranus Cave. Unknown birds
with colorful plumage grudgingly
flew from their path with angry squawks. The subtle sound of
padded feet creeping behind the foliage grew alarmingly everpresent.
“I’d like to know who owns those feet,” Wolfgang said, then
frowned. “On second thought, I take that back.”
A gust of wind brought the unique stench of a carnivore to
Derek’s face. In the next instant, with a rustle of leaves and a
tremendous roar, a cave lion leaped from the underbrush, and
before anyone could react in the 3-G gravity, it bore off the last in
line of the three intended treasure bearers. The man’s agonized
shrieks ended with a sickening cracking sound.
“There’s nothing we could have done or can do now,” Derek
Ni
BLUE LAPIS OF OPALON
135
said. “Let’s just keep walking.”
“No point in running,” Wolfgang answered with a shaken
chuckle. “With the gravity here, the squirrels are probably bigger
and stronger than us. Moving in this steamy atmosphere is like
swimming through molasses.”
The remaining foursome marched on with their index fingers
on the trigger of their laser guns.
“What’s that?” Spear pointed to the edge of what appeared to
be a stack of large boulders behind a stand of giant fern-like plants.
Derek squinted. Could it be the landmark he sought? Or was
it another giant carnivore? He consulted the diagram his father
had left. “That has to be it!” he said excitedly. “My Lord! The old
man’s map is perfect!”
In several years time, the cave opening had become completely
overgrown. But just as marked on Cole’s map, it was exactly 27.47
miles and 27 degrees due northwest from the tallest quartz tree at
the lakeside.
After slashing open a narrow path with his machete, Spear found
the entrance to the cave behind a magnificent fifteen-foot
sword-shaped monolith of blue lapis.
Pausing for only a moment to admire the beauty of the smooth,
cobalt-blue marker, Derek led the foursome into the tunnel-like
cave on his hands and knees. In a short time, as he’d expected, the
serpentine interior of the cave commenced to open up. Roughly
two hundred feet in, they had enough room to walk upright.
“What’s that?” asked one of the men, terrified as dark shadows
swirled above them.
“It’s only bats. You’ve seen large bats before, in the Amazon
jungle, haven’t you?” Spear commented with a snicker.
“Yeah,” the man grumbled, “but not the size of small airplanes.”
The Uranus Cave was full of oversized bats and nameless
insects. Although none of them seemed life threatening, they
amplified the earthly invaders’ dread of the unknown. At a fork in
the tunnel, Derek ordered everyone to take the path to the right.
Soon they could hear only the sound of wings flapping in an
otherwise eerie silence.
136
Ni
Derek frequently consulted his map with his penlight. The
labyrinthine interior of the Uranus Cave offered up a turn every
ten to twenty yards, and a fork every fifty yards. Before they
reached what he thought was the end of the tunnel, Wolfgang
suddenly pushed him forward with all his might.
“Watch out!” cried the bodyguard, jumping onto Derek’s back
as they both fell to the limestone ground.
“What the hell!” Derek protested loudly. As he looked up, he
saw a spider the size of a full-grown Alaskan king crab, rapidly
dropping from the ceiling. Noiselessly, the creature ensnared
the attendant who had been walking behind Wolfgang in
finger-thick webbing.
“Aaiieee!” screamed the man as he struggled with the fine, sticky
threads. “Get me out of here!” The more he thrashed, the more
the steely fibers proved as indestructible as a bulletproof parachute.
The three remaining men watched agonizingly as, from the
front of its reddish torso, the black maiden spit a mouthful of
liquid onto the doomed man’s face and chest. As he shrieked
horrifically, the affected areas of his anatomy burned and melted
away from the toxic acid of the enormous spider.
“You worthless bastard!” Spear fired several rounds of laser
beams at the colossal killer insect.
The men stood and stared at the vaporized remains of both
spider and victim. Finally Derek shook his head. “Let’s go! We’ve
got no time to waste.”
Reluctantly, the group marched on. Due to lack of circulation,
the gloomy air grew more mephitic as the treasure diggers
advanced into the maze-like inner grotto. The beams of their
flashlights crisscrossed like searchlights at a Hollywood opening as
the men nervously scanned the walls and ceiling for signs of more
poisonous denizens. After turning two more corners, their vision
was suddenly blinded by an explosion of brilliant radiance from the
long-hidden diamonds clustered on the walls and ceiling of
the grotto.
The men’s shrill catcalls and whistles echoed in the vast space of
the grotto.
Ni
BLUE LAPIS OF OPALON
137
“My God!” Derek breathed. “Is it my imagination or is it merely
a dream? From the brightest pink to the deepest blue—dazzling
diamonds winking at me wall to wall and floor to ceiling?”
“Lordy! Lordy! Lordy! It’s true!” a trembling Wolfgang yelled
incredulously at the top of his lungs.
Indeed, at the end of the cave, Cole and Spear had found what
they’d sought all the way from the other end of the solar system. In
the play of the powerful flashlights, the glittering diamond ore
protruded everywhere on the dizzying walls.
“With the wealth of this diamond mine, I’ll control the world
economy from my penthouse!” Cole boasted.
Sure, Spear thought to himself. Now you can be a Master of the
Universe, just like you’ve wanted since you were a greedy little boy. He
rubbed his own covetous eyes again and again, as if to check the
reality of their vision.
Once the trio recovered their senses from the fantasies of
overweening wealth, they started to remove the diamonds with
their specially designed, battery-powered excavating tools. As the
diamonds fell against each other, the miraculous sound of hail
against glass filled the stifling grotto.
Derek heard no other sound but the chinking of their tools until
a spine-chilling scream came from Artie Ferrell, the third member
of the team, who was excavating in a far corner. Both Cole and
Spear jumped, then raced to the man’s side.
Artie was pointing, speechless, his finger shaking, at the skeleton
of a man sitting beneath a dome of thick spider webs and dust. His
flesh had been picked completely clean, and his clothing had rotted
away; his gender was inferable only from his boots. One garment
grotesquely remained: perched jauntily atop his skull, the remnant
of a cap read “Space 3000.”
“Poor devil must have been with my late father’s last expedition,”
said Derek.
“Wonder how he came to be abandoned in the cave?” Spear
mused. “I know Dr. Cole would never have allowed it.”
Derek fixed his companions with a glare. “He was probably a
greedy straggler who fell behind to secretly pocket extra diamonds
138
Ni
for himself. Unfortunately the black widow ambushed him. Let
that be a lesson to you. Now let’s get back to work, unless you envy
the dead man’s fortune.”
Several hours later, after each of the three men had stuffed their
pockets, bags, and pouches with radiant diamonds, they hurried
past the mummified cocoon of their former companion without so
much as a backward glance and headed toward the entrance of the
burrow. Miraculously, despite their exhausting labor and the added
weight of the stones, they felt light and effervescent.
“Funny thing,” said Artie. “I’m no longer afraid of bat attacks.”
“Congratulations,” Wolfgang replied with his trademark chuckle.
“That only leaves lions and spiders and dinosaurs.”
“Who says money can’t buy happiness?” crowed Cole. “It’s
already made us tougher men!”
XIX: To Catch a Falling Star
Joy rul’d the day,
And love the night.
—John Dryden (1631-1700)
he best time of my life, I’ve spent with
you on Opalon!” Tiffany said with
sweet sincerity.
That was all the reward Tophero
could ask for. He gazed at her with
unabashed adoration, the setting sun
lighting her glorious blonde tresses in a golden halo. He
responded by planting a thankful kiss on her well-tanned cheek.
There was no need for words. Reluctantly he led her back
toward the Crystal Lake. He hadn’t found Sharky and the
smilodons in their hunting grounds. He thought he would take
Tiffany back to the spacecraft first, then try once more to say
goodbye to them. At their leisurely pace, the site was still a day’s
distance away.
As the canopy began to thin out, the couple could see moonlight
pooled in the distance while reciting their favorite poems to each
other. Dotingly they strolled. Tophero scouted for a suitable tree
in which to spend the night, since the terrain featured no caves or
140
Ni
large overhanging boulders. Attracted by their body heat, fireflies
flickered in and out of the surrounding buffalo grass, creating a
ring of romantic sparkles in the inky darkness.
Across a meandering brook, a sliver of moonlight sneaked
through the foliage of the night. It illuminated Tiffany’s perfect
complexion. She wrinkled her straight nose and sniffed.
“Something is burning.” Before she could finish her sentence, a
beam of bright light swooped across the evening sky.
A tremendous jolt rocked the ground beneath them. Tophero
pushed Tiffany into the buffalo grass, instinctively covering her
body with his own. The endpoint of the dazzling light was no more
than a thousand yards away in the misty woods.
“It’s a comet!” Tiffany cried.
“Let’s go take a look!” he said, raising his head.
“Just a minute. I want to make a wish.” Lowering her face,
Tiffany whispered something in the prayerful voice of a child.
When she finished Tophero took her slender hand. Since
running through the thick woods was not an option for her in the
darkness of the night, she let him carry her. He ran toward the site
of the falling star, leaping and swinging fluidly with her in his arms.
He followed a scorched passage in the woods. Light blue miasma
rose from the warm muddy trail beneath his feet. Tophero set Tiffany
down gently, and after they walked the burnt path for a hundred yards
or so, they found themselves before a large, parched circle
surrounded by smoky mist and rocks. The gentle sound of water
came from the adjacent inland sea.
In the center of the circle stood a small, still-glowing meteorite.
The trail leading to the fallen star was simmering with heat and
smoke. Tophero dropped handfuls of cold clay on top of the burning
meteoric fragment. They stood there gazing at the reddish
translucent meteor, filled with peace and quiet joy. Then he reached
through the now-warm clay, felt for whatever was left inside,
polished it carefully on his loincloth, and showed it to Tiffany.
“That’s unreal...” she exclaimed with her hands covering her
cheeks. She accepted the small object with reverence. “This used to
be a star, perhaps the size of the earthly moon,” she explained to
Ni
TO CATCH A FALLING STAR
141
Tophero. “It burned through millions of light-years in the Milky
Way. This is all that remains—perhaps the densest substance left
in the core of that heavenly body.”
She gazed in awe at the perfect two-inch diameter disc,
approximately a quarter of an inch thick, tapering inward to a
tiny hole in the center. It was brilliantly translucent, like a large
flawless pink diamond. From the centrifugal forces of incineration in unimaginable heat, the surface of the object was
crisscrossed with triangular facets, as if a master artisan had
crafted it by hand.
“I’ve never seen anything so beautiful,” she said softly, pressing
his hands with both her own. “Let it be the token of our love, and
let the forest be our witness.”
Tophero took a thin strip of antelope tendon from his quiver,
ran it through the center of the pink meteor, and knotted it around
Tiffany’s neck.
“Thank you, my love.” Her luminous eyes gazed upon him like
the windows to a field in heaven. She reached up and kissed him,
while the soothing smell of honeysuckle permeated the misty
rockscape above the little brook.
A misty dawn arrived with spicy sunshine and vanilla sky. From
the treetop nest where she and Tophero had spent the night,
Tiffany watched the serene water puddles near the stream form
sonic circles from the pounding of a rampaging tyrannosaur.
“Tophero,” she said quietly.
“Yes, my love?”
“We have to look for Karen and her father, Paul, to ensure their
safety. Will you help me?”
The couple set out immediately toward the path Tiffany
thought she had left behind forever just a week ago. Not
surprisingly, when they reached the cave where she’d last seen
Karen and Paul, they found it empty. Her friends would have long
since departed in an attempt to find their way back to the spaceship,
or search for Tiffany herself.
They turned around and headed for the lakeside. As they drew
142
Ni
toward the edge of a plateau overlooking a ravine, they heard the
sounds of a titanic fight between two humongous carnivores.
From their vantage point above, using underbrush as cover,
Tiffany gasped as she watched the unimaginable battle raging
before her eyes.
XX: Tangle in the Jungle
Vain the ambition of Kings
Who seek by trophies and like things
To leave a living name behind
And weave but nets to catch the wind.
—Anonymous
tooped under the weight of thousands of
carats of diamonds, Cole’s party found
its way back toward the spaceship. As
Derek crossed a shallow ravine, a series
of
moss-covered
fifty-foot-long
meandering ridges suddenly moved.
The ridges quickly metamorphosed into a gigantic crocodile; the
kind of crocodile he could not fathom ever could exist anywhere.
With a joyous thrashing of its tail, the monstrous croc sank its
jaws into Derek’s only remaining treasure bearer, bisecting the
shrieking man in two, then devoured him in enthusiastic gulps.
“Damn it! We just lost a third of our diamonds!” Derek
hesitated, as if waiting for the super-croc to spit out the
undigestible stones.
“Are you crazy, Derek? Run! Forget about the diamonds! We’ll
lose another third unless you outrun that monster,” shouted Spear,
144
Ni
yanking on Derek’s arm. “Awww, poor Artie . . . . ”
Derek needed no further convincing as he watched the super-croc
swallow the second half of its bloody victim. He dashed as fast as
he could to distance himself from the crocodile, but as if in a
nightmare, his feet moved in slow motion under the spell of the
Opalonian gravity.
Seeming to grin in anticipatory delight, the giant croc apparently
desired a second helping. It gained on the two runaways without
visibly trying. Its snapping jaw caught Spear’s left foot, and his
boot promptly went down the overgrown crocodilian’s belly.
At that very moment, the massive leaves shading the northern
woodland parted without the effect of any breeze. From the cover
of the black forest, a prowling tyrannosaur appeared, blocking
Derek’s path to escape. He nearly fainted at the sight before him.
The super-croc shifted his attention to his new opponent at once.
In his prime, the big tyrannosaur roared with deep, walrus-like
resonance. The super-croc growled a series of thunderous reptilian
bellows in response.
Derek yelped as Spear yanked him out of the way of the
impending face-off between two ferocious titans of the Opalonian
swampland. Both creatures were fifty feet long from head to tail.
Given his extra height, the tyrannosaur’s seven-foot jaws were a fair
match for the super-croc’s ten-footers.
The crocodile made the first move by swiping its blade-like tail
at the tyrannosaur’s belly. The move appeared to be a feint to drive
its enemy off balance, so it could switch direction and attack with
its lethal jaws. The tyrannosaur anticipated the move and took the
glancing blow with its ten-ton body. Using the momentum
generated by its sweeping tail, the super-croc twisted around, then
sprang from the muddy water to take a shot at the
tyrannosaur’s windpipe.
The tyrannosaur skillfully side-stepped the move; at the same
time, he took a long stride and stomped his right foot onto the
super-croc’s scaly back, pinning it to the shallow riverbed. The
croc thrashed its body vigorously with enough power to dislocate
every joint in an elephant’s body, but its tormentor didn’t budge.
146
Ni
Attempting to take a nasty bite from the crouched-over
tyrannosaur’s throat, the trapped croc snapped upward and
backward with its massive muzzle. The tyrannosaur took the
opportunity to counterattack by chomping down on his enemy’s
upraised snout with its own powerful jaws.
The deathly power-wrestling between the two giants continued,
but the super-croc’s struggle to get away was futile; for he was
pinned in an unmoveable vise: on one end the tyrannosaur’s
powerful, taloned legs and its ten-ton weight, and on the other end,
his iron jaws.
The super-croc’s blood-spurting snout told the ferocity of the
duel. With the leverage on its side, the tyrannosaur ended the
monster’s reign of the swamplands by snapping the croc’s enormous
vertebra in its overpowering jaws. At the sonorous bone-cracking
sound, the king of the mangroves made a long, agonizing bellow
and his torso went spasmodically limp, ceding his struggle to the
undisputed monarch of the Opalonian woodlands.
After watching the tyrannosaur’s fortuitous—though
unintended—rescue, Cole and Spear suddenly woke up and ran for
their lives. They were in such a hurry that neither of them saw a
large tar pit on the far side of the ravine. As the duo stumbled into
it simultaneously, Derek recalled that tar pits were one of the most
horrific dangers meticulously documented in his old man’s secret
files. He’d survived a cave lion, a malicious spider, and the
famished super-croc, only to fall to his own inattention. He could
almost hear his sire’s vengeful laughter in the sky.
“This is it, Derek!” Spear hollered. “I guess we get to die with
our diamonds.”
“I can’t believe that I got rid of my old man for nothing,”
carped Cole as the deadly tar pit sucked him down with
unmistakable certainty.
“You helped your mama along too, as I recall.”
“That was a mercy,” Derek argued. “She was going soon
anyway. I shouldn’t have to die for it.”
“You won’t die!” The solid voice with its odd accent came from
Ni
TANGLE IN THE JUNGLE
147
what seemed to be a giant bird that had landed on the soaring teak
tree behind the tar pit.
Derek stared in wonder as a deeply tanned giant emerged from
the forest with a gorgeous blonde behind his back. I’d love to rattle
the headboard with her! he thought automatically. Wait—isn’t that
Tiffany? She looked so different in her tattered safari outfit with her
long flaxen hair draped over her back as opposed to the customary
knot behind her head.
The bronze man swaggered toward them with the sangfroid of
the undisputed lord of Opalon. With his dark hair gracefully
surging in the breeze, his countenance was serene and businesslike.
Bear-clawed battle scars across his iron-muscled chest merely
enhanced his rugged, nonchalant look. Besides the leather necklace
with a dangling broken sabertooth, the man of the forest wore only
a jaguar-hide loincloth. However, his left leg was bandaged above
the knee with the khaki fabric of his companion’s once-long
safari skirt.
“Help us, man! We’re sinking!” cried Wolfgang.
Not a moment too soon, the big brute threw one end of a long
vine he’d cut with his dancing spearhead to Spear. Both men
grabbed for the vine with a sense of desperation. “I’ll go first,
Wolfgang! That’s an order. Keep your bag close to you!”
Derek commanded.
Wolfgang snarled and didn’t let go of the vine; rather he held on
to it even tighter with all his strength. Without a word, the wild
man pulled the two large men out of the tar pit as effortlessly as if
they were two toddlers. They emerged from the oily black pit with
a light sucking sound.
Once out of trouble, Cole immediately resumed his regal look
and insolent demeanor. He worried that his saviors might have
heard his confession about the diamonds and his father’s murder.
His mother—well, that was just a hastening of the inevitable. But
if Tiffany overheard, she could make trouble.
Despite the fact that he was soaked from shoulders to toes in
nasty black tar, he immediately turned his attention to his former
ladyfriend. “Hey, gorgeous! Long time no see. What are you
148
Ni
doing here? You were supposed to stay inside the spacecraft!” He
wiped at his cufflinks inscribed with his initials, D.C., surrounded
by a coronet. “How do I get this crap out of my cloths?” He pulled
at his contaminated garments with disgust. Then he eyed his
rescuer. “I see your buddy didn’t get his overwhelming physique
from lifting weights in a gym like you didn’t get your blonde hair
from a plastic container. Who’s the caveman?”
The huge wildman tossed away the vine. “Caveman?” he said
evenly. “Let not such a name be uttered as you have dared to utter it.”
Derek snapped his head up in surprise. But the savage’s face
remained expressionless. Derek felt a paroxysm of anger; however,
he was not about to challenge the overpowering physique of the
jungle man.
Spear broke in. “Kudos for rescuing us from this damn tar pit,”
he said grudgingly as he struggled to dislodge a protruding chunk
of black tar from his cheek. “We owe you our thanks.”
“Thanks for what?” Cole demanded. “I had everything under
control here, until that hulk of a savage showed up and acted like a
hero! Who is he, anyway?” He narrowed his eyes, sizing up the
man of the forest with untold resentment. He then spun on Spear
and gave his bodyguard a dirty look.
“I just wanted to thank him for his stupidity and for absolutely
nothing,” Wolfgang said smoothly. “What did you think, Derek?”
“This is Tophero,” Tiffany said proudly. “He is the king of the
jungle of Opalon.”
Derek snorted. “I can see that he is a freak of nature. Heroism
is merely a romantic illusion, and his actions are undoubtedly but
base instincts from a low-intelligence beast. How did you teach
him English so quickly?”
Tophero shrugged. “Perhaps my base instincts were faulty,”
he said.
“Thank you for being so grateful to someone who saved your
life barely minutes ago,” Tiffany snapped. “You narrowly escaped
the experience of drowning in lungfuls of tar. So please abstain from
growling and barking like two dogs chained within sight of each
other. Mr. Cole and Mr. Spear, Tophero is ten times the man of
Ni
TANGLE IN THE JUNGLE
149
anyone I’ve ever known, living or dead.” Standing with her arms
akimbo, Tiffany sneered at the billionaire with utter disdain.
“Oh, Tiffany, sweetheart, I’m sorry to be so anti-poetic,” Derek
said, attempting to sound conciliatory. “I didn’t mean to rain on
your parade. It’s just that the rule of nature is that a man endowed
with his huge muscular development must have a teeny weenie
brain, the size of a pistachio nut at best.” With a snicker, he looked
around, expecting applause. Disappointed when his audience failed
to appreciate his comic flair, he added: “Well, caveman?”
“Your plebian vulgarity is surprising for a man of privilege,”
Tophero answered plainly, “and your vile epithet merely announces
your own feeling of inadequacy.”
Derek smiled, but with only his lips. It was the last straw that
broke the camel’s back. Not only did this savage show up like a
superhero for the rescue, taking his usual role, where did he acquire
the brass to win over Tiffany’s heart? He wasn’t sure what irritated
him more, the question or the nonchalant way Tophero eye-balled
him when he asked. Looking at Tophero’s noble height and beastly
bearing, all his violent temper was temporarily overshadowed.
Disquieted by Tophero’s unexpected eloquence, he gave up
disporting himself with the savage and shifted his glance to Tiffany.
However, his blatant attack on Tophero apparently was too
much for her. “I’m sorry that Tophero saved your miserable life on
my account, Mr. Cole,” she said, scowling. “You must stop your
unfounded insults at once. I now wish I had never asked him to
save you in the first place.”
Seeing that his demeanor had enraged her to the nth degree,
Derek softened his approach. “No insult intended, Tiffany. Come
on, I’ll take you back to the spaceship. Say goodbye to your
savage friend.”
Just as Derek’s hand fell on Tiffany’s forearm in an effort to pull
her near him, he felt the iron grasp of the barbarian on his wrist.
He struggled futilely against Tophero’s fingers. They appeared to
be made of steel. He felt the excruciating pain transmitted all the
way to his brain, and his wrist would surely have been crushed if the
jungle man hadn’t let go immediately.
150
Ni
Tophero’s grip was released only for an instant, however, as his
other hand caught Derek’s throat. The wild man’s superior strength
instantly eliminated the possibility of a contest. The hand on Derek’s
jugular pressed just hard enough to promise instant death, should
he not surrender unconditionally his violent behavior to Tiffany.
Cole’s gaze met that of his archrival, and suddenly he saw the
giant’s eyes transfigured from those of a refined gentleman to those
of a ferocious feline. Submitting to the discipline of those
thunderous eyes, he released Tiffany’s arm.
“I’ll go with an escort who can actually protect me,” Tiffany said
tightly. “Someone with manners and who doesn’t reek like a tar
man.” With a noble air she threw her glorious hair over her back and
took Tophero’s arm.
Tophero gazed unflinchingly at the once elegantly dressed man
of civilization. It took a supreme effort for Derek to bear his
powerful, big-cat stare. The jungle man released Derek, then
swept up Tiffany with his left arm and leaped onto the nearest tree.
With a whistle of wind, they disappeared into the dense foliage of
the middle terrace.
Derek gasped for breath, nearly blinded with rage. “That savage
must die in a rhapsody of suffering, the next time our paths cross,”
he spat.
Spear lowered his voice as he shrugged violently to rid himself
of the sticky black tar. “Let’s get back to the ship,” he said. “I’ve got
an idea...”
XXI: The Vow
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
—Robert Frost (1874-1963),
“Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening”
ophero escorted Tiffany to the lakeside,
where the SLR Cole awaited. He found
the vehicle fascinating. The silver-gray
titanium spaceship was longer than a
liopleurodon, a giant Opalonian whale-like
dinosaur. Its sharp nose was pointier than
that of a giant temnodontosaurus, a swordfish-like predator. With
long “fins” on three flanks of the rocket ship, SLR Cole looked more
like a sea monster than a product of science.
Under the willow trees, his mate tenderly kissed him goodbye.
“You’ll be back by noon tomorrow?” she asked, as though life
would suddenly become arduous if he weren’t with her even for a
tiny fragment of a moment.
“I promise. But go now. I must hurry, my dearest!” Tophero
felt her parting sadness amidst his own debilitating sorrow, as he
listened to capture the diminishing sound of her dress combing the
152
Ni
grasses and her footsteps on the jungle floor. He then raised his
head appreciatively to heaven for being permitted to be loved.
As soon as Tiffany entered the spaceship, Tophero rushed back
toward his hunting grounds. Despite feeling something vile in his
guts about leaving her, he decided it was the safest place for her to
be until his return the next day.
He swung through trees wherever possible to economize on
time, for he had to travel fast to cover the vast distance back to his
cave. Reaching the stony mountains that formed the crater walls,
he quickly ascended with his bare hands. Rock climbing had never
been a problem for smilodons, and he was among the best of them.
By late afternoon he descended the other side of the crater. He
returned to the trees and traveled swiftly ahead through the middle
terrace. Arriving around midnight, he saw Kobu, Kota, Koko, and
her cubs resting in the cave, for Sharky had killed a mammoth
earlier that day. Everyone was full and there would be no need to
hunt for at least a month.
“Where have you been?” he demanded. “I was here several days
ago, and I found no one. I waited a couple more days, and still
nobody showed up.”
“We were up north hunting big game. We thought that’s where
you were!” Kobu replied without a trace of sympathy. “We were
worried about you, for you had disappeared from hunting quite
some time ago.”
Tophero told them everything that happened since the deadly
greenhorn bit him. Now he planned to go to Earth with his new
mate and find out more about his biological parents.
Everyone was sadly moved, for Tophero had been the head of
the household ever since Tyra died six years before. He’d taken
care of every member of the family with the utmost diligence and
pride. Especially poignant was Sharky, who pulled on Tophero’s
hand with his muzzle and refused to let him go. He assured everyone
that he would return; for Opalon was the only home he’d ever
known. Then it was decided that Kobu, Koko, and Sharky would
go with him to say goodbye and meet his new mate, while Kota
would stay home to protect Koko’s cubs.
Ni
THE VOW
153
Immediately, the foursome left for the Crystal Lake to meet the
noonday deadline. Marching forward to the destination of
farewell, they reflected on the good times they had had in the
family and all the extraordinary hunting under Tophero’s leadership.
They laughed recalling the day when Sharky joined them, how
cuddly and tiny he was, and how grownup he had become. Now he
could take on any predator or prey alike.
With great anticipation and longing, Tophero raced down the
rocky slope into the tropical woods. The Crystal Lake lay placid,
unusually somber—nerve-achingly somber. Sunlight peeked
through the opaque foliage, creating paths of misty dust. The
willows stood solemn amidst the cobalt quartz trees on the waterside.
Bluebirds flew by silently and disappeared as if they could not bear
the cloudburst of sorrow to come.
Tophero’s knees wobbled and his heartbeat thundered in his
ears. Rubbing his eyes time and again, he clutched Tiffany’s mirror,
an appendage to his heart ever since she’d given it to him. He
could not believe what his eyes conveyed to him. To his grandest
dismay, there was no spaceship in sight! How could this be? It was
only mid-morning.
The truth began to dawn on him irrevocably. The spaceship
had left without him. He closed his eyes and began to tremble.
With a contorted face, he bared his teeth and let out a soundless
scream of hopelessness.
While examining the scorched earth from the rocket liftoff on the
lakeside, he reflected painfully upon every morsel of what had
transpired during the last few days. He recalled the unfriendly
quarrels Tiffany had had with the two scoundrels he’d saved from the
tar pit. The younger one undoubtedly had certain ulterior motives
toward her. They have kidnapped the love of my life. With that thought,
he viciously pounded his chest with his fists in an uncontrollable fury.
Suddenly, something snapped within. He grew uncertain about
Tiffany. Perhaps she had changed her mind. Why would she want
to spend the rest of her life with a caveman like me? The image of
Tiffany’s fear-ridden countenance when they first met came back to
haunt him. The doubts came fast and furiously.
154
Ni
Perhaps Cole talked her out of her infatuation with me. Did I really
know this earthly girl well enough to be certain of her decisions? Did she
need me on Earth with her? Didn’t my parents leave me twenty years
ago too? Did they need me?
For the first time since Tyra’s death, teardrops of mourning
chased one another down his burning cheeks. He felt the daunting
pressure of unrelievable grief crushing his spine. He grew breathless;
his mind’s eyes dimmed and his inner ears closed. Pacing,
desperately trying to control his outrage while saturated with
self-doubt, Tophero—no, Gora—decided to live and die among
beasts. The dense jungle would serve as his sanctuary from
incursions by two-legged strangers like himself. Overcome with
dejection and frustration, betrayal and bereavement, he frenziedly
felt the need to take in a breath of fresh air. He made a jewel-hard
judgment: Only on Opalon can I feel I’m truly alive; only here at home,
in the oxygen-filled jungle.
His aspirations devastated, his world had turned to ashes. He
stared at his grief-lined visage in the heart-shaped mirror from
Tiffany. Then he smashed the little glass on the blue quartz tree
standing impervious before him.
“Learn to be lonely once more,” he cried out.
Buy Now
Top Hero, Inc. Order Form
P.O. Box 10, Carpinteria, CA 93014-0010
www.tophero.com
book title
isbn no.
Tophero: Son of Smilodon $29.99
qty
price
$
978-0-9792905-0-3
Signed First Edition $55
$
CA Residents add Sales Tax (7.75%)
Shipping in 48 contiguous US $5.50, add $2.50 each add’l copy
International please e-mail for shipping charges
$
$
TOTAL
$
BILL
TO:
Name: ______________________________________________________
■ Charge my Credit Card Number ______________________________
Signature
__________________________Exp. Date________________
Address ______________________________________________________
City, State, Zip________________________________________________
Country
____________________
Phone ______________________
■ Money Order enclosed payable to Top Hero, Inc. $ ______________
all payments must be us dollars — no c.o.d.’s please.
SHIP
TO:
Name: ______________________________________________________
Address ______________________________________________________
City, State, Zip________________________________________________
Country ____________________________________________________
Order Comments and Special Requests __________________________
yt
dw
receive customer
update emails—
print your email
address below:
__________________

Table of Contents

Transcription

Similar documents

HTFM Biannual Bifold 2012 B1 web

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church of DeLand

CSI May Program Flyer 2010.pub

CSI March Program Flyer 2010.pub

L.C. Tiffany Favrile Gold Iridescent Over

Marycrest Manor - Trinity Health Senior Communities

furniture lighting / decorative accessories porcelain / pottery / glass

About Tiffany Stuart