Wonderland (Intergalactic Fairy Tales Book 1) (5 page)

“That doesn’t make sense. How can being Alice, be disappointing? Were you expecting someone else?”

“No, I asked who you are, not what your name is. That clearly means you don’t know who you are, which is disappointing.” The voice this time came from a mouth a few feet in front of her at about her eye level. That wouldn’t have been at all peculiar if the mouth were attached to a head, or anything at all.

Alice took a step back, not sure what to make of the floating mouth, and a pair of eyes joined it, roughly where eyes would be on a normal face. The eyes weren’t particularly normal, with their strange slitted pupils, but at least they gave her something to focus on other than the pointed teeth in the mouth. With the addition of the eyes, the almost-face started to look a little familiar.

“Well, disappointing or not, I’m Alice. Who are you?” she asked.

“Oh, I’m many things and also none of those things when I choose to be. Like many people, I change, depending on my mood and those that I find myself in the company of.” The mouth turned up in a proud grin, very satisfied with its answer. “I could go on, if you like, Disappointing Alice.”

“Argh!” groaned Alice. “Why must everyone here be so difficult to get a simple answer from?”

“Perhaps it’s because you aren’t very good at asking simple questions,” replied the mouth. “That’s generally a good thing. Simple questions come from a simple mind.”

“I don’t have time for this nonsense,” huffed Alice. She turned slowly, trying to find her direction again. “Now you’ve gone and confused me. I don’t know which direction I was going.”

“That way,” replied the mouth and eyes, no hint of sarcasm in its voice.

“You do realize that you didn’t point or in any way indicate which direction I was traveling,” said Alice, crossing her arms.

The mouth and eyes somehow managed to look abashed. “Of course I did, you just weren’t able to see it. Just because one can’t see a thing, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.” Alice groaned. “I must apologize though, for my lack of illumination. Sometimes I forget to make myself known. Old habits and all that.”

Slowly, as if emerging from fog, a face covered in dark gray hair took shape around the mouth and eyes, and then a lithe body took shape below, forming a cat-like person, a few inches taller than Alice. One arm was held out, a finger indicating a direction just over her right shoulder. He wasn’t the strangest creature that she had seen since landing on Wonderland, though he was peculiar. His bright eyes and knowing grin were a bit disturbing. The suit he wore gave him the appearance of someone respectable. The hat, worn at a jaunty angle, gave him a roguish look. He looked as if he not only knew where Alice kept her stash of candy, but had eaten it three days ago without her noticing. It wasn’t entirely clear what his reasons were for helping her and she knew there was little chance he would ever tell her.

“Thank you, I really must be on my way to the palace docks, I have business to attend to,” said Alice, turning to follow the direction the cat had indicated.

“I’m not really sure what you’re thanking me for. I was the one that got you turned around in the first place,” said the cat.

Alice turned to face the cat again, her brow furrowed. “That’s right, you did.”

“And there’s nothing to say that I didn’t point you in the wrong direction just now, either.”

“Oh, bugger,” groaned Alice.

“Though I didn’t.”

“Right,” said Alice, relief washing over her. She turned and headed off again.

“Unless I’m lying,” called the cat, still standing in the same spot.

Alice stomped back to him, pinning him with her strongest glare. “This is infuriating.”

“Only because you aren’t using your head,” replied the cat, his body vanishing once again, leaving only his head floating before her.

“I’m starting to get tired of everyone in this place telling me how to think. I’ve only talked to three people from here and they’ve all said basically the same thing.”

“I would think that if everyone was telling you the same thing, that you might decide to try listening, especially when they are just telling you to use your brain,” purred the cat. “Now, ask me one more question and make it a good one. One you’ve put some thought into.”

For a few seconds, Alice pondered just leaving. Then, the more she thought about it, the more she realized that she did need more information; even wrong information told her something. “If you were me, how would you go about finding one of the queen’s ships and getting off this planet?”

“Oh, good question. You can do some thinking after all. I’ve made up my mind to like you, Alice,” said the cat. The rest of his head disappeared, leaving only his grinning mouth.

“Aren’t you going to answer my question?”

“Some day, I may, if it suits me.”

“Well, this has been an extraordinary waste of time,” said Alice with a sigh.

“Quite extraordinary indeed, thank you, Alice.”

“You’re welcome,” Alice said automatically, her manners getting the best of her. That annoying cat was most certainly not welcome. She started to tell him so when she realized that his grin had disappeared along with the rest of him.

CHAPTER FIVE

Once the cat was gone, Alice did a bit of thinking on her own and found her way back to Bandersnatch Boulevard. From there it was just a short walk to The Red Palace.

The place was a massive tower, looming over the rest of the buildings around it. Considering the high-tech landscape of the Wonderland she’d seen so far, the fact that the palace was a skyscraper shouldn’t have been a surprise. It just seemed strange that a real queen existed, but she didn’t live in a proper castle. The massive glowing sign at the top of the building left no question though.

Come see the Red Queen battle for dominance in the croquet match of the century, only at The Red Palace!

Hordes of people flowed in and out of the doors, chattering excitedly. Alice approached slowly, looking for signs that would direct her to where the ships were kept. She had no desire to watch the queen play croquet. As she approached she heard a strange popping noise, and then a whole chorus of them.

“The Red Palace has the best girls.”
Pop. Pop. Pop.

“Clean girls.”
Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop.

Men and women lined the sidewalk in front of The Red Palace, their arms outstretched to the people passing by. Mostly they were ignored, sometimes they were shoved.

Alice had seen beggars before, when she went to the capital with her father. It was never a pleasant sight. Usually she would ask her father for some money and would give it to them along with a smile. They rarely smiled back, but when they did, it made her day.

This time she didn’t have any money to offer them, so she decided to at least give them a smile since they were being treated so badly. Once she approached though, she realized they weren’t beggars at all. Their outstretched hands weren’t empty, waiting to be filled. Instead, they held small cards with colorful pictures on them.

“Girls. All shapes, sizes, colors.”
Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop.

The popping was them flicking the cards to get people’s attention. It was surprisingly aggressive for such a small noise. By the time she realized her mistake, she was too close to avoid them. As she walked by, a dozen hands held out cards for her, pulling them back just before she walked into them. She was able to ignore the first six or seven. Eventually, the incessant popping pulled her attention to their hands and before she could look away the card was in her hand.

It was the size of a standard business card, glossy black with a naked woman sprawled across it. A phone number was written across the top in bright pink. On the back were written various services that Alice didn’t understand with a price next to each one.

She stared at it blankly for a moment, not exactly sure what to make of it. It didn’t make any sense. Why were there random people out on the street, handing out small pictures of naked women? Then it clicked. These women were selling their bodies…for sex. Alice looked around hurriedly, concerned that someone would see her with the card, that she would be in trouble. She could feel her cheeks burning. Nobody paid her the slightest bit of attention, including the people handing out the cards.

She stuffed it in her pocket, determined to find a trash can to dispose of it. The sidewalk was already littered with the lewd cards, but she couldn’t compound her guilt over having taken the card with littering as well.

“Some pirate you are,” she berated herself, heading for the main doors of the building. “You read about men on pirate ships going ‘wenching’ all the time. You know what it means, but you practically wet yourself just because you got handed a card with a hooker’s number on it. You’re not a child any more. It’s time you started acting like it.”

Inside, a wall of sounds assaulted her ears. People cheered and groaned from every direction, accompanied by the sounds of bells, electronic beeping, and the clatter of coins. The air was thick with smoke that tickled the back of her throat and made her cough. To her right was a huge room full of machines. People stood in front of them, pressing buttons or pulling handles. They fed them coins and occasionally coins spilled out of the bottom into a metal tray. It took her a moment to realize what they were. Slot machines. To her left was another room, just as large, but full of green tables with people around them, playing cards.

The Red Palace was a casino.

Alice almost turned around and walked right back out the door. On Nedra you couldn’t gamble until you were eighteen years old, and even then, her parents had taught her that gambling was something only the weak-minded did. Thoughts of her parents disapproval pushed her forward. If her parents didn’t approve, then maybe she should give it a try. After all, they didn’t want her to be a pirate, either.

“Shouldn’t they check your ID before they let you just walk into a casino?” asked Alice of no one in particular.

“If you’ve got money, the red queen doesn’t care if you’re in diapers,” barked someone passing by, their breath smelling heavily of liquor and cigarettes.

Directly in front of her was a bank of elevators with large signs next to them. That seemed like as good a place as any to start. She briefly entertained the idea of asking someone where the ship docks would be, but discarded it after thinking about her encounter with the cat.

One of the signs next to the elevator indicated airship parking was on the tenth floor. Perhaps she could have her ship and be on her way within the hour.

Alice stepped off the elevator into an area that was very similar to a parking garage, just much taller. Ships of various shapes and sizes were positioned throughout the massive space. It took up an entire floor of the casino. It would probably take her the better part of an hour to search the whole area.

“Well, nothing for it but to get to looking around,” she said to herself, sighing heavily.

Her mind drifted to the adventures she planned to have as soon as she had her ship. The first one, obviously, would be finding a crew. In the great pirate adventures, the captain always put in at a known pirate port and headed to a tavern. There were always men hanging about in taverns, waiting to find a ship to set sail on. It probably wouldn’t take too much asking around to get someone to point her toward someplace with disreputable pirate types in this city. She could probably just go back down to the casino floor and ask three or four people.

That made her smile. If there was a place that was ripe for pirating, Wonderland was it. All she had to do was find her ship and get to it.

After a few minutes of wandering she came to an area that was fenced off. Placed periodically, were large signs in the shape of blood red hearts proclaiming: Keep out! Property of the Red Queen.

Alice stepped close and peered through the metal mesh. There were dozens of ships beyond the fence. One of them had to be The White Rabbit. She walked hurriedly along the fence, scanning for a way through. The top of the fence was four meters in the air and covered with lots of nasty looking razor wire, so that wasn’t an option. Rounding a corner brought a gap in the fence into view, but there were two crazy looking guards standing in front of it.

Each guard was wearing what looked like armor out of a fantasy story: helmets, chainmail, gauntlets and various other pieces that had hard to pronounce names. They paced around, clattering loudly, large long-handled axes resting on their shoulders. The craziest part was that their bodies were almost perfect rectangles with only the smallest notch out of the bottom for their legs, and they were nearly flat. Alice was a thin girl and they were easily half as thin as she was. On the front of their armor was painted the design of a playing card. One was a two of hearts and the other a four of hearts. If their weapons and armor hadn’t looked so wicked, Alice would have laughed out loud.

Thankfully they were a hundred or more meters away and her area of the parking garage was rather poorly lit, so they likely couldn’t see her. Just in case, she ducked back around her corner and watched them with one eye poking around the fence for much longer than was strictly necessary. Their heads and arms looked human enough. Their bodies looked as if someone had simply smashed them flat in order to make them resemble playing cards. As to be expected from someone with a smashed body, they didn’t look at all very happy. Once she’d had her fill of gawking at the guards, she peered down the length of fence and spotted a small gap between two poles. It was very narrow.