The Weevil Chronicles

We left New York that night, hitching a ride on the back of a ziptruck west to Minnesota. Public transit, either by magtrain or zipjet, was out of the question since anyone traveling north would be watched. We wanted to get as close to the border as possible before we lit out on foot, saving our Power Shoes til we really needed them. Mine were a borrowed second-hand pair and their power supply was questionable. We had a long way to go.

Wilmo had a friend meet up with us in St. Paul, a short, intense redhead named Magda, who knew the "safe" crossing areas. There was something going on between them, but I didn't know what, so I just wrote it off to friendship between two modern lunatics.

Magda took us to a house, don't know if it was hers, but she was using it. We had to wait til nightfall so it was heelsitting time for a couple of hours, while we looked at maps and tried to rest. The two really don't go together. I had never done anything like this and though I like to think of myself as Wilmo-wild, he had something on his mind he was not letting on about and it made him pace like a one-man zoo. We were in the back room and we could hear the buzz of voices out front as Magda tended to some kind of biz, and though Wilmo never went out front I could tell that he was in on it and I most definitely wasn't.

Then we heard someone else come in, and the voices grew loud with a new tension. Wilmo started looking wilder than usual and headed for the door, just as it flew open. Magda was with a tall guy with straggly black hair and eyes too close together for comfort. He was staring at me, but talking to Wilmo.

"Can he be Trusted?" he asked with a capital T. Wilmo looked at me, his eyes suddenly as narrow as the tall guy's. "Yes," said his mouth. But his eyes said,"Don't let me down, Marx."

Still, Tall Guy didn't mention his name, and no one offered to introduce us. He said,"There's a crisis. On Arthropoda."

I could tell they were all watching for my reaction, and I didn't let them down. "Arthrop..." is as far as I got before I choked on a molecule of phlegm. Too many questions came to mind for me to even speak, so I looked with buggin' eyes from one of them to the other to the other, til someone , I donšt know who, started talking.

"We're members of a group sympathetic to Weevils. We believe humans and Weevils have an important future together. This journey to the Weevil ruins isn't just a romp, Marx. We have to remember that Earth is their home planet, too, before all traces of them are literally wiped off the face of the Earth."

My head was swimming, tossed on a sea of new thoughts and ideas. I didn't know if i was standing up or what i dint know.

And that wasn't even the big news.

"We think war has finally broken out on Arthropoda. We've lost contact with Colfax."

Now I remember. My name is Marx. Twain. Marx Twain. I'm a writer. I have to ask questions. And I realized in a rush that that's the reason I'm here at all. To Get The Story.

"Colfax," I said, "who's..."