Things were looking worse. Not only was Maximus out of his gourd, but the rhino had stepped on it and its seed had been spilled onto the reddish soil. "Oh, no," exclaimed Terry under his breath. "It looks like Maximus' seed has been spilled!" Juditha's ears perked. It was a topic she had always found to be of great...interest. Given this dire development, there was, obviously, not a moment to lose. Terry and Jack scanned the 84 spear points lying between them and the gateway where Joimus and Lucilla spoke endlessly of General topics. "We could..."Terry began, but was interrupted by...

************

...the large, splintering *SPLAT* produced by a wide section of the outer stockade toppling. As one, the 84 spear points swished, turning away from the goat corral towards the strange development in their outer ramparts.

Bunny smiled,little slivers of stockade still jutting out here and there between her front teeth. Keep Jack and Terry away from Maximus, would they!!!

Whilst all eyes were fastened on the plopped palisade, the Captain and the K&R agent vaulted over the corral rails, sprinting across the village, dodging the brilliant light beams from the circling helicopter patrols and the 45 loosed attack dogs, not to mention the extraordinarily large robotic creature with all the eyeballs that seemed so intent on stepping upon them as they leapt across the opening trap doors with poisoned spikes in their pits.

Scrambling over the fallen stockade, Jack smiled joyously at Terry. "Ha,ha!" he shouted in that same appreciative manner he had when engulfed by large, shark-infested tidal waves sweeping across the deck of his vessel.

Joimus and Lucilla were finding it hard to continue their quiet conversation with all the *whup-whup-whupping* of low-flying helicopter blades, the ground-shaking stomps of the robotic creature, the slobbering growls of the half-starved attack dogs, and the opening *flop- whaps* of trap doors. Joimus, yanking the hem of her pale yellow gossamer Fuegan gown from under a just-whapped trap door and neatly side-stepping 3 large dogs intent on dismemberment, remarked off-handedly, "Hmmmmm? Pardon me, Lucilla, but I think I shall..." and without even the courtesy of sentence-completion, dashed off, hard on the heels of the two fleeing characters.

"Wait for me!" Lucilla shouted, not intending to be left out of any action on the Plains of Sheba, what with everything being so dull right now in the village itself.

As soon as the four members of our cast had cleared the fencefall, it began to rise up in the night, settling back into place, filling the gap. The 7 dozen Village People skidded to a halt, pounding on it with their fists.

Outside the stockade, backs leaning against it to prop it up, Hando and the former Welshwoman smiled at one another. "We...we...may not have been in the storyline for a few episodes," Ando puffed, "but here we are....saving the day...er night...er whatever!" The smile Hando flashed her and the sight of his shoulder muscles bulging in the moonlight as he applied his great strength to gap-plugging, were reward aplenty for her.

Bunny poked her head out just enough to whisper, "What about the open gates?"

"Shhhhhh!" Ando hissed back between her teeth. "Be quiet and maybe they won't notice!"

Jack and Terry raced across the Sheban Plains towards Bud and the still-seated General of the Armies of the North. Joimus and Lucilla, both having trained for the summer Olympics by sprinting repeatedly between Boston and Baltimore during their lunch breaks the past month, were soon right beside them. Joimus, seeing now the object of their mad dash, shifted her legs into high gear and despite her floor-length gown and spike heels, left them eating her dust. A few seconds more and she was beside the Commander of the Felix legions, throwing herself to her knees beside him, a new 15 inch tear opening up in the skirt of her already rather shredded gown.

His hands lay limply, palm-up in his lap as oceanblue eyes stared, unblinking, unseeing. His lips moved soundlessly, repeating something she couldn't quite make out. In this state, his electrical current was currently quiet. Reaching out with trembling fingers, she cupped one side of his cheek in her hand. "Oh...Maximus...Maximus...", she murmured. Her teardrop fell, splashing into his left palm, making the teensiest little puddle where two tsetse flies came for refreshment. She looked up, then, eyes glistening in the coming lavender-peachiness of dawn. "What happened to him?" she asked Bud.

Jack, Terry, and Lucilla arrived as the cop answered, "It was his name," he said somberly.

"His...name?" Lucilla repeated, not understanding.

Bud wiped one hand wearily across his eyes. "I called him Maximus," he explained, "and he...he...couldn't...."

"Couldn't what?" Terry asked, impatient to get to the cause of the General's obvious obliviousness.

"He didn't think Maximus was his name," Bud continued, a bit irked at the K&R agent, "but when he couldn't remember any name at all...he...he...got like this."

"Was the scream I heard his?" Jack asked, remembering the horridity of the wail.

"No, "Bud replied, "it was..." He shook his head. "Don't ask."

Jack's brow knitted slightly, then he crouched beside the General. "MAXIMUS!" he shouted in his best masterfully commanding tone of voice. The oceanblue eyes did not even blink. Jack looked up at Terry. "This is serious...worse even than the blue lightning." Terry's eyes sought the smashed gourd he had seen earlier through Jack's telescope.

Lucilla, following his glance with her own, drew in a ragged breath. The utter....waste...of the General's seed, spilled as it was amongst the basal rootlings of the prairie grasses, was nearly more than she could bear. How often she had dreamed of...other uses...for this very product. Kneeling, she took the largest of the curving pieces of broken gourd shell, and almost reverently began to scoop the seed.

Joimus watched Lucilla for a moment, her own hand still on the General's cheek. As long as she had the person of Maximus himself, the least she could do was allow Lucilla to possess some of his seed. Sometimes her moments of great generosity surprised even herself...rare as they were. She only hoped that, within the year, this would not come back to haunt her.

All the captives from the village had managed to make their way through the open gates whilst the Village People still pounded on the Hando-held gap. Gradually they arrived at the heart-tugging scene being enacted on the plains. Soon joined by the rest of the uncaptured cast, they formed a silent circle about the seriously angsted six.

Jack, doing a rapid telescopic check of the village, wondered how much longer Hando and the former Welshwoman could hold back the surging tide of Villagers, robots, attack dogs....and Sid. They needed a relocation....desperately. He scanned the distant line of jungle growth that lay in the opposite direction. It was too far, way too far for him to get this large cast to in time. And, then, of course, there was the matter of the General. Carrying him any distance would slow them considerably, yet it was obvious he could not travel anywhere on his own. What to do? WHAT?

His seagreen eyes came to rest upon the person of the English rabbit. Of late, she had been of great use with her sharp little carving stone. "Bunny," he said, motioning her to his side. "We seem to have a dire lack of rock walls about us at the moment, but is there something you could...do...anyway... that might aid in our imminent departure from this plain?"

She nodded, reaching into her pocket for her carving stone. Looking back at the village where, assisted by the giant robot, the stockade had finally fallen again and Hando and his sidekick were even now dashing towards them, she asked, "What of Sid?"

Jack glowered at the thought of the Chipman. "He must be left behind...at all costs," he rumbled.

Bunny half-lowered her lids. What the captain didn't know wouldn't hurt him...all that much...she figured. Gesturing for the cast to step back and give her room, she cut a quick shape into the red soil, smiling as she worked, humming the strutting song from Saturday Night Fever under her breath.

Jack watched, not quite sure just what it was that she shaped so rapidly and with such pleasure. As episodes tended to end with cliffhangers, he hoped they would not find themselves upon some wild mountaintop pursued by an insane Lithgow and his cohorts.

"There!" Bunny said proudly, standing up just as Ando and the bald one arrived, "It's finished!"

Jack stood, looking down at what she had made. His eyes narrowed. It was...well...unusual... to say the least. But it would have to do, he thought, as a spear thunked into the red soil between his feet. "Come!" he ordered, guiding the cast toward it.

He and Terry took Maximus under his arms, half-lifting, half-dragging him along. Lucilla carried her large piece of gourd carefully, determined not to lose any of its precious...er...cargo. Joimus quickly grabbed the rust-colored cape, following close behind the General's dragging boots. With only the barest hesitation, the lot of them plunged into the opening.

It was dark....dark as Ridley's screen after Maximus had been hauled off by the curly-slippered people. Would sudden sunshine blast them or white horses run by? BugDogPugMom huddled close to Biebe, hearing soft, leathery rustlings above her head and wishing the locusts had not devoured his hockey stick. Jeffrey, nervous, took long swigs from his pocket flask of soy sauce. Little popping noises, produced by each footfall, were sending Nash almost into a frenzy. Colin, bumping his shins against a large object, reached his hands out in the blackness, trying to determine what obstacle was impeding his progress. "Aiiieeeee!" he screamed, practically knocking over poor Eryn. "A DESK! It's a DESK!"

"Colin...Colin...calm down," Eryn comforted him. "We are not in a motel, remember...and, besides, my pockets are filled with long strips of bandages....just in case there are....nails...about."

Colin pressed his palms tightly together, sweat trickling down his neck, soaking his white undershirt. "But..but...where ARE we?" he murmured.

"I don't know, " Eryn replied, "but at least this is leading us out of Africa."

Bunny, behind them as she had entered last in order to wipe away all traces...supposedly... of her carving, smiled. Yes, they were, indeed, heading out of Africa.

"Usually, " Ando complained, "we just go in one side and out the other. What the heck is UP with this anyway??"

Just then the former Welshwoman was smacked in the face by something firm and rather ovoid. "Hando," she asked, slightly excited, "are you there?"

Sue gave Ando a bit of a shove, "You goose!" she said, "Can't you tell a corncob when one smacks you in the face?"

Alas, Ando, having avoided any and all fields her entire life, could not. Great shivers ran up and down the length of her body. "Are...are...we in a...a...a FIELD??" she stammered, her teeth beginning to chatter and her knees wobble.

"It's beginning to look that way," Sue replied cheerily. "I see definite signs."

"SIGNS? Did you say SIGNS??" chirped Susan.

The large leaves grew ever thicker around them in the darkness. Joimus, used as she was to plowing her way through racks of wardrobed coats on her many visits to Narnia, felt quite at home. She hugged Maximus' cape close to her breast, breathing in its familiar scent. Perhaps there would be a lamppost soon? Stranger things had happened....and usually did. "There seems to be some general lightening ahead, " she remarked to Lucilla.

Lucilla, being ever so careful in the darkness not to stumble and lose a single bit of the precious seed, replied, "Don't tell me Maximus is sparking again!"

Joimus laughed, "No...no...I said 'general lightening'...not 'General lightning'!"

"Oh," Lucilla sighed in relief, "well, then, that's better. What's causing it, anyway?"

Joimus strained up on her tippytoes. "It looks rather like....sky...I think." Before long, the entire cast began to filter out of the vast underground cornfield, out into a world stretching greenly to a far horizon. Before their startled eyes lay a freshly heaped mound of earth upon which rested loins...er... lions.

"Did someone say 'lions'?" Jo asked excitedly, hoping perhaps for a glimpse of Aslan.

"No," Jack replied, his tone dripping with disgust. "It IS loins!"

As, indeed, it was. Resting atop the earthmound, his back turned toward their arrival, sat, alas, Sid, his legs spread out in front of him as he sifted the soil through his fingers.

Joimus was livid. How DARE the Chipman SIFT!!! That lay strictly in Maximus' purview. Tucking the folded cape under one arm, she strode angrily up to Sid, smacking the rest of the soil from his hand. "STOP THAT!" she shouted.

He tipped his head, looking up at her with that satisfied smile he got whenever he provoked the Pittsburgher. "Am I not allowed to gird my...loins...for battle?" he remarked, licking his lower lip slowly.

Bunny scampered up, attracted, doubtlessly, by all the references to Sid's loins. Sid lowered his lids, looking at the English rabbit, mouthing silently, "Thank you."

Joimus whirled on the cottontail. "Bunny! What have you DONE?"

Bunny batted her lashes. "We couldn't leave him behind, could we?" she asked. "What would we do for a villain?"

Joimus, knowing this to be true, nevertheless also knew that it was not Sid's villainy that Bunny found so impossible to leave behind.

"Rabbits!" Joimus said, shaking her head.

Jack surveyed the scene with his telescope, then remarked, "I thought, Bunny, you were taking us out of Africa?"

Bunny, blowing the last bits of Plains soil off her carving rock, replied, "I did. This IS out of Africa."

Sid stood, taking Bunny's hand. "Ah, then," he said softly, leaning towards her, "would you like me to wash your hair amongst the flamingo flocks accompanied by lovely strains of classical music?"

Joimus, though, had had her fill of Africa. Jack and Terry had propped the General up against a small tree and she walked over, kneeling beside him. His oceanblue eyes were open. "Maximus?" she said softly, yearningly. "Can you hear me, Maximus?"

Looking at the Captain, she asked, 'Oh, Jack, what are we going to do? He needs...help."

BertiWise, studying the cornfield immediately to their rear, had an idea. "Perhaps," she ventured, "if we were all to take a nap, this might become a field of dreams and we would find ourselves in..Madison County?"

"I'm not sure that would work," added Amanda. "Last night I dreamed of Africa and found myself rebuilding an old house with a lot of snakes." Jo's head whirled. Movie titles were whooshing all around like mosquitoes.
 

Terry spoke up. "I think we should all just go back into the cornfield and come out again and take what we get."

Joimus inhaled deeply. That could be risky. Perhaps even foolhardy. But as her eyes scanned the current scene with its grassy rolling hills and nothing else, she knew there was no help for Maximus in this place. She looked warily back at the cornfield. Would it lead them to a walk in the clouds or was it a passage to India? If only she had known that it led directly....