Joimus never did find out the healing properties of rivergrass

crushed by hippo teeth, though, as suddenly....prompted doubtlessly

by the word "dune" the ground in front of Ando opened up and a large

sandworm bared its circular set of molars.

"Aw...SHUCKS!" the former Welshwoman said, her shoulders heaving

with a deep sigh. She turned and looked back at Joimus.

"Now REALLY, Joimus...aren't you going a bit too far here?"

Too far not being in Joimus' vocabulary, as was evidenced by

the way that....

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

.....the sand worm reared upwards a good 50 feet and arched

itself over the Londoner, who, though pleased for a bit of shade,

had actually rather have had a parasol. She shook her head, making

little "Tsk! Tsk! Tsk!" sounds with her tongue and teeth, figuring

that Joimus would not really let her be eaten for, then, what would

the evil epi queen DO without her to torture?

Alas, would the former Welshwoman NEVER learn that the Pittsburgher

had no qualms whatsoever about having Ando devoured by a giant sandworm?

There would, of course, be some unforeseen, unorthodox twist to

it that would, inevitably restore Ando to her position as # 1 torturee.

And so, as Yul intoned to Charleton back in the days when he was

busily adding to the public conception that Ramesses was the pharoah

of the Exodus, "So let it be written...so let it be done!" Just thinking

about it as she typed, got poor, dear Joimus so hot under the collar

(which was a good thing, you know, in frigid Pittsburgh this January

day) that almost against her better judgment, her icy fingers found

themselves typing that the enormous sandworm curved itself down,

down, down toward where the tsking Ando stood upon the dune,

opened its circular mouth into a wormily happy smile, and *poof*

the Londoner had disappeared down its gullet.
                             

Though she had, indeed, been "wormed", Ando would have been

quite satisfied had she been able to hear the wild, "NOOooOOoo-

OOoooOooo!" that blasted from Hando's lips and the way that he

jumped onto the sandworm's back, pounding it with his fists in

desperate rage. It was quite touching, it was. The sandworm did

not appear to particularly care for it, though, and sank quickly

back under the sand, leaving Hando sitting alone atop the dune.
  

Arthur sat down hard on his hot-crossed buns, burying his virginal

Welsh face in his hands. He had not been quite up for joining Hando

in the desperate leap onto the giant sandworm's back, but the loss

of Ando was just as heartbreaking for him. Had Jack been conscious,

I'm sure he would have played his violin at that point. East offered

to strum his guitar, but somehow it just didn't quite tug on the

heartstrings.

"Well," said Joimus, dusting her palms together, "That is, as they

say, that."

She turned her face southward again as Sue whispered to Cort,

"And they call ME vile?"

A little smile tugged at one corner of Joimus' lips.

The rest of the day's trekking proved hot...and somewhat

disturbing. They tried antidote after antidote to revive the Captain.

Terry had pounded a chunk of lava rock into fine granules with his

equipment and Ann had carefully mixed it with her hard-won vial

of crocodile tears. Then Russell had made a paste from flannel

fray mushed with ant dung. Nothing worked!
                             

Himself was quite concerned about the captain. He had not spent

all those months in Mexico wearing wet wool and swaying atop

mainmasts just to have his creation expire in some forgotten

backwater of the Nile! He narrowed his seagreen eyes and glared

at Sid. "YOU!" he said, anger rumbling through his vocal tones,

"Did you put the Palauan squid juice in the raspberry puddle?"

Sid professed to know nothing about squid, Palauan or otherwise.

Chipman grinned, thinking of how his method of putting the

tribbles in the quadrotriticale had never been discovered.

He was GOOD!

Russell didn't really believe him, but Sid refused to talk. Maximus,

rubbing his thumb back and forth across the blade of his gladius,

tightened his jaw muscles. He liked the captain and, as well, was

disturbed by the red rims around Juditha's eyes. He knew she

hadn't slept since Jack's unfortunate taste. Never would he forget

her gentle care of him when Sid had held him captive in the Fuegan

laboratory. (See Lucilla's Party in ElderEpis)Those had been the

tenderest moments in the history of epidom...so far. Even now she

hovered near the captain's limp form. She had torn the lower section

of her djellaba off and formed a canopy from it to shelter his face

from the desert sun.

Maximus recalled his endless journey to Zucchabar with only a slobbering

hyena for shade. It was not only Joimus, he knew, that gave the characters

a hard time. Movie plots were often very rough, too. Just ask poor East.

Or Colin. And then there were those like Lachlan, left with just a few

weeks of life expectancy...their fate unknown.

Yes, as barbarous as some epis had been, at least Joimus never

actually bumped a character completely off...yet... or even had

his hands nailed to the top of a desk. Now, Ando, well....she might

prove to be the first of the cast to meet her doom. It certainly

looked that way, didn't it?

Maximus then gazed at Nash, sitting atop a termite mound and busily

conversing with Charles. He sighed. Too bad Paul was being Charles at

a time when they could really have used Stephen. Andy and Johnny

were slumped together in a tired heap. They had carried Jack for

several hours. They might be younger than Maximus was, but he knew

they had yet to develop his great strength, both of heart and bicep,

so when it was time to move on, the General scooped the captain up in

his arms and headed off, not asking for help.

Joimus and Juditha both smiled at the sight. "You know," Juditha

remarked rather pensively, "if we had only finished rebuilding the

Tuscan villa (that was back in the Elder EpiUnder the

TuscPeep Son...er...Sun), Jack would probably never have

tasted the raspberry/squid juice."

"Yes," Joimus replied, "you are probably right, Juditha. You've

heard, I expect, that the DVD is coming out in a couple of weeks."

"Oh, could we go back?" Juditha asked eagerly.

"I doubt it," Joimus answered, thinking how she herself quite

missed the Russketeer days. Soon Tuscany was forgotten as their

eyes were filled with Maximus, who had reached the top of a low

ridge. The blues and violets of the coming twilight spread across

the sky behind him as a light wind caused his rust-colored cape to

ripple out to his side. His biceps bulged under the weight of his

friend and his seagreen eyes were scanning the horizon. As lovely

as was a Cort-beholding ceremony, THIS was the BEST! All of

Crowedom (except the devoured Ando, of course) got lumps in

their throats.

Sid broke the mood by making loud barfing noises. Amanda, who

had throat-lumped with the best of them, kicked his shin. "Stop

that!" she barked, angry because just how often did Maximus stand

on a ridge like that with the cape blowing and the muscles bulging

and the great lighting of the sky backdrop so good that even

Zeferelli would have run for his camera?

Maximus turned, his eyes serious but a slight smile playing about his

lips. "Wow!" exclaimed Himself. "Look at that...the eyes all serious,

the suggestion of a forehead crease, the working of a jaw muscle,

and yet that small smile!" He was, you see, well aware of how he

could convey differing emotions on separate areas of his face at

the same time. The cast smiled. His...er... proficiency was, after

all, WHY they were CroweWomen in the first place. Even Hando

and Arthur smiled at one another, knowing so well as they did

Himself's range in a short span of time. Too bad the Londoner

was not there to see the smile. It was remarkable and who knew

when such a thing might ever happen again?

Ando had developed some degree of expertise at last in dodging

the half-digested Sudanese yaks that swirled continuously about

her, aided greatly by the badminton racket that no good Englishwoman

is ever without. It was, actually, not so bad. At least Joimus wasn't

there. She was, though, a bit puzzled as to why the inner walls

of the sandworm's digestive tract bore some resemblance to

whooshing starfields. But...she would think about that tomorrow...

should she survive. Which, of course, was a tad iffy.

Our wormily-external remaining cast members had encamped for the

night atop a flat butte with a great view of....sand. Sue was happy.

There was NO water anywhere about up there. If her tongue had not

been so swollen from thirst and her lips not quite so cracked, she would

have smiled. She was glad that Ando could not see the way Arthur was

wringing the sweat out of his socks into his glass like that. Fondly, she

recalled the many times she and Ando had sat together in English pubs,

swigging one cup of weak tea after another. Ah, what she wouldn't give

for one of those now! Turning her head, she gazed long at the resting

Cort, delightfully dust-covered again. Well, there was definitely ONE

thing she would not give, come to think of it!

Ann slept restlessly, tossing and turning and constantly clonking into

Terry's equipment. He gritted his teeth and kept silent. She had

taken such good care of it for some years now, surely he could

withstand a few indentations. Ann would probably pound them out

with a hammer in the morning and all would be well again. Strangely,

somehow, sleep escaped him that night. But not Ann, who, having eaten

the overly-spiced rat foot stew Joimus had cooked especially in her

honor as a result of nameless offlist commentaries, dreamt terrible

dreams of giant crawfish devouring helpless camellia bushes.

Only Susan Guildford, who had suffered so greatly...and often...

over her blue poppy (frequent plot device), would have understood.

But Susan was comfortably settled for the night, Zack's beard

proving to be a fine blanket against the midnight chill of the desert.

Maximus had scooped a shallow depression in the sand and lain

Jack gently in it, to protect his back and sides from the cool air.

Juditha folded the djellaba canopy into a pillow for his head, then

the General covered him with his rust-colored cape. Maximus stood

there a long while, the moonlight glowing on his armor and cheek moles,

staring at the quiet captain. He had not realized how much he would

miss Jack's puns and mixed-up metaphors, as well as his genial

companionship and leadership qualities. Something must be done about

this...and soon! He turned his seagreen stare over to Sid, who was

attempting to talk Bunny out of her cottontail for use as a pillow.

Hmmmm? There didn't appear to be any loose glass lying about

the butte. Perhaps if he dismembered chipman a bit, the fellow

might actually confess. As silently as possible, he began to unsheathe

his sword as he walked toward Sid. *Scraaaaaaaape* "Damn frost!"

he muttered as Sid turned and sprang to his feet. The two most

entirely opposite of character characters faced one another in

the Sudanese night (well, there WAS Jeff and Hando, but they

were asleep at the moment).

Joimus and Bunny watched, their eyes large and round like white

frisbees left heedlessly on some park bench by a child called home

for lunch. Sid's jaw jutted unbeardedly out in defiance at his older

counterpart. "Did you hear the thud of Jack's head as it bounced

off the tomb floor...again and again and again?" he mocked, knowing

just where to drive his verbal knife into Maximus' soul.

The General's eyes went all hard with a mixture of past memories

and present affronts. He would not give Chipman the obviously-

sought satisfaction of hearing the "your time...at an end" speech

fall from his lips. This time there was no encircling ring of

Praetorian guards to stay his hand. The hardness of his seagreen

eyes morphed into what can only be described as 'deadly pleasure'

as his blade cleared its sheath.

Wild clapping shattered the moment, causing both characters

to blink and jerk their heads towards where the assembled

castwomen were expressing massed approval of the magnificently

portrayed morph. "No wonder he got the Oscar!" Susan exclaimed.

Joimus beamed proudly. No one could morph better than the

Commander of the Felix Legions!! When Maximus turned back

towards Sid, the chipster had disappeared into the darkness

beyond the reach of the firelight's glow. He sighed. As much

as he loved his CroweWomen, sometimes they did have a way

of breaking the momentum of a good dismembering.

When the cast had settled back down, Maximus walked once again

to Jack's nest in the sand. Juditha was sitting beside him, holding

his hand and kissing the scar on his right knuckle. Maximus looked

at his own hand, where the scar was much fresher. No wonder he

felt so connected to the captain who bore every single one of the

General's injuries. He smiled down at Juditha, "Take good care of

him." Then he found his own place for the night, trying as best he

could to keep Joimus in her gossamer Fuegan gown warm without the

aid of his rust-colored cape.

Morning spread its peachy pinks across the sky as the cast made

their way down the steep sides of the butte and headed toward the

Ugandan border. The desert was left behind, having given way to

greener, more snake-infested climes. Here they found ever more

possible antidotes to try upon the Captain, whose toes had yet to

uncurl from the Abu Simbel lizard ear milk despite Juditha's constant

attempts to straighten them. She carried his black boots tucked into

her sash in case the day ever came when he might actually fit into

them once more.

After the most recent failure of the slivered bongo bark dissolved in

a solution of gorilla footprint mud, Joimus began to think they really

MUST try a different approach. So...she went over and tapped

Nash on his shoulder. He ceased poking pushpins into the vine he

had twined around the the fallen tree and smiled shyly at her,

motioning the invisible Charles to come to his side. He always felt

more secure when his roomie was safely nearby. Joimus sighed.

This was going to be harder than she'd thought.

"John," she began, a somewhat forced smile on her face, "I need

to discuss something very important with you."

Nash took a step or two away from the Pittsburgher, narrowing his

seagreen eyes suspiciously. "Did Parcher send you?" he asked, his

fear rising, his eyes darting now from side to side, looking for

black automobiles.

                  

"No," Joimus replied, trying to keep her voice smooth and even.

"It's about Charles."

"CHARLES!" Nash shouted, "What do you want with my roomie?"

He looked at her hands, sure she must be concealing a syringe

somewhere.

Joimus extended both hands, palms upwards, towards him so he

could see she intended him no harm. "John," she continued,

"you know the captain has not been himself ever since he tasted

the raspberry/squid juice back in Russenaten's tomb, don't you?"

Nash hugged himself as he asked, "Who's he being?"

Joimus smiled slightly. "He's not been able to come out of the

Palauan squid-induced stupor and is in desperate need of help.

That's why we need to borrow Charles for a while."

"BORROW Charles?" he muttered, backing even further away

toward the unseen, watching silverback gorilla. "Charles knows

nothing about antidotes. Why would you need HIM?"

"Well, John, it's not ACTUALLY Charles we need. It's Stephen."

John's eyes narrowed into mere slits. He knew that Stephen's

presence meant Charles' absence. "No," he said firmly. "I need

Charles!"

"Just for a little while, John...a very little while?" Joimus wheedled.

"Would you at least ask Charles about it?"

Charles, of course, had heard every word. As he watched the

silverback swing off through the trees, John clutched in its arms,

he spoke, still unseen, to Joimus, "It looks like presently John might

have more use for Hando than for me."

"Truly, Charles, I do believe you might just be right. HANDO!"

she called and the Andoless one came crashing through the underbrush.

"Nash was just gorillanapped and they went thataway," she said,

pointing high up into the canopy of the trees.

"I'm on it!" Hando snapped back, a strange grin on his lips as he

swung himself easily up a thick vine.

Joimus turned back to where Charles' voice had come from.

"Charles, do you understand the gravity of the situation with the

captain? Might I appeal to the Stephanity of your nature to come

to his assistance?" She need not have had any doubts as already,

in a very Cheshire cattish manner, Stephen began to appear before

her eyes, robe, hat, and walking stick.

                                                  

"Well, then," the doctor said, "there's not a moment to lose!"

Joimus had forgotten how the surgeon had repeated Jack's line.

It was actually quite good to hear it again after all this time.

"Where is he?"

Joimus led the way through the thick underbrush, wishing she

had thought to bring the captain's cutlass for chopping purposes.

Arriving at a small clearing, Stephen's eyes took in the scene before

him. Jack lay in a hammock fashioned of woven vines as Juditha

fanned his pale face with a large leaf. The doctor bit his lower lip.

The last he'd seen of his friend, Jack had been hale and hearty,

striding across the Galapashires looking for lost poppies.(See: The

Return of the Captain in the ElderEpis) If only Nash were not so in

need of Charles' company, Stephen would never have left the

captain's side.

"What happened to him?" he asked urgently.

Juditha explained quickly about the heart-shaped puddle of

raspberry juice that had flowed out of the sarcophagus onto t

he tomb floor and somehow become mixed with Palauan squid

juice. Stephen's eyes widened. "Not PALAUAN squid juice?!?"

he exclaimed, grimacing in near despair.

Amanda nudged Annette, "I thought this was supposed to be

a comedy."

"Don't worry," Annette sagely replied, "the best comedic moments

often happen in the midst of great and tragic plots...like this one."

Meanwhile, along the more tragic line, Juditha had just tremblingly

asked, "What is so unusually bad about Palauan squid, Doctor?"

Stephen's lips were pressed together into a tight line and tears

glistened in the curve of his lower lids, the sight of which caused

Juditha untold distress. The plot was at its very most tragic at

this point, alas.

Meanwhile, still within the innards of the sandworm, Ando's

racket was getting rather slimy and ever harder to maintain in

her grip. And they thought THEY were being grandly tragic in

the Ugandan jungles! HA! It was nothing compared to the drama

she was in the midst of! A half-digested yak narrowly missed

her cheekbone, just to prove her point. THIS was REAL drama!

The reader must really trust Ando on this judgment, too, based

on the former Welshwoman's turn as Julia Roberts' understudy

in the 12-year off-Broadway run of "Dial M for Murder" in which

Julia had played the victim of the fiendish plottings of the

disturbed, disembodied brain of Flash Gordon. It was there,

during the evening performances when Julia had gone for her

twice-weekly teeth buffings, that Ando had learnt the absolute

depths of what drama really was. But we digress!

At last Stephen was composed enough to explain the facts of

Palauan squid dangers. He and Jack had, in the 37th volume

of the O'Brian series....a little known and even less read book,

alas...been carried in a cast off rowboat across the Pacific

by the tidal wave that was the result of the yet-to-be-

discovered "butterfly effect" of Diz batting her eyelashes a

bit too vigorously at Egan (Silver Stallion's The Man) one

heather-scented afternoon in the Scottish highlands as she

trained him in the finer techniques of the caber toss. They

had washed up on the beaches of Palau right in the midst of

the most deadly battle of the inter-tribal squid juice wars.

Phyllis was still queen, but barely retaining her grip on the

throne, which had become quite slimed in a similar manner to

Ando's badminton racket, though not from swatting half-digested

yaks.

Juditha was puzzled. "But Jack never mentioned any of this

to me before."

"No, he wouldn't," Stephen replied soberly, thinking of the

many sessions of hypnotherapy it had taken to erase the memory

of it from Jack's mind so that he could function again as a

human being. Juditha could not help but notice the shudder that

ran completely through the doctor's long frame as he recalled

Palauan events long past. How very, very strange it was that

the potent squid juice had come back so untowardly into the

captain's life...and in an Egyptian tomb, at that. Stephen

closed his eyes as scenes unspeakably horrible played themselves

out once again on the screen of his inner lids. If only those

wandering New Zealand cricket players had never come to the

island, bringing their sports with them! Did they not consider

that the isolated islanders had no natural defenses against such

things?? Had they known that cricket bats connecting with

Palauan squid would result in such carnage, surely they would

have paddled on to Hawaii. But, no.

The captain moaned and Stephen was quickly at his side.

"Perhaps he senses that you have come," Juditha said, hopefully,

as she brushed escaped blonde tendrils back from Jack's brow.

Just then, a wild, whooping yell filled the jungle air as Hando...