Alternate Gerrolds (13 page)

Filltree both hated and envied Rexie. Jill gave all her attention and affection to the dinosaur, speaking to Daddy only when demanding something else for her collection of creatures. And Mommy was another one—she paid more attention to preparing the little tyrant’s meals than to his. The dinosaur got fresh beef or lamb three times a week. He got soy-burgers.

For a long while, he’d been considering the idea of a separation—maybe even a divorce. He’d even gone so far as to log onto the Legal-Net website and crunch the numbers on their divorce-judgment simulator. Although Legal-Net refused to guarantee the accuracy of its legal software, lest they expose themselves to numerous lawsuits, the divorce-judgment simulator used the same Judicial Engine as the Federal Divorce Court and was unofficially rated at ninety percent accuracy in its extrapolations.

All he wanted was a tiny little condo somewhere up in the hills, a place where he could sit and work and stare out the window in peace without having to think about tyrants, either the two-foot kind or the three-foot kind. Tyrant lizards, tyrant children—the only difference he could see was that the tyrant lizard only ate your heart out once and then it was done.

According to CompuServe, he could afford the condo; that wasn’t the problem.
Unfortunately
, also according to Legal-Net’s Judicial Engine he could not afford the simultaneous maintenance of Joyce and Jill. The simulator gave him several options, none of them workable from his point of view. A divorce would give him freedom, but it would be prohibitively expensive. A separation would give him peace and quiet, but it wouldn’t give him freedom—and he’d still have to keep up the payments on Joyce and Jill’s various expensive habits.

Grunting in annoyance, he pulled the heavy carry cage out of the garage and lugged it awkwardly back down the basement stairs. Jilly followed
him the whole way, whining and crying. He slipped easily into his robot-daddy mode, disconnecting his emotions and refusing to respond to even her most provocative assaults. “I don’t love you any more. You promised me. I’m not your daughter any more. I’m gonna tell Mommy. I don’t like you. You can go to hell.”

“Don’t tempt me. I might enjoy the change,” he muttered in reply to the last remark.

Back downstairs, Filltree discovered that Rexie had not only finished his meal; he was already standing on top of the rock barrier again, lashing his tail furiously and studying the realm beyond. He looked like he was preparing to return to his hunting. At the opposite end of the room, the remaining stegosaurs were mooing agitatedly.

Rexie spotted them then. He turned sharply to glare across the intervening distance, cocking his head with birdlike motions to study them first with one baleful black eye, then the other. Perhaps it was just the shape of his head, but his expression seemed ominous and calculating. The creature’s eyes were filled with hatred for the soft pink mammals who restricted him, as well as insatiable hunger for the taste of human flesh. Filltree wondered why he’d ever wanted a tyrannosaur in the first place. Rexie hissed in defiance, arching his neck forward and opening his mouth wide to reveal ranks of knife-sharp little teeth.

Filltree frowned. Was it his imagination or had the little tyrannosaur grown another six inches in the last six minutes? The creature seemed a lot bigger than he remembered him being. Of course, he’d been so angry at the little monster that he hadn’t really looked at him closely for a while.

“He’s awfully big. Have you been feeding him again?” he demanded of his daughter.

“No!” Jill said, indignantly. “We’ve only been giving him leftovers. Mommy said it’s silly to waste food.”

“In addition to his regular meals?”

“But, Daddy, we can’t let him to
starve
—”

“He’s in no danger of starving. No wonder he’s gotten so voracious. You’ve accelerated his appetite as well as his growth. I told you not to do that. Well ... it’s over now. We should have done this a long time ago.” Filltree picked up the net and brought it around slowly, approaching Rexie from his blind side, taking great care not to alarm the two-foot tyrant king. The thing was getting large enough to be dangerous.

Rexie hissed and bit at the net, but did not try to run. Tyrannosaurs did not have it in their behavior to run. They attacked. They ate. If they couldn’t do one, they did the other. If they couldn’t do either, they waited until they could do one or the other. The creatures had the singlemindedness of lawyers.

Working quickly, Filltree caught Rexie in the net and swung him up and over the glass fence of the terrarium. He lowered the dinosaur into the open carry cage, turned the net over in one swift movement to tumble the creature out, lifted it away and kicked the lid shut. He latched it rapidly before Rexie could begin bumping and thumping at it with his head. Jill watched, wide-eyed and resentful. She had stopped crying, but she still wore her cranky-face.

“What are you going to do with him?” she demanded.

“Well, he’s going to spend tonight in the service porch where it’s warm. Tomorrow, I’m going to take him to ... the dinosaur farm, where he’ll be a lot happier.” To the animal shelter, where they’ll put him down ... for a hefty fee.

“What dinosaur farm? I never heard of any dinosaur farm.”

“Oh, it’s brand new. It’s in ... Florida. It’s for dinosaurs like Rexie who’ve gotten too big to live in Connecticut. I’ll put him on an airplane and send him straight to Florida. And we can visit him next year when we go to Disney World, okay?”

“You’re lying—” Jill accused, but there was an edge of uncertainty in her tone. “When are we going to Disney World?”

“When you learn to stop whining. Probably when you’re forty or fifty.” Filltree grunted as he lifted the carry cage from behind. He could feel its center of gravity shifting in his arms as Rexie paced unhappily within, hissing and spitting and complaining loudly about being confined. The little tyrant was not happy. Jill complained in unison.
Neither
of the little tyrants were happy.

Somehow Filltree got the heavy box up the stairs and into the service porch. “He’ll be fine there till tomorrow, Jill.” In an uncharacteristic act of concession, he said, “You can feed him all the leftovers you want tonight. The harm has already been done. And you can say goodbye to him tomorrow before you go to school, okay?”

Jill grumped. “You’re not fair!” she accused. She stomped loudly out of the service porch and upstairs to her bedroom for a four-hour sulk, during which time she would gather her strength for the daughter of
all tantrums. Filltree waited until after he heard the slam of her door, then exhaled loudly, making a horsey sound with his lips. Considering the amount of agida produced, he wondered if he’d locked up the right animal.

Dinner was the usual resentful tableau. The servitors wheeled in, laid food on the table, waited respectfully, wheeled back, then removed the plates again. His wife glared across the soup at him. His daughter pouted over the salad. Not a word was said during the fish course. Instead of meat, there was soy-burger in silence again. Filltree had decided not to speak at all if he could possibly avoid it. Joyce couldn’t start chewing at him if he didn’t give her an opportunity.

Idly, he wondered how much meat it would take to accelerate Rexie’s growth to six feet tall. The idea of Rexie stripping the flesh from Joyce’s bones and gulping it hungrily down gave him an odd thrill of pleasure.

“What are you smiling about?” Joyce demanded abruptly.

“I wasn’t smiling—” he said, startled at having been caught daydreaming.

“Don’t lie to me. I
saw
you!”

“I’m sorry, dear. It must have been a gas pain. You know how soy-burger disagrees with me.”

He realized too late his mistake. Now that the conversational gauntlet had been flung, picked up and flung back, Joyce was free to expand the realm of the discussion into any area she chose.

She chose. “You’re being very cruel and unfair, you know that,” she accused. “Your daughter loves that animal. It’s her
favorite
.”

Filltree considered the obvious response: “That animal gets more hamburger than I do. I’m the breadwinner in this family. I’d like to be treated as well as Rexie.” He decided against it; down that way lay domestic violence and an expensive reconciliation trip to Jamaica. At the very least. Instead, he nodded and agreed with her. “You’re right. It is cruel and unfair. And yes, I know how much Jill loves Rexie.” He tasted the green beans. They were underdone. Joyce had readjusted the servitors again.

“Well, I don’t see why we can’t rebuild the terrarium.”

“It isn’t the terrarium,” Filltree pointed out quietly. “It’s Rexie. He’s been accelerated. Nothing we do is going to contain him anymore.” He resisted the temptation to remind her that he had warned her about this very possibility. “If he gets any bigger, he’s going to start being a hazard.
I don’t want think we should take the risk, do you?” He inclined his head meaningfully in Jill’s direction.

Joyce looked thwarted. Jonathan had hit her with an argument she couldn’t refute. She pretended to concede the point while she considered her next move. Perhaps it was just the shape of her new coiffure, but her expression seemed ominous and calculating. Filltree wondered why he’d ever wanted to marry her in the first place.

His wife patted the tinted hairs at the back of her neck and smiled gently. “Well, I don’t know how you intend to make it up to your daughter ... but I hope you have something appropriate figured out.” Both she and Jill looked to him expectantly.

Filltree met their gaze directly. He returned her plastic smile with one of equal authenticity. “Gee, I can’t think of anything to take Rexie’s place.”

Joyce tightened her lips ever so delicately. “Well, I can. And I’m sure Jill can too, can’t you sweetheart ...?” Joyce looked to Jill. Jill smiled. They both looked to Daddy again.

So. That was it. Filltree recognized the ploy. Retreat on one battlefield, only to gain on another. Jamaica appeared inescapable. He considered his options. Option. Dead end. “You’ve already made the booking, haven’t you?” His artificial smile widened even more artificially.

“I see,” his wife said curtly. “Is that what you think of me ...?” He recognized the tone immediately. If he said anything at all—
anything
—she would escalate to tactical nukes within three sentences. The
worst
thing he could say would be, “Now, sweetheart—”

Instead, he opened his mouth and said, “We can’t go, in any case. I have research to do in Denver.” This time, he amazed even himself. Denver? Where had
that
idea come from? “I’ll be gone for a month. Maybe two. At least. I’m sorry if this ruins your plans, dear. I would have told you sooner, but I was hoping I wouldn’t have to go. Unfortunately...I just heard this afternoon that no one else is available for this job.” He spread his hands wide in a gesture of helplessness.

Joyce’s mouth tightened almost to invisibility—then reformed itself in a deliberate smile. “I see,” she said, in a voice like sugared acid. She refused to lose her temper in front of Jill. It was a bad role model, she insisted. She had declared that eight years ago, and in the past five, Jonathan Filltree had amused himself endlessly by seeing how close to the edge he could push her before she toppled over into incoherence.
Tonight—with Denver—he had scored a grand slam home run, knocking it all the way out of the park and bringing in all three runners on base. “We’ll talk about this later,” she said with finality, her way of admitting that she was outflanked and that she had no choice but to retreat and regroup her energies while she reconnoitered the terrain. She would be back. But for the moment, the conversation was temporarily suspended.

“I’ll be up late,” Filltree said genially. “I have a report to finish. And I have to pack tonight too.” He took a healthy bite of soy-burger. It was suddenly delicious.

Joyce excused herself to escort Jill upstairs to get her ready for bed. “But, Mommy, don’t I get dessert...” the child wailed.

“Not while your Daddy is acting like this—”

Jonathan Filltree spent the rest of the evening working quietly, almost enjoying himself, anticipating what it would be like to have a little quiet in the house without the regular interruption of Rexie’s intolerable predations. If only he could get rid of Jill and Joyce as easily.

Filltree wondered if he should sleep on the couch in his office tonight, but then decided that would be the same as admitting a) that there had been a battle, and b) he had lost. He would not concede Joyce one inch of territory. Before heading upstairs, he took a look in at Rexie.

The tyrannosaur was working at the left side wall of the carry cage, scratching at it with first one foot, then the other, trying to carve an opening for itself. It bumped its head ferociously against the side; already the thick polymoid surface was deformed and even a little cracked. Filltree squatted down to get a closer look at the box, running his hands over the strained material. He decided that the damage inflicted was not sufficient to be worrisome; the carry cage would hold together for one more day. And one more day was all he needed.

He headed upstairs to bed, smiling to himself. It was a small victory, but a victory nonetheless. The knowledge that he’d be paying for it for months to come didn’t detract from the satisfaction he took in knowing that he’d finally held the line on something. Today, Rexie; tomorrow, the soy-burger.

He was awakened by screaming—unfamiliar and agonized. Something was crashing through the kitchen. He heard the clattering of utensils. Joyce was sitting up in bed beside him, screaming herself, and clawing at his arm. “Do something!” she cried.

“Stay here!” he demanded. “See to Jill!” Wearing only his silk boxers, and carrying a cracked hockey stick as his weapon, he went charging down the stairs. The screaming was getting worse.

A male voice was raging, “Goddammit! Get it off of me! Help! Help! Anyone!” This was followed by the sound of someone battering at something with something. High-pitched shrieks of reptilian rage punctuated the blows.