Clash of the Geeks (7 page)

Q: There’s still there the problem with the whole “mythical animals” thing.

Scalzi: Unfortunately when Lysenkoism was dropped as a Soviet science policy in the mid-60s, a lot of the paperwork on this project was inadvertently destroyed. There are a few gaps here and there. You can’t expect me to be able to explain
everything
. 

Q: Even with their remote home, you’d think we would have heard about these things before. Because, you know. Unicorn pegasus kittens. They’re pretty marketable.

Scalzi: I think the official Russian government policy is to deny their existence. The Russians aren’t proud of everything their Soviet forebears did, and these experiments are one of those things it prefers not to talk about. If it officially recognizes the unicorn pegasus kittens, then it would also have to recognize The Great Zombie Were-Koala Plague of 1959, which wiped out half the population of the Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. There would have to be reparations. Russia can’t afford that now. 

Q: So how does one get a unicorn pegasus kitten from Irkutsk to Los Angeles?

Scalzi: Let’s just say you have to know a guy, and leave it at that.

Q: Okay. So when did you all manage to get together?

Scalzi: We did the posing in early April. I was out in LA on other business and so I was able to carve out a couple of hours from my schedule.

Q: Was doing the posing difficult?

Scalzi: No, Jeff’s a real pro. He took a lot of pictures for reference and did a quick sketch of us in our places, and then we were done. The hardest part was keeping the UPK in hover mode.

Q: Aside from the volcanoes, did Jeff take many liberties?

Scalzi: How do you mean?

Q: Well, Wil seems more pumped up, muscularly speaking, than he does in real life.

Scalzi: Are you kidding? Have you actually been in Wil’s presence?

Q: Well, no, I’ve just seen him in pictures.

Scalzi: Dude is
ripped
, man. I saw him changing his shirt at w00tstock. Each one of his six-pack has a six-pack. He’s got, like, a case-and-a-half pack. The pheromones that waft off him cause fish and amphibians to spontaneously change their sexes. Trust me, Jeff was totally working from life.

Q:
I have to say he hides it well in pictures.

Scalzi: Well, the thing is, he’s almost always wearing oversize t-shirts. To hide his form. Because he’s married, you know. Happily. He knows better than to wantonly ignite lust wherever he goes. It’s just not fair to his many admirers. 

Q: So you’re saying he’s keeping his awesome musculature under wraps…for the fans.

Scalzi: That’s just the sort of incredibly cool guy he is. I mean, have you ever heard of any other public figure who would do something like that?

Q: Honestly, no.

Scalzi: Exactly. So in some ways it’s a treat from them that the clown sweater shows his true and ample dimensions.

Q: Not to mention the blue hot pants.

Scalzi: I suppose indirectly they offer some salacious thrill for the kids. But you should know those blue shorts have historical military significance.

Q:
I don’t know this, to tell you the truth.

Scalzi: You went to high school, right?

Q:
I have some memory of it, yes.

Scalzi: Then in your world history class you should have learned that in 1263, Alghu Khan, the great-grandson of Genghis Kahn, declared war on Kaidu, his rival for control of the Chagatai Khanate.

Q: Yes, that’s pretty much the only thing I remember from world history.

Scalzi: Then you’ll also remember that to defend himself from Alghu Khan, Kaidu allied himself with Berke, Khan of the Blue Horde, who give him an army. An army which included a cavalry of warriors so fearsome that they went into battle clad only in small, tight blue pants. Because that’s just how badass they were. Now, as it turns out, Wil is very distantly related to Kaidu, so when we put him astride the unicorn pegasus kitten with a spear in his hand, he felt the hot blue pants would be an appropriate tribute to his warlike ancestor and the cavalry he commanded.

Q: Of course, the clown sweater throws off the historical accuracy a bit.

Scalzi: We’re not doing a Ken Burns documentary here. We can afford a little room for creative interpretation.

Q: Like with you being an orc.

Scalzi: What do you mean?

Q: The portrayal of you as an orc. All green and scaly and ugly and, you know, orcish.

Scalzi: You don’t like me as an orc?

Q: I just think it looks like you lost a bet of some sort. 

Scalzi:
Really. Lost a bet, is it.

Q: No offense.

Scalzi: Well, offense taken, asshole. I’ll have you know I’m proud of my orc ancestry.

Q: I’m sorry. I didn’t know.

Scalzi:
No, you didn’t know, did you. You thought just because I can superficially pass for a human, I
must
be human, and then you could make all your little bigoted orc jokes without consequence. Surprise, you dick. Probably everything you ever learned about orcs, you learned from Tolkien.

Q: Well…

Scalzi: That putz. Tolkien didn’t know any orcs. He never spent any
time
with orcs. And Oxford was—and still is, I’ll have you know—a hotbed of irrational anti-orc sentiment. Going to Tolkien for your orc history is like going to Shakespeare to learn the truth about Richard III. It’s all propaganda and lies. Anyway, lots of people these days are part orc. Famous people. And not just the ugly ones, or pro wrestlers. Angelina Jolie is part orc.

Q: Is she.

Scalzi: When she played Grendel’s mother in
Beowulf
, it was totally a shout-out to the Orc-American community.

Q: That might be stretching the interpretation of Grendel’s mother a bit.

Scalzi: How would you know? You know who one of the foremost Beowulf scholars was? Oh, yeah, that’s right——
Tolkien
. That bastard’s been screwing us for decades. Maybe you don’t want to see a conspiracy here, but then again, you don’t
have
to, do you, Mr. Oh-We’re-All-Humans-Here.

Q: Look, I’m really sorry. I was thoughtless. I apologize.

Scalzi: Warren Buffett’s part orc.

Q: Seriously. Very sorry.

Scalzi: Rachel
Ray
, man. 

Q: I believe you.

Scalzi: You better. 

Q: Let’s get back to the artwork.

Scalzi: Yes,
let’s
.

Q: I have to know, once the posing session was done, what happened to the unicorn pegasus kitten?

Scalzi: Well, it’s funny you should ask that. It was difficult enough getting the thing into the US, but once it was here, the middleman I used refused to ship it back. Said that now that it’s been exposed to US germs, taking it back to Irkutsk introduces a risk to the other UPKs. It could come back with a new strain of feline distemper, hoof and mouth disease or avian flu and just decimate the native population. So now it’s stuck here.

Q: It’s still here, then?

Scalzi: Yes. Wil put it up for a while, but the suburbs really aren’t the place of a unicorn pegasus kitten, you know? Dogs make it nervous and with that horn it’s only a matter of time before it came home with Fido impaled on its head, and then there would have to be apologies, and explanations, and animal control officers coming around. Also, unicorn pegasus kittens eat a lot and poop a lot, and contrary to expectation, they don’t poop sparkly rainbows. They just poop poop. 

Q: If it’s not with Wil, where is it now?

Scalzi:
As it happens, the Columbus Zoo here in Ohio happened to have another unicorn pegasus kitten—apparently they knew a guy, too – and was interested in acquiring ours in order to have a breeding pair. So they paid for shipping and off it went, and from what they tell me it’s quite happy with its new mate. They also say that when the wind is right, you can hear their mating calls in Cleveland. 

Q: I’m not sure I needed to know that.

Scalzi: Oh, I’m quite sure you
did
, my friend.