Frek and the Elixir (57 page)

The splitting reminded Frek of something: The Orpolese themselves reproduced in this way. Perhaps they were finding the shuggoth bodies more congenial than those of human form. Just as Jeroon had said, as soon as the monster divided, a fresh Orpolese halo appeared on the new scion. Off in Orpoly customers were waiting in line for the New Revised Humanity Channel Game Featuring the Attack of the Shuggoths.

“Did you hear Ellie say that one of them turned into a thousand this afternoon?” said Renata. “That's sick. Where will it stop?”

“There could be millions tonight,” said Frek. “Trillions tomorrow. Nothing to stop them until the food runs out. Until nothing's left.”

“You should talk to the Orpolese,” said Renata. “Make them quit. Or if you don't want to, I can talk to them.”

“I have a better idea,” said Frek. “I'll go to the branecasters. I'm still the humanity channel's rep.”

All the way to Middleville, Frek and Renata saw shuggoth trails and shuggoths. The farms down by the River Jaya were denuded. It was hard to believe this much damage had been done in one afternoon. Uphill from the ravaged farms, the ever-multiplying wave of shuggoths was plowing through the mapine forest. In the mass, the alien-controlled combines were like an avalanche, like a tidal wave, like lava. The shuggoths had just reached the outmost isolated house trees at the edge of Middleville. People were running toward the center of town.

“The Orpolese got bored with us,” said Renata. “They're like bratty kids kicking down someone's sand castle. I hate that.”

Yes. The Orpolese had tired of watching Earth's slow upward progress. The audience share had dropped. So the producers Vlan and Tagine were pulling a desperation move to attract viewers. Kolder Steiner had given them the recipe for an agent to merge organisms together. What had Stoo said? “Your crunchy-granola little biome won't be the same for long.” But surely Kolder hadn't realized things would be this bad. In a day or two there'd be nothing left, from pole to pole.

“There's my house,” said Frek. “I think Ida and the toons can find the Magic Pig. He's got to help me now. I have to see the branecasters.” They landed in the backyard between the garden and the dogs' hut. Already alerted by the sounds and smells of the shuggoths, the dogs were furiously barking. Wow squeaked out a few hoarse questions.

“Don't let them touch you,” Frek told him. “And save your barking until they reach our front yard. Warn us then, and run.”

The angelwings were already unsettled, and the sight of the puppies made them frantic. Frek and Renata quickly garaged them and ran into the house.

“Oh, Frek,” cried Lora. “Thank Buddha you're here. We're seeing frightful things on the news. They say we should evacuate.”

“I can see them from my window,” called Geneva from the head of the stairs. “At the edge of town. Help me pack, Mom!”

“What are they?” Ida asked Frek.

“Shuggoths,” said Frek. “Giant killer slugs. Look, we have to tune away from the news and watch some toons. The Goob Dolls and the Skull Farmers. I want to talk with them.”

“Watch toons!” exclaimed Lora. “Have you lost your mind? Come upstairs and grab whatever you want to save, Frek. The news said we have to be out of here in five minutes.”

“Mom!” shrieked Geneva. “I can't find my nupearl necklace!”

“Calm down!” yelled Lora, running upstairs. “You lent that necklace to Amparo.”

“Put on the Goob Dolls,” Renata urged Ida.

“Okay,” said Ida in her deep little voice. She and Renata had become pals.

Meanwhile Frek dashed upstairs and fetched his Skull Farmers urlbud. Lora and Geneva were each in their rooms, frantically packing—for now they ignored him. By the time Frek got back down and slapped his bud onto the family room wall, the three Goob Doll characters were already active. And now Soul Soldier sprang up at Goob Doll Judy's side.

“Frek wants to find the Magic Pig,” Renata told the toons. “We only have a few minutes.”

“Let's try the alley where he disappeared this morning,” said Goob Doll Judy, batting her eyes at Soul Soldier. “We can go there with this big strong Skull Farmer.”

As usual Soul Soldier was toting a heavy-duty machine-gun. “Ready for pig-huntin',” he said, opening his bare, blackened jaws to return Judy's grin.

“It's so nice to see you, Leroy,” said Goob Doll Judy.

“Don't call me that,” said Soul Soldier, shaking his head. “Only my mama call me Leroy. If the other boys hear you say that stuff, they gonna—”

He broke off as Strummer and Gypsy Joker appeared.

“Niiice,” said Goob Doll LingLing, elbowing Tawni. “Dates for us girls, too.” She stepped forward and plucked a string of Strummer's guitar, then gave a little flip to the lapel of his cape. “I love musicians.” LingLing's glasses were pointed like flirty cat's eyes.

“I'll sing about you,” said Strummer. “Take you right on board.”

“We stalkin' that pig?” Gypsy Joker asked Tawni. She nodded. He cocked his toothy jaw in something like a leer. “Lead the way, pretty mama. I'll be right behind you.”

“Heel,” said Tawni.

“Are you packed, Frek?” shouted Mom from upstairs. “Ida? The shuggoths are only a few blocks away!”

Up on the family room wall, the Skull Farmers and the Goob Dolls were racing down the same curlicued pastel street as this morning, and once again they ended up in an alley's dead end. With no Magic Pig in sight.

“He ain't gonna hide much longer,” said Gypsy Joker, taking one of the dice from his dangling earring. “Back off, boys and girls.”

He tossed the ivory cube at the spot on the ground where the Magic Pig had wheenked away this morning. With a disorientingly rapid reverse zoom, their viewpoint sped out from the alley and up into the blue sky, well past some cute puffy Goob Doll clouds. A thermonuclear mushroom bloomed from the alley below, flattening every building in the Goob Doll's home town.

“Oops!” said Judy in a cheerful tone.

Making a sound like a squadron of dive-bombing jets, the Skull Farmers and the Goob Dolls flew down into the heart of the cloud, with Soul Soldier laying down a withering barrage of machine-gun fire, complete with rhythmic muzzle-flashes and the sight of shell casings flying by.

Inside the cloud was a vague glow. But then, yes, they found a round hole in the ground right where the Magic Pig had disappeared. Strummer unlimbered his guitar and struck a fierce arpeggio of notes. The sounds echoed down into the hole—was there a response?

“Sooey sooey sooey, pig pig pig!” sang Goob Doll Tawni.

“We you coming to get!” added LingLing, and burst into giggles. “Kill the pig!”

Strummer plucked his strings again. There was definitely an answer from the hole. A faint
wheenk.

“Go in there, Judy,” said Ida. “Bring him out. He has to talk to my brother.”

Squaring her slender shoulders, Goob Doll Judy took a deep breath and dove into the hole. One cartoon moment later she was back, firmly grasping the Magic Pig by one of his floppy ears. He didn't seem able to break free of her grip. His teeth were chipped yellow stumps. With his white bristles and wrinkled eyes, he looked pitifully decrepit. But maybe that was on purpose.

“Let me go,” grunted the Magic Pig.

“No,” said Judy, giving Rundy a shake. Far from letting him go, she fastened onto his other ear as well, waving him around like a piece of laundry.

“Tell him, Frek!” exclaimed Ida.

“I have to get to the branecasters, Rundy,” said Frek. “I want to terminate the Orpolese production deal.”

“Business opportunity!” exclaimed the Magic Pig. He followed this with so long and shrill an oink that Judy had to drop him and slap her hands over her ears. But rather than running away, the Magic Pig struck a pose, letting an update ripple across his image. His straggly bristles shortened, his teeth whitened, his careworn wrinkles smoothed away. His body itself grew rounder, his aura brightened to a healthy glow.

“I'm at your service,” continued the Magic Pig, bowing with a sweep of his immaculate trotter. “We have three problems to solve. (a) You can't terminate a production deal without picking a new producer. (b) You have to go to the Planck brane in person to contract for a new producer. And (c) there is no branelink hookup between your plane brane location and the Planck brane.”

“Oh yeah?” said Soul Soldier, poking the Magic Pig's smoothly curved stomach with his gun. “How'd you get here then?”

“I'm a projection,” said Rundy. “An information pattern like you. Shooting me would mean nothing. So don't do it, bonehead.”

“Frek!” exclaimed Lora, coming down the stairs with a bag in each hand. “What was that horrible squealing? We have to go!” She glanced back up the stairs. “Hurry, Geneva! The shuggoths will be here any second!”

Frek began talking to the wall skin very fast. “(a) The Unipuskers can be our new producers,” he told Rundy. “(b) I'll go to the Planck brane right now. And (c), I bet you can bend a branch of the brane link tree down to touch our space here. Make it lead to—to the pantry in our kitchen.”

“That'll work,” said the Magic Pig after the briefest of pauses. He was enjoying himself. “It'll be good theater. The Unipuskers can use it in their sign-up ads. I happen to know the Unipuskers haven't withdrawn their offer. Here comes the link.”

A
whump
sounded from the kitchen, and a clatter.

“The shuggoths!” screamed Lora, who hadn't been paying attention to the toons at all.

“They're still fifty meters off,” yelled Geneva from upstairs. “I'm coming, Mom. Do you realize that stupid Frek and Ida haven't packed a single thing?”

Before Lora could say anything, Frek and Renata ran into the kitchen and flung open the pantry door.

There was no sign of the shelves of food you'd expect to see in here. Instead some wavering pinstripes twitched in the air just beyond the doorframe, sketching a picture of an arched opening—Frek recognized it as the entrance to the Pig Hill branelink tree, as seen from the inside.

And beyond the tree hole was the Planck brane world, with the branecasters standing there posed as if for a formal portrait upon a green hilltop, with more hills rolling away in the background. Chainey, Jayney, Bitty, Batty, Sid, and Cecily—with the Magic Pig cozily nestled in pink-jowled Cecily's ample arms. He was, after all, her father.

“Hang on to me,” said Frek, taking Renata's left hand with his left hand. “I'll go in. Be ready to pull me back.”

Renata braced herself in the door frame, and Frek stepped through. Ida put her arms around Renata's waist, just in case.

Right away Frek could see the Planck brane had changed a lot. A year's worth of renormalization storms had come and gone, six or seven yugas. Today's Planck brane was flatly rendered, tinted in beautiful unnatural shades, and detailed with masses of photorealistic texture. Objects were juxtaposed in striking ways that ignored the constraints of physical size. It was a world of artful photo collage. The cityscape of Node G had become rolling hills with curious monumental structures on their peaks.

What made the scene especially surreal was that, although the landscape was lit as if by warm afternoon sun, the sky was dark and blue-black, sprinkled with five-pointed stars and hung with a full moon.

Frek's first thought was to look up into the branches of the branelink tree for Dad. While the tree had once looked like a great dead oak, now it was wholly flat and simple, a giant oval leaf, with its trunk transmuted into the leaf's stem. The veins in the leaf echoed the structure of the former branches.

Craning his head so far back that his neck hurt, and pzooming his view across the tree's surface, Frek finally spotted something upon the skyscraping leaf. A puff of white fiber, like a spot where a spider tacks down a surplus fly. Could that be Dad?

“Hello,” said someone, drawing Frek's attention down. It was bald, gray-skinned Chainey, his mouth, as usual, a humorless slot. He and the others were impeccably dressed, with lots of gold jewelry. Chainey's thin-lipped spouse, Jayney, was leaning on his arm, her head cocked at just the exact polite angle to indicate she was attentively listening to what everyone said. “Rundy says you want a new deal,” continued Chainey.

“Yes,” said Frek. From the Middleville kitchen behind him came the sound of Wow barking. No time to interrogate or bargain. Earth needed instant relief. “Please switch us to the Unipuskers right away.”

“Orpolese went crazy on you, hey?” said Sid, twisting his thick lips. “We're more than happy to change the deal. The Unipuskers have a very nice package on the table. We can see you're in a rush, so no need to go over the details. Right, Bitty?”

“I double-checked the figures,” said rumpled Bitty, leaning on a pencil the size of a walking-stick. She opened her mouth and waggled her tongue with its heavy gold stud. “We love it!”

“You can be the one to start the deal this time, Batty,” said Jayney.

Twitchy, hunched-over Batty lurched toward Frek, holding out a big-knuckled veiny hand for Frek to shake. But first Frek glanced back at Renata and tightened his grip upon her warm hand—lest Batty try and judo-flip him, or worse. And then he shook with Batty.

“Your Orpolese espers are gone as of now,” said Batty, fixing Frek with his glittering eyes. “You'll meet Hawb in your home town to finish the deal.” He released Frek's hand.

Back in the real world, Wow's barking was rising to a crescendo, joined by Lora's cries of alarm. Frek cast a last wistful glance at the motionless tuft of spider silk stuck so high upon the flat tree, and then stepped back through the arched opening in the trunk.

As he left the Planck brane he heard a low squeal from the Magic Pig followed by a rumble of laughter from Sid, as if to say, “Screwed them again, eh?”