Frek and the Elixir (58 page)

In the kitchen everything looked golden bright. Espers were definitely watching through Frek's eyes. Probably the Unipuskers. But he had no time to focus on his sky-air-comb routine.

“Hurry!” Mom was shouting. “We can still get out the back door.”

Wobbly surfaces of gray and green were visible out the front door. Shuggoths. Wow had taken a stand beside his dog house, baying at the intruders.

“Move it!” called Geneva, already out in the back with her carry-pod at her side. Mom, Frek, and Ida ran to join her.

Glancing toward the side yard, Frek saw something wonderful. The shuggoths were lying still, barely trembling. And their Orpolese haloes were gone.

“Help me, Frek,” said Geneva, wrestling with her heavy carry-pod. “Stop staring at those icky things.”

“We don't have to run!” exclaimed Frek. “The shuggoths are dying.”

Wow made so bold as to dart over and nip at a crooked goat-leg that dangled from the nearest shuggoth. A split appeared in the beast's side. Another tug from Wow and the gray shuggoth skin broke open like a wet paper bag. The connective slime oozed away and the shuggoth's components lay revealed: bushes, tree limbs, deer, rabbits, worms, a goat, mushrooms, grasses, fish, and a woman.

“It's Shurley Yang, the tailor,” exclaimed Mom. “Can we wake her up?”

“I know first aid,” said Ida. Frek's brave little sister picked her way through the smelly debris of the shuggoth and leaned over the comatose Shurley Yang. With quick motions, Ida cleaned out Shurley's nose and mouth, and then she crouched down to give the woman artificial respiration. Even Geneva had to stop yelling and watch.

A few minutes later, Shurley was coughing and sitting up among the tangled mapine branches.

“Bless you, Ida,” said the tailor, rubbing her face. “I was working with a turmite mound and—it was like the sky fell onto my back. One of those things—” She gestured toward a nearby shuggoth. “It swallowed me. An Orpolese player was running it, holding us together and thinking our thoughts. Ow.” She leaned over and rubbed her legs. “I got pretty banged-up in there. Like a doll in a purse.”

Frek walked over to the next shuggoth and gave a hard yank on one of its lifeless tentacles. It, too, split open.

“I'm down with this, too,” said Renata, and they moved around the neighborhood, helping to dissolve the shuggoths into their component parts. All across town the shuggoths were dead and decomposing. People were picking around the melting shuggoths, clearing the debris away. Those who'd lost their homes were loosening the soil, preparing to plant fresh house tree seeds. There was a feeling of calm, as after a great storm.

The wonderful thing was that, for the first time in a year, all the citizens were free of alien control. But perhaps not for long.

The unyunching saucer of Cawmb and Hawb appeared in the evening sky like a thunderhead—huge, gray, flattened, with a bump on top and a round window on the bottom. As it shrank toward Middleville, the shape grew smoother and shinier, more clearly saucerian. Soon it was floating right overhead, a two-hundred-meter UFO, its chromed surface broken by a dozen gleaming feelers.

Any minute now Hawb and Cawmb would emerge to finalize the deal by shaking Frek's hand. And then people would be wearing Unipusker halos and living out their days as actors in these new aliens' game.

“I can't let it happen again,” Frek told Renata. He kept thinking about poor, angry Stoo.

As if called up by his words, the orange donut of Tagine appeared, flying low across Middleville. Vlan's dark, iridescent tentacles waved from the side of the Orpolese craft; a bolt of energy shot toward the Unipusker saucer.

Moving with negligent ease, one of the saucer's feelers sketched a space warp that reflected the blast up into the heavens. The Unipuskers had learned from their last encounter with the Orpolese.

Six or seven chromed snakes lashed out from the saucer, uncoiling so rapidly that they managed to seize Tagine and Vlan. Vlan launched a cascade of energy bolts. The saucer absorbed these, growing larger and brighter. Tagine spat out a blinding cannonade of fireballs. The miniature suns scattered off the saucer like hailstones, digging smoking craters into the ground where they hit.

The end came quickly. Boluses of energy wobbled out along the Unipusker's gleaming feelers, inflating the Orpolese into a wobbly pumpkin/cuttlefish balloon—which exploded into scraps of black and orange. Just like that, the fight was over. The fragments that had been the Orpolese fluttered through the air like dead leaves, dissolving into nothingness as they fell.

The great round window in the Unipusker saucer's underside shuddered. Hawb and Cawmb floated through, then rode smoothly down upon a tractor beam, their thick-plated brown skins glinting in the setting sun, bright highlights flashing from the gold covers on their stubby tails. Their clawed feet dug into the soft soil of Frek's backyard.

Hawb's flat clamshell head opened one edge, showing his yellow-lined mouth. “Greet Frek. Request that we close our deal.”

He stepped forward with his thick three-fingered hand extended, his pale blue eyes bouncing on his eye stalks as he came.

“Just a minute,” said Frek, edging back toward the kitchen door. “I'm not ready.”

“Demand immediate satisfaction,” said Cawmb, close on Hawb's heels. “Inform you that Unipusker gold has already been transferred to the Planck brane. Warn of grave actions from the branecasters should you fail to honor your commitment.”

“Um—that's just it,” said Frek. “I kind of rushed my deal with the branecasters. They didn't tell me what we'd get in return. We got the elixir for signing on with the Orpolese, but what are we getting for signing on with Unipusk?”

Over by their turmite-paper garage, Lora and Geneva were staring at the Unipuskers with their mouths agape. Ida and Renata were at Frek's side. If Ida was scared of the Unipuskers, she didn't show it.

“Extol the fabled Unipusker organizational skills,” said Hawb, twitching his eye stalks to shake off some gnats. “Promise that we will conform your behaviors to the Unipusk Branecast Code. Guarantee that we will prune down the species of your overly diverse biome. Shake my hand.”

In front of the house, crows were noisily picking over the remains of the shuggoths. The flowers in the backyard were bobbing in the evening breeze. Starlings swooped about in the twilight, catching moths. At Frek's feet a puppy was nosing a glow worm.

“Go inside and start up the toons,” Frek told Ida in a quiet tone. “Put a whole lot of them on the kitchen walls.”

“How are your children, Cawmb?” said Renata by way of distracting the aliens. “I hope none of them have ickspot?” She couldn't quite suppress a giggle.

“Express anger that you dare to gloat over your wicked ruse,” said Cawmb, slapping the curious Woo away from his gold-covered tail. “Marvel that none of our children perished in the collapse of our dwelling. Deny your right to make further jokes.” Ida had slipped into the house.

“So how many children do you two have now, Hawb?” temporized Frek.

“Assert the number at bedtime last night to have been eight hundred and sixteen,” said Hawb, still holding out his hand. Flies were landing in the sticky corners of his mouth. “Cease your chatter and close our deal!”

“Correct the always-careless Hawb and assert the correct count to be eight hundred and twenty-two including my newborns!” put in Cawmb pugnaciously. Just then a puppy hopped onto his foot. Cawmb swung his leg, sending the puppy flying. “Advise that we soon replace your filthy plants and animals with rickrack and vigs.”

“No way,” said Frek, working to keep the conversation going. “The whole reason I went to the galactic core was to restore our biome. Can't you see how beautiful it is here? Listen to the birds!”

Actually, the main sound right now was a cacophony of voices from the Huggins kitchen—drawls, quacks, whistles, yells, and whoops. Ida had started all the toons.

“Shake now!” said Hawb, still holding out his hand, uninterested in anything but closing his deal.

“Give me five minutes,” said Frek. “I have to talk to the branecasters one last time and get some things clear. We have a branelink right inside my house. Wait here. You can talk to my mother and my other sister. Lora and Geneva.”

“Can we look under the cover on your tail?” Geneva asked Hawb. She'd heard all about the Unipuskers from Frek. “I want to see the baby Unipuskers.”

“Don't be rude to our guests, dear,” said Lora. “Would you two like to sit down?” She darted into the garage and emerged with a bolt of turmite silk. “I don't think any of our chairs would hold you, but this will take the chill off the ground.” She shook out the turmite silk like a picnic spread. “Can I offer you a snack? You must sample our anyfruit and drink some tree-juice. Perhaps I'll play you some music. Do you have music on Unipusk?” A minute later, the Unipuskers were sitting on the ground eating peaches and apples, listening to Lora play a simple tune upon a wooden flute.

Good old Mom.

When he and Renata reached the kitchen, Frek found the walls teeming with toons. Though the Goob Dolls and the Skull Farmers seemed to have become fast friends, some of the others were miffed to be sharing a wall skin. Normally people ran only one cast of toons at a time.

“What these free-loading pests doing on my farm?” fumed Da Nha Duc, immersed up to his orange knees in the green water of his rice paddy. His hoarse voice was so close to a duck's quack that he was quite hard to understand.

Only a few feet away, the water blended into the sour-colored purple and yellow stripes of the Space Monkey's circus tent. “Get rid of the others, Frek,” chirped Space Monkey Dolfy, swinging forward so that his face took up a third of the kitchen wall.

“Don't get so big!” snapped Goob Doll Tawni, jabbing Dolfy with a pin from her bun.

“I'm here too,” called a cuttlefish with a mortarboard.

“Professor Bumby?” exclaimed Frek.

“I'm the Professor Bumby
toon,
” said the cuttlefish. “Not that departed alien's mouthpiece anymore. I've gone autonomous like any other toon. Virtually real and artificially intelligent, with simulated evolution and synthetic speech. It's a life. I've got a plan for a new show that—move over, you!” The cuttlefish flared an angry red and rolled up one of his long tentacles to thump Skull Farmer Strummer on his bony pate.

Strummer elbowed Sue Ellen Klaxon, who shoved Goob Doll Judy, who kicked Dha Na's nephew Huy into the rice paddy. Huy's brother Duy threw a mud ball at Space Monkey Dolfy. Dolfy ducked, and the mud ball struck the stomach of one of the Financiers of the Apocalypse, who was riding Puffy Pam the dragon with Mean Queen at his side. Some round-faced Happy Eaters pushed forward to clean up the scraps of mud. They were part of a pachinko toon game that Ida liked to play.

Ida herself was staring at it all, her mouth open in a grin. “We should always do this, Frek,” she said.

“Don't make it no habit,” said Soul Soldier, flicking a Happy Eater off his shoulder. “We ain't gonna tolerate this kind of mess very long.”

“You tell them, Leroy,” cooed Goob Doll Judy, leaning against the dark skeleton's side. Her face suddenly asterisked in distaste and she yanked Fax Frog from the inside of her shirt, then skimmed the obnoxious green toon along the wall's surface. He came to rest in the Space Monkeys' garbage can, his croaks echoing.

But now Frek heard something louder: Hawb's voice in the backyard, complaining, followed by Lora's soothing tones. Geneva sang out something perky to distract the Unipuskers. She and Mom weren't going to be able to keep the testy aliens occupied for all that long.

Renata felt the urgency. “Help us out and I'll see that each and every one of you gets a full day of primo display time in the hologram at the top of the Toonsmithy,” she told the toons.

“Oooo,” said the toons, pleased at the thought. Toons lived and died by their publicity. The more wall skins they got invited onto, the more space and time they had for their personal worlds.

“So let's hear a plan,” said Renata, giving Frek a quizzical smile. “Or should I make one?”

“I'm going through that door into another world,” said Frek, pointing to the pantry. He could see from here that it was indeed still a branelink entrance. The Magic Pig hadn't yet taken it away. “And I want all of the toons to come with me.”

“Me too,” said Ida. “I want to help save Daddy.”

“And me,” said Renata. “By now I know more about toons than you. But what makes you think they'll be able to pass through the branelink?”

“The creatures in the Planck brane are almost the same as toons,” said Frek. “I just realized that today. They call themselves Hubs. They only stay alive if the other Hubs keep thinking about them. They're ideas, just like the toons.” He raised his voice to address everyone on the kitchen walls. “You toons will like it over there in the Planck brane. You'll have lots of room.”

Again Hawb's voice rumbled outside.

“Less talk, more action,” said little Ida, marching over to the pantry door. “I'm ready to kick butt.”

“Here's what we'll do,” said Frek, talking fast. “We'll find Dad, blow up the Exaplex, and wipe out the branecasters. The toons can help.”

Ida led the way through the branelink with Frek and Renata close behind. The toons flowed down the kitchen walls and through the doorframe. As they passed into the Planck brane world they popped into three-dimensionality, as real as Frek and the girls: the hard-looking Skull Farmers and the Financiers of the Apocalypse; the colorful Goob Dolls with their Mean Queen foe; the wealthy, backbiting Klaxons; the choleric Da Nha Duc and his nephews; Geneva's fat Puffy Pam dragon; the alien-designed Professor Bumby; and the bouncy, grinning Happy Eaters.

“Excellent polygon count,” exclaimed Strummer, staring down at his guitar. He swiveled his skull around once, twice, three times. “Are we ready to boogie? Who do I ice, Frek?”

“The branecasters,” said Frek. “There's six of them, three women and three men. But—”

The branecasters were nowhere to be seen. The top of Pig Hill was deserted, a sunny green meadow beneath a star-spangled night sky. A few pale clouds set off the full golden moon.

Well, even if the branecasters weren't around, Frek could get down to saving Dad and wrecking the Exaplex. The branelink tree stretched up like an enormous beech leaf, veined with a zillion possibilities. High, high up on its side was the cottony little puff that Frek thought might hold Carb. It was only thanks to pzoom that he could see it at all. Before starting toward the cocoon, he looked out across the landscape, checking against the approach of enemies.

No longer a gritty metropolis, Node G was a landscape of pristine creeks and wooded hills with odd-shaped buildings on their peaks. The structures were formed like immense copies of familiar objects—a giant boot, a clock, a jingle-bell, a stone owl, a bowler hat, a pair of lips, an apple—no two of the hilltop edifices were the same.

Distant tiny Hubs quivered in the air around the buildings; it seemed that in this new order all of them could fly. But none were headed toward Pig Hill. This was the ideal moment for Frek to rescue his father. Still he hesitated, afraid of what he might find. It had been a whole year.

He turned his attention to the toon creatures, cheerfully milling around and chatting with each other. They were companionably playing with the possibilities of this new world, quite unconstrained by normal physics.

Strummer hopped high up into the air and hung there playing a solo; Goob Doll Judy flew along a trajectory that included a series of sudden right-angle turns; Huy, Lui, and Duy Duc zapped from spot to spot without bothering to traverse the spaces that lay between. Most startling of all, Puffy Pam the dragon instantiated three, no four, copies of her large self, taking advantage of the unconstrained Planck brane space, so much more commodious than a network of wall skins.

“Well?” said Renata.

“I'll try to save Dad,” sighed Frek. “Or see what's left of him. I'm not that optimistic. You might as well wait down here. Keep an eye on the toons.” Frek beckoned to Gypsy Joker. “Can you carry me up to that fuzzy spot on the leaf up there? And you, Space Monkey Dolfy, you come along, too.”

“I want to help get Daddy,” put in Ida. “Tawni, you carry me.”

With Frek cradled in the skeleton's arms and Ida perched on the Goob Doll's back, the brother and sister rose to the top of the kilometer-high beech leaf. Dolfy and two other Space Monkeys followed close behind, climbing up the ridged veins. Professor Bumby tagged along too, gently beating the skirt of his cuttlefish fin.

“Daddy's in that white puff?” said Ida as they approached the silky two-meter cocoon. “It looks awful.”

“The branecasters kept decohering him,” said Frek. “Feeding on him like vampires. They did it to me for a few minutes, but Dad saved me. And now they've had him for a year. I wish I'd come sooner. I'm—I'm scared that—”

“It might be too late,” said Ida. “He's not moving at all. Wake up, Daddy!”

The white mummy was quite still.

“Dad!” yelled Frek, echoing his sister. “It's Ida and me! We're here to save you!”

But when he pulled loose the silken shroud there was no Carb inside. In his place was a layered mass of—pictures? Gossamer-thin leaves with images of Carb and Lora and the kids spilled out and drifted away, melting into thin air as they tumbled. There was nothing left of Frek's father but dry, lifeless memories, and in a few moments the memories too were gone. A final object came rattling out of the limp shroud—a pair of rings, their bands linked together.

“Kac!” yelled Frek, and furiously flung the rings against the towering flat branelink tree. One of the veins promptly absorbed the pair—and they were gone for good. Like Dad. Ida was crying.

Just then some dark shapes angled down toward them from the night sky.

“Look out!” screamed Renata from below.

“Don't worry, darlings,” came a warm, womanly voice from on high. It was Aunt Guszti the flying catfish, accompanied by her niece Flinka the trout.

“We have come to be your guides,” called Guszti as she approached. “Today I think you will free the Hubs.” She beamed at the pullulating toons. “You have found very good Plan the B.”

“My father's dead,” said Frek. “Where are the branecasters?”

“Hiding in the Exaplex,” said Guszti, waggling the barbels beside her mouth. “They're frightened of the toons. Sad news about your father. But no surprise.”

“I bet the Magic Pig is with the branecasters,” added silver Flinka. “All the things he tells you to do, Frek, they are just so your path is the harder. I think he hinders you to make the humanity channel more interesting to watch.”

“Flinka talks silliness about our Pig,” interrupted Guszti. “He left branelink door open for you on purpose. He knew Frek would bring his Plan B toons. He sees the ending of the branecasters and he makes his plans the further ahead. Condolences from me as well, Frek, regarding your father.”

“Daddy's really gone?” said Ida, not quite believing it. “There was nothing in that sack but leaves with pictures.”

“His husk,” said Frek, and put his arm around his sister. Renata flew up to join them, and the three kids consoled each other for a minute.

“Let's take a look in Rundy's burrow,” said Frek, hoping to find some clues.

They flew down to the base of Pig Hill—Frek in Gypsy Joker's arms, Ida on Tawni's back, and Renata joining the parade with Goob Doll Judy. In their wake followed Flinka, Aunt Guszti, and more toons—lots of them.

The toons had all been making copies of themselves. Dozens of Goob Dolls, scores of Skull Farmers, hundreds of Ducs and thousands of Happy Eaters. Frek thought uneasily of the shuggoths. But this was different. The toons were copying themselves without eating anything. Self-replication came naturally to them. After all, they were used to deploying instances onto millions of different homes' wall skins at the same time. And, come to think of it, if the toons overran the Planck brane, who was to say it would be a bad thing?

Frek and Renata were the first two to reach the Magic Pig's arched door. Rundy's muddy wallow was to the side.

“Can you still kenny craft?” Renata asked Frek before they went in. “I'd feel better crawling into that burrow with a blaster in my hand.”

It had been nearly a year since Frek had even tried kenny crafting—it just didn't work for him on Earth. But he found that, in the Planck brane, he still had the knack. Frek went ahead and crafted heavy-duty blasters for himself, Renata, and Ida.

Ida was grimly pleased to have a gun. It only took her a second to figure out the controls, and before anyone could stop her, she'd widened Rundy's burrow to a height of three meters. She had a deft touch; she only excavated as far as the spot where the entrance burrow met the living room, leaving the Pig's quarters and furnishings fully intact.

Rundy's main room was much the same as before, with its clean piles of straw and its cupboard of yams and beets. One immediate fact they gleaned was that the Magic Pig hadn't been gone all that long, for there was a bubbling kettle of porridge on the hearth.

Frek went and tried the locked door of the Magic Pig's study. He was curious what was in there.

“Blast it open,” suggested Flinka, who'd pushed her way in with them.

“Let me,” said Ida, and raising her gun again. One quick needle of power punched out the lock. The door swung open.

What Frek saw in there was, strictly speaking, impossible. A green chair faced to the left, and at the same time the chair faced right. The Magic Pig was in the chair, but the chair was empty.

Frek was looking into a wholly different form of reality, a world of multidimensional time, with every alternative coexisting. A map, perhaps, of the Magic Pig's mind.

The Pig in the chair looked at Frek and made a spiteful face. But no, come to think of it, the Pig and the chair weren't there at all. The room was filled with images, like a thousand stories wanting to be told.

The Magic Pig was on all fours, bucking his back. He coughed out a soft pink bean. The little shape writhed and grew, it became a ruddy pouch with twitching tendrils, expanding like a house tree. The red flesh forked and split, branching into higher dimensions. A lowering face appeared upon the dark meat—Zed?
“Wheenk!”
laughed the Magic Pig.

“Lots happening,” said Flinka, her glowing body at Frek's side. None of them dared to actually enter the study.

The Magic Pig was definitely gone—though at the same time he was sitting in that green chair in the doorway, blocking the view. Inside the study Rundy was proudly giving Cecily Pig's hand—trotter—to Sid at a fancy wedding, with all the branecasters in attendance. No, it was a funeral. All around the figures, the hallways and the mind worms of the Exaplex grew, with Zed somehow present in every part of them. The branecasters leaned over Carb, decohering him into melting pictures—