Tom Swift and His Dyna-4 Capsule (10 page)

After a single block, a narrow ring surrounding downtown, the houses abandoned any attempt at reality. Further along they were only facades, as on a movie set, with nothing inside—indeed, no insides at all, just three walls and an open back.
Props for effect,
Bud decided. Like the hair clippings.

And beyond there was even less than that. The "houses" were only painted models planted in the ground. To create the illusion of distance when viewed from the center of town, the houses had been made smaller. They became the size of small sheds; then just rows of cheap dollhouses and toy cars, with lawns of green felt.

"It’s creepy-wonderful," observed Reb.

"I get the creepy part."

"Oh, but it’s all imitation, artificial—
that’s
the
wonderful
. I feel very relaxed here. It’s Reality—so-called, Beeb—that gets under your skin. But
this
—this is all a big toy. I think I belong here. I love things that don’t pretend to be more than they are. This is all just fakery, real honest fakery, and I know it, and it knows I know it. It’s nice to have something to trust." For once Bud said nothing.

The two humans trudged on. Finally their own washed-out shadows rose up in front of them, and they came to the wall of the round valley, a village covered by a lid like a tureen that was supposed to be Friendly.

Bud ran his hands along it and rose on tiptoe. "Concrete or something like it," he told his companion. It was covered with painted detail and on its lower parts, the parts within reach, an appliquéd imitation of rough bare ground and a far horizon—and a highway. "They obviously want to keep the doors hidden. We’ll work our way along it all the way around, but I’ll bet it won’t be easy to find even a crack."

"Well," said Rose Reb with burdensome sarcasm, "you
really
should never travel without one of those Eye-Spy cameras, Beeb."

Bud grinned. "Who says I don’t have one in my pocket?"

"I was wondering."

They proceeded sideways for a few minutes—and suddenly were interrupted.
Music
!—unexpected, familiar, and bizarre!

"
Good night!
" Bud exclaimed, spinning around to face downtown. "Is that—?"

"A
calliope
!" shrilled Reb. Then she giggled like a child. "A parade! Come on, come on!" She danced away happily toward the white steeple and Main Street, Bud trotting behind, equally curious but urging her to stop.

She’s losing it completely
, he thought desperately.
It’s just piped-in music, not a—

But it was. A parade!

In the lead was a drum major, then a rank of four drummers, then two ranks of brass instruments. Then came a long float decked out with pretty girls and serious men with big grins, and a weightlifter in leopard skin. The float was followed by a white horse and a tiger.

The human forms, even the serious men, were all made-up as clowns. The whole parading mass moved together as one in a smooth glide, the units connected together without subtlety by metal rods and beams. Altogether about sixty feet of gaiety.

It was, of course, without life. It advanced down Main Street on thin metal tracks, which Bud had first taken for trolley tracks. The mannequins on foot did not move their arms or legs as they glided along, suspended about nine inches above the pavement, but their feet rocked forward and back on twin hinges in a poor imitation of walking. Their heads swung slightly right, slightly left, on hidden pivots, one swing to exactly four "steps," and all in perfect unison. The sticks of the drummers angled down and up rapidly and regularly, never actually touching the drumhead, like a windup monkey-drummer doll Bud had once seen. The trombones and trumpets and tubas tilted up and down rhythmically. The upraised hands of the bathing-suited girls half-rotated as their painted teeth remained frozen. The weightlifter raised and lowered his barbell. The legs of the animals swung forward and back above the ground without point or purpose, like the livelier figures on a carousel, and their jaws opened and closed.

Bud could hear the
put-put
of the motor beneath the float that made it all go. He dropped flat to the street and looked beneath the skirt of the float. There was no driver, just a mechanism. Nothing was electronic, certainly not audio-animatronic; it was all a matter of gas and gearing, 1950’s style. These were not robots, just marionettes.

Bud Barclay had felt surges of fear since entering the dead timeless world of Friendly Village; now he felt something strangely close to the shapeless dread of nightmare. This mechanical marionette show, sliding along a dead eyeless street in an empty city, making its noise and swiveling its clockwork heads,
this
was lifelessness writ large.

Just as disturbing, as disorienting, was the music. The marching band was brass and drums; the music from the hidden speakers was that of a single calliope. It was not a re-creation of some real thing in Eck’s past, only an
illustration
of a
theme
. A few disjointed pieces of this and that, welded together and made to march. "They call it the dead past," Bud whispered. "It should stay dead!"

He felt disgust toward Rose Reb, walking along and clapping her hands. "But
Beeb
, it’s a
parade
! It doesn’t have to have people.
We’re
the people! It’s all for
us
! It’s a music box. Put it next to the bed and enjoy it."

"RR... you knew it was a parade before you saw it."

"Because of the calliope." Her gaiety suddenly dropped away. "Too spontaneous for you? Not scientific? You’re suspicious of whatever a person can
feel
. You always were. I hear a calliope and I think of a parade. You see the sun and think of the moon. And it’s not just the moon in the sky. It’s your next stop." Reb stepped closer. "But you never
do
stop, Bud. The train station turns out to be just another train." She was pouting. Yet Bud sensed that inside the fret was something of bitter anger and menace.

"We have to follow it," he pronounced quietly. "It could lead out of here."

"Yes," she replied vaguely. "We have to follow."

The phantoms-on-parade passed through town with a few right turns, exiting at last through the residential zone, then on into the stretch of fake, desert-like field enclosing it. Seeing a structure of wooden planks ahead, long, low, and narrow, Bud felt a spike of hope. A tunnel into the wall?

But both ends of the structure were wide open. The parade entered and fell silent. Its motor cut out. "Show over," Bud pronounced. "Maybe on a timer."

"Untouched by human hands," commented Reb. "You could almost say the same thing about me, couldn’t you—flyboy? Boy fly?"

"That’s your business."

"Business has been slow. Or it
had
been... then..." She looked at the expression on her companion’s face. "Not what you want to hear. Not because you’re
jealous
, no. Oh, I see it in your gray eyes, Bud Barclay. Indifference—an avalanche of indifference. What makes my Beeb happy isn’t down here in Friendly Village. Even a parade—"

Bud turned to her fiercely, digging something from his pocket. "
Look
!" He held it in front of her face and flicked it—a cigarette lighter. A flame jumped to life. "From the drugstore. Guess what I plan to do to your toy, Reb!"

She fell back. "Oh?" Then she smiled.

Bud’s eyes caught the glow of the flame. "When this place starts to burn, you can
bet
those doors will open!"

AS BUD held up his little torch—Liberty’s torch, he hoped—Rose Reb came forward and touched his wrist. "Now you’re the man from my poetry, gray eyes. Burn, burn it all down. Just for me! Where can I watch? The steeple up high?"

"Don’t be stupid." He shoved her aside and knelt, bringing the lighter near the shrubbery touching the wooden garage. "Dry wood planks, warping. Probably demolished a barn somewhere. Nice effect. Jetz, it’ll feel like Christmas to send those clowns to—"

It began to rain.

The two looked up, Bud with satisfaction. "Sure. Sprinklers. But not automatic, RR." The rain became a deluge. "Didn’t start when I flashed the lighter, when I made the flame. Didn’t even start when I held it up in the air." He roughly grabbed the little New Goth purse from her arm. She made a noise as he overturned it, emptying her many plastic pill bottles onto the puddling ground.

"I
need
those," she protested weakly. "Or I get weirded out."

Bud turned the empty purse inside out, tearing the lining. He saw what he was looking for, something the size of a silver dollar attached to the bottom. "Started when I
said
what I was going to do.
That’s
why they put you down here, Reb. They knew you’d stick to my side, you and your drugstore."

She looked at him curiously, then said without emotion: "They’ve been listening to us."

"Sure. Gotta keep tabs on the hostage, wandering loose in Friendly Village. For all they know I might’ve absorbed a few things from hanging with—my best friend! Genius boy!
Tom Swift!
"

The rain stopped. Everything was dripping.

The sky spoke, bouncing off concrete walls.

"
God speaking
," boomed the voice from the sky. "
Knew you were a smart one, bo. Mr. Boss had to play his game, but me, I knew, I knew. Sooner or later they always get out, Swift and Barclay. ’Course, no offense, you’re just half of the great teamup—lower half, hunh? Tail without the dog, fins without the rocket.
"

Bud held the black purse near his face. "Come on down, God," he invited pleasantly. "Bring the skateboard."

"
You wanna meet God? Awesome
."

"I’d just like to shake God’s hand. We could meet at the church, Baxx."

God chuckled, then fell silent.

Bud started to hurl the purse away, but Reb grabbed it out of his hand and swept the pill-bottles back into it. "I need the pills," she insisted doggedly. "It doesn’t matter if Gar listens to us, not any more."

Bud snorted. "God’s always listening."

She stood up, counting the bottles. "Don’t call him that. His name is Garton. He’s very wise, Beeb. It could have worked, the healing. He’s a little flawed—
Sorry, Gar!
—but I know he would have cared for me, protected me. But
you
...

"Sandy Swift—Little Miss Perfect, blond-eyed, blue-haired. Is she really so sweet, BB? Is she like Tom? An easy replica? That family... Is it really all that
normal
a family? Isn’t it more like
this
? This place here? Except the
Swift
fakery is never mentioned. Oh no, don’t ever talk about it. It’s just always
there
, like the darkness inside a covered vase. But of course, darkness doesn’t lie
deliberately
. It just
is
what it
is
, like Friendly Village. But then you have the case of Mr. and Mrs. Alva Truncheon...

"Have you heard that saying... They say ‘forgive and forget’ but the fact is, Bud, I sometimes forget
first
. And then I don’t know what to forgive."

The youth stood back from her, staring upward. "RR, I don’t have time to deal with—that seeping hair dye, or whatever you call it. Gulp down a few pills. I’m sorry, I apologize, but
please
fake being normal for a while, hunh?"

"He’s coming for us, Beeb," she said quietly. "I know him. He’s nice, always so polite, but I know he’ll come down with his big gun and blow us away, both of us."

"Nice," said Bud.

She took his wrist. "We can’t go back to the hotel. I know where we can hide for a while. I saw it while we were walking."

Bud allowed Rose Reb to drag him along. "Down this street!" she panted. "When we get to—"

But Bud could already hear the low roar of an engine. A jeep pulled around a corner, skidding with an artful swerve to a halt in front of them. They reared back, then froze, as Gar Baxx leapt out. As predicted, he was carrying a gun—
big
. He held it casually. He was not angry; his face looked like it was having a great time.

"
Hey there!
" he chirped. "Howya doin’, lovebirds? Wouldn’t Friendly Village make a great place to get married? And to honeymoon in—honeymoons oughta be friendly, doncha think? You don’t even have to go away anywhere. That was one of Eck’s ideas, he told me. Rent the church, see, and a honeymoon suite in the hotel. Package deal."

"I’m a little tired of the vacation, Baxx," declared Bud. "Time to go. Not much of a future down here in Friendly Village."

Garton Baxx whuffed a laugh. "Y’can say that again, bo! Nothin’ but the past. Well, I gotta say,
Mistah Eck, he crazy
. But let me add—he knows money. Knows it, wants it. Gives a lot to me." He held out a hand, a reaching gesture. "To
us
."

Rose Reb giggled and walked past Bud, taking Baxx’s hand, folding into the side of him next to the gun. "Always so sweet, Gar. Love eternal."

"Uh-huh, eternal and external."

"I wondered, Reb," stated Bud coolly. "I suspected. From the start. The way you popped up suddenly, no dirt from lying in the street on your neat black New Goth uniform. Kind of careless, RR. So you’re part of it. They
sent
you down here, to watch me and—transmit."

She looked hurt and said quickly, sincerely: "No,
no
! It was all sincere, Beeb. I
wanted
to be here with you. The thing in Shopton, down here—I needed to get you off the plate. I needed to see you once more. I needed to
know
, once and for surely, that I was
right
when I started hating you back then, hate for love. It’s all part of the healing process, just like Gar says."

Gar nodded his approval. "She’s real adaptable, my Reb. Eck found me, decided I was the One, set me up at the nuthouse, brought the two of us together, Reb and me—he knew your bud’s machine was the only thing that’d get him... aaa, some stupid thing, opening a box to get a will... something. Money! But I fell for her, sure did, my little girl."

Reb looked at him with shining eyes, barely focused. "Ohhh, Bud, the things we go through to just plain
live
. Sometimes, I... I don’t think I understand what it’s all for... I felt sad, seeing you unconscious in the back of the van. But guilt—no no, I was never guilty. No."