Frek and the Elixir (23 page)

“See you soon,” said Renata. “If they let me, I'm going to come along on the saucer.”

As surely as he'd known how to turn his ring on, Frek now understood how to turn it off. It required a certain mental gesture akin to reaching out and pinching a candle flame. He did it.

Frek, Gibby, and the dogs spent a few minutes fruitlessly staring at Unipusk's distant disk for a sign of Hawb's launch. And then their attention returned to the fever dream of Jumm's turbulent bands of clouds, an eight-hour drop below them. To slightly slow their fall, Frek got them all to set their spacesuits to be pushing them upward as strongly as possible. And then, finally, they fell asleep.

 

Frek awoke amidst wisps of cloud. It was like being in the treetops of an endless gauzy forest. Quite lovely. The enormous yellow and red whorl of Jumm's great spot seemed like it should be making a noise. But all was silent. Gibby and the dogs slept at Frek's side, limply adrift, the dogs' legs occasionally twitching.

Frek hung there in the silence, savoring the moment. He felt strong, rested, optimistic. As before, his perceptions were tinged with the golden glow that resulted from having aliens esp him on the branecast. He would have liked to ignore it—like an actor learning not to stare at the camera. But in the end there was always a background awareness of his observers, for the process changed the very texture of his thoughts. Everything was simplified, black or white, with hardly any shades of gray. Oh well.

Frek turned his mental focus to recent events. How far he'd come! Today was Sunday, May 15, 3003. On Friday, Gibby had taken him to Stun City and had gotten drunk at the Brindle Cowloon. Saturday, yesterday, the counselors had come for him at dawn, and Frek had run off to attack Gov's puffball, armed only with his chameleon mod. Incredibly—with the help of the reborn Bumby—he'd succeeded. He'd killed Gov. If nothing else came of all this, that was something to be proud of.

Yesterday had been a very long day. Bumby and Ulla had yunched them halfway across the galaxy, supposedly in search of the elixir to restore Earth's biome. Thanks to Carb and Renata, Frek had crashed them into the Planck brane and met the branecasters. And now Frek, Gibby, and the dogs were entering the outer atmosphere of a giant planet that made Earth look like a glass bead. Supposedly some creatures lived here, big hostile things called bobblies. Where was that rescue saucer?

At this last thought, Frek couldn't help but chuckle.
He was waiting for some aliens in a flying saucer.
Maybe he'd be dead in half an hour, but while it lasted, he was having a goggy adventure indeed. This was a far cry from glawking around watching wall skins in Middleville. Still smiling, he gave Gibby a poke.

Gibby woke with a startled yelp and a colorful curse that made Frek smile the more. And then the dogs started barking at Jumm. The warmly tinted cloud tops were beginning to pile up around them like mountains.

Right about then the Unipuskers' shiny flying saucer appeared. It was shaped something like the imaginary flying saucers Frek had seen in toons: a broad disklike base with a dome on top, the dome blending in very smoothly. One unusual feature was that the saucer had a number of flexible feelers. The scale of the saucer seemed excessive; it was at least two hundred meters across.

The silvery disk hovered above them, and four beams of light lanced from some of the stubbier feelers on its underside. Tractor beams. They latched onto Frek, Gibby, and the dogs, then drew them toward the saucer's underside. The saucer base had a big round window in it. When they reached the window, it shimmered like a curtain of water and let them pass through.

As they slid through the skin of the Unipuskers' saucer, their Orpolese spacesuits melted away. Frek was in the same clothes he'd started in, his tough blue turmite-silk pants and his yellow T-shirt. He still had his ring, and his waterproof fungus-purse with the Aaron's Rod twig and the two remaining doses of chameleon mod. He and the others were alone for the moment, in a large room with a transparent floor that was the window they'd just passed through. This was an entrance hall, with doors leading off it. The saucer immediately started accelerating upward, providing a weak kind of gravity.

Cautiously Frek inhaled his first breath of the saucer's air. It was humid, with a sulfur smell, as of firework-reeds on a rainy night. This was, he'd soon learn, the smell of the Unipuskers. The odor also held a touch of rotting leaves and hints of fungus. If Frek had wanted to paint the smell, he might have made it dark purple with smeared orange dots.

Wow and Woo were sniffing like mad, holding their heads up and flexing the delicate whorls of their moist black noses, drawing their own conclusions.

“Stinks,” said Gibby simply.

And now here came two Unipuskers. Though Frek had already glimpsed one of them in his ring's aura, this first face-to-face meeting was unforgettable.

They were the size of men, with arms and legs, and with heads like clamshells. They were a muddy-brown all over, with an iridescent sheen. Their skin was thick, taking the form of overlapping leathery plates. They had three fingers on each hand, and four toes on each foot, with the toes splayed out like a chicken's claws.

They wore hardly any clothes, and their exposed crotches were as featureless as those of dolls. Their short tails were the one part of their bodies they seemed to be modest about. These were covered by gold-colored sheaths held in place by straps around their thighs.

Although the heads were shaped and ridged like shells, they were the same iridescent brown as the skin, with eye stalks alertly twitching this way and that. The eyes were a very pale blue, veined with lines of a darker blue. As well as the two eye stalks, each head bore perhaps a dozen more flexible projections—feelers, radio antennae, or scent organs.

The Unipuskers bounced along, effectively feather-light in the false gravity of the saucer's gentle acceleration. They were talking in their own language, their speech a series of hisses and gurgles. It almost seemed as if they were arguing, with their yellow-lined mouths tensely clacking open and closed. Seeing Frek and his companions, the Unipuskers broke off their quarrel.

“Greet Frek,” said one of them. “Introduce self as Hawb. Introduce Hawb's companion Cawmb. Comment disingenuously upon the absence of the Orpolese.”

The second Unipusker bowed. They looked very similar, though Cawmb's tail was a bit thicker, and his gold tail cover was patterned in circles, as opposed to Hawb's, which was embossed with squares.

“Greet Frek,” said Cawmb. “Ask names of Frek's fellow travelers.”

“I'm Gibby,” volunteered the Grulloo. “And these are Frek's dog, Wow, and his dog's friend, Woo.” Gibby swaggered forward, rocking exaggeratedly from side to side, leaning far over so as to hold out a hand.

“Inquire about nudity of your tail,” said Hawb, peering at Gibby's hand and then shaking it. “Speculate about your tail's lack of fecundity.”

“Inquire away,” said Gibby with a puzzled smile. “Those are real pretty underpants you two got on your tails, by the way.”

“Is my father on board?” put in Frek.

“Explain that Carb was asleep in his bed when we left,” said Cawmb. “At our rickrack mansion. Assure son that Dad will be eager to greet him later and—”

“Notify Pilot Evawrt to take rapid evasive action!” shouted Hawb. “Advise guests to take a seated position to withstand extreme burst of acceleration! Point out the attack of a Jumm bobblie visible through the deck!”

The ship shuddered, lurched, and shot upward, pressing Frek hard against the floor. The window wasn't like a water curtain anymore; it was, rather, like an impermeable sheet of diamond. The acceleration was so strong that lying on his stomach was more comfortable than trying to sit up. Face pressed against the transparent deck, Frek peered down.

Sure enough, something was coming toward them from the surface of Jumm. The thing was so big that it took a mental effort to see it as a whole. It was like some old-time paintings Frek had seen on the Net, where an artist would make, say, a woman's face out of a bunch of different fruits, or paint a landscape that, if you looked at it differently, became a hunched man with a hill for his back, a lake for his beard and a tree for his nose. Far from being a simple flying jellyfish, a bobblie was—a living weather pattern.

Close as they were to Jumm, it seemed like half the visible surface was peeling up toward them. Mountainous clouds closed in on them like teeth; one whole side of the great red and yellow spot rose up like a dragon's tail.

A hum filled the Unipuskers' saucer as it strained upward. The acceleration was so intense that Frek felt his bones might snap or push through his skin. He was pasted to the transparent deck, with one eye staring through it at the rising cloud-creature, a thousand kilometers long. Gibby lay panting at his right, with the dogs beyond him softly whimpering. To Frek's left, Hawb and Cawmb sat on the deck, effortlessly holding themselves erect with their bodies' tough plates.

One of the bobblie's tendrils seemed to pass over the saucer. The craft shuddered, but its surface held firm. They climbed higher. And then they were free.

Twisting in a spasm that could only be a fit of anger, the bobblie hurled itself at the world-spanning shaft of the transport tube, then sank back down into the swirling colors of Jumm. The tube's force field walls quivered, but stood firm. It occurred to Frek that the bobblies might resent the Unipuskers for siphoning material away from their world.

“Request Pilot Evawrt to reduce acceleration to a less taxing intensity,” said Cawmb, the second Unipusker.

The acceleration lightened up again. Frek sat up and began asking questions.

“Are you sure it's safe for us to breathe your air? It has all the right gasses in it? Isn't there a danger of contamination, like us infecting you or you infecting us?”

“Affirm the similarity of our atmospheres,” said Cawmb. “Inform that our genomes are two-dimensional molecular tiling patterns as opposed to your one-dimensional DNA. Minimize any possibility of cross-contamination.”

“Are you and Hawb a married couple?” was Frek's next question. “Is one of you he and the other one she?”

“Summarily state that all Unipuskers are one sex,” said Hawb. “Remark that we use a type of genomic exchange for variation. Snigger that you will not be privy to the details. Admit that Cawmb and I are like a couple in that (a) we do exchange genomic sub-tilings, and (b) we are raising seven hundred and eighty-three children together, with thirteen more expected in the coming week. Qualify with the information that we bud off our children individually from our tails, and are capable of reproducing solo. Suggest that you refer to all Unipuskers as he.”

“Point out Hawb's insensitive and careless error regarding our number of children,” said Cawmb in an irritated tone. “Supply the correct numbers of seven hundred and seventy-nine children, with seventeen more expected this week.”

“Impugn Cawmb's knowledge in this context,” said Hawb, his voice rising. “Assert the accuracy of my original count. Report that I personally visited each of the children's rooms yesterday evening to tuck them in.”

“Expose Hawb's deceit and poor partnership,” screamed Cawmb, his mouth opening very wide. “Reveal that four of those children died of ickspot two days ago, leaving four beds empty. Bewail my bereavement. Complain that I alone had to fumigate, lest the ickspot spread. Reiterate that seventeen children are expected this week, as Hawb would know if he were paying proper attention to his partner's tail!”

“End this topic thread,” bellowed Hawb, his clamshell head splitting nearly in two. “Present a pleasant facade to our transgalactic guests! Usher Frek, the dogs, and the deformed thing to our feeding-chamber!”

“I've got a name, you two-legged piece of kac,” snapped Gibby. The Unipuskers' ill-humor was contagious.

“Express an insincere apology for my partner's slight,” said Cawmb. “Reformulate his botched invitation to use the name ‘Gibby.' Invite Frek, the dogs, and Gibby to share a meal of rickrack and vig.”

Cawmb and Hawb smiled at each other as if their fight were all over, linked arms, and waddled through one of the entrance chamber's arched doors, conversing in their native tongue of whispery burbles. Frek and Gibby followed along, Gibby muttering in an angry undertone. The dogs pushed ahead of them, sniffing at the Unipuskers' legs and gold-wrapped tails, bouncily enjoying the acceleration's weak pseudogravity.

They found themselves in a kind of dining room with a table and several stools. A planter box of green shoots ran along one wall. Each plant was a single, thick, segmented stalk with horizontal branches sticking out. Rickrack. Sleeping on the deck by the table was a fat orange beast with floppy, triangular ears. A vig. He looked a bit like Frek imagined a pig might have looked—though of course NuBioCom had let pigs go extinct many years before. No need for them, really, with anymeat cultures in every kitchen.

The vig had some features in common with the Unipuskers, that is, eyes on stalks and a half dozen other stubby antennae protruding from its long-lipped head. The eyes were bright green. In place of legs, it had six bumps on its belly; perhaps it used them to creep along like a caterpillar. For the moment the vig's eye stalks were flopped down flat upon its head, which was a long bulge shading seamlessly into its corpulent body.

Wow trotted right over to sniff at it. At the touch of the dog's wet nose, the vig woke and let out an angry squealing noise that Frek would later learn was called a vheenk. As well as vheenking, vigs could vark, with the vark sound being like an abrupt, echoing cough.

The vig's mouth was longer than Frek had realized, reaching nearly a third the length of its body, and lined top and bottom with ragged saws of bone. Wow barked with excitement and fear, Woo joining in. The vig rose up on its stubby cushion-legs and began angrily vheenking as hard as it could.