Frek and the Elixir (36 page)

Frek dreamed he was back in Middleville. Mom had kissed him good night, but he couldn't sleep. He crawled out of his window, climbed down the house tree, walked over to an open patch of the yard and stared up at the sky, Wow at his side. In the dream, he looked at the sky for so long that he got a crick in the nape of his neck, a sharp ache that seemed to drill right in. Frek tried to look down at Wow to ease the pain, but when he did that, his dream switched back to when he'd first walked over to the clearing and looked up at the sky. It was one of those loop dreams where you do the same sequence over and over. He'd look at the sky, get a neck ache, look down, and there'd be a little glitch and he'd be back to staring at the sky—really focusing on it, trying to see each and every star.

Outside of the dream loop something was happening that made his stomach feel hollow and sick. With a rising whine the dream loop spun faster.

The sound of voices woke him; everyone in the ship was talking at once. Frek realized something horrible. His neck hurt because Atmen had grown hair-fine tendrils through his skin and into the base of his brain. Just like the peeker uvvy that Gov had used on him.

Frantically he jerked his arms, wanting to tear out the connection. But his arms were bound fast by the great sea cucumber's feathery tentacles.

“Wake up, Frek,” Gibby's voice was repeating, as if from inside him. The Grulloo's moolk madness had worn off. “She's trying to pick our brains! Block her off like you did the espers!”

Yes, the Radiolarians had been driving Frek's dream of looking at the night sky, dredging up his star memories. How creepy to have aliens manipulating his simple dream of home.

“We screwed up,” groaned Dad. “She's got us strung together like beads. They want to invade Earth. Don't think about the stars, Frek, she still doesn't have a good fix on the location.”

“Mother Atmen?” Yessica was saying over and over. “Can we talk?”

“Do something, Frek,” wailed Renata. “We're about to yunch!”

It was pitch dark inside the ship. Presumably they were well out in interplanetary space, far from Unipusk and her binary sun. All eleven passengers were tangled up in Mother Atmen's tentacles. The connecting tendrils made everyone's voice seem to come from inside Frek's head.

A memory of the home sky seen from his backyard flashed through Frek's mind yet again. He seemed to see Wow and Woo standing beside him, muzzles raised to the heavens, barking. But now he could feel the probing inhuman intelligences—Atmen, Nefertiti, Firooz, Tutankh, and Smenkh—feeling through his mind for star sightings, working to find the route to defenseless Gaia.

Unlike with the espers and their golden glow, the sky-air-comb routine seemed to be of no use in blocking the Radiolarians. Frek strengthened his will and redoubled his efforts.

Acting on instinct, he thrust a blazing sun into the sky of his mental landscape, blotting the stars from view. He visualized Atmen's connection to him as a tunnel in the ground, a tunnel leading both to his sly enemies and to his friends. He made six mental copies of the Sun and hurled them down the tunnel toward Renata, Dad, Yessica, Gibby, Wow, and Woo, hoping to cover over the star images in his companions' minds. It must have worked, for now Atmen's tentacles twitched, giving him an angry shake.

The whirling sensation of an imminent yunch continued to grow. Soon they'd zoom up to galactic size. And then they'd yunch back down—to where? To the Radiolarians' home world, or directly to Earth? Perhaps the Radiolarians' vast minds couldn't yet pinpoint Earth's location from the information they'd obtained—but surely they'd soon overcome Frek's temporary blocks and find what they needed. In his mental image of his yard back home, the brightness was draining from his imagined inner sun—and feathery tentacles were creeping from the tunnel in the ground. Quite soon it would be dark again.

And all the while the voices were talking, the trains of thought overlapping and at cross-purposes, the five Radiolarians and seven Earthlings fighting like weasels in a sack.

 

YESSICA:
“Frek is humanity's representative with the branecasters. Did you know that, Mother Atmen?”

CARB
: “Leave my son out of it, you grinskin. Don't always be trying to get something for yourself.”

NEFERTITI
: “Flickerballs are not attracting us. We are wanting Earth to host a planetary Radiolarian as well. Your people will be living as fruits upon a single vine.”

RENATA
: “The sun image you sent me is working, Frek. The aliens keep making me think about the sky, but your sun blots out the stars.”

TUTANKH
: “Smenkh is needing more information, Grandmother Atmen.”

GIBBY
: “Gaussy. I just pulled the plug outa my neck with my tail. Can't get my arms free, though. Here you go, Woo, I can reach your plug with my tail tip. That's it. Claw your way over here, girl, and chew these damned tentacles off my arms.”

WOO
: “
Yipe!
Woo help Wow first.”

FIROOZ
: “One dog is being loose, Mother Atmen. She is gnawing the other dog's connector. I am crawling toward them.”

YESSICA
: “You'll need a Regent, Mother Atmen. A representative to speak to the peoples of Earth. I'm uniquely qualified for this role.”

RENATA
: “Don't start that stuff again!”

WOW
: “Wow free. Wow and Woo dig to Gibby.”

MOTHER ATMEN
: “We will now be yunching up and down. Who is helping me to find our target location? I am offering rich rewards.”

TUTANKH
: “The grotesque dwarf's brain plug is being severed, Mother Atmen. He may be causing grave disruption very soon. I am crawling to aid Firooz.”

SMENKH
: “I have been integrating our route, Grandmother. You must be waiting a bit longer. We are lacking sufficient data points.”

YESSICA
: “Look in me, Mother Atmen! I remember the sky from Sick Hindu. I often went to the surface to meditate, I'm visionary that way. There was this blinding sun in my mental images before, but now it's going away. The stars—I see stars.”

RENATA
: “Don't be so geevey, Mom! Everyone's laughing at you!”

WOW
: “Wow chew meat vine through.”

GIBBY
: “Good dogs. It's butt-kickin' time. I got my knife. First for that striped starfish.”

NEFERTITI
: “Careful, Firooz!”

FIROOZ
: “I am being dismembered. My arms will not be grasping the ugly dwarf's neck. Hurry, Tutankh.”

GIBBY
: “I'll show you five-legged brain suckers what ugly is.”

TUTANKH
: “They're rising up, Mother! They will be dissecting me, too!”

CARB
: “Get those spacesuits ready for us, Frek!”

FREK
: “Use your knife on Atmen, Gibby! Cut her biggest stems!”

GIBBY
: “Here's the bull-goose main trunks of them all! Five of 'em. Yee haw!”

 

The connection went dead. Frek was alone in the darkness, with nothing to guide him but muffled sounds. The tentacles around his wrists were slack. It was a simple matter to pull his hands loose. And then he ripped the pad off his neck. The pad's hundred hair-thin connectors made a tearing sound that traveled into Frek's nerves and into his bones.
Ow.
He blacked out for a second, and woke to the touch of a human hand.

It was Renata; she'd pushed over to him. Frek could smell her sweet breath.

“Take this,” said Frek, handing her the one suit he'd had time to make earlier. “Get into it fast.” Even as he talked, he was feeling around within his mind to see if Atmen's intrusion had messed up his memory. But he felt normal.

“The thing on my neck,” said Renata. “It's in the way.”

“Rip it off.”

“I'm scared to. It'll hurt.”

“You want me to do it?”

Renata was still for a second.

“All right,” she said finally.

Frek felt for the knobby sucker in the darkness, and yanked it off as abruptly as he could. Renata grunted and thrashed in pain. But then it was over, and she was slipping into the suit, Frek helping her to find the arm and leg holes. She fit the turkle inside the suit with her.

“Take my blaster,” said Frek, pressing it into her hand. “But don't shoot until we all get suits on. We'll be sucking vacuum once we blow a hole in the side of Atmen. Call the others over here, and remind Dad not to shoot his blaster yet either.”

And then Frek focused inward, vaaring kenner. Even though they must have been thousands of kilometers from any solid matter other than their ship, this particular location proved to be kenner-rich. In just minutes, he'd pulled five baseball-sized globs from the void, and a few minutes after that he'd crafted them into kenny spacesuits for him, Dad, Wow, Woo, and even Yessica. He wasn't making these new spacesuits look like vigs or Unipuskers, he was leaving them transparent. He wished the Unipusker spacesuits were as sturdy as the Orpolese ones—but he didn't dare tinker with the complex design. Once he'd crafted the spacesuits he also made a flashlight flower like he'd had at home, a ten-centimeter kritter with a luminous blossom.

Meanwhile Renata called the others to them. Gibby slashed easily through the underbrush of tentacles with his knife, the dogs in his wake. And Dad simply tore his way toward them with his arms, Yessica close behind.

For now, Nefertiti, Tutankh, and Smenkh were keeping well away from them. Playing the beam of his flashlight flower amidst Atmen's lax tentacles, Frek glimpsed the Radiolarians lurking in the tangled thickets, doing their best to wriggle out of the light. Down where Gibby had cut the main stalks of Atmen's five tentacles he saw jelly-globs of transparent goo. Atmen was regenerating her tissues to heal her cuts.

A few desperate, trembling moments passed before Frek and his companions were all garbed in their transparent spacesuits. As before, the suits fed them air and transmitted their voices. Just as Frek was telling the others about how you could move by speaking commands to your suit, Atmen's tentacles came back into play.

The great sea cucumber's lashing fan tendrils were strong and unbelievably fast. But Renata and Dad were faster. They fired their blasters before the tentacles could seize them. The beams charred a hole in Atmen's outer wall—and she ruptured.

Drawn along by the rush of air, the party flew outward into the vacuum, banging into each other, tumbling head over heels. It took Frek a minute to form the proper commands to his suit to stop his careening through space. Gibby managed too, then Dad and Renata. The dogs and Yessica went pinwheeling off into the distance.

“I'll go for them,” said Dad, and with a few quick words to his suit he was on his way.

Renata and Gibby joined Frek, frowning back at the giant split-open sea cucumber. Nefertiti, Tutankh, and Smenkh remained enmeshed in the dangling tendrils. Firooz's cut-up body fragments were reassembling themselves, and Atmen was still moving. There was no reason to believe she wouldn't heal herself.

“Should I blast them some more?” wondered Renata.

“Let's wait till the others get back,” suggested Frek. “Let Atmen have it if it looks like she's going to fire at us. But she probably won't. We're worth more to her alive than dead.”

Meanwhile the others kept up a steady low chatter of conversation. Renata was studying the alien sea cucumber in the way she did when she was remembering something she wanted to draw. Right now she couldn't get at the turkle tucked inside her suit.

Frek tore his attention away from Renata and stared off into the distance. The bright binary suns of the Unipusk system were to his left. To the right lay the tiny red-yellow disk of Jumm, with Unipusk a speck beside it. Closer by were the lively shapes of Dad, the dogs, and Yessica, making their way back. Oh, oh. A flying saucer was coming up behind them.

“Hurry, Dad,” said Frek into his spacesuit.

“I hope it's Evawrt and Gawrnier,” put in Renata. “If it's them, they might still help.”

But of course it wasn't. The saucer drew even with them just as Dad, Yessica, and the dogs returned. Though all Unipuskers tended to look somewhat alike, there was something about the two figures in the saucer's bridge window that could only be—

“Hawb and Cawmb,” said Dad, a little out of breath. “We're fubbed.”

“The rings,” said Frek. “Can the rings help us?”

“The rings can only call each other,” said Dad. “But you, Frek, maybe you can call the Orpolese. You're the one who's special.”

The saucer heeled over and a door swung open in its bottom. Meanwhile, Mother Atmen's torn side sealed itself up like a slow zipper. She moved toward them, waving three branching lavender tentacles.

Frek reached down into himself and found a clear memory of Bumby and Ulla when last he'd seen them. A big friendly cuttlefish with W-shaped pupils in his eyes, accompanied by a dimpled purplish ball. They'd been crying out in anguish as the branecasters tormented them. And before that? They'd been in a form perhaps closer to their true selves, Ulla a crimson hoop covered by green veins of Bumby. Right at the end, when Frek had made them collapse toward Unipusk, Bumby had repeatedly called out a phrase in the Orpolese tongue.

The sounds were clear in Frek's memory. He began saying the phrase over and over, at the same time mentally projecting the message toward the Orpolese—wherever they might be.

“Alilallah tekelili eheu uborka Orpoly.”

Nothing. The Unipuskers and the Radiolarians drew closer.

Frek thought now of the sensation of the upward yunch, and he found a way to put some of that feeling into the phrase.