Frek and the Elixir (4 page)

“Kac, Huggins,” interjected Stoo. “The Skulls never ran a level like this for me yet. What makes you so gaud?”

“I don't know,” said Frek, forcing a laugh. He had a sudden memory flash of that dark shiny shape he'd glimpsed in the farthest recess of the space under his bed. But it couldn't be. The toons were just playing with him was all. “I'll handle that Anvil,” he said, making his voice firm. He aimed his prop gun and squeezed his trigger finger, expecting to see simulated bullets shoot across into the toons' sky, expecting to see some Y2K saucer UFO icons darting away in response. But the toons were ignoring his prop gun.

“This is realtime,” said Gypsy Joker, watching Frek with his hot red eyes. “We ain't jivin' you. There's something come down to Earth lookin' for you, Frek, and don't nobody know what it is or where it's hiding.”

Suddenly Sao Steiner walked into the room. Her voice was cold and all business. “Frek, I just got a message from Lora. There's two counselors over at your house to see you. Go talk to them before they have to come over here to get you. Kolder's furious. What on Earth have you been up to, you odd little boy? Stoo—he didn't ask you to do anything geevey, did he?”

A watchbird appeared as soon as Frek got back in the air, and it followed him all the way home. It was a gray, beady-eyed little thing, a tweaked hummingbird kritter with the slick bump of a tiny uvvy on the back of its neck. The watchbird's one color accent was its narrow, scarlet beak.

A man and a woman were standing by Frek's garage waiting for him. They wore uvvies and powder-blue overalls. Counselors. Mom was standing next to them. Geneva and Ida watched round-eyed from one of the house tree windows. The counselors' shimmering teal blue lifter beetle was nibbling on the grass of the lawn.

“Hi there, Frek,” said the counselor woman. “I'm PhiPhi and my partner here Zhak. Gov sent us to help you.” Zhak and PhiPhi had round, calm faces and pleasantly full lips. They looked like dull-witted siblings. It was said that Gov did something to the brains of those who signed on to be his counselors—Gov being the person, or the simulated person, who ran things around Middleville. The watchbird fluttered down and perched itself on PhiPhi's shoulder.

“When's the last time you talked Carb Huggins?” asked Zhak, helping Frek out of his angelwings.

“Don't bother him about his father,” snapped Mom. “Carb left us last year, and that was that.”

Frek was glad to have his mother stick up for him. These days it upset him to think about Carb. Sometimes he worried that it hadn't just been Gov's persecution that drove away his tough, wise-cracking father—maybe Dad had left because of something Frek himself had done. Like asking too many questions about how toons were made. Carb hadn't liked toons at all. Or maybe Frek had brought too many glypher slugs home from school.

Toward the end, Carb had always had a headache. Gov had put the peeker on him because of the Crufters, and he'd never fully recovered. He'd get confused sometimes. Gov had started talking about giving Carb this kind of brain therapy called the Three R's. And then Carb had quietly gotten hold of a space bug and flown away. Maybe it wasn't fair of Frek, but was still mad about it. Shouldn't a father stick with his family, no matter what?

“We must know,” said PhiPhi, smiling blandly and fixing Frek with her eyes. “Necessary for you to answer. Otherwise we peek, most unfortunate. When was the last time you talked Carb, Frek?” She said all this as flatly as if she were reading it off a message board in her head. Counselors let Gov do a lot of their thinking, and they used Gov's ugly, gobbledygook style of speech.

“Don't you dare talk about peeking him, you Gov-skulled stooge,” said Mom evenly. Somehow she'd managed to wedge herself in between Frek and the counselors.

“It's Frek's decision,” said PhiPhi, holding her eye contact with him.

“What my mother said,” muttered Frek. “One night I saw him at supper and the next morning he was gone.”

“Do you know why we're here?” asked PhiPhi, taking a different tack.

“About the Anvil from space,” blurted Frek.

“Yaya,” said Zhak. “Now we get somewhere.” Zhak had an extra uvvy in a mesh sack on his belt. A twitching, bright-yellow peeker uvvy. Getting peeked could mess you up for good. A regular uvvy took the words you deliberately thought at it, and sent them off to other uvvies, but peekers dug their tendrils in deep and took whatever they could find.

“The Skull Farmers told me,” said Frek, the words tumbling out of his mouth. “Some toons I saw on Stoo Steiner's wall skin. They heard it from the Goob Dolls. They said something from space landed last night. They called it the Anvil. They said that someone on a flying saucer told them the Anvil was looking for me? At first I thought the Skull Farmers were making it up. And then Sao Steiner told me I should come see you. That's everything I know, honest.”

“I can search the house?” Zhak asked Mom.

“Search for what?” she demanded. “Maybe Frek knows what this is about, but I sure don't. We cleaned up today, by the way, and I can tell you right now there's nothing unusual to see. Maybe you should stop busy-bodying. You should leave honest people alone.” Her voice grew a little louder. “You think it's easy being a full-time facilitator and raising three children? With my husband gone? And now you Gov zombies have to come here and threaten my poor son? Because of something that a stupid game toon said?”

“The search doesn't take long,” said PhiPhi, in a soothing tone. “Calm calm.” She patted Mom's shoulder and displayed a big, warm smile. “What it is, Lora, the Anvil is real. It might be some kind of alien? Or it's from the Crufters? We're uncertain. It came down last night, simultaneous with a warning message regarding Frek Huggins. The message came from an anomalous unidentified vehicle, now vanished. This makes possibles. Maybe just a prank same time as a meteorite, we hope. But, Lora, for your good, and Frek's good, Gov has to be sure. Zhak and I assigned to stay and watch your home for one or two days. If you kindly permit, we plant a little shelter for ourselves—over here? It remains afterward for your guest room or perhaps shed.” PhiPhi was pointing to a spot between their house tree and their garage.

“Not so close to my garden,” said Mom, not entirely displeased. Recently she'd been talking about needing money for an extra room, with the three kids getting so loud and big. But house tree seeds were expensive.

“Those
are
all standard plants?” asked PhiPhi, peering at Mom's vegetables. “Carb not sending down crufty oldbio seeds, huh?”

“As if oldbio could live on Earth anymore,” said Lora. “Don't you know anything? Second of all, Carb and I are unwebbed as of three months ago. There's no link between us anymore.”

Unwebbed? Mom hadn't told Frek about this. The news hit him hard. Not only was Dad never coming back, it was as if he'd never been here at all. Frek had no father. His face felt so odd and stiff and silly that he turned away so nobody would see. He coaxed his angelwings into the garage and petted them. They made soft
kvarr
ing noises, which made him feel better. He stepped back out just in time to see Zhak go slipping into their house. Mom was so distracted by PhiPhi's chatter that she didn't notice. For the moment, Frek felt too upset with Mom to warn her.

In any case, there was nothing for Zhak to find. Or was there? Frek was still thinking about the lumpy shiny purplish-black object he'd glimpsed under his bed. The Anvil? A UFO come to rest under his bed? Impossible. But what if? If the counselors found it, they'd punish him for not telling them. And if they didn't find it—what then? What was the Anvil really? Frek's stomach felt cold and hollow.

PhiPhi wasn't looking at him right then, which was good. Even though counselors were dumbed down, they had uvvy access to special Gov routines for reading people's thoughts from their expressions.

PhiPhi was busy trying to push a house tree seed into the ground. The seed was pointed at one end and flat at the other, about five centimeters long. She was trying to push the seed in sideways. It was like she was impaired. Mom squatted down and helped PhiPhi get the seed properly into the ground, point first. Lora Huggins knew how to do everything right. Frek was lucky to have her for his mother. Even if she had unwebbed from Dad.

“Where did Zhak go?” said Frek, so that Mom would look up from the seed and notice their house was being searched.

“What?” said Mom, standing up. “He's already started?” She brushed the dirt off her hands and rushed inside to supervise.

PhiPhi gave Frek an angry look. But all she said was, “Will you get water? The seed needs water.” She tore open a pod of fertilizer-pollen and sprinkled it on the ground.

Frek attached a snakeskin hose to their house tree's spout and asked the tree to set a steady trickle of water flowing into the muddy patch where Mom had pushed PhiPhi's seed into the ground. In a matter of minutes, a pale green sprout appeared. It worked its way upward and unfurled into a tiny, lobed house tree leaf set upon a shiny gray-green twig. The leaf-bedecked twig twitched as if sniffing around for light, then angled itself out away from the Hugginses' house tree. Three, five, seven more shoots appeared from the ground near the twig. Soon a little thicket was growing upward, the sticks getting fatter as they rose.

PhiPhi stood off to one side, her face blank, listening down into her uvvy, communing with Zhak and Gov. Though she didn't talk out loud, her lips were moving and she twitched her hands a little. Meanwhile her lifter beetle was hungrily edging toward Mom's garden. Frek herded it away. Presently Zhak appeared in the window of Frek's room, holding up Frek's wooden top. The watchbird was hovering next to him, its little wings a blur.

“This thing,” said Zhak, waving the top. “What is it?”

“It's a stupid toy that doesn't work,” called Frek. “You wrap a string around it to try and spin it.”

“It's too little, Zhak,” exclaimed PhiPhi. “Don't be dim. The Anvil is two hundred kilograms and the size of a man's head. It's not there. Maybe coming later.”

“I dunno,” said Zhak. “There's so much kac in this kid's room….”

“Don't you turn everything topsy-turvy,” came Mom's voice from behind Zhak. “It took Frek all morning to get his room picked up. You have no idea how hard it is for him.”

“Listen Gov on your uvvy, Zhak!” exclaimed PhiPhi. “Nothing's manifesting yet, and so we wait. Come out now. Don't ill-will our clients. Lora Huggins indeed of gog good standing.” The watchbird swooped out of the window and lighted on Frek's shoulder. He could feel the faint touch of its little claws through the cloth of his shirt.

“He going to keep an eye on you,” said PhiPhi. “Cute, yes?”

Frek could see the gray, bright-eyed little bird out of the corner of his eye. It seemed a bit mangy and, no, not cute at all. Its beak was the color of blood. The watchbird's eyes glared at him, glassy and inscrutable.

Meanwhile the bases of the new house tree's branches had merged into a bulging, gnarled trunk that was painfully pushing itself out of the ground. Frek kept on watering it. The new house tree rose up faster and faster. It had a big hole in one side and a smaller hole near it, just the right shapes for a door and a window. The thing grew to the size of a hollow tree-stump two meters across and three meters tall, then stopped. A crop of green-leaved branches sprouted from its lumpy top. The branches were tough and wiry, veined with antenna metal extracted from the soil. The inner walls of the new house tree were flickering and alive. An image of Gov appeared, visible through the door like an oracle in a cave. Gov was presenting himself in the toon form of a stylized First Nations eagle, all red and black and pie-eyed.

“Attention, counselors PhiPhi and Zhak,” said Gov's toon. “Counselors are to withdraw to the temporary shelter and stand by for further notification. The watchbird will surveillance the Huggins family for events regarding the Anvil. Your inaction is correct in the meanwhile time.” Gov always talked in broken jargon. You saw him on the wall skins every now and then, issuing exhortations and orders. Carb said Gov wasn't a person at all, and that he'd accidentally evolved from the code for a certain parasitic worm that genomicists had been using as a standard lab specimen years ago. A pinworm from a Quileute village called La Push in the Pacific Northwest.

“Tell them to tie up their lifter beetle,” Mom told Gov. “I don't want him to eat my whole yard and garden.”

“Let it be so,” said Gov, gesturing with a red and black wing. PhiPhi and Zhak settled into their newly grown house tree hut, with the beetle tethered right outside.

Frek went straight up to his room. He just had to look under his bed to see about the lumpy, shiny, purplish thing, even though the watchbird was whirring along behind him. To appear less suspicious, he acted like he was tidying up. “Keeping things organized,” he muttered. “Zhak made a mess.” He forced himself to work on his shelves and his closet a bit before looking under his bed. Mom appeared in the room before he'd gotten to the bed.

“Are you looking for the Anvil?” she asked straight out.

“No,” lied Frek, annoyed with her for making it all so obvious.

“I wonder if this really does have anything to do with Carb,” said Mom, plopping down on Frek's desk chair. She looked keyed up and chatty. “The counselors said they got a message when the Anvil came down? Those toons you saw, did they talk about him?”

“No,” said Frek. “But the Anvil came through the asteroid belt. Where Dad is. Not that you care what he does anymore. Can you leave me alone now, Mom?”

“Are you mad about me and Carb getting unwebbed?”

“Do we have to talk in front of the watchbird?” said Frek.

“That thing?” said Mom. “It doesn't matter. The house tree has eyes and ears, too, you know. And for sure Gov taps into that; you know his puffball has plenty of brain nodules to monitor what the counselors don't watch in person. So forget about the watchbird. He's mainly for following you outside.”

“I don't want to talk,” said Frek stubbornly. “And I'm not looking for the Anvil. I'm only cleaning up.”

“Suit yourself,” said Mom. “Come downstairs in a bit; we'll have lunch.”

Frek worked on his closet a little more, folding a few of his mounded clothes, and then he walked over to his bed. He lay on the floor beside it, shifting the objects about, all the while peering to see the thing that was maybe the Anvil. The watchbird strutted back and forth on the floor right beside him, turning its head this way and that. Frek was almost glad the watchbird and the house tree were observing him. If there really was an alien under his bed and it came darting out at him, it wouldn't be so bad to have Gov and the counselors ready to help.

But he saw nothing but toys and games. Had he imagined the shiny thing before? No, wait—there was a funny spot by the wall, a spot where things didn't want to go. He pushed with his Solar Trader game box, bulldozing some toys toward the mystery corner. His throwing disk slid off to one side of the special spot and the model rocket slid off to the other. Yes, something was there, but you couldn't see it. The air in that spot had a warped quality—as if a lens were floating there. Scooting forward and stretching his arm out as far as he could, Frek reached into the place where nothing wanted to go. And, yes, he felt something. Bumpy, smooth, faintly vibrating. He swept his hand on past the spot, so that maybe the watchbird and the house tree wouldn't realize what he was doing, even though his heart was pounding so hard that it seemed like everyone must be able to hear. He took a deep, shuddery breath, sat back up and brightly said, “No sign of the Anvil! And now my room's nice and tidy.” And then he went downstairs to the kitchen.