Frek and the Elixir (44 page)

Frek picked the second door from the left. It opened onto a landing with three more doors, and stairways leading down and up. The stairs were like catwalks of a stiff cartilaginous substance. The treads had perforations in them, and at certain angles, Frek could see through them to level after level of landings with more doors. The Exaplex was a living labyrinth.

Gibby pulled open one of the three new doors, revealing a dim screening room with perhaps a hundred stoollike seats, all but one of them empty. Upon one of the front seats perched a single manlike figure who, as soon as they came in, got up and left without pausing to glance back.

The screen was a big boxy three-dimensional view into an alien world. The graphics had the same pulsing, stroboscopic quality as flickerball visions. There was a curious multiplicity to the images, that is, Frek had the sensation of seeing several scenes at once. It took an effort of will to narrow in on one particular version of the scene.

Frek settled, more or less at random, upon a vision of frenzied oversized ants fighting—or making love?—beneath a curdled pink and blue sky. The giant ants were upon the beach of a sea with large square waves, the waves impossibly piled up like silver blocks. The visuals were accompanied by the chirping and squawking of the ant aliens, the steady crashing of surf, a pungent scent of chocolate and dill, and a faint metallic taste.

As if their search for the right theater wasn't going to be hard enough, there were additional doors ranged along each of this screening room's side walls.

“How about it, Wow,” said Gibby. “Can you sniff out the right room for us?”

“Find pig?” squeaked Wow, still thinking about the apparition they'd seen on the tracks.

“Find home,” said Frek. It stood to reason that the theater showing Earth would smell familiar. And the Earth room would surely be the place to find the elixir.

Wow took off so fast that it was hard to follow him. To start with, he led them back out to the antechamber and through the center door instead of the door Frek had picked. Confronted with more doors and two staircases as before, Wow led them down two flights, and then through the central door of that landing.

It was another screening room, again with a dark man—or something resembling a man—who left as soon as they came in. The screen here showed a desert world of tornados, great yellow twisters splitting into pairs, gobbling up smaller ones, partnering in groups of two and three, endlessly whirling the sand. The room was filled with roaring, and with a dusty, acrid smell. As with the world before, there was a sense of there being a whole continuum of possible images, with your subconscious volition singling out but one of them.

Wow darted down the right aisle and led them through the second to last door in the wall. This gave onto another long red-fuzz-covered hallway, punctuated by the same featureless shiny-framed doors, everything slightly warped and curved, with a constant deep throbbing noise in the background. Wow scratched at the fourteenth door on the right. Passing through, they found a fresh set of staircases, and went four more levels up. Or was it five? They pushed through another door, and found a theater showing scenes of giant snails, incredibly clear and vivid. Once again the screening room held a single watcher who rose to leave. Seeing him in silhouette, Frek noticed the man had a funny way of walking; his big feet never seemed to leave the floor. And his head was covered with little projecting braids.

“Hey,” shouted Dad as the dark man glided toward the door. “Wait up. Talk to us.” The silhouette ignored him and was gone.

Wow whined and took off down the aisle to lead them through the fifth or sixth door on the left. They ran down another red hallway, opened a chitinous door, ran down a wobbly staircase a few levels, pushed through some other door…

“Anybody keepin' track of what we've done?” said Gibby. “So we can get outa this nuthouse later on?”

“Wow will know,” said Frek, hoping it was true.

They continued running the maze for perhaps an hour. Time and space folded together into an endless blur of meaty walls, of dull shiny door frames, of staircases, of empty screening rooms displaying multiplexed photorealistic images of weird worlds. In every room a shadowy figure left the front row as they entered.

Was it a different watcher in each theater? Frek didn't think so. The figure always looked the same, unchanging as a mirage appearing over and over at the far end of a hot summer's road. Yes, somehow the dark man was staying out ahead of them down every twist and turn of their path. There could be no fathoming how the watcher managed to do this. Wow wasn't following him—the dog and the dark man always chose different doors. Yet their paths kept crossing, again and again.

Was the strange man laying a trap for them? There was something uncanny about his stealthy haste. No threat or command made the wraith wait up; no mad dash succeeded in catching him.

“Home,” said Wow at last, paw-tapping one more door.

When Frek pushed this door open he saw a screen that showed, not Earth, but a world of dogs. Dogs in trees, dogs in chariots, dogs herding chickens, dogs happily piled on each other with their tongues hanging out. The theater was filled with yips, snarls, growls, barks—and the rich, nose-tingling smell of canines.

“Oh, Wow,” sighed Frek. “I meant find
my
home. Find house tree. Find Lora.”

Wow wasn't listening. He was crouched beneath the great rectangular display, nose pointed up, raptly savoring the air.

As usual the dark watcher was at the far corner of the front row, on his feet, about to go.

“Please help us,” called Frek, stepping toward him. “We're desperate. Oh please! Maybe we can give you something you want.”

For the first time, the dark figure paused, seemingly looking their way. “Help us find the room that shows Earth,” begged Frek. “We can't do it without you.”

“I been waiting for you to ask me polite that way,” came the figure's voice, rich and rough-edged, vibrant with life. “Instead of yelling and grabbing like you got something coming. Your world's been right next door all along, hear? Come on in, boys, it's time. Top floor.”

The figure tapped a blank-looking spot on the hairy red wall. A shiny-framed door appeared and swung open. Pleasant yellow-green light spilled out, the color of sunlight reflected from leaves. Frek could see through to the room's screen. Instantly responding to Frek's unspoken wish, the screen showed Middleville, as real as looking out a window at it.

“Yee haw,” said Gibby to the dark man by the open door. “Thank you, friend. My name's Gibby.”

The being stood silent, his expression watchful, calm, faintly amused. He wore a red T-shirt, skinny gold pants, and bulbous black shoes. His skin was the dark shade of an African's in the days before humanity's genes were monoculturized. Unlike the Hubs, he didn't have an aura at all. He was neither human, nor Hub, but something different.

“I'm Carb,” said Dad, approaching the dark figure. “What's your name?”

“Zed,” said the black-skinned being. “Zed Alef.” His hair was twisted into dozens of little pigtails arranged in a grid. Corn rows, they'd been called. “Might say I'm the brains of the Exaplex, the quintillion-world puppeteer, understand?”

“Are you friends with the Magic Pig?”

“Not hardly. I hate that bossy little grunter. I chased him outa here just before you came. He was nosing around in your time pool, as if I had to tell you. Maybe I oughta think twice about helping you boys. Especially since I still haven't heard any kind of ‘please' from you, Mister Carb Huggins.”

“Please,” said Carb, nodding his head. “Please help us. My son, Frek, wants to save Earth's biome. Tell him the details, Frek!”

“I already know the particulars,” said Zed. “I been watching through your mind worm.”

Frek was back by the dog-world display, tugging at man's best friend. “Come
on,
Wow, come with us now.”

“Aw, let the dog be,” called Zed. “Smart dog like that. He be fine. We'll be right next door.”

“No,” said Frek. The way Zed had been able to directly open a fresh passage to the theater of Earth indicated that “next door” didn't mean much here. If Zed Alef should choose to close the new door, Wow would be lost for good.

“You're coming with me,” Frek told Wow, getting his arms around the dog's middle and lifting him up into the air. Wow twisted and clawed, even snarled a few curse words. But Frek hung onto him.

Dad and Gibby had already stepped through to the screening room of Earth. Through the door Frek could see their silhouettes down near the display. Zed was waiting by the door. His skin was wonderfully lustrous.

“You said you'd give me something I want?” asked Zed in a low tone as Frek approached. The whites of his eyes were slightly yellow and his tongue was a vivid pink.

“Yeah,” said Frek. “If we can.”

“I was studying on keeping that dog, but you're so mighty tight with him, I changed my mind. Now I'm wanting you or your old man. Me and the branecasters could use some nice fresh plain brane folks to get qubits from. You'd be tasty.”

“I can't stay here,” protested Frek. “I've got to take the elixir back to Earth.”

“I expected you'd be saying that. And you know that means we keep Carb.”

“No!”

“Hush,” said Zed with a confidential wink. “Don't tell him yet.” And then, before Frek could protest any further, Zed hurried off into the dark recesses of the Earth theater. Again Frek noticed an oddness in the way Zed moved. His feet never left the floor; in fact it looked as if the floor bulged up a bit to merge with his big, rounded shoes. Frek promised himself to keep a close eye on his father.

And then Frek carried Wow from the dog theater to the Earth theater. Behind him the door to the dog-world disappeared. Of course Wow had to frantically claw the throbbing red wall for a while, and then try pushing open one or two doors. But finally Frek managed to interest the dog in the scene showing here. It was, after all, home.

Yes, the flickering block of space floating at the end of the room was filled with the swaying house trees and bindmoss-covered paths of Middleville. With the natural perspectives and familiar homey colors it seemed realer than the Planck brane. Earth was a world where things made sense.

A sigh of homesickness welled up from Frek. How nice it would be to step into the picture. The view panned across the rolling sunlit lawns set with roseplusplus bushes, past the anyfruit trees, and through a little garden of yams, tomatoes, carrots, chard, rice, and red beans. Seeing the familiar plants made him hungry.

Frek and Wow joined Gibby and Carb, staring up at the solid screen of Earth images. Frek let his hand rest on his father's shoulder. No way was he going to leave his old man behind in this gollywog world.

Frek's view of the 3D screen zoomed out from the garden, showing a damaged turmite mound, a turmite-paper garage and—the Hugginses' house tree. The outer wall of the tree melted away and he saw into the kitchen. Briefly Frek wondered what Carb and Gibby were seeing. But he didn't bother asking them. There was too much for him to take in.

Lora, Geneva, Ida, Yessica, and Renata were in there together, with Woo lying on the floor. It was perfectly real, with every hair in place, all the sounds of everyone breathing, the faint scent of Lora's perfume, even the scuff marks on Ida's shoes. Renata was still wearing the green fern-patterned ribbons that Frek had crafted for her.

 

Yessica was putting some food on the table, a dish made of whole anyfruit-tree raspberries and ground-up carrots, the raspberries lined up on the watery little mounds of orange paste. She was holding forth about the perfect balance of this dish that she'd just now concocted from fresh ingredients found in the Huggins garden. She called it vitamash. Yessica explained that the vitamash was to help welcome herself and Renata into their temporary new home. She said the raspberries were like chakras, and that vitamash exemplified the Crufter way.

Lora told Yessica not to talk about Crufter stuff because Gov and the counselors were always watching and listening through the walls of the house tree although, added Lora, Gov had taken a big damage hit last week, and been replaced by a clone, with a few memories lost in the transition, thank goodness, but even so you shouldn't be waving a red flag in his face, not that he had a face, being in fact a parasitic worm, as was clearer than ever, given what people had seen in the blasted-out hole in his puffball that those alien attackers from the Anvil had made.

Meanwhile Geneva and Ida were getting Renata to tell about the Unipuskers and about how Frek had scared the aliens with the ickspot costumes. Renata was showing them some of the drawings she'd stored in her turkle. To keep Gov from getting interested, they talked like the story was a made-up plan for a toon show Renata wanted to invent, and instead of saying “Frek,” they were saying “Roarboy,” which was what Geneva sometimes called Frek to tease him.

And then Lora asked Yessica how “that man” was doing, and Yessica said that man was okay, except he'd let Yessica down in not helping her arrange to make daily broadcasts into the minds of everyone on Earth. “And how would that be?” wondered Lora, and then Yessica started to tell about the branecasters and about how she'd wanted to kill Frek so she could become the branecaster representative. Yessica was saying this flat out as if she didn't see anything wrong. And then Lora emptied the carrots and raspberries over Yessica's head.

Renata started crying and ran outside, but Geneva and Ida went after her to tell her to come back in, and that even if their moms fought, Renata was welcome anyway since she was a friend of Roarboy's. Renata whispered, “I have a goggy crush on Roarboy,” and that made Geneva laugh, but Ida shushed her.