Frek and the Elixir (50 page)

Two chimes sounded while Bumby talked. With the first chime, their makeshift spacesuits melted away, and with the second, Ulla's transparent kenner tweets clothed them in heavy-duty Orpolese suits.

And now Ulla unsealed her top and bottom, returning to her customary shape of a green-veined reddish-purple donut.

The third chime sounded. Frek felt a familiar dropping sensation in the pit of his stomach; he sensed the yunch whine within his flesh. Looking out from the donut, he could see their alien attackers in the middle distance. But Bumby's tentacles were laying down a withering barrage of energy bolts that kept them from approaching closer.

Ulla/Bumby's rapid transition into yunch had caught the other aliens by surprise. Their pursuers showed no sign of yunching up with them. As Frek watched, the Unipuskers, Radiolarians, and hostile Orpolese dwindled into invisibility, followed, in short order, by the densely clustered suns that filled the center of Orpoly.

A worry pinged in the back of Frek's mind.

“Isn't it dangerous to yunch near so much matter?” he said into his spacesuit.

“Quite the feat of derring-do, eh?” said Bumby's voice. As before, the group of yunchers had become tenuous clouds, overlaid upon each other. It was as if Bumby's voice were within Frek's own head. “Leaping off the maiden's balcony to land upon the back of one's faithful steed,” continued the alien. “Scampering down the giant's beanstalk. Out of the joint in time. Unlax, my boy, yunching near massive objects isn't nearly so high-risk on the way up as on the way down. Assuming, of course, that we don't spring a leak. But that's not very—what, Ulla?”

For a moment Bumby fell silent, and in the silence, sooner than expected, chime four sounded, signaling the superexponential phase of the yunch. The stars tumbled past like dust. Frek assumed it was good to be traveling so fast. Soon chime five would sound and they'd level off at galactic size and—

“Shed the ring!” roared Bumby, his voice like a storm. A vortex of Orpolese energies clawed at Frek's hand.

Frek had been too distracted by the yunch to notice his finger. But, yes, his ring was buzzing and sucking, pulling fine lines of red from the hazy ring of Ulla/Bumby, and floating near Frek's hand was the ghostly image of—Batty's face.

“Quantum leak!” shrieked Bumby, his voice cracking. “They're killing us! Tell Tagine and Vlan. They inherit our deal.” His voice was weaker than before. Already there was but little strength in the forces trying to twist off Frek's ring.

Still Frek hesitated to cast it away. The ring was his last link to his father. But then he heard the voice of the Magic Pig, squeaking at him through the mouth of Wow.

“Drop the ring before they get you, too, Frek.”

So now, as in the vig herd on Unipusk, Frek discarded his troublesome ring. It went tumbling off toward the galactic core. For a fleeting moment, Frek again could see the hyperspace tube connecting his ring to Dad's. It was like a rubber band, pulling his ring toward the branelink and the Planck brane.

Meanwhile their upward yunch continued. Frek heard a faint sound, halfway between a hiss and a moan.

“Bumby?” he called tentatively. No further answer came. The green-veined purple cloud that had been Ulla/Bumby was damaged beyond repair—ragged and breaking into bits on every side. This time Ulla and Bumby were worse than decohered. They were dead. Who would help Frek now?

“Rundy?” he essayed. But the Magic Pig was gone. Wow's only sound was a doggy whine.

They were moving up past the galactic level now. As before, Frek spotted a few other yunchers rising up and then sinking down. But unlike the others, Frek and his companions continued unceasingly to grow.

“Gibby?” said Frek finally. He wasn't eager to hear his partner's reaction to his latest goof.

“You've fubbed it good,” came the Grulloo's bitter response. “Killed our ride home. And looky down there. That tiny white disk in the middle of our stomachs? That's the geevin' galaxy, kac-for-brains. Now hurry up and unyunch us like you did when you ruined the first trip. It's the least you can do, you gump. Not that we have a dewdrop's chance in hell of ending up on Earth.” Gibby was a cloud of anger.

“Hold on,” muttered Frek, too abashed to say more.

He thought back on what he'd done during that first outward trip with Ulla/Bumby. They'd come to rest at the galactic size level and then, spurred by his treacherous ring, Frek had prematurely unyunched them down toward Unipusk.

How had he done it? It had been a matter of remembering the particle-spinning feeling of the upward yunch, and starting a similar kind of motion, but in the opposite sense.

So now Frek tried. And got nowhere. When he'd cut short their first trip with his will to unyunch, they'd been in a neutral state, paused at the size of the galaxy. But this time their Orpolese guides had died before having the chance to sound the crucial chime five. Frek, Gibby, and Wow were in the throes of a powerful, ongoing upward yunch. Try as he might, Frek could find no way to overcome the inertia of the yunch-spin.

“The yunch is, like, stuck,” said Frek presently. If anything, the pace of their upwards yunch was increasing. A cluster of small white disks flew past. Other galaxies.

“We're gonna keep growing forever?” demanded Gibby.

“I don't know.”

The galaxies tumbled past like snowflakes in a storm. And still Frek and his companions grew. Frek glimpsed one other pair of yunchers, overlapping ducks who purposefully waddled from one galaxy to another and shrank demurely down. How enviably controlled were their motions compared to Frek's mad, unconstrained upward rush.

The galactic flakes of light shrank to dust motes. The accumulation of bright specks sketched scarves of light. As the scale grew yet vaster, the faint, stippled surfaces folded over upon themselves, as if building up tissues of transgalactic flesh. These shapes in turn dwindled to dots and lines of light that became the elements of still larger forms, ever more remote from anything familiar. Weary and hopeless, Frek and his companions slept.

When he woke, the fractal dusts and skeins of light were still coming at them. Though Gibby and Wow were silent, Frek had a sensation of someone talking to him. The melodious voice seemed to come from inside Frek's body, as if his bones were vibrating to make the sounds, or as if the background hum in his ears was a song. But each time Frek tried to focus upon the voice, it faded away. He could hear it only when he wasn't trying to understand what it said.

Up ahead a patterned cloud rushed toward them. The approaching fog held three enormous shapes: a boy, a Grulloo, and a dog—all seen from behind. Frek and his companions had grown so big that they wrapped all the way around the universe.

Although Frek's yunched-up body was comfortably overlapped with the forms of Gibby and Wow, it wouldn't overlap itself. There was a faint
boing
as Frek stepped on his own heels—and stopped growing. He was as large as anything in his home universe could become. The upward yunch was over.

Frek felt around within himself, unsuccessfully trying to start the unyunch. He'd wholly forgotten about the voice within his body. So now of course the words came clear.

“Hello. I'm Q'lem.” You couldn't really call the voice either male or female.

“God!” exclaimed Gibby.

“I'm not God,” said the voice. Once again the sounds were over-flowing into Frek's other senses. The voice smelled like honey; it sparkled pale white. “I'm more what you'd call an angel,” continued Q'lem. “An eigenstate of your universal wave function. Or perhaps an intelligent mold upon the four-dimensional hypersurface you call your universe. There's levels upon levels in the cosmos. Are you planning to hyperjump farther up? I could boost you.”

“No, no,” cried Frek. “We want to go home. We started yunching and we couldn't stop. We want to go back to Earth—to heal our biome and get rid of the branecasters.”

“I'm scanning your worldline,” said Q'lem. “A very wriggly thread.”

“Can you help us get home?”

“You need a size scale to attune yourself to,” said Q'lem. “Follow your heart. Your loved ones are your beacon, your standard meter. Ask one of them to stretch out a hand.”

“How would I talk to them?”

“They're inside you. You're everywhere.”

“I smell our yard,” said Wow, speaking more clearly than ever before. “I can find Lora.”

“The dog knows,” said Q'lem. “I'm helping him.” The shining, sugared voice sank back into the background hum from whence it had emerged. And the odor of Wow replaced the scent of honey.

“I'm just as smart as you are, Frek,” said Wow, his voice supremely well-modulated. “You only think I'm dumb because I'm not interested in the same things as you. I'm an expert on our backyard. I know where the turmites have a path up the anyfruit tree. And where there's a puddle with mosquitoes. I know all the blades of grass. The pebbles. They're part of me. I can see our backyard and near it I see Lora. She's sleeping. It's almost dawn.”

“Good, Wow,” said Frek, trying to hide his unease at having his dog speak as an equal. “Can you help me talk to Lora?”

“Careful, Frek,” put in Gibby. “Q'lem has that dog all hopped up. An angel made of universal pond scum? What if Q'lem's given Wow rabies?”

Before Frek could finish thinking this over, Wow barked a slightly mocking command to him. “Come, boy!” The dog's clear, forceful voice set a whirlpool spinning in Frek's head.

Frek had a sense of being in two places at once. He was still yunched up to the size of the universe, with his front wrapped around to touch his back. But at the same time he was at the far end of the whirlpool, peeking into—Lora's dream.

Lora was dreaming about teaching a man to play the sitar. The man's head was a pumpkin carved like a jack-o'-lantern. Whenever the student got a good rhythm going, he'd groovily wag his big orange head—and it would fall off and roll across the ground. Lora would sigh, put the head back in place, and say, “Roast beets, Mr. Taj.” And then the student would start playing again, raga variations upon “My Dog Has Fleas.”

Frek pushed farther into the whirlpool, sending an image of himself into Lora's dream to stand next to Mr. Taj.

Lora recognized her son right away. “Frek,” she exclaimed. “I'm so worried about you. You're okay?”

“I'm as big as the universe, Mom,” said Frek. “I want to come home. Can you reach out your hand to me?”

“How?” said Lora. “Which way?” And then the student's pumpkin head fell off again, distracting her. “Roast beets, Mr. Taj,” repeated Lora. When Frek tried to get his mom's attention back, he couldn't. Lora was lost in her dream.

The whirlpool closed up.

“No luck?” asked Gibby. He, Frek, and Wow remained stalled at the largest possible size.

“I'll take you to Geneva and Ida,” suggested Wow. “I can find them, too.”

But this proved fruitless as well. Geneva was immersed in reveries of an endless dress store, and Ida was dreaming about the Goob Dolls. Neither of them recognized Frek. Geneva mistook him for a sales clerk, while Ida thought he was a Goob Doll troll.

“Try Renata,” Frek told Wow after giving up on his sisters.

“I don't know her scent very well,” objected Wow.

“Try anyway,” insisted Frek. “It should be easy to find her. I bet she's in our house in Middleville, sleeping in my room. Go, Wow. Take me into Renata's dream.”

Renata's dream image of herself was younger-looking than the real Renata, but with the same long, braided pigtails. She was dreaming about sculpting shapes in three dimensions, waving her arms in the air and leaving solid trails. Just now she was designing a ribbed, branching form like an old-time saguaro cactus. Frek's image appeared seated on one of the dream-cactus's arms.

“Is that you, Frek?” said Renata. “You stayed away too long. When are you coming back?”

“Right now,” said Frek. “If you can help me. I'm stuck, and I need to hold your hand.”

“I'll try,” said Renata, reaching out toward him. “I need help, too.”

Renata's hand was at just the right hyperdimensional dream space angle for Frek to catch hold of. As soon as he locked into contact with her, he knew he could come home. He tautened the connection between his two selves: the image within Renata's dream and the yunched-up body that filled the universe.

Renata gave his hand a gentle tug, and then, at last, the downward unyunch began. Quickly feeling around with his other hand, Frek managed to get hold of one of Gibby's hands—or feet. Gibby in turn used his free limb to catch hold of Wow. And thus the three of them unyunched together. There was whiff of valediction from Q'lem, a sweet chime of good-bye.

The trip was fast. The tenuous forms of galactic superclusters flew past, resolving into smaller and smaller components. In five minutes, Earth herself came rushing at Frek like a well-thrown ball. Stretching out before Frek was the long pink worm of his arm, a million-kilometer pink spaghetti leading down to the coastal plains of a green-shaded continent lightly shadowed by Gaian clouds.

The arm reeled him in at a reckless rate, pulling Gibby and Wow behind. They swooped down past dawn-gilded Middleville treetops and through Frek's bedroom window to land—
thump, thump, thump
—foursquare on his bedroom floor.

Renata was sitting up in bed, blinking and smiling, her arm extended toward Frek. He was his solid old self, firmly clasping her hand, with his other arm reaching back to hold Gibby, who was holding Wow. Their space suits were gone.

“Stop that noise, Renata!” yelled Ida from her room down the hall. “Too early!” Frek, Gibby, and Renata started laughing, and Wow let out a joyous bark.

“Frek! Wow!” exclaimed Ida. She came rushing into Frek's room, dressed in her old yellow pajamas with the bumblebee stripes. And then Lora and Geneva woke up, too.

It was a wonderful reunion, with hugs all around, everyone talking at once. Woo found her way into Frek's bedroom as well, she and Wow delightedly sniffing and nuzzling each other, their tails wagging, yipping and nipping, batting each other's muzzles with their forepaws.

“Frek, you look like you haven't washed for—has it been eight days?” said Lora right away. Same old Mom.

“I'll clean up in a minute,” said Frek. “It'll feel good. Is Yessica here?”

“She moved to Stun City,” said Renata. “So things have been pretty calm.”

“Except for yesterday,” put in Geneva. “Yessica came back for a visit. She bought Renata some angelwings. They're lying on our lawn.”

“Renata was yelling at Yessica really loud,” said Ida. “Then she stopped and Mom told Yessica to go away some more.”

“It's okay,” said Renata, seeming eager to change the subject. “You haven't introduced Gibby yet, Frek.”

“Hi, Gibby,” said Ida, crouching down to peer under his low hat.

“Careful,” said Geneva. “Grulloos bite.”

“Maybe I'll eat a Nubby for breakfast,” said Gibby, rocking back on his leg-arms and waving his scaly lizard tail.

“Nothing that you hear about Grulloos is true,” said Frek. “Gibby's a great guy. I met his family. He saved my life a bunch of times.”

“Frek's the man,” said Gibby. “A real hero, no lie. And he's got the magic potion in his pocket.”

“Show me!” exclaimed Renata.

Frek pulled out the egg, and they leaned over it.

“It looks like a jigsaw puzzle,” said Geneva. “All different little animals. What's it for?”

“I think I can use it to bring back the missing species,” said Frek, forgetting the need for secrecy. “It's full of gene codes, all the codes that NuBioCom erased back in 2666.”

“What an imagination,” said Lora, giving Frek a sharp look, as if to remind him that the house tree walls were watching and listening, the same as ever, feeding every word to Gov and his counselors. Oops.

“Aren't those codes NuBioCom property?” said Renata. Her voice had gone flat and cold.

“You think NuBioCom owns the genes to Gaia's butterflies?” said Frek, quite unable to let this pass, even if the counselors were listening. “Come on, Renata, don't be a gurp.”

“Well, NuBioCom did register the patent,” said Renata. “Whether you like it or not. And even if the detailed patent records were destroyed, the restrictions stay in place. You'd have no right to reimplement those codes. Gov wouldn't allow it.”

Frek took a step back from Renata and stared at her. What crazy world had he returned to? Suddenly Renata smiled. “Never mind,” she said dismissively. “I'm being silly. That's just Yessica's influence on me, I guess. She's made friends with some counselors. They've found her a place to live in Stun City. I might move there, too, now that you're back. She wanted me to wait here for you.”

“You seem different,” said Frek, no longer sure where they stood. “And—Gov's still in power? I thought maybe—”

He well remembered his fierce joy of seeing Bumby blast the Gov worm into fat cracklings and greasy smoke. But, yes, Gov had mentioned a clone ready to be programmed with his stored memories. Hopefully, these memories didn't include Frek and Bumby killing Gov.

“The new Gov is just like the one before,” said Lora, with the slightest downturn of her mouth. “And the puffball's already regenerated itself. We're all very happy. Yessica told us some crazy story about another planet, but none of that's true, is it?”

“Uh—no,” said Frek, following his mother's lead. He wasn't going to be able to tell the truth at all. Once again he was pinned beneath the dead weight of his sick, gleepy society.

Wearily he began to lie. “After that alien attacked the puffball, Gibby took me back to the Grulloo Woods and I rested in his burrow. I got better. I'm sorry I was rough with PhiPhi and the other counselors, by the way.” The words were ashes in his mouth. How could anyone live this way? Forcing a smile, Frek hefted the elixir egg like a worthless toy. “I might as well admit this is just a rock. I made up all sorts of gollywog stories for Gibby's kids.” He shoved the egg back in his pocket. “I guess I'll take my shower.”

“Good,” said Lora. “I'm so glad you're thinking clearly again. The counselors were worried after you ran away.”

“Did they put the peeker uvvy on you?” asked Frek. He'd been fretting about this for a long time.

“No,” said Lora in her blandest tone. “Why would they? I have no secrets. It was just that terrible mix-up about the aliens' Anvil thing. Probably because of Carb.” A bit of honest curiosity crept into her voice. “Is he coming back, too?”

Frek sighed and shook his head. There were so many things he wanted to say. Was it really any use trying to keep up a front? For now all he said was, “I'm here. And I'm fine.”

“Anybody can see Frek doesn't need the Three R's anymore,” exclaimed Geneva. “He really is all better.” She couldn't resist adding on a little teasing. “Oh oh, Frek—you have to make up a whole week's worth of homework!”

Homework? Frek's mind reeled at the concept. A minute ago he'd been the size of the universe, and now he was back to being a kid who had to worry about gurpy homework?