Frek and the Elixir (7 page)

“I didn't know it would turn out this way,” said Frek wretchedly. “I'm sorry. I wish—I wish we could go back to the way things were before.” He wanted to form a plan, but thinking was so hard. “What else have the counselors been up to?”

“They decontaminated your room while they had you at the service center,” said Mom. “And the last few days they've been up at Giant's Marbles where you planted those seeds. Killing everything with poison and flame-puffers. They keep coming here to ask about you. It's Thursday now. You were sick five days. They said they'd decide about healing you on the sixth day. Tomorrow. Thank Buddha you're better.” Her hands were shaking. “You're really better?” Perched on the knob of a kitchen cabinet was the tiny gray watchbird, one of its eyes fixed upon them.

“Oh yes,” said Frek, looking at his mother's familiar face. Would he still recognize her if he got a new brain? “Completely well.”

Mom stared back at him. Of course she knew. Lora Huggins always knew. “That's wonderful,” she said slowly. “I'm so glad. Let me show you the garden. Those nosy neighbors trampled most of it last week, but I used fertilizer-pollen, and the plants are just about like new. We can play a game. I bet you need exercise. Oh, and, Frek, there's apples on the anyfruit tree. You can use your angelwings to get the ones off the top. Your wings have missed you.”

It was the first time Frek had been outside since they'd brought him back from the peeker. Spring had moved a notch further along; it was practically summer. Everything was green and rustling, except for some yellow leaves on the mapine. The air was soft and sweet. A crow was cawing. Everything about their house and yard looked so cozy and familiar. Frek's heart overflowed with the simple joy of being alive.

For the moment he and Mom didn't talk about anything real. The watchbird was hovering right next to them. Mom showed him the garden and he said it was nice. They picked some apples from the low-hanging branches, and he said they tasted good. Mom went and got his angelwings out of the garage. Frek wasn't quite sure why she wanted him to fly. To run away? But the watchbird would track him and bring the counselors.

He stared hopelessly at Mom laying out the wings. It was going to be a mess trying to put them on. No way was he going to be able to do all the right steps in the right order. His mind was like a sieve. He stood there worrying, soon forgetting all about the angelwings.

He felt sure he'd get well on his own if Gov would just give him more time. He could feel the healing at work within him; it was a combing sensation, like fingers running through his hair—as if he were combing his brain, fluffing up his familiar old modes of thought, getting his personality back together, bringing his memories on line. But tomorrow the time was going to run out. Some people said you had an immortal soul. Would he get a new soul when they changed his brain? If the Three R's even worked, that is. The facilitator toon had talked about a high success rate. That was a roundabout way of saying that some patients died. Maybe Gov would deliberately make sure Frek ended up being that kind of patient. Yes, tomorrow Frek was probably going to die. He probed the thought, weighing it against the feel of the late afternoon breeze, the smell of the garden, the light slanting through the gathering clouds.

“Don't look so gloomy, Frek,” said Mom, actually laughing at him. “Oh, I'm sorry, but you should see your face. I'm going crazy. Let's not give up yet. You don't feel like flying?”

“Uh—”

“Well, then, let's play badminton first!” she exclaimed, as if she'd been waiting to say this. “It's a new set, I got it this week to distract the girls from worrying about you. Look.” She darted into the garage and brought out a pair of long-handled racquets, beautifully gnarled wood with springy meshes of fibers.

“They're from a please plant,” said Mom. “The strings are good, aren't they? And, look, Frek, here's the
birdie.
” She produced a rubbery little pellet with a fringe of feathery fronds.

They went over to the lawn beside the garage so as not to step on the angelwings. They played without a net, not keeping score, just batting the little birdie back and forth. It was easy. The watchbird was intrigued by the shuttlecock's motions; it kept buzzing back and forth, chasing it.

Mom began lobbing the shuttlecock higher and higher. It would settle slowly down toward Frek with the watchbird buzzing after it, and then he'd whack the badminton birdie back to his mother.

“Oops,” said Mom. She'd just kicked a hole in the lacy turmite mound, and you could already see some of them swarming out. A pungent, vinegary smell came from the angry turmites. Mom casually moved a few steps away from the mound and hit the birdie to Frek again. He was down past the far end of the garage.

As they continued to volley, Frek noticed something odd about Mom's motions. She kept looking from him to the watchbird to the turmite mound behind her, which meant she had to keep awkwardly turning her head. Doing this over and over. At first he thought it was that she was worried about the turmites stinging her, but then, all at once, he got the picture.

“Ow,” said Mom, suddenly stepping to one side and bending to brush a turmite from her ankle. The shuttlecock and the watchbird were flying straight toward Frek. This was it.

Focusing all of his attention, Frek swung his racquet through a full sweep, stretching the length of his body from the tips of his fingers to the tips of his toes. He caught the watchbird full-on with the center of the racquet and sent it hurtling toward the turmite mound.

If the watchbird wasn't dead when it hit the ground, it was a few seconds later. A mass of the angry, tweaked insects crawled over its body, biting.

“Yes, Frek!” called Mom in a low, intense tone. She radiated urgency. “Quick! Let's get your wings on. Come over here and lie down on them. I'll help. And listen, I'm going to give you the mate to Carb's ring. He left it for you. It's exactly like his.” She drew a heavy shiny ring out of her pocket and slipped it onto his finger. She'd wrapped some sticky bark tape around the band to make the ring small enough to stay on.

“I'm supposed to run away?” whispered Frek, not quite believing it. He looked down at the ring. It was indeed exactly like Dad's, a solid gold band, thicker on one side, with a glowing dot of red set into a depression in the thick part. The red spot wasn't a gemstone; it was, rather, a shimmering ball, like a tiny, immaterial fire suspended at the base of a little golden cup in the ring. Frek had studied Dad's ring many times.

He ran his finger over the smooth metal, oddly warm to the touch. The origin of Dad's ring was a bit mysterious; Dad had once told Frek that he'd gotten it in a dream he had the night before Frek was born, a dream about some kind of magic pig. But Carb had never filled in the details, nor told him about this copy. Wearing it was almost like holding hands with his father. Frek smiled down at it, then looked up at Lora.

“I'm supposed to run away?” he repeated.

“Not so loud,” hissed Mom. “The house will hear you. Yes, run away before Gov takes you again. Your brain will get better by itself. You still have something wrong, don't you?”

“I can't remember what I'm doing,” breathed Frek. He was lying on the wings now. “Things slip away from me.”

“Oh, Carb had that too after they peeked him,” said Mom with another anxious glance at the house tree. “He was getting better, but Gov didn't want to give him time. You'll be fine.” She leaned over and helped with the angelwings, her voice even lower than before. “Hurry. There's a Crufter hideout five kilometers west of town. Follow the river upstream. The hideout's in the ruins of that old hydro plant. You've seen the ruins, we've been there for picnics. There's a door down near the base on the other side. Pound on it and show them the ring and someone will help you for sure. Your father, he always thought you were destined to do something special. Maybe he was right.” The angelwings were tightly attached now. Mom stood back. “Hurry, Frek!”

Frek got to his feet and flexed his wings. He was still holding the racquet. What all had Mom just said?
Where
was the hideout?

“Here,” said Mom, showing him a folded piece of paper and then shoving it into the pocket of his pants. “I wrote everything down for you. Take it one step at a time. First you fly to the river.” She pointed away from Lookout Mountain. “You know where the river is, Frek.” She took hold of him and turned him so he was facing downhill. “You take off, and you fly fast and low. Stay under the trees whenever you can. The counselors will be looking for you. Got that much?”

“Fast and low,” said Frek. “Where's the hideout again?”

“Upstream,” said Mom. “When you get to the river, fly toward the sun. To the left. It's all on this paper.” She gave him a fierce kiss on his cheek. “Go now, Frek. And be careful.”

“I love you,” said Frek, hugging her.

“Buddha bless you, dear son. You're my heart's delight.”

Wow suddenly came trotting into the yard, his ears pricked and alert. He poised himself, ready to run along on the ground after Frek. “No, Wowie, you stay here with me,” said Mom, grabbing his collar. She was crying.

Frek lifted into the air.

“Good-bye Frek,” squeaked Wow, straining at his collar and staring up at him. Even the dog could tell this was a big deal. “Goodbye.”

Frek's angelwings were well fed and well rested; he buzzed down the shady pathways of Middleville at a tremendous speed. Pretty soon he'd left the house trees behind. He was in a zone of all-season mapines, thick and uniform. The ground was a carpet of sticky red and yellow leaves, pocked by turmite mounds intricate as little cathedrals.

Frek noticed he held something in his hand: the badminton racquet. He savored the sudden memory of how he'd swatted the watchbird. That had been so godzoon goggy. He'd slammed the watchbird and the turmites had finished it off.

Speaking of turmites, they were crawling all over the fallen mapine leaves, feeding. Bolts and swatches of turmite-woven fabrics and garments rested beside their mounds: denims and silks and wools. Middleville was known for its tailors. They cultivated these turmites and harvested the cloth. Off to the right, Frek saw Shurley Yang, the tailor who'd sold Mom her one fancy dress. Shurley glanced over at Frek and waved. She didn't know he was running away.

Running away from what? Frek looked over his shoulder. Nothing was following him. But then his mind played the squeak-clank sound of the brain-lid on the facilitator toon's head. He was running away from the counselors and the Three R's.

The mapine forest stopped abruptly, and Frek was flying across patchwork fields of vegetables, the fields rolling downhill to where the bank dropped off to the clear, rushing waters of the River Jaya. This was the first time he'd used his angelwings to fly down here.

The fields were for yams, tomatoes, carrots, chard, rice, and red beans, the same vegetables as always, the plots butted together upon the rich land of the river bottom as far as Frek could see. Farmers were at work, supervising their crews of pickerhand kritters. Some of the scampering little hands were planting, but others were harvesting as well. The tweaked crops yielded all year round. The harvester pickerhands were loading the produce into elephruks who would carry the produce off to the Nubbies of Middleville and Stun City. So much to see!

Frek's attention fixed upon a rice paddy in a slough just below him, teeming with pickerhands. A massive bull elephruk rested on his knees beside the paddy, taking on a load of the winter-ripened rice. A gangly, thin farmer stood twitching his elbows as he talked with the elephruk's mahout. It was nearly quitting time. Frek slowed and circled to take in the scene. He loved elephruks.

The pickerhands were like living gloves, propelling themselves across the muddy water of the paddy by fluttering their fingers. They were picking each ripe stalk they came across. Once a pickerhand had collected as big a sheaf as it could clasp between thumb and palm, it would clamber up onto the banks of the slough and trot to the elephruk. The hands had a cute, twinkling way of running on their fingertips.

The long, gray elephruk had let his back sag all the way down so that the pickerhands could more easily get into his hopper. The hands beat the stalks against the hopper's inner walls, incrementally mounding the elephruk's freight-bed with grains of rice.

Just then things got even more interesting. The elephruk decided that the load upon his back had grown heavy enough. He rose slowly onto his six legs, unkinking himself from front to back. When a last few pickerhands leaped into his hopper with more sheaves, the elephruk reached his trunk back and plucked up the pickerhands one by one, hurling them into the waters of the rice paddy.

The elephruk's mahout began screaming at his beast. He was a wiry old man in orange tights and a turban. His shrill, cracking voice was so instantly and disproportionately furious that it made Frek laugh to hear it. The elephruk paid the mahout no mind at all. The dusty behemoth rocked from side to side, settling his load, then began making his way around the slough toward the mossy lane that followed the River Jaya to Stun City. The mahout stopped yelling, bid the farmer good-bye, and hopped onto the elephruk's back.

“Frek! Frek Huggins!” The voice came from above, mixed with a clattering in the air. It was PhiPhi, leaning out of the same shimmering green-blue lifter beetle that had carried Frek off to the peeker session last week. No! Frek had forgotten he was running away!

He spurred his wings to a supreme effort, darting toward the river. The high clay riverbanks were green with bindmoss. Frek's mind was empty of any idea about whether to turn left or right, so he took the direction the elephruk was walking in. He had a bit of a lead on the lifter beetle; perhaps he could outfly it.

Frek sped downstream just above the river water, putting every bit of his nerve energy into making his angelwings beat faster.

The River Jaya was crystal clear to the bottom, inhabited only by mosquito larvae and the amplified trout who fed upon them. Frek envied the calm of the great trout, hanging there in the clear water like birds in the sky, gently beating their fins against the current.

He made it past two bends of the river before PhiPhi's lifter beetle drew even with him. PhiPhi was alone, sitting sideways to face him. She was holding a large, hairy, crooked webgun: a heavily tweaked spider. Its spinnerets pointed Frek's way.

“It is easier on you if you land over there and let me take you in,” PhiPhi called to Frek. She gestured toward the high bank of the river. “Otherwise I have to net you.”

Squeak-clank, thought Frek. They want to eat my brain.

He went a little gollywog then. With a sudden lurch, he dug his angelwings into the air, managing to get behind and above the lifter beetle. And then, faster than thought, he swooped down at the lifter and slashed the edge of his badminton racket against the base of beetle's tiny head. The shock sent the racquet twisting out of Frek's grasp.

Though the lifter's chitinous head was too tough to break, the blow was enough to stun it. The teal-blue beetle dropped its passenger pod and fell to the river itself. The pod and the beetle skipped across the surface like a stones. A wad of web stuff came shooting up from PhiPhi, treading water in the stream. Frek dodged the web and flew on. Yes!

He made it past another bend of the meandering River Jaya. And then he realized he had no idea where he was going. PhiPhi would be uvvying in for reinforcements. What had Mom told him to do? Frek couldn't remember.

He'd pushed his wings so hard that they were drawing strength from the muscles of his chest and arms, not only from his normal energy molecules, but from his body's hidden reserves of dark matter. The alchemical transformation of dark matter was essential to balancing the angelwings' prodigal energy budget. At first his arms had ached, but now they were starting to go numb. He glanced back and saw the glint of a lifter beetle two bends behind him. It was time to go to ground.

Here came another river bend. The carved-out left bank was bluff-high with a fringe of roseplusplusses and please plant fronds against the cloudy sky. Frek went part way round the bend, then quickly angled up to the top of the bank, his arm muscles a mass of pain. Above the bank he found an overgrown slope with no sign of human habitation. In a momentary flash of insight, he realized he'd ended up in the Grulloo Woods. He'd never been here before. Well, it was better than letting the counselors get him. A deep gully gouged the slope above the bluff. Frek dove for the spot where the vegetation looked the thickest.

As soon as he hit the ground, his angelwings peeled themselves off him. They were trembling with fatigue. They wanted to start foraging, but Frek stopped them. He gathered them in his arms, collapsing them like umbrellas. And then Frek scooted under the thickest, lowest-hanging bush he saw—a please plant bush with a bundle of thin branches that rose up from a central clump to droop back to the ground, leaving plenty of room underneath. The branches were set with little oval leaves of a lovely spring-fresh green.

Frek lay there for a while crooning softly to his angelwings and rubbing their domed eyes and their complicated mouths against his cheeks. Up through the bush he could see the clouds turning pink with the setting sun. As he shifted around, trying to be invisible, he felt some hard lumps under his hips. Last year's please plant seeds.

The seeds were shaped like smooth little rods with round disks on the top—like spoons, but not cupped like spoons. Each of the rods had a tiny hole in it. Something about these shapes seemed familiar, but in his present condition, Frek had no hope of remembering what they were. He held some of them up to the mouths of the angelwings. The famished kritters gnawed avidly.

For the next hour or so, Frek lay beneath the bush feeding please plant seeds to his angelwings and looking at his new ring. Frek had always hoped he might get a special ring like Dad's some day, but he'd never thought it would be so soon. Dad had left it for him, and Mom had been saving it for when he got older. Dad cared.

The ring was nicely made, with its cup fashioned into a perfectly parabolic dish. The mysterious red light at the base of the cup glowed equably. Frek prodded at the light with a bit of twig; the stick moved right through the red dot.

Mom had wrapped enough bark tape onto the band to make it a tight fit. With a little effort, he slid the ring off and had a look at the underside. He'd never actually seen Dad take his ring off, and he wondered if you could see the red dot from underneath. But he found smooth gold metal all across the back of the hemisphere—lightly flecked with subtle crystalline structures, the crystals making a delicate pattern that teasingly seemed to change when you stared at it. Frek turned the ring right side up and stared into its glowing red dot. For a second the light seemed to be painting a pattern in the air, like a laser limning a hologram. A face? Could Dad be using his matching ring right at this moment to try to talk to him? But then the thing was once again just a ring. Frek slid it back on, pleased at its weight upon his finger. Having the ring made him feel better about Dad than he'd felt for a long time.

Too bad Dad wasn't here, though. He'd know what to tell the counselors, all right. Dad was the one to have on your side when there was trouble.

While Frek was thinking about Dad and the ring, the rest of his memory kept blanking out on him, but not so much that he ever forgot that he was hiding from the counselors. At first he kept hearing their lifter beetles flying along the river, but after a while the buzzing went away. The clouds grew orange, then shaded down to purple and gray. Maybe he could fly farther down the river tonight. He wished he could remember where Mom had told him to go. He'd forgotten about the paper in his pocket and he'd forgotten he was in the Grulloo Woods.

In the distance, farther up the slope, an occasional thud sounded, as if someone were chopping wood. Just before it got completely dark, the chopping stopped. A moment later a glistening teal lifter beetle set down on the ground some thirty meters off. It was PhiPhi and Zhak with some kind of animal—oh Buddha, it was Wow.

“You smell him near here, Wowie?” said PhiPhi in a sweet voice. Frek could hear her perfectly. With the coming of dusk, the air had grown very calm. “Good, smart dog. Poor Frek needs help. Find him! Find Frek!”

“This the fourth place that dog think he smell Frek,” said Zhak impatiently. “We should get real counselor watchdog, a dog with an uvvy so you know what it thinking. Get real counselor dog come back tomorrow morning. If Gov gave Middleville better funding we have dog like that in the first place.”

“Tomorrow morning the boy could be in Stun City,” said PhiPhi. “Where Gov lives. Gov doesn't want that.”

“Little geever,” said Zhak angrily. “He supposed to head upstream to that old Crufter hideout. Like Lora Huggins tell him to. I waiting there all afternoon and he never come. His brain's fubbed, yes? Let's just K-I-L-L him, hey PhiPhi?” He spelled the word to keep Wow from understanding.

“Gov doesn't want that,” said PhiPhi again. “Gov wants the boy for bait to reopen the Anvil. We bring him in alive. We do like Gov says, Zhak.”

“Yaya,” said Zhak wearily. “Go on, you stupid dog! Find Frek!”

Wow gave a low growl. But PhiPhi started up the sweet-talk, and soon Wow was nosing around in the brush. It took all of three minutes till his head appeared under Frek's bush, his soft golden eyes glowing with pleasure at having found his friend.

“No, Wowie,” whispered Frek before Wow could bark. “Go away. PhiPhi bad. Zhak bad. Frek hide. Go away.”

The angelwings twisted in Frek's grasp, trying to escape the smell of dog. If they started chirping he was doomed.

“Go away, Wow,” hissed Frek.

Wow bared his teeth in his version of a smile, and went crackling off through the bushes, moving on past Frek, pretending still to be searching, and having himself a good look around. He kept it up for quite a long time.

When it was fully dark, Zhak and PhiPhi started hollering for Wow. And then, finally, Wow went to them.

“Frek not here,” squeaked Wow from deep in his throat. The sound carried clearly in the calm evening air.

“Curse you,” said Zhak. “We go now, PhiPhi. These woods not safe at night. The Grulloos thinking about suppertime. Grulloos eat people. If Frek here, he won't get to Stun City. We posted watchbirds all along River Jaya anyhow. Enough now, PhiPhi. We go.”

“I wish we have one more watchbird,” said PhiPhi. “I got a feeling Frek's under one of these bushes. Listening to us. I bet Wow lying to us. I wonder if Frek come out if we start T-O-R-T-U-R-E his dog?”

“Yaya,” said Zhak with a snicker. “I like your think. Hang on. I'll—” He broke off in a yelp. “He bit me! There he goes! Don't let him get—”

Frek heard frantic crashing in the bushes and then a distant splash in the river.

“I'm bleeding, PhiPhi,” said Zhak mournfully. “I need med leech. We go. Forget curse you dog. Maybe he drowns or a Grulloo eats him or we catch him tomorrow, who cares. We go.”

The lifter beetle buzzed away, invisible against the black sky. It was a cloudy, moonless night.