Frek and the Elixir (19 page)

“What about us?” put in Gibby, exhaling a curling cloud of blue smoke. “Sure you're promising us an elixir, but what good's a promise from a face full o' slimy grabbin' arms? And I don't get the point of this branecast stuff you keep talkin' about, Bumby.”

“Don't butt in,” snapped Frek. Then he caught himself and softened his words. “I'm sorry, Gibby, but I need to hear more about my father.”

“There's not much more to tell,” said Bumby, making a blooming, expansive gesture with his sucker arms. A cuttlefish shrug. “As for Gibby's last question—a rich vein of info there. The branecasters have you on open access to attract a production deal, sure as death and Texas. Branecast producers like Ulla and me—or like Hawb and Cawmb—the way we wangle the branecast rights for a newly contacted race is to get a representative of the talent race to register in person with the branecasters. To keep things simple, the branecasters fixate on the first representative they meet; they give them full negotiation rights for their whole race. Can you relate? That's what Ulla and I have pegged you for, Frek, the human race representative for our branecasting deal. You're the man, Frek, with Gibby as backup, assuming you can call him human, too. With any luck, you'll yak with the branecasters before your father does, and you can register Ulla and me as humanity's branecast producers with,
harrumph,
exclusive distribution to the Orpolese consumers. Yes indeed. So shoulder the load, face your fate, and pick the best producer with the wiggiest audience. An Ulla-Bumby production exclusively for the Orpolese. It's a race for the deal. And your father, he's the representative for the Unipuskers. Him and that woman and her daughter—a girl about your age called, um—what was her name, Ulla?”

A shape like a drum drifted down from Ulla's wall. “Renata,” said Bumby as soon as he'd reached out a tentacle to touch the drum.

Though Frek didn't think he'd ever heard the name before, it had a familiar feel to it. Like something he might have heard in a dream. He repeated the name to himself. An image of a girl popped into his mind: a pleasant-faced girl his age with pigtails. It was a little sad to think of Carb having a whole new family. A tweet drifted through his head.

“I savor the pang of the father-son bond,” said Bumby as if reading his mind. “It's fresh. We have a different parent-child pattern on Orpoly. We're cloners. It's easy enough to divide off a new one, eh? Could your parent-child emotions run so high precisely because you're
not
identical?”

“Don't ride him, you slimy squid,” said Gibby. “You kidnapped Frek because the other guys took his Dad? Tell the dang story and don't beat around no bush.”

Bumby primly bunched together his arms and tentacles, collecting his thoughts. The tentacles had a cute clockwise twist like a cowlick, or like the top of a soft ice-cream cone. “When Ulla tweeted the Crufters, we found out about the Unipusker producers taking Carb Huggins. So, yes, Ulla and I integrated the inputs and hatched the plan of snatching Carb's son, Frek. If you get a father's son, you've got psychic judo. But somehow it must have been that the Unipuskers found a way to tip off the Gov worm about our plan, because, as we noticed, the counselors were after us as soon as we got to your house, Frek. And Ulla and I were still too bone-weary from the big yunch to fend them off.”

“The flying saucer that came when you landed, that was the Unipuskers?” asked Frek.

“Must have been,” said Bumby. “I was surprised they got it together so fast. But all's well that ends. Ulla and I are hale and hearty now. We're scheme-dreaming that maybe Frek will talk some sense to good old Dad.” Bumby thinned one of his arm tips down to the size of a worm and tapped Frek's ring with it. Frek yanked his hand out of the cuttlefish's reach.

“Oh, Ulla and I know your father has a ring like this,” said Bumby in a smug tone. “We know all your secrets. And we know what these rings are for. They're connected by a higher dimensional tunnel. We godlike aliens use them to communicate. At any rate, the Unipusker scout ship took your father and Renata and Renata's mother, I think I mentioned her? A person named Yessica Sunshine. Took them all to Unipusk, which is an Earthlike moon circling a gas giant called Jumm. Welcome to the
Strangers in Unipusk
show!”

“Will it be safe for Dad on Unipusk?” wondered Frek.

“Any place is safe as houses if you're with Orpolese,” said Bumby, not quite answering Frek's question. “What your race grovels to as the Laws of Physics—well, for us, those so-called rules are local ordinances, and the fat cop is asleep. Don't litter, keep off the grass, no spitting—ha!”

Professor Bumby stopped talking and carried out a rapid sequence of miraculous transformations. He tripled his tentacle count, turned inside out, transmuted his flesh into something very like chrome metal, shrank to the size of a thumb, burst into flame, and then grew a fresh green cuttlefish body from the thick smoke. “We advanced beings can keep you Earthlings alive just about anywhere,” said the reconstituted Bumby.

Frek didn't say anything. It sounded like Carb was okay for now. He started thinking about the golden glow again. He was being esped almost continuously. Again he struggled and failed to drive the intruders from his mind.

“Don't tense up, it ruins the empathy,” said Bumby in a low tone. “And, yes, we're taping you. Ulla's got a flickerball inside her. I'll get out of your way and let you have some lunch.” Bumby rippled his fin, flying out to fasten himself to a spot on Ulla's ceiling.

A flurry of bird-shaped tweets swooped down from Ulla's walls. The shapes circled tantalizingly close to the dogs, causing them to snap and bark. The tweet birds slowed down and drew closer. Wow finally caught hold of one, and then Woo had one too. At the dogs' touch, the tweets changed form. They looked and smelled like pieces of anymeat. Apparently the Orpolese had the power to transform invisible dark matter first into tweet and then into solid, familiar food.

“You really think they watchin' us?” Gibby was murmuring. “All kinds o' weird lobsters and slugs lookin' at us right now from other planets?” Either the vast alien branecast audience out there wasn't interested in Gibby—or the Grulloo was too coarse-natured to sense the watchers within his mind.

Frek's sense of a golden glow was, if anything, getting stronger all the time. Bumby might not be the only one watching Frek. Creatures could be tuning in on him from all over the galaxy and, who knew, from other galaxies as well. Frek imagined the numbers spinning on a popular url's hit-counter. The Frek site.

“Gundo goggy,” said Frek, distancing his faint sense of panic by acting gaud. “Way shecked-out.” It would be better, really, not to think about the branecast at all.

So he caught hold of one of the edible tweet birds, a nicely browned slab of white anymeat with a pair of grobread wings. Given that there might be an endless number of branecast viewers watching him, he did the generous thing and handed the tweet off to Gibby, who hadn't yet managed to grab one. And then he snagged another for himself and bit in.

It was delicious.

Frek, Gibby, and the dogs ate in reverent silence. And then, just as Frek's throat grew dry, some big, jiggling drops of water came floating by. The round globules had force-fields around them, like nets. They tingled a bit to the touch. Frek held one of the charged balls near his face and pursed out his lips to sip at it. The water was cool and clear and fresh. Gibby followed his example, and then Frek held some water balls steady for the dogs.

To top the meal off, a few nuggets of stim cells drifted to a rest right in front of Gibby's nose. “Lookin' real good, Bumby,” said Gibby, and chomped down his medicine.

For a few minutes the four travelers simply floated there, savoring the energy filling their frames, admiring the awesome orb of space on Ulla's walls, velvet black and besprent with stars.

“Can you believe we're out here?” Frek asked Gibby, finally beginning to enjoy the trip. “Look how small Earth is.”

But knowing that he was on live branecast made everything he said sound a little staged and false. Rather than talking any more, Frek held his hand out at arm's length. He could easily cover Earth's disk with the tip of his little finger. He nudged Gibby, pointing this out. Gibby held out his arm as well, testing the same thing.

Wow and Woo made running motions in the air, trying to come over to sniff at Frek and Gibby's outstretched hands. One of Wow's legs caught against Woo's side, sending her spinning toward a wall. The collision sent Wow flopping into Frek. Frek cradled his dog, savoring his old pal's furry feel. Woo bounced and came slowly drifting back toward them, yapping all the while. Dogs much preferred barking to human speech.

“Wonder what that squid's got planned next,” muttered Gibby, rolling his eyes toward the spot overhead where Bumby had fastened himself.

“I guess we're gonna yunch soon,” said Frek, and gave a reckless giggle. He was so excited that he was feeling giddy. “Lunch and yunch!”

“I don't like the sound of that yunching,” said Gibby uneasily. Some little scraps of tweet were moving among them. Whether by esp or by tweet, everything they said was overheard.

“Yunching likes
you,
Gibby,” called Bumby from on high, using a soothing tone tinged with mockery. “Don't be flummoxed, little freak. Yunching is how we jump far. Your so-called elementary particles are wound-up strings of space, knots of nothing. No matter, don't worry, nothing's the matter. String-wise, there's a trade-off, a duality of winding versus scale. Let's make it butt simple. If you wrap your strings tight, your size is huge. If you wrap your strings loose, your size is small. When it's yunch time, which will be in, oh my, fifteen seconds or so, Ulla and I will wind all of our strings so tight that we're a third the size of the galaxy. Then we'll fly till we're spang centered on Orpoly. At our yunched-up size scale, moving across the galaxy will be easy. And then we unwind our strings. Yunch, scoot over, unyunch and fall into cozy, bustling Orpoly. We'll reach maximum expansion at chime five, and we'll be back to normal at chime ten. It'll go off slick and painless if you characters relax and ride along. And that's all I need to say. Toodle-oo!”

“No!” screamed Gibby. “Don't!”

Bumby remained silent for a long moment. Gibby yelled again.

“Listen here, Earthlings,” snapped Bumby, “Don't fight it. Once we start yunching, we're synched together, closer than close, like peanut butter and jelly. If one of you even
thinks
about holding back you can throw the whole thing out of kilter. You can make us unyunch too soon. And that's a doubleplusungood no-no. Understand, Gibby?”

A spark crackled viciously through the air, and the Grulloo let out a yelp.

“Understand?” repeated Bumby.

“Understand,” muttered Gibby, rubbing a spot on the side of his tail.

“Yunch!” said Bumby.

A clear, musical tone filled the air.
Chime one.

Ulla and Bumby began to glow. Ulla's walls grew opaque and turned a deep shade of purple. Bumby's green, writhing arms fanned out across the spherical inner surface of Ulla, branching and forking as when he'd attacked the sky-jellies before. But this time the substance of Bumby's body was melting out into his arms. In a matter of moments nothing remained of the cuttlefish but a livid tracery of green veins embossed upon Ulla's dark lavender walls.

Wow had twisted loose from Frek; he and Woo were barking frantically. Gibby was shouting for help. A golden note reverberated from the flesh of Ulla/Bumby.
Chime two.

Some objects drifted down from the green-veined purple walls, coming at them from every direction. The shapes were glassy, curved planes, shaped a bit like troughs and bowls. Two of them converged on Frek's left leg, crystalline half-cylinders. He tried to move his leg out of the way, but then the troughs had clamped onto him, garbing his leg in a transparent, close-fitting tube. This stuff may have been made of kenner, but it had more solidity to it than the tweets. Pieces were converging on his arms, his other leg, his body and even his head. Looking over at the bellowing Gibby, Frek saw the same thing happening to the dogs and the Grulloo. Ulla and Bumby were covering them with a kind of armor that fit together to make spacesuits.

In less than a minute, the four of them were dressed in Orpolese-crafted kenner. Frek reached out to touch Gibby's lizard tail. Through the armor he could feel the shape of the tail and the scales of Gibby's skin, but even so, he had a sense of not quite touching his friend. As if thin transparent membranes lay between them.

And what about air? Somehow there seemed to be plenty of it inside Frek's spacesuit. It was very fortunate to have this armor and its air supply—because right about then two great holes opened up in Ulla's body where the top and bottom doors had been, and this time the ship's air rushed out in a
whoosh,
leaving a brief sparkling of ice crystals.

The sharp, lancing pinpoints of the stars were visible amid the growing disks of black above and below. Larger and larger grew the holes, until finally Ulla was but a belt girdled around them, a hoop of deep purple with Bumby's green ridges twisted upon her like a vine.

So there they were, Frek, Gibby, and the dogs free floating in empty space, circled by the braided wreath of Ulla/Bumby. It was hard for Frek not to have the feeling that he was falling. And he wasn't the only one. Thanks to yet another feat of Orpolese reality-hacking, his transparent spacesuit was transmitting the voices of his companions.

“Fall,” whined Wow, fruitlessly churning his legs. “Frek hold me.” But he was well out of reach.

“In case we're about to die, you've been a good friend, Frek,” said Gibby. “Tell Salla I love her.”