Frek and the Elixir (25 page)

“The angelwings have a way of metabolizing dark matter,” said Frek. “That's what makes them so strong. And the Orpolese already showed me some kenner tweets. I'd always thought dark matter was supposed to be invisible—at right angles to ordinary reality. How do the Unipuskers do it?”

“I'll take you to see a kenny crafter when we get to Unipusk. They're goggy,” said Renata. “A kenny is an indoctrinated chunk of kenner, right? A kenny knows how it's supposed to look and how it's supposed to act. To make, like, a chair, the kenny crafter just tells a wad of dark matter to start acting that way. This ship we're in—it's a kenny that thinks it's a flying saucer. The three big high-status jobs on Unipusk are branecast producer, saucer pilot, and kenny crafter. Those are the ones who have the biggest rickrack plants and the most children. I talk a lot. You look confused.”

“This is a long way from Middleville,” said Frek, smiling at Renata. He was having so much fun watching her face and listening to the melody of her voice that he wasn't following everything she said.

“What's it like there?” asked Renata. “Tell me about Earth.”

So Frek talked to Renata for a while about his life back home. He hadn't expected it would seem particularly interesting to her, but she hung on every word, asking lots of questions. She loved hearing about the Goob Dolls and his sisters. It didn't seem to matter to her that she was two years older than he was.

“You guys must miss your dad,” said Renata presently. “I like him, he's nice. And funny. A little—disorganized, though.”

“He's living with your mother and you?” asked Frek.

“Sort of. On Sick Hindu there aren't any real family groups. We all sleep together in a row of pods.” She positioned her turkle in her lap. “I have lots of pictures of Sick Hindu. Show the pods, turkle.” A drawing of pointed hammocks appeared, delicately hatched, and with tints from the turkle's skin. “Usually Carb takes the pod next to Yessica,” said Renata, pointing. “She has him enchanted, only Brahman knows how. And they spend a lot of time together in the day. After me, Yessica likes Carb more than anyone. Or, no, Yessica likes
herself
the most, then me, then Carb. Or maybe Carb, then me, I guess it depends. Show my drawing of Yessica, turkle.” A vain-looking woman appeared, wearing an exaggerated crown and with a forked tongue. “She's mad at me a lot, but she gets even madder at Carb when he flirts with other women. She was the one who wouldn't let him send a message to your family. He kept trying to, but she always found a way to block it. Until she got the idea of tricking you with the ring. I'm glad to be off on this outing without them, to tell the truth. That's enough Yessica, turkle.”

It made Frek sad to think of Carb being tangled up with a woman who kept him from talking to his real family. And a little jealous to think of Carb taking care of Renata.

“Who's your father?” he asked her.

“I'll tell you some other time,” said Renata, looking a little embarrassed.

So Frek changed the subject. “When we get back, you could come visit us in Middleville,” he said. “I could take you out flying on the angelwings. And we could look at lots of toons.”

“You know what I'd really like to be when I grow up?” asked Renata.

“What?”

“A toonsmith. That's one reason I like to draw.”

“I want to be a toonsmith, too!” exclaimed Frek. “I thought the Crufters didn't have toons or the Net, though.”

“We have this archival, static Net,” said Renata. “Like for a library. If you go to the right url in our archive, there's a whole bunch of classic toon shows stored in there. The boss Crufters don't know about it. I've watched all the old shows and practiced drawing the characters. Show him my Goob Doll Judy, turkle.” A little animation of Goob Doll Judy juggling the Earth, Moon, and Sun appeared on the turkle's back. “Toons are the best,” said Renata. “I'd love for my drawings to think and talk. On Earth, when you watch the Goob Doll show, can Judy really see you move?”

“Oh yeah,” said Frek. “
Especially
Judy. Goob Doll Judy doesn't miss a thing. On my way here I spent a night in Stun City, and Gibby and I were at this cowloon and I met two women toonsmiths. Sooly and Deanna. Deanna had a turkle just like yours. I could probably introduce you to her. Maybe you and I should work together on a show about our trip! Do the Unipuskers have toons?”

“No,” said Renata. “They watch that thing instead.” She pointed at the crystal ball on the table. “The flickerball. Go ahead and esp some brane.” She made a face.

“So that's it, huh?” said Frek, leaning over to study the ball. It was preternaturally smooth and shiny. A kenny of some kind. The slowly rotating logo in its center was an image of cube with shiny blue rods for its edges and slow-moving happy faces on each of six sides, six kinds of aliens, each of them smiling down at a little flickerball. Satisfied branecast customers. “Esp some brane,” mused Frek.

“They say that because our universe is a brane. You know, short for ‘membrane,' it's that word from string theory. And using the flickerball feels like extrasensory perception would be.” Renata paused and looked at him. “The Unipuskers and the Orpolese have talked to you about branecasting, right? They're competing for the right to produce the humanity channel. Branecasting is the whole reason they abducted us.”

“I know all right,” said Frek. “I just met the branecasters.”

“You did?!?” exclaimed Renata. “Already? Hawb and Cawmb aren't going to like that. They wanted your dad to be the first one to talk to them! Oh Brahman, what'll they do when they find out?”

“They know,” said Frek, and sighed. “They've been esping me all along. I bet lots of aliens are esping me—not just the Unipuskers, but the Orpolese and who knows what other alien races. Megahits on the Frek site.”

“You can feel it too?” said Renata. “My mother and your dad can't tell. I started noticing it right before the Unipuskers showed up. I'd almost been wondering if I was going gollywog. Tell me how it feels to you.”

Frek looked around the room. He was, of course, being esped right now. With the plot thickening like this, it hardly let up at all anymore. Frek was good viewing. “Things look warmer and smoother. For short I think of it as the
golden glow.
And there's this other feeling—of being just a little bit outside of myself.”

“Exactly,” said Renata. “And I get these flashes of having everything look really—surprising. Like I'd never seen a chair or a ceiling or a human hand before.”

“Yes,” said Frek, smiling at Renata. She understood. “Do you know how to use the flickerball? I wouldn't mind seeing how it feels from the other side.”

“It's simple,” said Renata. “You just touch the flickerball and it starts up. It begins flashing and making a buzzing noise. It's annoying, but if you focus in on the ball, you start seeing things. It's like the ball is a camera that gets inside the head of anybody anywhere in the universe who's in a talent race that the Unipuskers can see. The flickerball puts your head right inside the alien's head and you see like him or her, and you think the same thoughts. It's extreme.”

“Have you been on Unipusk a long time?” asked Frek. “To figure all this out?”

“I've lost track,” said Renata. “Maybe two weeks. Like I said, Hawb and Cawmb wanted us to register them as the humanity channel's producers. Only, ever since we got here, the Unipuskers' tunnel to the Planck brane has been down. Talk about losers. And meanwhile you've already been over there?”

“That's me,” said Frek, puffing himself up a bit. “When we yunched down, we popped through to the Planck brane right away. The branecasters decohered Bumby and Ulla—froze their souls. But then they made me the humanity channel negotiator. I told them we didn't want to be branecast at all, but they said we had to be, so I picked Ulla and Bumby as producers, so at least nothing will happen right away. While I was at it, I asked them to give me an elixir to restore the Earth's biome. To bring back all the extinct species.”

“Bring back sparrows and monkeys?” said Renata. “Artichokes and butterflies?”

“Yubba,” said Frek. “Restore everything. But the branecasters are sleazy crooks. They said they'd only give me the elixir if Bumby asked for it, but meanwhile Bumby stays decoherent until the branecasters get a ten-kilometer gold asteroid for bail. And of course the whole deal is off if some other producers make me change my mind. Or if they kill me.”

“Carb wouldn't have thought of asking for a genomic elixir,” said Renata. “Yessica just wanted him to get her the access to branecast Crufter propaganda into everyone's heads.”

“What's wrong with the Unipuskers' tunnel to the Planck brane?” asked Frek.

“They call it the branelink,” said Renata. “It feeds on the junk that the Unipuskers pipe in from Jumm through their transport tube. But a bomb from Jumm blew out the transport tube right before we got here. I hope the Unipuskers don't freak out and hurt you. The whole reason they got us to ask you to land here was so you wouldn't get to the Planck brane before them. Talk about a backfire.”

“You tricked me,” said Frek.

“Well, in a way. Not really, though. We asked you to come help us, and we do need help.”

“I wonder how we can escape,” said Frek, not really mad anymore. “It'll be hard, with them watching our brains all the time.”

“Maybe something will come up,” said Renata, glancing around. “Maybe we can figure out a way to block them out.”

“I might as well try the flickerball,” said Frek. “See what it's all about.”

“Do it,” said Renata. “I've tried it twice, but I don't like it. It's unny. But see for yourself.” She nodded her head, which made her pigtails bounce. “I should tell you that you twitch your left eye to change channels and you twitch your right eye to change the point of view. I'll shake you if you get stuck. Meanwhile—” She put her fingers in her ears and added, her voice a bit too loud, “—it makes a sound that's really annoying if you're not the one esping it.”

Tentatively, Frek laid his hand on the flickerball. It was big, nearly the size of his head, a transparent glassy ball resting upon a smooth hole in the table. As soon as he touched the ball, the blue-edged cube with idiotically happy faces faded away. The flickerball began to hum. Light pulsed out of it, strobing faster and faster. Frek stared into the flicker, letting the buzz fill his ears.

And then he was on another world, watching a Unipusk-produced branecast channel. He was a giant lizard beneath a green sun. A creature like a velociraptor. His jaws were stained with blood. He'd just killed a hairy animal, something like a sloth. Before beginning to feed, he threw back his head and gave his victory roar. An error. The jungle trees shook and a lizard twice his size appeared. A creature like a tyrannosaurus rex. The monster sprang at him. Frek twitched his right eye to change viewpoint.

He was the attacking T. rex lizard. He'd already pinned the velociraptor creature to the ground and was about to tear open his neck. The captive lizard was hissing and squealing; its eyes were piteously rolling in their orbits.
Let it go,
thought Frek.
Don't kill it.
The big lizard hesitated, wanting to kill, yet forbidden to by Frek's branecast command.
Run away
, thought Frek. The great T. rex creature rose and wheeled about, heading off through the jungle trees. Frek twitched his left eye to change channels.

He was Spa of planet Zorg. He was a gout of metallic lava oozing down a gently sloping volcanic shield a thousand kilometers across. Powerful electric currents circulated within his molten body, maintaining the patterns of his thought. Next to him was a fellow gout named Fon. They'd been flowing down this slope for seventy years now; when they reached the bottom, they'd seep into a crack, percolate down to the One Great Magma, and rise up again. It was a predictable cycle, presently enlivened by Spa's contemplation of the possible geometric forms to be found in seven-dimensional space. He thought a lovely stellated polytope pattern toward Fon, but, unbelievably, Fon wasn't interested. Why? Fon was busy thinking of—how ghastly, how inane—arrangements for the branches of a three-dimensional tree. He'd been dulled by one of the parasitic esper minds that infested their world. Sadly, Spa contemplated his seven-dimensional polytope on his own. Fon's lapse made his very ions ache. Frek twitched his right eye.

He was Fon, sliding along beside his old friend Spa. Spa was thinking a seven-dimensional shape toward him, but just now he was absorbed in a problem that an esper voice in his head had set him to working on. It was a design for a rickrack tree to serve as the living quarters for a hundreds-strong family upon the world of Unipusk. The Unipusker espers had been coming and going within their minds ever since the coming of the branecast to planet Zorg—two full flow cycles in the past. Fon sensed Spa's frustration with him for not accepting the beautiful frozen music of his seven-dimensional polytope. But he had no choice but to obey the branecast voice that had spoken within his mind. He was bound and determined to search through every possible configuration of a particular seventy-three-branched rickrack tree to find the one form that maximized the comfort indices of all of its three hundred and eighty-eight rooms. Frek spoke into Fon's mind. “Forget about the Unipuskers' tree. Listen to your friend Spa.” Still sensing through Fon, Frek shared the joy of hearing an esper voice release him of his wearisome task! Gladly, Fon opened his mind to accept dear Spa's intellectual treat. Frek twitched his left eye to switch to a different channel.

He was a bobblie on the surface of Jumm. He hated the Unipuskers with all his might. Their vile, intrusive transport tube was sucking away the substance of his home world. Their snooping branecast technology peered into the noble souls of the bobblies and dared to try to influence their behavior. And now he sensed the presence of a bossy esper within his mind again. His shape just now was a ragged crescent covering most of Jumm's largest red and yellow spot. He was sinking down into the atmosphere, his body a chain of raging storms. He'd nearly caught a Unipusker saucer a little while ago. He had to do something against those brutes. Perhaps he could feed another bomb into the filthy force field vortex of their transport tube. But probably the esper in his mind wouldn't let him. “Go ahead,” said Frek silently. “Bomb the Unipuskers. Go for it. Goggy indeed.” The bobblie's mind registered pleasure and surprise. He sank deeper, his winds howling, searching for the tube's bottom end, fashioning a supercritical mass of sulfur and helium on the way. Frek twitched his left eye.