Frek and the Elixir (31 page)

“Unbelievable,” breathed Frek. “What's it for?”

“Dismiss it as merely another lizard-world-style table to be used as a flickerball-stand,” said Gawrnier. “Impugn my customer's taste for having ordered it. Remark how uninspiring most of my orders are. Suggest that the glut of kenner coming in through the Jumm transport tube lowers our customers' level of taste. Assert that I would much prefer reworking our existing stocks of kenner into more interesting creations. Remark that certain kenny crafters are in fact pleased by the transport tube bombings, as these slow down our all-but-mindless order fulfillment process.”

Gawrnier kicked at the limp orange tube on the floor till it perked up again. This time he drew off a smaller amount of kenner—the tube went flat quite soon, and Gawrnier's hands weren't very far apart.

Gawrnier vaared the space between his hands, that is, he fixed his attention on it with a marvelous intensity that Frek could almost feel. The air wavered, thickened, became like a lens. And then Gawrnier was holding a brand new flickerball, already displaying the blue-edged branecaster logo.

“Question the purpose of making yet another one of these,” said Gawrnier with a sigh. “Remark that my countrymen esp entirely too much brane.”

“But you have all those flickerballs set up around the edges of your studio,” said Frek.

“Explain that we're expected to draw inspiration from them,” said Gawrnier. “Regret that the customers want us to ape the worlds that they esp. Confess that, personally, I'd be content to make nothing but statues of vigs.”

“Did you make the marble statue with the golden bowl on his back?” asked Frek ingratiatingly. Maybe, if he played his cards right, Gawrnier could be of help to him. He was worrying about the branelink. Maybe Gawrnier could help him escape. “The one that Cawmb and Hawb have? It's beautiful. I've never seen anything so skillfully crafted. And the wishing-well feature, it's like magic.”

The kenny crafter's shell head parted in a long smile. “Express appreciation for your astuteness. Confirm this creation as mine. Gloat that I call it
Dream Vig,
that it's filled with a reserve chamber of liquid kenner, and that I crafted it so that whatever one wishes for, within reason, will appear within the golden bowl. Explain that
Dream Vig
's telepathic interface is my invention, based upon a clever repurposing of flickerball technology. Declare that this is the noble kind of project I'd like to be spending my time upon instead of filling orders for stupid kac like a flickerball stand with dinosaur legs!”

In a sudden fit of pique, Gawrnier vaared so hard at the newly made table that its entire surface became covered with spidery hair-line cracks. The cracks gave the thing a crackle finish that was kind of interesting; it made the table look as if it were covered with irregular transparent tiles. Cocking his head at the table for a moment, Gawrnier vaared again, so that now the bits of crackling took on alternating colors, making a bizarre checkerboard effect.

Right about then the hoverdisk came swooping back, with Gawrgor, Hawb, Cawmb, Carb, and Yessica aboard. Yessica was glued to Carb's side, stroking his cheek, working on him. Carb looked a little heavy-lidded, as if he still wasn't quite awake. He hadn't groomed his Mohawk today; it was flopped halfway down to the left.

Cawmb was briefly distracted from his mission by the sight of the new flickerball stand. “Express admiration for that finish,” he said, his eye stalks stretching down. “Add a copy of this to my order.”

“Kac on copies,” muttered Gawrnier. “Praise the bomber of the transport tube.”

“Tolerate the ravings of crazy artists,” said Hawb dismissively, then turned his attention to Frek and Renata. “Urge haste,” he cried. “Report that the branelink is ready!”

“This is it, Frek,” murmured Carb as Frek and Renata squeezed onto the crowded hoverdisk. Though his father was acting sleepy, he was, Frek now realized, poised and alert. “I won't let them hurt you,” breathed Dad.

And then they swept out of the kenny crafters' studio and over the mounds of dirt to the ball-like building on stilts next door.

“The branelink's inside of it,” fretted Renata. “Don't pressure Frek, Mom. You don't have to always try to win!”

“Stay out of this, dear,” snapped Yessica. “You have no idea what's best for you.”

The hoverdisk rose up above the golden ball on legs. The ball had a hole at the top. Looking down into its interior, Frek saw a racing whirlpool of fog with a shiny green ball in the center. Evidently the ball was the mouth of the branelink. It looked like the leafy canopy of an earthly tree, pleasant enough. But Frek could readily imagine the unkind faces of the branecasters down there past the vegetation—the branecasters and the warped bright toony curves of the Planck brane landscape.

“Explain that all you have to do is jump in,” said Hawb, taking hold of Frek's elbow.

“Inquire one final time if you will secure the humanity channel production deal for us,” said Cawmb, holding Frek's other arm.

“No,” said Frek, a little surprised at how calm he felt. “I'm not.”

“Command you to kill him, Hawb,” said Cawmb. “Plan then to send his father in his place.”

“Stop it!” cried Renata.

“You'd be wasting your stinking time,” said Carb in a hard, level tone. “I won't do it either.” He placed himself between Frek and the Unipuskers.

“Kill Frek and
I'll
go,” said Yessica suddenly. “I can negotiate the deal for you. I'm more trustworthy than Carb.”

“Damn you, Mom,” shrieked Renata, and gave her mother a shove. Yessica very nearly fell off the hoverdisk. Gawrgor had to drop the little craft down about five meters to keep her aboard, while Hawb and Cawmb released their hold on Frek to steady themselves. Frek seized the moment and jumped off the hovercraft onto the ground.

He had a chameleon mod out of his fungus purse in a second, and when he hit the ground he tore off his clothes and smeared on the mod. At the same time, he used his ever-growing mind powers to sky-air-comb the espers from being able to read his mind or even to see through his eyes. He was free and, if not invisible, at least reasonably hard to find. Even so, Gawrgor would probably have caught him right away—but just then there was a
boom
followed by a prolonged screaming noise from the sky.

Not taking time to look up, Frek bent low to the ground and ran away from the branelink as fast as he could, his skin the same stippled blue as the soil of Unipusk. By the time the two Unipuskers started yelling for him, he'd lost himself in the dirt piles. Only when he'd put the kenny crafters' studio between himself and the slowly circling hoverdisk did he pause to look up.

He saw a giant finger frantically color-painting the sky. It took a moment to grasp that this was the transport tube. The new bobblie bomb had gone off—not way out in space, but less than a kilometer overhead. The transport tube was completely severed from its Unipusk terminus. The force fields were steadily unraveling in either direction. The stub attached to the ground was already gone, and overhead the receding mouth of the tube flailed around like an out-of-control garden hose. Plumes of ammonia-scented Jumm stuff shrieked from the mouth, blotting out the sky.

The gas was chilling the air. And then all of a sudden it began snowing red and yellow methane crystals.

The snow stung Frek's bare feet, and the fumes made the air hard to breathe. The shrill roar from the burst tube was stupefying. He wanted to head for the spaceport—he had a vague plan of getting aboard some alien ship. But just now, more than anything, he needed shelter.

Glancing up at the kenny crafters' building, Frek noticed a lone figure standing in an open door. Gawrnier. The languid Unipusker's eye stalks were pointed straight at him. Even though Frek's skin was cunningly stippled with blue, red, and yellow to match the methane crystals and the Unipusk dirt, Gawrnier could see him. The kenny crafter made a quick beckoning gesture.

The smell of the Jumm gas and the melting crystals was sickening. Frek could hear a threatening buzz beneath the shriek of the broken transport tube. The hoverdisk was about to appear from around the clam-shaped building's edge. Frek darted up a spindly staircase toward Gawrnier, and a moment later he was safe inside the kenny crafters' building.

Though Frek had expected to end up in the same big-domed room he'd seen before, he found himself in a Spartan two-room apartment with some odd, minimalist chairs, a dark steaming tub that he recognized as a Unipusker bed, and an inactive little flickerball. A door across the room led out to the big workshop.

“Welcome Frek to my private studio,” said Gawrnier. “Explain that I prefer this to my mansion by the spaceport. Offer you a seat.” He cocked his head, peering at how Frek's skin had changed color to blend in with the room's shades of gray and pearl. “Observe that if I weren't able to vaar the kenner in your body, you'd be hard to see. Admire your camouflage, not to mention your forceful autopoietic blocking of branecast visibility. Propose that you relax.”

“I'll try,” said Frek, gingerly perching himself upon a kind of coiled spring. It rocked beneath his weight. “Please don't tell Hawb and Cawmb you found me. I have to get to the spaceport to escape. And I want to take the others with me. Carb, Renata, Gibby, Wow, and Woo. Not Yessica.”

“Praise your determination,” said Gawrnier. He closed the door to the big workshop. “Reveal that I despise Hawb and Cawmb. Reassure that I'll do what I can to help you. Inquire if you want to be a kenny crafter?”

Frek's heart leaped at the thought. “Uh—how did you guess?”

“Reply that I can sense your desire and your latent skill. Confess that I am eager to teach you so as to spread my noble occupation to your world. Propose that we begin immediately.”

But surely this was impossible. “I don't have time for lessons,” exclaimed Frek. “I'm on the run.” He glanced down at himself. His skin was nicely patterned to match the opalescent curves of the spring-seat. This dose of chameleon mod would only last another few minutes—but he still had one more dose in the purse-fungus glued to the palm of his hand. Though he could feel the delicate touch of the golden branecast glow trying to seep back into his mind, he was finding it easier and easier to sky-air-comb it away. Maybe he could spare some time after all. “How—how long would it take to learn?” he asked.

“Propose ten minutes to begin,” said Gawrnier. “Predict the rest of your life for mastery.” He held out his hands to shape an invisible ball. “Observe and imitate.”

Gawrnier had no tube of Jumm gas to get material from; he was going to work with whatever ambient kenner—that is, dark matter—could be found in the air of the room. Frek held out his own hands, imitating the Unipusker. He studied the empty space between his hands, wondering how to vaar the dark matter. Supposedly it was everywhere. Outside the broken transport tube was screaming in the sky, though bit by bit the sound was dwindling.

“Think smoothly,” said Gawrnier. “Be like ripples in water. Don't grasp. Forget as fast as you notice. Let the space between your hands be part of you.”

Frek peeked over at Gawrnier and, as before, he saw a shimmer between the Unipusker's hands.

“Don't watch me,” admonished Gawrnier. “Don't think words. Be the kenner.”

Frek flexed his fingers, focusing again on the ball of air between his hands. Nothing there, and nothing to say about it. Nothing—instead of starting up a new thought, he dove into the mental space at the end of the word. Holding back his own thoughts was no different than holding back the prying eyes of the espers. He breathed evenly and gazed straight ahead. At some point he had a sense of his head growing forward to fill the space—he hacked away the perception like weed in a garden and sank back into emptiness. The space between his hands was like part of his head. Emptiness. Something was flickering, but he didn't try and name it. Nothing.

There was a
thump.

“Commend Frek,” said Gawrnier.

Frek snapped out of his trance and looked down. A striped ball the size of a plum had dropped to the floor from between his hands. A ball of kenner. He'd vaared it from thin air. Glancing over at Gawrnier he saw that the Unipusker had made a large thin disk big enough for two people to stand on.

“I can't believe I did it,” said Frek, nudging his little ball with the tip of his toe. “It was so easy. Why haven't people always been able to do this?”

“Suggest two reasons,” said Gawrnier, “these being that (a) it's much easier to do something that you know to be possible, and that(b) you, Frek, are unlike your fellow men. Repeat a rumor that before your birth you were blessed by the Magic Pig.”

Through Gawrnier's door Frek heard voices in the common room of the kenny crafters. Hawb and Cawmb, asking questions, and that damned Yessica yelling something, too.

“What blessing?” demanded Frek. “What Magic Pig?” The phrase sounded vaguely familiar.

“Confess I know little more on this topic. Suggest you question your father, within whose somewhat addled brain Hawb found the phrase and the rumor.” Gawrnier cocked his head at the sounds from beyond the door. “Prioritize a second kenny crafting lesson,” said the Unipusker. “Promise I will then rush you to the spaceport.”

“All right,” said Frek. “Show me how to vaar my kenner into something useful.”

“Thus and so,” said Gawrnier, cocking his head and gazing down at his round plate of kenner until it grew a railing and acquired new convolutions upon its lower side. He'd made the thing into a hoverdisk, complete with railings and a stubby control rod.

The Unipusker regarded Frek with a noticeable twinkle in his stalk-supported eyes. “Suggest you vaar what might be most useful to you,” he said. “A vig-shaped spacesuit!”

“Huh?” Out in the common room, Hawb's voice was slowly drawing closer. For the moment all thoughts of kennies flew away.

Frek looked down at his body and saw naked copper skin. Kac! His chameleon mod had worn off. No time to lose. Without even looking at Gawrnier, he pried open his fungus purse, pulled out his last mod, and rubbed it on. His skin once again took on the shadings of the room around him. The only thing left in his fungus purse was the twig of Aaron's Rod. Add water and get a hundred-meter thicket of impenetrable tendrils. He had a feeling it would soon be time to use the Aaron's Rod, though he wasn't yet sure exactly how.

“Fix your mind upon your goal,” said Gawrnier, calmly regarding the agitated Frek. “Imagine the shape of a vig, and the functionality of a spacesuit. Push the image out to the rind of your consciousness and empty your mind's center. In nothingness, merge with your ball of kenner. Let the target image collapse inward. And thus craft your kenny.”

“I—I don't know how to design a spacesuit,” protested Frek.

“Curse,” said Gawrnier, and rapidly diddled with his flickerball. “Look and absorb,” he said after a minute. Frek gazed into the flickerball and saw that Gawrnier had tuned in on a holographic set of plans for a spacesuit similar to the ones the Orpolese had given them, though lighter and less durable in appearance. The plans were of Unipusk origin; the labels on the figures were three-dimensional squiggles resembling markings Frek had seen upon the Unipuskers' dwellings. Perhaps a hundred sets of the images flew past: views from every angle, close-up detail shots, filigrees that must have been logic circuits. And then Gawrnier turned the flickerball off; that is, he let it revert to showing the familiar blue-edged ad-cube. “Go,” said Gawrnier.

Again Frek calmed his breath and his mind. Though he didn't think he remembered the exact shape of a vig, let alone the intricacies of the designs he'd just seen, he found the information intact within himself. He pushed the images out so that they surrounded him like a hollow shell. He and the kenner became one and the same.

Just as the pounding on Gawrnier's door began, Frek let the prepared images descend upon his ball of kenner. And then came the last mental twitch that Gawrnier had promised Frek would find. It was like the way Frek could sometimes look at a drawing of a cube and see it flip into its mirror image. His mind folded the target pattern right into the kenner. And now a floppy orange spacesuit lay at his feet; a kenny vig skin with a slit on one side where he could crawl in. The skin was wondrously light, no thicker than turmite silk.

“Praise my student,” said Gawrnier, hopping onto his hoverdisk. “Urge haste.”

Frek grinned at the Unipusker. He almost felt like, in just ten minutes, Gawrnier had been more of a father to him than Carb had been in the last ten years.

They skittered out Gawrnier's back door an instant before the door to the common room gave way. And then they were flying across the monotonous Unipusk landscape. Methane snow, blue dirt, rickrack, vigs. Frek hunched down, with his new spacesuit wadded into a little bundle between his feet. His skin was streaming with colors matching the crystal-dusted fields.

The sky was a low mass of billowing red and yellow clouds from the ruptured Jumm-to-Unipusk transport tube. But the screeching of the sabotaged tube had faded away—the tube's dissolution had advanced up past the Unipusk atmosphere. A fresh breeze was blowing, bringing in clean air.

Rather than heading straight for the tall rickrack plants on the horizon, Gawrnier angled a bit to one side, as if to approach the spaceport from another direction. Low rickrack homes and fields of vigs flew past below.

They were just drawing even with a curious collection of shiny linked kenner domes when a crackling bolt of green light shot past them. Hawb and Cawmb's hoverdisk was closing in on them, moving recklessly fast with its cargo of three Unipuskers and three humans. Even if, to all appearances, Gawrnier was alone, the producers were suspicious of him.

Gawrnier instantly steered his hoverdisk for the ground, managing to land near a small herd of vigs. Besides the mysterious domes, there were a few wide-based twenty-meter rickrack trees that served as Unipusker dwellings.

“Go, Frek,” exhorted Gawrnier. “Run to the vigs and put on your suit. Then try to make your way to the spaceport. There's a bar called Taz where you can seek passage offworld.”

“I'll never forget you,” said Frek, unable to say more. It hurt to leave this incredible new teacher.

Holding the suit bunched against the side of his body that faced away from the rapidly approaching hoverdisk, Frek sprinted across the field toward the vigs.

His chameleon mod was still in effect; it was sufficient to make his image blend in with the snow crystals, the tufts of rickrack, and the blue dirt. Frek circled around the vigs and lay down behind them so as to wriggle into his vig suit before his last bit of mod wore off. The anomalous weather had put the vigs into a quiet, somber mood.

For a first effort, the vig suit was well made. Once Frek was inside it and on all fours, he blended right in.

The softly vheenking vigs ambled toward the hoverdisks, their muzzles nosing the tender rickrack shoots, with Frek in their midst, watching. Being among them reminded him of Earth's extinct pigs, and of course set him to wondering about his father seeing a Magic Pig.

Meanwhile Hawb and Cawmb were yelling at Gawrnier in Unipusker. Gawrgor stood to one side holding his blaster. Carb, Yessica, and Renata were still on the hoverdisk, Yessica apart from the others.

Though Frek had no real idea of how he'd achieved the effect, his spacesuit was sensitive to sound. Staring at the others was enough to bring their voices into focus.

“Inform you crass bullies that I was upset by the explosion,” Gawrnier drawled, switching the conversation into English. “Point out that I am entirely alone. State that I have no idea whatsoever concerning the fate of your precious Frek. Speculate that you clumsily dropped him into the branelink. Assert that you'd be too coarse and stupid to notice.”

“Demand again why you sped away from us,” roared Hawb. “Request that you justify your actions.”

“Reassert my superior status as a sensitive artist,” sneered Gawrnier. He made a sinuous gesture toward the domes on the other side of the field. “Grudgingly confide that some vagrant impulse brought me here to observe the specimens in the Talent Race Zoo.”

“Silence yourself,” hissed Cawmb.

But it was too late. Yessica had overheard.

“What's that about a zoo?” she cried, a flamingo of fury taking flight in her voice. “Don't tell me you keep sentient beings locked in those cages!”

“Inform you that these quarters are where Hawb and Cawmb plan to permanently display you four humans,” said Gawrnier in a loud, clear tone. “Clarify that you will enter the Talent Race Zoo as soon as they obtain their production contract. Reassure that you'll barely notice, as you'll spend the rest of your lives in a dream. Innocently wonder how soon Frek will return from his meeting with the branecasters.”

“Insist that Frek isn't in the Planck brane,” bellowed Hawb. “Reiterate that he ran away, aided by his skin camouflage, by his ability to block out brane esp and, most probably, by a ride from you, Gawrnier. Deny that we would imprison you or your daughter, Yessica. Categorically forbid any further talk of a zoo.”