Frek and the Elixir (47 page)

The rain-sprinkled wind tugged Frek and his companions still higher into the sky. Gibby kept his leg-arms locked around Frek and Carb, who had their arms wrapped around each other's shoulders. Frek had tucked his blaster inside his shirt to free up his other hand to hold Wow against his chest. And Carb was holding Wow, too. The four of them tumbled along together like a fan of leaves.

Through the smoke and rain, Frek could see that Node G was utterly changed. Buildings were burning all across the city. The structures that remained had turned uncanny, arcane. Frek saw: stone castles with long wind-whipped pennants; fanciful assemblages of transparent domes and marble cones; organic shapes resembling insect parts hybridized with plants; long spiky feelers bedecked with berries and pods; tall masts with apes in the rigging; crystal spheres dangling from iron chains.

Thanks to phenomenological autozoom, Frek could pick out the individual Hubs as well. They'd altered along with the buildings. He saw chimerical drolleries like a harp with a human head, a knife with two enormous ears, and a lobster with clamshell wings. Crawling over everything were fat black frog-bellied demons with their fanged little mouths agape. Everything that moved was edged by a glowing aura.

Meanwhile the great dark wedge of the pie-shaped city park was receding from Frek's view. That was where the branelink to their home universe was supposed to be. But the raw, turbulent wind was blowing them the wrong way.

Two silvery shapes wiggled down at them from the flame-lit, cloud-wracked sky—supple forms that moved too fast for Frek to even think of trying to shoot them with his blaster.

“Fear not!” fluted one of them. They were a pair of large fish, surrounded by luminous auras, sailing through the air like birds. “My aunt's an enemy of the branecasters,” said the one. “I am Flinka.” She resembled a ten-meter trout; her voice was a soprano singsong with a middle-European accent.

“And I am Flinka's aunt Guszti,” said her companion in an equally accented contralto. “She forgets to introduce me.” If Flinka was a trout, Aunt Guszti was a catfish, with floppy barbels on her back and around her mouth. “You can ride us,” continued Aunt Guszti. “We help you go home.”

The wind raged ever stronger, bearing them out past the borders of the surreal cityscape that had been Node G. Ahead of them lay only dark fields and ragged mountains. Riding the flying fish seemed like the best option by far.

“Let's divide up,” suggested Gibby. “I go with Frek, and Wow goes with Carb. You Huggins guys can always find each other with your rings.”

“Good,” said Frek. “I don't want to ride with him.”

So Carb and Wow mounted Flinka, while Frek and Gibby settled onto Aunt Guszti. Aunt Guszti's glowing yellow-brown back was slippery in the rain; Frek grasped her barbels like a bridle. Gibby sat behind Frek with his leg-arms linked around him. For his part, Carb clamped Flinka's narrower body between his legs, cradling the damp Wow against his chest.

With a powerful slap of her tail, Flinka went darting toward the dark mountains. Aunt Guszti followed in her wake.

“Wrong way!” hollered Frek. “We need to go to that park back in the city!”

Aunt Guszti's eyes were so high up on her head that she could roll them back to look at Frek. “This storm blows stronger than even we can fight,” she said. “But not make a worry. Today's configuration of Planck brane wraps around.”

“How do you mean?”

“Mountains ahead of us are same as mountains behind us. As soon as you sail off one edge of Planck brane today you come back the other side. We'll land by Pig Hill with your branelink before you know it. Unless reapers catch us. They come out above fields during renormalization storms. Nearly all of them die during each renormalization, so they become frantic to eat and breed. They breed very fast, the filthy things. Is good that Flinka and I are faster than the reapers.”

As if in response to this last remark, something fierce came whistling toward them. Aunt Guszti dodged it with a quick snap of her tail that nearly sent Frek and Gibby a-tumble. Hugging the fish and squinting his eyes against the cold rain, Frek could see Flinka rapidly weaving, too.

Another attacker went screaming past, briefly visible in the light from Guszti's aura. The creature resembled an ordinary pottery jug, with two leathery arms holding an old-fashioned reaping scythe. Instead of wings, it propelled itself with a jet of steam from its rear end. It was such an unlikely apparition that Frek didn't fully absorb the image until the reaper circled around and came at them a second time.

The reaper handled its scythe with the smooth expertise of a professional hockey player wielding his stick. Even though Aunt Guszti bent herself nearly in half to dodge it, the reaper managed to cut a nasty gash in her tail. Frek let go of one of the barbels he was clutching and fished his blaster from inside his purple shirt. To his satisfaction, he was able to nail the next reaper that came after them. Even though the blaster beams hadn't had much success against the mind worms, the reapers were small and three-dimensional enough to vaporize effectively.

A green explosion ahead showed that Carb was shooting reapers, too. Gibby unlimbered his blaster and opened fire as well.

For the next few minutes they were busy picking off incoming reapers, their blasts red, green, and purple. And then things quieted down. Frek focused his attention upon his ring and right away Carb's head appeared.

“Everything okay?” asked Carb.

“Gaussy,” said Frek, momentarily forgetting to be mad. “Aunt Guszti says we're gonna wrap around and come back into Node G from the other side.”

“Flinka told me,” said Carb. “How many reapers did you bag?”

“Seven,” said Frek.

“And four for me,” put in Gibby, peering around Frek's side.

“This is fun,” said Carb. His head lurched to one side and a dog-muzzle appeared by his cheek. “That's right, Wow, I'm talking to Frek. Now calm down. Stop it! I better sign off, Frek.”

The black fields sailed by beneath them, marked here and there by the guttering orange flames of burning barns. Up ahead were the fantastically carved foothills, and beyond them the mountain range that rimmed this world.

“Tell me about the Magic Pig,” Frek said to Aunt Guszti. “Who is he? What does he want?”

“His name is Rundy,” said the flying catfish, rolling back her eyes. “He claims to be ordinary Hub like rest of us. But nobody remembers a time when he was not. He is often with the branecasters, but he says he is against them. He is very ancient, very strong.”

“So he's against the branecasters?” said Frek.

“I like to think so,” said Aunt Guszti, twitching the barbels beside her mouth. “But I am not, how you say, brightest bulb on Christmas tree. I wish to get rid of the branecasters. And I dream the Pig can help. The branecasters amass so much wham that fewer normal Hubs survive each storm. Yesterday Rundy called on me to fly him to the Exaplex. He says you four plain-braners are bringing us the liberation. And that you would break the Exaplex. That was Plan the A.”

“Rundy's advice nearly got me killed,” said Frek. “Shooting up the Exaplex hardly made any difference at all.”

“Where's that Magic Pig now?” asked Gibby.

“In his burrow under Pig Hill,” said the flying catfish. “It's at the end of the park with the branelink. The branecasters built their link tree right atop Pig Hill. Our Magic Pig claims this angers him. He has always been beneath Pig Hill. Maybe you make with Rundy a Plan the B.”

“I'm not really sure he's on our side,” said Frek.

“Rundy will talk all this with you. Meanwhile I fly.”

Aunt Guszti was vigorously beating her tail, driving them higher and higher, with a view to sailing over the dark, jagged mountains. The air grew increasingly frigid, and the spatters of rain turned to snow and ice. Hearing Gibby's teeth chattering behind him, Frek suddenly thought of making a cape to wrap themselves in. In a minute he had one.

“How you do that?” asked Aunt Guszti, who'd been keeping an eye on him.

“Kenny crafting,” said Frek, settling the cape around him and Gibby. “Don't you know about it? I thought you Hubs had super-powers.”

“I am not brightest bulb,” repeated Aunt Guszti. “Which is why my hopes run so high for you. Advise your father to make cape, too. Flinka says he's soon keeling over.”

So Frek dutifully used his ring to remind stupid Carb he could use kenny crafting to warm himself. And not a moment too soon. Carb was quite blue, and there was ice in the bit of Wow's fur visible above the ring.

Still higher they rose, driven up the inky mountain slopes by the wind and the steady beating of the fish's tails. The mountains were darker than the sky. The silvery gleam of Flinka stayed fifty meters ahead of them, Carb a dark spot on her back. It was hard to gauge just when the moment of the wrap would come.

Finally the ridge began sinking beneath them. And then Flinka disappeared.

“Dad!” shouted Frek to his ring, at the same time wishing he could stop caring about his father.

“It's fine,” said the little image of Carb's head above his hand. “I can see Node G up ahead.”

Frek felt a prickling in the skin of his face. The front part of Aunt Guszti disappeared. And then Frek, Gibby, and the rest of the flying catfish had passed through the singular surface that glued one end of this Planck brane configuration to the other.

Lights gleamed in the vast plain below. Node G, seen from the other side.

As they neared the outskirts of town, a fresh wave of the jet-propelled pottery jugs came for them, each with its insect-thin arms wielding a scythe. Again, the Earthlings' blasters made short work of the little monsters.

“I hope high,” repeated Aunt Guszti, angling down toward the base of Node G's triangular slice of park. It was a wooded region with a low hill in the middle. “There's Pig Hill; your branelink is the tree in the middle.”

The husk of a large dead tree loomed at the hill's center, lit by a great bonfire nearby. The many-branched tree had an opening in one side, revealing the warped-looking tunnel of a branelink. Fine.

But four hangman's nooses hung from the branches of the tree. And fat-bellied black demons were capering around the bonfire, their toothy mouths open in savage song. Mixed in with the demons were the buttoned-down figures of the six branecaster execs—Chainey and Jayney, Sid and Cecily, Batty and Bitty. They too were pumping their arms and legs in the figures of the dance; they too were throwing back their heads to howl at the sky.

Frek felt for his blaster, then paused. It took a strong effort of his will to stop himself. Opening fire on an army of demons would be madness.

The music of drums and horns drifted up with the shrill cries. The instruments were living Hubs: the drums fat sullen demons pounding their enormous bellies with hands like clubs, and the trumpets blue storks with human arms to finger their bugle-shaped beaks. But the loudest noise came from a single monstrous bagpipe near the fire, a soft unclean thing, twitching its sticks and raising its horn to blat out an endless droning squeal compounded of anger, resentment, fear, selfishness, and cold-blooded lust.

Four carcasses were turning upon two long spits over the enormous bonfire, the charred roasts shaped like a man, a Grulloo, a boy, and a dog. The fat was sputtering, the smoke was drifting, and two chattering demons were cranking the squeaky gears, now and then running over to tend to the squawked demands of the huge bagpipe.

Snaking up the hill's side came a torchlight procession of still more demons waving swords and pikes, their voices massed into a hoarse roar. The tangled woods were alive with fire-lit yellow eyes.

“We don't have a chance!” exclaimed Frek. He focused in on the maddening, familiar face of his father. “Do you see those monsters? What does Flinka say?”

Up ahead the silver fish was circling around to the far side of the hill, avoiding the firelight. “She says the Magic Pig has a den at the bottom,” reported Carb. “They're gonna set us down there.”

“We're fubbed,” said Gibby wearily. “I don't understand why this is all takin' so long. Hang me by the legs, stab me, roast me—kill me now and get it done. Good-bye, Salla! Good-bye, Bili and LuHu! I ain't never seein' you again.”

“The branecasters wait for you to approach the tree,” said Aunt Guszti. “They wait to pounce.”

“Oh great,” said Frek.

“If the Magic Pig were more honest, you would have better chance,” said Aunt Guszti fatalistically. She was skirting around the rim of the lit area as Flinka had done. “You would travel home to Earth and carry out clever plan B to defeat the branecasters. Ah, look below and see him waiting, your new friend.”

Sure enough, at the very bottom of the hill was a tilled garden patch, and beside a tiny dark hole in the hill with a glowing pink face peeking out—the Magic Pig, smaller and less prepossessing than Frek had ever expected.

A few moments later, Flinka and Aunt Guszti had unloaded them.

“Quick,” said the little pink pig. “Come in here! I'm Rundy.” His voice was a rough lively grunt, modulated into words. Perhaps he was old, but he was well cared for and spry. His body was made up of smooth curved surfaces, like a toon's.

“Don't trust him with your life,” were Flinka's final, gloomy words. “I think he is maybe for the branecasters today.”

“You are foolish, Flinka,” Guszti scolded as the fish flew away. “Rundy is playing a much deeper game.”

It was easy for Gibby and Wow to walk through Rundy's door, but Frek and Carb had to bend double. Crouched down behind Gibby, Frek noticed that the Grulloo was carrying a large fish scale that had come loose from Guszti. Another of his souvenirs.

Just like a Grulloo burrow, Rundy's hall tunnel opened up into quite a large living room, complete with comfortable piles of straw to lie upon, a pantry cupboard filled with yams and sugar beets, a handy bucket of pure clean water, and a little hearth with a clean-drawing chimney and a kettle of porridge over the flames. Wow went and drank from the bucket, and began slowly sniffing all over the room. There was a locked door in the far wall.