Shuteye for the Timebroker (5 page)

Clayton’s soft-heartedness evaporated instantly, as Captain Jill’s rude manner reminded him of all the grief she had caused him and the rest of the town.

“Get up,” he said. “You’re coming with me.”

Captain Jill shot instantly to her feet, drawing her sword. “No one orders Jill Innerarity about like that!”

Moving quickly, with his long reach, Clayton plucked her sword from her hand.

Captain Jill smiled ferally. “Been eating your oats, I wot. Well, I admire spunk—to a point. But this will cost you dearly, my lad.”

Advancing sinuously, Captain Jill grabbed Clayton’s biceps. A long moment passed. Clayton stood there grinning. Captain Jill squeezed harder, to no effect. She stepped back in awe, her jaw dropping.

Clayton moved to grab her.

Jill launched a booted kick that landed on Clayton’s stomach and blasted the air out of his lungs. He dropped his flashlight and doubled over.

When he recovered, Jill was not to be seen, but the sound of her running feet echoed down the tunnel.

Picking up his light, Clayton jogged off after her.

Several hundred yards down the dank passage, Clayton came to a branching. He stopped to ponder. Silence filled his ears like cotton. Cautiously he peered down one alley, shining his torch.

Out of the other branch resounded a piercing battle cry: “Yaaaah!”

Captain Jill landed like a hod of bricks on Clayton’s back, wrapping her legs around his waist and her hands around his unprotected neck.

The choking was bad enough, for Jill was frightfully strong. Worse was the cold. Clayton’s invisible suit stopped just above his collarbones. Jill’s enervating chill was seeping in, numbing his muscles and brain.

Left with no alternatives, Clayton threw his whole weight backward, landing atop Jill. He heard her head smack the hard floor of the passage.

Her grip relaxed, and Clayton got to his feet.

Jill’s eyes were still open, although she gasped for breath, evidently fighting unconsciousness. She seemed to be making an effort to get up and fight some more.

So Clayton slugged her on the jaw.

He felt just like Bogie.

Clayton picked up her unconscious form. He retraced his steps to the ladder to his cellar. There, he slung Jill over one shoulder and climbed up easily.

In the living room, he stretched her out on the couch. When the passing minutes drew a beam of moving sunlight across her face— where a bruise was appearing on her jaw—a transformation seemed to occur, an ineffable softening of her marble flesh. On a hunch, Clayton tentatively raised her limp hand to graze his unprotected face. There was no accompanying blast of chill.

Granny shuffled in as Jill began to stir. “I’ve fixed up a spare bedroom,” she said, “if you want to carry her up.”

Clayton nodded, entranced by the sparkle of the light in Jill’s green eyes.

“I can unravel that suit now, I suppose,” said Granny, “for my next project.”

Back when I wrote this story, I was on a Herman Melville kick. I mentioned in my 2005 collection,
The Emperor of Gondwanaland
, how one of my earliest sales was made by taking the template of Melville’s “Benito Cereno” and using it to produce an SF adventure. It amused me afterward to co-opt one of Melville’s titles for a story that bore no thematic or conceptual links to his masterpiece. I’m not sure now if such a joke isn’t ultimately confusing and off-putting, but I’ll let it stand.

Twenty years ago, Hollywood had barely begun to scratch the surface of computer-generated imagery. Nor had the reign of the megafilm been fully inaugurated. But I could already see that both trends would come to dominate the film industry and offer ripe material for satire. Hence Billy’s tangle with the composite Luke Landisberg.

I thought that my “spring” story, completing the seasonal cycle in Blackwood Beach, should, naturally, focus on growing things. Thompson and Morgan is a real seed company, but I’ve yet to find them offering such extraordinary seeds as they do here.

Billy Budd

Billy Budd didn’t find it hard being green.

Despite what that stupid cloth frog always sang.

How distressed Billy had been when that song had infiltrated the airwaves. How grateful he had been when it had vanished. Although the citizens of Blackwood Beach were, of necessity and habit, quite understanding of each other’s quirks, foibles, and unavoidable eccentricities, Billy had not enjoyed having his particular uniqueness the constant focus of everyone’s attention. During this period, while walking the twisty streets of his queer New England hometown, Billy felt that everyone’s eyes were upon him. The story of his strange birth, he imagined, had been resurrected among the townspeople, just when he had hoped it was forgotten. But after a time, other, more demanding events came to displace Billy’s temporary notoriety, and in the end he claimed no more attention in town than anyone else.

Perhaps the reason Billy was usually so comfortable with the shade of his skin was that it was such a lovely, subtle hue.

Picture the earliest spring leaf buds of a lilac, or the tender innermost layers of an artichoke. Lighter than a blade of blanched grass found beneath a mass of wet leaves in April, Billy’s skin was perhaps the lightest color that could still be called green. It was as if Billy’s veins ran not with blood colored by hemoglobin but with sap tinged by some exotic chlorophyllous substance, suffusing his skin from crown to feet.

Which was, in fact, the case.

Because Billy’s hair was a thick, unruly thatch of bright yellow, some said he looked, on the whole, rather like a dandelion. It was rumored that there was even a family connection between Billy and the dandelions, and one mentioned
Taraxacum officinale
in Billy’s presence only gingerly.

This bright May morning, however, as Billy took his regular walk from Eva’s Boarding House to his business, he felt charitable even toward the dandelions that dotted the untidy front lawns of the houses in Blackwood Beach. The source of his good-natured happiness was a certain special plant growing in a secluded and laboriously chosen spot on the outskirts of town. This plant, sown from seed just a month ago, was already half as tall as Billy. In another eight weeks or so, it would reach its mature height and full growth, and Billy would gently harvest it, achieving a dream that had recently come to dominate his thoughts.

But for now, all he could do was tend the plant lovingly. Fertilize its roots with 5-10-5, keep it free of mites and fungus, fence it diligently from gnawing rabbits and rodents, water it thoroughly but not over much— and read aloud to it from as wide an assortment of books as he could find.

Billy, thinking warmly of his pet project, wished he could visit it this morning. But his greenhouse—Budd’s Plant Emporium—had to be opened and his more conventional stock there seen to. He would have to content himself with visiting at noon, and again after closing time. Those two trips should be enough attention at this stage, although as growth progressed, he might have to fit in a third each day.

Walking beneath the greening trees that overhung the streets of the village, Billy, his thoughts running in such channels, soon came to Budd’s Plant Emporium.

The greenhouse—the only one in Blackwood Beach—dated from the 1920s. It had not been run by the Budds all that time; Billy had only recently bought the business from its ancient proprietor and founder, who wished to retire. It had been quite a run-down structure then. After Billy’s restoration, it looked as it must have looked when new. White stucco walls supported a roof of Spanish tiles, forming the retail and office portion of the building. Attached to this was a long, one-story shed, whose few courses of brick upheld the framework of painted metal and sparkling glass beneath which thrived Billy’s stock.

Pushing open the unlocked door, Billy went in. He flipped the CLOSED sign to OPEN and turned on the lights.

The front of the store exhibited a counter, a cash register, a roll of wrapping paper on its upright cutter-spindle, a wrought iron table holding various cards that customers could inscribe, and numerous plants on display. What it lacked was refrigeration units. These Billy had torn out, for he refused to sell cut flowers of any type.

It was just too much like a surgeon setting up a shop to sell bloody organs he had removed from helpless patients.

Only live plants left Billy’s store, and he had to be convinced that their new owners would treat them right before he let them go.

Business wasn’t great, but he somehow eked out a living. And nothing pleased him more than matching up a happy plant with an appreciative human.

Going to a glass-paned wooden door leading to the actual greenhouse, Billy could feel the emanations of the various plants within. Cyclamens and clivias, azaleas and hyacinths, orchids and violets, all radiated their individual personalities, welcoming Billy back for another day.

Throwing open the door, Billy stepped into the warm, moist, richly scented embrace of his growing charges. Time for another day of work.

But what a pleasure it was!

The morning passed in a busy flurry of repotting, watering, mulching, clipping, dividing, misting, and sowing. A few customers came in and had their needs met, but generally Billy was alone with his eager green friends.

Around noon—Billy could tell the time to within a few minutes by the position of the sun—a commotion sounded out on the street. Laying down his trowel and wiping his hands on the apron he wore, Billy headed out to see what could be happening.

Out on the sidewalk, he looked down the elm-bordered street toward the noise.

A garish madman was leading a parade.

This was Billy’s first thought, while the crowd was still at a distance. As they approached, he saw no reason to modify it.

The stranger at the head of the procession was dressed like no native. He had on a multicolored Hawaiian shirt that stretched across his big stomach like a jungle scene distorted by non-Euclidian geometries. He wore pale orange pants equally tight and thick-soled shoes obviously intended to compensate for his shortness. His bald pate was trying to hide beneath a few reluctant strands of hair. A great deal of gold jewelry festooned his neck and fingers. He chewed aggressively on an unlit cigar, around which he occasionally uttered a heartfelt exclamation as some new sight caught his roving eye.

“Wunnerful!”

“Jesus, whoda thought it—”

“What a find!”

“Lookit that old house, fer Chrissakes!”

“Where the hell’ve they been hiding this town? It’s just perfect!”

The fat stranger waddled past Billy where he stood at the entrance to his store. When his glance alighted on Billy, it rapidly bounced off, perhaps refusing to acknowledge that he had actually seen the light-green man.

Following some distance behind the man were scores of citizens of Blackwood Beach. They shared a look of immense curiosity and puzzlement, apparently finding this intruder as much of an improbable spectacle as he found their town.

Billy hailed the man nearest him, who happened to be Tom Noonan, owner, publisher, editor, reporter, and typesetter for the town’s newspaper, the
Blackwood Beach Intelligencer
.

“Hey, Tom. Who’s this character?”

The burly Noonan stopped beside Billy. As he frequently did when nervous, he unconsciously stroked the three stubby fingers on his left hand, whose upper joints he had lost when first learning to operate his cantankerous, antediluvian printing press.

“Can’t rightly say, Billy. He pulled up in a fancy foreign car half an hour ago, and he’s been wandering through town ever since, gaping like a mooncalf. When the kids got out of school for lunch they started following him. Then the adults joined in. Pretty soon, I reckon, he’ll have the whole town trailing along.”

Billy was about to ask why no one had stopped the stranger and inquired his business when Noonan said, “Can’t stand and talk, Billy, he’s getting away.”

Noonan rejoined the parade. Billy stood still a moment, then did the same.

The horde of Blackwooders continued to follow the meandering stranger. Each house he passed seemed to add its trickle of inhabitants to the flow, until Noonan’s prediction was almost fulfilled, and hundreds of citizens obligingly trailed the loudly marveling and still-oblivious man.

Gradually working their way up the slope of the natural amphitheater in which the town lay, the procession wended its way toward the western outskirts. As Billy noticed where they were heading, he began to grow nervous. They were approaching the very spot where his most important plant grew. It was generally known to the natives that Billy had something going up near the old Mowbray house, but they were too respectful to intrude verbally or physically on his project. Certainly this stranger couldn’t know about it also? No, it had to be coincidence—

At last, houses growing sparser around them, they reached the Mowbray manse.

Andrew Mowbray was a sorcerer who had lived during the early 1700s. Unfortunately, he hadn’t been a very good one. When it came time for an inevitable showdown between him and Welcome Goodnight, the other resident mage, Mowbray lost. The climactic battle—during which the figures of the two men could be witnessed one night as gigantic white shadows against a cloudy sky—had been the last time anyone had ever seen Mowbray.