Year Zero (15 page)

“Got it,” I said. “And, uh … how exactly are you in on the biggest secret in the universe?”

“We’re part of a very powerful … program that has a rather large research staff,” Carly said evasively. “They’re good at ferreting out secrets.”

“Is it some creepy KGB-like thing?” I asked.

“Oh, it’s much creepier than that,” Carly said. “And our father runs it.”

“And what does your program do?”

“We’ll get to that later,” Carly snipped.

Oh please. My entire
species
was allegedly on the line, I was risking my life to save it, and she wouldn’t even tell me what she did for a living. “Well,” I said, “I think it would be appropriate to at least—”

“I said we’ll get to that later!”

I had a brief flashback of my iPhone disintegrating in Carly’s telekinetic hands, and backed right down.

“For now we’re going to Dad,” Frampton said, looking at his sister. “Please?”

There was a grumpy silence. Then, finally, “Oh, all
right
.”

Frampton immediately lit up, and turned to me. “Oh—and you should come!” he said.

Carly was already shaking her head. “We can’t take him to see Dad without taking him out there,” she said, pointing vaguely at the wall.

“You mean I can’t leave this room?” I asked.

Carly shook her head. “It would be dangerous.”

“Why? Because I’d … choke on the air?”

“No. Zinkiwu is identical to Earth in terms of its
atmosphere, size, and gravitational field. By design. The problem is that while humans are hugely advanced in music, you’re desperately primitive in every other art. That includes decor, textile design, architecture, cuisine, and scented-candle craft.”

“Which means?”

“Which means you could find the sights, smells, and textures of a Refined home as enthralling as the rest of the universe found the
Kotter
song.”

“You mean my brain could explode?”

Carly shook her head. “The human aesthetic sense is far too dull to engender such a cultivated response. But you could end up in a useless trance for hours.”

“But Nick could help talk Dad into keeping a lid on things,” Frampton pleaded. “He’s a lawyer—and he’s from
Earth
. Dad will have to listen to him!”

Carly considered this. “You may be right. But what happens when he sees my apartment?”

“Oh, he’ll be fine. Didn’t you see his office? He has no aesthetic sense whatsoever.”

“True,” she allowed. “But still, I just updated the lighting, and it’s simply gorgeous out there. I don’t know if he can handle it.”

“We can shut it off. It’s still daytime, and your apartment gets sunlight.”

“But what about my layout? It’s so stunning it makes
my
head spin. What’ll it do to him?”

“I could go out there first and rearrange the furniture,” Frampton offered. “Make it look really crappy?”

Carly considered this, then nodded. “And hide all the art. And open the windows to dissipate the scents. Cover up whatever walls you can. And if there’s any food out there,
for God’s sake, vaporize it. Otherwise he’ll be like a panther with a bushel of catnip.”

“I’ll turn it into a sensory deprivation tank.” As Frampton slipped out the door, I shut my eyes so that a stray glimpse of Carly’s dangerously brilliant layout wouldn’t cripple me. Moments later, we could hear him banging around outside.

“We put these rags back on for you, for the same reason,” Carly grumbled, looking at her robes.

“Afraid that your own fashions would overwhelm me?”

“Yes. They’re too tasteful for your mind to process comfortably.” She was entirely serious.

“Hey, some of
our
clothes are amazing, too—you should see the girls in Rio and St. Tropez.
³
And why do you dress like a pair of religious kooks anyway? You’re not exactly scaling the heights of our fashion—lame as you find it.”

“We know how important religion is on Earth. So we thought we might get more respect from people this way. Was it a bad choice?”

“Bad? It was abysmal!” It felt good to be the expert for once. “You look like a couple of nut jobs. A nun and a mullah walking through midtown stand out as much as—I don’t know, as much as a Wookiee and a Klingon.” That was something of a zinger. By then, I knew that our films were viewed with smug derision everywhere, with our depictions of alien life being particularly mocked.

I was about to follow this up with a truly cutting jab when Frampton opened the door to the living room, changing my life forever.

The colors Of Carly’s living room
were lucid in ways I didn’t know were possible. It was like I’d spent my life watching some ghastly Nixon-era TV mounted in a huge wooden console, then was suddenly plunked down in front of a hundred-inch plasma screen in James Cameron’s house. Nothing was gaudy, it was all just very … present. The blues had immense gravity—like they’d been pulled from the depths of an ocean that was distantly illuminated by a thousand suns. The reds actively smoldered—as if a master enamelist had taken the truest red in nature, distilled away its slightest impurities, and then applied a nuclear infusion to give it a deep, plutonium glow. And the dark touches looked like they were carved from black holes—accents of perfect opacity that made the rest of the room look phosphorescent by comparison.

Each color would be a museum-worthy marvel on its
own. But the shades of the textiles, the furniture, and the walls wove together in an immaculately balanced tapestry. It was like a color symphony sustaining the perfect chord—one with both an infinite, fractal complexity and the pure simplicity of a low integer. Lush primary splashes offset fields of bewitchingly deep tones, all bracketed by those impossibly perfect blacks. And everything—textures, reflections, contours—stood in perfect counterpoise. As for the furniture, Carly’s humblest footstool could single-handedly transform the lowest Staten Island squat into the swankest bachelor pad in New York. Meanwhile, the carpets were not only gorgeous beyond words, but they caressed and coddled my feet in almost pornographic ways. When I bent down and touched one, I found that it was softer than eiderdown, and deliciously squishy—kind of how a chinchilla blanket might feel if you were on one of those drugs that can make even asphalt feel satiny.

“Oh my God!” Carly murmured as we both took in the room. I assumed its familiar splendor was dazzling even her. Then, “It looks like absolute
crap
without the lights on.” She took in the furniture arrangement. “You totally trashed the superasymmetry, too. And who knew this place would look so
dowdy
without the artwork showing. Frampton, you’re a genius.”

“I’ve seen a lot of American music videos,” he said bashfully, lapping up the rare praise.

“Well, you really
learned
from them. I mean, this is amazing, I’m honestly feeling nauseous. Nick? How are you handling this?”

“
It’s the most glorious place I’ve ever seen,
” I said in a minuscule voice. I was saving every ounce of my energy to revel in the splendor before me.

I soon realized that the room was illuminated by a natural golden glow that was radiating from an immense window. I approached it and beheld the city that I had glimpsed from the Wrinkle’s chaos. We were at the pinnacle of a vast building that floated miles above the ground. It was surrounded by thousands of other massive structures—some floating, others freestanding. Each building soared, stretched, inverted, and arched as if it were spun from living gossamer and suspended in zero gravity. And all of the buildings moved in a slow, majestic, ingeniously synchronized dance. As they flowed through their motions, their reflections, lights, and shadows interplayed, causing sublime new patterns to emerge across the face of the city every few seconds. It was as if hyperintelligent counterparts of Frank Gehry, Alex Calder, Dr. Seuss, and Martha Graham had gotten together, dropped a load of acid, and hit the drafting boards.

“
What do you call this place?
” I asked in my minuscule voice—still preserving energy for ongoing rapture.

“Paradise City,” Frampton said.

“
Paradise—as in, where The Good go after death?
” I asked. This made unimpeachable sense.

“No. Paradise
City
, as in track six of the first Guns N’ Roses album.”

“This city’s an arts center,” Carly said. “We built it on rock ’n’ roll. What do you think of it?”

“
It’s … it’s … it’s beautiful!
” I said. More lyrical, or poetically adequate, words simply eluded me.

I’m not sure what response I expected to this. Softly murmured assent, or some reverential silence would have been nice. Instead I got a gale of guffaws that belonged in a truck stop. Frampton sounded like he was gagging on snot,
as Carly leaned on a chair for support, verging on a seizure. “It’s … it’s … it’s
byooooo-tiful
!” she squeaked in a cartoon falsetto, and she and Frampton lost it all over again.

“Seriously,” Frampton said, after struggling for several seconds to regain control. “That’s Paradise City. You wouldn’t find a tackier place if you … if you … 
looked really, really hard
!” This devastating salvo brought on another round of hysterics.

Once he calmed down, Frampton removed the chunky diver’s watch that he always wears. I watched in amazement as it drained of color and reshaped itself into a translucent lump.

“Is that a stereopticon?” I asked.

He nodded. “Have you seen one before?”

“Özzÿ used one when he visited us in my apartment,” I said. I didn’t mention that we still had the device in our possession. I was annoyed that Carly was stonewalling me about the program they were working for, so I didn’t feel like revealing every last card in my own hand just yet.

“Most Refined beings have one on them at all times,” Carly said, clasping her bulky, medieval cross. It oozed and melted into the same shape. She pressed it back against her neck, and it re-formed into the crucifix. “They’re like a cross between a computer, a phone, a 3D recorder, and a lot more. By the way, put your phone on that table.”

I did as she asked. It immediately levitated, then disintegrated into a familiar shower of green sparks. An instant later it reappeared on the table. Carly’s crucifix glimmered softly throughout this, and I realized that the telekinetic display that had cowed me in my office was actually an ingenious optical illusion projected by her stereopticon. I thought of Manda, and her idea of using our stereopticon to
recruit Judy to our cause—and decided that it was brilliant after all.

Frampton was meanwhile gazing at an information display that his stereopticon was projecting about a foot from his face. “Dad’s on the far side of the planet. Should we contact him?”

Carly let off an exasperated sigh. “What did I tell you about the security of the datalinks on this planet?”

Frampton thought hard. “Nonexistent, right?”

Carly nodded wearily. “How are the Wrinkle connections?”

Frampton consulted his data readout. “Totally booked out. Air and space traffic slots are bad, too. The best way to the other side of the planet is a dropway.”

“Call an omnicab,” Carly commanded. She turned to me. “We’re going to travel by a physical route, since the Wrinkles are booked out. Frampton just ordered a vehicle, and it’ll be here soon. You mentioned that you were afraid of heights, didn’t you?”

I shrugged. “Oh, I wouldn’t really say ‘afraid.’ ”
¹

“Excellent,” Carly said, with a puckish grin that I didn’t like one bit.

Frampton was meanwhile launching a series of projections from his stereopticon. It was a procession of flawless 3D renderings of common animals and objects, including shoelaces, praying mantises, fire hydrants, cats, KFC-branded “sporks,” bedbugs, freeway on-ramps, and hundreds of other things.

“Refined life is so abundant and diverse that many different
species of it can blend in seamlessly on any given planet,” Carly explained. “Frampton’s cycling through all the Refined species that resemble things on Earth. They’d be the beings to choose from if someone wanted to infiltrate your society.”

“Shoelaces?” I asked no one in particular, looking gravely at my Cole Haan’s.

“There’s about a thousand Refined look-alike species for Earth,” Frampton said, “including some birds.” He quickly produced a little feathered police lineup—a 3D tableau that included several species of bird, including a dead ringer for the parrot I had met at Eatiary.

I pointed at it. “That’s the species.”

Frampton expanded the projection of the parrot and started getting excited. “I—I think I know exactly who visited you.”

“Seriously?” Carly turned to me. “He has his weaknesses, but my brother never forgets a face.”

Frampton checked something else on his stereopticon. “One of these guys used to be really famous. As in, he was on
Aural Sculptures
.”

I gave him a puzzled look.

“It used to be the universe’s most popular entertainment program.”

“It featured all of the greatest musicians,” Carly added. “The Kotter Moment was the death of it.”

“Bingo,” Frampton said, looking at another data display. He made a flicking gesture, and a member of the yellow parrot–like species appeared in the middle of the room, standing next to an orange, pus-oozing lizard. The lizard had five bloodshot eyes mounted on stalks that bristled with metallic thorns. Frampton pointed at the parrot.
“This guy’s Exalted name is Paulie Stardust. So he’s the one you saw at the restaurant.”