Frek and the Elixir (16 page)

“I can magic-carpet us there in a flash,” proposed Bumby. “I'm full of helium.” He used his two long tentacles to lift Frek onto his broad, gently domed back, leaving a spring-coiled tentacle stretched back like a bridle for Frek to hang onto with his one good hand. Beating his skirt fin in smooth waves, Bumby shot forward through Gov's corridors. Every bit of the wall skins was wallpapered with Bumby toons. They were jeering at Gov and warning all the counselors and workers to get out of the puffball right away. People were leaving in droves, many of them still blinded. None of them were in a mood to confront Bumby.

Frek had plenty of experience with finding Wow, who was known for wandering in search of female dogs. It was only minutes till he and Bumby had tracked Wow down. On the way, Frek worked his ring out of the purse fungus and put it back on his finger. It comforted him to wear it, and with the chameleon mod worn off, there was no reason not to. He wished Carb could see him riding the alien cuttlefish.

They found Wow, Woo, and Gibby imprisoned within a chamber near the puffball's entrance, a kind of holding cell. A blast from Bumby's siphon tore the cell door apart like turmite paper. The Grulloo and the two dogs were bound at the ankles by tough stalks growing from the puffball wall, one stalk for each ankle.

“Halt,” intoned Gov's voice again. His menacing raven toon appeared upon the wall skin to drive his message home. “Stop now, Frek, or I'll rip them to pieces. Surrender. Only a matter of time till the counselors catch you. If you keep this up, you make things worse for self—and for your mother.”

Seeing the raven frightened Frek; it brought back the nightmarish memories of his hours with the peeker uvvy. But the threat to Lora redoubled his determination.

“We're going to kill you,” he told Gov evenly, then turned to his new alien friend. “Help us, Bumby!”

Gov's wall-stalks crawled apart, spread-eagling his captives. Gibby grimaced, and the dogs yelped in pain.

“Quite unacceptable,” said Professor Bumby. Again he grew light-tendrils from the tips of his arms. A few well-aimed twitches burned the shackles in two. At the same time his multiple Professor Bumby toons squeezed Gov's image right off the wall skin.

“Thankee kindly!” exclaimed Gibby, producing a longish knife from within his jacket to cut the remaining circlets of puffball from his ankles—or wrists. He glanced up from his work, squinting at Professor Bumby. “This would be that space alien you tole me about, hey Frek? Proud to meet you, Mr. Cuttlefish. I'm Gibby the Grulloo, and this here is Frek's dog, Wow, and the dog's lady friend, Woo. We been making ourselves acquainted here, passin' the time till they started dissectin' us.”

“Call me Professor Bumby,” said the floating cuttlefish. “Glad to meet you.”

It was cozy to hear Gibby again. And a pure joy to see Wow. Frek hopped off Professor Bumby's back and ran to hug his dog. Wow and Woo's story was simple enough. Once the bone was chewed down, Wow had decided to follow Frek after all. Woo had come along, and some NuBioCom workers had caught them while Wow was sniffing at Frek's discarded clothes.

As it happened, the counselors had thrown the clothes into the cell along with Gibby and the dogs. So now Frek was able to get dressed again, which he found a great relief. His soft leather shoes felt good on his feet, and it was nice to cover his nakedness with his blue pants and yellow T-shirt.

“Let's go, Frek, yes,” said Professor Bumby, bobbing in the middle of the room like a friendly balloon. He beat his fin to bring himself down to the ground. “On the road. From what I'm overhearing on the uvvy links, we'll be in for a dash to catch my
slobber-tweet.
But once we save my lady fair, we'll take you to meet the branecasters and fetch the elixir that will restore the biome of your Earth.”

So that was the plan. Frek hadn't realized all that before. It sounded glatt. Restoring the biome was exactly what he wanted to do. It was like Bumby had read his mind. “Elixir” was just the word Frek had always thought of. But he did wonder why it had to be specifically Frek Huggins who fetched the elixir. Why hadn't Professor Bumby just brought the elixir along in the first place? Maybe it wasn't so easy to get hold of the elixir, maybe somebody had to snatch it away from those branecasters, whoever they were, and maybe Bumby was choosing Frek to do this because Frek was so clever. Or so pure of heart. Frek guessed he was fairly pure of heart. He loved his family, he didn't sneak if he didn't have to, and he never stole things or picked on other kids.

Once again the golden glow suffused Frek's surroundings; again his sensations seemed like artifacts in a store window. It was that same feeling that had come over him just before he'd darted inside the puffball. Savoring the sensation more distinctly than ever before, Frek realized it was as if there were a stranger inside his mind, tasting his sensations and sharing his thoughts, getting him to make everything unambiguous and clear. The glow was a nonspecific pleasure tingle, as if designed to make you enjoy having the stranger watch you. The glow felt good, but being watched was distracting. And it caused you to think simpler thoughts, as if you were explaining things to someone, having to name every sensation and emotion.

This was what Kolder had been talking about. Aliens were peeking into people's minds. Frek wished he could turn off the glow. This was supposed to be his own real life, not a toon show for some invisible beings' entertainment. Perhaps freeing humanity of the galactic eavesdroppers should be part of Frek's quest as well as fetching the elixir. A tall order. Gazing at good old Wow and tough little Gibby, he realized he needed them as helpers.

“Will you guys come with me?” he asked. “I know I'll do better with you along.”

“Wow come,” said Wow immediately.

“Woo come,” added Woo. She and Wow had really bonded. So much the better. An extra dog could be a good thing.

“Where all did he say he's takin' you?” asked Gibby, still not quite decided. “To catch what? What was that noise he made?”

“He calls the Anvil
slobber-tweet,
” explained Frek. “Or Ulla. The Anvil is his starship, you know. I think he's going to take us to a different part of the galaxy. I'm sure Bumby could make stim cells for you.”

“Anything you need,” chimed in Bumby. “Food, air, spacesuits—I make it all from kenner.”

“I always wanted to travel,” said Gibby slowly. “Bein' a Grulloo and not all too welcome in most spots, I ain't been able to get no further than Stun City. I'd surely love to come, Frek. But—” A shadow crossed his face.

“What?”

“Long way to go without tellin' Salla,” said Gibby. “She'll think I got moolked up like never before. Wouldn't put it past her to declare me dead and find a new husband. I'd hate to see Bili and LuHu raised by some other guy.”

“Uvvy her,” urged Frek. “Tell her to wait.”

“We don't got no uvvies,” said Gibby. “We're off the grid.”

“Could we fly by Gibby's house on our way out?” Frek asked Professor Bumby. “And visit my mom, too? Lora Huggins?”

“Your planet has sky-jellies, I'm sure you're hip to that,” said Bumby a little edgily. “The Skywatch Mil satellites, tools of the Gov-worms that tyrannize your poor green world. Even now a jelly is getting ready to try to blast me. It's goggling down, charging up its laser-cells, crooning and scheming till Frek and Bumby pull clear of Gov's puffball. And then you'll see some zick and some zack. We're going to be whisking out of here faster than you've ever seen, my merry friends, and not all that likely to be stopping door to door.”

“You won't escape,” said Gov's voice from the walls. A true voice of doom, carefully modulated in the deepest, scariest, most psychologically effective way.

“It's
your
clock that's running out,” snapped Bumby. “It's over for you, stink worm. We're the ones to finish the job. Saddle up, Frek, and it's fine if you bring the hounds. There's scads of room inside Ulla. She can shrink us on our way in, you understand. And you come too, if you like, Gibby, but get with it, runt!”

“Don't call me runt, you space squid,” said Gibby, never one to stand still for any kind of insult. “Do you know what it's like to travel off and leave your wife?”

“My wife travels with me,” said Bumby imperturbably. “I mean, I might as well call her a wife. But you've no need to stew about your absence being unbearably long. A yunch trip is over almost before it starts. And for a hero like our Frek, it won't take much time to get hold of the fabled elixir.”

Frek wondered why Bumby was so convinced Frek was a hero. The cuttlefish knew next to nothing about him, right? Or maybe he'd done some kind of deep scan data search on the whole planet before landing? Even if he had, it was a little hard to see why Frek's name in particular would pop up on the top of anyone's list. But if Bumby thought Frek could be a hero, who was Frek to say no? He was certainly ready to try. Destroy Gov and restore the biome—these were tasks worth risking your life for.

“We supposed to ride your back?” whined Gibby. “Looks mighty slick.”

“We'll grab onto his tentacles,” said Frek. “Stop stalling. We've got important things to do.”

“Easy for you to say,” said Gibby, still dithering. “You got feet and hands both, which is more than me and the dogs can say.”

“I'll lash you down,” said Bumby shortly. He laid his long tentacles along his back. “Come or don't come, it's no tearful worry thing for me. Only Frek matters.”

“Oh, what the hey, I'm in for this tune,” said Gibby, clambering up. “Nothin' gambled, nothin' gained.”

Frek, Gibby, and the two dogs settled onto the hump of Bumby's back. Frek was lying on his stomach with one of the dogs under each arm. Gibby was wedged beneath his ankles, and Bumby's tentacles were criss-crossed over them all.

“Going up,” said Bumby, puffing up his girth with more helium. “And we'll take out Gov on the way.” He pointed his siphon toward the ceiling and blasted open a shaft five meters across. Gov screamed again. Beating his fin like a hula skirt, Professor Bumby drifted gently upward.

They passed a diverse assortment of puffball chambers. Everything lay quite open to the newly blasted shaft. As well as officelike cells, they saw large laboratory rooms, with dozens of experimental kritter prototypes growing in tanks. Other rooms were completely filled with fungus filaments suspending convoluted fleshy knobs. These were the puffball brain nodules that watched the Nubbies through the eyes of the house tree walls. Bumby used scathing blasts of energy to clean out every chamber he saw. But still no Gov. What if they couldn't find him?

As they passed the second-to-last floor, Frek noticed a flutter in one of the shaft's walls. With sudden conviction, he knew that Gov lay behind it.

“Gov's there!” he cried. “Behind that wall.”

Bumby flipped out one of his long arms and ripped the sheet of mushroom flesh away. And, yes, they'd found Gov's hidey-hole, a foul-smelling chamber filled by an immense coiled-up worm, partly grown into the flesh of the puffball.

The worm's cold gray eyes glinted with hatred; the beast opened its little disk mouth to show its weak, spiteful fangs. Gov himself.

“Kill him!” said Frek to Bumby.

“Don't you dare!” hissed the worm as Bumby prepared to blast him. His voice came both from his body and from the puffball walls. “Don't you think I stored my memories across the puffball's brain nodules? Don't you think I have a hidden clone? Killing me accomplishes nothing. You have no time, Bumby! I launch the space bug to take your Anvil to the Sun!”

“Kill him, Bumby!” repeated Frek.

And Bumby did. A single blast from the cuttlefish's siphon scoured out the chamber, crisping the cruel worm into a greasy cloud of smoke. Bumby kept his siphon blast going, burning out more and more of the puffball, and riding the blast up into the sky. They emerged from the top of the puffball's great curve. The sun was high; it was early afternoon. A space bug had just crawled out of the puffball's flesh at a spot nearby.

Frek had seen space bugs before. They were like big maggots or grub-worms, pointed at one end, with strong skin and combustible flesh. Basically space bugs were live tubes of rocket fuel who happened to be stupid enough to light themselves if you asked them to. They had a trio of tough little wings to steer themselves. The one leaving the puffball was furiously beating its wings to get a bit out of range before actually lighting its torch. It was narrow with a faint bulge in its middle—that would be the Anvil. The space bug was only a few score meters distant, its tiny wings laboring. It looked as if the space bug would be easy to catch, but just then its rear end kindled into a blinding bright flame and it shot into the sky.

“I'm coming, baby!” shouted Bumby. Tightening his tentacles around Frek, Wow, Woo, and Gibby, the airborne cuttlefish swung his pointed rear end up into the air and unleashed the strongest blast yet from his front-pointing siphon, coincidentally charring another huge hole into the puffball. The blast sent Bumby rocketing up into the air after the space bug. The dogs howled and clawed at Frek's sides, Gibby moaned, and Frek gritted his teeth. Still they rose higher.

It was only when they were nearly a thousand meters up in the clear blue sky that Bumby drew even with the space bug. And then he wasted no time. He seized the ridged body of the space bug with his sucker-arms. Though Frek couldn't see the details from where he lay, Bumby's mollusk beak must have been a goggy one, for in an instant the space bug had been torn to shreds. Its still-burning tail went spiraling crazily down toward an open field outside of Stun City. And Bumby was clasping the thick, purplish disk of the Anvil with his sucker arms, crooning over it like a long-lost lover. It was less than a meter across.