Frek and the Elixir (29 page)

“That's my father,” said Frek. “You were already esped-out when he came downstairs. Carb, this is my traveling buddy, Gibby. Gibby, this is Carb.”

“You got a peach of a young'un, Carb,” said Gibby, gamely resetting his mood. “He took a big risk to come down here and save you.”

Carb seemed a little bemused at meeting a Grulloo socially, but he took it in his stride. “I hope I didn't call him here for nothing,” he said. “Tomorrow's the big day.”

“Announce a tour of Unipusk beginning bright and early,” said Hawb, still listening in. “Inform you that the tour ends at the branelink. Inquire again if we can depend on you to help us with the branecasters, Frek? Threaten death for noncompliance.”

“Don't nag me,” said Frek, determined to keep his options open. “Ready, Dad?”

“Stay down here with me for a while, Carb,” put in Yessica, leaning against Frek's father. “Renata can show them where to go.”

“That's pretty selfish of you, Mom,” put in Renata. “Frek hasn't seen his father in over a year.”

“Would you mind, Frek?” said Carb.

“Oh, sure. I nearly kill myself to come save you, and—”

“Present myself as prepared to escort you,” interrupted Angawl.

“I'll come upstairs with you, Frek,” said Renata in a comforting tone. “To help show you the ropes.”

“I don't feel so good,” complained Gibby. “With my spacesuit gone I can't get any stim cell nuggets.”

“Use the wishing well,” said Carb in a careless tone. “At least that's what I call it. That gold bowl on top of that marble statue of a vig. You stare into it and visualize what you want, and it makes it for you. And, Frek, don't make me feel even guiltier. Let's just enjoy being together again, okay?”

“You
should
feel guilty!” exclaimed Frek, feeling a balloon of anger in his chest. “You left us without saying good-bye. And how come you never sent us a message?”

“Because I wouldn't let him,” said Yessica imperiously. She caught hold of Carb's hand and led him over to a big soft couch farther off. They flopped down together and Carb took out the moolk pod and passed it to Yessica, who couldn't wait to start sucking the juice from it. Carb was totally under Yessica's spell. Was this his idea of being together with his son? Thanks for nothing, Dad.

Meanwhile Gibby got himself some stim cell nuggets from the golden bowl, easy as pie. Fortunately he hadn't noticed Carb getting the moolk. Angawl and Renata led Frek, Gibby, and Wow over to the other side of the room to the negative gravity zone so they could ride up to the living quarters.

The forces in the bright-lit column of air were tuned so the upward motion was pleasantly slow. It was a nice feeling to be drifting up through the big rickrack stalk. There were decorations for the first thirty or so meters—paintings, bas reliefs, sculptures, and moving holograms, mostly of Unipuskers. But after that the walls were just plain green, a two-tone green with faint vertical stripes.

To make it easier to get around—and to fend off a possibly disastrous drop—the rickrack tree had grown a number of tendrils across parts of the shaft, green ropes like jungle vines. At first Frek was worried about bumping into these safety vines, but then he noticed that as long as he was still moving up, the vines got out of his way. A rickrack tree seemed to be at least as intelligent as a house tree.

At the fifty-meter level they began encountering orange viglets and young Unipuskers frolicking in the negative gravity column. The frisky creatures liked to ride the column up, find their way out of it, drop down along the edges, and swing from a vine—or air-glide—to get back into the column for another ride up. Both the vigs and the Unipuskers were flexible enough that they could stretch out their bodies enough to cut the air. For his part, Wow's legs churned frantically in the air each time a vig hurtled past with its eyestalks laid back against its head for speed.

When Frek thought to look down again, he noticed Yessica twining her arms about Carb's neck, rubbing herself against him like a spider spinning silk around a captured fly. How could his father prefer a dumb, pushy woman like that to Mom?

Right about then Frek was distracted by a little Unipusker the size of his forearm smacking into him. “You're ugly and you stink,” gurgled the child alien, parroting the insult Frek had delivered to Hawb back in the saucer. Word spread fast on Unipusk. The little creature spread his shell-head wide open to emit the wet creaking noise of Unipusker laughter.

“Prepare to alight,” said Angawl.

“He means we get off at the next branch,” said Renata. “Your room's out at the very tip.” She grabbed Frek's hand and shoved him away from her. The reaction sent her out of the negative gravity column, and as she fell, she pulled Frek after her. Frek caught hold of Gibby and Gibby grabbed Wow. It almost looked as if they'd fall straight back down to the floor, but some smart rickrack ropes swooped into position for them to grab. Renata caught hold of one, and Frek did, too. The elastic tendrils slowed their fall, and swung them into one of the hollow side branches of the great rickrack tree.

A gingerbread-man army of young Unipuskers went pounding down the long branch with them—well, actually some of them were more than waist high. Every single one of the Unipuskers wanted to tweak Gibby's tail, to ruffle Wow's fur, to feel Renata's soft skin, to sniff Frek, and to pipe, “You're ugly and you stink.” What made it even worse was that Angawl let out the exact same gurgling chuckle each time one of the children said the tag line. If one Unipusker thought of something interesting to say or do, all the others had to say or do the same thing. And none of them ever got tired of it. Hawb had said they were unoriginal.

The horizontal branch was a series of dorm rooms, separated by soft walls with slits in them that you could easily push through. Unlike the great room downstairs, the dorms were sparsely furnished, with little more than dome lamps on the ceilings. Upon the floors were disk-shaped pools of muddy slurry, grown right into the flesh of the rickrack tree, three or four pools to a room. These were the dark spots Frek had earlier thought might be rickrack spores.

Seeing some of the little Unipuskers comfortably lying in the puddles, Frek understood that these were their beds, and that the sculpture of Hawb and Cawmb in the great hall was of the couple about to sleep together. The smell from the beds was rank; it was the very essence of what was unpleasant about the smell of Unipuskers.

Frek felt uneasy about pushing farther and farther into the branch, through room after strong-smelling room. As they got farther out, the Unipuskers in the rooms got larger and more intimidating. “I'd rather be closer to the middle,” he complained.

“They want you out on the very tip,” repeated Renata. “For security. Mom and I live on the tip of the branch directly across from yours, by the way. And Hawb and Cawmb sleep at the rickrack tree's top. Like this.” Quickly she sketched a diagram on her turkle.

“What about my father?”

“He usually sleeps on a couch in the main room,” said Renata, marking the spot with an X. “The Unipuskers don't mind, so long as some of us are out on the tips being hostages. Carb doesn't like it up here. And Mom's not good at getting in and out of the shaft, particularly if she's drinking moolk, so she stays downstairs a lot, too. The nights when they both make it upstairs, I get to go and sleep downstairs myself. The air's better down there. But don't worry, the tipmost rooms don't smell that bad. How do you like my mom? Are you going to help us get out of here?”

“I hate to say,” said Frek, focusing on the second question. Too late he realized that it might sound to Renata as if he didn't like her mother—which was true, but obviously it wasn't the right thing to tell her, even if she herself didn't like her mother. Immediately Renata grew distant and cold.

Just then they reached the sealed green door to their room. Unlike the other doors, it didn't have a simple entrance slit, only a pinhole at its center. Angawl patted the door with a rapid and subtle series of gestures and the pinhole spread open to make an entrance hoop.

Renata stiffly watched Frek, Gibby, and Wow climb into the green conical tip of the long branch. Frek would have liked to talk to her alone some more, but Angawl was impatient and in any case Renata too seemed in a hurry to go. She said a quick good-bye and then Angawl tapped the door closed.

Immediately Frek had an urge to run after Renata to try to clear things up, but by now the door had stiffened, and it wouldn't let him through. They were locked in for the night.

So Frek, Gibby, and Wow settled down on the sloping green floor as best they could. The room had neither beds nor a lamp, but some light filtered in from the Unipusker dorm room next door. The rickrack walls were soft to the touch, with a fresh plant smell, faintly scented with violets. With the door sealed off like this, the room was fairly pleasant.

“I'm beat,” said Gibby, comfortably curling his arms around his head. He looked very small. “That flickerball stuff, Frek, it was goggy. Fella could get hooked on that thing. I was a tiger, and a bird, and a—some kind of jellyfish. And then I was climbin' a tree. What a day.”

“I have no idea what'll happen tomorrow,” said Frek uneasily. Part of his defense against the espers was to resist forming opinions before he had to. And even if he had known his exact plans, telling his companions would be tantamount to telling the Unipuskers.

“You'll know what to do,” said Gibby. “Don't worry.” He wrapped his arms a little tighter and shut his eyes.

“I'm glad you're here, Gibby,” murmured Frek.

There were some air holes on the walls, like windows the size of Frek's fist. He peered out a hole for a minute, staring at the other lit-up rickrack trees, and at the glowing ships and warehouses upon the field of the spaceport.

“Woo gone,” said Wow, standing next to him, reaching his nose up to catch some of the window's air.

“Why did she run off?” Frek asked the dog. “Do you know?”

“Sweet whistle called us,” said Wow.

“From the other ship? That barrel thing with the tentacles?”

“Sweet whistle,” repeated Wow. “Wow stay with Frek. Wow miss Woo.”

“Good boy, Wow. Maybe we'll get Woo back soon.”

And then Frek lay down with his companions and fell asleep.

In the night Wow woke him up.

“Woo,” Wow creaked into his ear. “Woo barking. Lift Wow up to smell and listen.” Though Frek's ears weren't sharp enough to hear any barking, he held Wow up to one of the air holes for a minute, letting Wow thoroughly sniff the air, all the while cocking his ears, turning his head, and wagging his tail.

And then Wow did some barking of his own, which set the four nearly-grown Unipuskers in the next room to hissing and gurgling in excitement, until one of them called out, “You're ugly and you stink,” and then they all had to yell that, and then one of the Unipuskers thought of pounding on the wall separating them, and then they all had to do that, and then of course Wow had to bark back.

“Good barking,” said Wow when things quieted down. “Woo know Wow here. Wow know Woo there. Woo know Wow know. Wow know Woo know.”

 

In the morning Renata came along with Angawl to get them. The first thing Frek saw when the door irised open was the hurt expression on Renata's face.

“I'm sorry about last night,” he said, not entirely sure why he was apologizing, but having a sense that it was expected.

“You weren't very nice about my mother,” said Renata, slowly swinging her pigtails.

“Oh, she's fine,” said Frek. “For a grownup. I'm nobody to complain about parents. Look at Carb.”

“I'd rather not, a lot of the time,” said Renata with a little smile. “He and Mom just went to bed in our room about an hour ago. Up all night. They woke me up. I've been waiting for Angawl to come get you. Killing time floating in the gravity shaft and chasing vigs.”

“Well, please don't be mad at me,” said Frek and then, before really thinking about it, he leaned forward and kissed Renata's sweet cheek.

“Yee haw!” exclaimed Gibby, which was enough to end the moment.

“
You're
staying here today,” Renata told the Grulloo with mock sternness.

“Confirm this information,” said Angawl.

“Huh?” said Gibby. What with spending yesterday evening staring at the flickerball downstairs, Gibby had missed out on most of the plans.

“You and Wow are supposed to be hostages today,” Frek told him. “To put the pressure on me.”

“I doubt if this overgrown horsetail plant can hold me,” said Gibby, thumping the floor with perhaps more bravado than he felt. “You go and do the right thing, Frek. Don't never mind about us.”

The golden glow of the alien espers had been around Frek as soon as he woke up, and it had taken a few minutes' effort to carry out the three exercises he'd started calling
sky-air-comb
for short. First, phase the glow from intense spotlight into a brightness of the sky; second, offer so little resistance to the peekers that he was as untouchable as air; and third, restore his natural mental processes by running a virtual comb of ghostly fingers through the tissues of his brain.

After all that, Frek didn't feel free to think very concretely about the events to come. “You're a pal,” was all he said to Gibby.

And then Angawl, Frek, and Renata pushed their way through about a hundred stinking dorm rooms, and swung on a series of vines to reach the ground floor. Hawb and Cawmb were waiting on one of the couches. Seeing Frek and Renata approach, Hawb called out a command. The garage set into the room's wall opened its door, and their chauffeur, Gawrgor, came riding out on the hoverdisk.

“Greet Frek,” said Hawb, ushering Frek and Renata up the hoverdisk's brass steps to lean upon its velvet railings. “Announce the start of our little tour. Predict you will love Unipusk. Mention that we'll pick up Carb and Yessica later, right before we proceed to the branelink. Bid farewell to Angawl.”