Futures Near and Far (21 page)

Most of the stories
in this collection are awfully serious. My wife will tell you this one is more
like the sort she figured I wrote when she first got to know me but hadn’t yet read
any of my fiction.

How the world has changed since I wrote this in the
mid-1980s. Back then, the phrase “snail mail” had barely been coined (not
counting its earlier usage just after the telegram first came into wide use).
It would be years more before I had an email account. The mail was the mail. It
was a thing of paper and postage stamps. And if you were a freelance writer, it
could be months or even years before publishers coughed up the payments that
had long since fallen due.

We warned them foreigners not to go messing around up on Muledeer
Ridge, but they wouldn’t listen. Now look what’s happened.

I remember I was down at Casey’s store when they come in. You
never seen such a sight as them two. They were young enough — maybe thirty or
so — but I ain’t never seen grown men look more like a pair of women, all pasty
soft skin and pot bellies, not a lick of muscle on ’em. Their backpacks was
those new synthetic jobs, all shiny and hunter-safety orange and smelling like
new vinyl. Their boots had never seen a speck of dirt since they was made. They
had enough camping gear in the back of their jeep to sleep a whole commune of
hippies.

The first one come up to the counter, squinting at me through
a pair of bottle-bottom glasses. “Do you have any batteries for my torch?” he
said, talking all stiff and formal, like them Nazis in them World War II
movies.

“Batteries for
what
?”
Casey said.

He held up a flashlight.

“You foreigners, ain’t you?” I asked.

He turned to me, a little wrinkle in his forehead, like he
was afraid I was going to make something of it. When he saw I didn’t mean no
harm, he said, “Yes. I am a Czech. My friend is a Pole.”

“Fancy that,” Casey said, taking the fella over to the rack
of batteries. “What in tarnation you doing all the way up here?”

“The sightings,” the man said. His buddy just stood there
next to us. I don’t think he understood American.

“My colleague and I have come to investigate.”

Casey and I looked at each other. “You fixing to go up on
Muledeer Ridge?” Casey asked them.

“Yes. That was the place,” the Czech answered, holding up a
map. “We will spend a month there.”

Casey was shaking his head real slow. “You don’t want nothing
to do with that place. Folks has messed with them U.F.O. things before. Never
come to no good.”

“We are scientists. We must go,” the Czech said, and he sounded
mighty sure of himself. Casey and me didn’t say nothing until they done paid
for their batteries and climbed back in their jeep. That Pole drove like he
never seen a motor vehicle before last week.

“Damn fools,” Casey muttered.

o0o

It was about four days later that we knew something was up.
Some tourist backpacker come through town and told us he seen the jeep that the
Czech and the Pole had used, sitting in the woods with nobody around it. That
weren’t so strange, except that a lot of the equipment was still in it, and it
looked like a bear had been through the food. When Sheriff Baker heard the
story, he called me and Casey and a couple of the other boys together, and we
hightailed it up to the ridge.

We found the jeep right away, no problem. It was just like
the tourist said. What the bear hadn’t got to, the flies and the ants was
finishing off.

“Well, they didn’t go far,” the sheriff said. “Here’s their
tent,” holding up a flap of green nylon.

We found the camp only a hundred yards off. The foreigners
had laid out a fire and tossed down their sleeping bags, but neither had been
touched.

“Will you look at that?" Casey said.

Right in the middle of the camp was a track like nothing I’d
ever laid eyes on before. It was wide and flat, with three pointy toes, bigger
than an elephant’s. Pretty soon we found more. They led right to the crest of
Muledeer Ridge, right to the spot where some of the townfolk had been seeing them
funny lights now and again.

We got out rifles and followed them prints on up the hill. We
found them at the top.

They were the biggest, ugliest things God’s Earth ever did
see. Sort of like giant frogs — all naked and green — with mouths that must’ve
been three feet wide, except they walked upright like human beings, and wore
some funny looking belts full of buttons and gizmos. We figured one was a
female and the other a male, cause the one of them had something dangling
between its legs and the other one didn’t.

I don’t know who started shooting first, but it weren’t long
till we all did. That female never knew what hit her. The male must’ve took
five hits right in the chest and a couple more in the butt as he scooted up the
ramp into his U.F.O. I guess we didn’t kill him, because he fired that sucker
up and buzzed off over the horizon like a hummingbird with a tail wind.

It took nerve to make us walk up to the female’s body. God,
but it stank. It was leaking green goo out of the bullet wounds. Still, when we
saw the bulge in its belly, we knew what we had to do.

I took out my hunting knife. It only took one big slice, and
the female’s innards plopped out all over the pine needles. Sure enough, inside
was the Pole, sort of half digested and not quite all together. I stepped back
so I wouldn’t get no slime on my boots.

“Well, I guess that about decides it,” the sheriff said. “It’s
plain as the nose on your face. The Czech is in the male.”

Return to Table of Contents

I mentioned one of
the inspirations for this story in the introduction to “Termites.” I wanted to
come up with something that explored the future that might exist once
localizers, the inventions of my friends Bob Fleming and Cherie Kushner, come
into widespread use. That the devices will become part of our everyday lives,
along with the other halfway-here-already technologies referred to in the
story, I have no doubt. The question is of course whether that will be a good
thing or not.

It’s odd, but whenever I re-read “The Cookie Jar,” I
react to it almost as if it were an autobiographical work, which it most
certainly is not. I have never been in the protagonist’s shoes. He doesn’t
speak for me. In fact, of all the stories contained in
Futures Near and Far,
only “Fearless” gets so personal that I
could even begin to say any character is me in disguise. But “The Cookie Jar” takes
me back to certain places, things, and people who were part of my life. 1) I
chose Seattle as the setting in tribute to my first visit to the city, which
was in order to attend World Fantasy Con in 1989. During lulls in the con, my
friend Sheri Cohen and I wandered Pike Place Market, Ye Olde Curiosity Shop,
Pioneer Square, and more, pausing at a host of espresso outlets. I was charmed
by the ambience. By the flight back to California, I had the peculiar sense
that I had visited there many times. 2) The mime motif came about as a nod
toward fellow Santa Rosa resident Eliot Fintushel, who is not only an author of
gonzo science fiction stories but whose main gig when I met him was that of a
professional (government funded) street performer. 3) The flashback sequence
set in the creek is a composite of several real locales. For some reason nearly
all my life I have lived next to a creek, though at no point have I planned it
that way.

Bill dreamed of the dogs again. First, the terrier. Little
more than a mutt, it capered over a suburban lawn at dusk, imbued with energy
in spite of its protruding ribs, its matted fur, its bloodied and torn ear. It
had no one to care for it. No owner. Its dinners consisted of scraps stolen
from garbage cans.

Inside the house, a dachshund stood on its hind legs,
peering out of the living room view window at the terrier. It yipped and danced
on manicured toes, its coat freshly brushed, its personalized collar jingling.
Its stomach bulged slightly from the meal recently served by its master. It had
everything a dog could want — except to be outside right at that moment,
playing with the chewed-up tennis ball the terrier had found beneath the
winter-blighted quince.

Hunger drove Bill to consciousness. The dream faded. Peeling
away his blanket, he rolled off his pile of cardboard. His muscles complained,
yet the cardboard was better than concrete, and the warehouse, vast and
unheated as it was, fended off the rain and wind. He stood and tried to
stretch. The mist of his breath trailed up toward the distant rafters, where
the pigeons cooed their good mornings. His footsteps echoed as he shuffled to
the restroom.

The toilet worked, as did
the cold water tap. By month’s end the warehouse’s legitimate tenant
would no doubt return for his stacks of empty pallets, do the final cleaning,
and shut off the utilities. Bill filled the sink, stripped, took out his
cherished washcloth, and began scrubbing his body. The process set his teeth to
chattering, but he did a thorough job. The better he smelled, the closer he
could approach the tourists.

Restoring his socks and thermal longjohns, he gained control
of his shivers. He inhaled the whole-wheat roll he had saved for breakfast,
washed it down with water, and hurried to prepare himself for the streets.

Delving into his make-up kit, he debated what to be today.
Clown or mime? His tips were bigger as a clown, but the other choice required
less make-up, fewer props. Also, his mime togs were less wrinkled. Done. With a
wig, a fake mustache, and a bit of whiteface, he transformed himself into an
updated version of Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp.

The one part of his clown gear he included was his
harmonica. Stuffing touch-up cosmetics in his fanny pack, he placed his
remaining possessions in his battered rucksack and exited the restroom.

Keys rattled in a lock on the far side of the building. Bill
leaped behind a screen of pallets, adrenaline surging. The creak of hinges was
still echoing across the cavernous interior when he reached the loose board,
pushed it aside, and squeezed onto the deserted loading dock.

His blanket remained behind on the pile of cardboard. Bill
cursed.

He rounded the building and blended into the world of
sidewalks and storefronts, struggling to maintain his
I belong here
aura. The commute hour was in full swing, and though
traffic was light in this part of town, Bill shrank from each passing vehicle.
It was the rucksack. He never liked carrying it in the open. It marked him as
homeless.

Relief settled upon him as he turned into a refuse-laden
alley. An unshaven, middle-aged scarecrow of a man, prosthetic foot jutting
from his trouser leg and Purple Heart medal glinting on his khaki shirt, sat in
a large crate that had been turned on its side against one of the buildings and
covered with a tarp. The veteran nodded as Bill wedged his burden into the gap
between the crate and the brick wall.

“Morning, Jimmy.”

“Sleeping late this fine day?” the man scolded, tilting his
thumb at the sun, which had cleared the rooftops to the east to shine directly
on the crate, bringing a welcome and remarkably substantial dose of warmth.

“Fate has made me rich, and I live a life of ease.”

“Must’ve found a spot indoors. And you didn’t let me know?”

“Too late now, I think.” The warehouse was too risky for
further use, though he would try recovering the blanket assuming the tenant
failed to notice it and the loose board. “Next time.”

Jimmy spat. He did it to the side, but Bill winced. He
needed the veteran. Jimmy provided a base of operations. Thin and ragged though
the old guy was, he had the skills to defend this turf from scavengers. Over
the past month, Jimmy had often guarded Bill’s rucksack like he watched Claude’s
spare boots and Zach’s valise of mementoes. In return, Bill and Claude and Zach
and other transients were supposed to share whatever bounty they turned up,
saving the vet the annoyance of clomping around the city with a bum foot.

“I’ll make it up to you,” Bill promised.

“Eh,” Jimmy said, spitting again and waving him off.

Unsure whether the man was reassuring him no-harm-done or
spurning the apology, Bill’s sense of security remained unsettled as he said
his farewell and headed downtown.

o0o

Riders on the bus glanced sideways at his appearance. Bill
hoped they were seeing a mime, not a bum, but all that really mattered was that
he didn’t have to add more wear to his deteriorating shoes. Seattle’s hotel tax
law had been reinstated, restoring the Ride Free Area, and far be it from him
to ignore the gift.

Pike Place Market bustled with activity on this Indian
Summer morning. He stationed himself outside — not so near an entrance as to be
asked to move away — and brought out the harmonica. The crowd flowed around him
as he played. He made his eyes sparkle, wiggled his eyebrows, and generally
assumed as non-threatening and accessible an image as possible. Most passersby
nodded or grinned but did not break stride. A few lingered, if only to hear the
end of a tune.

One little girl seemed uncertain whether to be frightened of
such a strange vision in white face and Hitlerian mustache. Slipping the
harmonica into his fanny pack, Bill executed a sudden pratfall.

The child beamed. The mother squeezed the girl’s shoulder
approvingly. Bill lured them to stay longer by pretending to have lost his nose
in the tumble and to be searching all over for it — including intimations that
he was going to look for it up the dress of the three hundred pound matron who
was waddling by.

The little girl clapped. The mother, white teeth flashing as
she absorbed and echoed her daughter’s pleasure, slid her wallet out of her
purse, keyed in an amount and a clearance code, and held out the device so that
Bill could plug in his own and download the tip.