Shuteye for the Timebroker

by Paul Di Filippo

  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.

  After his disappearance, his house had stood vacant for many years. Eventually, new inhabitants dared to move into the desirable property. They didn’t stay long, however; nor did any others who tried over the next two hundred years. Finally no one could be found who would dare dwell in the house. It had been vacant for fifty years.

  Now the many-gabled house stood in the center of its weedy lot, surrounded by a picket fence from which the paint had all weathered off and most of the pickets had fallen. Thick woods began at the rear of the property, and it was not far within those trees that Billy had his little plot of special land.

  The stranger came to a halt before the shuttered, decaying house. With his back to his neglected audience, he placed his hands on his wide hips and stared for several minutes at the stark building. The crowd waited with its breath held for the next startling actions of this anomalous figure.

  He didn’t disappoint them. Throwing up his pudgy hands he shouted, “This is it!”

  The crowd jumped as one.

  The fat man whirled around and, for the first time, directly addressed the expectant Blackwooders.

  “Freddie Cordovan,” he said, pulling a wallet from his rear pants pocket and flashing an official-looking gold badge. “State Film Bureau. Friends, you are in luck.

  “We’re gonna make a movie here!”

  * * *

  Florence Budd was an old maid. An old old maid. She lived alone in a small, one-room house on Nightshade Lane, far from the physical and social center of Blackwood Beach. Her house resembled a pack animal that had been overburdened for too many years: a prospector’s donkey that had ascended the Grand Canyon one time too many; a nomad’s camel that had been mercilessly driven back and forth across the Sahara; a peasant’s water buffalo bent from years beneath the yoke. Her little cottage had slanted walls that were threatening to pop out of their window frames like seeds squeezed from a grape. Her roof of wooden slates, where soil had lodged over the years, was full of weeds and wildflowers. The ivy climbing over the exterior of the shack seemed to be the only thing holding the building together.

  Florence had no running water or electricity. Having been born about 1870 (she wasn’t quite sure of her birth date), she considered such things modern affectations. Oil lamps and a well supplied her basic needs. As for luxuries—she had her books.

  Besides a bed and a cupboard and a chair, Florence’s house held little except books. Piled high from floor to ceiling, they were the musty ramparts that shielded her from the outside world, which she had never been too fond of anyway. Every day, in the flickering light of her lamps (the books blocked whatever sunlight might have crept in through the dirty windows), Florence read her favorite volumes over and over, finding new pleasures in their familiar faces and voices.

  The books Florence read were those of the American authors who had been popular during her youth. She had seldom cracked the spine of a twentieth-century novel. There was enough earlier genius to occupy her for more than a lifetime. Just to recite the names was to tell all: Hawthorne, Howells, Thoreau, Emerson, Alcott, Cooper, Twain, James, Melville, Longfellow.… The list went on and on.

  Florence’s favorite author was Melville. Although she greatly admired his writing, her partiality toward him stemmed from personal, rather than critical, reasons.

  Melville was the only author she had ever met.

  When she was twenty, her father had taken her to New York on business. It was the one and only time she ever left Blackwood Beach. She didn’t care for the city at all. In fact, the noise and stink and filth of New York City just prior to the advent of the twentieth century was probably what fully soured Florence’s already fussy attitude toward life. But one thing she did enjoy was meeting an author. True, the bearded Melville was somewhat crabby and remorseful, due to his lack of critical and financial success, and didn’t pay much attention to his young female visitor (except to comment that she had “an interesting name”). But still, he was a real author, one of those glorious figures who produced the books that Florence even then relished more than life.

  Florence’s father lost all his money soon afterward, in the Great Cathay Bubble of 1901 (which involved investors trying to convince the Chinese population to adopt johnnycakes as their dietary mainstay rather than rice). When his creditors came to attach his house, he thwarted them by setting fire to it and perishing in the flames. Florence barely escaped. After that, she took up residence in the shack on Nightshade Lane, the only property left to her by the creditors.

  For forty-five years, Florence lived her bookish, solitary existence without any compunctions. She supported herself by selling herbs and simples to the population of Blackwood Beach. There was much call for such things, and Florence made enough to supply her spartan needs.

  In her seventies, Florence suddenly and inexplicably became lonely. S
he felt it would be rather nice to have someone to talk to every day, someone to draw the water when her joints were acting up. But who would ever consent to share her eccentric life?

  One day, Florence was studying a plant catalogue. This particular catalogue came from England, and was called the Thompson and Morgan Seed Catalogue. It was a compendium of the strangest plants she had ever seen. From it, Florence had gotten many of her best-selling seeds, which she grew in a small plot behind her shack. She thought she knew the contents of the catalogue from cover to cover. This day, though, her eyes fell on an entry—without an accompanying picture—that she had never noticed before:

  Homo sapiens mandragora: This rare cultivar, commonly called a mandrake, is offered exclusively by Thompson and Morgan to those discerning customers whose orders over the years have shown their interest in the unusual. PLEASE DO NOT SHOW YOUR COPY OF THIS CATALOGUE TO ANYONE ELSE.

  The mandrake is a vegetal cousin of humanity, of a commensurate size and intelligence. It should be sown in early April, in slightly alkaline soil. After three months, it may be harvested at that stage of development resembling a human five-year-old. (Certain of our correspondents report achieving an accelerated development by various methods. However, we cannot recommend such forcing.) Upbringing after harvest is the responsibility of the individual.

  Germination rate: 100 percent. Price: £1 the packet. (Please specify sex.)

  Florence filled out her order at once, and walked out to the Blackwood Beach post office.

  The package arrived on the last day of March.

  Florence sowed the single big seed with trembling hands, and then settled in for the three months of waiting.

  The plant shot up with remarkable speed. It resembled a huge cabbage, taller than it was wide, with many dark green leaves wrapped around a hidden core. By May, it was as high as Florence’s knees. That was when a thought occurred to her.