Shuteye for the Timebroker

by Paul Di Filippo

  Locked in the dark, stifling, stinking bunkhouse with his comrades, Artist Number One Hundred and Fifteen cried for two hours for the death of his only friend. But then he wiped his eyes and resolved to take revenge.

  From the near-obliterated depths of his memory came the details of certain arcane rituals of his people. Fifteen set out to perform them. They involved nothing more than some bodily fluids, a handful of dirt, a lizard bone saved from supper, a pencil stub wrapped in cobwebs, and a scrap of paper.

  In the morning the artists cowered, awaiting the arrival of the eel-master and his whip. But he never showed. By noon, with their bladders bursting and stomachs growling, they dared to break cautiously out of the bunkhouse.

  They found the overseer and the other bosses flattened to a lifeless two-dimensionality, as if they had been run over by a large macadam-smoothing machine. Incredulous at their good fortune, the artists dispersed, each making for home.

  Back in his village, Artist Number One Hundred and Fifteen reunited with his family and soon was reintegrated into the ancient ways. He never spoke of his period of slavery, and showed little interest in matters outside his village.

  Years later, a charity package of drugs with expired dates arrived from the United States. The contents were protected with recent newspapers. Smoothing one out, the young man who was no longer Artist Number One Hundred and Fifteen saw pictures that made him smile.

  Even now, years later, the American authorities seemed to be having trouble rounding up all the slavering, gibbering, whirling Tasmanian devils that had slaughtered all those studio executives.

  16.

  THE SPECTER OF MONSTER APPEAL

  Putting a point on his claws with the wall-mounted sharpener, Furry Hackerman began pasting up the latest issue of Famous Monsters of Filmland. He employed his claws to spike various articles in anticipation of immediate need. At one point in his compositional routine, when all his claws held multiple articles, and other gluey snippets had stuck accidentally to his hairy form, Hackerman the editor looked as if he had fought a battle with the Sunday edition of the Monsterville Times and lost.

  Hackerman’s furry, fanged, fiery-eyed face wore a look of intense concentration. He was trying to decide which piece would be the lead in this issue.

  Should he go with Greedy Corporate Executives Suck Blood of Stockholders or Ancient Male Senators Force Women to Give Birth to Unwanted Babies?

  The first item focused on the new Roger Goreman film, Corporations Ate My Future! A real thriller-diller, starring those hairless apes that had suddenly become Hollywood’s latest monsters du jour. Of course, no hairless apes existed any longer in Hackerman’s world. The players in these films were all shaved werewolves (Hackerman’s own species), or giant salamanders with many prosthetics and much makeup, or trolls in rubber suits. But the very memory of these so- called humans and their incredibly bizarre society as it had once existed in genetic isolation on the island of Madagascar was still potent enough to generate boffo box office.

  The second item related to John Carpenter-Ants Legislature of Hell! Another hairless-ape spooktacular. There were some really effective scenes here of humans drooling as they affixed their signatures in blood to the deadly legislation. Those shots would play well with Hackerman’s juvenile audience of young ghouls and goblins.

  In the end, Hackerman went with Legislature of Hell!

  Hours passed as the editor continued to paste up the issue. Around eleven, his secretary entered, bearing a steaming cup of grue. Trixie Frankenstein’s tall column of lightning-streaked hair barely cleared the door frame.

  “Furry, it’s time for your break. You’ll work yourself senseless if you go on like this.”

  “Hey, baby, life’s short. I’ll sleep when I’m undead!”

  17.

  THE CYCLOPEAN POTENTATE

  Hazel Dimpflmaier, sitting alone in the sunny plaza outside the office building where she worked, bit into the big, juicy Macoun apple she had packed for her lunch.

  Much to her surprise, her first chomp revealed not the undifferentiated pulp of a real apple, but an intricate structure of equipment-filled rooms. And the rooms were occupied by scores of worms!

  Hazel gagged and spit out most of the unchewed remnants of her mouthful of faux fruit. But she did not immediately hurl the mock-apple away from herself, somehow hypnotized by the activity within.

  The tiny worms were scurrying about, pulling various levers with their mouths and striking various buttons on their equipment with the accurate tips of their bodies. Hazel could hear their little piping voices shouting encouragement and warnings and damage reports.

  Eventually, one worm emerged from the confusion and crawled up to the top of the apple, to perch on the fruit’s outer skin—where it boldly confronted Hazel.

  This worm wore a distinctive hat, which, Hazel intuited, marked it as the leader. It exhibited an exceedingly ugly face, mostly human save for the fact that one big cyclopean eye dominated its visage. A hairy soul patch decorated the worm’s chin.

  The worm opened its mouth and shouted, resulting in a sound about the magnitude of a cricket chirping. Amazingly, it spoke English.

  “Cruel human! You have destroyed our ship! Now we will never be able to return to our home in the Coalsack Nebula.”

  Hazel glanced about to make sure none of her coworkers were present to see her addressing a piece of fruit, and then she answered, “How—how was I to know? Your ship looked just like an apple!”

  The cyclopean worm looked disconcerted. “An apple? Our orbital probes to your world revealed no such edible counterpart to our ship. I will be shortening those responsible for this gaffe by at least two segments!”

  Hazel had begun to feel somewhat more at ease with these tiny harmless visitors from space, and now contemplated how best to ease their plight. “Don’t worry about anything,” she finally said. “Mankind will be happy to offer you a new home here.”

  The worm captain grinned in a horrifying fashion. “That is only just. We are quite pleased that you will not be putting up any resistance. I have just received reports from two of my crew whom you swallowed, and they say that your intestinal tract is some of the most agreeable real estate they’ve ever seen!”

  18.

  BUNNY DUCK

  The office of the prime minister of North America was guarded by a hideous two-headed monster, the PM’s combination spokesthing and bodyguard.

  Created by an international consortium of biofabbers, the guardian of the PM’s privacy and safety combined salient parts of a dozen genomes.

  From the basepairs of a famous TV talk show host, the scientists had isolated the genes for persistence and obliviousness to the emotions of others.

  From the cells of a ferret they had taken slinkiness and slipperiness factors.

  From a duck they had stolen a feathery hide that would repel anything.

  From a pit bull they had lifted jaws that would clamp on to anything with enormous pressure and never relent.

  From a hare they had taken a beguilingly innocent visage to conceal the creatures harsher qualities and disarm any supplicants or intruders.

  And so on and so on.

  The dual heads were a feature designed mainly to allow the spokesthing to utter contradictory statements simultaneously.

  For many years the spokesthing functioned admirably in its role, disseminating official lies, spinning the truth, and rending to bloody bits anyone who dared to approach the PM unbidden.

  But one day, as could have been predicted by any mythographer, a hero showed up to conquer the monster.

  This hero looked like a typical female TV journalist, fashionably attired and coiffed. She did not carry a sword or laser pistol or bomb, just the tools of her trade. Meeting the two-headed spokesthing for her appointed interview, the journalist positioned her microphone midway between the two mouths of the beast and asked her poisoned question.

  “Which one of you has better access to the prime min
ister?”

  The two mouths immediately blurted out contradictory responses. Two conjoined heads swiveled on rubbery necks to glare at each other, claws extruded from separately controlled paws, and within minutes the spokesthing lay dying from a thousand self-inflicted wounds.

  The journalist skipped elegantly aside to preserve her Manolo Blahniks from the runnel of blood, faced her cameraman, and said, “Later on Entertainment Tonight, we’ll look at my appointment as the prime minister’s new representative, under the rule of the Golden Bough.”

  19.

  THE HYDRA OF MADISON AVENUE

  Harry Yankdollar was sitting in his luxurious fifty-fifth-floor office at Yankdollar Bleach Hobblewight and Dripp when the small flying saucer zoomed in through his open window. The pale blue, glitter-flecked, bubble-canopied saucer was approximately as big as an amusement park ride for toddlers and contained exactly one purple-hued, wild-eyed, grinning alien.

  His mouth widening like that of a housewife presented with the news of the inferiority of her favorite detergent, Harry jerked backward in his Aeron chair as the saucer came to rest on the thick carpeting of his office. The bubble canopy retracted and the stubby alien stepped out.

  “Yankdollar, you can call me Quisp. My race has been monitoring the broadcast advertisements produced by your firm, and we’re here to hire you for a big campaign.”

  Harry’s pulse slowed and he regained his composure. The alien’s words had restored him to familiar ground. So what if the client sported a single propeller-tipped shaft from the top of its head? A campaign was a campaign, and the client was always right.

  “What’s the product?” inquired Harry. “And more importantly, what’s the budget?”

  “The product is a service, so to speak. It’s the enslavement of your entire species by my kind. We need you to make this program palatable to your fellows, to diminish their resistance. And the budget is commensurate, as you’ll discern from your personal fee. You’ll receive ten thousand kilotons of prime dark matter and a small habitable moon to which you may retire to escape the hatred of the race you will betray. Do we have a deal?”

  Harry considered for only a few moments. “This dark matter—is it the regular medium of exchange across the galaxy?”

  “Indeed. One ounce is sufficient to purchase the services of thirty skilled Rigellian lemur-whores for a week.”

  “And this habitable moon—does it have any nasty surprises on it?”

  “By no means. It was formerly the vacation home of the Exarch of the Pleiades, and you know his discriminating tastes!”

  “Right, sure. Hmmm … OK, I’m your man for the job.”

  “Excellent!”

  Quisp removed a sidearm from a holster and aimed it at Harry.

  “Hey! Wait one commercial minute! What’s going on?”

  “Merely a formality to insure your continuing compliance and inability to change your mind. This gun is a Mark Three Soul Stealer. The capture and removal of your soul will insure your obedience.”

  Harry shrugged. “Fire away. The guy from the tobacco industry used a Mark Four, and I didn’t feel anything at all.”

  20.

  PIGSKIN GLORY

  Starrzell “Screamer” Scripsack emerged from his final NFL game a quadriplegic. And his team lost as well.

  Starrzell’s legendary on-the-field endurance and spirit failed him in his new role of helpless cripple. The contrast between his old high life of worship by fans and women, recreational drugs, and physical glory, and his new low life of abandonment by sycophants and tarts, pain-killing drugs, and physical decrepitude, was just too much for him to buck himself up. He dispiritedly forced himself through rehab, and then, the first time he was alone for ten minutes in his new handicap-accessible apartment, he rammed his puff-tube-activated electric wheelchair into the side of a therapeutic Jacuzzi, pitched forward, and drowned.

  Starrzell awoke in the afterlife restored to his prime condition, and he knew he was in Heaven. He stood, suited up, in the middle of a playing field. The stands were filled with roaring fans, every last one of whom was himself a former football great. The cheerleaders were all stark naked.

  But where were his teammates? So far, Starrzell was all alone on the turf, save for a football resting on its perch. Maybe competitors and comrades were just waiting for him to kick off before materializing? Starrzell couldn’t see anything else to do. So he loped forward, muscles flexing to send the football arcing upward.

  Just as he drew his foot backward, the football changed to the living head of his mother. His mother who had died a charity case in the worst hospital in Chicago while her son was partying at the Playboy Mansion West.

  Unable to stop his programmed motion, Starrzell kicked the screaming head of his mother perfectly through the goalposts.

  Suddenly he was back in the position where he had first appeared, and another football awaited him midfield. Dumb as he was, Starrzell knew what would happen once he came within striking distance of the football, and he tried to leave the field. But the naked cheerleaders morphed into skeletal warriors that barred his exit.

  Resignedly, Starrzell returned to the field, where he jogged listlessly at the pigskin—which changed at the final moment into the head of his high school coach, whom Starrzell had cuckolded on numerous occasions.

  After that, there came an endless succession of all the people Starrzell had injured during his lifetime. One by one, the ranting, cursing, begging heads went sailing through the goalposts, racking up points on the stadium scoreboard. And when what seemed like an eon had passed, and all of Starrzell’s accusatory victims had been booted once, the cycle returned to the start, with his mother once more.

  Several infernal kalpas passed before a halftime show intervened.

  And even then, the marching band was hideously out of tune and the Gatorade burned like brimstone.

  21.

  TAR PIT KITTY

  The perfection of the Liminality Stargate allowed mankind to colonize the galaxy.

  But this invention also insured that the ultimate pattern of segregated communities would result.

  Escape from detested unbelievers of any stripe required nothing more than a single step through any gate to a congregation of welcoming, like-minded fellows.

  Homogeneous planets full of identical-thinking dittoheads became the rule.

  There were planets full of fundamentalist Christians and planets full of Koran-quoting Muslims; planets of Republicans and planets of Democrats; planets of Trekkies and planets of romance-novel readers.

  Some of the affinity groups pushed the limits of trifling distinctions. One star system was devoted solely to Neil Diamond fans.

  But two of the worlds hosted radically antipathetic groups that could never, under any circumstances, coexist.

  Cat lovers and cat haters.

  The inhabitants of Ailurophobe IV maintained strict quarantine over all their Stargates. Newcomers were searched with sensitive detectors and, should so much as a single cat hair or flake of catnip be detected, they would be summarily returned whence they came. The “border” guards of Ailurophile VII subjected visitors to a comparable test: exiting from the Stargates, all new arrivals were forced to cuddle without flinching the most dander-producing, long-haired, insolent felines available.

  Naturally enough, given human nature, the two camps were not content merely to exist separately from their hated enemies. No, each side wanted to convert or eliminate the heathens.

  Over the decades, many tactics had been tried without success by both sides. The stalemate seemed destined to persist forever. But then the scientists of Ailurophile VII had an inspiration. They created transgenic beings who, to all outward appearances, were incredibly sexy humans, but whose genomes in reality were made up of 75 percent feline genes.

  Having raised up hundreds of thousands of these dumb but irresistible double agents with accelerated growth techniques, the Ailurophilians launched them en masse through the gates at t
heir enemy.

  The cat-people represented themselves as traders, tourists, immigrants, visiting scholars, and converts to the anti-cat cause. Within weeks, they had infiltrated every stratum of Ailurophobian society, with the mission of interbreeding with the Ailurophobes and, over the long run, rendering them extinct.

  The Ailurophilians sat back and waited eagerly for reports of victory, as signaled by a wave of cat-baby births.

  After nine months of silence, one of the cat-people returned. Looking marginally chagrined as only a cat can, the agent reported the total failure of the invasion.

  “But what went wrong?” demanded the Ailurophilian leaders. “Didn’t you mate with the natives?”

  “We did,” said the returned agent, licking one hand and using it to smooth back the hair behind his ear. “But as soon as the kittens were born, we cat-fathers killed all the males, and even then the cat-mothers didn’t have enough teats to nurse those that remained.”

  22.

  CLOWNS AND CRUSADERS

  The living tanks in the endless war fought on the planet of Shiloh were fashioned from giant tortoises and helmed by cortico-chimps. Inside the tiny cabins of the carbon-fiber shells, the cortico-chimps continually manipulated petcocks and zaptrodes that directed the enormous flesh-and-blood crawlers by either chemical or electrical stimulation and restraint. Visual feedback came through fiber optics that connected the tortoises eyes to a small monitor in the cabin. When a tank came within sight of the enemy, its chimp would check that the pilot light in the throat of his tortoise was lit before triggering an enormous belch of methane that would flare out and crisp any unprotected soldiers or structures or vehicles.

  The enemy of the tortoises and chimps—Crusaders, the chimps called themselves—were the Clowns. The Clowns were extraterrestrials whose natural facial epidermal patterning made them resemble the earthly entertainers of yore. Moreover, the Clowns possessed big floppy feet and three puffy “buttons” down their torsos, these buttons actually being sensory organs.