The VMR Theory (v1.1)

by Robert Frezza

  “What’s wrong? Er, ah, what have you been thinking about?”

  “I want to be a dancer.”

  “Sure, and I want to be solvent.”

  “I’m serious, Ken!”

  I thought I had at least as much of a chance of becoming solvent as she had of becoming a dancer, but I tried to inject some slight degree of sympathy into my voice. “What kind? Ballet? Tap? Belly?”

  “Ken! I’m serious!”

  “Sorry.” I tried to imagine Wyma Jean doing Swan Lake but it kept coming out as Pelican Wallow. “Can you hold that thought for a moment?” I cupped my hand over the receiver and motioned to Catarina. “She wants to be a dancer. Does our health insurance cover psychiatric care?”

  “You’ll want to ask her what steps she plans to take to achieve her goal, but that looks like Calvin, so could we continue this discussion another time?”

  Wyma Jean was saying, “Oh, my God! There he goes again. Where does the little slug hide it all? Ken, you got to get his mother up here quick with a shovel!”

  “Uh, Wyma Jean, we’ve got to get moving here. Why don’t you think about this dance thing for a day or so, and then we’ll talk.”

  “Ken!!!!!”

  “Gunslinger Six out.” I turned off my radio and looked at Catarina. “When we bill Admiral Crenshaw, do we put this down as ‘day care’ or ‘hazardous waste’?”

  Calvin walked up and dropped his satchel. “I’m here. Why aren’t we ready to go? We’re already four minutes behind schedule.”

  We trooped out to where the car was waiting. Tskhingamsa tossed Catarina the car keys and disappeared. Muffy, Trixie, and Belkasim piled into the front of the vehicle. Catarina, Calvin, and I scrunched down in back.

  Calvin grumbled, “You would think these people would appreciate what we’re about to do for them. We’re risking our necks to save their capitol and all of their elected representatives.”

  Catarina grinned.

  “Calvin,” I said earnestly, “think what you’re saying.”

  Trixie stopped the car in the parking lot for the pet hotel. The capitol loomed over us, its massive dome showing the influence of human statuary styles. On top, beneath a very large dollar sign, a Legislator straddled a hog-tied Truth surrounded by gargoyles representing various special interests.

  Calvin and I got out, brushed our hair, and walked across the street. When we reached the door, Calvin pushed down on the lever. “It’s locked!” he announced in a high-pitched nasal voice.

  Plans rarely survive contact with the people assigned to carry them out.

  “Any ideas?” I inquired.

  “We could blow it open. Of course, that’s likely to detonate the charges inside. Now, I personally wouldn’t do it that way, but you keep telling me that you’re the boss, and—”

  “Thanks, Calvin.” I touched my radio. “Uh, Gunslinger Six to Gunslinger Four, we got a problem. The door’s locked. Ask Muffy how she got in before.”

  “She says she used the key,” Catarina reported back.

  “Did she bring it?”

  “No,” Catarina said cheerfully.

  “We’re already seven minutes behind schedule,” Calvin pointed out helpfully.

  “Do you have any constructive ideas on how to get inside without setting off the charges?” I asked him.

  “If I had planned this operation, obviously I would have considered the possibility of the door being locked and taken appropriate precautions,” Calvin explained as he took out a small drill and bored a hole in the door to insert an optical relay and scope out the interior. “Now, I’m not running this show—as you keep telling me, you’re in charge—but it’s obvious to me that we have here a locked door with no key, so the solution is to pick the lock.”

  “Good idea,” I said. “Can you?”

  “What do I look like to you? A burglar? I am an ordnance disposal expert, and proud of it! Everybody knows there’s no locked doors in ordnance disposal.”

  Swelled heads yes, locked doors no. I saw Catarina approach and fought down my first impulse, which was to embrace her, and my second, which involved Calvin. “Can you pick the lock?”

  “But of course,” she said, producing a tool designed for that purpose.

  “She can cook, too,” I explained to Calvin as Catarina worked on the lock. She gently pushed the door open.

  Three cars full of cops pulled up. A dozen police piled out and began milling around the parking lot.

  Catarina pulled the door shut. “Maybe we should defer this for a few minutes. Up on the roof?”

  We grabbed Calvin and climbed a ladder conveniently positioned as a fire escape. From there we surveyed our predicament. Another three cop cars were pulled around in front, conveniently blocking our egress. I pointed. “That’s Wipo. I recognize the hat. What’s he doing here?” I looked at Calvin. “You didn’t tell anybody where we were going, did you?”

  “Not unless you count Lieutenant Commander Stemm—you all right, Ken? You look a little weak around the liver.”

  “No, I’m fine. I always groan when I feel this good.” I asked Catarina, “What do you think?”

  She smiled in the darkness. “I think we have a problem.”

  Feeling unusually conspicuous in silver spandex, I carefully ran my hand over the ledge where we were sitting. “Do they have pigeons here?”

  “No,” Catarina said judiciously.

  “Good. That means that I’m sitting in something else.”

  “Things could be worse,” Catarina observed as we watched the Special Secret Police sniff around the building.

  “Excuse,me? Here we are, trapped by people who intend to kill us, on top of a building that’s going to blow up in six hours, and you say things could be worse. How could things possibly be worse?”

  Just then I felt a raindrop hit the end of my nose. “That was intended to be a rhetorical question.”

  “We’ve got to get off of our bully pulpits and do something!” Calvin volunteered.

  Catarina handed me her guitar and reached into her belt purse for some change. “You call it. Heads, we stay up here until we go out in small pieces. Tails, we go down there and eat lead.”

  “Maybe we could hold off on making a decision for an hour or so,” I suggested.

  Catarina brightened. “While we’re waiting, we could tell ghost stories. I know some good ones about poltergeists who scrawl graffiti on subway trains, and other things that go bump when they write.”

  I took the coin from her and tossed it. “Tails it is,” I lied.

  She patted me on the arm. “Here’s the plan. I create a diversion. You and Calvin slip inside and disarm the charges.”

  I shook my head. “Let’s flip for the honor. That way if I win, I don’t have to finish doing my taxes.”

  She looked down her nose at me. “Why do you always wait until the last minute to file?”

  “Hey! I get an automatic thirty-day extension for being off-planet. Besides, there are several possible endings to this mission, not all of which necessitate my filing taxes this year.”

  “Would you believe I had to fill out a 4562 and an 8829 this year?” Calvin said gloomily. “And a schedule H.”

  Catarina took the coin from me. “Call it.”

  “Heads,” I said.

  “And I made a mistake figuring my capital gains, which means I’ve got to fork over an extra three hundred that I hadn’t counted on,” Calvin continued.

  Catarina caught the coin neatly and slapped it on her wrist. “Tails it is.” She held it out for me to see.

  “Two out of three?” I suggested.

  Catarina ignored me, and we both ignored Calvin. “I think I can crawl to the car without being noticed. Hopefully, the crowd will follow me. Give me the cash you’re carrying.” She began transferring it from my belt pouch to hers. “If I’m spotted, I’ll try the money-scattering trick.”

  “Lydia is going to flip when she sees this on our expense account.”

  “We
can always write it off on next year’s taxes as an unreimbursed business expense.” With that she was gone. We watched as she stealthily crept along a hedge that looked like embalmed sauerkraut until she reached the street.

  “Not much of a diversion,” Calvin sniffed.

  He was closer to the edge than I was, and I considered creating my own diversion. A moment later Catarina reached the car without being spotted. She turned around, put her fingers to her mouth and whistled loudly. Instantly, every cop wandering around the building turned to see what was up. She held up her arm and waved. “Yoo hoo, over here!” She climbed inside, and Trixie put pedal to the plastic.

  The effect on the cops was galvanic. They all piled back into their cars and sped off in hot pursuit.

  “You know, Ken, I don’t mean to sound critical, but this is almost as disorganized as if you had a bunch of politicians running it,” Calvin grumped as we climbed down. I tried thinking pleasant thoughts.

  The cops hadn’t gotten around to locking the door on us, so we were in, a fact I immediately had cause to regret. Despite the breathing mask I was wearing, which was designed to filter out particulate matter and a number of unhealthy gases, the interior smelled like dead whale, which is one of those lively but penetrating odors that stick with your clothing and the lining of your respiratory apparatus. I had no doubt that I would be reminded of the moment for hours, if not years, to come.

  The wig and Elvis mask weren’t helping me very much so I ditched them. As fertilizer flakes drifted and eddied around the dome in the glare of our lights, I sighed and said, “I can’t help feeling that there’s something very symbolic about all of this.”

  “You know, Ken,” Calvin observed, “your problem is that you talk so gosh-damed much that no one else can hardly get a word in edgewise. You know, when I was your age, I learned that the most important thing that a human being can learn is to be able to suffer in silence, which reminds me of a little story—”

  “Oh, look,” I said, “there’s one of the charges.”

  We fried the motion sensor.

  “So far, so good,” I commented.

  Calvin sat down with a pair of wire cutters and began working on the charge. Suddenly, he stopped. He waved the wire cutters for emphasis. “You know, Ken, I’ve been giving this some thought.”

  “Eh?”

  “What is the right thing to do here? I mean, don’t you see—these Macdonalds just aren’t very nice people, and we’re going to have to settle with the goomers sooner or later.”

  “Later is nice.”

  “I mean, they’re spoiling for a fight, and the longer the dang-blasted Confederation bureaucrats wait to give them one, the tougher they’re going to be.”

  “Come again?”

  “Ken, the Confederation is just bumbling along here. The problem is a failure of leadership. These guys are trying to push past us, and all we do is sit around and whine about it. It’s just goofy. We’ve stopped being tough and resilient. All we want to do is feel good for the moment and let the future take care of itself. What we need to do is hunker down and concentrate on some blocking and tackling—you see what I’m saying?”

  “Can we talk about this after we disarm the charges here?”

  “But don’t you see, Ken, when you see a snake, you kill it—you don’t hire a consultant and form a committee on snakes. If we just make things happen here, when the little people back home see what’s going on, they’ll force the bureaucrats to do the right thing!” His eyes misted over. “Don’t you see that the future of the Confederation is in our hands?”

  “Calvin, are you sure this is the right time and place to discuss this?”

  Calvin folded his arms. “Ken, there is always no better time and place to start than the present.”

  I stared up at the ceiling. Calvin was clearly one of those people who would rather be right than president and didn’t have to worry too much one way or the other. “If I’m understanding you correctly, you’re saying we should let the bomb go off and wait for the war to start. Did it possibly occur to you that this might be the tiniest bit illegal, immoral, and fattening?”

  “Ken, you got to quit hanging ‘round those ivory tower guys. Roll up your sleeves and get under the hood on this thing!”

  “But—”

  “Get down here in the real world, where the rubber meets the road!”

  “But-—”

  “Ken, let me try and explain this to you one more time, nice and simple.” He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket. “Now, see this diagram here—”

  “Uh, Calvin—”

  “Are you going to let me finish a sentence here? I have no patience with people who won’t let me get a single word out. There aren’t many hunters left, but everybody wants the meat. Now, as I was saying—”

  “Calvin, can I—”

  “Ken, can I just finish one sentence without interruption? I know what you’re trying to do, and it won’t work. It’s like trying to slip sunrise past a rooster. You remember I don’t need to be here, and if you keep badgering me like this, I’ll be out of here in a New York minute. Let me tell you a little story.”

  The story had a great deal to do with goats and chickens, but not a whole lot to do with demolition charges, and “little” was obviously an elastic term. Sincerity being an overrated virtue, I picked up both of the taser guns. “Do these things work?” I aimed one and pulled the trigger.

  “Ouch! That was my foot, you big dummy!”

  “That was the general idea.”

  Whatever his other faults, Calvin was not stupid. “You wouldn’t do that! It’s inhuman!”

  I fired another bolt of electricity that landed about an inch from his right shoe. “I’m not human—I’m a vamp. And I am having a really rotten week, so let’s get with the program. If you help me pull the charges, you’re a hero. If you don’t, you’re a lightning rod. Which would you prefer, Column A or Column B?”

  Column A, it was. Using Belkasim’s diagram, we drilled some holes, shot out the motion sensors, and removed the charges carefully to avoid creating sparks which might potentially complicate and/or shorten my existence. It took us ten or fifteen minutes, and Calvin, who apparently did have a rudimentary sense of self-preservation, was unnaturally quiet throughout.

  As we stacked the last charge neatly by the door, I said, “Good job, Calvin.”

  “Don’t imagine you can get back in my good graces just like that!” he snapped.

  I opened the door. “Uh, Calvin—”

  “There is no more forgiving man on the face of this planet, but if you think that I’m going to forget for one minute—”

  I tugged at his sleeve. “Uh, Calvin—”

  “And don’t try and change the subject!” He turned his head to see what I was looking at and shut up.

  I grinned weakly. “Hello, Wipo.”

  “We meet again, Mr. MacKay. Or may I say, Mr. Bond.” Wipo was holding something that looked like a stovepipe with a steroid problem. “Place your hands in tee air and do not move. I am holding a zapor gun pointed at your heart.”

  “My least vulnerable part.” I tilted my head. “Don’t you mean vapor gun?”

  “No.” Wipo aimed the thing at my midsection. “It is a product of our technology. If I pull tee trigger, it will excite every nerve ending in your body with hideous pain.”

  It sounded too much like being married, so reluctantly I raised my hands. “You wouldn’t happen to know a good bail bondsman, would you? Normally, I keep a card on me, but—”

  “Come wit’ me to tee car.” Wipo wrinkled his nose. Then he wrinkled it again. “Perhaps, on second t’ought, we should hose you down first.”

  Plots Inspissate Better with Cornstarch

  After Wipo’s boys gave me a quick rinse and dry, we drove four blocks to Special Secret Police Headquarters. Along the way I figured out that, unlike their underlings, Macdonald bigwigs ride in cars with big fuzzy dice. When we arrived, large persons with sharp spea
rs escorted me back down to my cell.

  There were a few changes in the old hole. There was now fresh hardware on the wall—ringbolts and such—as well as a little table with a vase of white roses on top to give the place a homey atmosphere. A little guy with a hangdog expression came by to check my inseam and shuddered when he saw my taste in clothing. He took measurements and returned with form-fitting shackles for my waist, ankles, thighs, upper arms, and wrists.

  Wipo dropped by a few hours later to assess progress and found me whistling “The Lonely Bull” to cope with what was turning out to be yet another set of Class 3 rapids in the river of life.

  “Ah, Mr. Bond, hanging around, I see.”

  I remembered reading somewhere that Cro-Magnons used to scrawl that joke on cave walls. “I hope you’re not planning on giving up your day job for the comedy circuit.”

  “You wound me, Mr. Bond.”

  “Call me MacKay. That thought has crossed my mind.”

  “Ah, such levity in tee face of horrible execution!”

  “Touching on what is rapidly becoming a very sore point, I hear you guys abolished capital punishment.” Wipo clicked his tongue a few times. “Well, Mr. MacKay, modem penology embraces tee notion t’at every criminal has a sublimated deat’ wish, so we merely view it as assisted suicide for our criminals in denial.”

  “How quaint. Modem liberalism in action.”

  “In your case, to be assured of your utter destruction, we have decided to lock you into a tiny spacecraft and fire you into tee sun.”

  I stared up at the ceiling, which needed repainting. “Mind telling me how you came up with this charming idea?”

  “Actually, one of your commentators described it as, ‘A recurring plot device affected by bored and perpetually clueless writers,’ but we have not been able to uncover tee meaning of t’is statement.”

  “I don’t mean to quibble, but isn’t this a rather expensive way to get rid of me?”

  Wipo smirked. “One of our movie studios has offered to pick up tee tab. We will call tee picture, ‘Twilight of tee Vampire,’ and as technical consultant, I will receive seven percent of tee Terran and Martian syndication rights. Moreover, as it is necessary for mailship RVN 23 to have an unfortunate accident to prevent you from blabbing our nefarious plot all over tee galaxy, combining tee two operations by stuffing you into tee mailship and shooting you into tee fiery heart of a star would appear to be an excellent way to reduce costs.”