I thought I’d been shot. Then my mind blanked because there was no room for anything else in that space but pain. The breath froze in my throat. I could not see. No agony was worse than this, nothing. The most terrible part was I remained conscious throughout—no blackout, no physical escape. I must have looked like a drunken man, sitting on the floor dazed and gone. It was like an underground nuclear test. You know—when the bomb goes off the only visible sign is the earth collapsing inward toward the fifty megaton fire in its belly half a mile below.
I don’t know how long it lasted—five seconds, a minute. I don’t know how I survived. When it stopped I was stupefied. Is that the word? Stupefied, paralyzed, nothing in my brain would ever work right again. Nothing ever could after that.
Sitting on the floor outside the computer room I stared unseeing at a large black-and-white photograph of Ernest Hemingway on the opposite wall. Next to him was one of Fitzgerald, then Faulkner, Emerson, and Thoreau. I knew the faces but it took an eternity to dig their names out of the rubble of my mind. To make sure it was Hemingway, I said his name. It sounded correct although it came out of my mouth slowly, as if the word were made of chewy caramel.
I felt the cold of the floor under my palms, the hardness of the wall against my back. Nothing in me was safe or to be trusted anymore. One of the first realizations I made when my mind started focusing again was the brain tumor had just taken over my being. Despite what Barry said about me having a few days’ grace period before it killed me, what just happened proved he was wrong—I might not have any days left.
I tried breathing normally but it was impossible. My lungs took only short fast panting breaths like those of a small animal that’s been cornered. I tried willing myself to breathe slow and deep but it didn’t work. My eyes moved down the opposite wall, across the floor and onto my hand. It still held the gun, but for the longest time I literally couldn’t recognize what that object was.
From inside the computer room came children’s laughter.
That more than anything sharpened my thoughts. Why I was there came back to me: Floon—get him, Maeve’s daughter– save her. Get up.
“Get up, mullerfucker.” I smiled at my mistake. One of my favorite words in the English language I couldn’t even pronounce now. So I tried again, carefully. “Mother-fucker.” Good, and now it was time to stand up. I tried. I tried pushing myself up off the floor but I was heavy, so incredibly heavy. Gravity had doubled, tripled. How was I ever going to rise?
For one grisly instant my head went on fire again—the pain blasting across it like a miles-long dance of heat lightning on an August night sky. But that was all—that flash, my breath freezing again, but then it was gone. It was gone.
And then I spoke again but it was not in my own voice. “Get the fuck up, motherfucker.” I said, someone said, the word perfectly enunciated this time.
“I can’t. I have no strength.” I said without self-pity, with perfect calm.
“No you can’t, but I can. So do it.” Gee-Gee’s voice came out of me.
I said, “Where are you?” and waited. He said, “Everywhere you need me. Just get up.” I decided it was a good idea to leave the gun on the floor while trying to stand. I put it down gently, not wanting to make noise. It was black against the yellow linoleum. I don’t like yellow things.
“Forget the yellow! Pay attention. You have to pay attention to what you’re doing.”
“Okay.” I licked my lips and pulled some energy together to stand. It was slow going at first. As I was propping myself up, I suddenly felt a massive jolt of both strength and energy in my arms. But only my arms, no place else. They felt like they belonged to someone strong and agile. To someone maybe seventeen years old...
“It isn’t me doing this, is it, Gee-Gee?”
“Yeah, it’s you. Don’t start getting philosophical on me. Just get a fucking grip and do it.” He sounded exasperated, like my helplessness was a pain in his neck.
Standing again, I looked down and saw my pistol on the floor. It looked like it was five miles away at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. I needed it for what I was about to do but didn’t know if I’d be able to get down there again without doing a nosedive.
“I don’t think I can do this.”
“Get the goddamned gun.”
Like an old man, like the old man I’d been in Vienna, I carefully bent my knees and went down in a slo-mo squat for the gun. It worked and I felt like I’d really accomplished something. Because despite the strong arms, the rest of my body felt useless.
“Now what do I do?” I asked the emptiness around me. No answer came. Just when I needed Gee-Gee most he disappeared.
I stood there with ashes and smoke coming out my ears from the Mount Vesuvius that had just erupted in my brain. There was no guarantee I wouldn’t keel over again any instant. Yet I was supposed to step into a room and disarm a lunatic billionaire murderer with two children nearby?
Three children. When I was able to rummage up the strength to get me to that door again. I looked in and saw three little backs standing around one big one. Two little girls, a boy, and Floon were all staring at a computer monitor. He was seated while they stood but none of them was higher than his shoulders. The kids were close enough to be touching—they didn’t want to miss any of the fun flying across the screen. It showed so much information so fast that it was impossible for my eyes to absorb any of what was there. Since all of their backs were to me I continued watching.
Now and then Floon put his hands on the keyboard and proceeded to type faster than anyone I have ever seen. That’s what set the kids off laughing so much. Every time he put his fingers down and attacked, they squealed their delight and kept trying to push in even closer to the monitor. I’ve heard the fastest typist can do a hundred and sixty words a minute. Forget it – Floon was eons beyond that. From the look of things, he was going faster than the damned machine could take. I swear to God there appeared to be a kind of infinitesimal lag between what he put in and what showed up on the screen. Typing, he looked like a cartoon character on fast forward.
Eventually he sat back in his chair and waited while the computer caught up and did what he had asked. Seconds later there would appear a burst of words and graphics or a flying myriad of mathematical something. He’d watch it a while and then assault that old keyboard again. Every time the kids cracked up at his frenzy. The interesting thing was, from all appearances, Floon didn’t seem to mind them being there. Or else he wasn’t even aware they were there at all.
But I was—even more so when, turning to Nell Powell, the boy gave her a hard push into the other girl. Nell shoved him back just as hard. Off balance he staggered back from the girls, trying to catch his balance. He couldn’t and fell on his ass. At which point I saw his face and he was me, age nine or ten or thereabouts. Ten-year-old Frannie McCabe was in that room with Floon and the girls. Forty-seven-year-old Frannie McCabe stood outside alone and watched.
When I asked Gee-Gee where are you he had said, “Wherever you need me.” So this was what he meant? That me was no longer only me, and then Gee-Gee, but now other McCabes from all my eras. Including little boy Fran in there with Caz de Floon. A living greatest hits album played all at the same time.
Still on his butt the kid looked at the door. His small face was a mixture of sneaky rat and choirboy. Without the slightest sign of surprise on his face he smirked like we were in on an in-joke together and flipped me a big thumbs-up.
I turned from the door. Back to the wall again, I closed my eyes tight. Okay, go with it. This is how it’s going to be till you die: Chaos everywhere, no answers to your questions, a head ticking like a time bomb, and a different McCabe every time you turn around. So go with it, use it; embrace it if you can. Because you ain’t got time to do anything else, bud.
Once more at the window, I watched as the boy stood up and looked my way again. He made a face that clearly asked, what do you want me to do? Seeing this, Nell turned around to see what
he was mugging at. I pulled back quickly, not wanting her to know I was there.
What were my options? What could a little boy do with Floon that I couldn’t, although at the moment the kid probably had more strength and clearheadedness than I did. The blowout in my head had left me drained and very shaky, too aware that I could collapse at any time.
As a boy I had the patience of a housefly. I should have remembered that when I was watching little Gee-Gee in the computer room. After we stared at each other some more he gestured again, all impatient exaggeration. His whole jiggling twitching body asked, what should I do?
As best I could I used hands and charades to outline a computer monitor. He got what I was saying and nodded. Next I showed him what to do. He lit up like a thousand-watt lightbulb. Boy, did he love these instructions.
Without a second’s hesitation he stepped over to where Floon was typing away. With both hands the boy shoved the monitor off its base, and that big fucker flew out into space and crashed on the floor. Time passed. All four of them froze where they were. But then that bastard Floon didn’t do what I expected. I thought he would go nuts, berserk, rip himself in half Rumpelstiltskin-style at the loss of his data or the time he’d already put in on the computer doing whatever the hell he was doing. None of the above. With a coolness that was disconcerting he rose from his seat, moved over to the next computer, and started wailing away on that one, not missing a beat.
My one idea flushed, I shoved the door open, walked over to Floon, and smashed him good on the back of the head with my pistol. That did the trick. Rocking forward, his face hit the screen and cracked it. He had a lot of white hair. I grabbed a handful and banged his head down on the keyboard.
“Kids, get out. Nell, your mom is waiting outside.”
The girls took off like water bugs but not McCabe Junior. “That was super cool!”
“Go outside.”
“No way! I’m stayin’. You think I’d miss this? Hit him again.”
“Go or I’ll tell your mother you stole fifteen dollars from her purse so you could go to the car show in White Plains.”
His jaw dropped. “How’d you know that?”
Trying not to smile I managed, “Because I’m psychic. Go outside and wait for me.”
“Jeez, what a hot turd.” On that note he started to leave. “But I’ll be waiting for you. Just remember that.”
As soon as the door closed, I banged down Floon’s floppy head once more only because I felt like it. Thoroughly unprofessional but I was no longer a professional. I searched for his gun. It was in one of his pockets. I took it out and put it in mine.
“McCabe—” he mumbled.
“Shut up, Caz, or else I’ll dribble your head some more. Don’t think I’m not tempted.”
“McCabe, listen—” He sounded half-in-the-bag drunk.
A blast of pain blew across my brain. Not now! Not now, please not. Raising my shoulders and pulling my head down into my neck, I waited for the worst but none came.
“McCabe, at least look at the screen.”
What was displayed there looked like a densely detailed train schedule.
“So what?”
“Tan—” He took a deep breath and started coughing halfway through it. Blood dripped from his mouth onto the table. “Tancresis. It hasn’t been invented yet! Or if it has, there is no public mention of it. Is that amazing? There’s not even the word for it in the dictionary. Nobody knows about it yet.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Caz. And I don’t much care.”
“Don’t care? Tancretic spredge? Nuclear transmutation? Cold fusion, you idiot! How to do it hasn’t been discovered yet!”
I banged his head down onto the keyboard again. This was getting to be fun. My anger at him brought a good adrenaline load of energy back into my veins and heart. “Don’t fuck with me, Floon—your dick’s not big enough.” And to the tune of the Sam Cooke song “Wonderful World” I sang:
“Don’t know much about cold fus-ion,
Don’t know much about Caz de Floon.
But I do know that I’ll kick your ass
And you do know it’ll happen fast—
“I don’t care what you’re looking for or what you’ve found, Floon. Right now you and I are going to leave here. If you do anything along the way that pisses me off I will kill you without the slightest hesitation. I give you my word.”
“You can’t kill me—you’re a policeman.”
“Past tense, Caz. Past tense. It’s a brave new world. Get up.”
“Please, McCabe, listen to me for two minutes. What I tell you will change your life.”
I snorted. “What little there is left of it. I don’t need my life changed any more than it already is. What do you want? You’ve got one minute to say it. So talk.”
“All right.” He touched his forehead and winced. He looked at his fingers and didn’t appear to know what to do with the big smear of blood there. That made me feel just fine.
I looked at my bare wrist and put an imaginary watch against my ear to check to see if it was functioning. “My watch tells me you’ve got about thirty seconds left on your minute, Caz.”
“Stop! You should be grateful to me for what you are about to see. If nothing else I will show you how to become very rich right now. In five minutes. Just give me five minutes—”
“Two. I already have enough money.”
“Two. All right. I’ll show you.” Once again he slid over– to computer number three. At the rate we were going there would be no more machines left in the library by the time we left. His fingers started machine-gunning away and whatever info he was calling up flew onto the screen.
“I know that site! Yahoo! Finance.”
“Correct. Now watch,” he said while typing something in. A moment later a full screen of market research appeared on a company called SeeReal. The stock ticker abbreviation for it was SEER. Individual shares in the company were selling for four dollars and fifteen-sixteenths. SeeReal had been in business three years but hadn’t made one penny’s profit yet.
“SEER. Very symbolic name, Caz. Selling for four dollars a share? Wow, right up there with Intel, huh? Time to go.”
His voice went up up up. “No, no, you must listen! SeeReal has discovered a substance called naterskine. That line of research will lead them to creating something called tancretic spredge. Once that happens this company will become ten times more important and powerful than General Electric. Believe me, McCabe. That is why I was so shocked to realize it hasn’t happened yet. None of this information is in either the latest dictionary or encyclopedia. It’s as if someone named Bill Gates asked if you would be interested in investing in a new company he was founding called Microsoft. And if you give me a little bit more time to work here I will find a great many more of these things for you. Invest in them now and within five years you will be as rich as Croesus.”
“Floon, you’re shit on the bottom of my shoe. The sooner I scrape you off, the better. For some unimaginable reason you were given the great privilege of being allowed to travel back in time thirty years. Time travel, for Christ’s sake. An absolute all-out four-star miracle. But what’s the first thing you do? Get online so you can surf the Web for ways to make money. You disgust me.”
“That wasn’t what I was doing.”
“I don’t care what you were doing. Get up.”
“Don’t be an ass, McCabe. Neither of us knows why we were sent back here. Nor do we know if we’ll ever be returned to our proper time. So why not make the most of this while we’re here?”
He believed I was here for the same reasons he was. “You think I was sent back here from jour time?”
He blinked exaggeratedly and slowly several times. When he spoke again his voice was pure sarcasm. “Well, hello, are you not standing here with me now when the last time we saw each other was in Vienna?”
“Floon, you’re sixty years old. Do I look sixty years old?”
“That d
oesn’t matter—”
“Yes, it matters a great deal. Your being sent back here was a mistake. My being sent back here was a correction. This is my time; it ain’t no mistake for me.”
Clearly unimpressed, he crossed his arms. “How do you know?”
I was about to answer but then thought why bother? “Because the aliens told me. Let’s go.”
“What aliens?” Now he looked like he believed me.
“You haven’t met them yet? The Martians from Rat’s Potato? Nice fellows. They live behind the Crab Nebula. When they come to Earth they disguise themselves either as paramedics or well-dressed black men wearing expensive watches. Move.”
“Where are we going?”
Where were we going? Until that moment I hadn’t really thought about it, what with all the swirl going on. But Floon had a point. I couldn’t take him to jail because that would involve too much time explaining to the people down at the station house and I had no time to explain.
“Don’t you want to know what I was doing on the computer, McCabe?”
“No and be quiet.” Where the hell was I going to take him?
The door flew open and little me appeared. “The cops are here.”
“Where? Didn’t I tell you to go outside?”
“I did, Mr. Stupid. But now the cops are out there. That’s all I came in to tell you. I thought you’d want to know. They brought two cars and now they’re talking to that librarian across the street.”
Thinking out loud I said, “Maeve must have called them.”
With a taunt on his face and in his voice Floon asked, “Are you going to have me arrested, McCabe?”
“I’d rather have you stuffed. Now shut up. I have to figure this out.”
The two regarded me as if I knew what I was doing. Floon was impassive, the boy very happy and excited. I hadn’t ordered him out again which meant that for the time being he could stick around for whatever was coming next.
The Wooden Sea Page 22
