The Paul Di Filippo Megapack

by Pau Di Filippo

  “I’ll think on it.”

  Pretty soon they had crossed the state line. A road sign announced:

  JETER’S LAKE STATE RECREATION AREA

  CAMPING, BOATING, SKIING

  “Jeter’s Lake,” said Tracey wistfully. “I haven’t been there since I was a kid.”

  “Last time I was there, I was too pregnant to fit into a swimsuit. Leastwise, any I’d wanna be seen in.”

  “Well, hell, let’s stop. I could enjoy some peace and quiet.”

  Tracey took the appropriate exit. The secondary road began to curve under arcades of firs. Soft sunlight dappled the van’s interior, and a balsalmy scent began to compete with the odor of a quarter ton of cotton-wrapped, pee-soaked baby shit.

  A rustic wooden sign heralded the park’s drive. The entrance fee was three dollars, which they paid to a Smokey-the-Bear-hatted Ranger who regarded their van with frank curiosity.

  “On our lunch break,” offered Tracey.

  “It’s mighty hard work,” contributed Jay Dee.

  “A regular calling, though,” Catalina affirmed.

  Down a narrow paved road to a half-empty lot surrounded by forest. Once parked, they eagerly climbed out. Catalina carried Mister Boots.

  “Lord, I got to clean out my lungs! Let’s head down to the water.…”

  The forest gradually fell away to reveal an extensive body of sparkling water surrounded by tall hills, two of which were partially denuded, their ski trails now grassy, the lifts immobile. A small manmade beach, occupied by a few sunbathers, stretched to left and right; several red-stained log structures held changing rooms, showers, rest rooms, and a small snack bar cum grocery. Beyond the swimming area was a dock occupied by several rowboats, canoes and outboards.

  Spying the boats, Tracey said, “Oh, Jay Dee, let’s see if we can rent one. It’d be so nice to be out on the water.”

  Beneath the sign that said “Rates: $5/hr, $10 deposit” sat an old codger who looked carved out of an inferior grade of wood. His chair was tipped back, his hat was down over his eyes, and a dead pipe was held firmly between his teeth, indicating, if not life, then at least recent rigor mortis.

  “Hey, fella, can we rent a boat?”

  The ancient relic slowly raised a hand to lift his cap. He squinted suspiciously at the trio with one eye before declaring, “All taken.”

  “All taken? What’re those?”

  “Ree-zerved.” He dropped his cap.

  “Reserved, huh? No problem.”

  Jay Dee took out the Master Remote. “Window.” A square plane appeared in midair. In it was portrayed a posh marina, numerous yachts abob at their berths. “Girls?”

  “That one’s cute.”

  A sudden wave swept over the shore. Half the boats tethered at the dock capsized and sank. At the end of the pier rode a proud forty-foot yacht, chrome gleaming, wood polished, radar turret aimed at the horizon. It bore the name THE BISHOP’S JAEGERS.

  Startled by the commotion, the codger glanced out from beneath his cap. He jerked upright, his chair went out from under him and he toppled backwards.

  Luckily, no one was aboard their new vessel; Mister Boots’s prowling through every hatch would surely have aroused them. Quickly mastering the controls, Tracey swung the vessel about, demolishing the dock with elan.

  They stopped in the middle of the lake and dropped anchor.

  “Now we can relax,” said Jay Dee.

  Catalina said, “I want to go swimming, don’t you? But we don’t have suits.”

  “So? Go bare-ass. Nobody can see you from the shore, less it’s some birdwatcher with his binoculars.”

  Catalina pouted prettily.

  “Cat, are you trying to pretend you got any modesty left, after what you ee-nitiated last night?”

  “No, it don’t have nothing to do with modesty. It’s just fashion. I like to dress nice, whatever the occasion.”

  “Oh, all right. But it’s a waste of energy if you ask me.” A concerned look blossomed on Jay Dee’s features. “Box, your batteries ain’t running low, are they?”

  “I have extrinsic sources of power several magnitudes greater than your era’s annual energy budget.”

  “Oh, good. Well, let’s see some nice bathing suits for the ladies then.”

  Soon Tracey and Catalina were clad in the outfits they had selected, complete down to sunglasses, floppy hats and Grecian sandals laced up their charming legs. Jay Dee had been convinced to don a pair of flower-print baggy shorts.

  “I feel like a goddamn idiot.”

  “No, you look sharp, Jay Dee.”

  “Mighty attractive.”

  Jay Dee smiled. “Well, okay, if you all say so. But I’ll look even better underwater, where no one can see these pants. Last one in’s a talking moose!”

  Jay Dee hurled himself over the side. Tracey and Catalina soon followed.

  The trio splashed and stroked until they had had enough exercise and fun. They climbed an aluminum ladder back into the yacht. Below deck, in a luxurious cabin, they stripped off their clammy suits and began to towel themselves off.

  “That’s a horny ol’ devil you got there on your arm, Jay Dee,” observed Catalina.

  “That ain’t his arm you’re holding, honey,” reminded Tracey.

  “So it aint.”

  An hour or two later, Jay Dee walked out on the deck, alone and clothed. Mister Boots appeared from somewhere and began rubbing against Jay Dee’s ankles. Jay Dee hefted the Master Remote with an expression of thoughtfulness on his face. Then he spoke to it.

  “Box, what am I gonna do with that Catalina? She needs a steady man something wicked.”

  “You are a man.”

  “Not the kind of heavy-duty boyfriend she needs! And besides, I got Tracey.”

  “What about the man in the cube?”

  “Gene? Oh, he’s handsome enough, but he’s too ornery and spiteful and conceited to wish on the worst bitch, let alone a nice girl like Cat. She did like his looks though.… Nah, forget it! I— Boots! What the hell do you want?”

  Mister Boots had stretched up with his forelegs and was using Jay Dee as a scratching post. Jay Dee unhooked his claws and picked him up. “Look, go hang out with Catalina, she loves you—”

  Jay Dee stopped dead. A smile big as a slice of watermelon grew on his face.

  “Get me the cube with Gene in it,” he ordered.

  The cube appeared, hanging six feet off the ground.

  “Dump him out.”

  Gene Smith fell out of the cube’s missing bottom into a heap on the deck. He appeared quite dazed.

  “I could see inside myself…,” he said. “Wherever I was, I could see inside myself. And around the whole world too.”

  Gene spotted Jay Dee. “You. You did this to me.” He began to climb to his feet.

  “Smudge the cat.”

  Mister Boots went formless.

  “Peel off Gene and layer him on Mister Boots.”

  “Compensating for the extensive mass-difference between origin and target will require my tapping a new source of power.”

  “Do it.”

  There was something casting a shadow between Jay Dee and the sun. Or so it seemed. He shaded his eyes and looked up.

  The sun had a black notch cut into its circumference. Even as Jay Dee watched, the spot disappeared, reconquered by nuclear flames.

  Two Genes stood on the deck. The original stopped in his tracks.

  “It’s me.… You turned that cat into me! You mother—”

  “Smudge him.”

  There was a Gene-sized eye-wrenching hole in the air.

  “Now put that image of Mister Boots you saved at the motel on him.”

  “This is inconvenient. I now have to dispose of extra mass that I could have used in the first transformation. You must learn to sequence your commands more rationally.…”

  “Who’s the boss here? Screw rational! Just do it!”

  “How shall I dispose of the surplus mass?” />
  “I don’t care what you do as long as you don’t mess with the sun no more. That’s too spooky. Just dump it somewhere.”

  “Very well.” The box paused. “Your planet’s satellite now has a new crater, its largest. Shall I inform the proper authorities, so that you retain the right to name it?”

  “No!”

  Jay Dee looked at the two other living creatures on the deck.

  Mister Boots—wearing Gene’s appearance—tentatively raised one hairy muscled arm into his line of sight, then began to lick it.

  Gene—on all furry fours—bent his body to look at his hindquarters. He yowled, and launched himself at Jay Dee.

  “Ribbons!”

  The cat thumped to the deck, neatly packaged. It continued to hiss and spit.

  Tracey emerged, rubbing her eyes sleepily. “Jay Dee, what’s all this noy—” She froze. “Gene, you’re free—”

  “It ain’t Gene, Trace.” Jay Dee explained.

  “Oh. My. God. Jay Dee, it’s inhuman!”

  “Sure. But ‘inhuman’ just might be what Catalina needs. C’mon, let’s introduce ’em.”

  Tracey and Jay Dee each took one of Mister Boots’s arms and walked him forward. The man-cat moved shakily, as if unused to the articulation of its new joints, walking on its tiptoes.

  They guided Mister Boots down to the cabin.

  Catalina stirred when they entered.

  When Mister Boots recognized her, he began to purr. The front of his shorts bulged.

  “Jay Dee, Tracey, what—”

  “It’s Mister Boots, Cat. He needs some petting.”

  “Nice kitty—oh!”

  Tracey and Jay Dee sat in deckchairs, holding hands. The yacht had stopped rocking a few minutes ago. They silently contemplated the sinking sun, apparently none the worse for its loan of energy to Mister Boots. Then Jay Dee spoke.

  “You know what, Trace?”

  “No, what?”

  “Life can be good.”

  “Sometimes you forget, though.”

  “’Course we forget. Why shouldn’t we, the way we live? People like us, we rush from one bad day to another, never having enough money, usually sick, stuck in dead-end jobs. We’re forced by life and society to forget what we were born for.”

  “To mix men and cats in a blender?”

  “You wanna hear my philosophy or not? Okay. No, to have fun! To enjoy ourselves without worrying about where the rent money’s gonna come from. To laugh more than we cry. To relax our nerves and unknot our brains. To help our friends and confound our enemies. And this little box lets us do just that. Why, everybody should have one!”

  At that moment, a car bounced down the access road that led to the now-empty beach. It stopped in a spray of sand right at the water’s edge. Among others, a moose-headed man emerged and began to fire his pistol futilely at THE BISHOP’S JAEGERS.

  “Well, almost everyone.” Jay Dee got up. “C’mon, Trace, let’s go.”

  “Where to?”

  “Try the far side of the lake. Seems to me I remember Route 10 passing near there.”

  They upped anchor and motored off.

  As they drew closer to the far shore, they could make out the highway guard-rail running along the top of the banking raised a few feet above the lake’s surface.

  When they were about a hundred yards offshore, sirens began to sound.

  Soon the guardrail was lined with squad cars, their roof-lights flashing patriotic colors.

  “Shit! If only we wasn’t stuck on this boat! If only we had wheels!”

  “Done,” said the remote.

  “Wait a minute. That’s wasn’t a real wish—”

  “Jay Dee, the ship’s handling funny—”

  “You don’t figure— Trace, I got a hunch. Head straight for the shore.”

  As the yacht approached the road, more and more of it emerged from the water. But instead of grounding to a halt, its keel embedded in the bottom, it moved steadily forward.

  Catalina came up from below.

  “Where’s Gene? I mean, Mister Boots?”

  “Catnap. What’s going on? Oh, I see.…”

  A cop began to yell threats through a bullhorn. He sounded less than sanguine.

  Now enormous weed-wrapped wheels, big as those on a monster-truck, showed beneath the boat. Apparently the undercarriage of some large vehicle had been melded to the yacht and the drive-train integrated with its big engines.

  The nose of the ship reared up as its treads bit into the sloping shore. Gripping the wheel, Tracey kept her feet; Jay Dee and Catalina were thrown against the walls of the bridge. Mister Boots—Gene, rather, and still in ribbons—slid back along the deck to thump solidly against the stern.

  The monster wheels crushed the guardrail first, then the hood of a cop car. Tracey throttled up to climb the junk. The rear wheels bit solidly. Then they were onto the road.

  The land-yacht began to trundle off at approximately twenty-five miles per hour.

  Bullets were pinging off the ship’s superstructure.

  “Shall I give our craft a more conventional appearance?”

  “Fuck that! They got me mad now, shooting at us like that, ruining our good times. I want everyone who comes after us stopped permanently. But without hurting them.”

  “May I recommend a glueball? I use only the highest quality gluons.…”

  “Sure, if it’ll do the trick.”

  Inside the Master Remote, a golden sphere materialized, just as the letters on its case once had, a short twenty-four hours ago. But when the sphere reached the surface, it kept on coming, emerging somehow through the intact remote.

  Jay Dee held the marble-sized glueball.

  “This is gonna stop people from bothering us?”

  “Once it is activated, yes, certainly.”

  “What should I do?”

  “Throw it at your pursuers.”

  Jay Dee leaned cautiously out the bridge and tossed it.

  The glueball landed atop a police car.

  The car was gone. Or rather, it was plastered flat onto the surface of the glueball, which had swelled to accommodate it. The flat policemen inside the car banged their hands on their windows. One opened his door and emerged to slide around on the surface of the sphere.

  The next car to touch the sphere vanished faster than the eye could follow, flattened likewise to the face of the glueball. The ball was bigger than before.

  Lacking brakes, Tracey throttled down to nothing. The yacht coasted to a stop.

  The glueball occupied the whole road. There were no cars left outside it. They all rolled around its surface like rainbows on a soap bubble.

  Now the glueball began to move.

  It rolled away from the yacht, toward the city.

  Everything it touched—including the road, down to a depth of ten inches—was sucked into it. Trees, guardrail, grass, birds. The sphere swelled and swelled, like a snowball rolling down an alpine slope, leaving a cleanly sheared path of destruction.

  “Holy shit.…Stop it!”

  “That is beyond my capacities.”

  “Beyond your— You stupid machine! Why did you let it loose then?”

  “I am Turing Degree Three. Humans are Turing Degree Ten.”

  “Oh, Jesus. Will it ever get full, like, and stop?”

  “How big is this planet?”

  The glueball was now six stories tall. It seemed to be moving faster.

  Catalina was sobbing. “Jay Dee—” began Tracey. But the anguished expression on his face made her stop.

  Something appeared in the darkening air above the sphere.

  Jay Dee swung the ship’s searchlight on it.

  It was the man they had run over, the owner of the Master Remote.

  Suddenly there were a dozen of him. They formed a ring around the glueball. It stopped. It began to shrink, but did not disgorge what it had eaten.

  When it was marble-sized again, all the floating men coalesced into a single indivi
dual. He landed on the ground, picked up the glueball and pocketed it.

  Then he was on the yacht.

  “Uh, sorry we killed you once, Mister Spaceman.”

  The man brushed some dust off his rubberoid lapels. “I am as human as you, Mister McGhee. I am a resident of your future.”

  Catalina had ceased crying. “Juh-gee, you must come from pretty far in the future.”

  “Fifty years,” said the man. “But they’re going to be wild ones. Now, may I have back my unit?”

  Jay Dee surrendered the Master Remote.

  Tracey asked, “How come you didn’t arrive one second after you were killed to claim it, and prevent all this mess?”

  “The unit disturbs the Fredkin continuum in a chaotic manner. I had a hard time zeroing in on it.”

  “What’s going to happen to us?” said Jay Dee.

  “Oh, nothing much. Say, did you ever see a tie like this?”

  They all stared at the time-traveler’s paisley tie. The border of each paisley was made of little paisleys, and those were made of littler paisleys, and those were made of even littler paisleys, on and on and on, forever—

  That night the Li’l Bear Inn was as crowded as the last copter out of Saigon.

  But the atmosphere was a little more pleasant.

  Above the sounds of clicking pool balls, thwocking darts, ringing bells, exploding aliens, kazoo, farts, Hank Junior, and the bug-zapper hung outside the screen-door that gave onto the gravel parking lot, the calls for drinks were continuous.

  “Tracey, two shots!”

  “Tracey, another pitcher!”

  “Tracey, six rum ’n’ cokes!”

  The woman behind the bar smiled at the deluge of orders. It meant more profits in her till.

  A man with two tattoos emerged from the back office. “Catalina just called, Trace. She’s stopping by soon as Gene gets off work at the exterminator’s.”

  Tracey said, “It’ll be good to see her. I’ll have a frozen daiquiri and a saucer of cream ready.”

  The man looked around. “Lord, it’s jumping tonight. We should be able to pay off the mortgage next month.”

  A large neutered tomcat stepped fastidiously among the pools of spilled beer. A patron reached down to pet it. It hissed and scratched the offered hand.

  “Jay Dee, you should get rid of that mean animal!”

  Jay Dee just smiled.

  There was a muffled noise from the moosehead mounted on the wall behind the bar. The moosehead had a rope tied around its snout. Its eyes tracked furiously.