Six moons before mating, p.10
Six Moons Before Mating, page 10
Badmere’s response was to pull out a gun and aim it at Stan’s chest, bruise level.
“You have to follow.”
“I want to get away from this craziness, not follow it.”
“Maybe I haven’t shot you in the head yet.”
“No, that was Vanessa.”
For a moment, Stan blacked out, as though he had been shot in the head. When he came to instantaneously, Badmere repeated himself.
“You have to follow,” he said. Then he lowered the gun, turned, and walked away.
They took Stan’s truck. Stan didn’t know how Badmere had arrived. Maybe wheelbarrow. Or spaceship.
• • • • • • •
As they drove, Stan kept looking at his silent passenger. For some reason, Stan waited for Badmere to grab his arm, as though expecting Stan to topple over, maybe escape. Stan didn’t understand this, and didn’t want to. Some things can’t be explained, and if they can’t, fuck ’em.
They continued to a secluded airport Stan had never seen before, more of an airstrip, the front gate wide open, the buildings like barns. The control tower resembled a water tower. The single runway, however, appeared brand-new.
Waiting to taxi, what a pretty little jet. The quiet whine it made was charming: Abby would love it. He’d have to take her flying one day, but he had already promised her a ride in a wheelbarrow, and hadn’t fulfilled that vow. Next time for sure.
No one waited outside the jet to greet them, welcome aboard, wherever the hell you’re going. But the door was open, and Badmere led the way, soon inside, strapped in, the pilot a woman with hair like Abigail, no other resemblance. Abby couldn’t fly a plane if she couldn’t even walk. There was another vow her father had failed to fulfill.
All in time.
• • • • • • •
They did not sit shoulder-to-shoulder, but separated by the aisle. Room for six inside, plus crew, no flight attendant, and the pilot had closed her door. The flight was sort of rattly, like a car with low-aspect rubber and too much air pressure going over a sequence of railroad tracks. Stan figured they were halfway to destiny when he got around to asking Badmere the bloody bleeding obvious:
“What happened to the cops?”
Badmere had to think about that before replying:
“You must have decreated them.”
“Oh. I thought you unrequired them.”
“That might will be.”
Deeply engaged in this enlightening conversation, Stan spit out the next captain-obvious query:
“Where are we going?”
Badmere seemed utterly surprised upon replying:
“I’m following you!”
That would require unconsciousness, because Stan took a nap.
• • • • • • •
Despite the window at his shoulder, the view lacked enthrall, even upon landing. Clouds. A desert, or a very very broad dirt road. Sniffing as the plane angled downward, Stan smelled cat pee, so he felt, though he had never been in an environment where a cat lived, never owned a cat. Abby’s only cat was stuffed, cartoonish, more fantasy than domesticated creature.
No, of course they didn’t land on a dirt road: that was off to one side; and, yes, the area was a desert, though Stan saw no mountains in the distance. Was that a requirement of barren land?
He didn’t understand that the vehicle waiting for them was a truck similar to his, though green. Cat pee, he knew, was green. Pee green.
Without asking, he drove. Badmere gave directions by suavely waving his hands this way and that. Stan only needed some influence, since he pretty much remembered the way, not thinking that never before in his lifetime had he been here. That was no limit.
They drove past a furniture factory with smoke roiling from fat stacks at the property’s edge. Furniture Universe. Vehicles filled the multiple parking lots, many bicycles, no wheelbarrows, and even fewer spaceships.
They drove through a city with modern glass buildings, annoying in their black glare, just a few stories tall, no skyscrapers. The local homes weren’t built like this: no glasshouses.
Without asking, Stan stopped at the nearest Cupcake Queen to use their john. Badmere remained in the car, and neither man considered eating.
Driving again, bladder happy, Stan felt like a sad little girl. He just wanted to cry. Now and then, his existential essence rendered everyday feelings inside, but normalcy was becoming increasingly rare. But hadn’t he traveled through the very air to find the truth of his memories, the facts of his variable position in time?
“Left here, right?” he asked Badmere, who nearly panicked:
“Left, not right!”
“Don’t freak out. I’m master of the U-turn,” Stan claimed.
No severe turning required. The truck entered the parking lot of a government facility, sort of. “NASA Future Museum.” In the early days of the space race, the building had been a movie theater.
The men parked and walked to the museum. They saw no armed guards ahead waiting for a confrontation. They only confronted a bored fat woman holding out her hand, ready to exchange tickets for ten bucks, five per head.
Stan paid. He had a feeling Badmere wasn’t good with money.
Once inside, Stan came to an abrupt halt. He stared at Badmere, who didn’t seem quite present. But he was near enough.
“Haven’t we been here before?” Stan blurted.
“Haven’t we been here again?” Badmere choked.
“Well, if we have, let’s try to get it right this time,” Stan said.
“Let’s try to get it right in time,” Badmere countered, his voice calmer.
Badmere began walking, and Stan followed. Somehow this didn’t seem right. The interior volume was remarkably small considering the consequence of the display. Space Exploration! Shouldn’t space take up a lot of room? A few people strolled around, brochures in hand. Right around the corner, the sound of solid-fuel rocket motors gushed out quietly. Right in front of the two newcomers, a genuine satellite from the sixties rotated on a skeletal stand.
Far away, on that distant wall, a silver screen, its surface scarcely visible, obscured by huge posters of space shuttles and orbital stations.
Noticing that Badmere had not tarried, Stan decided to follow before his partner walked out of sight. For the first time since their meeting this day, Badmere seemed to know what he was doing. That would be a good place to be.
Badmere stopped beyond Planet Earth. Arriving at the extraplanetary exploration section of the hall, he looked at the prototype equipment for an upcoming, future, dreamed-of, not-likely colonization of Mars. Ignoring the lightweight buildings, he stared at the vehicle for traipsing across the surface. A small vehicle, open body and fat tires, room enough for a small family and maybe a picnic basket. As soon as he saw the Mars car, Stan stared, convinced that either he had seen this vehicle before, or that he was viewing an alien tricycle.
Badmere didn’t move, but Stan stepped closer. He wanted to see inside. He wasn’t interested in the manual controls, but he heard something.
He heard a memory, and it seemed utterly appalling because it had yet to arrive, but he knew it, knew its content in advance. And he took one step back, all he could manage, because he felt ill. Not his head, not his stomach, but his existential accumulation. He felt fear. That super high-tech little vehicle could take you here and there, in the right locale, but wouldn’t it lead to smothering? Mars didn’t have enough good air to breathe, but that was anticipated. What else could make a man smother? A man, or a girl. A princess.
No, a princess wasn’t just the offspring of unelected officials. The only princess he knew was regal from the inside out, starting at her heart, ending at his.
He would have to look for her. He would have to see the past before it arrived.
Trying not to gulp or groan or vomit, Stan stepped ahead again. Bending, peering closely, he saw a nasty, beautiful color, the color of growth and otherworldly infections. But that green was healthy, because it expanded as he viewed. No, not a pot of green peas dropped and spreading. No, not bile-coated toxins in the gut spewed out via reverse peristalsis. Leaves. Leaves of a certain habit.
Far, far away, another party gasped, someone he scarcely knew, despite his responsibility. Far away, perhaps, but not in distance: in time or in actuality, Badmere standing near and seemingly sick himself, feeling no better as Stan entered the car, hoping to escape.
No, he didn’t plan on getting in and leaving. He planned on finding something, leaving his ignorance behind. Left foot in first, and that’s where the Orbos echolalii extended, reaching in a living manner, but not all growth is positive. The growth of disease is negative, the expansion of cancers, mental illness, bad memory, inverted actuality, all sickening states.
Understanding that this car had taken him far enough, Stan tried to retreat, but the Repeater plant had ensnared his ankle. So what. It couldn’t grow fast enough to climb his legs and torso and fill his lungs.
Feeling a lungful of terror escaping as a scream, Stan reached out to terrified Badmere for help, yanking his foot out of the car only to trip on the grasping plant, falling violently against the concrete floor.
He picked himself up.
Chapter 14
A Dog Slipping Outside
The first thing he saw was a face in the greenhouse. Blinking, he understood he was not viewing his reflection, but someone inside. Why wouldn’t his father be in the greenhouse? Didn’t matter, because that man was not his father.
Surreptitiously turning, Stan snuck away, like a thief. Despite failing to understand why, he felt it best to avoid meeting that unknown man in his own building. Of course, he wasn’t a thief or a criminal or even a trespasser: he was someone Stan had encountered before, but not again, not now.
Since he had previously loaded his truck, Stan just slipped inside and drove away, not looking back. Whatever he left behind too often looked ahead at him, and he didn’t like it.
The drive wasn’t bad, but he could handle traffic. He was in no rush until he passed a local library and saw the current exhibition: Mankind’s Achievements In Space. Then he couldn’t wait to get away. What was his problem: bad grades in space cadet school, or a dangerous journey to whatever planet waited at the end of the block?
In that moment, he could not grasp the difference between forgetting the present and failing to remember the past.
At the end of the block, he would find heaven, because that’s where his darling lived.
Parking in the driveway, he learned there’s no quiet way to remove heavy equipment from the back of a pickup truck. Witches have the sharpest ears.
“What are you doing?” came a voice from the open front door.
“I’m taking my daughter for a ride.”
“You’re not putting my daughter in that,” Vanessa growled, “it’s dangerous.”
“It’s not dangerous,” Stan countered. “These new dual-tire models are stable.”
“But you’re not,” she insisted. “You’re always falling down.”
“What do you mean? Tell me the last time I fell down.”
“Oh, you’re always stumbling, and you know it. Why don’t you do some yard work as long as you have that thing? That would be doing something for a person except yourself.”
By then, the excited girl had arrived at the entry and was trying to slip past her mother despite being burdened by crutches.
“Abigail, you are not getting in that filthy thing wearing your nice dress,” Vanessa commanded. “You can put the green one on.”
Wearing a big, phony smile—because he was actually peed-off—Stan ran to his daughter and scooped her up in his arms, allowing her crutches to clatter to the walkway. Smiling genuinely, she wrapped both arms around his neck, and he could smell her and hear her giggling breaths as he dumped her into the wheelbarrow, very gently.
As he grabbed the handle and sped away down the sidewalk, shouting came from behind:
“You better pick them up yourself, dammit—and it’s not your time!”
“Time to take a nap, Mommy,” Stan said while looking down to the girl. “That should slow you down.”
Abigail shared his sneaky smile, shoulders scrunched.
Once away from the property, Stan slowed. Since no pedestrians shared the sidewalk, he felt free to curve left and right, making zoomy sounds. Abigail didn’t have to hold on too tightly. Finally, Stan turned all the way around.
“I’m master of the U-turn,” he pointed out.
“I’m following you!” she laughed.
Arriving at a rough patch of sidewalk, Stan blasted right over instead of slowing. Though one tire was low on air, that made the ride somewhat softer. Not too soft.
His passenger bounced up and down, not too much, laughing all the way.
“If a lion ate us, this is how we’d feel bouncing in its tummy when the police chased it!”
He couldn’t have expressed it better.
The next phase of their journey became calmer. At this edge of the family neighborhood, the two enjoyed the nice air and nice sounds of birds without the first flea encroaching. Stopping at the intersection of a narrow side street with zero traffic, father and daughter looked both ways, their heads moving in unison. Her back to her daddy, Abby didn’t notice that, but Stan nearly laughed aloud.
After settling in for a nice stroll (or roll), Abby began singing wordlessly. Though she couldn’t hold a tune, her sound was supersweet.
“What is that song you’re singing, Abigail?”
Holding on to the wheelbarrow sides with either hand, the girl continued enjoying the boring view while explaining:
“Mommy sings that to me when I go to sleep and she’s taking a nap now so I’m doing it for her.”
“That was a long sentence,” Stan observed. “Long and fine in its construction, child.”
“Oh,” she said.
It was clear by now that a great deal of happy feelings would be created on this journey.
“Daddy, what do you call that kind of song?”
“What kind?”
“That you do to go asleep.”
“Nighty-night tune?” he tried.
“No, Daddy, it’s lily something.”
“Lilliputian? That means it’s a very short song.”
She snorted like a tiny pony.
“Daddy, you make things up.”
“I made you up,” he said, “though I had some help.”
Negotiating a broken length of sidewalk, Stan considered adding to their repertoire by mentioning that old tune about “step on a crack, break your mother’s back,” but, uh, no.
After passing an acorn but no squirrel that Abigail pointed out and a dead mouse that drew an “eew” from her, the Powers arrived at a populated length of concrete. Good old normal people always with an opinion about something that was none of their business looked askance upon that wheelbarrow perhaps illegally traversing their narrow concrete thoroughfare. Stan just rolled past them on the grass. He might have run them over, but didn’t want to spill his precious cargo.
They didn’t stop until arriving at the third commercial building on the left. Past the barber (not a beauty saloon), past the drugstore, then a thrift store. Stan noticed the sign literally on the window.
“Look, Abby, they painted the letters from inside on the glass. That makes it look supersmooth.”
“I could read it, Daddy, if I knew more words.”
“Try, see how far you get.”
“Ant— Ant something.”
“Antique. That means very old.”
“Antique Emp…. You go.”
“Emporium. That’s an antique way to say store.”
Parking the wheelbarrow, Stan lifted his girl as he had many many times before, having no trouble holding her securely while grabbing the door knob with his free hand.
Immediately inside, they encountered a normal person with a dimwitted response to a subject that might not have been any of her bloody bleeding business. A lady of whatever age, who may have been of the human subset “customer,” stared at Abigail with a horrified look that disgusted Stan.
“Doesn’t she have any legs?!” the woman groaned.
“Yes, but they don’t work any better than your brain,” Stan pleasantly replied.
She had to think about that a moment. She did so while walking out the door, throwing a glare over her shoulder only upon gaining the sidewalk, where Stan hoped she would step on a crack and break her daughter’s mother’s back.
Unhappy Abigail looked up to her daddy to ask:
“Was she being mean?”
“Not on purpose, so it doesn’t count.”
She accepted that wisdom, which proved her own.
Next they confronted the proprietor. Indeterminate age, pointy pate without a lick of hair, narrow eyes that seemed stretched, lips that had difficulty holding those teeth back. Handwritten on his genuine plastic name tag was the identity, MR. JOM.
His question was reasonable, and cordial:
“Could I help you find something?”
“Yes, we’re looking for something we’d like to buy,” Stan explained.
The proprietor nodded his head wisely while speaking not one additional syllable.
As Stan proceeded along the nearest aisle, Abigail whispered:
“Was that mean?”
“Which one, him or me?”
“You.”
“No, and neither is this.”
Then he noisily smooched her on the neck. Being in public, she tried to control her laughter.
“It’s up to you if that was mean or not,” he told her. “If you gripe, it was mean; if you giggle, it was nice.”
He had the answer in advance, and knew it. If only the real world worked that way.
This aisle held treasures, including one big empty box of soap powder, valuable not for the former soap, but for the quaint design. Stan had to stop and look at a tiny glass jar with a stopper, but went right by. Abby’s carefully viewing everything with parted lips and not a sound touched Stan so that he squeezed her just a little more firmly. That made her look up to him, obviously wondering if she had done something mean. He rubbed the top of her head with his cheek, and they returned to their looky-looing.
