“Take care of One Brow, who is my cousin,” I sang to Mother Jungle, and the others in the village echoed my reverent prayer song. Mother Jungle had already taken One Brow’s song into her chorus, and I imagined I could hear his wispy tones among the highest tree branches.
Gray Sackmonk stood by, waiting for me to return my attention from prayer to the pinkman. Gray Sackmonk held in one hand a hot, steaming cup of grol. I inhaled the tangy fragrance and dipped a finger tip into the thick, murky liquid. I touched it to my tongue, tasting its bitterness.
I nodded to Gray Sackmonk, and he gave the cup to me. I spat in the cup and told the pinkman to spit too. It did not understand yet, so hunters gripped its shoulders and neck while I pinched its nose and scooped some spit from its open mouth. I mixed our spit in the grol, drank some and offered the cup to the pinkman. It shrank away and spat on the ground, wrinkling its face as one would after biting into a rotten crythafruit.
“You keep your goddamn jungle shit away from me, savvy?”
With a nod from me, hunters again gripped its arms and thrashing legs and held the head still. Again I pinched the nostrils. When it opened its mouth, I poured in a few drops of grol. It swallowed, eyes rolling ‘loperlike in fear, chest heaving as it gasped for air.
We released the pinkman, and the hunters stepped back to wait for the grol to make him talk People with me. It bellowed in its strange tongue, tugging at the bonds and straining.
In a few heartbeats, its struggles subsided and it began to make sense. It began to talk People with me.
“I am angry and frightened,” it said. “What is happening to me? Are you killing me?”
“You are not being harmed,” I said. I stood an arm’s length away. Flies buzzed around its sweaty head. Its mouth opened and its brow wrinkled in puzzlement.
“I understand your words,” it said. “How?”
“The grol helps you understand my words in your head. I’ve been listening to your gibberish all day, and now I hear it in my head as People talk.”
“How does the grol work?”
“It is a gift from Mother Jungle.”
It looked around the village at the People watching, eyes like a trapped ‘loper. It met the eyes of families with infants, of hunters, of Gray Sackmonk, and of People arriving to witness this adventure even as we spoke through the grol. A handful of handfuls of People — think of it — watching.
“Why?” it said.
And we talked. We talked on and on until God’s Heart had given the sky to the Nightbird. I learned it was a he. I learned he was named “lieutenant.” He named me “little buddy.”
In the end, we agreed, lieutenant and I, that in exchange for not killing lieutenant, and not allowing Grandfather Galion Claws to give him as a pet to his granddaughter Shines Like God’s Heart, lieutenant would return to Ghost Horizon and tell the pinkmen to kill no more of Mother Jungle’s trees, to stay on Ghost Horizon’s barren soil and never walk along Mother Jungle’s trails among her bounty, and never hear her song.
In exchange, I, Fast Climber, as leader of the People, pledged that the People would not kill pinkmen and would not destroy their flying boats and other made-things.
I saw doubt about the song I had sung with the pinkman flicker on the brows of some of the watching People, but none moved to sing another song. I was leader and I had captured an alive pinkman. My wisdom prevailed.
And I saw wisdom in this song. Even if we killed all pinkmen in Ghost Horizon, that land would remain forever barren, a place where Mother Jungle’s song would never be heard again. Mother Jungle wastes nothing. The pinkman said his kind craved this worthless soil. Let them have it.
And if lieutenant changed his song — who knows if pinkmen have true hearts — the People would begin killing them again, laying waste their flying boats, spitters and tools.
It seemed a wise song.
As the grol wore thin and the pinkman’s words began turning back to gibberish, the village prepared for the Nightbird’s flight across the sky. We released the pinkman’s bonds and he pointed to the stars as they opened their petals, saying he lived among them. Politely, no one laughed aloud.
Lieutenant asked us to give him some grol to take with him, but we’d consumed it all. He seemed disappointed.
Gray Sackmonk offered his bower, the highest in the village, as befitted a village leader and the village’s guest, for the pinkman’s sleeping. The pinkman couldn’t climb, being stiff limbed, so a family gave their bower closer to the ground. Again, none of the People laughed aloud at the pinkman.
Before his talk turned back to gibberish again, I understood lieutenant to say he wanted our grol talk to be bitten onto a message pod that he could carry back to the other pinkmen, to show them that we had agreed. He called the message he asked me to bite a “treaty.”
I nestled into a bower just below Gray Sackmonk’s. As the Nightbird flew, casting a silvery glow over the trees, I listened to Mother Jungle’s lullaby and fell asleep, content.
The sackmonk’s chittering awoke me at God’s Heartrise. I looked down the trunk of the tree in which I had slept and saw two hunters squatting at each end of the low bower in which the pinkman slept, a noise like a dungbeetle taking flight emerging from his open mouth. The two hunters looked up at me and one finger-talked: “His nightsong brought many marshwurms and other crawlers. We kept busy all night driving them off.”
I nodded and climbed away to urinate.
Then I climbed down and waited for the pinkman to awaken. God’s Heart had climbed halfway up the trees before he awoke, muttering gibberish. He looked around. The People, those from Gray Sackmonk’s village and the handful of handfuls of other People stood, sat, hung or squatted, watching the pinkman.
“Jadu, what is this? A cammie convention? Or do I look like breakfast?”
I felt it was still important to memorize his gibberish. Later I would drink grol to find out what the words meant. I knew I would be asked to sing the adventure again and again.
None of the People moved. We watched.
At last he yawned. He ran stubby fingers over his hairless head and scratched at the welt on his shoulder.
“I think it’ll heal up okay,” he gibbered.
He looked around again and shook his head. “I didn’t hallucinate what happened last night, did I? I actually talked with —” He looked around from face to face. At last: “With you.” He pointed at me. “You made me drink some foul shit, worse than shipboard coffee, and we talked. Me and you, little buddy. I savvied every word you said.” He shook his head. “The damnedest thing.”
He began climbing down the tree, slow as a bist out of its burrow, until he reached the ground. We watched. He looked around at the People, until he found my eyes. Again, he pointed.
“You and me got a bargain, remember, little buddy? You don’t kill me or whatever the hell you had in mind, and we don’t give you any more shit. We stick to our side of the fence and you guys stick to yours. I’m holding you to your end of the deal, savvy?”
Though I didn’t understand him, I dropped to the ground near him and handed him the message pod I’d bitten as he had asked. He turned the pod over in his hands, squinting at the words, brow wrinkled in a frown. He couldn’t read, of course, but he seemed pleased.
He removed from a pouch the dungbeetle thing he carried, and stared at it, squinted between it and God’s Heart, nodded and put the thing back in its pouch. “That way, right?” He pointed toward Ghost Horizon. “Don’t know how far, but with your help, I’ll get home. Right, little buddy?” He laughed.
Perrin Feather and Far Spitter offered to guide the pinkman through Mother Jungle toward Ghost Horizon.
As he left Gray Sackmonk’s village, he turned to me and spoke. “Aren’t you coming for the ride, little buddy? You are chief cammie, aren’t you?”
I stood still.
He shrugged huge shoulders. “Well, nevermind. Look, I really kind of like you, but I got a job, you know? I’m just a g
runt, not a chief like you. The brass will ask what happened and I’ll tell them. No use not to. After they hear about this grol shit you guys make, they’ll send guys back. Too bad you don’t have a sample for me to take along. Maybe if I did they wouldn’t have to come back in. All the high tech crap we got — most of it fritzed anyway — we don’t have anything like that. Intelligence will wet their pants when they get a hold of this stuff. They’ll make life hell for you, you can bet. Sorry about that. Really.”
“I bid you safe journey through Mother Jungle, lieutenant,” I said.
“Yeah, same to you, little buddy.” He smiled and waved, turned and trekked out of sight.
He sang a gibberish trekking song as he disappeared in Mother Jungle’s embrace, the grunt and trill of the song fading with distance. I listened, content, as I set about brewing another cup of grol to find out what his last chorus of noise meant. Mother Jungle absorbed the pinkman song into her chorus as he trekked away, until it became part of her song.
Mike had back to back stories in issue #1 and #2. I wanted one of these in the anthology, and I finally had to go with “Jack in the Box” from the debut issue. Hard to imagine this wicked little story came forth from an astronomer with a PhD who also writes hard SF novels. He’s also a fellow Clarion West graduate. I apologize in advance if you’re one of those people afraid of clowns.
JACK IN THE BOX
MIKE BROTHERTON
Jackie Jerky and the other clowns practiced their tumbling routines with only the dim light of the tiny basement window far above. They jumped off cardboard boxes onto the brown teddy bear, somersaulted around chair legs, limboed under the plastic fence of the Barbie Cowgirl Farmyard, and juggled rat bones.
Then they heard the door in the other room open and close. They heard a “meow” and the pitter-patter of feet.
Jackie and the others looked to the doorway, but by then the black cat was among them. The white plastic shell of Linguinitini’s body cracked under the swipe of the cat’s paw. With a loud pop, high-pressure biofluid erupted as if Linguinitini were a busted water balloon.
“Scatter!” Bosco ordered.
Jackie grabbed Connie Cutie’s mitt and pulled her after him. Connie had the biggest shoes of any of the clowns so she had trouble running, and, since she was the only female, Jackie tried to watch out for her.
While the cat tore Linguinitini apart, Rubby-Tubby tipped over and rolled behind a box, and Bosco led Spagetini toward the door to the toy train room.
Jackie and Connie waddled quickly away. He wondered if Linguinitini would come back — so few did these days, since the girl stopped coming. He’d miss Linguinitini’s somersaults if he never came back.
Racing through piles of cardboard boxes and paint cans, the pair made it to the room’s corner and the pile of cinder blocks there. They found a crack and crawled in to hide.
“It isn’t chasing us,” Connie said. “I can hear it eating.”
Jackie adjusted the filter on his mike, knocking out the sloshing of his own overworked pneumatic systems, and he heard it, too. Crunching up Linguinitini. Jackie realized he still held Connie’s mitt, held on for a few seconds more, and finally let go.
Jackie kicked up the gain on his CCDs. He scanned Connie’s round white face with her red nose, dilated pupils, and the orange yarn glued to her head, then down over her body and her painted-on designs.
“I don’t see any cracks,” Jackie said. “But you do look scuffed on your bottom.”
“You look fine.”
There were curved pieces of plastic, like potato chips, strewn everywhere under the cinder blocks. Jackie recognized the orange lips and blue hair of Eggy Engelburger.
“It’s the man,” Jackie said, “I bet he made the girl go away. He sent the rats to kill us. Now the cat.”
“I hate the man,” said Connie.
The six remaining clowns made a defensible camp in the train station.
The basement held three rooms: the playroom that doubled as a storeroom, where the cat had gotten Linguinitini and the girl kept her toys; the studio with the wood floors, the wall mirror, and bar where the girl had danced — but the door was closed to that room; and the train room with the toy mag-lev that didn’t run anymore, the little old-fashioned city, and the plastic people four-inches tall — about half the height of the clowns. The train station’s doors and windows could be closed, and the plastic building was strong enough to keep the cat out.
The cat had cornered Bosco and Spagetini there, but had eventually lost interest and curled up in a corner of the playroom to nap. Then Jackie, Connie, and Rubby-Tubby sneaked in to join the others.
“Look, troops,” Bosco said, “We reamed the rats. We can kill the cat.”
Spagetini started to cry without tears. His tassel-topped cone-shaped cap bobbed up and down in time with his sobs.
Bosco waddled over and placed a mitt on Spagetini’s shoulder. “Cheer up! We’re going to bag that cat.”
“Butta we hadda two man act. That’sa two man!”
Bosco turned to the others and whispered, “He needs a moment.” The clowns waited until Spagetini was done, then Bosco said, “We need a plan. Any suggestions?”
Connie said, “We could dangle a piece of string in front of it.”
Rubby-Tubby said, “Yup, we could, and we could make it jump at the string and fall off a cliff.” Rubby-Tubby was slow, but sometimes that made him all the more funny.
Spagetini said, “We ain’t gotta cliff, Rubby. Maybe we coulda put a blonde wig ona da cat, with a little girl curls.”
All the clowns laughed at the thought of the cat caught looking so foolish.
There were other suggestions, but most of them also involved making fun of the cat, rather than capturing or killing it. Jackie thought about the trap they set for the first rat made from parts of an old clock, about the razor blade guillotine another rat had succumbed to. He’d thought of those. Jackie did the best slapstick.
Jackie interrupted, “Bosco said it — ‘bag the cat.’ There’s a burlap bag under the train table that will hold the cat. One of us can lead him in while the others close the bag.”
Bosco nodded, then started to laugh. “Ho ho ho!” The others joined in. The clowns enjoyed a good laugh. Bosco stopped laughing. “Who’s the bait?”
Spagetini, who appeared to be in better spirits, said, “It’sa me that should do it. I’ma just no good without an act.”
Bosco said. “It’s Spagetini’s right. Spagetini will be bait for the cat.”
The cat howled, and from his perch above the trap, Jackie felt fear.
Linguinitini had not come back, and might never come back. Jackie himself had broken — died — three times, but there was never pain, and he’d always found himself in a new body back in the playroom being held by the girl. Same green hair, same sneer, same Jackie.
Spagetini came running around a box headed for the bag, the cat a few steps behind. For a moment, Jackie thought that Spagetini wouldn’t make it, but he managed to slide into the burlap. The cat followed. Jackie over-pressurized his legs.
“Now!” ordered Bosco.
Jackie leapt from the top of a cardboard box, armed with a stapler. It jarred loose as he landed, but he wrestled it back into position and started stapling the bag closed.
The cat thrashed, making the bag slide across the concrete floor. Bosco, Rubby-Tubby, and Connie emerged from behind a trunk to help. Within seconds the bag was secure, but Jackie kept on with the staples for another half minute.
Distantly, Spagetini’s voice came. “I’ma comin’ Linguinitini...” followed by giggling.
The cat thrashed again, meowed loudly. There was a crack and a pop. Dark biofluid oozed through the burlap. Crunching sounds came from the bag.
“Rubby-Tubby is glad that’s over, Rubby-Tubby is.”
“No, it isn’t,” said Connie. She waddled off behind the trunk and dragged back a knitting needle.
Bosco said, “Can’t we just leave the
cat there?”
The cat was thrashing, scratching. Jackie didn’t think the bag would last long. “Connie’s right. We must finish it.”
Connie raised the needle to her shoulder and charged the bag. She thrust the point deep into the moving lump.
The cat screamed.
Connie stabbed again and again as if energized by the shrieks. Blood seeped through the bag onto the floor. Bosco and Rubby-Tubby turned their backs, but Jackie didn’t dare stop watching in case the cat got out. He was prepared to rush in and help if Connie needed him. The cat’s screams went on, and he had to reduce his mike’s gain. He didn’t understand pain; it was different when a clown died. He was glad the cat would die.
After a long time, the cat stopped screaming, stopped jerking. Connie only stopped her jabs when Jackie grabbed her by the shoulders.
“What’s wrong, you stupid cat?” boomed a voice from the train room. “Where’re you at, Panther? Poker game’s over — you can come back up.” The silhouette of the man loomed in the doorway holding an empty beer bottle. “Oh, you little fuckers!”
The bottle came flying down like a thunderbolt, hitting Rubby-Tubby a glancing blow. The bottle shattered as it slid into a wall.
The man stomped into the playroom. Jackie and the remaining clowns scattered as the man tried to step on them. “You monsters!”
The clowns ran under bikes and around paint cans to the cinder blocks while the man cussed. They listened to the man calm down, then to the sound of ripping burlap.
“Oh, Panther. Those sick little perverts.”
Rushed steps, and a bike clattered to the floor. “Shit!” Jackie peeked out from the cinder blocks. The man picked himself up. “I’m going to terminate you like I should have when Sarah . . . safe my ass!”
The man took a shuffling step toward the cinder blocks, lifting his head, then ducking it, and squinting his eyes. He reached over to grab a shovel leaning against the concrete wall.
The Best of Talebones Page 22