The One Tree of Luna

by Todd McCaffrey

  “I was thinking, rather than do the robbing yourself, why not sell the tools?”

  “Sell the tools?”

  “Yeah, you could advertise?”

  “Where?”

  “Soldier of Fortune, Evildoers Anonymous, on-line,” I said, adding with a shrug, “the usual places.”

  “I don’t know …”

  “Well, I could help,” I said. “After all, I’m kinda good at that sort of stuff.” I had managed, after he got of jail, to convince him that I could help him by finding suppliers. That gave me a leg up in figuring out what he was trying to do — hence, the anti-blackhole shield.

  “But your common evil-doer is so dumb!” Dad complained.

  “Well, that’s it, then!” I told him. “Just make an evil genius pill or something.”

  “An Evil Genius Pill?” Dad said, trying out the sound of it. He gave me an approving look. “You know, that might just work!”

  “Hey, and if it does, will you come trick-or-treating with me for Halloween?”

  “Trick-or-treating?” Dad sounded dubious.

  “All the kids do it,” I said. I could see that he wasn’t impressed. “And if people don’t give treats, then I can do some really good tricks.”

  “Oh,” Dad said, sounding suddenly enlightened. “And what tricks do you have in mind?”

  “What tricks do you suggest?”

  Dad thought for a moment and then listed four or five really nasty tricks ranging from letting air out of tires to infecting toothbrushes with tooth-removing bacteria.

  “Wow, Dad, you’re really good at this!” I told him. Maybe I could distract him enough, and maybe slow him down enough that I wouldn’t have to worry about him going back to jail.

  “But first, I’ll need to make those Evil Genius Pills,” he said. I could tell he really relished the idea, even without his rubbing his hands together and laughing maniacally. But that was Dad — when he did something, he did it all out. Which is why I should have been more careful.

  You see, even I didn’t think that Dad could come up with something in the four weeks before Halloween. So I slacked off, checking out Halloween costumes that I could wear and that Dad would approve. I finally settled, after having regretfully shelved the Pistol-packing Pink Barbie outfit, on emo-Goth girl. Complete with blackened teeth and a tear-drop out of one eye. When I mentioned it to Dad, he merely said, “We’ve still got to get the Evil Genius Pills perfected.”

  “Come on, Dad, with your brains, it’s got to be easy!” I told him. “Just do the whole little girls thing and corrupt it.”

  “What?”

  “Well you know, they say that little girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice,” I told him, being very careful to scowl and roll my eyes — something I wasn’t quite faking because while I might like to wear pink, I honestly couldn’t subscribe to the whole girls-as-wimps thing. “So just take that and corrupt it — make it evil.”

  “Huh,” Dad said. He frowned and shook his head. “I don’t think it’ll be that easy.”

  “Well, it’s worth a shot,” I told him.

  Dad got that far-off dreamy look he got when he was thinking deeply and following his intuition. “Hmm, maybe some plutonium and some anti-protons coupled with a degenerate DNA interferon bacterial transport …” he looked back at me again. “I’ll be in the lab.”

  As soon as he was out of sight, I raced up to my room and fired up my computer. I wanted to know what he was doing. And, as I said, I’d promised to look at the whole marketing angle. I made a mistake, then, and got totally lost in an article in Soldier of Fortune — “Girls, the next superweapon?”

  When I finished, it was way late and I was too tired. I should have checked in on Dad but I didn’t.

  The next morning, he was late for breakfast. Heck, he was late for lunch. So I made a pair of sandwiches — roast beef with horse raddish and chili peppers, just the sort he likes — and ran up to the lab with it. I knocked but no one answered.

  Worried, I keyed in the combination to the lock. The normal combination, the one Dad had given me. But the door didn’t open. So I left the tray by the door and ran back to my room. Inside, I fired up my computer and did a quick security scan, then I turned on the spybot in Dad’s lab. He wasn’t there. I turned on my tracking device and discovered that he was in the downstairs john. I turned everything off — with a super-genius Dad you can never be too careful — and raced back down.

  “Dad?” I asked, knocking gently on the door. “Are you in there?”

  “I know what went wrong,” Dad’s voice came rasping through the door. It sounded echo-y and I couldn’t figure out what was up until I heard him retch into the toilet again. “Oh, no!” he sounded weak. “That’s the twenty-third time.”

  “Should I call a doctor?” I asked. Dad had never barfed more than twelve times in a row with his previous experiments and then he’d had to get his stomach pumped. This sounded serious.

  “No, no, at least it’s not green anymore,” he called back weakly.

  “Should I make toast or tea?” I asked, just wishing for something to do, some way to help.

  I heard the toilet flush and my Dad open the door. I stood back, ready for anything. I wasn’t ready for pink. And I wasn’t ready for the hair.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Your hair!” I said, pointing at it. I didn’t dare mention the pink — Dad has a thing about pink. He turned and looked into the bathroom mirror. He jumped and slapped his hands to his face, crying desperately, “I’m pink!”

  “I’m sure it’ll wear off,” I told him quickly. His face, hands, every part of his body was the color pink that I dreamed about. Guiltily, I wondered if somehow I’d managed to infect his project, to somehow project my hopes into his actions — after all, neither of us could ever tell for a certainty that Dad’s old Psychic Projector hadn’t worked. “You should drink some water, get some rest.”

  “Not now, not now!” He said, moving past me and climbing back up to the lab. “I’ve got it, I know I’ve got it.”

  “What?”

  “The Evil Genius Pills, I know what to do now!” Dad exclaimed.

  “How?”

  “I took some and now I know,” he told me. He gave me a grateful look that at was spoiled by the deep, pulsing pink that had filled the whites of his eyes. “Sugar, spice, everything nice — and plutonium! That’s just the start, Robin, just the start! Today the pills, tomorrow the world!”

  He dashed inside before I could say anything and then, just as quickly was back with a piece of paper in his hand. “I need you to get these for me. Have them sent immediately. Use the Hermes guys.”

  “What, are we ordering flowers?” I asked, glancing down warily at the list.

  “No, no, the overnight guys!” he said, waving a hand dismissively. “You know the ones I mean. Why it absolutely has to be here tomorrow — make sure it comes tomorrow. There’ll be a full Moon.”

  “Okay,” I said as my insides turned to jelly. Full Moon? Overnight? This was sounding serious.

  “And place those ads!” Dad said, turning and rushing back inside, locking the door behind him.

  Okay, now I was freaked. Dad had used the Evil Genius Pills? Or the first version, at least? And he’d turned his hair white and his skin pink! What if they actually worked? What then? What if, suddenly, there weren’t just dozens but hundred — thousands or even tens of thousands of evil geniuses on the planet?

  I looked at the list and tried to make sense of it. It included aspirin, alcohol, sugar, spices — including mace — and a whole bunch of other things including — I could hardly believe it — Gummee Slops! Apparently, Dad took whole fruit Gummee Slops — so that’s where they went! — and rolled them around the plutonium-DNA-retroviral core to make the whole mess swallowable. Or, thinking back to the bathroom, at least initially swallowable.

  I ran up to my room. How could I stop this? How could I make these pills not work but do so in a way tha
t Dad wouldn’t suspect and he’d still make money?

  I scanned the list. There was one thing on the list that fairly jumped out at me — vinegar. Apparently the pills were supposed to be packed in vinegar to preserve them. Hm … what if they weren’t packed in vinegar? What if they were packed in something like brine or olive oil? Hmmm … it’d have to look the same.

  I got on-line and searched. It took me all night to get the list just right and then I placed the order.

  And I placed the ads. And I made the little video. I thought it was pretty cute, really. Okay, I admit it, I really got into making the video. I mean, I thought that maybe someone who see it and say, “Who’s that girl? She’s got a great voice!” And then, well, you know, I was all of twelve and I liked dreaming. Is that so terrible?

  But maybe, if I hadn’t been dreaming, none of this would have happened.

  The stuff came in and Dad allowed me to take charge of bottling so he never knew about my “secret ingredient.” He smiled when he saw my ad but I could tell that he wasn’t really that impressed — maybe I should have added those explosions and fake headlines I’d thought of.

  Anyway, orders started pouring in. Slowly at first, and then more and more until we were making Evil Genius Pills day and night. And we were finally getting money in the bank.

  “So, I can go, can’t I?” I said to him the day before Halloween.

  “What, Robin?” Dad said, looking up from the latest sales figures. “What did you say?”

  “I said, can we go trick-or-treating?” I repeated. “Halloween’s tomorrow, and I’ve already got my costume.” I’d bought it without telling him when we made our first hundred thousand dollars. Evil Genius Pills don’t come cheap and we were selling thousands of them.

  “Well, sure, if there isn’t anything on the news,” Dad said.

  “It’s early, Dad,” I assured him, secretly relieved that there’d been no news stories about Evil Genius Pills. I was sure, because of that, that they didn’t work. I still can’t believe that I was so wrong. “So can we? It’ll be fun.”

  “Yeah, okay,” Dad said distractedly. But I knew I could hold him to his word. So I ran over and gave him a hug.

  “Great,” I said, “we can start out at seven when it gets dark.”

  “Okay, honey.”

  “And you don’t have to worry about a costume, Dad,” I told him. “With your white hair, all you have to do is wear your lab coat and pretend that you’re an evil genius.” The pink skin, by then, had faded back to just a healthy glow (as it were).

  “But I am an evil genius!”

  “See? So, no problem!” I ran up to my room and then into my secret room where I looked at the dark emo-Goth costume and wondered, just for a moment, what it would be like if I had a father who would have been cool with a Pistol-packing Pink Barbie outfit. But, still … it was better than nothing.

  And then it was Halloween. We rushed out about a thousand orders that day and I’d re-ordered a whole bunch of supplies, the overnight guys were non-stop at our door and some of them were complaining — and some of the neighbors had started to look at me funny when I answered the door.

  I ignored them or waved as nicely as I could and then either handed off the packages or carted them inside. I couldn’t wait for the night. And we were swamped or maybe I would have had time to look at the news or the internet or something.

  But I didn’t know about the manhunt until it was too late.

  “Come on, Dad!” I called as seven o’clock came and went. “We’re late!”

  “Just one more batch!” Dad called down from the lab.

  “You promised!” I wailed, getting ready to throw a certain-to-succeed tantrum.

  “Okay!” Dad called back. He was down a moment later, in his white lab coat. “How do I look? Am I scary enough?”

  “Yup, you are,” I assured him, grabbing a bag and pulling him out the door behind me. I was pretty sure I heard it latch. Pretty sure.

  We went down our street first, then around to the next block. Dad was really getting it the whole evil genius thing — even as the Evil Genius Pills were getting into everyone else.

  We tricked and treated for about an hour and … honestly, it was the greatest night of my life! Finally, I was tired and told Dad that we could head home.

  We saw the lights when we rounded the corner to our block.

  “Is that our house?” Dad shouted, breaking into a run. “It’s on fire, Robin!”

  Dad raced way ahead of me. I was tired, my feet hurt, I had a full bag of candy … none of it really mattered, though. If I’d known, I would have dropped the bag, I would have torn after him, maybe stopped him but —

  Three shots rang out and I saw Dad stagger, clutch his chest and stumble.

  I dropped my bag then, you can bet and I ran, and ran, and ran and I was screaming and I ran right into the first policeman — Goodi TwoShoes himself — and I started clawing at him, I racked my fingers on his face and I tricked to kick him and beat him and — rough hands pulled me off and held me, no matter what karate moves I tried and I screamed and screamed and still kicked until I had no more energy and then —

  “Robin Beaumont, you are under arrest, everything you say can and will be held against you …” Goodi TwoShoes read me my rights.

  You see, I didn’t know it and Dad never found out. But that was the Night of the Zombies. The night that everyone who ate too many of our Evil Genius Pills turned into stark raving mad, flesh-eating zombies. And, all over the world, they killed tens of thousands of people before they were finally destroyed.

  It was Goodi TwoShoes who figured it out, who traced the outbreaks to us, who set up the arrest, who thought that Dad was another raving zombie — the white hair gave them away — and shot him four times in the chest while a fireman hosed him down with gasoline.

  They never lit the match. My assault had done that much.

  And so that’s how I lost my father and ten years of my life.

  The cops found everything, took it all. Except my room. I guess if I hadn’t been working so hard on it, maybe my Dad would still be alive. If I’d told him about the anti-blackhole shield or what happens when you combine it with an equally strong mini-blackhole generator, maybe he’d still be alive. But I didn’t. I was afraid. And … to be totally honest, I thought that this one time I could have something that was all my own.

  The Anomalizer. What happens when a blackhole generator and a blackhole shield operate at the same time? An anomaly. A void in the space-time continuum. Whatever is inside is no longer here or there — it just is.

  Which is why no one found my room.

  And which is why Goodi TwoShoes will never worry about my next report. Because in five minutes, I’m going to attach my special micro-Anomalizer to that prick’s car and he’s going to go nowhere … forever.

  And after that? We’ll see.

  My name is Robin Redbreast. You killed my father. You stole my childhood. Prepare to …

  Stone the Crows

  Stone the Crows was the result of a challenge from Maryelizabeth Hart of the Mysterious Galaxy bookstore chain, to write a short story in half an hour in their front window.

  Nerius Stimpton Poddlemore bore his name with all the grace that a youngster could manage. When his parents took over the ancestral home of Poddlemore, they enrolled him in the local primary school — but that didn’t last.

  In fact, it took a mere six months before Nerius was no longer in school.

  When he had healed and the snows had lifted, Nerius would take walks in the garden or sit in his room reading. His parents informed the school that he was being home-schooled which, if leaving a child alone all day from breakfast to dinner was schooling, was perfectly accurate.

  Freed from the bullies of school, one would imagine that Nerius would have found in nature much peace and enjoyment. Instead, he used nature to vent his anger on the world that had bred bullies and parents who could possibly believe that Nerius was a dece
nt first name.

  One day, he noticed a murder of crows gathered in the nearby field, picking at wheat and such-like. He gathered himself a handful of good-sized stones and proceeded to rain them upon the crows.

  The crows dodged his ballistics and cawed and crowed their dismay, flying away from their food with obvious irritation.

  This so delighted Nerius that it became his daily exercise for weeks on end until, finally, the murder of crows was enlarged with the presence of one particularly stout bird. Nerius spotted him — it was an instant challenge. He knelt, scooped a handful of stones and fired them off in rapid succession at the large crow.

  What Nerius didn’t know was that this was the King of crows. Of all the crows. The King dodged the missiles easily and, with a low “caw!” urged his minions to retaliate, being the first to dive from on high down upon Nerius’ uncovered head.

  Thud! Nerius cried in pain as his scalp was scraped.

  Whack! Another crow caught his arm and tore through jacket and shirt both, leaving a bloody streak.

  Caw! A third crow circled, with talons extended and tore his cheek.

  Bawling in agony and terror, Nerius raced into the safety of his home.

  When he tried to venture forth the next day, the crows stooped upon him. Defeated, Nerius took to staying indoors.

  One day, thoroughly depressed, Nerius happened upon a chess set. He slowly taught himself the game, playing in the big bay window that looked out onto the back garden.

  As the days turned to weeks and then into months, Nerius got good. As his fear of the crows turned into absorption in the magic of chess, Nerius grew braver and, instead of playing with his back to the window, turned to let the light fall upon his board.

  It was a full fortnight before Nerius noticed that he had watchers. The crows watched as he played. At first he was startled but then felt triumphant, raising each piece and moving it carefully, as though battling the very crows with his brilliance.

  A year passed. It got to be a new game, playing with the crows watching. He particularly liked the way the King crow watched his every move.