by Mark Crilley
This is the coolest place in the world, and practically no one even knows it's here! Now I gotta become an Affy, so I can hang out here all the time. I wonder if they'd let me bring my skateboard….
“AFMECopolis,” said Jim. “The air gets a little stuffy down here—something to do with the oxygen filtration system—but you can't beat the view. Especially when the whales go by.”
The van coasted down to a wide concrete platform that was like a huge helicopter pad. It was about five hundred feet across, with several ramps attached to it that led to nearby parking garages. There were two vehicles already on the platform. One was a shiny red Porsche; the other was an old yellow school bus covered with dents and rust spots. “The school bus is actually faster than the Porsche,” said Jim. “Sports cars don't handle the air turbulence so well.”
They came to an abrupt stop and all the doors on the van opened automatically. Orzamo jumped out and stood next to the van. Billy followed her and immediately began turning his head in every direction. Several vehicles swooshed past on a ramp below. A building off to one side towered above them, covering half the platform in shadow. The sunlight—twice muted, by the water and the superthick glass above—tinted his skin a pale blue.
Billy inhaled deeply. His father was right. The air was slightly stuffy. Humid.
He peered up at the glass dome above and shuddered. Man, I hope they've never had any problems with it cracking.
“Back already, Mr. Clikk? You were just here yesterday.” A whiskered old man in overalls trotted out from a nearby doorway. He had a green-and-orange parrot on his shoulder. Or a parrot-like animal, anyway. Billy noticed with delight that it had scales on its belly, like a fish, and five or six spikes jutting out of its head.
“So what is it this time,” the old man asked, “special business, or another creatch op?” He was examining the front of the van and hadn't noticed Billy yet.
“I guess you'd have to call it special business.” Jim wrapped an arm around Billy's shoulder and scooted him forward. “Gordy, I'd like you to meet my son.”
The old man flinched as if a pistol had been pulled on him. The parrot creature flapped its wings and let out the piercing yowl of a startled house cat. Several more spikes popped out of its head, only to begin receding seconds later, and its wings turned from green to red.
“Holy smokes,” the old man said, stroking the parrot creature's head to calm it down. “This is special business. What's goin' on here, Mr. Clikk?”
“Long story, Gordy. We'll fill you in later.”
They crossed to an escalator at the edge of the platform, Orzamo trotting along behind them. The old man called out to Jim as the escalator carried them up and away: “How's she flyin', Mr. Clikk?” He was back to examining the van.
“Straight as an arrow, Gordy,” Jim called back, raising an enthusiastic thumb into the air.
“Actually,” he whispered to Billy a moment later, “she's still a little wobbly from a mission we had in Alaska a few weeks back. I'll tell you all about it someday. Hair-raising stuff.”
“Stuff involving two hundred and fifty pounds of salmon heads?”
Now it was Jim who flinched. “How did you…find out about that?”
Billy smiled. “Come on, Dad. You left the receipt in the trash can.”
Jim looked irritated and pleased at the same time.
When they reached the top of the escalator, they crossed a marble-floored lobby toward a bank of elevators. To get there they had to weave through dozens of Affys charging from one place to another: people of all races, shapes, and sizes, but all dressed in the same gray AFMEC uniform. Orzamo led the way, bounding through the various obstacles with astonishing speed and grace.
Jim and Linda followed, and Billy brought up the rear, checking out the walls above as he went along. They were painted with murals depicting what appeared to be Affy exploits through the ages: ancient Chinese Affys battling a huge red blob near the Great Wall, Inuit Affys firing harpoons at a slickskinned amphibious creature in the thick of a snowstorm, Mexican Affys chasing a herd of fire-breathing black lizards across a cactus-covered plain.
Billy was so busy gazing up at the murals, he nearly crashed into something as it glided by on a pushcart: a large aquarium filled with multiarmed translucent creatures bobbing slowly up and down in a yellowish liquid. They were about two feet tall from top to bottom, with bodies like jellyfish and pink pulsing organs visible right through the skin. They had at least half a dozen eyes apiece, some of which slowly opened and closed as the aquarium rolled past.
Suddenly one of the creatures slid a slimy arm out of the aquarium and wrapped it around Billy's neck. It was frigid and wet against his skin, like a dead salamander. There was a nauseating chemical smell too, like a freshly dissected frog.
Billy reached up and tried to throw the thing off him, but it already had a pretty good grip.
“Mom! Dad!”
Billy's parents turned just as the arm stretched to its limit and let go, slithering back to the aquarium, which disappeared down a nearby corridor.
“Whoops,” said Linda with a chuckle. “Jellied bagflabbits. They do that sometimes. No harm done, eh?” she added as she inspected Billy's neck and wiped a bit of the slime from his shirt.
“That was pretty disgusting,” said Billy. “But kinda cool, too. I just made contact with my first creatch.”
“That you did, my boy,” said Jim. “If only all the other creatches were as harmless as those bagflabbits. They were pretty heavily sedated,” he added with a wink.
When Billy and his parents joined Orzamo on the other side of the lobby, Linda punched an impossibly long series of numbers into a keypad on the wall. As she did, a fellow Affy passed and smiled. He looked Chinese.
“Linda, ni hao!” he said.
“Chén xiansheng,” Linda said, still punching numbers into the pad, “hao jiu bù jiàn!” She spoke with a perfect Chinese accent. Well, perfect to Billy's ears, anyway.
Jim smiled proudly and squatted down to pat Orzamo on the head. “We'll be right back down, girl,” Jim said. The dog sighed and found a place to sit at the edge of the lobby.
While they waited for the elevator doors to open, Billy glanced up and noticed that the entire wall above them was covered with bronze plaques—hundreds of them—some shiny and new, others tarnished with age. He read three of the plaques nearest him:
Skinned alive? thought Billy. Debrained? Man, these Affys are into some seriously dangerous stuff here. Even the agents-intraining buy it sometimes.
Billy looked at his parents, and suddenly they seemed very different to him. They hadn't changed, of course. They were still the same people he'd always thought of as his dorky mom and dad. Now, though, they weren't dorks at all. They were like action heroes from a movie.
PING
Doors slid open and they stepped into one of the elevators. There were no buttons of any kind. Instead, there was a video monitor in the wall before them, a frumpy woman peering from it. She looked as if she needed coffee.
“Morning, Linda, Jim,” she said. “This must be our little… prank caller.”
Billy swallowed, wondering if he should say something.
“Good morning, Louise,” Linda said. “Is Mr. Vriffnee ready to see us?”
“As ready as he'll ever be.”
The screen went blank. The elevator began to rise.
“Now, listen, Billy,” Linda said, “just leave the talking to us. Mr. Vriffnee is a good man…”
“A great man,” added Jim.
“… but he's not a very… patient man.”
“Va-riff -nee?” Billy had never heard a name like it before.
“That's right.” His mother smiled a nervous smile. “He's the boss. The prime magistrate of AFMEC. He's going to decide how you'll be…”
Her lips puckered.
“… dealt with.
” “You mean punished,” said Billy.
Jim Clikk put a hand on Billy's should
er and spoke to him with great seriousness, something he didn't often do.
“Listen to me, Billy. Whatever they do to you, I'm going to insist they do it to your mother and me too. We're in this together. And we're going to get through it together.”
PING
The elevator doors opened.
They stood in an office, much smaller than Billy had expected after the grandness of the lobby below. There were shelves covered with books, tables half hidden by maps unfurled across them, and bulletin boards buried under pieces of paper. Indeed, everything in the room seemed to be buried under something else.
In the corner was a desk. Behind the desk was a man. Mr. Vriffnee, thought Billy, and found that he had trouble pronouncing the name even in his mind.
“Get in here.” The old man was facing a dusty computer screen, squinting through spectacles at tiny green letters scrolling across it.
Jim led the way, marching across the creaky wooden floor to one of three chairs in front of the desk. He stood near it but didn't sit down. Billy and his mother did the same.
“Sit down.”
They sat down.
A speaker nearby periodically erupted into snatches of conversation, like radio dispatches on a police officer's walkietalkie: “… mountain creatches?” a staticky voice asked. “That's right,” an equally staticky voice answered. “Lady says they've been in her barn for the last two weeks…. Over….”
Mr. Vriffnee finally turned to face them and rocked back in his chair, which made a prolonged squeak. His thick spectacles magnified his eyes and the mass of wrinkles surrounding them. He had slightly disheveled white hair and a bushy white mustache to match.
He cleared his throat. “James. Linda.”
Billy's parents leaned forward.
Mr. Vriffnee paused before continuing. His eyes swept back and forth as he regarded Billy's parents. Billy was both disappointed and relieved that the old man's eyes never met his.
“I've seen some serious breaches of security in my time. But I've never seen anything this… outrageous.” He had a hint of an accent: German or Russian, maybe. Billy squirmed in his chair.
Jim raised an index finger. “I take full responsibility, Mr. Vriffnee.” He inhaled deeply, preparing for a long and carefully worded explanation. He never got the chance.
“You better believe you're taking full responsibility. Let's just take a look at this. Together.” Mr. Vriffnee hammered a button on his desk and one of the bulletin boards flipped up to reveal a silvery video screen. It flickered, then projected a scene that Billy found oddly familiar: Signs in foreign languages. Confetti. His parents in a convertible.
It was the same broadcast he'd seen on TV the previous evening.
“Do you have any idea…,” Mr. Vriffnee began, “…any concept of how many people saw this?” His eyebrows were drawn so close together they were getting tangled. Billy caught his mother giving his father an I told you so look.
“Well?” Mr. Vriffnee's face was red. He was shaking with anger.
“It was a small, lightly populated island,” said Jim. “We were given assurances by the local authorities that the parade wouldn't even be filmed, much less broadcast on televi—”
“Assurances!” Mr. Vriffnee jumped up from his desk. “Assurances!” He began to storm around the room, sending pieces of paper whirling to the floor wherever he went. “A lot of good those assurances will do you when creatches start recognizing you wherever you go!”
Billy breathed a quiet sigh of relief and settled back to watch his parents get in trouble instead of him.
“Parades! Confetti!” Mr. Vriffnee pounded a table. A book fell off a shelf. “For the love of…You might as well paint a bull's-eye on your forehead and start inviting creatches over for dinner!”
Billy's parents were sitting there like kids sent to the principal's office. His father was biting his lip. His mother was examining her hands as if she'd never seen them before.
“You know how many creatch supremacists want you dead,” said Vriffnee. “You're at the top of their list. Both of you!”
Creatches want Mom and Dad dead? thought Billy.
Vriffnee opened his mouth to continue but then stopped himself, as if he wanted his words to sink in a little more.
There was a long, uncomfortable silence. Billy became aware of a grandfather clock tuk-tuk-tuk king on the other side of the room. Next to it was a little bronze sculpture: a man dressed in a Roman toga thrusting a spear into a beast that was half ox, half scorpion.
The speaker crackled: “Hank, gimme an update on those sea creatches, will ya?” “Yeah, uh, we're definitely gonna need some reinforcements, Pete. They've sunk a couple of fishing boats out here, it's a real mess….”
Mr. Vriffnee circled the room one last time and returned to his desk. He planted his hands among the stacks of paper and gave Billy's parents an ugly stare. They sank lower in their chairs and turned their eyes to the floor.
“Listen. You're two of the best agents I've got. But look at yourselves.” He rolled his eyes at the video screen. The footage of Billy's parents was being played over and over in an endless loop: they were smiling, waving, loving every minute of their moment in the spotlight. “You're like a couple of nitwits.”
Billy had to stop himself from grinning: seeing his mom and dad get busted like this was actually kind of fun.
“And you.”
Uh-oh. Billy bolted up in his chair. Mr. Vriffnee was staring directly at him.
“Unauthorized handling of AFMEC property. Impersonation of an Affy. Acquisition of restricted information.” Mr. Vriffnee didn't look quite as angry as he had earlier. But even a not-quite-as-angry Mr. Vriffnee was pretty darned angrylooking.
“I could have you detained here indefinitely, young man. There's a special place in the AFMEC detention center for children like you. If you're so anxious to find out about what we do here, I could have you sharing a bunk with a delinquent demi-creatch. How would you like that?”
Billy swallowed and said nothing. He knew from experience that grown-ups didn't expect you to answer these sorts of questions, and became strangely angry when you did.
“But since this is a first-time offense, and since your actions were due mainly to the incompetence of an AFMEC member”—Mr. Vriffnee shifted his gaze to Jim, who sank even farther into his chair—“I'm going to be lenient.”
Mr. Vriffnee shuffled some papers on his desk and took a quick glance at the computer screen he'd been reading earlier. Then he turned back to Billy and his parents, now seeming to regard them as nothing more than a bit of unfinished business.
“Take him back home,” he said to Billy's parents, “and see to it that nothing like this ever—ever —happens again.” Billy's parents nodded vigorously.
“As for these televised shenanigans of yours …” He was still talking to Billy's parents but was no longer looking at them. “…I'm placing you on involuntary leave for a month. Maybe a few weeks cooling your jets will teach you to take your AFMEC responsibilities a little more seriously.”
Billy had never seen his parents look so heartbroken.
“That's it. I'll see you back here in a month.”
Billy's parents rose to their feet, and Billy did the same. They all crossed back to the doors where the empty elevator waited for them. As they stepped inside, Jim placed a hand on Billy's shoulder. “Mr. Vriffnee went easy on you today, Billy. You should thank him.”
Billy cleared his throat.
“Thank you, Mr. Very-funny.”
Billy's parents gasped.
Mr. Vriffnee's gritted teeth and bulging black eyes were all Billy could see as the elevator doors slid shut.
“I didn't mean to call him Very-funny. It just came out that way.”
Billy was eating hot dogs with his parents in the AFMEC cafeteria. It was a brightly lit place that looked surprisingly like the food court at Piffling's local shopping mall, but with one important difference: a small-town food court generally doe
sn't have a display in the middle of it featuring an enormous stuffed creatch. AFMEC's cafeteria did, and Billy couldn't stop staring at it. It was thirty feet tall, multi-eyed, and covered with horns.
“Of course you didn't, darling,” Linda said. “No one in his right mind would intentionally call Mr. Vriffnee very funny.” She was trying to sound cheerful. She and Jim looked depressed, though. There was no disguising it.
A silence fell over the table. Billy took another bite of hot dog.
“Vita-dogs,” his father had explained as they stood in line to get them. “Over seven hundred percent more vitamins and minerals than ordinary hot dogs.” And boy, could you taste it. Every bite of vita-dog was like a mouthful of chalk. Still, the vita-dogs were downright tasty compared to the proteinenriched hypersprouts, dark green scraggly things that looked like spinach and tasted like fermented seaweed.
“Jimmy!” Billy spun around to see a tall, thin man striding across the cafeteria with his family behind him: a wife and daughter. The three of them were wearing matching AFMEC uniforms.
Billy's eyes immediately focused on the girl: she was the first person his own age he'd seen since leaving Piffling. Twelve years old, he figured, maybe thirteen. She was small with shoulder-length black hair, long eyelashes, and just a hint of freckles. He'd never seen anyone like her at Piffling Elementary, that was for sure. She was pretty. Like someone from a magazine ad. It was kind of disturbing.
“Jimmy, Linda! So good to see you two, it's been too long.” The man had a thick South American accent. “And who do we have here?” He extended his arms and smiled at Billy like a longlost uncle waiting for an overdue hug.
“Allow me to introduce you, Fernando,” Jim Clikk said, rising from his chair. “This is our son, Billy.”
Billy shook Fernando's big hairy hand as Linda and the woman exchanged kisses on the cheeks, then launched into what must have been a sidesplittingly funny conversation in fluent Spanish.
“Billy, this is Fernando García, his wife, Maria, and their daughter, Ana. They're from Guatemala.”