The Mad Scientist Megapack

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  “Just tell me your three favorite flavors.”

  “Uh…vanilla, coffee, and creamberry, I guess,” he said as he worked his way out onto the sidewalk.

  “Well, I invented creamberry.”

  He stopped dead and stared at me. “You did?” he said.

  I nodded, and pointed at the drifting stardust up the street. “Let’s try that place,” I said.

  “Okay.”

  We walked on in silence for a moment—at least, I walked; I’m not sure how to describe what Bo did, but it moved him along. It wasn’t really slithering.

  Then he asked, “So if you’re a rich, famous inventor, why don’t you have anything better to do than go out drinking with me?”

  “If you’re a rich, famous movie monster…” I began.

  He wiggled a tentacle at me. “Okay, I get the idea. I’ll tell my story if you tell yours first.”

  “It’s a deal. Mine’s real short. About a year after creamberry hit the market, I had a little industrial accident—my own damn fault, I’m not blaming anybody. I got careless. Nothing all that serious, by most standards—just minor nerve damage.”

  “Uh…what kind of nerve damage?”

  “Nothing much,” I said bitterly. “I lost my sense of smell, that’s all.”

  “But…oh. You’re a flavor chemist.”

  “I was, anyway. But now…well, I can still run the computer, but that’s about it.”

  “Jeez,” he said, “That’s rough!”

  I didn’t answer at first, except by pushing open the door of the bar, but then I burst out, “Damn right it’s rough! I get so damn mad about it! One stupid little mistake and my whole career is gone!”

  We sat down at the bar; the bartender was busy down at the other end.

  “So you lost your career,” he said. “I can see the drinking, I guess. But don’t you have any friends to party with?” He seemed to realize he’d been a bit blunt, and he turned his eyestalks away, ostentatiously examining the decor.

  “Not any more,” I said. “People get tired of drinking with somebody who just gets morose about it.”

  The eyes drifted back in my direction, and he might have nodded a bit—or maybe that was just swaying. He’d been drinking a lot, after all, and he was new at it. “Um,” he said.

  “So what’s your beef?” I said.

  That huge mouth of his sort of pursed up for a minute; then he leaned over toward me and whispered, “It’s sort of embarrassing.”

  “Spit it out,” I said, “I’m hardened.”

  He blinked, and spat it out.

  “I’m still a virgin.”

  I blinked at that.

  “You’re a virgin,” I said stupidly.

  He nodded. “Twenty-one years old and I’ve never gotten laid. Never even gotten close.”

  I thought about that for a second, and then said, “Um…pardon my asking this, Bo—but just what else did you expect, given your, ah…your appearance?”

  “I don’t know what the hell I expected, but I sure know what I wanted,” he said bitterly, “And this ain’t it!”

  “But…Bo, your anatomy, I mean…”

  “I know what you mean,” he said. “Look, I don’t know that much about it, I don’t think anyone does, but Rye, I’ve been interested in girls since I was twelve, and I’ve got the equipment— maybe not exactly like most guys, but it works. I’ve been whacking off since I was thirteen—and I’m still just whacking off.”

  “Ah…what kind of girls?” I asked.

  “Girl girls, stupid! You think because I look like this that I only want to screw monsters? Hey, you don’t look like Valerie Bertinelli yourself, y’know.”

  “What about female movie monsters?”

  He snorted, a truly disgusting sound. “Bleah!” he said. “Maybe they don’t look as bad to me as they do to you—I mean, I’m used to what I see in the mirror, and I’m happy with it—but they sure don’t have any sex appeal, either. I mean, would you want to make it with a movie monster?”

  I had to admit I had never considered the idea, and didn’t find it very appealing.

  “Besides,” Bo went on, “There are only about sixty of us, all together, and because of all the legal trouble they aren’t making any more, and almost all of us are male. A couple I think are neuter. I don’t know why they did that, but they did.”

  I knew why they did that, actually—I was old enough to remember when the point was brought up in the papers. They didn’t want anyone taking chances on maybe producing a fertile female monster that could be the mother for whole new generations of monsters. I decided not to mention that.

  The bartender came up about then, and Bo shut up. I gave the barkeep my card and told her, “It’s all on me. I’ll have bourbon and ginger. My friend here will have a Coke.”

  “Hey,” Bo protested.

  “You don’t think you’ve had enough?” I asked him.

  “Hell, no! Look, I told you why…”

  I held up a hand. “Okay,” I said, “What’ll it be?”

  He considered. “Get the Coke,” he told the bartender, “But put rum in it.”

  “Right,” she said.

  While she was getting the drinks, I asked, “So are all you guys frustrated, then?”

  He shrugged, an awe-inspiring sight. “I don’t know,” he said. “I mean, it’s not that easy to talk about. I get the impression that a lot of us, especially the younger ones, just aren’t interested.”

  The bartender arrived with his drink; he took a slurp and said, “I sure am, though.”

  The barkeep left, and I asked, “You ever date anyone?”

  He snorted again, and his rum-and-Coke foamed up.

  “You ever try?” I asked.

  He hesitated, and then he admitted, “Well, yeah. There was this girl in high school who got used to me, and I thought she liked me. Her name was Ashley, and she was a cute little blonde, and she’d say hi to me every day in the halls. So one day I met her after school and asked if I could take her out to a movie or something, and she just stared at me, and then she started to giggle, and then she just burst out laughing, and I said something stupid, I forget what, and she was practically rolling on the ground, laughing at me…”

  I thought he was going to start bawling, but he gathered himself together and took a deep breath—that was something to see!—and then went on, “So after that I never even asked again. And I sort of avoided girls in general. And then I started avoiding guys, too, because they’d all talk about their dates, or how hot their sex lives were, or later on they’d even be talking about their wives, and I haven’t even gone on my first damn date!”

  He slammed the glass of rum-and-Coke down on the bar with that last word, and it shattered. He looked at it stupidly and said, “Oops.”

  “No problem,” I said, mopping up the mess with a stack of paper napkins and waving to the bartender with my free hand.

  She came and we got the mess cleaned up and added to our bill, and a twenty-dollar cash tip let us stay where we were and go on drinking.

  “Maybe I have had about enough,” Bo admitted as he sipped his replacement Coke—no rum this time.

  I nodded.

  “You know,” I said, “You shouldn’t let that one girl, Ashley, ruin your whole life, Bo. I mean, she was just a kid, and you caught her by surprise. You’re older now, you’re not a kid, you’re a little more self- assured—you should try again.”

  “Yeah, but I’m not in school any more, either—where am I supposed to find someone to ask?”

  “Anywhere,” I said, with a sweeping gesture that left me a little dizzy. It began to register that I’d been drinking a little more than was good for me, but I didn’t let that interfere with my speech. “Right here in this bar, maybe. The world’s full of beautiful women, Bo, and they aren�
�t all unreachable. You’re a nice guy, you’re rich, you’re famous—you aren’t handsome, but you can’t have everything, and hey, you’re different, right? There’s gotta be a girl for you somewhere! All you need to do is find her—and you’ll never find her if you don’t look! Right?”

  He stared at me with drooping eyes. “Right,” he said, a bit doubtfully.

  “And you’ve gotta let them know you mean it, Bo! That girl Ashley probably thought it was a joke—I mean, she probably didn’t realize you were serious, that you’ve got the same needs and desires as any other guy. You need to make a girl know you really want her—you have to sweep her right off her feet!”

  I was losing the thread of what I was saying, and wasn’t sure I was making sense any more, but it took a real effort to shut myself up.

  I was so busy gathering my wits that I didn’t realize at first that Bo was staring at me. His eyes weren’t drooping any more.

  “You’re right, Rye,” he said, “You’re damn right!”

  Then he got off the stool, and I tried to get off my own, but my feet got tangled and I went over sideways, and by the time I was untangled I’d forgotten why I wanted to get up in the first place, and it seemed like an awful lot of effort when there was a perfectly good floor there for me to lie on.

  Then the bartender was there leaning over me, which was a very interesting sight indeed, and I enjoyed that for a minute before I realized she was trying to get me back on my feet.

  I was glad to cooperate, once I knew what she wanted, but even so, it took both of us to get me upright.

  And once I was upright, the first thing I did was to sit down again—not on a stool this time; the bartender got me to a booth.

  “No more drinks for you,” she said. “You want some coffee, or something to sober you up?”

  “No coffee,” I said, “But I could use something, I guess.”

  She brought something, a little green pill and some orange juice to wash it down, and I swallowed it all and sat back, while she went back to her duties. The stuff began to work in a minute or two, or maybe the booze was just wearing off on its own, and I was able to lift my head and look around and realize that I didn’t see Bo anywhere.

  “Hey,” I called to the bartender, “Where’d Bo go?”

  “Who?”

  “The guy I came in with—the movie monster. Where is he?”

  She shrugged. “He…”

  That was as far as she got, because she was interrupted by an ear-piercing shriek.

  We turned just in time to see Bo weaving his way out the door with a chunky redhead in his tentacles.

  I don’t mean walking alongside—Bo was carrying her, and she didn’t look at all happy about it. She was kicking and struggling, and she was the source of the shriek we’d heard.

  Bo seemed oblivious to her reaction; his eyes were waving about wildly, and he was staggering—at least, I think it was staggering, but since I never figured out his means of propulsion in the first place I can’t be sure. Let’s just say his path was not a straight line.

  “I’m calling the cops,” the bartender said, and she slipped away.

  I got to my feet, wavered for a moment until the floor steadied itself, and then staggered out the door after Bo.

  It wasn’t hard to spot him—a four-hundred-pound monster carrying a screaming woman down the middle of an otherwise quiet street does sort of stand out from the background.

  I tried to run after him, but with all the liquor sloshing in me it wasn’t much of a run, and he was really moving. I hadn’t realized he could go that fast. He’d gone three blocks before I got close, and by then I was too out of breath to yell at him; I just tottered along behind him, trying to suck in enough air to be heard over the redhead’s hollering.

  Then we heard the sirens.

  “Oh, shit,” I said.

  Bo stopped where he was and looked around, puzzled, still holding the girl.

  She stopped yelling and looked around, too.

  A moment later the first cop car pulled up in front of us, and two cops climbed out, one on either side. One had his revolver out, and the other had a riot gun.

  “All right, hold it right there!” the one with the shotgun called.

  Bo blinked, and I thought I’d never seen so stupid an expression on anybody’s face, human or otherwise.

  “You mean me?” he said, in a tiny little voice.

  Another car pulled up, and some idiot in civilian clothes stuck his head and a camera out the window and started shooting.

  “Put the lady down!” the cop called.

  Bo looked down at her in surprise, as if he’d forgotten he was carrying her.

  “Jeez, miss, I’m sorry,” he said. “I guess I got carried away.” He lowered her gently and stood her on her feet.

  “I was the one who got carried away!” she snapped. She tugged her purse free from where it had snagged in Bo’s belly pouch.

  I figured the crisis was over, so I stepped up and put a hand on Bo’s tentacle.

  “Freeze!” shouted the cop with the revolver, and I froze, startled.

  “Put up your hands!” the other one yelled.

  I put up my hands, saying, “Officer, it’s okay, really, he’s harmless!”

  Bo raised his tentacles, too. On him it didn’t look much like a gesture of surrender, though— more like he was getting ready to pounce. Fortunately, the cops didn’t take it that way.

  “You okay, lady?” one of them called.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” she said, and she started to walk away, back toward the bar.

  “Hold it!” the cop called, and she stopped, startled.

  Then about three dozen other cops started arriving, and we were all bundled into a police van and taken to the station.

  They put cuffs on me, and tried to put them on Bo, but they wouldn’t stay, just kept sliding off. He tried to look sheepish about it, but it didn’t really work.

  One cop even went up to the redhead with a pair of cuffs, but she snarled at him and said, “I’m the victim, bozo!”

  The guy with the camera followed us.

  At the station they checked our I.D., and after a few minutes of standing around looking confused the cops got us into a quiet little room, where a cop in plainclothes asked, “What’s the story?”

  Bo and I looked at each other, unsure who should say what, and the redhead took the opportunity to say, “This stupid monster kidnapped me!”

  “I did not!” Bo burst out.

  “You did too!” she shouted at him.

  The cop held up his hands for quiet, and they subsided. Then he pointed at me.

  “You,” he said, “Who are you?”

  “Doctor Ryan Tewary,” I said.

  “What do you say happened here?”

  I sort of shuffled uncomfortably, then said, “I didn’t see all of it, but I think it was just a misunderstanding. My friend here, Bo, was a little drunk, and he wanted to ask this lady for a date, and…and I don’t know what happened after that.”

  “He kidnapped me, that’s what!” the redhead announced.

  The cop turned to her. “Tell me about it,” he said, “And start with your name.”

  “Sheena Dubois,” she said. “I was sittin’ in the bar when this monster comes up and says hello, and asks if he can buy me a drink, and I was sort of surprised, but I said yeah, and then he asks if I’d like to go somewhere for a bite to eat or something, and I looked at him and figured it had to be some kind of a joke, so I said…ah…”

  Her voice trailed off for a moment, but the cop prompted her, “Go on.”

  “Well, I said, you know, where he’s a monster, I said, you look more like you’d like to eat me, and he grinned at me and said sure, if you want, and then he picked me up and carried me out of the bar, and then you guys came and stop
ped him. I guess it was supposed to be a joke, but it went a bit too far for me, you know?”

  Bo had been staring at her during this speech, his eyes widening and his mouth coming open with surprise. “I thought…” he began.

  The cop turned to him. “You thought what?” he asked.

  “I thought she meant like…like oral sex, you know? I thought she was…”

  The cop stared at him. Ms. Dubois blushed crimson. “Oh,” she said. “I was… I didn’t think of that.”

  Bo said, “Hey, I’m not a cannibal! You think I’d be walking the streets if I were dangerous? Come on!”

  The cop just stared.

  “It’s not my fault the way I look!” Bo said to him.

  The cop sighed. “I suppose not,” he admitted, “But I’d have thought you’d be used to dumb jokes about it by now.”

  Bo shook his head. “You never get used to it,” he said mournfully. “Maybe if I… I don’t feel too well.”

  “He’s been drinking a lot,” I volunteered, “And he’s not used to it. We were celebrating his birthday—he just turned twenty-one.”

  The cop stared at me this time.

  “So what did you have to do with all this?” he asked.

  “Nothing, really. I mean, I do feel a little responsible, because I’d been buying Bo’s drinks, and we were talking about women, you know, and I said he should be a little more forceful when he asked women out, and I guess he took that wrong, and…” I let that trail off, and then offered helpfully, “I was drunk, too.”

  The cop turned to Ms. Dubois and asked, “Do you want to press charges? We can call it battery, or kidnapping, or attempted rape, or we can just forget the whole thing as a simple misunderstanding. What’ll it be?”

  She blushed again, and then said, “Oh, forget it. It was a misunderstanding. I didn’t know… I mean, he… Never mind.”

  “Fine,” the cop said. “We’ve got your name and address—tell the clerk where we can get hold of you if we need you, and you can go.” He waved her away, and she marched out.

  When the door opened I saw the guy with the camera standing right there, listening.

  The cop asked a few more questions, and then booked us as drunk and disorderly, and the night court judge let us plead guilty and take a fine and a night in jail to sleep it off, which we did. I didn’t feel like going home, anyway.