"We head to the back of the house, and we go into this bedroom, and it's like walking into a hospital. There's a bed with rails, and monitoring equipment, and IV's, and there in the bed is this kid. I say 'kid,' turns out he was 13, but he was tiny, you know, frail, like a stick. And he looks like he could be Astro's kid brother. And he's fast asleep.
"The woman comes charging into the room behind us, saying 'Don't you touch my Davey!'"
Jill looks at Dave. "So you were the kid in the bed?"
"Hey, who's telling the story?" I say. "Don't skip to the end. The woman says, 'Don't touch my Davey!' Astro ignores her, still, looks at me and says, 'This is Davey Lopez. He's been in a coma for six years. The monkeys are coming after him. We have to protect him.'
"Well, the woman starts freaking out, like 'What are you talking about, monkeys?' And we're heading back to the front of the house, and Astro suggests weapons might be a good idea, since he lost the stop sign. So I head out to the garage and grab a shovel, because I'm, you know, Digger, and I come out into the front yard, and the woman's really freaking out, because Astro's out there holding her couch. He looks at me and says something like, 'The bigger, the better.' The woman's having a total cow, and then the monkeys start appearing down the street, and the woman shuts up and runs inside.
"So then we start fighting monkeys. Some of them are small, like the ones we fought before, and some are big, like baboon size. I run out and fire up the Driller Beam Generators on my wrists. I dig this big trench and throw up the dirt on one side for a barrier, but the monkeys just swarm right over, and I swear to God I am not making this up, some of them shoot flames out their butt and fly over."
"No way," Jill says.
"They had an air force, swear to God," I say. "So I'm running back and forth, smacking monkeys with a shovel, and Astro's flying overhead, swinging at the flying ones with a couch. And it's like, did you ever see Zulu? Where there's like fifty British troops fighting five thousand African warriors? Same damn thing. They were everywhere. It was hopeless.
"So I look up to see if Astro has any ideas, only I can't see him. No Astro, no couch. Just this big, green, crawling lozenge that slams into the ground. Astro's lying in this shallow crater, covered with biting, pounding monkeys, and he's not moving. I run over there, and I dig the Driller Beam Generators into the ground and blast this huge wave of dirt and rock that knocks the monkeys off of him for a moment. Then I go in swinging the shovel, and the monkeys back off.
"I look down, and Astro's in bad shape. His clothes are torn up. He's bleeding from like a hundred bites. I kneel down and help him sit up and say, 'Are you okay?'
"And he says, real quiet, 'I give up.'
"I wasn't sure I heard him right, so I asked him what he said, and he says it again. 'I give up.' I asked him what he meant, and he said, 'Why keep fighting? They're going to win someday. Might as well be today. What am I staying around for? I might as well take off, just like he did. Just like everybody will, eventually.'
"And I'm like, 'What are you talking about?'
"And he looks up at me, and he says, 'I'm tired.' And then he fades away. Dissolves into smoke."
"What?" Jill asks.
"Gone. And I realize the monkeys are leaving me alone, and I turn around, and the house is just covered with them. They're tearing at the walls, pounding on the roof. So I go running toward the house, and I fire up the Driller Beams and dive under ground, come up in the living room. I run back to Davey's room, and the walls are shaking, and Mrs. Lopez is leaning over the bed, screaming hysterically, and the kid's just sleeping through it all.
"The woman's screaming at me, 'Make it stop! Make it stop!' And I don't know what to do. I mean, you can only beat up so many monkeys. So I ask her, 'Mrs. Lopez, do you have a gun?'
"She looks at me like I'm crazy and asks, 'What?'
"'A gun,' I say, 'do you have a gun in the house? Maybe if we shoot a couple, it'll scare the others away.' Which probably wouldn't work, but it would give her something to do other than scream, and besides, I was desperate, because at this point, the walls are cracking apart and dust is coming down from the ceiling.
"So she says, 'Davey's dad had a gun, I think, but I don't know where he hides it.'
"'Well, can we call him?' I ask.
"She says, 'I don't know where he is! He left us!'
"I'm all, 'What do you mean?' and she says, 'Fifteen years of marriage, and yesterday, he says he can't take it anymore. I'm tired, he says. I give up, he says. And then he just leaves. I don't know where he is!'
"And that's when I figured it out. Astro wasn't Davey, but he was a part of Davey. Like some fantasy of what Davey wanted to be, made real somehow. The monkeys, too. I don't know what they were, some manifestation of his illness, or maybe just his depression from his father leaving. Maybe every random space monster Astro ever fought was some manifestation of Davey's struggle for life. Only every time up to now, Astro had won, and this time, he had given up, because Davey was giving up. And as soon as those monkeys got hold of Davey, he would die.
"So I grabbed the kid and I said, 'Stop it, Davey. Make them stop. I know you're tired, but I also know you want to live, because if you didn't, the monkeys would have just appeared inside your room, instead of coming here from all over town. If you didn't want to live, you wouldn't have sent Astro to fight them, and you wouldn't have had him bring me here to fight for you. So just STOP IT!'
"Which worked as well as saying 'Just stop it' ever works. The ceiling tore open, and the walls crumbled, and monkeys came swarming in from all directions. Mrs. Lopez fell down screaming, and I grabbed Davey, tore out the IV tube, and went in the only direction I could, straight down.
"So I'm carrying this kid who weighs like, nothing, like forty pounds, like he's stuffed with feathers, and I'm running as fast as the Driller Beams can carve a path for me, but I know it's hopeless. I can't outrun them. My only hope, Davey's only hope, is to get him alone and maybe talk some sense into him, which, you know, is probably impossible, but I had to give it one last try.
"So I turned back toward the surface and burst up into a yard on the far side of the street. And the monkeys were there, waiting for me. So I jumped, as high and as far as I could, over their heads, hit the roof of the house, then dropped into the back yard and took off running.
"Did you ever see Ferris Bueller's Day Off? The bit at the end where he's racing his sister home? It was like that. I'm jumping over fences, getting chased by dogs, bouncing off trampolines. And then I see what I'm looking for.
"It's this shed for garden tools. Aluminum. Flimsy. I dive in there and wedge the door shut with a rake. I put the kid on the floor, and I cover his body with mine, while the monkeys are outside, hooting and screeching and pounding on the walls. It was like, did you ever read that story, "The Monkey's Paw"? Where the parents are huddled inside the house while the storm is raging, and there's this pounding on the door?
"It was like that, onl
y with hundreds of monkeys' paws, and green eyebeams ripping through the walls overhead. And I just put my head down and started babbling into Davey's ear. I don't even remember what I said."
"Yes, you do," Dave says. "You said you'd promised Astro you'd protect me, so if they wanted to kill me, they had to kill you first. And you didn't want to die with chili on your shirt."
"Oh yeah, I did say something like that," I say. "And then I said, 'Don't kill me today. Give me one more day. I promise you, it won't look as bad tomorrow as it does today, and even if it does, it won't look that bad the next day. Just one more day. If you can make it through one more day, you can make it through one more week, and before you know it, I'll be buying you a beer on your twenty-first birthday. In fact, I promise I'll buy you your very first one. What do you say? I could really use that beer, kid. Come on, you owe me, you already ruined my burger!'
"And then the pounding stopped. Silence.
"I stood up, and I looked out through the holes in the wall, and it was just solid green monkeys, as far as the eye could see, covering everything like Astro-turf. And none of them were moving.
"So I opened the door, and I picked the kid up, and I stepped outside. And the monkeys are dissolving, one by one, into green mist, just like Astro had. I walk out of the yard, into the street, and there's more monkeys and more mist, until there's just a few stragglers left. And off in the distance, I can see one big monkey running, like he's coming late to the party, and he's carrying something, but I can't tell what. And he comes up and sits down right in front of me, and he holds out his paw and hands me this Tommyburger.
"There was a dried leaf stuck in the chili, but I ate it anyway. It was good."
Jill doesn't say anything for a while, just looks back and forth from Dave to me to Dave. And then she asks him, "Is that really what happened?"
Dave shrugs. "Hell if I know. I was asleep."
Jill picks up her mug and salutes with it. "Well, then, here's to you, Dave. May you never mess with another monkey in your life."
"What about me?" I ask. "I did most of the work."
"Yeah, but you need to get messed with every now and then." We all clink mugs, and Jill and I sip.
"So," Jill says, wiping a darling little fleck of foam from her lip, "was that the day you came out of the coma?"
Dave looks at me, flashes me this grin I haven't seen in years. A cocky little grin that says, Watch this shit. "Who said I did?" he asks, and then he fades clean away.
Gone, like smoke.
Jill's jaw drops. I reach over and snag Dave's beer. Shame to let a good beer go to waste.
****
Giving it 14%
Ani Fox
He was reading a comic book when it happened. “Ombudsman.” Fiona’s voice buzzed over O’Malley’s console. “Time to work. Level A, Main Conference Room.”
O’Malley rose and put on his coat. It had been in the closet, waiting in shrink-wrap and desiccators for a good fourteen months. He rolled his shoulders, swallowed his fears and developed the mien of a man genuinely thrilled to be working for StarDrive. Having worked less than ten full days in the past eleven years, his mastery of this skill had paid the rent for quite some time now.
“Fiona, you may be the only person here that I truly love.”
“I’m a computer.” The voice remained dispassionate and hollow.
“My point exactly.”
O’Malley worked in the tallest building in the world-the StarDrive Tower. Management arranged workers according to rank. Each successive rank earned a seat of power in a small office one step closer to the shining beacon of progress, otherwise known as Level A, the Top or HQ. He worked on the second floor and had never been called to an office higher than the hundredth floor.
He took an elevator down to the foyer and stopped before The Door. Above it hung an epic painting of a starship breaking the bounds of light. StarDrive’s stated goal was to produce a faster than light spacecraft. The Chinese felt that, for form’s sake, even the elite should enter and leave via the main door. It was perhaps the only vestige of their eighty-year Communist experiment. O’Malley put his hand in the fingerprint reader, half expecting to get a shock. Instead, the door opened and he entered. The Door gave one access to a special elevator, filled with sofas and upholstered chairs, which fired directly to the executive floors high above.
He sat while the elevator conveyed him to the executive entrance. Four enormous jade FooDogs guarded the corridor. O’Malley had heard rumors from his fellow Ombudsmen that StarDrive had liberated them from a failing nation-state. Beyond those lay various personal offices guarded by the Dragon Ladies of the Imperial Royal Secretarial Service: beautiful, lithe, Asian women of indeterminate age who would serve tea. Possibly they were also capable of typing, calculating particle mechanics or killing a man with one blow. O’Malley would probably never know.
He was ushered in by one such stunning beauty, handed a cup of Irish Breakfast tea-Twining’s bag still in the cup to show they cared-and plunked at the end of an enormously long and, theoretically, intimidating table.
“I am Number One,” a voice announced. Ten somber, middle-aged Chinese men wearing blue pinstripe suits faced him. In the logic of The Organization, Number One actually ranked fourth in the corporate schema.
“Good day, sir.” O’Malley sipped his tea. They had over-brewed it by fifteen minutes. He smiled and drank more.
“We have a problem,” Number One continued. They all smoked; O’Malley could barely make out the rough vicinity of his voice. In all the time he had been working for StarDrive, he had never gone more than three sentences before one of his betters would ominously say “we have a problem.”
“That, sir…” He enunciated to carry across the room. “… is why you pay me. How may I assist?”
The men appeared embarrassed. “We have a problem with our space ship, with achieving light speed. We need your help.”
“I’m sorry.” O’Malley tried not to drop his jaw. They were being polite, among other things. Politeness usually meant someone had died. “I’m not an engineer or a scientist. I work for your human resources department.” He sighed and then added, “At a very low level.”
“We know,” a different voice answered. “But your name is O’Malley and we thought you might be able to help us with this specific problem.”
He sipped his tea dry; a Dragon Lady refilled it with Jasmine White leaf. He savored its crisp sweetness and tried to be motionless. He had heard it worked for lizards and certain kinds of rabbits.
“You see…” a third voice spoke.
“We have men hallucinating upstairs,” the leader finally spoke, pushing forward. This was Han, the actual number one of StarDrive. O’Malley had never met him, but the Chairman Ma
o-sized banners of him on every floor familiarized a person with his general likeness. He saw now that a wart or two had been tastefully airbrushed off the inspirational posters.
“Europeans?” O’Malley thought he caught the drift of the problem. Hallucinations would be terribly bad press.
“No.” Han waved dismissively. Europeans apparently were beneath his concern. “Nationals, of course-important men, pilots and engineers.”
“The nature of these hallucinations?”
“Our men…” Han hesitated. “These men are very trustworthy and I know many personally.”
Great tension filled his voice. The message was clear. I trust them, you better trust them too. Or else.
“Our men believe they are seeing leprechauns.”
“Leprechauns.” O’Malley kept a somber face.
“Yes,” one of the adjutants agreed.
It all clicked. “I’m the only Irish employee you have, then?”
One of the men nodded with obvious disdain. “It would appear so.”
“And you felt that being O’Malley would give me some ethnic, some Irish born, insight into these hallucinations?”
“Exactly.” Han nodded. Silence sat upon the boardroom. Finally, Han put out his cigarette and announced with finality, “You leave immediately.”
O’Malley tried not to spit. Although he understood that being in the world’s tallest building also connected him to the StarDrive Space Elevator, he had never given it thought. He’d read the brochures during training. A satellite stationed many thousands of kilometers above the towers trailed a cable that linked the building itself and an ancillary ballast-weight station with a tube built like a human spine. Inside, a bubble-shaped elevator made the transit. Five hours from tower to space station, four from space back down. No bends, no discomfort, no sense of gee-force or blastoff; they even had some kind of gyroscopic system that buffered it against the winds in the upper atmosphere. You could drink tea on the way up.
Jim Baen’s Universe Page 63