Hey, Mister—can I come? Rudy asked, was not refused.
Rudy pressed his face against the glass paneled phone booth, breathing mist against the glass and pretending he was an enormous fish in a bowl.
Andy? the surveyor said. This is Steve. Yeah, the connection’s terrible. I’m up at Caple’s Lake ... What? Dunnigan, Steve Dunnigan. No, I don’t have a sister. We were in Dr. Tennyson’s seminar together, remember? Okay, okay—just forget it. I’ve found something you’ll want to take a look at—
Here, Dunnigan said, shutting the glass booth behind him. Buy yourself some baseball cards.
Rudy accepted the quarter cordially, slipped it into his pocket, went to the lodge and bought a quarter pound bag of beef jerky with one of the twenties from his genuine cowhide wallet. He sat on the front steps and chewed as he watched Dunnigan hurry bags and equipment from his cabin into a battered red Toyota. When Dunnigan drove off, the Toyota’s flimsy clutch rattled like a marble in a soup can.
Rudy went home for dinner, rapidly consumed two steaks, a potato, no broccoli, three hot slices of cherry pie, and a frozen Snicker’s bar. Upstairs in his loft he was only mildly queasy, and watched the portable television underneath his bedcovers. He fell asleep and resumed the dreams again, awoke in a cold sweat, his stomach protuberant and growling. He slipped downstairs and managed a pair of ice cream sandwiches, returned to bed and the dreams again. It was as if his mind was being fed on a very short loop. Eggs for breakfast, four or five scrambled. Mom was pleased, offered encouragement. Another sandwich? Cookies? More milk, Rudy? Eat, eat! Marie and the girls are always talking about your skinny arms ... Father said, Good for you, boy! Build those muscles—you don’t want to be a skinny little wimp all your life. You’ve got to be tough, you’ve got to take care of yourself in this world, boy. You think I’m not tough? Go on, then; try me. Hit me in the stomach. Go ahead, hit me. Harder. Harder, now! Show some muscle, boy. I’ve swatted gnats harder than that!
Dunnigan returned in the afternoon with a circumspect, goateed man. They conferred beside the sunken statue, consulted pocket-size devices, and departed in a jeep. Dunnigan returned again the following morning with more men, equipment, jeeps. Rudy visited the site daily, saw crowbars snap like popsicle sticks, pneumatic hammers grind to a halt, strong men with ringed underarms herniate in chorus, puny forklifts roar as cables snapped everywhere. Helicopters beat overhead the secluded lakefront property, CB radios spluttered and squawked in the crisp mountain air. Still, the object did not budge. It would not budge. It was stubborn, heroic and invulnerable, Rudy thought. Just like Superman.
Father and Mom budged quite readily, however, packed Rudy up with the other belongings and relocated to the relative sanctity of their San Francisco mansion, where Rudy explored the daily papers with casual regularity. The initial notice appeared in the back pages of the Chronicle, amidst advertisements for lingerie and quick-weight-loss clinics. The blurb included Rudy’s name, Dunnigan’s, date and location of find, difficulties encountered. A mere journalistic kernel, yet fecund, perseverant, it rooted and advanced to page two as Life Buried in Strange Object? and blossomed ultimately in front page headlines:
LIFE BURIED IN STRANGE OBJECT!
—Child Unearths Cosmic Treasure
Father and Mom begun introducing Rudy to their friends as “the little archaeologist in the family” before posting him off to bed when another reporter infiltrated the party. The phone rang constantly, and Mom had the number changed. Reporters and cameramen populated the front porch, lunatics verged on the perimeters. The streets resounded with cymbals and tambourines. Bull-horns proclaimed the sovereignty of Jesus-Christ-all-mighty. The Flying Saucer Gazette accused Rudy of conspiring with sentient vegetable protein from Betelgeuse. Satanists dropped by evenings for coffee and, rebuked, splattered sheep’s blood on the lawn, driveway and deluxe Mercedes convertible. A flurry of Dianetic brochures arrived daily with the harried postman. Red journalism complemented topical hysteria. Cosmic Statue Predicts Earthquakes!!! Jeanne Dixon Communicates With Telepathic Statue in Esperanto!!! Cosmic Boon to Acne Sufferers??? Rudy chatted happily with the interchangeable lunatics and newsmen until his family’s tolerance was “overextended”, Father’s press release declared. All he can tell you, Mom shouted one day, yanking Rudy back inside—is that he found the thing, he gave it away, and then he came right home! Crestfallen, Rudy was denied permission to pose for the covers of Jack and Jill Monthly and Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. For the rest of the summer Rudy was relegated to the video entertainment console of his isolate bedroom.
Dunnigan, along with the “cosmic treasure,” was appropriated by U C Regents Berkeley. A Visiting Lectureship compensated the former while an elaborate wing of the Physical Research Center secluded the latter. Dunnigan appeared frequently on network news programs and The Tonight Show, Starring Johnny Carson. Frankly, Johnny, we’re baffled, he conceded. We can’t penetrate the object’s shell, but ultrasound has detected embedded proteins, minerals, rudimentary enzymes—materials implicit in the genesis of life. As I told you over dinner, the statue’s shell is so dense that the molecules are virtually impacted together. Conceivably billions of years old, it’s perhaps the byproduct—or so contend the latest theories—of some titanic implosion, the devastating force of which would be unconscionable even in our nuclear conscious age. At this point Dunnigan granted the unconscionable audience a winsome, ingratiating smile, like a Nobel Laureate confronted by some giddy coed, and Johnny suggested they play tennis together real soon.
Rudy switched off the television. It was late. He couldn’t sleep. The resumption of grammar school foreclosed upon the vanished summer like some formidable mortgage. Rudy awoke the next morning in an empty house. Dad in Rio, Mom in bed. The lunch, prepared by the maid, was folded inside a double bag on the kitchen counter. Rudy scanned the Chronicle’s comics page and devoured an eight-ounce box of Rice Puffies. Public concern over the statue had receded in the wake of renewed Mideast skirmishes. Rudy went to the bathroom, vomited anxiously, brushed his teeth, removed a frozen Snicker’s bar from the freezer, and chewed as he departed for the bus stop. Father had won the debate years ago concerning Rudy’s education. He’s going to public, not be a sissy, just like me.
On the street corner Kent Crapps and Marty Femester were passing an untidy cigarette back and forth, inexpertly rolled from Bugle tobacco and parting at the seam. Rudy sat on the curb and handled his lunch bag to tatters.
Hey. If it ain’t the rich kid. Hey, Crapps. Ain’t that the poor little rich kid?
Sure is, Crapps said. It looks like two rich kids, if you ask me. Hey, fat boy. You better stop eating so much. You’re liable to explode!
Rudy sat forlornly as he heard their approach. The wrecked cigarette bounced off his knee and he brushed at sparks.
Hey, maybe the fat boy’s hungry. You think so, Crapps? You think he might like a marshmallow? There’s a marshmallow, there in the gutter. It’s a little muddy—but maybe the fat boy’s real hungry.
Rudy hunkered submissively, anticipating the customary ridicule.
Hey, fat boy. Look what we fixed you to eat—
As the imperative mud-filled hand clamped Rudy’s mouth something unfamiliar activated abruptly in his mind. Something alert, canny, uncompromising.
Help help help quit it no no help help blech! Marty struggled weakly, like a small damaged sparrow. There, Rudy thought, his arm not strong so much as intent. You eat the mud this time. At a discrete distance Kent Crapps bounded up and down and shrieked for the police. Rudy wasn’t even angry. He just wanted them to know he could take care of himself from now on. He had new responsibilities, through his discovery of the statue a sort of implied integrity. The weight of the buried statue filled the deep part of his mind. Nothing can hurt you, the deep voice confirmed, resounding in the immensity of remembered dreams that whirled, unalterable and patient, impervious and eternal.
Young men have responsibilities I don’t car
e who started it you can’t carry on like hoodlums what if everybody behaved like that I’m doing this for your own good, the principal pronounced, and down came their pants. The secretary pulled shut the office door. Rudy neither whined nor protested at his turn. He felt supremely confident, and listened to the deep dreamy monotone of the buried voice. Returning to class he met wary eyes and whispers. He ate a magnanimous lunch alone in the cafeteria and cached burps to be released later, in class, in improvisatory bleats.
Grade school was a breeze.
Ha ha ha, everybody laughed, orbiting him in the school yard. Occasionally Rudy grabbed the scrawniest of them—a homely, wheezing asthmatic—and twisted his limbs one at a time. He commanded the asthmatic to confess explicit sex crimes with his mother, his father, his dog. Everybody laughed and even the asthmatic grinned plaintively. You’re a riot, Rudy. You are—you’re the funniest guy I know. You oughta be a comedian. Rudy never once suspected himself of bullying. He was merely amusing his friends. He viewed popularity as a social obligation, like the ballot. When the bell rang the timid orbiting boys dispersed readily to their classes and Rudy, in his own time, lumbered along behind, thirteen years old and one hundred ninety seven pounds, and nobody told him what to do anymore. Not even his parents.
Rudy! Rudy, stop that! You heard me, young man! Let go of your mother—I mean right this minute! Father bellowed punily.
Damn, Rudy thought, and released Mom’s red perfumed arm. Damn if anybody sends me to military school, and flung the academy brochure in the trash. I’m not a failure. I will succeed. I am tough, too, and will make my mark on the world. Just watch.
Father and Mom departed for the Riviera, and left Rudy under the aegis of a flinching, reluctant maid. Just fine with me, Rudy thought. I don’t need anybody. I’m happy to be me, just like they recommend on television talk shows. He deposited himself at the kitchen table and trooped through a stack of grilled cheese sandwiches as if through so many Saltines.
Rudy dropped out of school at sixteen. Father leased him a two bedroom apartment in the Financial District and promptly departed with Mom to Rio where, it was rumored, they developed a successful liaison with two blonde, liquid women Mom had met in Toronto the year before. Rudy, meanwhile, ate. Mountains of toast, vistas of jelly and syrup, acres of Rice Puffies and Sugar Dongs and Candy Cakes and Twinky Pies. Crushed plastic cereal toys littered the floors of his apartment. A mobile landmark, Rudy strolled immensely through the neighborhood, easily visible from high office buildings, helicopters, incoming passenger planes. He visited Taco Heaven, Mrs. Mary’s Candy House, Happy Jack’s Ice Cream Palace, and returned home munching candy apples, barbecued sides of beef, Big Macs. He squeezed blithely through crowds of slim, fashionable secretaries, and never glanced twice at their slit skirts, high heels, polished nails. Desire never pestered Rudy; his public hair remained downy, innocent. The family doctor proposed hormonal supplementation. Adamant, Rudy refused. He was not sick. He was inconceivably healthy. His life was purposeful, coherent and determined: he ate, he slept, he waited.
Steve Dunnigan appeared at Rudy’s door one summer afternoon. Rudy was uncertain of the year. The seasons had flitted by like moths. Rudy shifted his weight away from the door and Dunnigan sidled into the cluttered apartment. Dunnigan wore a faded Grateful Dead teeshirt, stained levis, tattered Keds. My, how you’ve grown, he said. Rudy slumped into a bean-bag chair and the straining plastic envelope burst with a pop, spewing brown varnished beans everywhere. Rudy sagged unconcernedly as the chair depleted, listening to the vague familiar man through his stuffy brain.
I came to warn you, Dunnigan said.
Rudy yawned. Dunnigan scratched his head, and white dandruff spilled onto the floor.
Have you heard about IRM, Rudy?
No, Rudy croaked, and massaged his Adam’s apple circumspectly.
Innate Releaser Mechanism. Genetic knowledge, knowledge coded into the DNA. Instinct, really. But an instinct, a mechanism, which must be triggered by a behavioral cue, understand? Mother bird does a little dance, perhaps, and activates the fledgeling’s migratory program. Then the fledgeling departs for Tehachapi, Capistrano, Guam.
Rudy reached for a crushed Ritz Cracker box, rattled crumbs into his mouth.
The cue was tactile, Rudy.
Rudy tore open the box, licked more yellow crumbs from waxed paper.
A few years ago, undergraduates at UC Research came into contact with the statue. Today these students are withdrawn, anti-social, disrespectful of authority, obese, and under heavy sedation at UC Medical. The doctors and scientists have agreed on a tentative diagnosis. The prognosis is catastrophe ... Rudy, are you listening?
Rudy picked up the telephone and dialed Chicken Delite. Three buckets of center breast, he thought, and a gallon of cole slaw. The line was busy.
The statues are containers, Rudy, distributing life’s essential ingredients throughout the universe. But the molecules of the container must be fused, the container launched. Think of a simple atomic reaction. A solitary atom is split, and the devastation is well publicized. Your body is composed of how many trillions of atoms, Rudy?
Rudy put down the phone, his head lolled against the wall. A few last beans dribbled from the exhausted plastic envelope.
Cosmic evolution—just think of it, Rudy. Life is forged from calamity, catastrophe, annihilation. The ultimate purpose of life—mere perseverance. And the law of evolution? Survival of the fittest—
Father, Rudy said. Hypnagogic, he stared at the ceiling.
Rudy, wake up!
Rudy started upright. Chicken Delite? he asked.
Would you like to see the statue again, Rudy? Would you like that?
Yes, Rudy thought. Yes yes. He raised himself courageously to his feet. The varnished beans seethed on the floor.
There’s food in my car. Hungry, Rudy? Come on, Rudy, come on ... Dunnigan led Rudy out the door, rolled open the side of his van.
Rudy clambered inside, smelling pizza. Three cardboard containers streaked with oil. He opened the top box. The pizza was still warm, the cheese stiff and congealed. He divided the slices and transferred them, slice by slice, into his mouth. The van’s door slammed shut, bolts were thrown. Rudy chewed pepperoni, mozzarella, briny anchovies.
The van’s engine erupted, along with a nervous spasm in Rudy’s gut.
The van moved out. An air vent communicated with the driver’s seat.
Everything will be fine, Rudy. They dig out a tiny chunk of your brain—no bigger than a sausage. You’ll be happy, then. People will like you; you’ll like people. We’ll start you on an exercise regimen, a diet. Hell, with your money, you can just take your pick of the ladies. You won’t be lonely anymore. You’ll be just like everybody else.
But I’m not like everybody else, Rudy reassured himself, and placed his palm against his stomach. Something percolated deep inside, his bowels contracted. He tried to hold it in. Father would get very mad. Father hated when Rudy smelled up the car, and rolled down all the electric windows.
Just you wait and see, Rudy. We can command top dollar from the university, once I inform them of your condition. Let me handle it. Did I tell you they fired me? I used to know Johnny Carson and his wife personally. Now what’s my doctorate worth? All-night-delivering pizzas to junkies, high school parties, perverts. But I’ve learned. This time they’ll deal on my conditions. This time I’ll demand tenure—
The pressure mounted in Rudy’s stomach. He cried out.
What’s that? Watch your temper, Rudy. I don’t want you ending up like the others at UC Med. Armstraps and thorazine—very uncomfortable. And more than anything, Rudy, I want you to be comfortable. The fridge at our motel is packed with Candy Cakes, Twinky Pies, Rice Puffies, and plenty of that white soul food—mayonnaise and Wonder Bread.
Rudy returned the final slice of pizza to the container, closed the lid. He had lost his appetite.
—Did I mention the color teevee?
Rudy lay flat
on his back, gripping his stomach with both hands. Just when the pain grew intolerable, the deep voice interposed. Life is light. Life is calamity, catastrophe, annihilation. You are life, Rudy. Annihilate. Annihilate color teevee, Rice Puffies, UC Medical, Innate Releaser Mechanisms, the Financial District, military school, the homely asthmatic, the monotone principal, marshmallows, Johnny Carson, icy Margaritas, Sister Maria Theresa, Uruguay, Father and Mom. Will they see me in Rio? Rudy wondered. Just before they feel the impact of your cosmic prestige, the voice answered. Rudy chuckled contentedly. His colon fluttered.
Will they be proud? What will they think when they see me?
What the termites thought when the hammer came down. Life is light.
Every muscle in Rudy’s body contracted abruptly. And then, just before the flash, Rudy realized he would finally make his mark on the world.
THE MAN WITH LEGS by Al Sarrantonio
Born in New York on May 25, 1952, Al Sarrantonio graduated with an English degree from Manhattan College in Riverdale in 1974, attending the Clarion Science Fiction Writers Workshop that summer. Deciding to get closer to his prey, Sarrantonio stacked books in a warehouse for a couple years, then spent six years at Doubleday editing science fiction, fantasy, horror, and westerns. For the past two years he has been a full-time writer, with numerous short story sales to Heavy Metal, Weirdbook, Twilight Zone Magazine, Fantasy Book, Whispers, Analog, Amazing, and other magazines, as well as such anthologies as Shadows, Fears, Terrors, Ghosts, and Death. His fantasy/horror novel, The Worms, will be published by Doubleday this year, followed by Campbell Wood in 1985. He is presently completing work on a third novel, Totentanz. A former denizen of the Bronx, Sarrantonio now lives the life of a gentleman author in Putnam Valley, New York.
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