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. When 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 hundreds—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 that 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 online 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 would 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.
5
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 emoGoth 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. If we weren’t so swamped 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.
5
“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 into 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—
Four 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 raked 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 all 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.
5
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...
TODD JOHNSON MCCAFFREY wrote his first science-fiction story when he was twelve and has been writing on and off ever since. Including the New York Times Bestselling Dragon’s Fire, he has written eight books in the Pern universe both solo and in collaboration with his mother, Anne McCaffrey; appeared in many anthologies, most recently with his short story, “Coward,” in When the Hero Comes Home (2011), and with “The Dragons of Prague” in Dr. Who - Short Trips: Destination Prague (2008), and the mini-anthology Six. Visit his website at http://www.toddmccaffrey.org
Cycle of Revenge
Erik Buchanan
“Melviiiiiiin! Melvin!!!”
I hate that stupid name.
Melichor Blackheart shook his head and tried to focus his eyes.
“Melvin Bright! You get your skinny ass down those stairs and get your chores done now!”
A woman’s voice.
Ms. Janet Wilkin’s voice.
It worked! It worked!!!!
“Melvin, I will take my strap to you if you aren’t in this kitchen in one minute!”
Melichor’s grin stretched his face. He hadn’t felt this exhilarated since he’d fed Wolfe-Bergerdorff’s larvae into the water supply at Newton Station. Those things multiplied a thousand times in an hour once they were inside a host. He’d watched a thousand colonists die that day, eaten from the inside out.
And damned if the larvae didn’t turn into the prettiest butterflies.
“You hear, boy? I’ll whip you bloody!”
Not this time, Melichor thought.
Melichor had stepped into the time machine in desperation. His pistol had been out of charge. He’d killed a dozen of the black-clad, armoured, machine-enhanced police—the last two with a knife. His gang had accounted for dozens. And now?
Now Melichor could wreak havoc on the entire universe, thirty years before they even realized he was a threat. That would show those bastards. He’d kill the generals while they were still privates; cut their wives and children to ribbons in front of them.
And the whole time, they’ll never know why.
It was delightful, really.
“Melvin!”
And I’ll start with that scrawny bitch downstairs.
He couldn’t wait to see the look on her face. He rolled to his feet and headed for the door.
The door was too big.
Melichor was a strong, tall man. Then he’d had biomechanical implants to make him well over two metres tall. He should have had to duck to get through the low door of his attic room. Instead, he was barely above the handle.
Oh, no.
He yanked open the door and ran to the bathroom.
Oh...
In the mirror, he saw a seven-year-old. A too-skinny, brown-eyed, tousle-haired moppet, with skin brown from the sun, wearing only a pair of shorts in the boiling heat of the Klaridian summer.
...Fuck.
His fist slammed down onto the counter, making hardly any noise at all.
It wasn’t supposed to work like this!
“MELVIN!”
A hard hand grabbed his ear and twisted, hauling him up onto his toes.
Ms. Wilkin shoved him out of the bathroom and dragged him by his ear down the stairs to the kitchen. Still pinching his ear, she began whipping him with her strap. Melichor screamed as the hard leather licked his skin with fire.
It’s not fair! I’m a fucking warlord!
I had my own planet!
The strap licked out again and again, and Melichor wailed and cried and finally collapsed on the floor. The woman kicked him until he got up, then sent him stumbling out of the kitchen with two heavy buckets of pig slops.
“And don’t you spill it boy, or you’ll get it again, you hear me?”
Fucking old bitch.
He’d been the richest warlord on the edge worlds. He’d had his own spaceships. He’d had his own slave race. He’d had kings and politicians and business leaders grovelling on their bellies before him. He’d had their daughters on their knees. And their sons, if they were pretty enough.
And now I’m this pathetic, whining thing.
The time machine had been a whim, really. He’d taken it because he liked the thought of owning something no one else had. The old man who’d tried to sell it to him had given him no guarantees that it would work.
“We know it is possible for independent particles to jump through time,” the old man had said, “but there’s no evidence it will work for people. And then there’s the question of whether a person can inhabit two places at the same point in time.”
“But you’re pretty sure it works, are you?” said Melichor, looking at the contraption the man had taken three days to set up in Melichor’s rec room. It had two wide, thick pillars, with a glassed-in section in the middle. On one column was a simple panel with numbers and a small screen. The other was blank.
“Fairly sure,” said the old man. “And knowing you appreciate the unusual, I thought I would sell it to you, to fund my research.”
“Hm.” Melichor looked at the machine, decided he wanted it. “You thought wrong.”
He grabbed the old man’s arm in one biomechanical hand. Melichor heard the bone snap and the man scream as he shoved the old fucker into the machine. Melichor’s top lieutenants cheered as he typed in -100,000 years, then hit the big green button.
The machine lit up so bright it blinded them all. When they could see again, the old man was gone.
He’d intended to try something a little more practical, like sending himself a note six days before, or putting one of his men through to the previous year to kill a rival he hadn’t known about then.
Then the police had come, and everything had ended in fireballs and blood.
Assholes.
Now, his hands ached from carrying the buckets. His small, thin back and legs smarted and stung from the strap. And seven-year-old Melvin could do nothing but what he was told. So he heaved the buckets of slop down the path to the pig barn.
I am NOT Melvin, god-dammit. I am Melichor.
A farm. Of all the places to be raised. A stupid, ugly, stinking farm.
Well, now I know that one person can’t physically exist twice in the same time.
Solar collectors on the roofs of the buildings, charged by the two suns above, powered everything mechanical. Muscles powered everything else. Because no matter how technologically advanced people became they still needed food, and the most expensive food was hand-grown, organic, pure earth food, raised by labour and the sweat of a farmer’s brow. It was a hard damn life, but it paid so well that most folks could retire in less than twenty years, if they worked hard.
And when the folks who raised such expensive food said they needed labour, well, what better place to put a young boy with no real prospects?
I still can’t believe they sold me to this place.
When he was twenty-five and out of prison, he hunted down his parents. He cut their bellies open, tied their guts around the central support pillar of their house, and then lit the place on fire.
God, it had been fun, watching them run screaming, intestines like giant umbilical cords dragging behind them.
&
nbsp; He’d wanted to kill the Wilkins, but they had both died while he was in prison. He settled for burning the farm to the ground with its new owners inside.
But that was last time, wasn’t it? It’s all different now.
He stepped carefully with the slops. He needed to heal, first. And to find a knife.
After all, accidents happen all the time on organic farms.
But the accidents never happened.
Three years passed. At ten years old, Melvin—Melichor. I’m still Melichor—was starting to gain some of his height, but was still gangly. He could carry the slop buckets without spilling and fork the hay into the pig pen. He could take care of the chickens and the eggs and spend whole days in the fields letting the sun burn the pain from the bloody marks on his back.
But he hadn’t been able to kill the Wilkins.
Every time he tried something, every time he thought of a way to kill Ms. Wilkin or her bastard husband, every time he tried running away, something would go wrong, or they would notice something, or his child’s body just couldn’t do what he needed it to.
Then it was the strap from her or the fist from him or both, and nights sleeping on the cold floor of the cellar.
Melichor tried to remember what had happened the first time he’d been a child, so he could figure out how to change it. It had been so long ago that it was a haze. He remembered some of the beatings, but couldn’t remember what they’d been for. He couldn’t remember if he’d plotted revenge before, or just took it like the snivelly little bitch boy he had been.
“Mel! Mel, wait up!”
He remembered the pest, though.
Angel, they called her. Angelica Yin, really—all golden skin and golden hair and perfect round face. Two years younger than him and worse, a girl. Brought her in the year he turned nine. A pretty little thing with a quick mind and small nimble hands.
Melichor got her into trouble in her first three days, and watched with glee as Ms. Wilkin’s strap licked up and down her legs. It was so much fun, he did it again, and got to watch the old man turn her over his knee and apply the flat of his hand to her bare backside.
When the Villian Comes Home Page 35