The Old Reactor (10 page)

The boiling service idea had come to Myron when he read in the
City Moon
that hundreds of pounds of gel-soiled clothing was either going to the dump or being burned in back yard fires. Jellies had been increasing in dramatic numbers and so were jelly killings, which more than likely ended in a well-aimed discharge of gel. Boiling, he knew, would neutralize the odor and restore the clothes and footwear to usability. He opened a small operation in his basement, but a shortage of wood to fuel enough fire to boil the water in his kettles threatened to close it quickly.

The facility at Steaming Springs came into Myron’s possession when, out for a walk, he found the place abandoned. Apparently the it had ceased to boil after a hundred years of geothermal activity and the former boiling service had to close its doors.

Myron lived in a small house on the property, where he continued to pursue his art typing. Rather than haul his table and machine all the way into central Altobello, he simply carried his work in a portfolio and gave them away on the streets. That way he had nothing but grateful customers. He followed this routine every Sunday for months, then awoke one day to see steam rising again from the Springs. That night they were at full boil. The boilery was in business again.

When Moldenke arrived there and stood over the Springs, he looked down on an appalling scene: Myron’s body floated atop the boiling water while a ring of jellyheads stood around the pool laughing. “He looks like a dead fish,” one of them said. The naked body pinwheeled in the boiling, swirling current, its flesh bright red and split open in places.

One of the jellyheads spotted Moldenke and shouted, “Let’s boil that guy, too.” Three or four of them climbed toward him.

Exhausted as he was, Moldenke saw no other option but to run, and he did, as far as his sore ankles and breath would let him, dodging in and out of the crepe myrtles and eventually losing the two sluggish jellyheads trotting behind him. He was close enough to the byway to hear the rumble of speeding motors. He waved at passing vehicles, hoping one would stop and take him to the public bath near the Tunney.

Twenty or thirty went by. To make things worse, a hot, dry wind began with the first light of dawn. Moldenke remembered reading in a brochure that in some years Altobello was visited by an incessant wind, winter and summer, cold and hot that drove the early freemen half mad.

With his back to the traffic, Moldenke held out a thumb hoping that someone would see that he was far too weary and weak to do them any harm and offer him a lift. He heard one of the motors gearing down for a stop and turned to see Udo’s motor pulling onto the shoulder of the pavement.

“Get in, Moldenke,” Udo said, turning the crank that opened the door.

Moldenke got in and sat in the front passenger seat. “This is quite a coincidence, isn’t it? Hundreds of motors going along the byway and there you are to pick me up.”

“The roots of coincidence run deeper than we think, Moldenke. Our meeting in Point Blast, was that a coincidence?”

“I don’t see any other explanation.”

“Suit yourself. Be an idiot…What are you doing out here anyway?”

“Visiting a friend of mine at the boiler. Some jellies boiled him in the springs, then they were after me, chasing me. It’s lucky you came by. I’m exhausted. I want to get a bath, some food, and back to the Tunney for sleep.”

“I’ll take you there, but luck had nothing to do with it.”

“All right. Drop me off at the public bath. I’ll walk the rest of the way.”

“Will do.”

When Udo accelerated in a final push toward Altobello, a spume of black foam shot from the motor’s bleeder pipe. Udo saw it in the rear-view. “Bad break,” he said. “The steamer is hot. We’ll have to stop for the night. It’ll take till dawn for it to cool down.”

Udo angled the motor into the Black Hole Motel lot and turned off the engine. “We’ll stay here tonight and have a shower.”

Salmonella jumped out of her nook and clapped her hands. “Goody! Goody!” She put on a pair of rubber flip flops.

Udo said, “They tell me the workers at the Old Reactor used to stay here, so they have the best showers. Artesian well. Cold and clean.”

Salmonella hurried to the lobby, stepping on hot asphalt most of the way. The bottoms of her flip-flops were coated with it. Udo and Moldenke followed, soft stepping over the asphalt. In the lobby, a fluff-haired desk clerk asked Udo, “You here for Coward’s Day?”

Moldenke lit a Julep. “Is it Coward’s Day already?”

“It sure is and we’re almost full. Got one room left. Fifteen. It ain’t the best one.”

Udo showed his pass card and signed the register. “You
do
still have cold showers.”

“Sometimes, if the pump’s working. My husband, he got sent back to Bunkerville. I don’t know how to fix nothing. It’s room fourteen. Fifteen, I mean. Key’s on that peg up there.”

“I don’t see any other motors in the lot,” Moldenke said. “And you have only one vacancy?”

“Jelly families around here, they always come in on foot for Coward’s Day. Heck, I can’t stop ’em. You want the room or not?”

“Yes, we want a room,” Salmonella huffed. “We stopped here, didn’t we? Don’t be so stupid.”

“Excuse my daughter,” Udo said. “She’s been a mean young turd since I got her out of the Home. I’m going to slap her silly if she doesn’t stop.”

Salmonella snatched the key from the peg, ran toward the row of numbered rooms, and tried the key in fifteen. It fit, but was stubborn in the lock, refusing to turn. Eventually, after dozens of tries, the door opened to a burst of stale air. An ugly tableau presented itself. On the floor, beneath a hole in the ceiling, was a mound of rotting gel sacks with cockroaches roaming over it.

“This is bad,” Salmonella said. We can’t stay in here. Those things smell terrible.” She put her hands on her hips. “And I’m hot. I want a shower.”

“She said fifteen, didn’t she?” Moldenke asked. “Maybe she meant fourteen. Let’s try the key in fourteen.”

The key did fit fourteen. The door opened to a musty but clean room with a shower stall and an electric light on the ceiling. There were folding cots leaning against the wall and a splintery dresser made of pine. Moldenke opened a drawer. Inside was a copy of the
Treatise
and several folding paper fans. He picked the
Treatise
up for a moment, looked at the fading cover, and put it back. He gave fans to Salmonella and Udo and took one himself. It was baking hot in the room. Opening the window only let in a blistering wind.

“I’m first in the shower!” Salmonella shrieked. She ducked into the stall and closed the oilcloth curtain.

Moldenke said, “I’ve been tied in such a knot the past few days that I haven’t eaten anything. I’m hungry.”

Udo unfolded a cot and lay down. “There’s some kerd cakes in the motor. Go out and get them.”

On the way to the motor, Moldenke passed an out-ofuse swimming pool half full of water, a relic of the Black Hole’s heyday, when the Old Reactor was under construction. Though the sun blinded him, he could shade his eyes with his hand and see two dead jellies floating in the pool’s warm water. Their ear valves had been snipped off. Rats entered and exited holes in their bloated abdomens and gel from the leaking sacks streamed into the water and discolored it. Moldenke stepped away quickly.

After gathering up a few dried cakes of kerd and a couple of salted mud fish from the motor, Moldenke stopped at the motel office on the way to the room. He wanted to tell the clerk about the jellies in the pool. Perhaps she didn’t know. But the blinds were drawn and his knock was not answered.

When he got back to the room, Salmonella had finished showering and was sitting on a cot in her petticoat, fanning herself. “Damn, it’s hot in here.”

Udo sang in the shower, “Hang out yer laundry on the Siegfried line…dad a da, dad a da.”

“I saw two dead jellies in the pool,” Moldenke said. “Someone got to them before your daddy did.”

“Don’t tell him. He’ll get excited.”

Moldenke offered a cake of kerd to Salmonella. “This is all we have, except for a couple of mud fish.”

“No green soda?”

“Sorry, no.”

“I want green soda!”

“Please, for your own good, stop shouting. We don’t want any trouble. In the morning we’ll stop at the first Saposcat’s we see.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

“I like you better than Daddy. He’s mean.”

“He’s your father. That’s all there is to it.”

“I’d like to kill him. I think I will.”

“To be honest, there’s no law here that says you can’t. Back in Bunkerville, you’d be exploded for doing it.”

Udo finished showering and it was Moldenke’s turn. He took off his filthy clothes and entered the stall. Aside from being cold, what weak flow of water came from the shower head smelled of sulfur but was good enough to rinse off the patina of sweat and body dander that crusted him. Now, until he could get his dirty uniform boiled, it was a matter of putting it on an almost clean body.

He, Salmonella, and Udo settled into their cots. Moldenke wanted to keep the ceiling light on for a while so he could read parts of the
Treatise
to put himself to sleep.

Udo grunted then turned over. “I don’t care. I feel sick.”

Salmonella was wide awake. “Read to me. I can’t sleep.”

Moldenke read and partly paraphrased as he went along: “This is a chapter about the cries of animals…‘The angry tones of wild beasts can cause an awful sensation. It might seem that these modulations of sounds are not arbitrary but are related to the things they represent. But the main thing is, they make themselves understood.’”

Salmonella sat up. “So that means when a dog barks, other dogs know what that means. I’ve heard of dogs. They don’t have any in Altobello. Or if a bird sings, other birds understand.”

“Right. I think that’s what it means.”

By this time Udo was snoring loudly. His throat gurgled, his nostrils whistled with every breath. Sometimes the breathing stopped altogether for as long as a minute.

“Maybe he’ll die in his sleep,” Salmonella said.

“Never mind that,” Moldenke said. “Let me finish reading this and I’ll turn out the light…So, Burke says that our language is not so clear as the language of animals. Yet the modifications of sound in our language could be what’s sublime about it, as opposed to theirs, which is merely beautiful, because our language is almost infinite, which cannot be said of theirs.”

Now Salmonella was asleep and Moldenke’s lids were heavy. He closed the
Treatise
and lay his weary head back against the canvas cot and fell quickly to sleep.

In the morning, when he awoke, Udo was oiling and cleaning his niner. Salmonella still slept.

“You see any jellies out there, Moldenke?”

“No, none. They must be napping.”

“I don’t feel good. I’m not in the mood anyway. Let’s get on the road. The steamer’s cool by now. You drive.”

Moldenke felt refreshed after a good enough sleep. “I’ll go to the office and check us out.”

Udo handed Moldenke a time worn card with flayed edges. “What kind of card do you have? You’re new here. It might not cover this kind of luxury. Take mine.”

Moldenke walked over to the Black Hole office. The clerk was reading Burke’s
Treatise
and drinking from a mug of tea. “You people checking out?”

“We will be, yes. But I wanted to let you know, you’ve got two jellies dead in the old pool.”

The clerk lit a Julep and closed her book. “Jellies in the pool?”

“Two, with cut off valves.”

“Well, these are Cowards’ Days you know. There’s a lot of excitement. Jellies get shot. We find bodies all the time.”

Moldenke placed Udo’s pass card on the counter. “All right, then. I won’t worry about it. I’ll just go back to the room and we’ll get going.”

The clerk looked at the card suspiciously. “This is an old one.” She sniffed it.

“It belongs to my travel companion. I’m sure it’s a good card. He’s been here a long time.”

She gave the card back to Moldenke. “Happy motoring.”

Udo was in a foul mood when Moldenke returned to number fourteen. “I feel like death eating a cracker,” he said, “I think that little witch there poisoned me.”

Salmonella yawned. “I’m starving. Let’s go now.”

Udo raised his fist at her. “Shut up before I come over there and kick you hard. Can’t you see I’m sick?”

“Let’s go then,” Moldenke said. “He hoped Udo wouldn’t see the jellies in the pool as they walked to the motor and did his best to distract him by blathering on about the
Treatise
. “Really, Udo, who cares about the sublime and the beautiful? We have other things to think about, more urgent things. It’s a shame that’s the only book we can get here. There was a time when I read books. I was more alert. I could focus on things. Now I can’t.” Udo never saw the jellies, bent over as he was by stomach cramps.

“I did
not
poison him,” Salmonella said. “That gun oil got him sick.”

Udo burbled and seemed ready to upchuck.

The motor started up on the first crank. Moldenke let it run in place until he was sure there was no spume coming from the bleeder pipe then pulled onto the Byway and set the finder for Saposcat’s.

Udo slumped in the passenger’s seat, favoring his stomach and complaining now of a headache. Salmonella stood behind Moldenke as he drove. She spit on her finger and stuck it into his ear. “Wet Willie!”

“Stop that.”

“Hurry up. Drive fast.”

She gave him another Wet Willie.

“Stop that, please.”

Saposcat’s was crowded. They were offering a Coward’s Day breakfast special of mud fish and kerd. Udo sat on one side of a booth, Salmonella and Moldenke on the other. Most of the diners wore yellow Coward’s Day regalia.

The scrape of leg flesh signaled the approach of the waitress. “Morning. You all here for Cowards’ Day?”

“No, we’re not,” Moldenke said. “We’re headed for the west side.”

“You ought to stay. It’s something to see, I’ll tell you.”

“We’re in a hurry.”

“Okay, what’ll it be?”

Salmonella said, “Give me the special, with green soda.”