The Old Reactor (7 page)

The closer he came to the tree, the more distinctly he could hear groans of pain. The sickened jelly had curled up with his head close to a small campfire, his cap fallen off and smoldering. The bright blue eyes were open but unfocused. Moldenke kicked him a few times to be sure he was completely unconscious if not dead. He didn’t want to reach for the valves until he was sure he wouldn’t be bitten or sprayed with a hidden can of deformant.

Now, without a knife or a pair of scissors, it was a question of pinching off the fleshy valves with his fingernails. He knelt down and grasped one of the valves between his thumb and forefinger, sinking his long thumbnail into the flesh as far as it would go, then pulled the valve loose from its root. He did this to the other valve, put them both in his jacket pocket, and walked briskly out of the Park to the streetcar stop on Arden Boulevard, feeling relieved that his favor to Big Ernie was taken care of. When he showed his pass card, the conductor said, “You smell. Is that gel?”

“Yes. I was handling some valves and I’ve got gel on me.”

“Sit in the back.”

Moldenke gladly obliged and headed for the rear, holding on to seat backs to keep his balance as the car clattered off on the downtown line. It was early morning by the time it reached the stop a block or two from Ernie’s Bakery. He’d walked only a few steps when his bowel gave early warning by passing dry gas. It wasn’t all that urgent. He felt he could do his business with Ernie and still get to the privy in time.

Sorrel was behind the register as usual, her poor face heavily caked and painted. “Hello, Moldenke. You smell awful.”

“Yes, I know. Is your father here? I have something to show him.”

“He’s in the back, proofing dough.”

“I’ll wait, then.”

“You have the valves? Did you get the jelly?”

“I did. I have them in my pocket. That’s what you’re smelling.”

“Let me see them.”

Moldenke took the two valves out of his pocket and displayed them in an open palm. “It wasn’t easy getting them off. I had to dig in and pull hard. They came out with the roots. There wasn’t anything to cut them with.”

“It gives me the chills to look at them. Let me go get Daddy.” She gave Moldenke a bear claw.

He sat at the table and waited quite a long time. Eventually Ernie came out, dusted all over with flour. “She tells me you got the little demon.”

Moldenke held out the valves. “There they are.”

“Nice work. We’re glad to know he’s dead and gone. I’d give you a reward, but everything’s free here.” He turned to Sorrel. “Like my little girl there who’s free to do anything she wants to.” He winked at Moldenke. “She might get sexy with you, who knows?”

Sorrel lowered a veil over a withered, blushing cheek and put three or four claws into a bag. Ernie delivered them to Moldenke’s table, bent over, and whispered, “Her face is no good anymore, but the rest of her is fine. Why don’t you ask her out on a date? You can use my card. Go to Saposcat’s. Eat some food, drink some bitters. Have some fun.”

Sorrel overheard. She smiled and turned away.

“Maybe,” Moldenke said, giving her his awkward little salute. “When I get settled. I need a little time.”

Ernie and Sorrel followed Moldenke out onto the sidewalk and waved goodbye.

Zanzetti Scienterrifics has produced the first “preternatural boy.” He was born in the seventeenth month of fetal development, delivered by a “treated” jellyhead mother andhoused in a basement room of Zanzetti’s Bunkerville laboratory complex, kept comfortable with air coolers and de-humidifying units. Prone to fungal ravages of the epidermis he was otherwise sound and healthy.

The
City Moon
’s headline was: FIRST ‘GODBOY’ BORN IN BUNKERVILLE

Zanzetti was quoted as saying, “His brain will be a whopping twelve pounder, if he matures. We’ll harvest it, keep it alive in a saline and sugar solution, and see if we can get it to help us think better.”

“The paper called him ‘Godboy,’” a reporter said. “Are we to draw any conclusions?”

Zanzetti shrugged and looked upward. “Gods have been around since ancient times. We expect this one, like the others, to grow up and change the world for better or worse. I’m a scientist, and I say, eventually, why not now?”

One afternoon Moldenke went to the Saposcat’s on Arden for lunch. He found Udo and Salmonella there. Salmonella ate mud fish, picking them up in her hands and chewing them through, even the softened bones. Udo drank tea, ate nothing, and read the
City Moon
, which arrived in Altobello with day-old news. A reader had to allow for recent developments, especially if they related to events in Altobello, which had no newspaper.

“Well, yippie,” Salmonella beamed. “It’s Moldenke. Sit with us.”

“Look at this,” Udo said, tapping the paper with his finger. “Some kind of jellyhead show over on the east side tonight. It says Brainerd Franklin’ll make an appearance. Let’s go. Let’s all go.”

Salmonella placed her hand on Moldenke’s knee. “Come on. Come with us. Franklin’s that famous golfer. Daddy won’t shoot him. He’s too famous.”

“It’ll be fun,” Udo said.

“All right, I’ll go along.”

Salmonella clapped her hands. “Yippie!”

Udo folded the paper and swatted a fly on the window sill. “We’ll pick you up in front of the Tunney at half-past seven.”

Moldenke slept the afternoon away in his room, awakened at six by the distant sound of the
angelus
ringing in the tower of the Church of the Lark. He put on his uniform and boots and combed his hair without a mirror, glad he’d had a chance to sleep, to store some energy for the show.

Udo’s motor pulled up exactly at seven thirty. “Get in. It starts at eight sharp.”

Salmonella, sitting in the passenger seat, slid over to give Moldenke room to sit. “Promise you won’t shoot one, Daddy?”

“Shut up you little twit. Quit hounding me. They don’t feel pain like we do.”

Salmonella brushed back her hair with a quick motion and let her tongue part her lips into a smile. “What about you, Moldenke? Do you know if they feel pain?”

“They lack consciousness, it says in the brochures. They took it out of their own heads and put it into machines. That’s what turned them into jellyheads way back when. So they really don’t feel much of anything.”

Udo placed a hand around the grip of his niner to still the tremor, then rubbed the weapon with an oiled cloth.

Moldenke ate the second bear claw, soggy now and soaked with the fishy oil they were fried in, then lit a Julep. “I’m worried this won’t go well,” he said. “There might be trouble.”

Udo shrugged. “Trouble? No chance of that. So what if I wax a few jellies. People used to kill chickens and fish, didn’t they?”

Moldenke retrieved a long-stored memory of killing a chicken. It had happened when he was visiting his late aunt’s country home, where she kept a dozen free-roaming pullets. One spring day she asked him to go out and kill one and give it to the cook to fry. “He makes the most sublime spring chicken. We’ll have it for supper tonight. You kill it, he’ll pluck it.”

Moldenke went out and snatched the legs of one of the pullets and held it upside down. He took the head in his hand and pulled at it ineffectively, never hard enough to take it off. A pair of garden shears would probably do the job faster and better. He went to the shed, carrying the bird by the feet. The shears hung on a nail in the wall. He closed the door to keep the pullet from escaping and chased it with the shears, finally trapping it in a corner and closing the dull blades across its neck. Rather than shearing off the head cleanly, the neck merely folded flat between the blades, crushing the bones.

“I did kill a chicken once,” he said. “The wrong way. The way I thought was the smartest, and the chicken suffered a slow death. I could taste it in the meat when we ate it for dinner. It was off flavor.”

Udo said, “Enough blather. It’s almost dark. Let’s go see that show.” He set the finder for an address on the east side and the motor rolled toward the bypass.

Only days ago it was learned that near the Old Reactor, a jellyhead village of odd little mushroom-shaped dwellings has sprung up. Some are hemispherical, some barrel-like, some oblong, and at the top of each is a bucket of gel sacks, tending to prove Zanzetti’s theory of interspatial communication between the sacks and distant life.

Should free people take action? “No, not yet,” the scientist said. “Let me break the code, see what they’re talking about. There could be a way to distort the impulses from the sack and get the jellies to behave themselves and work for the general good.”

Zanzetti’s experiments will continue, and periodic reports and memoranda on his progress will be issued until the code is broken. In related research, the great scientist has pioneered a process for partially reviving newly dead jellies and putting them to work. Though he is guarded in any release of specifics, he does say that it involves the use of electromechanical stimulation of the cranial gel sack. All the mechanics and electronics are packed into a small box the size of a deck of cards worn at the back of the neck. The technique has worked on test subjects in the laboratory, Zanzetti says, and he hopes to begin additional trials very soon. “They won’t be like they were in the full bloom of life,” he warns, “but put them in front of a punch press or a milling machine and they’ll work it all day and expect no wage. They’re also non-vocal, so they’ll go about their tasks quietly. And they don’t eat, so they won’t require feeding or toileting facilities.”

Zanzetti proposes to use them in performing menial tasks. “They’ll sweep the floor, they’ll draw your bath, they’ll chop vegetables and wash windows. There’s no limit to the little jobs they can do. At bed time you just remove the box and they’re out like a light, dead to the world. Let them sleep in the garage or the cellar.”

After parking the motor, Udo, Moldenke and Salmonella stood on the stoop of a lap-sided, two-story house that had recently been painted, in contrast to the dilapidated buildings on both sides of it and all through the old neighborhood. There were a few streetlights burning dimly on low current.

Udo rang the bell. They waited in the heat until someone opened the shutters, raised the shade, and parted the curtains of an upstairs window. It was a woman with a slender face and a fair complexion. She blinked in the sun and held a hand over her eyes. Curls of black hair fell in ringlets to her shoulder. She opened the window, smiled down from the folds of the muslin curtains, and pointed at a service alley running along the side of the house. “Are you looking for the jellyhead show?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Udo said.

“There’s ten or twelve of them in my basement, living down there like bats. Here I am with the best kept house as far as I can see in the only decent neighborhood in Altobello, and look what moves in. Now they’re putting on a show.”

Udo placed his hand over his heart and patted the side of his weapons satchel. “We’ll take care of them, ma’am.”

“Let me thank you in advance,” the woman said, closing the window and drawing the shade.

“Daddy, don’t shoot them.”

“I agree,” Moldenke said. “Let’s just watch the show.”

“Tell you what,” Udo said. “We’ll watch the show and then I’ll take care of business and get some valves after it’s over.” He went up the alley and through a low door.

Moldenke looked at Salmonella. “I’ll go with him. You stay out here.”

“No, I want to see the show.”

“All right,” Moldenke said. “If he starts shooting we’ll leave.”

Salmonella, wary, followed Moldenke down the alley and into the basement.

There were wooden folding chairs arranged in rows of ten and a small plyboard stage lit by a dim bulb hanging from a joist. Udo was sitting in a front row seat. A jelly at a table near the doorway greeted Moldenke and Salmonella. “Come in. The show is free tonight. Brainerd Franklin’s here. It’s a special appearance. He’s going to work with needles.”

Salmonella asked, “What does he do, balance them on his nose?”

“No, no, not at all. Let me take you backstage. You can ask him yourself. He is a treasure to us, to our community. I’m his assistant.”

Bed sheets had been draped over a rope to define the back of the stage. It took only a few steps to get there. Franklin sat on a wheeled stool at a vanity table. He wore a white terry-cloth bathrobe, the hood pulled over his head. When he saw the backstage visitors, now including Udo, he spun around and wheeled closer to them, extending his hand palm down, as if expecting it to be kissed. Moldenke took the hand awkwardly for a moment and released it. When he did, it fell back and struck the leg of the stool. Brainerd winced then coughed up a wad of clear gel.

In a whispered aside, the assistant said, “Careful now. He’s very delicate in this state.”

Udo’s bloodless lips pulled back into a snarl. “All right, Franklin, let’s get on with the show. My girl here wants to know what you do with the needles.”

Franklin’s ear valves were erect and dripping gel. “It’s almost show time, my friends. Please join the audience. You’ll see what I do with the needles.”

Ten or twelve jellies had taken their seats in front of the stage, set with a cane-back chair and a bowl of silver needles on a small table. Franklin appeared from behind the bedsheet curtains, lifting himself along like an ape, using his fists as feet, and took his place in the chair.

His assistant ambled onto the stage. “The great golfer is in a trance state now and will work with his needles.”

As Franklin’s head came to rest on his chest, the light was turned off.

“I don’t like this at all,” Udo whispered. “I’m going to start shooting in a minute. That son of a bitch might go critical.”

The light sparked on again. Franklin stepped out of the chair and heaved himself forward, closer to the small audience.

The assistant said, “It is his pleasure now to show you his needlework.”

Franklin turned about and lifted the hem of his robe. There was a low hum of excitement in the room. When the robe was raised high, everyone saw a massive scrotal sack trussed with sewing needles placed either sideward or upward and yielding a good bit of blood.