|
THERE IS AN
OLD HOUSE AT the edge of the woods about sixty kilometers out from the
extremes of the nearest megalopolis. It was built in another century and
resembles the architecture of the century before that one. In some ways it
evokes the end of many things: the end of the road, the end of a time, the
end of a search (which the house has been, and on occasion it still is).
But it is also a good place for beginnings, a good place to begin a story
about beginnings -- as good as any and better than most.
And it
began at dawn.
As the
first hint of daylight entered the large second floor bedroom where the
saurs slept in a great pile, Axel opened his eyes and whispered,
"Yeah!"
There was
stuff to do and he was ready.
He pulled
himself out from under Agnes's spiked tail and Rosie's bony crest and
horns, then over Charlie's big rear end, almost stepping into Pierrot's
gaping mouth. He pressed, prodded, and pushed his way until he could lift
up the blanket and make a straight dash to the window. He hopped onto a wooden
stool and from there climbed up another step to the box-seated window
ledge. His little blue head moved left to right like a rolling turret as he
stared out at the wall of trees past the yard, silhouetted against the
brightening sky.
The sun is
coming! And the sun is a star! And it's spinning through space! And we're
spinning through space around the sun! And -- there's stuff to do!
"Stuff
to do!" he whispered, hopped back to the stool and then to the floor.
Axel looked
back at the sleep-pile. It was a great, blanket-covered mound. Except for
the breathing, a few grumbled syllables and occasional twitches, none of
the other saurs stirred. They were good sleepers for the most part -- all
but Axel. Axel could run about all day long from one end of the old
Victorian house to the other, and when sleep time came and the saurs
gathered themselves into a pile, he would shut his eyes -- but nothing
happened. His mind kept running. Even when he did manage to drift off, his
dreams were of running, of traveling in speeding vehicles, like
interstellar cruisers. And even if he wasn't moving, he dreamed of motion,
of stars and planets and asteroids, of winds and birds and leaves in
autumn. The whole universe was whirling and spinning like an enormous
amusement park ride.
He'd been
to an amusement park once, so long ago he couldn't distinguish it anymore
from the rest of life.
He had no
need to creep out of the room. The thump-thump-thump of his big padded feet
disturbed no one. His tail in the air didn't make a sound. He ran past the
room of the big human, Tom Groverton. The human ran and ran all day long
too, cleaning and feeding and keeping the saurs out of trouble -- but he
got tired and slept almost as hard as the saurs.
Axel headed
down to the first floor. Descending human stairs should have been difficult
for a bipedal creature only forty centimeters tall, but he flew down them
with ease. There were so many things to do today! The universe was so big
-- that is, sooooo big! How could anyone just lie about when the sky was
already lighting up the world?
No way!
Axel thumped the floor with his tail. Space and Time and Time and Space!
The Universe is one big place!
He'd
learned that from the computer.
The
computer was on a desk in the dining room, or what had been the dining room
when the house was just a place for humans, before it became a shelter for
the saurs. The desk sat over by the east-facing window. The computer was
old in many respects, but the old computers were often more easily
upgraded, and as long as they were linked to all the marvelous systems out
there in the world past the porch and the yard, there was nothing this old
model couldn't do.
"Yeah!"
Axel rolled
a set of plastic steps up to the desk and dashed straight up until he stood
before the huge gray monitor -- huge to Axel, at least.
"Hey!
Reggie!" Axel addressed the computer by name.
The
computer could be voice-activated and voice-actuated. The brain box chirped
at Axel's greeting and the screen came to life. Icons were displayed in the
comers and along the top, one of them being the Reggiesystems icon:
"Reggie" himself, the light green seahorse-or-baby-sea-serpent
thing, with its round black eyes and orange wattle that drooped down his
jaw like a handlebar mustache.
The icon
dropped to the center of the screen and grew until it was almost half the
height of the screen. The figure of Reggie rotated from profile to head-on
and in a smooth, slightly androgynous voice he spoke:
"Reggie
is ready."
"Hiya!"
Axel waved a forepaw and smiled, mouth opened wide, revealing all his tiny,
thorn-like teeth.
"Good
morning, Axel," said Reggie. "What can Reggie do for you
today?" Reggie always referred to himself in the third person.
"A
whole bunch of stuff!" Axel stretched his forepaws far apart.
"Important stuff! Fate of the universe stuff! Really truly big
important stuff!" His head bobbed with each exclamation.
"Where
would you like to begin?" Reggie said with patience.
Axel looked
sharply to one side, then the other. "Don't know! I forgot.
Wait!" He nodded vigorously. "The screensaver! Show me the
screensaver!"
The icon's
head seemed to jiggle slightly, affirmatively, as if acknowledging the
request. Reggie disappeared and the screen darkened to black.
Axel drew
his paws together in anticipation.
A bright
speck appeared in the center of the darkness. It grew until it flickered
gently, like a star, then grew some more until it looked as big as the sun.
It was the
sun -- as it might look if you were flying through space, directly toward
it. It filled the screen until it seemed you were in imminent danger of
crashing right into it.
"Aaaaaaaahh!"
Axel screamed with delight.
The sun
moved off to the right corner of the screen, as if you were veering away
and passing it by. Darkness again. Another bright speck started to grow in
the screen's center: Mercury, the closest planet to the sun. It was
followed by Venus, then the Earth, and Mars, and Jupiter -- all the way
through the solar system until a pudgy oblong bump rolled past odd-wise and
all that was left on the screen were hundreds, thousands of bright specks,
changing their positions at differing speeds, as you might see them if you
were flying through space. "Yeah!" cried Axel. "Yeah!!"
Through the
haze of the Oort Cloud, then out past the solar system, the stars kept
coming and coming until you could make out a bright little smudge, like a
smeared thumbprint in luminous paint. It was a galaxy! Another galaxy!
"Yeah!"
shouted Axel. "Yeah yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah YEAH!"
The galaxy
grew in size until you could just about make out some of the more
individuated members of the star cluster. Axel cheered them on.
"Yes!
Galaxies! Let's go!"
The
screensaver cycle was over and it was back to the beginning: the little
speck grows into the sun, then the planets, then the far off galaxy
Axel
watched it all again, and then one more time before Reggie interrupted his
reverie.
"There
was something else you wished Reggie to do?"
"Ohhhh.
That's-right that's-right that's-right!" Axel kept his eyes on the
moving stars. He remembered someone from the dream he'd had during his
brief sleep: he couldn't remember who, but it was someone he wanted to talk
to. "I gotta send a message!"
"And
where do you wish to send the message?"
Still
looking at the screensaver, he said, "To space?
Reggie took
an instant longer than usual to reply. "Space, as an address, is not
very specific. Are there any particular coordinates in space to which you
wish your message directed?"
"What
are coordinates?" Axel kept looking at the stars.
The
screensaver blinked away. In its place appeared numbers from top to bottom:
numbers with decimal points and superscripted degree signs
"Coordinates,"
Reggie said, "are a way to divide space by increments, so that one can
more accurately determine which part of space one is looking at or to which
section one might want to direct a message."
"Ohhhhh."
Reggie
scrolled the numbers upward. Axel gaped at them, partly perplexed at the
notion of numbers as directions, partly in awe at the sheer volume of them.
Numbers, decimal points, degree signs -- space was threatening to become an
impenetrable wall of numbers. If he thought about it any more his head
would heat up and explode.
"That
one!" Axel pointed with his left forepaw. "I'll take that
one!"
The numbers
stopped scrolling. "Which one?" asked Reggie.
"That
one!" He pressed the forepaw to the glass screen, then tapped against
it adamantly.
The numbers
were so small -- and his forepaw so big in comparison -- that Reggie could
still not discern which coordinate Axel had chosen. Reggie highlighted one
of the numbers in bright red.
"This
one?"
"Yeah!
That's it!" In truth it wasn't. But the red highlighting was
distracting to Axel, whose choice of number was already purely arbitrary.
Facing a wall of numbers, one seemed as good as another. "Send it
there!"
"What
kind of message?" Reggie asked. "Vocal? Alphabetical characters?
Equations?'
"Like,
maybe radio," Axel said. "Or whatever you've got that's faster,
like micro-tachy-tot waves, or super-hydro-electro-neutrinos."
"One
moment," said Reggie. "At what frequency?"
"Frequency?
Just once is okay." He rubbed a little spot just under his jaw.
A machine,
even one as sophisticated as this Reggiesystems model, is not given to
sighing, though one might imagine this model had many occasions to do so.
What Reggie did was increase his pauses and slow down his speech delivery.
"What
is meant by 'frequency,' Axel --" Reggie explained it all carefully.
Axel faced another wall of numbers and made another choice exactly the same
way he'd made the first.
The numbers
disappeared and the screensaver images returned. Axel watched it as avidly
as if he'd never seen them before.
"Reggie
has reserved time on the radio telescope at Mount Herrmann. The message can
be sent at 13:47 our time this afternoon, when their first shift team
breaks for lunch."
"Wow!"
Axel's head reared back. "Thank you, Reggie.
Thank-you-thank-you-thank-you!"
"Reggie
still needs one more piece of information."
"What's
that?"
Very
slowly, Reggie said, "The message, please."
"Oh,
right!" Axel tried to remember the message he'd worked out during the
night, as he'd peeked out from under the blankets and stared out through
the window -- at the rectangle of indigo speckled with pinpoints of light
-- and imagined all the "space guys" out there. Space and Time
and Time and Space -- They might look like Axel: blue theropods with
coal-black eyes, tiny forepaws, and clumpy feet -- but without the long
scar down his back; or they might look like one of the other saurs --
miniature tyrannosaurs or ceratopsians or long-necked sauropods or crested
hadrosaurs. Or they might look like human guys, or birds, Or jellyfish, or
clouds
"What
is the message?" Reggie asked.
"Okay-okay-okay.
The message --" Axel held out the last syllable as long as he could to
buy a little more time. "-- is -- it's -- 'Hiya!'"
"That
is the message?"
"Yeah."
"The
complete message?" Reggie didn't often emphasize his adjectives that
way.
"I
don't know. Is that enough? What else should I say?"
Reggie
paused long enough to formulate an appropriate answer. "You may say as
much or as little as you like, but it is customary to tell the recipient of
a message who you are."
"Why?"
It might
just have been a function of the old hard drive (technology had long since
moved past the use of them}, but Axel heard a strange, almost nervous,
clicking coming from inside the brain box.
"Because
the recipient might possibly -- for some reason completely unknown to
Reggie -- want to send a message back to you, in reply."
"Heyyy
--" Axel imagined the screensaver running backward -- you could do
that if you looked at it hard enough -- back through space the other way.
"Space guys! Yeah!"
"You
may also want to tell them a little about yourself," Reggie suggested.
"Where you live. What you do. Where you come from -- just to be
friendly."
"Ohhh!
Yes! Got it! Yes! I can say -- 'Hiya! I'm Axel, and I live in this big
house and I'm here with all my friends. We're saurs, you know, all of us
except for the human who brings us food and cleans up stuff. His name is
Tom. But we're saurs!
"'Saurs
are like dinosaurs. They were these really big guys who lived a long time
ago and went extinct. We're supposed to look like them except we're smaller
and we don't have the scary parts.
"'We
came from a factory that was like a laboratory too, and we were made out of
living stuff -- you know, biology.
"'They
made millions of us and sold us to humans as toys. All these human guys who
made us made big, big money and drove around in giant bankmobiles and wore
top hats and had houses a thousand times bigger than this place. But then
they had to stop selling us.
"'Turned
out we were smarter than we were supposed to be, and lived longer. This
lady from the Atherton Foundation said we weren't toys at all but
real-real-real things that were alive and they shouldn't be selling us.
"'But
we kept getting cut up and run over, or the kids who owned us stepped on us
or threw us out of windows. Or the parents who bought us drove us to the
woods and left us there -- or they stopped feeding us and stuff like that.
So after a while there weren't many of us left.
"'People
started to believe the Atherton lady. They set up a bunch of houses for us
and that's how we got to live here.
"'We
do all sorts of stuff the guys who made us didn't think we could do, like think
and feel and live longer than three years. My buddy Preston writes books.
My other buddy Diogenes reads all the stuff in the library. And the Five
Wise Buddhasaurs, who don't say anything but they play this stuff that
sounds like music sometimes. And Agnes is this stegosaur with plates on her
back and spikes on her tail and she knows all about humans and what's wrong
with them. She's twenty-five years old, so she must know everything. Doc is
smart too, but he's nice!
"'The
guys who made us said we couldn't make eggs because we don't have the right
parts and stuff, but we can do that too! Not me, but like Bronte and Kara
-- female guys. The humans aren't supposed to know, except for Tom and Dr.
Margaret -- she's the lady who comes every week to make sure we're not sick
or dead. I'm not supposed to know either because they think I can't keep a
secret, so don't tell the other space guys about this, okay?
"'And
when I finish this message, I'm gonna build Rotomotoman. He's this cool
robot I dreamed about last night. Reggie's gonna help me, because Reggie's
the very-best-smartest whole computer in the world. Then I'm gonna get on a
starship and travel all through time and space and save the universe and
crash into supernovas and get sucked into wormholes.'"
Axel took a
long, necessary breath, then said to Reggie, "Is that okay?"
"Under
the circumstances," Reggie said, "Your message is --
exceptional."
"Wow!"
"It
is, however, customary to ask after the well-being of the recipient of the
message, and to close the message --"
"Oh,
oh, I know! I know! So I'll say, 'Hope you're okay. Your friend, Axel.'
Like that, right?"
"The
message will be sent as you dictated it," Reggie replied, "with a
few grammatical corrections."
"All
right!" Axel leapt up. "A message to space! Thank you, Reggie!
Oh, thank-you-thank-you-thank-you-thank-you!"
"You
are very welcome, Axel," said Reggie. Then, with what one might
interpret as a trepidatious pause -- and with careful attention to
pronunciation -- he asked, "Now, please explain to Reggie, what is a
Ro-to-mo-to-man?"
Tom
Groverton stood at the door of the room where the saurs slept. Eyes half
open, hair still mussed, a middle button of his shirt undone, he said the
word "breakfast" clearly but not too loudly and stepped back as
the little ones ran past him.
The bigger
saurs rose slowly: grunting, grumbling, and stretching. The triceratops
named Charlie always had a little trouble righting himself. He braced up
against his mate, Rosie, until his hind legs were reasonably straight. The
two gray stegosaurs, Agues and Sluggo, went through a ritual that resembled
a push-up -- hind legs first, then forelegs up slowly with a sliding sort
of motion.
Hubert and
Diogenes, the two biggest theropods -- each over a meter and a half tall --
helped the other big guys, like Sam and Dr. David Norman. Tails really did
help.
Diogenes
lent a forepaw to Doc, the light brown tyrannosaur with a
"tricky" left leg.
"Thank
you, my friend," Doc said, his eyes barely visible under his thick
lids. "Each day it seems to get a little harder."
"It
does for everyone," said Tom Groverton from the doorway.
Doc nodded.
"But not quite the same way for everyone. You were a little one once,
who grew into an adult. We saurs were engineered. We were 'born' with our
eyes open. What growth we experienced is beyond memory. The little ones
stay little and the big ones were always big."
"Either
way, we grow old," Tom insisted.
"Until
we grow cold." Doc smiled serenely. "Or perhaps you can say we
wear out instead." "So do we."
As Hubert
and Diogenes folded up the blankets and covers, Tom walked over to the
wheeled, bassinet-sized hospital bed in the center of the room. Upon it was
a figure who was recognizably a saurian and recognizably a theropod, but
whose limbs -- all of them -- were missing and whose tail was a
crushed-looking stump. Several long-healed scars crisscrossed his abdomen
and where his eyes should have been were empty sockets.
"Good
morning, Hetman," Tom said to the figure on the bed. "How are you
feeling?"
"Not
so bad." Hetman's voice was faint and raspy, always a little more so
in the morning. "I had an odd dream. Odd, but pleasant."
"What
was it?" Doc asked, resting his forepaws on the bed railing.
"Very
odd. Very odd indeed." Hetman turned his head toward the voices.
"Can you imagine me riding on a horse's back?"
"I
can, old friend." Doc closed his eyes. "Like Zagloba, the Cossack
-- rebellious, reckless, full of life -- riding with incomparable
skill." He opened his eyes again and smiled. "It must have been a
splendid dream."
Hubert and
Diogenes stood at the bed railing, ready to move Hetman downstairs to
breakfast.
"Like
some help?" Tom offered.
"They
can manage." Doc spoke for them. Hubert and Diogenes were quite
literate and articulate but spoke only when necessity dictated. "Thank
you all the same, but you better get downstairs before Jean-Claude and
Pierrot get impatient. You remember yesterday."
The day
before, Jean-Claude and Pierrot chanted "Meat! Meat! Breakfast
meat!" until even the little ones who ate nothing but soy pellets and
oatmeal shouted along.
Tom nodded.
He looked at the other saurs who had still not gone down to breakfast:
Agnes, Sluggo, Kara, Preston and Bronte. All of them were looking up at Tom
except for Bronte. The bright green apatosaur was gazing in the direction
of Hetman's bed.
Tom gave
them an asymmetrical grin before leaving the room. "Well don't wait
too long."
When he was
gone, Hetman whispered, "Check the egg! I twisted in my sleep last
night. I'm afraid I may have hurt it!"
Hubert
turned Hetman gently on his side and lifted his pillow as Doc watched.
Under the pillow was a pale yellow egg, no more than a few centimeters
long.
"It's
fine," said Doc.
"Don't
let Doc pick it up," said Agnes. "The clumsy oaf."
"My
dear Agnes, I had no intention."
Sluggo had
already run over to retrieve a tiny cardboard box stuffed with cotton,
hidden behind the chest near the window, where the blankets and covers were
kept. He pushed it back along the floor with his snout. Diogenes picked up
the egg and carefully placed it in the little box.
Agnes
nudged past Sluggo and examined it, almost sniffing it, in search of the
slightest possible fracture. "I guess it looks okay."
Kara butted
Agnes with her head. She was an apatosaur, but her head was big -- and
hard. "Let Bronte see. It's her egg, after all."
"Oh.
Right.' Agnes stepped back and let Bronte timidly press in.
As Bronte
stared, a set of three tiny furrows took their place on her forehead. She
worried, she pitied, she pondered, all at once as she took in the egg's
contours and slightly rough surface. She held her breath and stared.
They all
did, gathered around the cardboard box, except for Hetman, who listened as
carefully as the others watched.
"The
shell looks so frail,' whispered Sluggo.
"Are you
an idiot?" said Agnes. "Have you touched it? It's like granite.
She won't have the strength to break through that shell." "Or
he," Doc suggested.
"What
do you know?" Agnes grumbled.
"What
do any of us know?"
Agnes
grumbled again, but left it at that.
None of
them knew if the time was soon for the first hairline cracks to form on the
shell-- for the little creature who might be within to break through the
calcium walls of her prison and her protection -- or his. Now. Later. Or
ever.
Agnes's egg
had had a yolk and a fetal sac, but no infant. So had Kara's. Bronte's
first egg had contained a tiny, almost shapeless thing that never moved and
never showed any signs that it could have moved, like some little plastic
charm in the center of a bar of soap. The saurs had sealed that one
carefully in a little plastic box and buried it in the garden.
In the past
few months they had combed every database they could find with any bit of
information about egg-laying creatures. They knew about ostriches and
cobras, platypuses and echidnas. They even read about dinosaurs -- the
"real" ones, the ones who had lived millions of years before. It
helped them guess at what might -- or what should happen, if anyone could
have guessed that this could happen at all, which no one had.
Bronte had
even practiced with bird eggs Sluggo found out in the yard, eggs that had
fallen out of nests in the trees. They hatched successfully, but who knew
if the egg of a saur was anything like the egg of a sparrow?
"It
needs heat," said Bronte, who spoke rarely, and then only in a
whisper.
"Sit
on it," said Agnes. "Gently."
"It's
too frail," said Sluggo.
"Put
it by the window, in the sun," said Kara.
"Too
much," Agnes replied. "You might boil it. Then, what if it clouds
up in the afternoon?"
"We
might ask Tom," Sluggo suggested meekly. "Or Dr. Margaret."
"No!"
Agnes thumped her tail on the floor. "It's not their business!
It's our
business! Besides, they won't know any better than we do. And besides that
besides, if it gets out that we're producing eggs the humans out there will
go into a panic. They'll stick us in labs again and examine us and try to
work out what went wrong. Or they'll just round us up and exterminate the
whole lot of us."
"They
-- they wouldn't do that," said Sluggo. The words didn't come out with
quite the certainty he intended.
Agnes
sailed on the energy of her own bleak visions. "They might even decide
they like the eggs and make us sit in pens and lay them like chickens!
They'll boil, scramble and fry them!"
"No!"
Bronte and Sluggo gasped almost in unison.
Kara simply
butted Agnes again. "Shut up!"
"Mark
my words!" Agnes gave each syllable blunt, apocalyptic emphasis.
"You can't trust humans! They say one thing, then do the other. They
want the whole damn place for themselves. They want everything. Everything!
They're greedy and sneaky and creepy and they kill things for pleasure!
They screw up everything, then go around and look for more things to screw
up!"
"That's
true," said Preston, who for all the thousands of words he'd written,
bent over a keyboard, tapping away with his four digits, rarely spoke more
than a dozen words in a month. "After all, they made us."
"What
kind of a joke is that?" Agnes's spiked tail swept the air in a short
arc.
"Tom
isn't like that," said Sluggo. "Dr. Margaret isn't like
that."
"They
aren't now." Agnes lowered her tail. "But they can turn on you
just like that! It's all that meat. It poisons their brains and they go
crazy. That's why you always have to keep your eyes on them."
"Dr.
Margaret doesn't eat meat," Sluggo reminded her. "She's an
herbivore."
"A
vegetarian, you mean," said Doc.
"Oh,
shut up! Who asked you anyway?" Agnes sneered at Doc.
"Who
asked you ?" said Kara. "We were talking about the egg."
"What
we need," said Doc, resting a forepaw on Bronte's back, "is
patience. We must be careful and observant. This egg may not hatch, my
dear. But if it doesn't we will learn more and know better next time."
"Someday,"
Kara whispered, "one will hatch."
"I
hope so." Doc patted her consolingly. "But as much as I hate to
say this, it may also be possible that -- in our genetic idiosyncrasies --
we may be only capable of performing half the job."
"Oh,
who died and made you king?" Agnes turned away in disgust -- or
perhaps to hide her pained expression momentarily.
Doc smiled
and gently said, "Sweet Agnes, pay no attention to me, then. I am just
a lame old fool who knows nothing except that he loves all his good friends
here assembled."
"You
old windbag!" Agnes backed away. "As if I trusted carnosaurs any
better than humans! You're all filled with baloney!"
"Nevertheless,"
said Hetman, his weak voice belying his proximity, "I have a feeling
this one will hatch. Just a feeling, but they're about all I have
left."
"Hetman,"
Agnes said after an embarrassed pause, "I didn't mean you when I said
that about carnosaurs. I -- I get carried away sometimes."
"Do
you?" Kara snorted.
"If
you didn't get carried away," said Hetman, "I'd fear I'd been
spirited
off to
another house in the night. Don't apologize for being Agnes, Agnes."
She
responded with a rumble -- this time from her stomach. A moment later,
Doc's stomach made a stuttered purr, like the starting up of an old
internal combustion engine.
"Breakfast,"
said Kara.
Hubert and
Diogenes nodded and pushed Hetman's bed toward the door, where they nearly
collided with the blue blur of a breathless theropod.
"Preston!
Hey! Preston!"
Axel slowed
himself just long enough to shout a hurried "Hiya!" to Hetman,
Hubert, and Diogenes, then he charged on, coming to a halt as he slid
broadside into Agnes.
"Uff!
Will you watch it!" Agnes barked. "Isn't it enough --"
"Sorry-sorry,
Agnes. Preston! Preston! Can I have --"
His
attention was drawn to the cardboard box, and its contents.
"Heyyy!"
Axel took a careful look inside. "There it is!"
Doc nodded.
"There it is."
He looked
around at the others and pointed to the box. "That's the egg!" he
said, as if they might not know yet. "Indeed," said Doc.
"Know
what that means?" Axel continued.
"No,"
Agnes sighed impatiently. "What does that mean?"
"Someone's
been having SEX!"
"Oh,
shut up!" Agnes shouted. "You don't know a thing about it!"
"Yes-yes-yes-yes!
I learned all about it from the Reggie! I saw Animal Mating Practices and
Habits, Barnyard Babies, From Sperm to Germ -- or something like that, and
-- and I saw Angelique Blows Her Birthday Candles."
"Shut
up! Shut up!" Agnes's back plates clicked with the tremor of her tail
smacking the floor. "Are you completely --"
"Axel,"
said Doc, "not that I want to distract you, but you came up here to
ask Preston something, didn't you?"
"Yes!
Right! Yes!" Axel stepped over to Preston. "Can I have five
thousand dollars?"
Agnes
gasped. "What!"
"Five
thousand dollars. That's all. And, and then they'll build him! They really
will! They already made up the diagrams and ski-mats and stuff! Reggie
showed them what I wanted!"
"And
what's that?" asked Agnes. "A working brain?"
"I'll
show you! Come on!" He took a few inaugural steps toward the door.
"Come on!"
"'Him,'"
Doc said with his best deliberation, in an effort to get Axel to slow down
and explain. "You said 'him.' And 'they.' You said 'they' too. Who is
'him'? And who are 'they'?"
"Rotomotoman,
Doc! It's Rotomotoman! Rotomotoman!" Axel beckoned with his forepaw.
"Come on!"
Doc wasn't
sure if this was supposed to be an answer to one question, or two, or to no
questions at all. The more he tried to decipher what Axel had said the more
his stomach rumbled.
Agnes shut
her eyes and raised her back as far as it would go. "Why? Why
us?"
"I --
I think we better go along with him," Doc said, "if we're ever
going to find out what this 'Roto-man' thing is."
"Roto-moto-man!"
Axel corrected him, then said it again more quickly, as if the mere saying
of the name was a kind of sheer delight.
"He's
flipped," Agnes said. "What hold he's had on sanity --"
"It
hurts nothing to see what's got the little fellow so excited." Doc
took a step toward the door.
"Little
fellow," Agnes spat the words out and turned to Bronte. "Little fellow!"
"Come-on-come-on-come-on!"
Axel shouted from the doorway.
Preston
picked up the box with the egg and, hearing no objections from the others,
followed Axel. Bronte kept to Preston's side, as close to the egg as
possible, with Kara on the other side. Doc limped along with Sluggo while
Agnes, furiously reluctant, brought up the rear.
By the time
the entourage reached the stairs Axel was already at the bottom. Looking up
and waving.
"Hurry
up!" he shouted, as if they were missing the last total solar eclipse
for the next fifty years.
"Patience,"
said Doc, as he and the others boarded the lift. "Patience. We're
coming."
The lift
was an adaptation from the "human days" of the house and was
originally built to carry a wheelchair up and down the stairs. Now it was a
simple flatbed platform that transported the saurs who were too small, too
lame, or too tired to climb up or down between the two floors. Speed was
never part of its design or of its renovation. To Axel, it was agony
watching the others come down on the lift, like being forced to watch the
tide go out.
When the
lift came to a halt, Doc and the others had barely gotten off before Axel
raced on to the dining room and up the plastic stairs to the computer.
"Come-on-come-on-come-on!"
"We
can see the screen from here," Doc said, as the group settled a meter
or so back from the desk. "Show us whatever it is you want us to
see."
"Reggie,"
Axel said to the screen, "display Rotomotoman."
The monitor
screen displayed a gray background and light blue grid lines. A snatch of
music played, something with a bouncy tempo and a lot of horns. A metallic
gray figure appeared on the screen -- a cylinder topped with a hemisphere.
Just above the line where the cylinder met the hemisphere were two white circles
with two smaller black circles inside them, like cartoon eyes. The cylinder
rested on four small circles that one could suppose were wheels or casters,
and attached at its sides were two articulated rods that one could imagine
were arms. At the end of each rod was a flat, rectangular plate, out of
which sprung five digits, one set off thumb-like from the others. The
retinas of the presumed eyes shifted slightly from left to right, as if the
figure were surveying the scene around itself.
"Go!"
cried Axel.
The figure
rolled off to the left of the screen, followed by horizontal
"speed" lines and a cartoon dust cloud left behind. It
reappeared, this time rolling in from the left and disappearing to the
right side of the screen. It rolled from left to right, right to left, left
to right again, as Axel chanted:
"Ro-toh.
Moto-Man! Ro-toh Moto Man! Ro-toh Moto-Man! Ro-toh Moto Man?
Before the
saurs became completely dizzy watching this relentless back and forth
motion, the grid lines were replaced on the screen by a simple cartoon
street scene, with houses, sidewalks, trees, bushes, lawns and fences.
Rotomotoman remained still now while the speed lines and changing
background lent him the illusion of motion.
A chorus of
voices joined the musical accompaniment.
The melody
was simple enough, like a theme from an old television program from the
middle of the last century, cannily synthesized by Reggie:
"He's
our man! Ro-to-moto Man --"
Axel sang
along, staring at the screen, completely enthralled.
"He's
our man! He's not from Japan -- "
Doc looked
at Preston. Kara looked at Bronte. Sluggo looked at Agnes.
"Japan?"
he asked.
Agnes shook
her head. She stood in front of the box with Bronte's egg where Preston had
placed it on the floor, as if to shield the egg from the sight.
The
"theme song" continued:
"Whaa-at
a man!
It's none
other than that Ro-to Moto Man!"
"But,"
Bronte whispered to Doc, "it's not a man at all."
"It's
not even --" but Doc couldn't go on.
The verse
repeated, while Rotomotoman, up on the screen, crashed through a brick
wall. He raced down a busy street while a flashing red light rose out of
the top of his hemisphere-head. He extended himself on thin metal legs. His
cylindrical body also extended, something like a telescope, until
Rotomotoman could see through second- and third-floor windows. By the end
of the second verse, little flashes of flame were shooting from one of the
digits of his right "hand," as if it had turned into a machine
gun.
By end of
the song, Rotomotoman was holding at bay a group of "bad guys"
who wore traditional snap-brim caps and black masks over their eyes. Their
arms were raised in surrender. Round, bulging bags with dollar signs
printed on them lay on the floor where the bad guys had dropped them. A
policeman with the appropriate badge, gun, and club saluted Rotomotoman
before taking custody of the villains. Rotomotoman modestly returned the
salute. A man in a dark suit, a monocle and top hat -- presumably a bank
president -- shook Rotomotoman's metal hand -- the same one from which
bullets had been firing earlier.
The screen
faded.
The saurs
stood there, gaping in silence, wide-eyed, stunned and dumbfounded.
"See?"
Axel trotted down the plastic steps. "Wasn't that great? Wasn't that
the neatest-greatest thing you've ever seen?"
Doc,
struggling for a politic response, was the first to speak.
"Axel," he asked sympathetically, "have you been getting
enough sleep?"
"Axel,"
Agnes said quietly but firmly, "are you nuts?"
"I saw
it in a dream!" Axel insisted. "If I dreamed it, I was
sleeping!"
"I
wish I were dreaming," said Kara.
"But
these guys can make a real one!" Axel continued. "A
real-real-real Rotomotoman! I asked Reggie and he found a company that
makes -what did he call them? Prototypes!"
Bronte, in
her whispering voice, said "Roto-prototypes."
"Proto-motoman,"
Preston mumbled.
"We
should disconnect Reggie," Agnes said. "Right away."
"So --
they can build him!" Axel turned to Preston. "And they can send
him here! And -- and it costs five thousand dollars. So can I have it,
Preston, please? Please-please-please?"
Agnes made
a sound that started like a cough and ended like a gag. "Five thousand
dollars for a trashcan on wheels! A trashcan on wheels that crashes through
walls! A trashcan that'll run around and crush us until we're flat as
pancakes! A trashcan with a revolving red light flashing on his head and
bullets shooting out of his fingers!"
"Yeah!"
said Axel. "Isn't he neat?"
"Axel
--" Doc started, but Agnes cut him off.
"Axel,
look around. Do you see any walls around here that need to be smashed
through? Do you see any saurs that need to be flattened out? Do you see
anyone that needs to be riddled with bullets?"
"Won't
do that! Won't do that!" Axel raised his forepaws. "Reggie said
we shouldn't ask for that. No bullets, no smashing. He's gonna have sense
-- like, a sensing system so he won't squash anybody!"
"In
other words," Agnes said, "a trashcan that rolls back and forth,
endlessly and uselessly. For five thousand dollars!"
"Not a
garbage can!" Axel admonished her. "Rotomotoman! He'll be mine! I
made him up! Reggie helped but I made him up!" His voice took on a
pleading tone. "He won't smash anything! He'll be our friend!"
"He
won't shoot anything?" Sluggo asked.
Axel shook
his head. "Rotomotoman is good."
"It's
good you made Rotomotoman," Bronte said. "That was very clever of
you. But --"
"You
did a very nice job," Kara added. "Very well done. But --"
"You
are a deranged idiot and probably insane," said Agnes.
"Thank-you-thank-you-thank
you." Axel bowed to each of them.
"But
perhaps," Doc ventured, "it would be better for everyone --
" Axel turned to him.
Doc pointed
to the computer. "-- if your Rotomotoman limited his activities just
to that screen." His stomach rumbled -- another call to breakfast.
"You can still play with him as you wish. Rotomotoman can smash
through whatever he likes as long as he remains on the screen." His
stomach now made an "urrrr" sound, distinct from the other noise.
Axel looked
carefully at Doc.
He
continued. "You can assuage the rancor of sweet Agnes here and relieve
the apprehensions of the rest of us."
Axel kept
staring, saying nothing.
"Axel?
Are you listening?"
"Yes."
Axel nodded. "Do it again."
Doc cleared
his throat. "Do what again?"
"Make
your stomach go 'urrrrrr' like that."
Doc took a
deep breath. "I meant, did you listen to what I said?"
"Sure.
What was it?"
Agnes
thumped her tail against the floor. "He said that there's no way in
hell that we're ever going to agree to have that metal trashcan in this
house!"
Axel's jaw
dropped and his eyes grew wide. One could almost feel the theropod's heart
sinking. "But, but -- I made him up! I did!"
He looked
at Kara, Bronte, and Sluggo -- he couldn't bear to look at Agnes.
"It's not what Rotomotoman does! It's that he is! Do you see? I've got
to make Rotomotoman!"
"I see
that Preston would have to have lost his mind to waste five thousand
dollars on a useless, dangerous piece of junk!" said Agnes.
"Axel,"
Doc said with great sympathy, "Preston here writes books all about
great star captains, mighty armies, and flying cities, but he doesn't have
to build prototypes of them or march them through the halls of our little
abode." He patted Axel on the head. "We can't build everything we
imagine."
Axel
stepped away, head lowered, and turned to Preston.
"Is
that true, Preston? Is that how you feel?"
It was
always difficult to gauge Preston's feelings. He spoke so little, and what
he wrote in his books presented so many points of view it was difficult to
figure which ones might be his own. He smiled at his companions, a little
more to one side of his mouth than the other.
"I
think what Axel has done is creative and -- amusing," he said in his
soft tenor voice.
"Amusing?"
Agnes replied. "I suppose a direct hit from a missile would have you
in hysterics!"
Preston put
his hand on Axel's head and led him to the plastic stairs, up to the
computer. The other saurs, with the exception of Agnes, were speechless.
"Preston!"
she cried. "What are you doing?"
Axel and
Preston kept going without reply.
"Preston,
you're not -- you wouldn't dare!"
At the top
of the stairs, standing before the computer, Preston said,
"Reggie?"
"Reggie
is ready," the computer replied.
"Please
connect me to my bank."
"Preston!"
Agnes wailed. "You've gone nuts too? Preston!"
"What
will Tom say?" Sluggo asked Doc.
"I
suppose Tom will have to deal with it. As we all will."
Preston
leaned over and said right into Axel's ear, to make sure he heard,
"Remember, no machine guns. No death rays. No crashing through walls.
No squashing little ones. No speeding."
"Yes-yes-yes-yes-YES!"
Axel wrapped his forepaws around Preston's leg. "Whatever you say! Oh,
thank-you-thank-you Preston!"
The
transfer of funds to the prototype company went smoothly. It had long ago
ceased to be strange for non-humans to hold bank accounts. The idea that
banks thought in terms of anything but accounts and their activities
belongs to the generation of our foreparents. Preston's financial holdings
were hardly remarkable except for their size, as were the accounts held by
some other saurs -- like Alphonse, who often won money on radio quiz
programs -- and Doc, who had a trust fund from a former "owner."
Axel's
excitement set the plastic stairs wobbling as the two came down from the
desk.
"Oh,
thank you, Preston! Thank-you-thank-you-thank-you-thank-you! You are the
best-best, most wonderful perfect greatest friend in the whole complete
universe! Thank you thank you you YOU!"
"Is
anyone in here planning to have breakfast ?" Tom Groverton stood
behind them, arms folded and head tilted. "Now that everyone else has
finished?"
"Breakfast-breakfast-breakfast!"
Axel dashed out past Tom. "Come on, Preston! My best-best friend!
Let's have breakfast!"
"Sorry
for the delay," Doc said to Tom, "but we had a little business to
take care of."
"Business?"
"I'll
explain later," Doc said. "I think it will take a little
time."
"Don't
ask me," Agnes shook her head wearily, "I don't think I ever want
to eat breakfast again."
Bronte
carefully covered up the egg with a swath of cotton before Preston picked
up the box and headed for the kitchen. "What's that? Another
egg?" Tom asked.
Agnes
raised her tail and stared severely at Bronte.
"Y-yes,"
Bronte said nervously, looking from Kara to Agnes. "Sluggo found it
the other day. A crow's egg, I think. It-it's rather big."
"Well,"
Tom said, bending down and rubbing Bronte just above the little furrows on
her brow, "best of luck. You're a first-rate egg-hatcher. You'll do a
fine job."
"Thank
you." The words came out as a rasp, as if her mouth was very dry.
She
followed Preston out of the room, just behind Kara and Sluggo, slowly
heading for the kitchen. Doc walked with his head down, attempting the
difficult gesture of rubbing his head with one of his short forepaws. His
stomach rumbled again.
"After
breakfast." He sighed. "After breakfast." Agnes narrowed her
eyes and stared up at Tom.
"You
just mind your own damn business!" she said, and followed the others
out of the room.
At dawn the
next day, when Axel crawled out from the sleep pile and ran downstairs, he
heard muffled sounds coming from the living room and noticed that the big
video screen was still on.
Hubert had
turned off the video just before sleep-time -- Axel distinctly remembered.
Maybe the video had gone on by itself -- or was there another saur who
decided to get up even earlier than Axel? He hurried over to investigate.
In the
middle of the living room, about the same place where the saurs sat when
they watched the video, was a lone frog -- a frog! -- about the size of a
softball; pale green with a pattern of gray, blotty spots all over.
Next to the
frog was the remote control pad the saurs used to change programs. He, or
perhaps she, sat very still, head turned to the screen. But the frog must
have heard Axel approaching. Before he could get any closer the amphibian
slapped the remote pad with his left forepaw. The video clicked off and the
frog hopped over to the couch by the window, then up onto the cushions.
"Hey!
Where ya goin'? Hey!"
Axel ran
after the frog, but not fast enough. In seconds the frog was up on the back
of the couch, onto the window ledge and -- flooop! -- out the window and
out of sight.
Axel
climbed up after him -- or her. He looked out into the yard, still dark in
the early morning shadows, then back at the video screen.
"Wow!"
He whispered. "A frog who can watch TV!"
AFTER
BREAKFAST -- and after most of the saurs had made their morning visit to
the litter room -- Doc found a spot of sunlight near the big window in the
dining room and pushed the plastic box he used as a stool there. It was a
good place to sit and feel a little warmth, and it still afforded him a
view of the video screen, where he could see a fat man and a thin man, both
in ill-fitting bowler hats, trying to move a piano up a ridiculously long
flight of stairs. The piano movers monopolized his attention until the hats
started to remind him of the head of Rotomotoman and he looked elsewhere
for contemplation.
Little
saurs were grouped in front of the Reggiesystem computer. Doc could hear
them learning what the principal exports of Ghana were. On the other side
of the room, the Five Wise Buddhasaurs were sitting on the couch, running
their plastic horns through a synthesizer, playing something fast and
wildly rhythmical that they referred to as "Chinese" or
"Dizz" music. To his left, Kara was sitting with Hetman, reading
to him from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. She had the book
propped up against the back of a straight wooden chair and she carefully
turned the pages with her snout.
Other
little ones were using the small, battery-powered wheeled platforms called
skates to get from one end of the house to the other. On the far end of the
living room, the stegosaur pair, Zack and Kip, were playing with
Jean-Claude and Pierrot, the theropod tyrannosaurs, a game using checker
pieces whipped across the floor with their tails, like hockey pucks. The
game was called "Hit 'Em Hard" until a red stegosaur named
Veronica got hit a little too hard by a stray checker. Then Agnes declared
the game should be changed to "Not So Hard."
In the
library, Diogenes and Hubert busied themselves shelving and re-shelving
books for the saurs who perused them, whether they could read them or not
-- fascinated by pictures, colophons, shapes, and even the smell of the
paper and binding.
Over the
noise of the "Dizz" music and the tinny accompaniment of the
hapless piano movers on the video, Doc could hear Agnes shouting to someone
on a skate, "Hey! Slow that down! What d'you think you're doing? Racing?"
The world
was in order -- for the moment. Doc closed his eyes and basked in the
warmth. What there was to worry over, he thought, could wait.
"Hey
Doc!"
Doc opened
his eyes. Axel stood before him.
"Guess
what I saw this morning?"
Doc
trembled. "Not another robot, was it?"
"Nooo!"
Axel waved the notion away with his forepaw. "It was a frog! In here!
He was watching the video!
"Yes,
Axel." Doc tried to smile. "And what he was watching?"
"I
didn't see, but I heard news-guy-type voices, like when they talk about
stocking markets and underwater volcanoes." He looked up at Doc, who
was glancing back at the video screen: the fat man was wailing and the
piano was rolling down the stairs.
"You
don't believe me, do you?" Axel said.
"My
friend, I remember when you warned us of the giant tidal wave bearing down
on us. And I remember you telling us that the Army of Northern Virginia was
camped outside on the driveway. There were the Saracen hordes riding their
horses through the woods -- I remember that too. And who can forget the
battle-cruisers from Alpha Centauri firing their photon rays at the power
lines?"
"But
that was playing," Axel insisted. "This was a real-real
frog-guy!"
"Axel,"
Doc patted him on the head, "I believe that you saw a frog here this
morning. But the rest I'd rather leave as a matter of conjecture."
Doc closed
his eyes and went back to his basking, but the spot of sunlight had shifted
by then. He pushed his stool over a bit to recapture it.
Axel,
however, wondering over the meaning of "conjecture," moved on.
Kara and
Hetman were close by. She was reading the passage from the novel where
Clarence describes to Harry Morgan the trap laid by King Arthur against Sir
Launcelot.
"Lancelot?"
Axel forgot about the frog for an instant and asked Kara, "Where?
Where's Lancelot ?"
"Laun-celot,"
Kara said. "The name is Sir Launcelot. He isn't anywhere. He's a
character in this book."
"Ohhh."
Axel remembered Lancelot, but not Launcelot. Lancelot wasn't a character,
he was a saur -- a buddy -- long-long-long ago. Axel tried to remember
more, but the harder he tried the more he forgot.
"Hey!"
he said to Kara, as Lancelot faded back from his memory,
"Guess
what I saw this morning?"
And he told
them all about the frog who watched the video.
He told
Bronte, sitting with her egg. He told Tyrone and Alfie and the other saurs
gathered around the Reggiesystem computer. He told Hubert, Diogenes,
Charlie, Rosie, and the Five Wise Buddhasaurs, but none of them believed
him.
He even
told Tom Groverton, once he finished cleaning up in the kitchen. Tom sat
down on the floor and explained to Axel why he couldn't have really seen a
frog in the living room.
"You
know that the house and the grounds are covered by a security system."
Tom ran his hand over the blue saur's back. "It's heat and motion
sensitive. If anything enters the security zone that's not one of us, it
sets off an alarm."
"Like
when the cat got in and tried to eat Symphony Syd," Axel said.
"Or that raccoon that scratched Agnes."
"Exactly.
A long time ago. And since then the system's been improved. So how can a
frog enter the grounds without setting off the alarm?"
Axel
glanced back at the window where he had seen the frog make his escape.
"He must be a really smart frog."
Tom showed
Axel the security system log on the Reggiesystem, indicating that nothing
had even touched the security perimeter the night before, at least nothing
bigger than a moth.
"Maybe
Reggie knows that he just came here to watch the video and that he wasn't
here to hurt anyone."
"I
don't think Reggie works that way, Axel."
"Why
not?"
Tom opened
his mouth as if to speak, then erased the action with a shake of his head
and tugged on one end of his droopy mustache.
"Okay.
Let's say Reggie did that. Since there seems to be some question about the
objective reality of this creature, Reggie figured it was okay for the frog
to come in and watch the video."
"So
you think the TV frog's not an objectionable reality."
That look
came over Tom's face again and again he went for that end of his mustache.
"Okay. Let's leave it at that. The frog is not an objectionable
reality."
"Then
you don't mind TV Frog coming in and watching the video?"
"TV
Frog?"
"That's
what I'm gonna call him."
"Well,"
Tom patted Axel on the head, "as long as he's not stealing anything,
or hurting anyone, and as long as he shuts off the video before he goes,
like you said he did, I don't mind."
A few saurs
-- some of the little guys, Sluggo, Hetman -- believed him, or at least
said they did.
And
Geraldine came out of the cardboard box she called her "lab" and
told Axel that she believed him too.
"He's
not a real frog," she said in her soft, tinny voice. "He's from a
planet on the other side of the galaxy. He's made a little tunnel through
space-time to get here."
Axel took
this in without question and concluded: "Wow!"
"Don't
pay attention to her," Agnes cautioned him. "She's making fun of
you. She makes fun of everyone. She thinks we're all stupid."
"You
all are stupid," Geraldine said, then returned to her lab. Axel
watched the box until the flickering lights coming from inside worried him.
Tom put those fire extinguishers nearby for a reason.
"Maybe
you need to sleep some more, Axel," Preston counseled him.
"Maybe
you're dreaming in the daytime because you don't sleep enough."
But that
night, Axel stayed behind when the other saurs went upstairs to sleep. He
hid behind the couch and waited until the frog hopped through the window
onto the back of the couch, then to the seat of the couch, then to the
floor. He hopped to the center of the room and slapped the remote pad with
his left forepaw.
The screen
flickered on, and the frog watched -- all night long, occasionally slapping
the remote pad to change the program.
He watched
old films and talk shows. He looked at nature programs and documentaries
about automobiles and the wars of the previous century. He watched a chorus
of dancing girls sing the praises of bottled water and a man on a weather
program talk for a whole hour about cloud patterns. It put Axel to sleep.
But the
frog watched on. He seemed comforted by the images, as if they were
relieving him of a great anxiety, or perhaps he was just grateful for the
light, for that sense of life moving from moment to moment without threat
or danger that the video provided.
"TV
Frog" left at dawn, but came back the next night and the night after
that.
Axel
resolved not to disturb the frog. In the morning, as Axel ran past on his
way to the Reggiesystem computer, he would call out, "Hiya, TV
Frog!" and leave it at that.
But by the
end of the week, as Axel ran past, TV Frog lingered long enough on the
window sill so that Axel could see him, in silhouette, raising his left
forepaw as if in greeting before hopping out the window to wherever TV
Frogs went in the daytime.
When the
crate containing Rotomotoman finally arrived, all the saurs gathered to
watch as Tom Groverton opened it in the center of the living room.
The crate
was enormous. Even Diogenes had to get up on his toes to peer inside. Axel
climbed up on his shoulders, expecting to see Rotomotoman inside just as he
envisioned him, fully charged and ready to go.
What Axel
actually saw was about a dozen batches of components wrapped in vinyl bags
and cushioned with packing foam.
Along with
a copy of the invoice were several sheets of paper filled with very tiny
type and headed with big bold letters:
As everyone
knows, "some" is a relative word. The creation of the Grand
Canyon took "some" time and the formation of matter at the
instant of the Big Bang required "some" assembly.
Tom
carefully took the components out of the crate. As the pieces slowly collected
on the floor, Agnes looked them over, frowning and sniffing.
"Hmph!
Looks like they sent you the trash instead of the trashcan!"
"He's
all in pieces," Bronte whispered, looking from one component to the
next.
"Did
he fall apart?" asked Rosie.
"They
forgot to put him together," Charlie observed.
Diogenes
bent over so that Axel could climb down and survey his unassembled
creation. He stood with his mouth agape, looking slightly appalled and
definitely overwhelmed.
"We're
in luck," Agnes whispered to Doc. "With all these pieces, it'll
take months for him to put it together."
"If he
manages to put it together at all," Doc replied. "Not that I
doubt the little fellow's enthusiasm and determination, but his attention
does tend to wander."
"Then
we'll gather up the pieces and throw them in the cellar, or put them out
with the trash, where they belong!"
"Let's
not get ahead of ourselves," Doc said in his deep whisper. "I
really don't want to see the little fellow despondent or
disappointed."
"No,
you want that big hunk of metal rolling over your toes every ten
minutes!"
Axel
wandered around the unassembled Rotomotoman not unlike an accident
investigator surveying the wreckage of a train or a jet. He looked up at
Tom Groverton.
"What
do we do now?"
"That's
up to you, Axel."
The other
saurs watched silently as Axel took another turn around the components.
Tibor --
the brooding, runt-size apatosaur -- came up to the crate with a crayon in
his mouth and quickly scrawled on it: "Tibor's Imperial Winter Palace
-- do NOT throw out, by order of Tibor."
Axel
pointed to a dome-shaped piece of metal and said to the others, "Look!
That's his head! And this other part here w" he slapped the cylinder
which was the largest piece taken out of the crate, "-- that's his
body! Those are his wheels in that bag over there! Those rods in that other
bag are his arms! And this -- " he held up a large white disk which
contained a dark, intricate retina in its Plexiglas frame, " -- this
is one of his eyes!" He held it up between his forepaws and against
his chest and approached one section of the circle of saurs. The retina
rolled around inside the larger disk as if the disembodied eye was
scrutinizing the room.
The saurs
retreated a few steps. Alfie hid his head against Tyrone's chest.
"Don't
be afraid! It's Rotomotoman! Rotomotoman is good!"
With the
retina rolling back and forth, right to left, along the bottom perimeter of
the disk, the smaller saurs were unconvinced.
"You'll
see, when I put him together!"
Axel sang
the "Rotomotoman Song" and tried to get the other saurs to sing
it with him, but as they looked over the pile of parts they appeared
justifiably unenthused.
"Beware
of any trashcan with its own theme song." Agnes trudged away with the
hope that this was the last she would see of Rotomotoman.
THE
CONTENTS of the crate were moved into the same workroom upstairs where
Preston wrote his novels and Alphonse sent out his quiz and contest
entries. It was also where Geraldine kept her cardboard "lab"
and, at another desk, Tibor hid in his cardboard "castle."
Axel walked
around the still-wrapped components laid out on the floor in a kind of
random formation, a kind of "Metal Henge."
In the
center of the formation he turned around and around until he was in danger
of making himself dizzy. "Where do I start?"
Preston
handed Axel the several pages of tiny type that came in the crate.
"Try to read this over all the way through once -- at least once. Then
read each section and do what it tells you and don't go any farther until
you finish what it tells you to do."
"Okay.
How do you do that?"
Preston
shut his eyes and summoned his patience with a great sigh.
"We'll
read the instructions together." He sat down next to Axel, took the
instructions and held them out where both of them could see. "To
paraphrase Aristotle, 'First things first.'"
After
reading through the instructions twice together, and after addressing
Axel's occasionally pertinent interruptions, Preston arranged the
components or sets of components in a circle around Rotomotoman's main
cylinder.
"You'll
start here." Preston pointed to a little black box that contained a
quantity of intricate circuitry. "You put that into the cylinder where
the instructions tell you, then you move to the next piece, and the next
piece, clockwise. That way you can keep track of what goes first and what
goes next. When you get all the way around the circle -- and as long as
there are no parts left over -- Rotomotoman should be completely assembled
and ready to go."
"Wow!"
Axel walked around the main cylinder and looked at all the surrounding
parts. "When do you think we'll be finished?"
Preston
shrugged and shook his head. "The sooner you get started, the sooner
you'll be done." He made sure to stress the "you" in that
statement.
"Yeah!"
Axel looked up at the ceiling as if he could stare straight through it.
Preston
looked at Axel. For the first time in years he took notice of the long scar
down his back, then followed Axel's gaze. He gently put his forepaw on
Axel's head. He had been looking at the stars through that ceiling for many
years himself.
"You'll
do fine," he said softly. "Just fine."
The
discipline of doing one thing at a time was almost too much for Axel to
comprehend, but he was undeterred. His energies -- which were capable of
flying off in a dozen directions at once -- were for once singly directed
to the task of assembling Rotomotoman.
It wasn't
quite high-energy physics, or as the saying went in another century,
"rocket science." The most detailed aspects of circuitry and data
systems had been assembled at the company that produced the prototype. But
each set of components had to be linked to another set, and those to
another set. A had to plugged into B, and B had to be slipped inside C, and
so on.
Axel worked
until long past sleep-time that first night, and did not join the other
saurs when exhaustion finally took him. He curled up next to Rotomotoman's
dormant head.
"It
won't be long," he said to the polished metal dome, placing his
forepaw in the place between where Rotomotoman's eyes would eventually go.
"I'll have you all put together in no time."
The next
day, he started after breakfast and only stepped away from the work for
lunch, dinner, trips to the litter facilities, and two times when he asked
the Reggiesystem for explanations and advice.
Doc, with
great economy, managed to explain to Axel the saurian techniques for
manipulating certain tools designed for human hands, specifically the
screwdriver and the adjustable wrench.
By the time
the other saurs were wrapping up their daily routines and heading up to the
sleep room, Axel had made it through the circle of components Preston had
laid out from twelve o'clock (the first piece})to three o'clock.
It took all
of the following day for Axel to get from three o'clock to five. He didn't
go downstairs to eat, but Sluggo brought food up to him.
"He'd
finish faster if we helped him," Sluggo told Agnes, as she peeled a
strip of rind from an orange.
"So?"
she asked. "That's his own damn problem. I didn't ask for that rolling
trashcan to be brought here. Besides," she mashed up a piece of orange
with her teeth, "the longer he works on that thing, the longer he isn't
knocking around here jumping off the couch and screaming about holes in
time and space or tidal waves or some damn frog sneaking in and watching
the video."
"He
might get sick," Sluggo insisted.
"Well,
what if he does? We've got more important things to worry about."
She
motioned to where Bronte and Kara stared with worried expressions into the
little cotton-filled box.
"It's
been too long," Bronte whispered. "A bird's egg would have
hatched by now."
"It's
not a bird's egg," Kara said. "It's your egg. And we just don't
know how long it might take."
"Too
long." Bronte bent down and with slightest pressure touched the egg
with her snout. "Too long."
~~~~~~~~
BY
SLEEP-TIME, Axel had made it to seven o'clock on the circle of parts. The
components were joined together, but they had to be placed inside the main
cylinder. Together, they weighed much more than Axel could possibly lift,
or even drag. And by this time Axel's head was filled with numbers and
letters: Bs and Ds and Cs and Qs floated around like tadpoles in a pond; he
looked at the joined components, but all he could see was a wall of binary
numbers.
Still, he
made the effort, grabbing on to one end with his forepaws and pulling
mightily.
It wouldn't
budge.
He went
around to the other side and pushed. The assemblage remained immobile. He
kept pushing.
He pushed
until Sluggo came by.
"You
need to sleep," he said.
"First,"
Axel said breathlessly, "I have to get this stuff," he took
several deep breaths and patted the block of components, "into that
thing -- " His voice trailed off as he took more deep breaths and
weakly pointed at the cylinder.
They both
pushed, but all they could manage to do was polish the floor under their
feet.
"Get
some rest," Sluggo said when they finally gave up. "We'll think
of something in the morning."
"Think,"
Axel mumbled deliriously. "Think think think! I have to think!"
"Sleep
first," Sluggo said, and nudged him toward the door.
Axel went
along like a prisoner being led back to his cell.
The
sleep-pile looked a little like a circus under a collapsed tent. The saurs
were already all gathered under the blankets, except for Hetman in his
little bed, just next to the pile.
Sluggo
lifted the blanket up at one end to look for Agnes and Axel crawled in with
him. It was impossible to make his way in without stepping on someone and
eliciting responses like, "Hey! Watch it!" "Ooof!" and
"Your loot's on my crest!" He climbed around from one end of the
pile to the other, paying little attention to the ruckus he caused, but he
couldn't find a place that seemed comfortable. "Think think
think!"
He lifted
up the blanket, crawled out and headed straight to Hetman's bed, climbing
over the railing and getting in next to him. "Hetman! Hetman!"
"Yes,
Axel," Hetman whispered in his raspy voice.
"Okay
if I sleep here?"
"You're
very welcome to sleep here, Axel."
"I
didn't mean to wake you, if I did. Did I wake you?"
"No,"
said Hetman, who was often haunted by pains old and new, though he refused
any strong drugs to help him sleep. "It hasn't been a good
night."
"Is
the egg under your pillow?"
"Yes
it is. Poor fellow," he said, referring to the egg. "I hope he is
sleeping better inside his little shell -- or she. But perhaps it can't be
called sleep if you haven't yet awakened."
"Sluggo
said I should sleep, but I have to think too. There's all this inner stuff
I have to get into Rotomotoman, but it's all put together and too heavy to
move." Axel rolled a little closer to Hetman. "Did I tell you yet
about Rotomotoman?"
"At
least twenty times, Axel, but tell me again. I enjoy hearing you tell me
about the wondrous Rotomotoman. Whisper it, though, this time. We needn't
wake the others. And maybe it would be best if you left out the Rotomotoman
song."
Axel did
just as Hetman requested, starting all the way back, from the dream to the
"inner stuff," careful to leave out the theme song, though he
really-really did want to sing it.
As Hetman
hoped, Axel fell asleep as he listed the catalog of parts: Motor Assembly A
to Relay Systems Response Assembly B, Relay Systems Response Assembly B to
Motor Systems Response Assembly C -- and so on. Axel's voice trailed off
after he mentioned that Thermostat Assembly F attached to Carrier Drawer
F1.
Hetman
listened. The house was silent except for the occasional grunts and snores
from the sleep-pile. He might manage a little sleep too before dawn, if he
could just get a little question out of his mind —
What does a
Rotomotoman need with a thermostat?
Axel slept
harder than he had at any time before: he slept past dawn. For once he was
not at the window to glimpse the last light of the stars (if it were a
clear night) and the first light of the sun (if the day was similarly
clear).
Instead, he
was lost in a dream of Rotomotoman roaming about the house. The strangest
thing about the dream to Axel was that Rotomotoman, with his round head,
looked very much like a big soft-boiled egg sitting in a cup. It occurred
to Axel that in some ways Rotomotoman was his egg -but instead of needing
the pieces to come apart, he needed to put them together.
Together!
He sat up,
awake. Put them together! He looked around and the room was already filled
with sunlight. Hetman lay beside him, asleep at last, but the sleep-pile
was gone -- everyone was gone, the blankets put away.
He climbed
out of Hetman's bed and ran to the workroom just in time to see Diogenes
and Hubert lowering the assembled components into the uprighted cylinder.
Not only
that, but the wheels were attached to the bottom, the arms attached to the
sides: listless, but attached.
Nearby, Doc
rested on his little box, screwdriver still held between his forepaws.
A crowd of
saurs, mostly little ones, was gathered around them, watching and
chattering. The Five Wise Buddhasaurs sat up on the top of a set of plastic
stairs, to get the next best view to the ones Geraldine and Tibor had from
their respective desktops.
Agnes had
the assembly instructions spread out in front of her.
"Okay,
next to the motor assembly junk is that other junk."
"The
battery pack?" Doc asked.
"That's
what I said, you dimwit! You're going to need the gray cable and the two
blue cables that are in that little bag."
Tyrone and
Alfie opened the bag and brought the cables to Agnes.
"Hey!"
Axel said. Everyone stopped and turned to him.
"Don't
look at me!" said Agnes. "It wasn't my idea! I can't help it if
everyone in this house has gone completely insane."
"Sluggo
mentioned to us this morning the trouble you were having," Doc said,
putting the screwdriver down. "We thought a little help might get the
project moving along."
"But,
but -- " Axel moved closer. He couldn't keep his eyes off the
cylinder. It was still headless, but it had wheels and arms, and it looked
nothing like a soft-boiled egg anymore.
He glanced
at the circle of parts: nine o'clock. Three quarters of the parts were
gone. "Guys -- I can't -- I don't know --"
"Oh,
shut up!" said Agnes. "Go down and get your breakfast. Tom's
waiting for you. Then get back up here and help us out."
To Diogenes
and Hubert, she said, "Now that that thing is loaded and Axel is up,
get Hetman downstairs and come straight back. I want the lid put on this
trashcan today! Tomorrow at the latest!"
Agnes left
nothing else to say. Axel ran downstairs. Diogenes and Hubert left the room
looking back over their shoulders. Agnes noticed Doc staring at her with
his most serene smile.
"What
the hell are you looking at?" she said.
"I am
looking at a marvel, my dear -- at a kind of brief miracle. I am looking at
Agnes in a good mood."
"You'll
be looking at a spiked tail meeting your face if you don't move your butt
off that box and get to work!"
With that
encouragement, Doc picked up the screwdriver and returned to the cylinder
without further comment, but unable to remove the grin from his face.
About this
time, in the world out past the yard and beyond the trees, a buzz was
starting.
As best
anyone could tell, the buzz began in the offices of the radio telescope at
Mount Herrmann. Apparently, a message had been sent to certain coordinates
from someone who went by the name of "Axel" and was addressed to
"space guys." There was nothing particularly extraordinary in
that, as the telescope operators had been accepting messages for many years
as part of a promotional and public relations program to aid in the funding
of their research, which included a search for extraterrestrial
intelligence.
What
started the buzz had to do with the content of the message, of a certain
reference to "making eggs." And since the address of the sender
was one of the houses operated by the Atherton Foundation for surviving
saurs, it presented a rather astounding possibility.
The rumor
could have been a prank, a mistake, a misunderstanding. But there were a
number of important persons in the bioengineering community who were not
sleeping well and would not sleep very well until the mystery was cleared
up. And the bioengineering community was an important group of persons who
held a great deal of sway in many circles. They did not bear sleeplessness
well.
And so a
call was made to Ms. Susan Leahy, the grandniece of Hilary Atherton
herself, who was then in charge of the foundation.
"They
want answers,' she said to Tom Groverton over the phone. "Or
I should
say they want assurance, if you know what I mean."
"They
want to send someone over to inspect the house,' Tom replied.
"Our
charter allows us to legally restrain them, but I'm afraid that would only
stir up more controversy. The Office of Bioengineering Standards has never
approved of our autonomy and would like nothing better than to challenge
it."
"So
they're coming," Tom said.
"I'll
be with them. And I want Dr. Pagliotti there too," she said, referring
to Dr. Margaret. "I won't have them pushing their way around, but I'm
afraid they have to search everywhere to their satisfaction to see that the
saurs aren't producing their own eggs. If they find anything that makes
them think otherwise, they'll file to do further research, and that will
get us into a battle I'd much rather avoid.' "I understand,' said Tom.
"I
know you do. You'll tell the saurs. Let them know we're coming."
"Yes.
It'll be good seeing you again, at least."
"I
only wish it was under less stressful circumstances. You do a wonderful
job, Tom. And the saurs never fail to surprise me."
"Then
you won't be disappointed this time, Susan. I can assure you."
By sleep-time
the workroom was empty of everyone but Axel -- and Rotomotoman.
The faint
traces of moonlight coming through the window endowed everything in the
room with a kind of ashen, metallic hue. The circle of components was gone.
In their place stood Rotomotoman, just under a meter and a half tall, set
upon four sturdy wheels and his narrow, rod-like arms down at his sides.
His large, round eyes, set against the curvature of his head, were fixed in
an expression perhaps best described as dementedly earnest -- a fitting
reflection of his creator. When seen in connection with the first
horizontal seam of the cylinder, a dozen centimeters below them -- a seam
that suggested a mouth -- those eyes also betrayed a certain perplexity, as
if Rotomotoman might be thinking to himself an incomplete expression of
surprise in the vein of "What the -- !"
A cable
connected him to a wall outlet, charging his battery. That was all he
needed -- with the exception of downloading some delicate software into his
brain -- before he could come to life.
Axel stood
transfixed, staring up at him with undiluted awe.
"It's
real," he whispered. "Real-real-real."
"You
should get some sleep," said Doc. He'd come into the workroom at
Sluggo's request, when Axel could not be found in the sleep-pile. "It
won't do to have you falling asleep tomorrow, at the moment of your
triumph."
"Look
at him!" Axel pointed up at Rotomotoman. "Isn't he the greatest
thing you've ever seen? The most stupendous, marvelous, fantastic, greatest
thing you've ever seen?"
"I've
seen quite a lot of him, my friend, in these past few days." Doc's
forepaws were still sore from handling all the human tools. His foot still
hurt a little from when it got wedged under the cylinder while he was
attaching the last of the wheels -- but it was the foot of his weak leg
anyway; the addition to his limp was barely noticeable. "But
yes." He put his forepaw on Axel's shoulder. "It is --
impressive."
"I
couldn't have done it without all you guys helping me. I have the
best-greatest friends in the whole universe!'
"It's
your creation, don't forget. Without you, your Rotomotoman would not exist,
would it?"
"I
don't know," Axel said, seriously pondering the question. "It's
like now I feel like -- like he always was, you know? And all I did was,
like -- "
"Like
what?"
"Like,
recognize him! Like, there's all this real stuff in one place and all this
could-be-real stuff in another place, like behind a window. Did you ever
see one of those gumball machines that's got stuff other than gumballs in
it? Like shrunken heads and rubber spiders and stuff? That's what it's like
-- like Rotomotoman was in one of those gumball machines and I turned the
handle and got him out!"
"Now I
know you need some sleep, my friend. You're talking like a Platonist. Or
even worse: a Jungian." "What's that?'
Doc patted
his head. "It's a kind of person who needs a great deal of sleep. Come
along. When Axel sounds profound it's a strong hint that one is either
dreaming or should be dreaming."
Doc led
Axel out of the workroom with a series of tugs. Only after they turned the
corner and entered the hallway would Axel stop looking back at Rotomotoman.
But then
Axel stopped in his tracks, struck with an idea.
"Hey!"
He gestured to Doc and headed for the staircase. "Now I can show you!'
"It's
far too late, little fellow, to show me anything -- "
"No-no-no-no!
Come on!" Axel trotted a few steps ahead, then looked back at Doc.
"But quiet!" He held one digit of his forepaw up.
"Ssshh!"
Axel crept
down one stair, and then another, and then another. Even at this slow pace,
Doc found it hard to follow. His bad leg made it hard for him to take
stairs, up or down, at any pace. He held to the round, vertical balusters
of the handrail and inched himself along until it occurred to him that he
still hadn't been given a good reason for putting himself through this
exertion.
"Axel,
would you mind -- "
"Ssshh!
Just a little farther." His whisper was louder than Doc's appeal.
"One more step!"
Doc had to
put his weight on his bad leg to descend the next step. He winced, but
caught himself before he cried out.
"There!
See?" Axel whispered. "Can you see?"
Doc could
see nothing. He reached for the next baluster, putting himself in an
awkward angle, almost hanging over Axel. He raised his tail to
counterbalance his weight. If he slipped a mere centimeter he would topple
headfirst down the rest of the stairs. But at last he could make out what
Axel was pointing to: a light coming from the living room.
The light
changed color and intensity with quick little flickers and flashes, as if
the video screen was still on. Not "as if" -- it was on!
"See?"
Axel whispered, more successful this time in keeping his voice down.
"It's TV Frog! I told you he was really there! He's
really-really-really there!"
"Axel,"
Doc felt his grip slipping on the baluster. "It's much more likely
that someone forgot -- " He couldn't finish the sentence, since it was
he who turned off the video that night.
"Maybe,"
Doc muttered, "a technical thing. A 'glitch,' as they say. A
malfunction in -- "
A voice
with the range and volume of a train horn sounded above them:
"Hey!
What the hell's going on down there!"
In the
fraction of a second between Doc hearing Agnes's voice and his forepaws
slipping from the baluster, Doc could distinctly see the light go off in
the living room, as if someone had slapped the "off" square on
the remote pad.
After that,
he saw nothing, but distinctly felt himself in gravity's clutches as first
he tumbled over Axel, then tumbled again and tumbled again.
He shut his
eyes for what seemed like a moment, but when he opened them the lights were
on. He was looking up at Axel and several other saurs, including Kara and
Sluggo -- Tom Groverton was there too -- all standing over him with worried
expressions. Tom ran his hands over Doc's back and abdomen, checking for
broken bones, no doubt.
"I'm
all right," Doc said several times, and after Tom examined him
carefully he even believed it. Bruises, muscle pains, but nothing worse. Agnes,
still at the top of the stairs, kept berating him for "skulking around
in the dark like a goddamn idiot!" -- which was akin to having a bad
ringing in the ears -- Doc had lived with that before.
"Ohhh,
Doc! I'm sorry-sorry-sorry!" Axel repeated it until it became a
litany. "I didn't mean -- I wanted you to see -- that it was TV Frog!
It really was! I'm soooo sorry-sorry-sorry!"
"I
followed along of my own choosing, Axel." Doc tried to reach for
Axel's forepaw but, falling short, weakly waved to him. "It must have
been funny to watch. A good pratfall, had there been an audience.'
As Tom
helped him back up the stairs and into the sleep room, Doc couldn't help
thinking about the light in the living room. Not that he could believe in
TV Frog any more than he had before, but there was something -- something
-- very strange about that video screen being on when no one could have
turned it on. And as he leaned his head back against the little cushion
Kara brought for him, it was that thought, more than any bumps or bruises,
that kept him up for the better part of the night.
ROTOMOTOMAN
WAS ready -- almost.
The saurs
gathered in the workroom. Most of them were on the floor, surrounding -- at
what they believed was a safe distance -- the figure of Rotomotoman that
towered over them. Others were perched on Preston's desk and others yet
were on the desk set across from it.
None had
ventured up to where Geraldine and Tibor kept their separate abodes, but
they too were quite literally out of their boxes to view the great moment.
Tibor even wore his "hat," which was really a green piece of
concave plastic with a little rim. It looked ridiculous on his head but
Tibor insisted it was quite regal and dashing, especially when he wore it
at a jaunty tilt.
Rotomotoman
was attached by cable to the hard drive of Preston's computer. No one knew
how long the download would take, but when it was finished Rotomotoman
would come to life. Axel, standing next to his creation, tried to count
down the seconds, but he lost his place several times and had to start
over.
"Attention!"
Agnes called out from her place near the door. "Attention! Keep back!
When this piece of junk goes berserk there's no telling who will be crushed
under its wheels! All saurs must keep back!"
Only Sluggo
paid attention to her, and that was only to get her to stop shouting.
Tom
Groverton was there too. No one noticed, though, that he was standing next
to the two fire extinguishers he'd placed next to Geraldine's lab.
Axel gave
up on the countdown and started to chant: "Go! Go! Go! Rotomotoman!
Go! Go! Go! Rotomotoman!"
Some of the
other saurs picked it up. "Go! Go! Go! Rotomotoman!"
Others
joined in. "Go! Go! Go! Rotomotoman!"
Even the
saurs who didn't speak squeaked and chirped to the rhythm of the cheer.
"Go!
Go! Go! Rotomotoman! Go! Go! Go! Rotomotoman!"
"Attention
all saurs! Keep back! When the piece of junk goes berserk--"
"Go!
Go! Go! Rotomotoman! Go! Go! Go! Rotomotoman!"
"--
will be indiscriminately crushed under --"
Rotomotoman
jerked very slightly, hardly a movement at all. The download was finished.
A faint hum and whir emanated from his mechanical innards. His hemisphere
head turned slightly to the left and the pupils of his huge eyes followed
the same general direction, then started back slowly to the right, taking
in the whole scene.
The
chanting stopped. Even Agnes held off her shouted warnings.
It is hard
to imagine a more startled expression on a piece of machinery, if one can
imagine an expression on a piece of machinery at all. The eyes had much to
do with it, looking like enormous versions of the eyes that adorned toys
and dolls in years long past -- but much more active, animated, in fact.
Those eyes and the mouth-like seam in his cylinder-torso created an
expression: surprise, panic, astonishment.
He surveyed
the ninety-odd dinosaur-looking creatures staring up at him -- and one
human, with arms folded, leaning back against a desk, smiling with apparent
admiration.
Rotomotoman
raised his arms in a gesture of surrender and recoiled right into Preston's
desk.
The
liquid-gray display screen on his torso -- his only means of communication
-- filled with exclamation points, question marks, and other strange
symbols that may even have been incomprehensible to other rotomotomen, if
any existed.
"See?"
Agnes shouted. "Just as I told you! The monster is ready to pounce!
Back away!"
But
Rotomotoman just froze in that posture until Axel approached him on the
back of the large brown triceratops named Dr. David Norman. Dr. Norman
lowered his head and Axel dismounted. He walked straight up to his creation
with his left forepaw upraised.
"Hiya!
I'm Axel!"
Rotomotoman
stared down at the small blue creature. He lowered one of his arms and bent
the joint that approximated the elbow of the other. His display screen
cleared of symbols, except for five characters of simple, recognizable
alphabet and punctuation:
"Hiya!"
Many of the
saurs cheered. Tom Groverton put his hands together and applauded.
Agnes
nudged Preston and muttered, "You sure there aren't any machine guns
in those fingers?"
"Positive."
"No
flame throwers or lasers?"
"You
saw the instructions yourself. Rotomotoman is weapon-free. He does have a
rotating red flashing light that comes out of the top of his head, but as
you can see he hasn't had cause to use it yet."
Agnes
grumbled. "He still looks like a trashcan made up for Halloween!"
"Hey!
Guys!" Axel said, as if the other saurs might not know yet, "I
want you to meet your new friend! This is Rotomotoman!"
Rotomotoman
held his metal hand horizontally just above his eyes: a salute to the
assembly, with "Hiya!" still on his display screen. More cheers
greeted him.
"Come
on!" Axel coaxed his metal friend away from the desk. "A little
this way! Follow me!"
Words
appeared on his display screen: first "Axel," then
"follow."
Rotomotoman
complied with each direction, if a little tentatively. His software may
have overly cautioned him about running over little ones, but he cast his
gaze downward and thoroughly surveyed the floor, checking to make sure no
one was underfoot. If a meter-and-a-half tall cylinder rolling on four
wheels could be described as moving "daintily," it would describe
Rotomotoman just then.
Axel led
him to the door of the workroom. Rotomotoman -- making no sound but an
efficient, high-pitched whir-- saluted the door. The word "door"
appeared on his display screen. He followed Axel down the hallway, holding
his salute all the way to the lift platform, where he stopped cold.
Rotomotoman
didn't seem confident that he could keep his balance on the flatbed lift,
with its guardrails set no more than a few centimeters high. Axel coaxed
him on with the assurance that the lift moved so slowly he would be in no
danger -- and with the assistance of Diogenes and Hubert pushing from
behind. With "Help!" replacing "Hiya!" on his display
screen, Rotomotoman held so tightly to the staircase wall he left a trail
of grooves in it, but everyone was too excited to notice them.
As he
rolled from the platform to the floor he cast his gaze upward as if in
thanks to some heavenly Rotomotogod.
"Look
over here, Rotomotoman!" Axel said, pointing to the living room.
"That's where the video is."
Rotomotoman
saluted the video screen. His own screen alternated the words,
"Video" and "Hiya!"
"Over
in that room is where we eat!"
Rotomotoman
saluted the dining room. "Dining room -- Hiya! -Dining room --"
He saluted
everything that Axel showed him, including the computer, the plastic
stairs, the bookcases, and the Five Wise Buddhasaurs' plastic saxophones.
And all their names were printed out on his display screen, each punctuated
with the same greeting.
"I
suppose this question should have come up long ago," Doc asked the
ecstatic Axel, while Rotomotoman saluted the lamp table, the couch, and a
broom Tom had left leaning by the living room window, "but just what
exactly is Rotomotoman supposed to do?"
"Rotomotoman
is here to protect good guys from the bad guys!"
"Well,"
Doc sighed deeply and patted Axel's head, "may your labors be
few."
The notion
of "bad guys" was not entirely forgotten by Doc as Tom Groverton
gathered all the saurs around in the library later that afternoon. In the
back of the room -- standing at attention, of course -- was Rotomotoman,
his creator proudly at his side.
"They'll
be here tomorrow, and they'll be looking for eggs," Tom said, his
hands folded loosely as he sat on a little stool in the center of the room.
"Tell
them to mind their own damn business!" Agnes shouted back.
"That
would be fine," Tom said, "if we could. But these folks have
rescinded their so-called 'proprietary rights,' based on a certain
definition of what you guys are. And as you know they've been looking for
loopholes ever since they agreed to the Atherton Foundation's proposal.
Your intelligence, your emotional capacity, your longevity -- it's baffled
them for years. They have the support of a certain portion of the
scientific community who'd like very much to make you the subject of study.
And they want desperately to find out what they did, well, 'right,' so to
speak, when they designed you. Generating eggs might change the deal if
they find out. I mean -- "Tom cleared his throat, "if they find
any."
"Any
what?" Doc asked in a whisper.
Tom smiled.
"That's the spirit. I won't ask any questions and you won't tell me
any lies -- other than the ones you may already tell me."
"Why,
Tom!" Doc said, his heavy eyelids raised as far as they would go.
"What makes you think we'd tell you any lies?"
Tom ignored
the remark. "Remember, I'll be here. Dr. Margaret will be here, and
even Ms. Leahy will be here to make sure these folks don't do anything out
of line. But they will be thorough, and we can't really stop them, because
we want to show them that we have nothing to hide."
"We
have nothing to hide," Doc said.
"Exactly."
Tom stood up. "Now, I have some things to do upstairs before I start
dinner. But there's one more thing: it might be a good idea to keep
Rotomotoman in the background when they come. We don't want to hit them
with more than they can take."
"What
did he mean by that?" Axel asked as Tom left the room.
"He
means that our visitors tomorrow are unprepared for your genius," said
Doc.
"Genius!"
Agnes marched up to Axel. "Spelled the same as 'idiot!' This is all
your fault! Sending messages to 'space guys!' You're the one who should be
locked up! Not Bronte!"
"Bronte!"
Axel gasped. "Who wants to lock up Bronte?"
"No
one said anything about locking up Bronte!" Kara looked over at
Bronte, whose concern about her egg had done little to steady her nerves
for the meeting. Now she was trembling.
"What
do you think they'll do?" Agnes continued. "They'll take her off
to a laboratory and stick her with needles and cut her up to find out how
she did it!"
A cry of
alarm rose from the surrounding saurs. Memories of past injuries and
dangers became acutely tangible even to the smallest and simplest of them.
"Don't
listen to her," Kara said to Bronte. "Agnes is overreacting as
usual. No one's going to take you away." She turned angrily to Agnes.
"Can't you ever keep your mouth shut? We're all in a panic when we
need our heads about us!"
"They'll
take the egg away, won't they?" Bronte stammered. "Like the
scientists in the video we saw once, climbing into nests and stealing the
eggs of rare birds."
"No
one's going to do that here." Preston put his hand on Bronte's back.
He could feel her shivers. "We'll think of something."
"I'm
sorry, Bronte," Axel said. His face never before looked so long and
mournful. "I didn't know this would happen."
"It's
not your fault," said Bronte, her nubby teeth grinding at her lower
lip. "You were just -- just being Axel."
"That's
the whole damn problem right there!" Agnes said.
"Maybe
Rotomotoman can help us now," Axel said in a low voice.
Rotomotoman,
in the back of the room, saluted at the mention of his name.
"Listen,"
Agnes barked at Axel, "I don't want to hear one more word about
Rotomotoman! Space guys! Electric trashcans! Frogs watching the video! If I
hear anything more from you --"
Agnes was
interrupted by a voice that had so far not entered the discussion. It came
back from the little bed over by the window, and in a low, raspy voice.
"Axel
is right," said Hetman.
"What?"
Agnes was ready for verbal battle, and the words "Axel is right"
set her back plates upright, but they were spoken by the one saur she would
not assail. "What did you say?"
"I
said, Axel is right. Something Axel told me a few nights ago has kept me up
thinking and-- I could be wrong, but-- Axel, do you still have the assembly
directions for your Rotomotoman?"
"They're
with Preston's stuff, up by the computer," he said.
"Bring
them down here, and hurry! We have stuff to do!"
"Stuff
to do!" Axel ran upstairs without hesitation.
"The
rest of you," Hetman continued, "I want you to look very
carefully at the sections on that sheet which refer to the Thermostat
Assembly F and Carrier Drawer Assembly F1. Perhaps I'm completely wrong,
but I think we've been overlooking something remarkable about that creation
of Axel's."
WHEN THE
BIG CAR arrived the next morning, Axel was at the window, up on the little
lamp table, scouting.
"Huuuu-mans!"
He announced to the others.
"They're
here! And they're in a bad guys car!"
The long
dark limousine had an official seal from The Office of Bioengineering
Standards on the side door. It stopped right in front of the house and out
came three strangers, Dr. Margaret, and Ms. Leahy. Of the strangers, there
was a young African-American, impeccably dressed in a topcoat and dark
suit; a gray-haired Caucasian, much more casually dressed, in an unbuttoned
leather jacket and a dark T-shirt; a young Asian-looking woman with very
short canary-colored hair, wearing a plaid workshirt and a denim jacket.
Ms. Leahy
led the way. Tom met the little group out on the porch.
"I'm
really sorry about this," she said as she shook Tom's hand. Susan
Leahy was trim and efficient as always, and she was starting to let the
gray come into her hair. She was one of those eccentrics who still wore
glasses, though hers were rimless. "You've told them what this is all
about, didn't you?"
"Yes,
they know."
She nodded
and turned to the three persons who were to search the house.
"Okay,
folks, you know the rules. You can search everything, everywhere, but if
anything you do seems to be upsetting or traumatizing the saurs, I or Dr.
Pagliotti here will have to ask you to back off. This is Tom
Groverton." She put her hand on his shoulder. "Any questions you
may have I'm sure he'll be glad to answer. We want to cooperate fully, but
you have to understand that we have to act in the best interest of the
saurs."
The young
African-American, Dr. Phillips, nodded politely to Ms. Leahy. "We've
done this kind of work at other houses. I can assure you we'll be as
non-disruptive as we possibly can."
Dr.
Margaret, who had seen some of the saurs' eggs herself, came up to Tom and
gripped his hand. She wore a white jacket that looked a little like a short
lab coat, and for once her long brown hair wasn't tied back. She didn't say
a word but searched his expression for any sign of what she might expect.
Tom could
only shrug. Anything can happen, he seemed to say, but don't get worried
yet.
"You
know," Ms. Leahy said, "it's nice to have an excuse to come here
and visit some old friends."
Axel was
still standing at the window, waving to her.
She waved
back. "Hiya!"
When the
group entered the house, some of the saurs stopped to watch them,
cautiously and curiously. The smaller saurs went on with their business,
moving from room to room on skates, getting their computer lessons, a brief
game of Not So Hard, or watching the video.
"Attention
humans!" Agnes announced from atop a lamp table near the door.
"Attention all humans! It's time to SHAPE UP!"
"Don't
mind Agnes," Ms. Leahy told the officials. "She greets most
humans that way."
"Humans!"
Agnes continued, "It's time to SHAPE UP! You've been running things
stupidly for too long! It's time to STOP BEING STUPID!"
"So
here's the little guy who's caused all the ruckus." Ms. Leahy went
straight to Axel.
"Miss
Lay-hee! Miss Lay-hee! Howya doing? What are you doing with the bad
guys?"
Ms. Leahy
carefully picked him up and perched him on her shoulder. "Important
stuff, Axel. Want to see?"
"Yeah!"
She made
sure she had a safe grip on him and that he wouldn't slip, even with all
his excited gesticulations. "So what's all this about you sending
messages to space?"
"Yeah!"
said Axel. "Reggie and me! We sent a message to the space guys and
told them all about us!'
The three
investigators gathered around to listen to the conversation. The young
woman, Dr. Yoon, took out a pocket computer to record it.
"And
have you heard anything back from the 'space guys' yet?'
"Yeah!
Maybe! At least I think that's why TV Frog is here! He comes at night and
watches the video, but no one's seen him but me! Doc almost saw him but he
fell down the stairs! He's okay, though. Doc, I mean, but TV Frog's okay
too. Anyway, I think TV Frog just wants us to think he's here because he
can't sleep. But Geraldine said he was really sent by the space guys,
because they know to drill holes in time and space!'
Ms. Leahy
looked at the three investigators.
"Well,
here's your source for the egg story."
Dr. Yoon
slipped the computer back into her pocket.
"And
who's that over there?" Ms. Leahy pointed to the metal cylinder with
the hemisphere head, standing out of the way, just to the left of the video
screen.
"That's
Rotomotoman! I built him myself! Well, Reggie helped me, and Preston, and
Doc, and Agnes, and a lot of the other guys. But I thought him up all by
myself!"
Rotomotoman
was motionless. His display screen was empty. His left arm was listless at
his side but his right arm was raised in a salute. It was hard to say what
he might have been saluting -- his right eye looked off to his left and his
left eye looked off to his right.
The
investigators looked over Rotomotoman carefully. They even took his head
off and inspected the components. Some of the saurs got very quiet and even
Agnes briefly desisted from her shouted exhortations.
"What
is it supposed to do?" the man in the leather jacket, Mr. Chase, asked
Tom.
"Ask the
inventor." He pointed to Axel. "You can talk to them, you
know."
"He
fights bad guys and protects the good guys!" Axel offered without
waiting to be asked.
"Doesn't
look like he can fight any bad guys in his shape," Dr. Yoon said as
she re-secured Rotomotoman's head.
"I --
I forgot to plug him in last night!" Axel looked over at Doc, sitting
on his little box, nodding almost imperceptibly. Then he looked to Agnes,
who waved her tail threateningly.
"I've
got to charge him up! He'll be okay tomorrow!"
"The
kitchen is this way," Tom said to Dr. Phillips, "but I'm afraid
the only eggs you'll find are in the refrigerator."
The
investigators looked anyway -- very carefully. They looked into every
cabinet and along the baseboards and around the ceilings. They went through
the cellar and the litter room, the living room, the dining room and the
library. They looked behind all the books on the shelves. Dr. Margaret
wouldn't let them look under Hetman's pillow, but she took the pillow out
herself and let them inspect it.
"If
the lady and gentlemen wish to look under the mattress," Hetman said,
"they are welcome to do so."
"If I
may?" Dr. Phillips said in an apologetic voice and did his work as
quickly as possible. Before he moved on, he said "Thank you," to
Hetman, came back and added, "Thank you -- sir."
"You're
very welcome."
They
searched all the rooms upstairs and even went up into the attic, where the
saurs had their "museum," made up of all the things friends and
former "owners" had left them over the years: toys, paintings on
construction paper, knickknacks and little articles of clothing. The investigators
found several egg-shaped things, made of glass and plastic, but not one
real egg.
Mr. Chase's
attention was drawn to a little charm on one of the shelves, a gold-plated
Star of David on a slender chain. He picked it up to examine more closely.
"Put
it back!" Agnes, who had followed them up into the Museum, shouted at
him.
"Is
this yours?" Mr. Chase asked her. "It's very pretty."
"None
of your damn business! Put it back!"
Agnes
harangued the investigators all the way down from the attic.
"Foo!
Humans! War mongers! Animal eaters! Planet spoilers! G'wan! Beat it!
Scram!"
"Adamant,
isn't she?" Mr. Chase said to Dr. Margaret.
"You're
upsetting her," Dr. Margaret replied.
"Sounds
to me like she's upsetting herself."
"Didya
hear?" Axel, still perched on Ms. Leahy's shoulder, whispered to her.
"He called Agnes an ant?
Ms. Leahy
held her finger up to her lips. "Ssshh. Maybe he meant 'aunt.'"
When the
investigators reached the sleep room they were approached by a pale green
hadrosaur who, after some deliberation, shouted to them,
"Yar-woo?"
"No!
No!" Agnes coached the hadrosaur. "That's not what I told you to
say!"
The
hadrosaur tried again: "Yar-woo!"
"No!
'Foo!' You're supposed to say 'Foo!'" She smacked her tail against the
floor.
"Foo?"
"Forget
it! Just forget it!"
"Foo!"
The hadrosaur smiled and walked away.
In the
closet of the sleep room, Mr. Chase found a little cardboard box with
wadded-up cotton inside. Nestled in the cotton was a tiny egg.
"Here's
something," he said to his colleagues, who were searching in other
parts of the room.
"Hey!
Put that back!" Agnes shouted. "That's not yours!"
Mr. Chase
held up the egg and inspected it carefully. It had a blue tint to it, and
was no bigger than the first joint of his thumb.
"It's
a bird's egg," Bronte walked up to Mr. Chase nervously. "A
robin's, probably. Sluggo found it in the yard. Sometimes we try to hatch
them -- as if they were ours."
She looked
up at Dr. Yoon and Dr. Phillips. "If they do hatch, we feed the little
bird until it's old enough. Tom can sometimes find another nest in the yard
and put it back. Sometimes the older birds accept him." Her voice was
trembling now. "It's -- it's just sort of a thing we do."
Dr.
Phillips took the egg and held it up to the light from the window.
"Looks like a robin's egg to me."
"That's
what she said!" Agnes stood next to Bronte. "Now beat it! G'wan!
Scram!"
"Is
this when they pull their guns out?" Axel whispered to Ms. Leahy.
"They
don't have guns," she answered.
"I
thought they were bad guys!"
"Well,
not really. Not that kind, at least."
Dr. Yoon,
with arms folded, glanced at Agnes and said to her colleagues, "It may
be that their eggs and the robin's eggs are almost alike. We better take it
in."
"No!"
Bronte gasped.
Ms. Leahy
bent down and put her hand gently on Bronte's back. "Must you?"
She asked the investigators.
"We
have to know," Dr. Phillips put the egg back into its box. "I can
give you all sorts of reasons, but the answer simply boils down to this: we
have to know."
"Hear
that?" Agnes shouted to the other saurs. "He said 'boil!' I told
you they were going to eat them!"
"Please,"
Kara said to the investigators. "It really is a robin's egg. Honest.
Don't take it away."
Dr.
Phillips bent down and spoke to Bronte, resting the box carefully on his
knee. "We won't hurt it. We just need to know what it is. It's a very
simple procedure and we can have it back to you in a day or so."
"What
if it hatches?" Bronte asked. "You'll take care of the little
bird? You won't just --pitch it?"
"If
that's what happens, I'll take care of it." He reached out and touched
the little furrows on her brow. "I promise."
Dr.
Phillips put the cardboard box into a little specimen bag, but left the bag
open. Dr. Yoon made some notes with her pocket computer. Saurs filled the
room. None of them spoke, not even Agnes, but they all looked at the
investigators, who did their work quickly and tried not to look back.
"They
may not be bad guys," Ms. Leahy whispered to Axel, "but I'll bet
you that right now they don't feel like good guys."
She, along
with Tom and Dr. Margaret, followed the investigators back out to the
limousine, but in the living room she noticed Doc, still sitting on his
plastic box, staring out toward the window as if deep in thought.
She put
Axel down and kissed him on the snout. "I'll see you later," she
said. "Gotta talk to my old buddy over there."
Ms. Leahy
knelt down next to Doc and hugged him. "My old friend. Forgive me for
not stopping to talk to you."
"You
were busy, I know. There is nothing to forgive."
"I'll
come back soon. For a real visit. We'll sit on the porch and talk of Cicero
and Democritus and St. Augustine."
"Juvenal."
Doc smiled. "'Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?'" He looked out
toward the front door, where the limousine waited. "Not bad for a
tiny, manufactured brain, eh?"
"It's
not how much brain you've got, but how you use it."
She hugged
him again and Doc reciprocated as best he could with his short forearms.
She
whispered: "Is there any real reason to worry?"
Doc shook
his head. "We'll be fine, for now."
When she
stood up, Ms. Leahy could see the motionless metal cylinder of Rotomotoman
saluting her. She returned his salute, bid farewell to the others and
walked out to the limousine.
On the
porch, Dr. Margaret asked Tom, "What will you do now?"
"I
think I'll sit out here for a while."
She put her
hand on his shoulder. "That's not what I meant."
"It's
not really my call. It's theirs." He gestured back to the house with
his thumb.
"What
are they doing in there?"
The horn
sounded from the limousine.
Tom walked
Dr. Margaret to the limousine. "Come back tonight."
He took her
hand and squeezed it gently. She got into the limousine and he watched it
until it was out of sight, past the trees. For a few more minutes he sat on
the bench on the porch, then got up and looked through the living room
window.
Rotomotoman,
back in motion again, had rolled out to the center of the room. The saurs
were gathered around him in a circle. Tom could hear a faint mechanical
buzzing and a high-pitched beep come from the metal cylinder. At the same
moment, a section of the odd little robot, defined by nearly imperceptible
seams in his cylindrical torso, slid out like the drawer of a desk.
Tom
couldn't see what was inside, but he knew what it was. Bronte was the
closest to the drawer, peering in with sad, hopeful eyes.
Then she
opened her mouth as if to gasp.
She spoke
to the others and they all moved in even closer, trying to get a peek
inside. Tom couldn't hear a word of it, but he didn't have to.
Axel,
perched on Hubert's back to stare into the little drawer, shouted out,
"It moved! I saw it move!"
Tom went
back to the bench. His coming in now would just create more nervous
commotion and probably start Agnes shouting again.
There would
be plenty of time later to consider all the implications. The
investigators, back-tracking through their information, might request a
look at the schematics of Axel's metal friend and discover Rotomotoman's
very practical function as an incubator.
But then, Reggie
might have anticipated that too, and devised a little camouflage for it.
Never underestimate the Reggiesystem, Tom learned long ago.
After all,
Reggie too was a kind of human-made life form, and like the saurs had
developed in his own way.
For now, though,
the moment belonged to the saurs, especially Bronte, the mother-to-be.
THAT NIGHT,
AXEL descended the stairs as stealthily as he could manage, in search of TV
Frog. But the living room was dark, the video turned off. For a moment he
thought that TV Frog must not have come, but he turned around and saw the
illuminated screen of the Reggiesystem computer in the dining room, and
before it sat TV Frog, visible in silhouette. The plastic stairs were
placed in front of the desk, just behind where TV Frog sat with an
old-fashioned clicker mouse, which he slapped with his left paw just as
he'd slapped the video's remote pad.
TV Frog
seemed to be clicking through a set of files, text on the right side and
pictures on the left. Axel couldn't make out any of it, so he crept up the
steps to get a closer look.
The
pictures weren't very pleasant to look at: emaciated creatures with
agonized expressions, bruised, battered, and scarred. Gaping mouths,
hollowed eyes, muscles tensed with pain —
They were
saurs, all of them.
These were
the official files of the Atherton Foundation, all of their cases, with
photos taken of the saurs when they were first found or brought to them.
Axel
recognized some of them -- Zack, Kip, Charlie, Hetman -- Oh! Herman! How
did he ever make it? He barely looked alive. He -The words got all tied up
in Axel's head. If he looked at the pictures, at least he didn't have to
think about them. But how could he not think about them after looking at
all the faces, all the pain
And then he
saw a photograph of a small, blue theropod, exhausted, lying on his side,
head twisted back as if he could hardly raise it -- one black,
expressionless eye was visible, staring upward. A second photo showed a
long, straight cut down his back, infected and swollen.
The cut was
the same length as the scar down Axel's back.
Axel felt
as if the desk dropped out from under him -- and the floor, the house,
everything -- as if he was failing through time and space.
"Space
and Time and Time and Space --"
Whirling
and spinning like an amusement park ride, but only the really, truly scary
parts, and no one was there with whom he could share the elation and
danger.
A boy, the
one he'd been purchased for, had cut him open, goaded on a bet, to see if
he had mechanical parts or biological organs. "Not like he's an
animal," the boy had said. "Just a thing. Don't matter what
anyone does to him."
But the boy
said "him," like he was someone
And
Lancelot was there! Lancelot, his buddy! The two of them were purchased
together, and they lived with the boy and his family. "Buddies
forever, Lancelot and Axel, Axel and Lancelot --"
But
Lancelot was all cut open, spread out on the floor, screaming, pleading,
"Please! Stop! Help me! Kill me! Stop!"
And Axel
had shouted too. "Don't! Don't hurt him! Stop it!"
A grown-up
interrupted the impromptu dissections. Axel had run, with all his strength.
He'd run, hidden himself, bled. With no food, with all his energy and
muscle spent, he slipped into a hole on the edge of a construction site and
waited to die, like Lancelot.
Axel
remembered what that upward-turned eye in the photograph was looking at.
It had been
night. The stars were out, and they were everywhere.
"Space
--" said Axel. He put his forepaw on TV Frog's smooth back. It
shuddered like an unbalanced engine.
"It
was all space and big and perfect and endless. And even though I was small,
I felt as big as space. I felt as big as the universe."
TV Frog
clicked the mouse and the monitor screen went dark.
"That's
what I should have asked the space guys about," Axel told him.
"What I wanted to ask before I forgot. I wanted to ask if they knew
any way to bring Lancelot back, or do something, so that he wouldn't be
dead."
TV Frog
just sat there. Still shuddering. His eyes looked immeasurably deep and
sad.
"I
guess they couldn't, huh?"
Whether or
not he could answer, TV Frog didn't, which seemed like a kind of answer in
itself.
Axel and TV
Frog stood in front of the computer, and after a while the monitor clicked
on again.
The screen
filled with stars.
This time,
when the screensaver reached the end of the cycle, with the smeared
thumbprint galaxy just in view, it seemed to go a little farther. The
galaxy filled the whole screen.
"You
know, Reggie says the universe is one big place!"
TV Frog's
eyes bobbed down into his head in a kind of affirmative gesture.
"I
came down to ask if you wanted to come upstairs and see what's happening.
It's the biggest thing that's ever happened here. The biggest thing that's
ever happened anywhere!"
TV Frog
didn't move.
Axel bent
down and tugged at TV Frog's forepaw. "It's okay! No one will see you
there! They're all looking at the egg!"
Axel kept
tugging and urging until TV Frog turned away from the computer.
"We'd
better hurry! It's almost ready to hatch!"
But TV Frog
propelled himself slowly, one cautious "flop" at a time.
"Come
on! No one will see you! I promise!"
All the way
down from the desk, across the floor and up the stairs to the second floor,
with Axel leading, TV Frog moved on: flop, pause, flop, pause, flop.
They peered
around the doorway into the sleep room. All the saurs were gathered around
Rotomotoman, situated in the center of the room. He, like everyone else,
was staring into his incubator drawer, his pupils cast at an awkwardly
downward angle. Bronte stood closest to the drawer, along with Kara, Agnes,
Doc, and Preston. The only sounds in the room were the soft purr of
Rotomotoman's machinery and the anticipatory breathing of every creature in
the room.
Sitting in the
back, as far out of the way as they could situate themselves, were Tom
Groverton and Dr. Margaret. They were holding hands, which Axel thought
especially fascinating. He tapped TV Frog and pointed to them.
"Look
at that!" he whispered. "I'll bet they're learning how to make
eggs too!"
He kept
staring at the humans until he heard a kind of chiming sound coming from
Rotomotoman. A disk-shaped part at the top of his head slid away and up
from the cavity rose a flashing, rotating red light -- just as Axel had
designed it.
A word
flashed on Rotomotoman's display screen: "Ready!"
The little
drawer opened.
The quiet
sighs of awe and pent-up relief from everyone gathered around sounded a
little like a low, deep chord from some great church organ.
"Come
on! Let's get a closer look!" Axel reached over to tap TV Frog again,
but there was no one at his side now.
TV Frog was
gone.
"Hey!"
Axel wanted
to go look for him, but his curiosity about the egg proved the greater
draw. Axel crept up to the incubator drawer and told himself he'd find TV
Frog later.
He gently
pushed through the thick crowd of saurs. Charlie grouched at him until
Rosie reminded him that it was Axel who was responsible for Rotomotoman.
They let him through, and Axel climbed up on Hubert's back, where he could
easily see into the drawer.
The first
few hairline cracks had already appeared on the surface of the shivering
egg. A piece of the shell dropped away and from that breach popped a little
pink head at the end of long neck.
No one looked
more surprised than Rotomotoman, whose huge diskeyes implausibly seemed to
grow larger at the sight.
The tiny
hatchling's eyes were shut at first, but its mouth was open and it made a
little sound, a "Gack!" like a clearing of its throat.
Diogenes,
who in all his years at the house had never been heard to utter more than a
few words, turned to Hetman's bed and whispered, "Did you hear?"
Hetman
nodded. "Thank you, that I lived long enough to hear it."
Then he (or
she) opened his (or her) eyes.
The small,
black, glistening orbs seemed instantly focused. The hatchling looked over
the top of the drawer and seemed to see everyone and everything.
Bronte bent
down and caressed the little creature with her snout, then tapped away
another piece of the shell to free it more.
"It's
hard to say," Doc looked at the hatchling, "since he's without
precedent, as far as we know, but he looks like a healthy little fellow to
me."
"Little
fellow?" Agnes snapped. "Can't you see it's obviously female?
Obviously intelligent? Obviously smarter than any carnosaur could ever hope
to be?"
"Don't
start," said Kara. "It's not the time to fight."
"What
will happen now?" Bronte asked Kara. "Will she grow? Will she
change and mature? Will she learn to do all the things we do?"
"Who
knows?" said Kara. "We'll learn as we go along."
"It
won't stay a secret for long," said Charlie, rubbing his nasal horn
against the floor. "Those humans in the big car know more than they're
saying. They wouldn't have taken Axel's story so seriously if they didn't."
"That
they figure it out isn't what matters," Agnes said. "It's what
they'll do when they know."
"Which
we can't predict," said Preston, smiling at the little pink creature
in the incubator drawer. "And this isn't the time to try."
All this
time Axel, balanced on Hubert's back, kept trying to get the hatchling's
attention, waving excitedly with one forepaw while holding to Hubert's neck
with the other.
"Hiya!
Hey! Up here! Hey! Hiya!"
The tiny
pink sauropod looked up at Axel.
"Gack!"
"Hiya,
Gack! I'm Axel!"
"That's
not her name!" Agnes waved her tail. "Moron!"
Kara nudged
her and shook her head. "We'll sort it out later." When Axel
climbed down, Preston put his forepaw on his head and said, "We need
to thank you. You -- and Reggie."
Axel looked
up at Preston. "Don't forget Rotomotoman!"
"Yes,
Rotomotoman too."
Rotomotoman
stared down and saluted the hatchling, the red light on his head still
rotating, as the word "Gack" flashed on his display screen.
Axel looked
around the sleep room and noticed that Sluggo was up on the box seat under
the window, looking out.
"Hey!"
Axel hopped up and joined him. It was his favorite spot, after all.
"Whatya doing up here?"
"I --
I just wanted to look up at the stars. I don't know why. The egg -- and everything--
I feel scared and I don't know why. Or I do -- but I'm still scared. I just
needed to look up at the sky and see the stars."
"Me
too." Axel put his forepaws up against the glass. "The Moon and
the planets and the stars and the galaxies are all spinning through space!
And we're spinning through space too! It's a fact!"
"When
I look up at the stars," Sluggo said, "I feel -- I don't know -I
feel--"
"As
big as the universe!" Axel said.
"Yes.
That's it. As big as the universe."
"It's
a good night for looking." Axel gazed at the Moon, his mouth wide
open. "It's the biggest, best universe in the whole world!"
Agnes might
have disputed him, and if not there were many others who would, but it
wasn't in Sluggo to argue. He had only one universe to judge from, just as
he had only one egg to judge from, but the both of them in their different
ways seemed pretty remarkable.
And so, in
an old house at the edge of the woods, far from the nearest megalopolis,
Axel and Sluggo looked out from the window of the sleep room, up at the
stars.
"Look
at that!" Axel pointed to a luminous streak, razor thin, cutting a
diagonal line across the night sky.
"A
shooting star!" Axel nudged Sluggo. "Do you see it?"
"Yes,"
Slug, go answered.
The
shooting star was there for a few seconds, then disappeared.
"Wasn't
that neat?" Axel said.
"Yes,
but --" Sluggo looked over at Axel, then out the window again.
"What?"
"Aren't
shooting stars supposed to shoot down? That one was going up!"
"Heyyyy!"
Axel rubbed the spot just under his chin. "That's right!"
The two of
them kept looking out at the sky the waiting universe before them and the
new world behind, as good as any and better than most -- but that was the
only upward-shooting star they saw that night.
These
manuscript fragments were recently found among the papers of (famous dead
sf writer).(n1) Unfortunately, the papers had been stored in the author's
wine cellar, and when the supports on a rack of (expensive vintage) gave
way, the subsequent flood of wine ruined almost the entire trove of
stories, essays, letters and (embarrassing type of fetishistic
pornography). Only the laborious efforts of (famous sf critic) have
succeeded in recovering even these small portions of one random text. The
gaps in the manuscript have been assigned grammatical and contextual labels
based on the scholar's best understanding of the author's published work.
The editor hopes that the readers will be able to enjoy these gap-ridden
story fragments by allowing their imaginations to fill in the blanks.
THE
(cosmological noun)
THAT (past
tense verb)
EARTH by
(famous
dead sf writer)
Tony
(unusual-sounding last name) occupied the junior spot on the staff at
(classic science fiction writer indicative of author's influences)
Observatory. Fresh out of his stressful post-grad stint with the
(derogatory adjective for female behavior) Angela Wiltdonger, Tony faced in
his new job the subtle discrimination leveled by the senior scientists
against the unproven newcomer. Tony consoled himself with the thought that
over time his professional status would (verb). Unless, of course, everyone
secretly hated him because he was a (ethnic stereotype).
In any
case, Tony's low rank secured him the absolutely worst viewing times on the
big, expensive (super-science gadget): the five minutes just before dawn.
Only during these scant hours could he collect data for his researches.
Tony's controversial theory about the origin of (quantum particle) in the
(distant nebula) during the (past era) and their effect on (type of human
behavior) had brought him nothing but (obscene noun). Nonetheless, Tony
clung (adverb) to his pet theory.
Little did
he suspect that today would prove the turning point in his (nerdy neurotic
compulsion to succeed).
As he
pressed his (body part) to the (very cold portion of super-science gadget),
Tony quivered with (emotion). He could barely believe his (adjective
involving F-word) senses! There, clear as day, stood revealed a Big Dumb
Object composed entirely of (quantum particle, plural)!
"Mr.
(unusual-sounding last name)! Exactly what do you think you're doing?"
Striking
him like an unexpected blow, the hated voice of Professor Angela Wiltdonger
caused Tony to slip from the observing platform and land clumsily at
Wiltdonger's feet, which were shod in the very latest style from (classy
designer).
Tony picked
himself up and brushed (yucky science glop) off his pants. "Um, just
finishing my observations, Professor Wiltdonger. And you won't believe what
I just discovered --"
"I
don't give a (part of rodent's anatomy) about any of your trivial
observations. It's one minute past dawn, and you're supposed to be swabbing
out the (radiation-producing lab equipment). Get busy!"
Tony bit
his (body part). No point getting in an argument with Wiltdonger now. Once
he had his discovery firmly documented, it would be a short step to winning
(one of the few prestigious prizes whose reputation is not marred by
SFWA-style infighting) and scientific immortality. Then he'd see what kind
of (a dish best served cold) he would enjoy!
...the
ruins of the (classic science fiction writer indicative of author's
influences) Observatory. Barely two walls of the structure remained
standing beneath the night skies, in the wake of the attack by the
(mythologically suggestive name, plural) who had poured forth from the Big
Dumb Object once it assumed Earth orbit. Who could have believed that just
one eventful week separated Tony's dawn-hour discovery from the current
(catastrophic event)? And to think that Earth's last hope against the
invaders resided now in a desperate collaboration between Tony and
Professor Angela Wiltdonger! Brushing back a lock of her (color) hair,
Wiltdonger swore, then refocused her attention on the delicate task before
her. Manipulating her (improvised too!) with trembling fingers whose
chipped painted nails revealed the merciless alien eradication of beauty
parlors everywhere, the (sympathy-provoking adjective) professor sought to
join (computer part) with (unlikely cross-discipline gadget). Tony steadied
his hand holding the (primitive improvised source of illumination) and
uttered encouraging noises. Finally, after what seemed like hours,
Wiltdonger sat back on her sexy (body part) and said, "It's done. This
inspiration of yours had better prove golden, kid. Otherwise humanity is
destined to serve for all eternity as (slang term among convicts denoting
prisoner's "girlfriend") for our new interstellar
overlords."
"I --
I think it'll work -- Angela...."
This
unprecedented use of her given name caused Professor Wiltdonger to look at
Tony in a new way. Her (adjective) blue eyes filled with (emotion), which
was returned in triplicate by her companion. Suddenly they were no longer
two rival scientists, but simply a man and a woman alone beneath the stars.
Without any
planning on Tony's part, he found that he and Angela were (gerund). With
the shattered bits of the (super-science gadget) digging into his (body
part), Tony began to murmur sweet words into Angela's (body part). In the
midst of her passionate reciprocation, she murmured back, "(Sultry
exclamation)."
With the
final coruscating flares of the (name of heretofore unknown type of ray)
dying down around them, Tony and Angela stood upon a mound of rubble in the
ruins of (major metropolitan area), clutching each other's (body part) and
gazing skyward. Fleeing like a pack of (cowardly beast, plural), the few
surviving celestial invaders made a beeline toward their Big Dumb Object.
"We
did it, Angela! We did it!"
(Wry
observation indicating basic cynicism tempered by newfound empathy)
Tony turned
to hug his new mate. "Well, it's up to us now to restore
civilization."
"Considering
that ninety percent of humanity has been wiped out, there's an awful lot of
(gerund) to do."
Tony
blushed. "I'm up to it, Angela. If you are."
Angela
smiled (smarmy adverb). "We'd better get busy then. Because if I know
anything about the way the universe works, there's one thing we can be
certain of. The (mythologically suggestive name, plural) will be
back!"
PAUL DI FILIPPO
(n1) This
introduction itself has suffered from numerous obscuring editorial coffee
stains that necessitate interpolations upon the part of the reader.
~~~~~~~~
By Richard
Chwedyk
One of our
most popular stories from last year was "The Measure of All Things"
(Jan. 2001), in which Richard Chwedyk introduced us to the saurs--toy
dinosaurs that turned out to be more than anyone expected. Now, after too
long an absence, the crew of unwanted pets return to our pages with a
remarkable tale of unexpected gifts, giant robots, and things from beyond.
Take the phone off the hook before you start reading this one; it's the
sort of story that's ideal for curling up with and interruptions will
surely be unwelcome.
|