No Small Bills Page 22

  “They could be,” I countered. “We have no idea who or what they are, really. Do we?” That last part was directed at Mary, who shook her head.

  “The Grays were unable to observe the invaders,” she said. “Every attempt was discovered and ended in the agent’s termination. All we do know is that they are from a divergent plane of reality, and have broken through the natural barriers that form this universe. They intend to alter our quantum frequencies to match those of their native plane, thus merging the two realities into one and rewriting our natural laws with their own. Once that occurs they will be able to dominate the universe and impose whatever changes and rule they require.”

  “So they could be anybody,” I pointed out. “And they could be complete chowderheads who have no idea what they’re doing or how to run a war or an invasion or whatever. They could be complete blundering idiots who just crashed through the wall by sheer accident.”

  “Great, they really could be an army of you,” Tall muttered.

  “Yeah, I heard that.” I peered at the pink building again. “But the point is, we have no idea how they think or what they have planned, so for all we know they really don’t know about the matrix and it really is as simple as walking across the street.”

  “He has a point,” Ned chimed in. “No point spoiling for a fight if we don’t have to fight anybody.”

  “All right, all right.” Tall sighed. “We should assess the situation fully.” He glared at me again. “But you are not going anywhere until we’re sure it’s safe. You’re the only one who can align the matrix, and I’m not letting you get your head blown off literally within sight of our objective.”

  “Aw, you really do care!” I batted my eyes at him—which isn’t easy without eyelashes, but it’s amazing what you can do with nictitating membranes if you try hard enough and if you’ve spent enough time drinking heavily. “Okay, you’re the war chief—how do we suss this thing out?”

  “We need to send someone to test their defenses,” Tall answered, glancing around at the rest of us. “Someone we can afford to lose if it all goes south in a hurry.” I could see the calculations in his head as his eyes moved over each of our companions in turn. No way he was sending Mary in there—she was our connection to the Grays, the only one who really knew much about the invasion, and she was smoking hot to boot. Ned was too damn useful as well. And Tansy’s reality-warping powers had already saved our butts twice. Which left him, but I didn’t think Tall was stupid enough to risk sacrificing himself on a slim chance. For certain success absolutely, but in a case like this where we didn’t even know if there was a threat, let along how much of one? No, for that we needed somebody completely expendable. Preferably someone we barely even knew, much less liked . . .

  Tall and I turned at the same time, and glanced behind us—through the plate-glass window.

  “Perfect,” I heard him whisper. And I’m pretty sure he wasn’t thinking about a haircut. Or a quick snack.

  Twenty minutes later, Ned returned from the Stellar SuperCuts. He had a tall skinny guy with him, and when I saw “tall” I mean over twelve feet and when I say “skinny” I mean maybe as thick around as my wrist. And I have surprisingly dainty hands and wrists. This guy had skin the color of butter and features that looked like they’d been molded in soft wax, like they were rough and crude and maybe a little runny. He also had five legs and three arms but I tried not to hold that against him. Or to think about how much I’d kill for some good sushi.

  “This is Siden,” Ned told us, almost clapping the guy on the back but apparently thinking better of it. “I explained how we’re trying to surprise our friends over in the pink structure and he’s agreed to help by walking over and checking to make sure they’re back from lunch already.” Siden nodded and let out a series of little whoots and whistles and clicks—I felt like I was listening to a clockwork owl convention.

  “Thanks, you’re a pal,” I told him, and he nodded and whooted some more before striding out past us and toward the pink building. We all crowded by the corner and watched as he walked, calmly and in no hurry. And why should he be? Poor guy thought he was just helping some people play a practical joke or something. I didn’t blame Ned for the lie, though—saying “hey, we think the building around the corner is heavily guarded by an invading force and we need someone expendable to check and see if we’ll get killed for approaching it” probably wouldn’t have gotten a lot of volunteers.

  Siden was already about halfway to the matrix building, and there’d be no response at all. “See?” I whispered at Tall, who made a shushing gesture and didn’t take his eyes off our tall, buttery, rubbery new pal. Siden took a long, loose step, raised several feet to take another—

  —and turned to a puddle on the ground.

  For a second I thought he’d just melted from the heat, or decided to pool himself for fun or to take a quick nap. But then I realized there’d been a brief, high-pitched whine, and the smell of burning rubber at the same time.

  That hadn’t been simple heatstroke. Siden had been murdered.

  “See?” Tall hissed at me, but he didn’t look all too thrilled at being proved right. “I told you they were guarding the place!”

  “Yeah yeah,” I grumbled back. “What’d they just hit Siden with? And can we do anything about it?”

  “A strong-force excitation beam,” Ned offered quietly. “That’s my guess, from the smell and the sound and the . . . results.” He shook his head. “Poor guy. He was only trying to help, and we got him killed!”

  “He sacrificed himself to help save the universe,” I replied. “Even if he didn’t know it at the time. So what’s this excitation beam thing? That doesn’t sound so bad—maybe he just got so excited he couldn’t contain himself, like that old Pointer Sisters song.”

  “The strong force is one of the guiding forces that binds together all matter in this universe,” Mary explained. “A strong-force excitation beam agitates the strong-force bonds within the target, causing it to lose cohesion at an atomic level.”

  “It turns anything it touches to a pile of goo,” Ned translated for me.

  “Oh. Got it. Any way we can protect ourselves from it?” But Ned shook his head.

  “The beam operates on a subatomic level—I don’t know anything that can block it, or even reduce the effects.”

  “So if we go out there we’ll be turned to goo too?” I ground my bill together. “There’s gotta be something we can do!”

  “Like what?” Tall turned to Mary. “Any other ways into that building?”

  “No,” she replied. “When it was chosen as the site for the matrix, the structure was reconfigured to be defensible in case of attack. The apertures you see were all sealed, save only the single entrance, and thanks to its location and the local terrain there is no way to reach it unobserved.”

  “Great.” We all looked at each other. “So how the hell’re we gonna get inside?”

  “What about your translocation whosis?” I asked Mary, remembering when we’d first met. “It’s only, what, a hundred feet or so? Could you use that to get us in there?”

  But she had more bad news for me. “The translocation device is not an option,” she reminded me. “The quantum frequencies have already shifted too far for them to function. It is not a question of distance but of operation.”

  “Right. Forgot about that part.” I rubbed my bill. “Okay, so we know they’re watching, we know they’re armed, we know they’ll shoot anyone who tries to sneak in. We don’t have any defenses, or even any weapons beyond that one gun of Tall’s, and we’re running out of time.” I glanced around at the others. “Okay. That’s that, then.” And I turned and headed out across the street.

  “DuckBob! Wait!” Mary ran after me, grabbing my arm. “What are you doing? They will kill you!”

  “No they won’t,” I assured her. “I’ve got a plan. Trust me.”

  “Really?” Tall had caught up with us. “You’ve got a plan?”

&nb
sp; “Absolutely. You guys hang back here, and I’ll take care of it.”

  “Wait!” Mary still had hold of my arm. I didn’t mind. “You are sure they will not harm you?”

  “Harm me? No idea,” I admitted. “But they won’t kill me.”

  She stared at me for a second, then leaned in and kissed me on the side of my face, right where my bill starts. Let me tell you, you wanna talk about erogenous zones? Whoo!

  “Be careful,” she whispered. Then she released her grip and stepped back.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing,” Tall warned. But he held out his hand, too. “Good luck.” I shook it, and he didn’t even try to crush my fingers. Much. I really was growing on him.

  “Here,” Ned said, holding up what looked like a fridge magnet—an H—and pressing it against the underside of my bill. “This’ll let you stay in communication with us. Good luck.”

  “Thanks.” I stretched my neck a little, but I couldn’t actually feel his gizmo at all. Maybe just a mild itch. Tansy gave me a quick kiss on the bill as well—earning her a momentary glare from Mary, I noticed—and then they all drew back around the corner to safety.

  I was on my own.

  “Right, here I come,” I muttered as I started walking again. “Get ready, because DuckBob Spinowitz is on his way!”

  I waited until I was maybe a third of the way across—I could clearly see the puddle that’d been Siden, a few yards ahead of me—before slowing to a stop.

  “Hello in there!” I shouted at the pink building. “Can you guys hear me?”

  There was no answer, but I did hear Ned whisper, “what’s he doing?” through the thing on my bill. Weird, too—it vibrated through my bill and into my head, which made it sound like I was listening to him underwater. In falsetto.

  “I know you’re in there!” I tried again. “My name’s DuckBob! I’ve been sent here to stop you!” I started walking again.

  “I know you could excite my strong forces or something like that,” I added, “but I don’t think you want to do that. Because I know some things you don’t, things you’ll need to know if you’re gonna take over this universe properly. You can kill me but then you’ll never find out what they were, and your little invasion might not even succeed. Or you can bring me in yourself, and we can talk about it.”

  “Not bad,” Tall’s voice shook through me. “Make yourself too valuable to kill—a classic hostage negotiation tactic.”

  “That’s me—a classic,” I muttered, and brightened a little when I heard Ned laugh in reply. His gadget worked! I could still talk to them! I didn’t feel alone any more.

  And I’d taken several more steps. All without being reduced to goo.

  “I’m unarmed,” I shouted next. “No weapons! I just want to talk, maybe do a little horse-trading, see if we can work things out quietly. What do you say?”

  Nobody answered, but I was even with the Puddle O’ Siden now, and then past it, and I was still safely unexcited. It was working!

  I kept talking, telling the unseen invaders that I could help them, that I had info they needed, that I just wanted to talk, that we could work things out—that one led into me breaking into the old Beatles song “Try to See It My Way,” which got snorts from Ned and Tall and quiet laughter from Mary and Tansy but carried me to within a short sprint of the pink building. And its one big, heavy metal door.

  “Okay, I’m glad you’ve decided to be reasonable about all this,” I announced as I took the last few steps. “I’m sure we can come to some kind of arrangement that works for everybody—maybe you can have the universe on alternate weekends and for holidays, but we’ll split the summers and you’ll have to kick in a bit for expenses. I—” I reached for the door—and it flew open in front of me. Nice.

  Then a whole bunch of hands shot out from the dark past the door and latched onto me, hauling me through into the blackness.

  Not so nice.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  What was that cereal’s number again?

  “DuckBob, are you there? Can you hear me?”

  “Ugh.”

  That wasn’t exactly coherent, so I tried again.

  “Uh-huh.”

  Much better.

  “Are you okay?” It was Ned, but not exactly—he sounded like he’d been gargling. Or was gargling. Or was being gargled.

  He also sounded a bit like a twelve-year-old boy.

  And my bill ached every time he spoke.

  Oh, right.

  “Yeah, I think so,” I managed finally. I sat up—which was when I realized I’d been laying down—and then had to rest my head in my hands so it didn’t snap off my neck and roll away like one of those horribly garish bowling balls you see at the local bowling alley gathering dusts on the racks because only crazed old ladies and former postal workers ever dare to use them.

  Ouch.

  “What happened?” pre-teen underwater Ned demanded. “We saw you step inside and then you stopped talking.”

  “We knew that had to mean things were seriously wrong,” a more gravelly-voiced teen commented. Tall. Not surprisingly, he didn’t sound like he’d ever really been young—he’d probably handed out speeding tickets in preschool to any kid who dared to do hopscotch at more than the officially regulated crawl.

  “I’m fine—I think,” I croaked. Which is weird, since ducks don’t normally croak—that’s a frog thing. But then you don’t see many ducks dressed like Elvis and sitting in a pink stadium either, so I guess it’s a moot point. “How long was I out?”

  “A few minutes.”

  I shook my head and immediately wished I hadn’t. At least it was still safely in my hands, though they weren’t all that steady themselves. “You didn’t hear me for a few minutes and figured something had to be wrong? I don’t talk that much!” I could practically hear the looks on the other end of Ned’s little transmitter thingy. “Oh, fine.”

  “Are you inside?” Mary cut in after a second. I noticed she didn’t argue the whole “can’t shut up thing” either, but then again if I’d been thinking clearly I couldn’t have made much of a case against it my own self.

  “I am.”

  “That is excellent! Your plan worked!”

  It did? I peeked out through my fingers. There was a sparkly pink floor below me. A quick upward glance revealed equally glittery pink walls and a likewise sparkly pink ceiling. Huh. I hoped I was actually sitting up, and not hanging from the ceiling or perched on the wall. That could be embarrassing, especially if somebody mistook me for a hat rack or a ceiling fan. “Yeah, I guess it did at that,” I agreed. “Cool.”

  “Nice work.” I could hear how Tall had to force those words out past his teeth. “So now you’re inside. What’s the next step?”

  “Next step?”

  “Yes,” he insisted. “You said you had a plan. Remember?”

  “I remember! And it worked! I’m inside. And still alive.” Which I was pretty happy about.

  “Yes. Yes you are. But what’s the rest of it?”

  “The rest of what?”

  “The rest of the plan!”

  I tried to lift my head but my neck muscles were claiming they deserved an immediate holiday, they had months of vacation time saved up, and they were taking all of it right now, whether I signed off on the junket or not. “You have the rest of the plan?” I asked from where I was. “That’s great—what is it?”

  Now Tall sounded like he wanted to strangle me. In other words, he sounded the same as always. “No, your plan, you idiot!”

  “My plan? What about it? It worked!”

  “Yes, but—”

  Ned cut him off. “That was the whole plan, wasn’t it?” he asked. “To get inside intact?”

  “Yep.”

  He sighed, or maybe I swallowed. The reverb on this thing made it hard to tell.

  “So you have no idea what to do next?”

  “Nope.”

  “Right.” I could hear angry whispers, probably Tall. “Hang in t
here. We’ll figure something out.”

  “Hanging in.” I wanted to sign off but wasn’t sure how. Did this thing have an off switch? Did it deafen them every time I gulped? What would it sound like if I ate something? It’d probably be horrible, one of those things that either scarred them for life or became an award-winning documentary on one of the major cable networks. Maybe both.

  They’d all stopped talking, and my head was starting to recover from the vibrations of having more than one person speaking through it at once, so I tried straightening up again. My neck muscles were still protesting and threatening to go on strike but they reluctantly cooperated, and I was able to look around a little bit.

  Pink. All pink. Different shades and textures, most of it muted and shading toward the rosy hue, but pink nonetheless. All of it shiny and glossy, too, like I was sitting in the world’s largest rose quartz crystal. It was even cool to the touch. Otherwise it was all on the minimalist side, no furniture just depressions and bulges you could use for chair or shelves or ironing boards. This place was a lot less like a building and a lot more like an above-ground cave system, I decided. Or an ancient Jell-O mold that’d been poked too many times with a fork.

  Then something moved.

  It was off to my far left, or maybe behind me—I hadn’t wanted to push my neck muscles too far by asking them to turn that extensively so I’d only managed to see in front and a little to the side so far. But there was a different flicker at the edge of my peripheral vision—which is pretty wide, given that my eyes are on either side of my head—and it seemed to be vaguely person-shaped. That and all the feathers on the back of my neck suddenly stood up.

  I wasn’t alone.

  “Hello?” I called out.

  Nothing.

  “Hey, anybody here?” Still no reply.