No Small Bills Page 3

  “Well, there you go, Mr. Spinowitz,” Smith exclaimed, slapping my back again. I wish he’d quit that. Did he think pain and discomfort would make me more pliable? Maybe he did, at that—he was part of the government, after all. “You will be able to save the universe after all!”

  Oh, joy.

  Chapter Four

  Well, isn’t that just ducky?

  The alien plumber—okay, I guess alien techie-guy would be more accurate—came around the table at me, still fiddling with his tool belt. “Hold still,” he said. “This shouldn’t hurt too much.”

  “Too much? Define ‘too much.’” I put the table between us again, which coincidentally put me on the same side as Mary. Win-win. “’Too much’ being ‘a routine tooth extraction’ or ‘having your spine torn out by a pair of rabid gerbils’?”

  “Somewhere in between,” he admitted. “Aha!” That last was because he stopped fiddling and pulled out—okay, I have no idea what it was. It looked like—well, at first glance I thought he was holding a dead rat. Then I thought he had an ice cream scoop, the kind with the little sweeper arm that drops the ice cream into your bowl (or, if you were in a frat like I was, directly into your open mouth) with one little click of the button. Then I thought he was holding a pen, one of those with all the colors on it that always get stuck and always on purple. But it wasn’t really any of those. “I knew it was in here somewhere! Okay, just give me a second and I’ll have this all taken care of.”

  “Now look here,” I said, maneuvering behind Mary for protection—and yes, I admit it, for a better view of her keister. I don’t think I’ve ever believed in a higher power before, but I sure did after that. “Can we just—I don’t even know your name!”

  “Ned.”

  That made me stop ducking, and even made me forget about Mary’s astounding rear end. For a second, anyway. “Ned? What is that, short for NE3QR7and so on?”

  Ned scratched his head. “No, it’s my name. Ned. Pleased ta meetcha.” And he held out his hand, the one that didn’t have the thingiewhatsit in it.

  “Your name is Ned? Not something unpronounceable that starts with a sound most closely approximated by the human sounds ‘ne’ and ‘deh’?”

  “Nope.”

  I stared at him. “Oh, okay, I get it. You’re from here, right? They did experiments on you, too. And here I thought I had it bad!”

  “No, I’m from round about Betelgeuse, originally,” Ned corrected cheerfully. “Decided I wanted to travel a bit, see the cosmos and all that. Hooked up with the Grays and here I am.” He advanced again.

  “You’re from Betelgeuse?”

  “A small planetoid in the region, but nobody’s ever heard of it so I just tell them Betelgeuse to make it easier.”

  “But—but you’ve got a Brooklyn accent?”

  “I do?” He thought about it for a second, then shrugged. “Wacky coincidence, I guess. So, you ready?”

  I tried to dodge out of the way as he moved around Mary—and he barely even spared her a glance, which proved he really was an alien—but Smith and Tall were suddenly there boxing me in. I had nowhere to go!

  “He’s ready,” Smith replied. “Go ahead.”

  “Gotcha.” Ned raised his doohickey and started, well, caressing it here and there. I felt like I should look away, give him some privacy—what a man does with his rat-scoop-pen-thing should be private, after all. But I couldn’t help staring. It was quivering and vibrating in places, and glowing through the fur and metal here and there. After a minute of that Ned grunted and waved the thing over me like an airport security wand. Wherever it approached got all tingly. It was kinda nice, actually.

  “All set,” Ned said finally, and stroked the thing until it was quiet again, then returned it to his tool belt.

  “That’s it?” I didn’t feel any different, and as far as I could tell I looked the same too, though that wasn’t necessarily a selling point. “I thought you had to finish the modification process or something?”

  “Yep. Did that. You’re good to go.” He gave Mary and the Gray a thumbs-up.

  “I thought you were gonna turn me into a full-on duck,” I muttered, examining my hands. I still had fingers, which was a relief. I’d half-expected to have wings and feathers and nothing else, which would have been great for going on vacation but hell for actually doing anything once I got there. Thank God for bendy straws, anyway.

  “Not my job,” Ned explained. “I just needed to finish your attunement to the quantum fluctuation matrix. So I did.” Figures—leave it to a techie to do exactly what he was told and not an inch more. He was probably union, too.

  “Okay, so now what?” I glanced at Mary. “I’m all attuned? I can reset this thing and that’s that, no more invasion, no more threat, the universe all safe and sound?”

  Mary nodded. “Precisely.”

  “Great!” I rubbed my hands—my still very human hands, thank you very much—together. “Point me to it and let’s get this over with. Though I’m not going back to work today, no matter what. I’ve earned a sick day—not like the last time when I said I had the avian flu. For three weeks.”

  Mary turned to the Gray and they conversed—at least I think that’s what they were doing. It was just a lot of high-pitched squeaking and head-tilting from where I stood. But damn she did a great head-tilt!

  After a minute she shifted her gaze back to me. “Very well. We are prepared to convey you to the matrix.”

  “Right.” I took that as an excuse to step closer to her. She smelled like an old lizard I’d had when I was a kid, probably from all her time with the Grays, but I figured I could work past that. Would she be offended if I bought her perfume? Or room sanitizer? “Are you the one taking me? Let’s go!”

  She shook her head and actually smiled a little. “We will send you by translocation,” she explained. “No accompaniment is required. Stand still.” She stepped back and I resisted the urge to follow her. Down, boy. Then there was a shimmer of lights around me and I felt a little tingle again, like one of those Magic Fingers hotel beds without the noise or the constant demand for quarters. The tingle got stronger, spreading all over my body, and the rest of the room seemed to fade a bit, like the image on an old picture-tube TV when you shut it off.

  Then the tingle stopped. And the room got clearer again.

  “Was that it? Are we done? That was easy—I didn’t even have to do anything. Was it just me being near the matrix that reset it, like a proximity sensor? Cool!” But Mary was shaking her head, and the Gray was frowning.

  “The translocation failed,” Mary informed us. “Something has blocked the transmission.” She communed with the Gray again for a second. “This can only mean one thing,” she concluded after they’d finished beeping at each other. “The incursion has already begun. The quantum frequencies have shifted slightly as a result of the impending convergence, and as a result our translocation devices can no longer function.”

  “So that’s it?” I asked. “We were too late? We failed?”

  “Not necessarily,” Mary replied. “The convergence has not occurred, and until it does we can still realign the matrix. Doing so will seal the barriers again—any invaders that have already seeped through will be trapped within and must be dealt with, but no more can follow and the frequencies will return to their normal wavelengths.”

  “Okay, so we’ve still got a shot.” I thought about what she’d said. “But you can’t send me there. Right?” She and the Gray both nodded—so did Smith, though he sneered like he was annoyed it had taken me that long to catch on. So I had thought Mensa was a candy with obnoxious ads. Sue me. “So how do I get there?”

  “Translocation was merely the quickest method,” Mary answered. “There are other paths. We will simply travel the long way around.”

  “The long way. Right.” I reached into my front pocket. MetroCard, check. “So where is this matrix thingy, anyway?”

  “Galactic coordinates X3597.124 by Y7794.390 by Z0189.242.�
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  I scratched my head. “And where’s that, then? It sounds pretty far. Staten Island? Delaware?”

  “Try the galactic core,” Ned told me. “That’s about forty-three million light years away. Give or take a few.”

  I stared at him. “Forty-three million light years away? How the hell are we gonna get there, then? Unless you’ve got a spaceship ready and waiting.” That might be kind of cool, actually. I’d always wanted to see the inside of a spaceship. Of course, the last time I had I’d been—no, no, not going there, nope. I quickly walled off that memory, spackled and painted for good measure, and turned back to the business at hand.

  “Our ships would not be fast enough,” Mary was admitting, and I breathed a little sigh of relief. I’d lost my enthusiasm for spaceships all of a sudden. “We cannot afford to lose that much time. We must take the bus instead.”

  Bus? I guess it was a good thing I’d checked for my MetroCard, after all.

  Chapter Five

  Excuse me, do you stop there?

  “Right, where’s the bus stop? I don’t suppose you’ve got a map?” I held out my hand.

  “You will not find the bus without me,” Mary said, and maybe it was just my imagination but she looked quietly happy about that. “I must accompany you.”

  Well, hot damn! This whole saving-the-universe thing had just gotten better, and suddenly my old geek fantasies were back on track! “Works for me,” I told her, trying to be cool. “Shall we?”

  “I’d better come along,” Ned announced, hitching up his tool belt—you’d think guys like him would wear a harness rig instead, distribute the weight across the shoulders so it didn’t keep sliding now, but I guess that wasn’t macho enough. And it didn’t create the infamous “plumber butt.” “You’ll probably need me to get you in there.”

  Mary nodded, and now we had a chaperone. Swell.

  “Agent Thomas will join you,” Smith informed us, and until he nodded at Tall I had no idea who he meant. So that was the guy’s name! I still preferred Tall, though Tall Thomas also worked. “That way you have a direct link to our agency if you need us.” More like “that way we can spy on you the whole time and steal any new technology we see!”

  But Mary was in charge of our little expedition and she nodded, so now we were four. A merry little band we were, too—a hot half-alien chick, a weird little all-alien techie, a stone-faced government suit, and me, the guy with the duck head. I’m sure wherever we were going we’d blend right in.

  “First we must equip you both,” Mary told Tall and me. Cool, I thought. Alien death-rays, jetpacks, rocket boots—I’m ready! But instead we got—a shot.

  “Ow! Hey, what the hell?” I asked, rubbing the back of my neck where she’d stuck me. I wasn’t even sure where the needle had come from, and shuddered a little at the idea that she might have more of them hidden about her person. That could make late-night groping awkward: “Oh, sorry I nicked a vein, but you should have kept your hands to yourself!”

  “Nanites,” she explained, stabbing Tall as well. He barely moved. If not for the way his tie shifted slightly with each breath, I would have sworn he was already dead.

  “Nanites? Like little tiny machines that build stuff?” Hey, I read comic books! I know lots of useful stuff.

  “Exactly,” she said. “These particular nanites are currently rebuilding your lungs and your skin.” That didn’t sound good! I hoped they were setting up some kind of backup system while they worked, because if they were anything like most IT guys, I could be stuck suffocating while my lungs had a little “we’re sorry for the inconvenience—please check back later” sign around them. “When they have finished, your body will be capable of absorbing elemental particles and converting them to oxygen.”

  Oh. That sounded—promising. “So I can breathe in space?”

  “You can breathe in space,” she agreed. “Not a complete vacuum, but those are incredibly rare. Most of space is in fact filled with tiny particles, and thus your body will be able to sustain itself under all normal conditions.” I didn’t exactly consider “wandering through outer space without a spacesuit” to be a normal condition, but whatever.

  “Okay, so how do we get there?” I asked Mary as she led the way out of the warehouse. “And what kind of bus is it, anyway? I’m pretty sure Greyhound doesn’t extend beyond the moon or Mars at the utmost.”

  “’Bus’ is not strictly accurate,” Mary replied. She’d stopped just beyond the warehouse door and I actually ran into her a little. Okay, sort of on purpose. What, a guy’s supposed to save the whole friggin’ universe and can’t cop a little feel? She didn’t even seem to notice, anyway. Probably I wasn’t alien enough for her. Hell, I’d met furries—even went out with a few (there’s a subset that’s into . . . never mind)—so why not alien-lovers or Gray-ladies or something? “It is merely the closest analogy to this transportation model,” she continued.

  “Okay, when is a bus not a bus? Got it.” I backed up to give her a little space. “So what is it, then?”

  “It is a regularized mass transit system created by an alien race that allows other spacefaring peoples to travel to various points through the universe without a contrivance of their own.”

  “It’s also dirty, smelly, unreliable, misses stops half the time, and breaks down a lot,” Ned added.

  Yep, that’s a bus, all right.

  “So it has a stop here on Earth?” I asked. I was picturing a little addition to Penn Station, with signs indicating “Interstellar Mass Transport—Track 59.”

  “No, but its route passes between Earth and the Moon,” Mary answered. “We will be able to latch onto the bus and pull ourselves on board.”

  Oh great, now we even had to run for the bus! This was just like my morning commute. I wondered if there would be the alien equivalent of the jerk who stands in the door and refuses to let people in or out, or the punk who sprawled across three seats and pretended to be asleep whenever anyone approached.

  “I can get us into low orbit,” Tall offered. “Though I need a few hours to arrange the details.” He already had a cell phone out.

  “Unnecessary,” Mary told him. “I can reach the bus from here. Nor do we have hours to spare—the next bus will pass this way in approximately twenty-one minutes.” Yikes! I had a feeling they didn’t come through often, either. “We will need a conveyance of some sort, however—it is best not to attempt the transition without proper shielding.”

  “You mean like an escape pod?” I asked.

  “A pod, yes,” Mary agreed. “Anything within which we can encapsulate ourselves. Ned can enhance it to provide adequate protection.”

  I turned to Tall. “Hey, what about your car? It’s still here, right?”

  He scowled at me but nodded. “It’s in the warehouse. Late-model Ford sedan, four-door, tinted windows, bulletproof glass. Will that do?”

  Mary glanced at Ned, who nodded. “Yeah, I can work with that, no problem.” So Tall turned and headed back into the warehouse. I had a sudden urge to run—with or without my two new alien buddies—but a few seconds later we heard the rumble of a car engine, followed by the clank and whir of a garage door, and then he was pulling the sedan up in front of us.

  “Get in,” Mary told me, pointing to the front passenger seat. “I will maneuver the vehicle,” she instructed Tall, who glowered again but surrendered the driver’s seat and moved behind it instead. Ned pulled out a few weird-looking tools and got to work modifying the car.

  I wondered if it would wind up with a duckbill of its own. If so, maybe I could claim it as my official vehicle. The Duckmobile! I wondered if the license plate was taken yet.

  “All set,” Ned announced after a few minutes, climbing into the rear passenger seat and slamming the door shut behind him. I actually heard Tall wince. “Start her up while I seal things from in here.” He had another device out and I thought I heard a weird little whine as he used it somehow. The car itself didn’t look any different but I noticed
our surroundings seemed fuzzy, hazy, like there was fog everywhere but us. Or wrapping around us and nowhere else.

  “Contact with the bus is imminent,” Mary warned, turning the car on and revving the engine. I noticed she’d pulled a strange little metal-and-glass doohickey from somewhere—I didn’t want to think too hard about where, not if I wanted to be able to see straight—and had set it or attached it to the dash just above the speedometer and odometer and the other gauges. “Everyone please fasten safety restraints.” I hastily buckled my seatbelt and hoped that, if we wound up needing them, the airbags went all the way up.

  “Shields in place,” Ned assured her. “Inertial dampeners active. Gravitational modulators online.”

  Mary nodded. “Very well.” She glanced at her doohickey. “Bus arrival in one minute and counting.”

  We waited.

  And waited.

  And waited some more.

  “Typical bus,” I muttered after at least three minutes had passed. “Either early or late but never on time.”

  “Its schedule is in weeks and months,” Ned told me from behind. “Not minutes.”

  “Even so.”

  Then the doohickey began to blink. “Bus approaching intersection point,” Mary called out. “Activating synchronous motion accelerator in three, two, one—now!” She hit the gas and the car peeled out from the curb—

  —and lifted off!

  “Holy crap, we’re in a flying car!” I looked out the window, watching the ground fall away with alarming speed and the buildings rocket pass as we shot up into the sky. “That is so cool! When we get back can I keep it? This is a lot better than getting stuck with wings for arms!” I’m pretty sure Tall was glaring at me but I didn’t care—if I was going to save the universe I should get something for my troubles, right?

  “The car itself is not capable of flight,” Mary explained, never taking her eyes off her gadget. “It is merely locked into the bus’s travel path and being carried along in an intersecting flight vector. We are being pulled closer and closer and will soon reach the bus itself, at which point we can exit this vehicle altogether.”