The Garbage Chronicles Read online

  Sid used to work there, Javik thought.

  He looked down at the text of the blue-bordered letter with unfocused, bleary eyes. He closed his eyes and rubbed them, then looked back at the letter:

  RE: MALLOY, SIDNEY

  YOUR INQUIRY OF 18 OCTOBER, 2605

  REGRET TO INFORM THAT MALLOY HAS NOT BEEN SEEN SINCE 30 AUGUST LAST YEAR. IS PRESUMED LOST IN DEEP SPACE. KNOWN TO HAVE COMMANDEERED THE SHAMROCK V.”

  Eight months ago! Javik thought, staring at the cottage-cheese-sprayed ceiling. He let out a deep, exasperated breath. Sid’s gone for good.

  Javik pictured his sleek black and silver space cruiser, smiling softly as he thought of Sidney at the controls. Didn’t realize Sid had it in him, he thought.

  An overwhelming sensation of guilt hit Javik. He dropped his head and stared down along the blue and white striped front of his robe. “Poor little fellow,” he whispered. A haunting, recurring feeling hit Javik that it was his fault for not reaching the cruiser in time to accompany Sidney.

  If only I’d made it, he thought. But Sid died well. That’s some consolation.

  Javik shook his head, still staring down. Nine hours to blastoff, he thought, reading the illuminated green face of his wrist digital. I should try to sleep.

  He pulled at the little pouch of fat under his chin, then leaned on the table and stretched his long frame. His muscles ached. In the window reflection he saw that his hair was tousled. He knew it was overdue for a trim and would be much worse after the mission.

  “Wonder how much extra weight’s in my hair,” he mused.

  Javik straightened and thrust both hands in his robe pockets. Staring at the floor all the while, he shuffled his way to the videodome in the living-room module.

  The dome was orbit orange plastic, with a sliding black door mat opened at his mento-command. He slid into one of two soft bucket seats inside, mento-flipping on the set.

  The screen lit up all around, giving Javik the illusion that he was seated in a racing car barreling down a straightaway.

  Too hectic, he thought, changing the channel.

  Javik finally settled on The Yippee Hour, a rockem-sockem game show. Javik became a member of the studio audience now, seated between two immense fat ladies.

  Contestants came and went with astonishing speed, all departing with their arms full of bright, shiny consumer products. One man with a stick-on blond mustache became so ecstatic at his winnings that he knocked his mustache off his lip. Undaunted, he left it on the floor.

  A volley of commercials accompanied each new contestant. Javik dozed off and blinked awake several times. Once, with heavy-lidded eyes, he watched seven chubby men in pineapple suits do a modern dance step while singing the virtues of Piney Pops fruit tarts.

  “Cute little fellows,” Javik muttered. “Cute little fellows.” he dozed off again.

  On the skatewalk outside, the little comet righted himself and used the yellow cat’s eye on top of his body to look around. “Gracious!” he said, in a squeaky voice. “Now let me get my bearings.” He felt an unidentifiable emotional rush which made him shake.

  It was shadowy on the skatewalk, illuminated faintly by a street lamp. A midnight moto-shoer whisked by, oblivious to the little coal-shaped visitor who lay below.

  The comet flickered, then whirled around in several complete circles. When the moto-shoer had disappeared into the dark distance, the comet brightened, flickering bright red for a moment to call upon his imprinted data banks.

  “There!” he exclaimed, pulsating light as he focused his cat’s eye on the synthetic marble face of Javik’s building. He scooted partway up the building’s entrance ramp, traveling only a hair’s breadth above the surface. An undersized, barely discernible red tail flashed like sputtering rocket exhaust from his rear end.

  Being young and undeveloped, the little comet had to stop only halfway up the ramp, panting heavily. “Uh oh!” he squealed, out of breath. He tumbled down the ramp, arriving in roughly the same spot from which he had begun.

  After several deep breaths, the neophyte comet was ready to try again. “Up we go!” he said, taking a deep breath. “Up. we go!” He scooted up the ramp, and this time nearly reached the top. But once again he tumbled back to the skatewalk, where he lay for several minutes, wheezing and coughing.

  “Oh dear! Oh my! What a terrible thing!” The little comet was quite upset. “Papa Sidney flies across the heavens, but I’m stymied at the tiniest slope.”

  A brilliant blue light flashed overhead. The little comet focused his gaze upward and saw his papa streak by, alternating his mighty nucleus between blue and white. The Great Comet made a graceful turn, then zipped away, disappearing beyond the building tops. The buildings were silhouetted for a moment in the waning light of the comet. Then it became dark again.

  He really is leaving me here, the little comet thought. All alone.

  On the next try, he struggled to the top of the ramp. Then he scooted along a slick marbleite surface to double sliding doors. Through the glassplex of the doors a faintly illuminated lobby could be seen. The lobby had a red plastic and chrome couch, with a matching side chair and table. Pictures of flesh-carriers and government buildings were arranged on two walls.

  The entrance doors were electric-eye-activated, and this presented no small problem for the comet. He saw how to activate the system, but noted to his chagrin that the seeing eyes were a full meter and a half above him. So he hopped as high as he could. That was all he could think to do. He jumped perhaps half a meter on the first try and three-quarters of a meter by the fourth attempt. After that, however, the height of each effort decreased. He grew very weary.

  The little lump of stone took a deep breath and spun around several times. “So weak,” he said sadly. “So weak.” He looked up at the night sky, still half expecting assistance to arrive from that direction. But all he saw over the building tops was a twinkling, unconcerned night blanket, dotted with silvery stars.

  Without warning, a moto-shoer bore down on him from less than a meter away. A skate wheel hit rudely, knocking him through the building entrance just as the electric eye doors swished open.

  “Son of a slut!” the fleshcarrier man who was moto-shoeing said, falling to one knee. “What the Hooverville was that?”

  The comet scurried behind a planter, then peeked around to watch as an angry, wavy-haired man searched the entrance area. Finding nothing, the man soon abandoned his effort.

  As the moto-shoer rolled to the elevator bank, the comet flew along behind, ever so silently. Presently the man and his stealthy pursuer boarded an elevator.

  Two-sixty-one, the comet mentoed as the doors closed, using a knowledge of elevators imparted to him magically by his fireball father. Feeling no click in his brain, the comet quickly realized why. I have no mento transmitter! he thought. Papa Sidney had one when he was human.

  The elevator rose swiftly.

  Only fourteen minutes, thirty-one seconds old, the comet thought. And already I’m facing another crisis!

  The comet was very upset-at this latest development. He had no idea which floor the man had selected. Faint, incomplete thoughts touched the comet’s consciousness. Something about a new autocar, cheerful thoughts.

  What is this? the comet thought. Then he realized with a rush of excitement that the thoughts were not his own. They came from the fleshcarrier standing next to him! The comet’s pulse quickened.

  What floor did you order? the comet wondered. What floor?

  But this thought was nowhere in the man’s mind now. Other thoughts became more clear, however. All concerned new consumer goods purchases the man and his permie were contemplating.

  Time was running out quickly. The elevator rose rapidly through the building’s core, completely oblivious to the pressing concern of the little visitor from another realm.

  Ah, here we are, the man thought, transmitting brain waves to the comet. Floor two-sixty-one

  The elevator doors whooshed ope
n.

  Now what am I doing here? the man wondered. He mentoed the correct floor into the elevator’s computer, unaware of the little magical comet at his shoe tops who was scooting out at floor 261.

  That was a stroke of luck, the comet thought as the doors shut behind him.

  It may very well have been more than that, although no concrete evidence has been found to support such an assertion. This was a building of 450 floors. Even the most foolhardy gamesman would not have bet upon such an occurrence.

  Still, it happened.

  The little comet scooted along a beige-walled corridor decorated with pictures of fleshcarriers and government buildings. He rounded a corner. Through a large window at the end of the hallway he saw something bright and pink flash in the sky over the city. Whatever it was disappeared in the blink of a cat’s eye.

  The little comet found himself at Javik’s synthetic walnut door. Maybe I can squeeze under, he thought, seeing a slender band of light beneath the door.

  In an attempt to get through the crack, he reached about halfway. But he was irregularly shaped, like a lump of coal, with a big bump on his back that held his eye. The bump would not pass through.

  Darn, he thought, wishing he could think of a stronger word. He flipped over and over, trying different angles of entry. Then he looked for wide spots under the door. He squeezed and squeezed and squeezed some more. But he could not get through.

  “Dad blast it!” he said, feeling better about this selection of words. He began to glow bright orange. Then he whirled and hopped about angrily, throwing a first-rate tantrum. At the height of his rage, he smashed headlong into Javik’s door. Then he hit it again. And again.

  Crash! Thud! Kaboom!

  This caused a good deal of racket in the hallway, despite the comet’s very small size.

  A brunette woman in the unit next door opened her door to peer out. “What’s going on?” she asked. She cinched the belt of her bathrobe and ventured into the hall on moto-slippers.

  Crash! Kathump! Thud! The little comet continued to pummel Javik’s door.

  The woman jumped back, startled. The comet was flashing a brilliant rainbow array of colors.

  “What’s this?” (he woman asked. She ventured closer. Then a little closer. All the while, the angry comet continued his onslaught against the door, falling back intermittently for wild, whirling spins.

  Now the woman was only a few centimeters from the curious little creature. With a tentative smile, she reached down, saying, “A toy?”

  The comet smashed into her shinbone.

  “Ow!” the woman yelled. “Ow! Ow! . . . Harold!” She hobbled and rolled back to her condominium, squealing in pain and calling for her permie.

  Javik’s door opened. A sleepy, robed Tom Javik stood with one unmotorized slipper off, looking down at the whirling little fireball.

  Before Javik could react, the comet darted through his legs and into the condominium.

  “Hey!” Javik yelled.

  Turning his head, he saw an orange light flash through his arch-ceilinged entry hall. The intruder disappeared into Javik’s living-room module.

  Fully awake now, Javik mento-slammed the door and ran for his bedroom module. “Service pistol,” he mumbled.

  Seconds later; holding his automatic pistol, Javik tiptoed into the living-room module. This room had champagne-colored carpeting, with specks of orbit orange in it, matching the orange of the centrally positioned videodome. The walls matched the floor, and this often made Javik lose his sense of perspective. He looked under two padded chairs and the couch. Then he tiptoed toward the videodome, feeling deep pile carpeting with his bare foot.

  “I am not a threat to you,” a tiny voice said.

  Javik whirled in the direction of the sound. He saw what looked like a lumpy, dark blue stone hovering in the arched doorway. The stone’s surface was rough and irregular, with the exception of a clear agate dome crystal that jutted out of its top. Javik heard buzzing and saw a faint, exhaust-like glimmer of blue light on the other side of the stone.

  “My name is Wizzy,” the stone said. “I came up with that name just now, sensing your fleshcarrier need for such a reference.”

  Javik glowered.

  “Papa sent me to see you. I’d rather be somewhere else, though.”

  “Papa?’’

  “Papa Sidney. He says you and I should help one another. . . . Oops!” Wizzy fell to the carpet with a dull thump. Then he glowed red and let fly a barrage of curses that would have made any nonsynthetic flower wilt. The expletives made him feel better.

  “Where’d you learn to swear like that?” Javik asked. “That was good. Damned good.”

  “The words just came to me. Like an inspiration.”

  Javik smiled. “A real religious experience, eh?”

  “My data banks use a rare red star crystal . . . embedded in my nucleus . . . to absorb energy waves from every source.” Wizzy continued to glow dimly red. “I am receiving your data at this moment. You are an expert in foul language, I presume?”

  “Kind of. Yeah, I guess I am.”

  “Perhaps you would prefer that I leave?” Wizzy changed to dark blue and scooted a meter down the hallway toward the front door.

  “Hold on a sec,” Javik said. “What the Hooverville is going on?” He pointed his pistol down at Wizzy.

  Wizzy settled to the floor, where he rocked back and forth. “Guess I need more strength to hover like that,” he said. “I’m just a baby, you know.”

  “No, I don’t know! Is this a gag?” Javik looked around warily, sighting around his apartment along the barrel of his gun.

  Wizzy laughed nervously. For the first time, Javik noticed a dimly glowing yellow cat’s eye in the agate dome on Wizzy’s topside. There seemed to be no mouth on the device. “This is difficult for me,” Wizzy said. “I have not yet acquired social graces.”

  “I’ll say! Barging in like that!”

  “You’re supposed to instruct me, I believe.”

  “In social graces? Me? Ha! What a laugh. You and I should go to the same school, pal.”

  “Uh, I think Papa also wants you to explain my emotions to me. He says they are very important.”

  Javik continued to glance around warily. “I don’t like this,” he said. “Smells like a Colonel Peebles trick . . . but he’s dead.”

  “You want me to leave, then?” The little comet moved farther down the hallway. “I shouldn’t bother you.”

  “Hold on,” Javik said. He walked past Wizzy and knelt beside him. “You look like a Bu-Tech surveillance unit,” he mumbled, studying Wizzy’s irregular surface.

  “Oh no! Nothing of the sort!”

  “A final security check before my ship takes off?” Javik touched Wizzy’s surface. It was lumpy and cool.

  “No.”

  “It is a classified mission.”

  “I said no. That’s not it at all.” Spying a chunk of aquamarine crystal on a charcoal-tinted glassplex hall table, Wizzy flew over for a closer look.

  Javik shivered. He drew his robe shut at the neck.

  “Pretty one,” Wizzy said to the crystal. “Do you have a boyfriend?”

  The crystal remained silent and motionless.

  “So you’re a male meckie, eh?” Javik said. “Well forget it, pal. That’s just a meteor fragment I picked up in the Hepfer Droids.”

  “Speak!” Wizzy demanded.

  There was no response from the crystal.

  “Hmmmph!” Wizzy said haughtily. “Just another pretty face.” He focused his cat’s eye on Javik.

  Javik leveled his pistol at Wizzy, saying, “You wanna know about emotions, eh? Let’s start with fear, then. You got any of that?’

  “I presume so. What is fear?”

  “It’s when you worry about your own skin.”

  “Skin.” Wizzy glowed red again, calling upon his data banks. “Ah . . . epidermis. But I have nothing like that.”

  “You try to act smart, but you know wh
at I think? I think you’re dumb.”

  “I am not! I am wise now, with the inherited data banks of my parents. Papa Sidney says I will grow wiser each day!”

  “Shit! What in the hell are you?”

  Wizzy nudged the piece of crystal and dropped to the tabletop for a rest. “You remember Sidney Malloy?” he asked.

  “Sure. But what—”

  “That’s my papa.”

  Javik’s head snapped back in surprise. “Your papa? Ha!”

  “He is! Papa Sidney’s in deep space.”

  Javik lowered the gun. “Sid died last year . . . never returned from our mission.”

  “Oh, he’s very much alive. Let me assure you of that. And I sense Papa wants to see you again someday. But he’s quite busy now with assignments from the Council of Magic.”

  “Magic, huh,” Javik said, scratching his head. “Where do you fit in?”

  “I’ve already told you that. You and I are supposed to help one another. I would prefer not being here, but Papa said—”

  “Papa said, Papa said! I don’t care what your goddamned papa said!”

  Wizzy flashed an angry shade of orange. “Now look here, Thomas Patrick Javik!”

  Javik became introspective. He laid the gun on the floor. “I was thinking of Sid before falling asleep,” he mumbled. “Is this a dream?”

  “I sense an answer to that question,” Wizzy said.

  “And that is?”

  Wizzy buzzed across the hallway and slammed into the knuckle of Javik’s hand.

  “Ow!” Javik groped for the pistol with his other hand.

  Wizzy knocked it beyond Javik’s reach. “Does that answer your question about a dream?”

  “Yes!” Javik said. “Yes!” He shook his wounded hand, wondering if he should lunge for the gun.

  Wizzy laughed mischievously. Then his yellow cat’s eye darted around in surprise. “That sound I just made,” he said. “What was it?”

  “What?” Javik snapped. “What-what-what?” His hand throbbed.