Everybody Scream! (26 page)

“Well, you can never be sure. They say some kids were throwing rocks, though. There’s gotta be a nest around here.”

“Scary thought.”

“I sent the KeeZees to look around where it first appeared. I don’t know who I’d less want to be if they meet, the KeeZees or the snipes. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be the one to find their nest,” Dingo chuckled.

Someone entered the trailer, both men and the woman behind the desk looked. A young girl. Dingo Rubydawn’s wary eyes relaxed a little. “Can we help you?”

“Yeah, ah, excuse me, but can you help me with something? I’ve been looking around for my friend for a couple hours now and I can’t find her, and we didn’t bring hand phones. Do you think you can page her...do you have a PA system?”

Wow, Del said internally. She had to be in her late teens. Mostly black, racially. Her skin was a lovely dark honey, her eyes–under full brows, half-lidded–made bedroom eyes look bulging wide awake; maybe the dreamiest dark eyes Del had ever seen. Her nostrils had an ethnic spread but not too wide and her cheekbones were well-shaped. The lips were thick and sensuous, despite the way shadow tended to fall over the upper lip and make a faint fake mustache.

“Yep,” said Dingo. “What’s her name and what’s yours?”

“My friend’s name is Bonnie Gross, and I’m Noelle Buda.”

“You want to get on the mic yourself and say, ‘Bonnie, where the blast
are
ya?’ or should I do it and be more discreet?”

“Ah, I would like to say that,” the girl laughed, “but I think you’d better do it if you don’t mind.”

“No prob.”

She had a great smile, as heavy and drunken as her eyes. Her voice, too, had a thick, weighty sensuality in its slow, soft coos. Her eyes moved to Del a moment and gleamed, the honey-thick smile on him before she turned her attention back to Dingo. Man, that contact. She wore a tight-fitting black sweater, a lacy and ruffled multi-layered black skirt probably best called a tutu over black tights ending a little below her knees, black sneakers. A thin red ankle ribbon. She was small and slim, a child-like young woman; her dense mass of tightly-curled black hair looked to be a fifth of her body weight. Del loved women’s hair. Once again, he could see why the Red Jihad made them keep it covered so as not to tempt men (though, not why they had to throw acid in women’s faces to enforce it). Candy, man. She was fucking candy for the eyes. All the sugar and sweets of this carnival poured into a human mold...

Dingo got on the PA and said, “Bonnie Gross, please report to the security trailer...your friend Noelle Buda is waiting for you. Bonnie Gross, please report to the security trailer...your friend Noelle Buda is waiting for you.”

“Thank you.”

“No prob. You just wait here, I’ve got to get back to work. You want a cup of java while you wait?”

“Java?”

“Coffee,” Del said for Dingo quickly.

“Oh, ah, sure. Thanks.”

Dingo gestured to one of the office robots to tend to her. He made for the door. “Good luck, kid.”

“Thank you.”

Del and Noelle were left alone; the woman at the desk again immersed herself in her work. Noelle was smiling softly, drunkenly at him. “Crazy time tonight. I saw a snipe kill people, I got swallowed and pooped out by a whale...”

“Oh, you saw the snipe kill those people?”

“I’m afraid so. Not what I had in mind for a night of fun and entertainment, exactly. That shook me up. And now my friend deserted me for some stranger...Moussa-something. What next?”

“Maybe it’ll be something nice, next,” said Del.

“I hope so–I’ve used up all my bad luck. Two months of bad luck in advance. I’ve
earned
something nice.”

The robot handed her a coffee. “Cream? Sugar?”

“No, this is good.” Noelle didn’t care much for coffee in any form. It was good for studying late, but so were pills. Mostly it was a social prop.

“More coffee, Del?” asked the machine.

“Oh–my
God!
” squealed Noelle. Del was startled, looked at her. She had spilled a little coffee on the floor; at first Del thought she had burned her mouth. Her free hand was clamped over it and above her hand her sleepy eyes had bulged awake at him. Only as she lowered her hand and began to speak did Del finally recognize this forgotten sort of behavior. “You’re Del Kahn, aren’t you?” she said in breathy awe.

A huge stupid grin spread across Del’s face; he was unaccustomed, ill-prepared, and embarrassed. “Well...I guess I still am.”

“Oh my
God!
” she laughed tremulously. “I don’t believe it! I was looking at you and I thought it looked like you but I didn’t really think so, with your suit and everything!”

Del shooed the robot away. “Well, I’d still be Del Kahn even in a dress, wouldn’t I?”

“God, I can’t
believe
this!”

“So...what, did you hear somewhere that my wife was running this carnival?”

“She is? No, I didn’t hear that, I had no idea!”

“Really?” If possible, Del’s grin expanded further. “God bless you, my dear...you made my day. A woman after my very heart.”

“I love your music, I really do. I have three of your chips.”

“Are you trying to get me to write you into my will, now? How old are you, anyway?”

“Eighteen. So what? I used to listen to you when I was thirteen–my brother had two of your chips. He gave them to me when he moved out and then I bought one, too. I have
Loud Secrets
,
Fossils and Fireworks
, and
Heroes
.” There was a considerable gap in years and in work between those two early albums and his last. At least, God bless her yet further, she had bought
Heroes
, not limited to dwelling solely on his optimistic, rousing, passion-of-life stuff as so many tended to do.

“Well, Noelle, for patronizing me to such an admirable extent in the past the least I can do is treat you to dinner. Have you eaten?”

“Oh…well…yeah, just junk. I could eat a little something.” Though her eyes no longer bulged she hadn’t gone totally back to sleep. They shone. She was more child-like now, less darkly sensuous, but still lovely.

“Good, well let’s go sit and talk while you wait for your friend to come. I’ve got nothing else to do, myself. I can help you salvage something nice out of the evening, I hope.”

“Um, but what if I’m not here when Bonnie comes?” She looked distressed, she looked like she wanted Del to sweep away that problem–like she now wanted to shake off her friend, not locate her.

“Gola,” Del said over Noelle’s shoulder, “will you give me a call on my hand phone when her friend comes in?”

“Sure,” said the woman at the desk.

“And try paging her again in a half hour if she doesn’t respond.”

“Right.”

“Thanks.” To Noelle, “Does that sound okay to you, kid?”

“Great! Believe me, Mr. Kahn, you
have
helped me salvage something nice out of the night.”

“Likewise, and glad to hear it. Come on, I have an interesting place in mind–hope you haven’t seen it already. It’s a favorite.”

“I remember seeing a few things when you got married,” Noelle said as they strolled side by side.

“Used to be if I blew my nose you saw it on all the news and headlines.”

“She’s pretty, though I can’t remember what she looks like.”

Del chuckled.

“You know what I mean,” Noelle grinned, embarrassed.

“I do. You’re right, she is pretty,” Del reluctantly admitted.

“I never heard about her buying a carnival, though.”

“Well, I bought it, mostly. But it’s hers…it’s important to her.” Now Del chuckled at himself. “Yeah, like she’d run a carnival if it wasn’t important to her, huh? She loves it. She does a good job–there’s a lot to juggle, a lot to organize. She has a good mind for business and management. I myself would rather leave that to others. Her real fantasy, though…or should I say goal…is to start a circus.”

“A circus? With, um, flying trapeze and clowns and all that?”

“Yeah. She’s been doing research into old, old Earth circuses. I don’t know, though. I don’t think Sophi is the circus type. She fits in better here. Carnivals are gritty. She’s a gritty woman.”

“Is that good or bad?” Noelle meekly asked, afraid to get personal.

Del didn’t hesitate in replying, however. “Good and bad, like anything. Mostly good. It’s good to be tough so long as you can still be soft, and she can.” Despite his openness, though, he didn’t want to talk about Sophi anymore. He asked Noelle about herself, and she told him about school. She was open, too–except that she didn’t bring up Kid.

Zebo’s Saucer
was actually a large trailer, not a space craft despite its saucer-like form and the fact that it hovered above the ground when traveling. A mobile diner. Inside there was a half circle counter and a few tables. On the walls were framed photographs and articles from newspapers and magazines. One recent photo showed Del Kahn and a smaller person, his gibbon-long arm around Del’s shoulders. It was Zebo.

Zebo came to Del and Noelle’s table for the exchange of introductions. He was barely five feet tall, a skinny disproportionate child with long arms and long hands, an oversized head with white skin as smooth and hairless as that of a fetus. No ears, a tiny slit for a mouth, two pinhole nostrils but two huge, wraparound lustrous black eyes with blinking translucent lids. Zebo had smiled and rushed over the moment Del entered.

“Did you get a look at Zebo’s pictures?” Del asked Noelle.

She twisted in her seat against the wall to peer at a few mounted near her. One was just a copy of an old photo showing a fringe of pine trees and a white saucer craft, presumably much larger than this one, hovering in the sky.

“That was over Oregon in 1964,” beamed Zebo, pointing. “Us, I should say. We had a crew of, ah, thirty-four on that one.”

“Oregon?” said Noelle.

“Earth. Nineteen sixty-four A.D.” Zebo clarified. “Beautiful country in Oregon at that time, all trees. No humans except for clones or the time-travelers are alive to remember that beauty, but I saw it. The things I saw of your world,” he reminisced wistfully.

Noelle, granddaughter of a colonist and never having set foot on the planet this being called
her
world, turned to Del uncomfortably in hope of more clarification than Zebo had to offer. He was grinning. “Zebo made several trips to Earth long ago, to study us from a distance. A couple of times his ships were sighted or photographed.”

“I made the
National Inquirer
on that one,” pointing out a framed article. He laughed and wagged his head, related how scared those blubbering farmers had been in his monitor screens. And the time his team took a man and his wife aboard and performed examinations on their prone bodies. He playfully flopped the man’s big penis this way and that. It was this kind of activity, and getting caught on film one time too often, he told Noelle, that had gotten him expelled from further visits. His memory of his voyages and missions had been erased, a procedure commonly used by his people on human specimens before release, but much of his memory had gradually come back.

Or so he believed, Del confided in Noelle when Zebo took their orders to the kitchen. “I think he thinks he did a lot more than he really did. If you believe him he was on half the unidentified flying objects reported in Earth’s twentieth century. He says one of his teams helped ancient Earth people build some kind of temple or structure–I forget what he said it was exactly. They also supposedly seeded humans on various planets as an experiment. The Chooms evolved from Earth specimens they seeded here, for instance.”

“He probably gets a kick out of seeing how much he can trick people into believing. Or he does it to make himself seem important. He’s just another alien.”

Del pouted in Zebo’s defense. “I like the guy. And he makes some really odd, tasty munchies. They’re out of this world.”

Zebo brought their food, returned to the counter, read a magazine, though occasionally Noelle glanced over and he seemed to be spying on them, studying them. He would quickly return to his reading. An eerie thought came to her. What if he hadn’t truly been expelled from his scientific team...if, in accordance with the passage of time, his studies had taken on this new kind of guise so as to move in close to the subjects? Del had said that Zebo’s race had never fully approached the Earth colonial network. Stupid, she thought, chewing a tasty morsel. Now the little clown’s got me believing his tall tales.