The Butterfly Kid

15

CLICK!

Zap!

“Good morning, Mister Spy. Do you wish to talk now?”

It was over. Finished. Dead. Ktch’d turned my torture off, plunging me with a morbid Click! from breathless peaks of subjective ecstasy to Wednesday morning. Wow, what a bringdown.

“Mister Spy?”

The lobsters were at it again, all twelve of them — a ghastly sight — scuttling here and there about the loft with fifty-gallon steel drums in their claws; all but Ktch, who was standing still with one pincer resting on the largest torture device and both eyestalks pointed at me. These were the kind of lobsters that liked to gossip while they worked, too — the worst kind of lobster — and the loft sounded like a firing range at rush hour. I hate loud noises in the morning.

“Can you hear me, Mister Spy? Are you all right?”

And this morning I was ready to hate almost everything. I was still drenched with metabolized coffee, for one thing, clammy and reeking. And I still hadn’t had yesterday’s lunch yet, not to mention supper, snack, and breakfast. The inside of my mouth felt like it was digesting itself, and tasted like it, too.

“You’re not — oh my — you’re not Dead, are you? Tell me you’re not dead!”

And I hadn’t slept, either. That was another thing. All-night torture sessions are fine and groovy if you dig that sort of thing, but I’m a cat who needs his sleep.

Furthermore, Michael hadn’t rescued me — first time he’d failed me in three and a half years. The world was still unsaved. These filthy lobsters’ evil plans were still intact, unfoiled. Everything had gone wrong. Everything.

Oh, but I was in a foul mood that morning.

“Oh dear! Speak to me, Spy. Dear Spy, please say something!”

Ktch was turning pale again. That seemed to be a habit of his, and I was sick of it. His feelers were flailing weakly about in the air, his eyestalks were wilting, and he was rubbing his claws together in brittle, nervous polyryhthms: crustacean symptoms of acute distress. I was pretty sick of that, too.

“Oh, Spy,” he wailed, “please, Please do not be dead!”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” I comforted him. “Will you shut up!”

“Oh my!” He sank to the floor and trembled noisily.

“Stop that!” I yelled. “Cut it out!” I hate to yell in the morning. “Stop that flipping noise, God damn you! Quit it!”

Which attracted the rest of the lobsters. They lay down their burdens and gathered in a clackety cobalt-blue cluster around me. This was a little quieter, but Ktch was still trembling briskly, and the sight of twenty-two extended eyestalks waving in my direction made me nervous.

“Stop that!” And I was developing a sore throat, too. “Stop!”

They didn’t seem to understand English, but the idea got across. They muffled their noise to a spring-rain patter that was merely aggravating, and retracted their eyes. Ktch, however, continued to clatter on the floor. It was shameful to see a grown lobster carry on so.

“You,” I said quite softly, blending laryngitis with intense menace.

Ktch froze in midclatter.

“You,” I repeated. “Stand up. Quietly.”

He stood up. Shakily. Every time his shell clicked, he winced, producing another click. His feelers dangled limply down on either side of him, his eyestalks drooped, and his claws just missed dragging on the floor. For a six-foot lobster, he was a sorry spectacle.

“Spy?” he begged.

“Shut up. I want to think.”

Now that I had them quiet, my temper wasn’t half as foul as it had been, but I was still uncomfortable enough to generate a decent rage if I needed one. To prove it, I glowered fiercely at my dozen lobsters. It isn’t easy for a face as bland as mine to glower convincingly, but I managed. Twenty-four limp feelers drooped like a grove of segmented willows.

“That’s better.” Still menacing. Not a carapace creaked.

It was clear that Michael was not going to rescue me. I had some things to say about that, but they could wait till I saw him again, if ever. Right now the problem was to rescue myself, a task for which I was eminently unsuited.

But maybe I had a chance. Look how I’d managed to cow these twelve strapping lobsters with naught but a yell and a glower. Consider yesterday’s interrogation scene with Ktch. Right. These bugs had chinks in their armor big enough to drive a seafood truck through: several helpful weaknesses I already knew about, doubtless many more to be discovered.

Their biggest weakness was this nonviolent nonsense. They’d sure as hell picked the wrong planet for that game. Human beings are just naturally violent animals, even the nonviolent ones. Hell, even the limp protesters who lie down in front of ammunition trucks and have to be hauled off the street like sacks of flour, all they’re doing is imposing their will on others, compelling other people to behave contrary to their own desires, which is the crystalline essence of violence. And the rest of us tend to be downright brutal: we spank our kids, we step on bugs, we fish and hunt for pleasure, we enjoy 3V bloodshed, we play football and other battle games — we’re a rough bunch, we are.

I didn’t think the lobsters really understood this yet.

And old Ktch here couldn’t even think about violence without turning pale. Groovy. If I didn’t get anything else accomplished, I intended to see just how pale he could get. I was fairly confident I could persuade him that he was personally and directly responsible for every act of violence caused by the Reality Pill, I was looking forward to that.

“Click.”

“Who did that?” Twelve lobsters faded. “Don’t do it again.”

I’d also like, I decided, to see friend Ktch’s reaction to a seafood restaurant. A lobster house, for instance.

Another massive weakness: the bugs were basing their ideas about the human race on Laszlo Scott, for Christ’s sake. You might as well believe you can handle wolves because you’ve had a dog. A yellow dog. If these blue plate specials thought they were dealing with a planetful of Laszlos, they were in trouble.

Anything I could do that Laszlo couldn’t, I figured — like overpowering Ktch’s mind control goody — almost anybody else could also do, Laszlo being pretty much at the bottom of the racial totem pole, wherein might lurk some nasty shocks should the lobsters ever come to grips with the human race at large.

Just to be mean, I filled my head with “Love Sold in Doses” again. Ktch winced. The others twitched rhythmically. Nice.

“All right,” I said, still keeping it harsh. “I’m done thinking for a while. You can move again. But keep it quiet, you hear?”

Hesitantly, the eleven working lobsters went back to work, muffling clicks as best they could. Some of the starch, returned to Ktch’s feelers.

“Spy?” humbly.

“Yes?”

“The torture. Did you break under the torture? Ah, are you ready to talk now?”

“Not a chance.”

“Oh my. I didn’t really think so.”

“Right. What are you doing?”

“Conducting the morning interview, as prescribed by The Rules. Ah, um, may I ask you some questions, please, Mister Spy?”

“Not a chance. What are the rest of them doing?”

“I’m not allowed to answer questions. The Rules…”

“Remember what happened yesterday?” I whistled a phrase in case he’d forgotten.

He hadn’t. “They are making ready for phase two, which begins tonight, Mister Spy.”

“Indeed. Just what is phase two?”

“Oh my. Large-scale testing of the chemical weapon, sir. We have already studied its effect on individuals and small groups. Now, Phase Two, we must observe its effect on large population masses before we can initiate Phase Three. The effect, you see, is — I shouldn’t be telling you this — is both qualitatively and quantitatively different in large groups. There is a resonance factor, and…”

“That’s nice. What are you going to do to get Phase Two started?”

“Please! The Rules specifically forbid…”

“I offered you riches an’ all of them things,’” fortissimo,

“For all of your fingers I offered you rings…”

“Ai! Stop! Oh, Stop!”

“To cover your body, silk fabric that clings:

And you gave me Love Sold in Doses.”

“Please, no more.” There’s something in the sight of a cringing lobster. “I beg of you, sir…”

“It’s an awfully long song, but I’ll sing it all if you insist”

“Oh dear.”

I rather liked the way Ktch kept changing colors. It lent variety to what would otherwise’ve been a fairly monotonous exoskeleton.

“Our plan,” he whispered, “is to pour six hundred gallons of the liquefied chemical into the reservoir called Croton under cover of darkness. Laszlo Scott will lead us there.”

“Oh yeah? Six hundred gallons, you say?”

“Shh! The others will hear you.”

“That’s nice. How many doses in six hundred gallons?”

“Doses? Oh, roughly ten billions, I believe.”

That stopped me. But, “Isn’t that a bit much for only ten million people?”

“We expect some waste, you understand. Besides, it’s really quite harmless. There is no lethal dose. We couldn’t do a thing like that.”

“Um. You shellfish have some pretty twisty ethics.”

That bothered him. He embarked on an elaborate defense of lobsterian ethics, full of feeler-flippings, claw-clickings, and similar rhetorical devices. Very dull. And I thought about Phase Two: the whole city high on Reality Pills. My imagination was too good.

I could see it all. Birchites launching millions of missiles against Russia, starting at last the war we’d avoided so long. Racists suddenly become omnipotent. The persecuted manufacturing impossible revenge. Cops really stamping out crime. Kids getting even with grown-ups. Mental patients striking back at the world. Sadists getting infinite kicks. The weak grown powerful beyond endurance. Lovers crushing all things under love…

And not just the city, no. The lobsters underestimated us. The whole world in flames, at the very least. And back of it all the blond Abaddon, Laszlo Scott, leading twelve blue lobsters to the Croton Reservoir.

And only I could stop it. I felt ill.

Why me? I never volunteered to save the world. I wasn’t even very good at saving myself.

But there it was, my job, whether I liked it or not, and time was running short. I reinstated yesterday’s rock-n-roll festival chorus and orchestra. “Untie the spy,” they played and sang, “Untie the spy,” over and over again, “Untie the spy,” in B flat, a domineering key.

Ktch weakened. His argument began to run down, to falter, and his gestures grew sloppy. He took one tentative step forward, then another. The argument petered out and stopped. He moved around behind me. I could feel the small pincers he used for delicate manipulation working at my ankles.

The other lobsters had stopped what they’d been doing and were standing frozen in their tracks like polyethylene-extruded monster models, paralyzed by my music, I presumed. Just to be on the safe side, I changed my text to, “Let the spy go home.” It had a catchy Latin beat.

There! My left foot was free. I wiggled it gratefully. Ktch was working on my right.

Then, “What’re you Doin’?” a shriek, and the whole thing fell apart. Laszlo had arrived.

Ktch backed away, gibbering percussively. The other lobsters took up defensive positions around me. One of them, ignoring my most vigorous kicks, retied my left foot. Phooey!

All the lobsters were clattering like up-tight teletype machines, and, “You was lettin’ ’im Go!” Laszlo complained. “You was gonna let ’im Go!” It was all very noisy.

“Shut up!” I yelled.

It didn’t work this time. That is, the lobsters shut up, but Laszlo didn’t. He stomped over to me like an angry gob of mayonnaise, screaming, “He was gonna let you Go!” while Ktch scurried out the door.

That blew it. When Ktch returned, his carapace was covered with a silvery blanket-like affair that evidently shielded him from my musical assaults. Ignoring me altogether, he concentrated on directing the other lobsters’ work.

That left me to Laszlo. “You know what I’m gonna Do to you?” he said, among other things, taking care no lobster overheard. “What I’m gonna do, soon’s all these Blue cats split, man, I’m gonna Take Care of You, baby. Real dirty an’ slow-like, you dig?”

He went into it in whispered detail, drooling over every indignity and pain he had in store for me. I’d never realized that Laszlo had such a fertile imagination. He must’ve been working on this for years. I was worried.

Then the loft fell silent. Laszlo shut up. The lobsters were gone, all but Ktch, who stood, glimmering in his silver safety suit, by the door.

“We are ready now,” he said.

“That’s boss,” said Laszlo, his little eyes twinkling.

“Come along, Laszlo Scott. Your services will be required Come. Now.”

“Me? But, man,” distress, “don’t you want, like, someone oughtta Look Out for this guy? I mean…”

“No. He will be all right here. Come.”

Laszlo slowly wilted and went.

“Downstairs now,” the lobster told him. “Hurry.”

Then, as Laszlo thudded down the stairs, “Farewell, Spy,” Ktch said. “I hope you will not be harmed in the disturbances tonight. You have been a brave and worthy opponent. Now farewell,” and he was gone, leaving the door slightly ajar behind him.

I had failed. I was still a prisoner, still attached to the torture machines (they were lit and humming, but I didn’t feel anything, so they were probably on standby), still absolutely helpless. So much for saving the world.

Aside from the hum in front of me and a clocklike ticking behind me somewhere, the place was deathly still. Not even traffic noises could be heard. Time passed.

Bang! from downstairs suddenly, the street door opening. Heavy feet started up the stairs.

Laszlo! I thought. I began to tremble. I tried to brace myself against the trembling, but it wouldn’t stop.

The feet came closer, moving slowly and deliberately, and still closer. They were on the landing one floor down. They came slowly up the stairs. They were on this floor. The door flew open. I screamed!