The Butterfly Kid

17

“GROOVY!” I screamed when they burst in, and then went on more quietly: “You sure as hell took your own sweet bloody time about it, mister. What kept you?”

“Later.” Michael Superspy was casing the joint, standing in the doorway looking very hot and paranoid.

Sean didn’t bother. He plunged in like the puppy he was, yelping, “You okay, baby?” without waiting for an answer. “I did a Things at The Mess last night an’ they really Dug it, man. What’re these things?”

He’d reached the torture machines. Michael was beginning to enter the room.

“Torture machines,” I explained. “Leave them alone.” I had plans for those gadgets. If they could just be stolen, I could make narcotics obsolete in Greenwich Village.

“Hmm. They’re turned on.” Michael had arrived. “How do you turn ’em off?”

I said, “God knows. Just leave ’em be, will you? I want to save them if I can. How about untying me?”

“Torture machines, you say?” Michael eyed them with a hungry look I didn’t like at all.

“Come on, Michael, turn me loose.”

“Maybe this red button here…”

“No! Cool it! Don’t touch any…”

ZAP!

“…thing.”

Sparks — green, blue, scarlet, quite electrifying — flew from machine to machine, a depressingly gaudy display. The room suddenly stank of ozone. Sharp popping noises and loud bubbling hisses issued from the depths of the machines. Wisps of plaintive blue smoke rose into the air.

“No,” Mike said, backing off, “I guess not.”

I had nothing to say.

It was Sean who finally untied me. Mike was too engrossed in watching the machines destroy themselves to move.

I’ll admit it was quite a show. As the rainbow sparks continued to fly and the smoke grew thicker, the machines began to glow dully, then to sag, and then to melt. Liquid metal gathered in small pools under the machines, and then ran slowly across the room, setting the ancient wooden floor afire.

My boots and briefcase were up against the rear wall, beside an open barrel half full of those well-known little blue pills. Impulsively, I filled the briefcase with pills. “Evidence,” I explained to myself. Then I grabbed my boots and cut for the door.

Sean was there before me, looking just about as puzzled as usual, but Mike was still involved with the machines. “C’mon,” I yelled. “Let’s split, man.”

The smoke was getting thicker, the ozone was stinging my nose and eyes, and the fires were beginning to crackle a lot. I didn’t really want to stick around much longer. “Kurland!” I yelled again, but still Mike didn’t move. Dropping my boots, I ran over and shook him. Hard.

“Oh,” dazedly. “Sorry ’bout that.”

He came peacefully.

Halfway down the stairs I remembered my boots, Too late. The fire was already roaring, and the fourth floor didn’t seem to be a healthy place to visit anymore. Those boots’d always been too tight anyhow.

When we reached the street, Mike said, “Torture machines?” He was still pretty dazed.

“When I tell you about it, you’ll cry,” I promised. “Sean, why don’t you hail us a cab?”

Once he’d caught a whiff of us, the cabby didn’t want our business, but it was too late. We were already aboard and in motion. He turned his air conditioner up as high as it’d go and drove on, muttering Brooklynoid curses.

“Hey, you stink,” I told Mike. He was coming out of his trance.

“That’s cool. So do you. What happened?”

“When I tell you,” I repeated, “you will weep.” Then I told him.

I was still telling him when we pulled up in front of the pad. I gave the cabby a five without interrupting my report and didn’t linger for the change. All the way up the stairs I talked and into the living room. Still talking, I tore off my stained and fragrant clothes and ran for the shower.

“Yeee!” Sativa screamed.

“Sorry.” I jumped in. She yelped and jumped out. “My need is greater than thine,” I explained. Then I went on with the report.

Mike took a shower next, and then Sean, so I remained in the bathroom, talking a blue and lobster-ridden streak.

When, mod-ishly garbed in paisley towels, we returned to the living room, I was still talking.

“Hmph!” Sativa snorted. “Men!” She stomped off to finish her bath. We sat down and I continued to talk. It was a long story.

I wound it up over my second plate of poached eggs and kelp. “And that’s it. They’re on their way to the reservoir now. What are we going to do?”

“Is it okay if I just, you know, go back to Fort Worth?”

Mike sniffed. Then, “We’ve got to stop them. Obviously.”

“Groovy,” I observed. “With what army?”

Sean said, “I’m gonna call the cops. Right now!”

“Cool it,” Mike cooled him. “They’ll never believe us. And all the evidence is going up in smoke, too. We just have to do it ourselves, that’s all.”

I repeated my question.

“Easy,” he said. “There are how many — twelve of them, right?”

“Plus Laszlo.”

“Twelve and a half then. So we’ll get all our friends to help.” He sounded perfectly rational — but our friends? “We’ll outnumber them, for one thing. And we shouldn’t have any trouble anyway, not if these lobster critters are as nonviolent as you claim they are.”

“Oh, they’re nonviolent, all right. But I don’t know, Michael: our friends?”

“Who else?”

“You mean Andrew Blake? Gary the Frog? Our friends? Are you sure?”

“Well, some of our friends. I’ll start calling them now.”