Before he could even think of what to do, something grabbed him from behind. Some new sea monster, shaking his shoulders. If he could turn around, he could at least see what had hold of him.
Using all his strength, he wrenched himself from the thing's grasp and turned in the water to face—
—his mother.
"Smitty, what
is
the matter."
He watched the ball bearing bounce on the floor and roll under the convertible sofa-bed. Had that tiny thing really made all this stuff happen to him just now? He could hardly believe it, but it seemed to be true.
His Mom was shaking him again, only not so hard this time. "Oh, Smitty, I thought you were having a fit or something," she said. "Are you all right?"
"Yeah," he said, half expecting to swallow water as he opened his mouth. "Yeah, sure, I'm okay."
"Maybe you should see a doctor."
Smitty didn't think much of the idea. "I was just foolin' around, Mom," he said.
Ronindella's brow furrowed, and she loomed over him much like the sea serpent that had been after him a minute ago. "You mean you were faking those terrible spasms?" she demanded to know.
"Well . . .sort of." For some reason, he didn't want her to know the truth, even if it meant he would be punished. That little silver ball had belonged to his Dad, and in a way the two of them, father and son, had shared the thing. Smitty didn't care if it was wrong, he decided. His Dad was gone, but Smitty wasn't about to forget him.
The flat of Ronindella's hand came down, and Smitty felt the sharp impact sting his cheek. "You had me scared to death!" she screamed. He could barely hear her through the buzzing in his ears.
"I'm sorry, Mom," Smitty said, cringing as the tears started to flow. "I was only playing. I didn't mean anything by it."
"Haven't I got enough problems without you frightening me like that? What's wrong with you?"
"Nothing . . . ."
"Maybe I'd better take you to church this evening. They're open all night, you know."
"I know," Smitty said miserably, wiping his face with the back of one hand.
"Well, I'm going up to the roof to see if Ryan is here with the flyby yet. You'd better behave yourself while I'm gone, if you know what's good for you. I want to see more of this stuff stacked up here in the corridor when I get back."
"Okay, Mom."
She went out, muttering darkly about finding somebody who could get the elevators working. Smitty listened to her footsteps diminish. Alone, he sniffed up the last of his tears and started to drag boxes out into the corridor, as he had been told to do. When he came back into the effapt, he tried not to look at the sofa-bed, but it was no use.
He got down on all fours and crawled behind it, groping for the little silver thing. It would take his mother a few minutes to go upstairs and come back down. Maybe he could put the ball bearing in his pocket and take it home. Or hide it someplace and come back later to get it. No, that wouldn't work; he didn't even know what bus to take to get here.
As he felt around on the grimy old carpet, everything abruptly turned blue-green. He had been in the water, but just for a second. His hand must have brushed the ball bearing.
Hurriedly, he held his palms flat and went back over the same patch of rug again, more slowly this time. One moment he was in the shadows behind the sofa-bed, and the next—
—he was in the sea, his hair plastered to his scalp. One monster was dead, or at least it was gone. But another was bearing down on him, its sharp breast cutting through the water like a knife. It had flippers, too, lots of them.
But even through the fog, Smitty began to see that these weren't really flippers. They were stiff, moving in unison. They looked like oars.
It was a ship! It was just like the ships in a video Dad had showed to him once. More than a thousand years ago, these ships had raided the coast of Europe. What had Dad called the guys who sailed them?
Vikings.
The rowers on the right side shipped their oars, holding them straight up so that they gleamed through the fog. The ship turned broadside to Smitty, and an oar was extended to him. The rough, bearded men pulled him out of the water, grasping him under the armpits. He was saved.
Falling on the wooden planks of the deck, Smitty gasped and raised his torso up with one hand. The Vikings, in their fur and metal get-ups, were standing all around him. Suddenly, a naked man pushed his way between two of them.
"Smitty!" the man said.
It was his Dad!
"Dad, I thought you were on Mars," Smitty said breathlessly.
"What are you talking about, kid?" his Dad said, lifting him up and embracing him. "I'm right here with you."
This was great. His Mom and Ryan had lied to him, as he had always suspected. Dad hadn't gone to Mars; he was here, on the high seas, having adventures with Vikings.
One of the Vikings, a giant, laughed deeply, and all the others joined in. At first, Smitty didn't know whether to be afraid or not, but his Dad was smiling, so he guessed it was all right. Maybe they would all be friends, and just sail around looting and plundering forever.
Just then a shadow fell over the deck. Smitty looked up to see another sea serpent, this one even more terrifying than the last. Before he could move, it opened its jaws and snatched something right out of his hand and—
—his Mom was shaking him again.
"Where did you get that?" she shrieked, pointing to the onee rolling on the floor.
For a moment, Smitty couldn't answer. After all, he had just been attacked by a sea serpent. It would take a few seconds, at least, to get used to the idea that he was back here with his Mom yelling at him, and not with his Dad on the deck of the Viking ship. As he gradually became reoriented to his surroundings, he expected his Mom to hit him again, but she didn't.
"Oh, Smitty," she said, tears starting to form in her eyes, "how could you do this to me?"
This was worse than getting smacked, as far as Smitty was concerned. He hated it more than anything when she acted like this. He knew he had to do something to improve the situation.
"Mom, I found it on the floor," Smitty explained, with just the right touch of desperation needed to convince her of his innocence. "Honest, I don't even know what it is."
"But you were under the influence of an . . ." She glanced toward the door, as if Conglom police might burst in at any second. She never finished the sentence, as though pronouncing the word could send her to the moon. She didn't try to hit Smitty again, either; instead, she hugged him.
"I'm sorry, sweetheart," she said. "But what you did is against the law. We'll call the police, but when they get here you'll have to pretend that you never touched it."
"Okay, Mom," Smitty agreed. "But what is it?"
"I think maybe Ryan should tell you that. He'll be down here in a minute, and he'll explain everything to you."
She'd been trying to make him think Ryan was his father ever since Dad moved out of the apt. Smitty didn't like it, but what could he do but put up with it? Even Ryan didn't much like pretending he was Smitty's Dad, but he knew Ronindella wanted him to do it, so he did it. Dad was never like that. If Dad thought Mom was wrong about something, he told her so, and then she bitched at him until he gave in.
Ronindella went to the phone and punched in a number. The screen remained blank.
"Shit," she said. "It's been disconnected. Your father's not even on Mars yet, and it's been disconnected already. He probably hasn't paid his bill, if I know him."
Smitty didn't like it when she said things like that about his Dad, but he didn't say anything. She would be even worse about it if he said something, and he might get punished, too.
Ryan Effner came through the open effapt door. "Hi, Ronnie," he said, affecting cheerfulness. "Hi, kiddo."
"Ryan, you've got to talk to Smitty," Ronindella said. "He's . . ." She didn't want to say it aloud, so she gestured for Ryan to come closer. He walked across the room in three steps, and they moved against the wall. There was no place else to go in the effapt, except the bathroom, and there was hardly room for one person in there, let alone two.
Shooting a warning glance at Smitty, Ronindella then turned away from him and whispered something to Ryan. Smitty watched them furtively, wondering what was going to happen next. He saw Ryan's eyes widen, and then Ryan said: "You don't think I had anything to do with it, do you?"
Ronindella looked at him with a puzzled expression. "What are you talking about?"
"I didn't give them to him," Ryan said. He sounded whiny, like a kid who had done something wrong and was afraid he would be punished for it. Smitty had never seen a grown man act like this before.
"Who said
you
gave them to him?" Ronindella screamed. "Just what the hell do you know about this?"
"Nothing." He looked away from her.
"Did you give it to Smitty?"
"No, just ask him." Saying this seemed to give Ryan new courage. "Go ahead, he'll tell you." He turned toward Smitty. "Won't you, kid?"
Smitty stared at Ryan. He simply couldn't understand why Ryan was acting so weird. After all, nobody had said the guy had anything to do with it.
"Well, go ahead, Smitty," his Mom said. "Just tell the truth. Don't be afraid."
Smitty took her at her word. "Ryan didn't give it to me," he said. "I found it right over there on the floor, just like I told you, Mom."
Ryan looked relieved.
Ronindella glanced at Ryan, but she didn't say anything to him.
"I didn't mean to make it happen," Smitty lied. "I was just trying to pick up a box, and all of a sudden . . ."
"All of a sudden, ka-pow!" Ryan laughed nervously. "I'll bet you never had a thrill like that before, Smit."
Turning on him, Ronindella said: "How come
you
know so damn much about it, Ryan?"
Ryan took on a sheepish expression. "Well, I've seen it in
Pixine
."
"Yeah, right."
"I'm sorry, Mom," Smitty said, seeing that the blame had been shifted onto Ryan. "I really didn't mean to do anything wrong, you know. You believe me, don't you?"
"Of course I do, darling." She went to him and hugged him again. "And I'm sorry I got so upset."
It would be all right now, Smitty knew. She might even get him some ice cream, if he handled things the right way.
"We've moved enough of this stuff today," Ronindella said. "Why don't we lock up the effapt and go get something to eat?"
"Yeah!"
Ronindella put her arm around Smitty's narrow shoulders and gave him a little squeeze. "Where would you like to go, hon?"
"You know, Mom. Kwikkee-Kwizeen."
"Then Kwikkee-Kwizeen it is. Ryan, would you care to drive us there?"
It was an order, and Ryan knew it. He would do anything right now to stay in Ronindella's good graces. He nodded meekly. "Sure," he said. "I love Kwikkee-Kwizeen."
"Everybody loves Kwikkee-Kwizeen!" Smitty chimed in, mimicking the projectogram ad. "'Cause it's the place that's really keen!"
Smitty and Ryan ran upstairs, and were forced to wait for Ronindella on the roof parking lot. Her stately progress, and the lack of a sunshield, required them to get into the broiling flyby and wait for a couple of minutes before the air conditioner cooled off the interior. It was less harmful than waiting bare-headed outside, though.
There was ample room for two adults in the Akbar, a Saudi make that Ryan had picked up only a year old for three hundred thousand. As Ronindella often attested, it was the kind of deal only a smart man like Ryan made. Smitty didn't quite know why, but he thought this meant more about his Dad than about Ryan.
The air conditioner was soon blasting away, and, though it was a little crowded with Smitty sitting on his Mom's lap, they were in good spirits by the time they pulled into the sweltering Kwikkee-Kwizeen parking lot.
Inside, there was a line snaking to the Kwizeen-Karts, where a credit card was all it took to buy all sorts of delicious foods. Ryan popped his credit card into the slot, and Smitty made his selections: fried seaweed sausages, petroshake, soy burger. A little slip of paper came out with the card once the order had emerged from the well in the top of the cart.
"What's that?" Smitty said.
"I don't know," his Mom said. "Why don't you take it to the table and see?"
Smitty snatched it up, and, following his Mom and Ryan to a booth, he sat down and examined it as they ate. He couldn't figure out what it was.
"Let Ryan see it," Ronindella said.
Ryan took the paper and looked at it for a while, his brow furrowed. "It's a contest," he said at length, as portentously as if he had deciphered the Dead Sea Scrolls.
"What's a contest?" Smitty said.
"It's kind of like a game, kiddo. You write your name down and you might win a prize. Here's a pen."
Smitty took the paper and pen. He knew how to sign his name, but he'd only had to do it a few times in his nine years. The Conglom tax forms, and a few other things were all that needed his signature, important documents like that. It seemed funny to sign something for fun.
But he did it anyway; maybe he'd win a prize. As he wrote, he realized for the first time how much he hated Ryan Effner.
THEY WERE ON their way to Mars. It seemed odd to Johnsmith, but he knew that it was true. He and Alderdice spent a lot of time clutching onees, but whenever they came up for air the drab interior of the Conglom Interplan ship was always around them, unchanged but for the tiniest details.
Of course, he could always go and look out the stern transparency at the diminishing Earth. But that depressed him, and besides, the rest of the heavens changed so slowly that it was hardly any fun at all unless you took it in fairly infrequently. Once a week or so was interesting, but no more often than that.
So it was onee thrill after onee thrill. At first Johnsmith really enjoyed the hallucinatory sights, smells, sounds, and feel of imaginary worlds. None of them were ever quite the same as that watery place he'd fallen into while he was sitting alone in his effapt back on Earth—the sensory definition was lacking. But it was still pretty good, usually. Not quite as all-encompassing as he remembered it, but that was surely because he hadn't known what to expect that first time. At least the hallucinations whiled away the hours, though.