Chester Anderson - The Butterfly Kid

It was roughly twelve feet tall, essentially saurian, overwhelmingly carnivorous. But it had three toothy heads, all evil, each on its own long, muscular, sinuous neck, and at least six limbs — two big ones at the bottom, two slimmer but incredibly powerful-looking ones at the bottom of its rib cage if it had one, and two small and maybe not very strong short ones at the top, all ending in unusually large numbers of long, battle-sharp talons. It looked like a red Tyrannosaurus rex with lots of optional equipment.

I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why and how it had three heads. I should think one would suffice, and be a full day’s work to manage, too. But what kind of environment would favor multiple heads? None I’d willingly imagine.

With a liquid, terrifying motion, the beast aimed two of those heads at us. The third, held high, slowly turned from side to side, ignoring us completely. So: a built-in sentry.

One of the heads roared at us. Then another one joined in, not on the same pitch but a pretty good fifth above. The two roars merged in a sub bass sonority that shook our bones. Then the third head joined the chorus and I fell down and blacked out. There are some disadvantages to being an ear man.

When I came to, we were cruising thirty yards offshore. The thing was gone.

“Don’ know where he went to, baby,” Little Micky reported. “He just jumped straight up and forgot about the comedown, dig it, man?”

Despite the air conditioning, the bus was growing warm. The beast’s triple roar had powdered our windows.

Sandi and Harriet had fainted and were still out of it. Sativa was wandering blankly, saying, “Ohh.” I wondered if she’d had second thoughts about her daily karma.

Gary the inevitable Frog seemed to have vanished. For a wild instant I thought he’d been devoured, and then I remembered where, knowing Gary, he must be. Sure enough, when I opened the toilet door, there he was, in a sadly unaesthetic condition from having reached the john an inch too late but otherwise undamaged.

Leo was hovering over Sandi, somehow clucking but unharmed. Andrew Blake was muttering to himself, or maybe God, or both, in execrable Latin. Karen was holding his hand. Apparently she hadn’t fainted. Very odd.

Pat and Stu were as excited as kids at an earthquake and kept asking one another, “Did you see it, man? Did you really see it?” Kevin was serenely manufacturing quaint theories to explain the thing. Little Micky was at a window, waiting for the next event.

Everyone was basically all right, so I went forward to confer with Mike.

“Perfect weapon, Mike?” I teased unfairly.

“Hey, I thought you said these lobster men were nonviolent.”

“They are. But they don’t object to anything else’s being violent, if that’s its nature. And if something like that triple dinosaur happens to get violent at us, well, that’s our affair — and the dinosaur’s — and doesn’t concern Ktch and company at all. That’s how they explain it, anyhow.”

“Oh.”

“But I don’t think they meant to let that creature hurt us any. You noticed that they got rid of it the instant it jumped. They just wanted to scare us, that’s all.”

“Swell. They sure know how to get what they want, don’t they?”

“Generally.”

From the rear floated treble snatches of, “Oh dear God! I saw it! Oh my!” which meant that Sandi was conscious again and functioning normally.

“How do you feel?” Mike almost whispered.

“Me?” Scared.”

“Me, too.”

“Groovy. What do we do now?”

We thought about that for a while. Outside, the darkness thickened. There were no stars visible and no moon, though last night at this time the moon was halfway up and nearly full. The sky had been clear at sunset, too. Apparently the lobster gang wasn’t taking any chances or missing any bets. I didn’t mention this to Mike, though.

We were waiting, intensely waiting, all of us and everything, consciously, yearningly, terrifiedly waiting. It was a texture, this waiting, a pressure where pressure was impossible. The dull, scared taste of apprehension covered everything: I could almost hear it. I had to give Ktch credit; he was thorough.

“I don’t know,” Mike said a little shrilly. “I don’t know what to do at all. I had something worked out before, but I’ve forgotten it.” I’d never heard him sound afraid before. I didn’t like it.

“Well, the first thing we’ve got to do,” with fraudulent briskness, “is keep that beach as brightly lit as we can, to keep the lobster gang from pouring their reality drug into the reservoir. That’s the important thing.”

“Light? Why should that stop them?” He still sounded scared.

“Shame, Michael, unadulterated shame. The things they believe and the things they do are almost mutually exclusive, for one thing; and they seem to be compulsive rationalizers, for another; which leads me to think they have an overdeveloped sense of shame.”

“Hey!” a bit less fear, “maybe we can work on their sense of shame!!”

“Not a chance. A sense of shame’s not much use to anyone. They won’t mind dosing our water, but they won’t want to do it while we’re watching, and that’s all the benefit we can expect from their sense of shame. However…”

One of the troopers screamed like a sudden banshee. Mike nearly fainted. I ran back to see what was happening.

Nothing was happening.

“I don’t know what got into me,” Karen sobbed. “I just, you know, kept getting scareder and scareder, until I just had to let it out or do something horrible. I don’t know!” She poured tears on Andrew’s shoulder.

This was Ktch’s waiting-and-apprehension game at work. I could feel it myself, though I wasn’t paying much attention to it. But something had to be done. A mere glance at our formerly brave little band was enough to tell me that. They were all unnaturally pale, some had developed tics, more had taken to looking back over their shoulders nervously, as though some hellish Thing were lurking there, and none of them looked at all happy. Even Pat’s grin, impossible to erase, had a rather hollow look to it.

“Listen to me, you guys,” I ordered firmly and loudly. “This is just one of the lobster gang’s tricks, this fear-and-waiting bit. That’s all it is, just a trick. It’s not real. Honestly it’s not.”

They looked half hopeful and a bit less credulous, which was an improvement, but not enough.

“Listen. We don’t have to put up with this. We can make them stop it. Yes we can. I did it. I did it last night, and I did it again this morning, when they had me tied up in their loft. It’s easy.”

I moved back to the harpsichord, gesturing to the rest of the band to follow.

“All we have to do is sing at them. Really. That’s all there is to it. We’ll give ’em ‘Love Sold in Doses,’ right? That’s the song I used, and it worked like a charm. Honestly! I think they’re a little afraid of it. Everybody sing, you hear? If you don’t know the words, hum something. Ready? Let’s go!”

And Sativa and The Tripouts and the MacDougal Street Commandos swung into “Love Sold in Doses.” It was pretty ragged at first, but it firmed up quickly, and by the end of the second verse we were doing right well by it. We were feeling better, too — all of us. You could tell it from the singing.

And then, suddenly, like a guitar string snapping, the waiting-and-apprehension business stopped. We all lit up like happy bulbs.

“Keep on singing!” I yelled. “Sing it again. Don’t stop until I do. And sing louder! Let the lobster gang hear it like it is. Louder!”

Oh my, but they were loud! Gary the cacophonous Frog was the loudest of the lot, of course, and flat to boot, but this was no time for technical quibbles. I smiled encouragement at him and — mirabile! — he sang even louder.