Free Cyberpunk by Pat Cadigan Page B

course, made much of the conceit that its title character was trapped in his bedroom, yet I recalled from some footage from Crab Sex Dorm how he could transverse human doorways by tipping himself dexterously on one side. The crab did this now, gripping the doorframe neatly with his claws and virtually rolling himself through the doorway. Inside, he dropped back to the unpainted cement floor. I followed, leaving the door open behind me. The basement was cool and conveyed an intense marine smell, like that of an aquarium. Low fluorescent fixtures shone a dim green light, from what appeared to be special bulbs, perhaps like those for illuminating plants or animals in a zoo display of creatures unused to direct sunlight. As my eyes accustomed themselves to the dark I saw that we were surrounded by dozens of immense water tanks, the murk and silt within them glowing in the greenish light.
    Another figure stepped from the rear, startling me. It was Feary Foorcum—or rather, Reg Loud. Loud was cloaked in a white lab coat, and still wore his hair in his signature ragged punk cut. He was also still of a childish stature, though he’d grown stocky, and his once brattish features were withered and creased with deep lines of cynicism and age—he seemed still too young to be an adult, and far too old to be in his early forties, as a quick calculation suggested he ought to be. But then perhaps he had been playing younger than his real age on Crab House Days, like so many child stars have done.
    “Reg, this is Mr. Lehman. He’s come to have a look at my quote-unquote comeback.”
    Reg Loud stuck out a horny, trollish hand. “Pleased to meet you,” he said in the terribly familiar voice, a sort of parroty squawk, with which he’d hectored both his parents and crab for all five seasons, filling their ears with his crank Libertarian views. “You’re one of the first to see the babies.”
    “Babies?”
    “Have a look.”
    I squinted in close to the nearest of the tanks. I spotted them now, realized in fact that they’d been visible all along but that I’d mistaken them for sworls of colored shadow in the glow. Behind the glass swam hundreds upon hundreds of tiny, translucent green-yellow crabs. Each was perhaps three-quarters of an inch wide. They coursed over one another in a giddy chaos of youthful agitation, like puppies, or sperm.
    I moved to the next tank and found more. I was no savant, but a rough guess suggested there might be tens of thousands of the tiny crabs in the damp, humming basement with us there, a slushy riot of life, a throbbing army of creatures.
    “Maybe you can help me decide what to call it,” said the crab. “I keep vacillating between Revenge of the Crab and Crab World Domination.”
    “I like Crab World Domination ,” I said. “It suggests more continuity with your earlier work.”
    “That’s a point,” said the crab.
    “They’re all him, you understand,” said Reg Loud.
    “Sorry?”
    “All him,” Loud repeated. “They’re clones.”
    “I see. How soon will they be, uh, ready?”
    “They won’t attain his mature size for twenty years,” said Reg Loud. “But they’ll be ready for release in three or four.”
    “Not so much of a comedy this time,” I mused.
    “You could say that,” consented the crab.
    “Perhaps more of a disaster movie, or a cable miniseries?”
    “Do you know anything about global warming, Mr. Lehman?” said Reg Loud.
    “Of course.”
    “You say you do, yet do you understand that the ten warmest years in recorded history have occurred since 1983? Seven of them since 1990. Some of us will be better adapted to the coming changes than others.”
    “In other words,” said the crab, “this really has nothing at all to do with television.”
    “The evolution will not be televised,” chortled Loud. “The mocked shell inherit the earth.”
    “Don’t worry, Lehman, we’ll still need historians of television comedy, or rather we’ll need them again in a few