Free Unidentified Funny Objects 2 by Robert Silverberg, Jim C. Hines, Jody Lynn Nye, Mike Resnick, Ken Liu, Tim Pratt, Esther Frisner Page B

hero.” Scaramouche snorted. “I can’t stand temps. They don’t understand our routine .” She tapped a control on her wrist, and the explosives began to beep in unison, a chirping chorus of impending death. “I don’t have all day. I have yoga at four thirty.”
    Stranger sagged against the truck. He couldn’t let Kelly die. “You win.”
    “The hell she does!” The tumor’s outrage bubbled through Stranger’s thoughts. “Nobody defeats Tumor and the Fecal Tornado!”
    Scaramouche giggled as she retrieved the time magnet from another trailer. The pistol-sized device resembled a radar gun.
    “I’m sorry, John,” said Kelly.
    Scaramouche sang in Italian as she calibrated the time magnet. “October third of 2002, wasn’t it? You were in a coma after moving the moon back into its proper orbit. If I pull you through from that day, the young you should sleep through the whole mind transfer.”
    “Dumbass.”
    Stranger clenched his jaw. “If you have something to say…”
    “Forget the acid tank. Just stop scarface from triggering it.”
    “I can’t control people. I’m not telepathic.”
    “Double dumbass. You’re talking to me, aren’t you?”
    “You’re a tumor, not a person, and I can’t control you.”
    “That hurt. You can’t control me because I’m superpowered. Scaramouche isn’t. More importantly, the meat in her skull isn’t.”
    The words hit him like a sucker punch from Gargantua. No matter how twisted Scaramouche might be, she was also brilliant enough to make this so-called “cure” work. That hope had wormed its way into Stranger’s heart, poisoning his thoughts just as his tumors had done to his flesh. With Kelly in danger, he had no choice. He had to accept Scaramouche’s offer, because it was the only way to save an innocent life. If that meant killing an alternate version of himself, so be it. But if there was any alternative…
    “Damn you.” He couldn’t decide who was more cruel: Scaramouche, for offering hope, or his tumor, for taking it away.
    Stranger concentrated, trying to imagine Scaramouche not as a person, but as a collection of flesh and blood and bones. A body, complex and beautiful and fragile. A biological machine controlled through the junction of electrical cables to the brain. He focused on that pulsing lump of electrochemically-active meat and whispered, “Stop.”
    Scaramouche collapsed like a discarded Muppet.
    Stranger studied the controller on Scaramouche’s wrist. “How do I use you to deactivate the bombs?”
    “What did you do?” Kelly whispered. “She’s not breathing.”
    “She’s not doing anything,” Stranger said. “I shut down her brain.”
    “You killed her?” She sounded horrified.
    “It was my tumor’s idea.” He finished disarming the trap, then snapped the chains holding Kelly in place. He picked up the time magnet. His hands shook. Clenching his jaw, he crushed the device to scrap.
    “Can you revive her?”
    “Don’t do it! Wait another twenty seconds, and she’s a rutabaga for life!”
    With a sigh, Stranger willed Scaramouche’s brain to live .
    “SO YOU BEAT THE VILLAIN, saved the girl, and mastered a new aspect of your powers,” said Jarhead. “Sounds like a win to me.”
    “It was. I think I owe her more than I realized.”
    “Why is that?”
    “You owe me, you ungrateful alien superdouche! If I’d known what you meant to do next, I never would have taught you that trick!”
    “Because after I returned Scaramouche to Edgewood, I started thinking. If I could force her brain to shut down, why couldn’t I do the same to an ordinary human tumor?”
    “I saved your life, and in return, you declared war on my brothers and sisters.”
    “I thought you couldn’t control the cancer.”
    “I can’t control mine .” He sat back in the chair. “How many people do you think I could help in six months? And when my own tumors finally begin to win, I thought I’d take a nice, long flight into the