Free Frek and the Elixir by Rudy Rucker Page A

ears pricked and alert. He poised himself, ready to run along on the ground after Frek. “No, Wowie, you stay here with me,” said Mom, grabbing his collar. She was crying.
    Frek lifted into the air.
    â€œGood-bye Frek,” squeaked Wow, straining at his collar and staring up at him. Even the dog could tell this was a big deal. “Goodbye.”

3
In the Grulloo Woods
    Frek’s angelwings were well fed and well rested; he buzzed down the shady pathways of Middleville at a tremendous speed. Pretty soon he’d left the house trees behind. He was in a zone of all-season mapines, thick and uniform. The ground was a carpet of sticky red and yellow leaves, pocked by turmite mounds intricate as little cathedrals.
    Frek noticed he held something in his hand: the badminton racquet. He savored the sudden memory of how he’d swatted the watchbird. That had been so godzoon goggy. He’d slammed the watchbird and the turmites had finished it off.
    Speaking of turmites, they were crawling all over the fallen mapine leaves, feeding. Bolts and swatches of turmite-woven fabrics and garments rested beside their mounds: denims and silks and wools. Middleville was known for its tailors. They cultivated these turmites and harvested the cloth. Off to the right, Frek saw Shurley Yang, the tailor who’d sold Mom her one fancy dress. Shurley glanced over at Frek and waved. She didn’t know he was running away.
    Running away from what? Frek looked over his shoulder. Nothing was following him. But then his mind played the squeak-clank sound of the brain-lid on the facilitator toon’s head. He was running away from the counselors and the Three R’s.
    The mapine forest stopped abruptly, and Frek was flying across patchwork fields of vegetables, the fields rolling downhill to where the bank dropped off to the clear, rushing waters of the River Jaya. This was the first time he’d used his angelwings to fly down here.
    The fields were for yams, tomatoes, carrots, chard, rice, and red beans, the same vegetables as always, the plots butted together upon the rich land of the river bottom as far as Frek could see. Farmers were at work, supervising their crews of pickerhand kritters. Some of the scampering little hands were planting, but others were harvesting as well. The tweaked crops yielded all year round. The harvester pickerhands were loading the produce into elephruks who would carry the produce off to the Nubbies of Middleville and Stun City. So much to see!
    Frek’s attention fixed upon a rice paddy in a slough just below him, teeming with pickerhands. A massive bull elephruk rested on his knees beside the paddy, taking on a load of the winter-ripened rice. A gangly, thin farmer stood twitching his elbows as he talked with the elephruk’s mahout. It was nearly quitting time. Frek slowed and circled to take in the scene. He loved elephruks.
    The pickerhands were like living gloves, propelling themselves across the muddy water of the paddy by fluttering their fingers. They were picking each ripe stalk they came across. Once a pickerhand had collected as big a sheaf as it could clasp between thumb and palm, it would clamber up onto the banks of the slough and trot to the elephruk. The hands had a cute, twinkling way of running on their fingertips.
    The long, gray elephruk had let his back sag all the way down so that the pickerhands could more easily get into his hopper. The hands beat the stalks against the hopper’s inner walls, incrementally mounding the elephruk’s freight-bed with grains of rice.
    Just then things got even more interesting. The elephruk decided that the load upon his back had grown heavy enough. He rose slowly onto his six legs, unkinking himself from front to back. When a last few pickerhands leaped into his hopper with more sheaves, the elephruk reached his trunk back and plucked up the pickerhands one by one, hurling them into the waters of the rice paddy.
    The