The Garbage Chronicles Read Free Page B

over, trying different angles of entry. Then he looked for wide spots under the door. He squeezed and squeezed and squeezed some more. But he could not get through.
    “Dad blast it!” he said, feeling better about this selection of words. He began to glow bright orange. Then he whirled and hopped about angrily, throwing a first-rate tantrum. At the height of his rage, he smashed headlong into Javik’s door. Then he hit it again. And again.
    Crash! Thud! Kaboom!
    This caused a good deal of racket in the hallway, despite the comet’s very small size.
    A brunette woman in the unit next door opened her door to peer out. “What’s going on?” she asked. She cinched the belt of her bathrobe and ventured into the hall on moto-slippers.
    Crash! Kathump! Thud! The little comet continued to pummel Javik’s door.
    The woman jumped back, startled. The comet was flashing a brilliant rainbow array of colors.
    “What’s this?” (he woman asked. She ventured closer. Then a little closer. All the while, the angry comet continued his onslaught against the door, falling back intermittently for wild, whirling spins.
    Now the woman was only a few centimeters from the curious little creature. With a tentative smile, she reached down, saying, “A toy?”
    The comet smashed into her shinbone.
    “Ow!” the woman yelled. “Ow! Ow! . . . Harold!” She hobbled and rolled back to her condominium, squealing in pain and calling for her permie.
    Javik’s door opened. A sleepy, robed Tom Javik stood with one unmotorized slipper off, looking down at the whirling little fireball.
    Before Javik could react, the comet darted through his legs and into the condominium.
    “Hey!” Javik yelled.
    Turning his head, he saw an orange light flash through his arch-ceilinged entry hall. The intruder disappeared into Javik’s living-room module.
    Fully awake now, Javik mento-slammed the door and ran for his bedroom module. “Service pistol,” he mumbled.
    Seconds later; holding his automatic pistol, Javik tiptoed into the living-room module. This room had champagne-colored carpeting, with specks of orbit orange in it, matching the orange of the centrally positioned videodome. The walls matched the floor, and this often made Javik lose his sense of perspective. He looked under two padded chairs and the couch. Then he tiptoed toward the videodome, feeling deep pile carpeting with his bare foot.
    “I am not a threat to you,” a tiny voice said.
    Javik whirled in the direction of the sound. He saw what looked like a lumpy, dark blue stone hovering in the arched doorway. The stone’s surface was rough and irregular, with the exception of a clear agate dome crystal that jutted out of its top. Javik heard buzzing and saw a faint, exhaust-like glimmer of blue light on the other side of the stone.
    “My name is Wizzy,” the stone said. “I came up with that name just now, sensing your fleshcarrier need for such a reference.”
    Javik glowered.
    “Papa sent me to see you. I’d rather be somewhere else, though.”
    “Papa?’’
    “Papa Sidney. He says you and I should help one another. . . . Oops!” Wizzy fell to the carpet with a dull thump. Then he glowed red and let fly a barrage of curses that would have made any nonsynthetic flower wilt. The expletives made him feel better.
    “Where’d you learn to swear like that?” Javik asked. “That was good. Damned good.”
    “The words just came to me. Like an inspiration.”
    Javik smiled. “A real religious experience, eh?”
    “My data banks use a rare red star crystal . . . embedded in my nucleus . . . to absorb energy waves from every source.” Wizzy continued to glow dimly red. “I am receiving your data at this moment. You are an expert in foul language, I presume?”
    “Kind of. Yeah, I guess I am.”
    “Perhaps you would prefer that I leave?” Wizzy changed to dark blue and scooted a meter down the hallway toward the front door.
    “Hold on a sec,” Javik said. “What the Hooverville