As best I could I used hands and charades to outline a computer monitor. He got what I was saying and nodded. Next I showed him what to do. He lit up like a thousand-watt lightbulb. Boy, did he love these instructions.
Without a second’s hesitation he stepped over to where Floon was typing away. With both hands the boy shoved the monitor off its base, and that big fucker flew out into space and crashed on the floor. Time passed. All four of them froze where they were. But then that bastard Floon didn’t do what I expected. I thought he would go nuts, berserk, rip himself in half Rumpelstiltskin-style at the loss of his data or the time he’d already put in on the computer doing whatever the hell he was doing. None of the above. With a coolness that was disconcerting he rose from his seat, moved over to the next computer, and started wailing away on that one, not missing a beat.
My one idea flushed, I shoved the door open, walked over to Floon, and smashed him good on the back of the head with my pistol. That did the trick. Rocking forward, his face hit the screen and cracked it. He had a lot of white hair. I grabbed a handful and banged his head down on the keyboard.
“Kids, get out. Nell, your mom is waiting outside.”
The girls took off like water bugs but not McCabe Junior. “That was super cool!”
“Go outside.”
“No way! I’m stayin’. You think I’d miss this? Hit him again.”
“Go or I’ll tell your mother you stole fifteen dollars from her purse so you could go to the car show in White Plains.”
His jaw dropped. “How’d you know that?”
Trying not to smile I managed, “Because I’m psychic. Go outside and wait for me.”
“Jeez, what a hot turd.” On that note he started to leave. “But I’ll be waiting for you. Just remember that.”
As soon as the door closed, I banged down Floon’s floppy head once more only because I felt like it. Thoroughly unprofessional but I was no longer a professional. I searched for his gun. It was in one of his pockets. I took it out and put it in mine.
“McCabe—” he mumbled.
“Shut up, Caz, or else I’ll dribble your head some more. Don’t think I’m not tempted.”
“McCabe, listen—” He sounded half-in-the-bag drunk.
A blast of pain blew across my brain. Not now! Not now, please not. Raising my shoulders and pulling my head down into my neck, I waited for the worst but none came.
“McCabe, at least look at the screen.”
What was displayed there looked like a densely detailed train schedule.
“So what?”
“Tan—” He took a deep breath and started coughing halfway through it. Blood dripped from his mouth onto the table. “Tancresis. It hasn’t been invented yet! Or if it has, there is no public mention of it. Is that amazing? There’s not even the word for it in the dictionary. Nobody knows about it yet.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Caz. And I don’t much care.”
“Don’t care? Tancretic spredge? Nuclear transmutation? Cold fusion, you idiot! How to do it hasn’t been discovered yet!”
I banged his head down onto the keyboard again. This was getting to be fun. My anger at him brought a good adrenaline load of energy back into my veins and heart. “Don’t fuck with me, Floon—your dick’s not big enough.” And to the tune of the Sam Cooke song “Wonderful World” I sang:
“Don’t know much about cold fus-ion,
Don’t know much about Caz de Floon.
But I do know that I’ll kick your ass
And you do know it’ll happen fast—
“I don’t care what you’re looking for or what you’ve found, Floon. Right now you and I are going to leave here. If you do anything along the way that pisses me off I will kill you without the slightest hesitation. I give you my word.”
“You can’t kill me—you’re a policeman.”
“Past tense, Caz. Past tense. It’s a brave new world. Get up.”
“Please, McCabe, listen to me for two minutes. What I tell you will change your life.”
I snorted. “What little there is left of it. I don’t need my life changed any more than it already is. What do you want? You’ve got one minute to say it. So talk.”
“All right.” He touched his forehead and winced. He looked at his fingers and didn’t appear to know what to do with the big smear of blood there. That made me feel just fine.
I looked at my bare wrist and put an imaginary watch against my ear to check to see if it was functioning. “My watch tells me you’ve got about thirty seconds left on your minute, Caz.”
“Stop! You should be grateful to me for what you are about to see. If nothing else I will show you how to become very rich right now. In five minutes. Just give me five minutes—”
“Two. I already have enough money.”
“Two. All right. I’ll show you.” Once again he slid over– to computer number three. At the rate we were going there would be no more machines left in the library by the time we left. His fingers started machine-gunning away and whatever info he was calling up flew onto the screen.
“I know that site! Yahoo! Finance.”
“Correct. Now watch,” he said while typing something in. A moment later a full screen of market research appeared on a company called SeeReal. The stock ticker abbreviation for it was SEER. Individual shares in the company were selling for four dollars and fifteen-sixteenths. SeeReal had been in business three years but hadn’t made one penny’s profit yet.
“SEER. Very symbolic name, Caz. Selling for four dollars a share? Wow, right up there with Intel, huh? Time to go.”
His voice went up up up. “No, no, you must listen! SeeReal has discovered a substance called naterskine. That line of research will lead them to creating something called tancretic spredge. Once that happens this company will become ten times more important and powerful than General Electric. Believe me, McCabe. That is why I was so shocked to realize it hasn’t happened yet. None of this information is in either the latest dictionary or encyclopedia. It’s as if someone named Bill Gates asked if you would be interested in investing in a new company he was founding called Microsoft. And if you give me a little bit more time to work here I will find a great many more of these things for you. Invest in them now and within five years you will be as rich as Croesus.”
“Floon, you’re shit on the bottom of my shoe. The sooner I scrape you off, the better. For some unimaginable reason you were given the great privilege of being allowed to travel back in time thirty years. Time travel, for Christ’s sake. An absolute all-out four-star miracle. But what’s the first thing you do? Get online so you can surf the Web for ways to make money. You disgust me.”
“That wasn’t what I was doing.”
“I don’t care what you were doing. Get up.”
“Don’t be an ass, McCabe. Neither of us knows why we were sent back here. Nor do we know if we’ll ever be returned to our proper time. So why not make the most of this while we’re here?”
He believed I was here for the same reasons he was. “You think I was sent back here from jour time?”
He blinked exaggeratedly and slowly several times. When he spoke again his voice was pure sarcasm. “Well, hello, are you not standing here with me now when the last time we saw each other was in Vienna?”
“Floon, you’re sixty years old. Do I look sixty years old?”
“That doesn’t matter—”
“Yes, it matters a great deal. Your being sent back here was a mistake. My being sent back here was a correction. This is my time; it ain’t no mistake for me.”
Clearly unimpressed, he crossed his arms. “How do you know?”
I was about to answer but then thought why bother? “Because the aliens told me. Let’s go.”
“What aliens?” Now he looked like he believed me.
“You haven’t met them yet? The Martians from Rat’s Potato? Nice fellows. They live behind the Crab Nebula. When they come to Earth they disguise themselves either as paramedics or well-dressed black men wearing expensive watches. Move.”