Cyberpunk

by Victoria Blake

  Curtis’s help. We were able to piece together a long section from one of the

  engravings.”

  Kane wondered if Curtis should have been involved. Curtis was clever &

  authoritarian & the less he knew the better. Kane sensed a primal conflict

  between himself & Curtis, building toward a violent release.

  Reese moved through the translation, pausing frequently to fill in gaps,

  suggest explanations, grapple with alien concepts. Kane found himself moved,

  almost against his will, by the story. He gazed out the windows of the

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  LEWIS SHINER

  auditorium, seeing past the verdant languor of the trees to the desert beyond.

  Always poor, always dry, feeding a few vastly alien creatures just enough to

  keep them in perpetual warfare. Reese offered no physical description of the

  Martians & Kane could only conceive of them in grotesque, cartoon terms.

  If anything, he thought, they must have been like Reese. Large, powerful,

  but carrying an aura of defeat & doom. What culture could have reached the

  peak that Reese described & left so little behind? A single devastated city, the last refuge of the artists & scientists fleeing the final war. Where they waited for the catastrophe of their own making to wipe the oxygen from the

  air, boil away the water, lacerate & blister the very stone. The translation made compelling poetry, full of strange pairings & cryptic emphases. In it

  Kane saw again the equanimity that moved him so strongly in Molly & Reese.

  They had given Kane his own house & Molly came to him there. The

  sexuality of their attraction had withered & Kane had come to see in her the power & competence he saw in Reese. His own nature, prone to extremes of

  apathy & violence, was in perfect opposition. In the darkness they sat on

  Kane’s bed without touching. As Kane listened, she drew him into the power

  struggles of the colonists. Without hesitation or encouragement from him

  she talked of the panel, taking his knowledge of it for granted. He wondered

  if she took his motives for granted too, or if she even cared.

  Curtis wanted the panel to power the generators of the colony, to expand,

  to solidify. Kane had heard the arguments before, on another world; more or

  less, they were the same as his uncle’s. Plodding, methodical, a denial of

  impulse or creativity. Molly—& others—wanted the panel to power a ship

  that could reach Jupiter, Saturn, beyond. Kane listened in silence, allowing

  Molly to engulf him with her dreams, the way she’d engulfed him earlier with

  her body. She knew as if by instinct how to reach him, tantalizing him with

  the inhuman beauty of the outer planets.

  Molly & the void of space were linked by the same relationship as Reese & the ruins. In Reese’s case it was a destiny of annihilation, the merger of his

  lost career with the fate of the lost Martians. For Molly it was something

  more vital, but still a gesture of despair. Both were prisoners, deprived of the frontiers they needed by an accident of time.

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  SOLDIER, SAILOR

  After Molly left, Kane took the pistol out of the bottom of his flight bag & stared at it. The voices sang in his mind.

  Kane, Molly & Reese went out to the shipyard. Here the remains of the big

  ships that had brought the colonists from Earth lay in shining disarray. Broken down in orbit, brought piece by piece to the surface in shuttles, converted

  into furniture, tools, decorations. What was left over stretched for five

  hundred meters across the pale sand. Kane walked through huge rings of

  metal, lightly touching them with gloved hands. It was an edited & polished scrap yard, free from the violence of oxygen & rain.

  “From this you’re going to build a ship?” Kane asked.

  “There’s still one ship in orbit,” Molly said. “Not that we can get to it, of

  course. But yes, between it and the parts here and the panel, we could build

  a ship.”

  “If,” Kane said, “Curtis were not governor of this colony.”

  She didn’t answer. Kane thought about Jupiter. Massive, inhuman,

  constructed on a different principle than Earth or Mars. With moons like

  worlds, floating under the huge red Eye. He found his breath coming short. His

  hands tingled & he heard a roaring in his ears. It didn’t seem important. Reese called his name. Kane tried to answer but couldn’t seem to get his breath.

  “Hypoxia,” Reese said.

  Molly was standing behind him. “Pressure’s all right.”

  “It’s the mixture,” Reese said. “Look out . . .”

  Kane sat down. He was aware that Curtis was trying to kill him, gently &

  from a distance. Reese disconnected his own tank & traded it for Kane’s. In the moment of the exchange, without air for a second or two, Kane had a

  particularly intense occurrence of the vision.

  His mind gradually cleared. Molly was driving them back to the base, Reese

  lying quietly, living off the air inside his suit. Eyes closed, Reese whispered:

  “Don’t talk about this.”

  Molly showed Kane where the panel attached to the city power grid, nestled

  in wiring like a flat egg. Kane had begun to feel the pressure of time & wanted 267

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  as many pieces of the puzzle within reach as possible. Soon he would have to

  make his decision.

  After sunset Kane sat on his porch & watched the rain. It fell almost

  hesitantly, without thunder to announce it or wind to carry it. Puddles of

  light from neighboring windows illuminated the grass & trees.

  Reese’s suit was missing. Kane did not doubt he’d gone to the ruins. Curtis

  had noticed as well. Kane felt the wheel turn under him, exposing a new

  segment of the Circle.

  When they stole the ship from Canaveral, with the help of his uncle, Kane

  had known that Reese was following some elaborate purpose of his own.

  Without him Kane would have been helpless; Kane himself seemed to make

  little difference to Reese beyond his ability to provide the ship. Still Reese

  had taught him to navigate, led him through rigorous physical training,

  controlled the mission from the first. Now Kane sensed a shift in the power

  balance. His own time had come, his phase, his moment. Or perhaps Reese

  had simply diverged, entered the final stage of his own compulsion.

  Kane had rejected the idea when it first came to him. But it continued to

  haunt him. He thought of Reese, out in the ruins, his labors, his feats of

  courage & strength. He thought of the Circle & the great fourth-dimensional being outside time. Of the salt spray & the shining cup & the others who had come before him. And then he knew.

  In the darkness Kane lost sense of his own body. His limbs seemed to shrink

  & swell as if in a fever dream. Over it all he smelled the stale salt of the sea

  & high harmonies rang in his ears.

  He dressed in darkness & tucked the pistol into his jeans. Out under the

  dome the rain had ended. The stars were smears of brightness behind the

  plastic. The lights flickered as Kane switched over to the auxiliary generator, but stayed on. He disconnected the panel with a few precise gestures,

  hampered by the pressure of the pistol in his waistband.

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  He sat in the wet grass outside Curtis & Molly’s house until the lights

  went out. Curtis finally emerged & headed for the air lock. Suited up, the
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  panel in one hand, the pistol dangling from the other, Kane followed him

  across the desert. Taking huge strides in the reduced gravity he slowly

  gained on Curtis’s headlamp, now almost halfway to the ruins.

  At night the desert became an ocean. Freckles of white froth sprayed the dune

  tops. Imaginary ships sailed off its edge. The desert seemed to exist in all

  dimensionalities, to form a link or stepping stone to the incomprehensible.

  “Curtis.”

  Curtis turned, startled & Kane shot him through the helmet. Curtis’s face

  exploded & a fine spray of blood hissed through shattered glass as the body crumpled to the ground. Kane’s hand throbbed slightly from the kick of the gun in the low pressure. He tossed the weapon into the dirt beside Curtis’s body. Carrying the panel like a shield in his left arm, he noticed the voices had become quieter.

  Once he was into the central pit, he had little trouble finding his way. He

  went through the airlock & sat down beside Reese.

  “How much have you figured out?” Reese asked, not looking around. His

  hands rested on the carved circles as if they were dials & knobs. Perhaps

  they were.

  “Most of it,” Kane said. “I just came to say goodbye.”

  Reese turned, nodded. “You took the panel. Have you decided what to do

  with it?”

  “Not yet.”

  The doorframe now surrounded a shimmering, luminous area of force.

  Rainbow colors ran off it, reminding Kane of an oil slick or a huge fire opal.

  “Will you be able to come back?” Kane asked.

  “I don’t care to, either way,” Reese said.

  “Good luck.” Kane reached up from where he sat & took Reese’s hand. He

  felt the link between them that had never been realized.

  Reese nodded & stepped through the shimmering gateway, across billions

  of miles of nothingness to a new world, just as the last of the Martian builders 269

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  had, while the city above was pounded into rubble. Kane continued to sit &

  stare at the shifting pattern. At last he got up & stood beside the opening, hesitating. He stuck one finger into the pulsing glow, felt the summer warmth

  beyond. And then he turned & walked away from it, the colors fading to

  chilly stone behind him.

  Passing the nadir of descent, Kane felt the insistent tug of the Return, a

  conceptual rebirth. His pattern nearly finished, he thought of the others who

  had walked it. Most of all Jason, the obsessed & broken sailor, whose creaking ship & brine-scented voyage had haunted his dreams. Of Percival, the soldier maddened by his realization of the Pattern, ending his days in futile

  subservience to a nameless God.

  Kane knew that each of them, the single being they made up & the single

  act they performed outside time, would continue. To each of them was a

  unique moment, a contribution, a change. Kane knew what his had to be.

  Molly was asleep & he was relieved that she did not wake up when he

  entered. His voices silent now, Kane set the panel beside her bed. Her Pattern

  was yet to come; Kane wondered if Odysseus would sing to her on her

  voyages.

  Kane’s point of view had begun to shimmer & bleed, like the gate that

  Reese had used. Only a force of will held his perceptions together as he suited up & began the walk back to his ship, back to the Earth, back to his kingdom.

  270

  THE JACK KEROUAC DISEMBODIED

  SCHOOL OF POETICS

  By Rudy Rucker

  I got the tape in Heidelberg. A witch named Karla gave it to me.

  I met Karla at Diaconescu’s apartment. Diaconescu, a Romanian, was

  interesting in his own right although, balding, he had a “rope-throw” hairdo.

  We played chess sometimes in his office, on a marble board with pre-Columbian

  pieces. I was supposed to be a mathematician and he was supposed to be a

  physicist. His fantasy was that I would help him develop a computer theory of

  perception. For my part, I was hoping he had dope. One Sunday I came for tea.

  Lots of rolling papers around his place, and lots of what an American would

  take to be dope-art. But it was only cheap tobacco, only European avant-

  garde. Wine and tea, tea and Mozart. Oh man. Stuck inside of culture with

  the freak-out blues again.

  Karla had a shiny face, like four foreheads clustered around her basic face-

  holes. All in all, it occurred to me, men have nine body-holes, women ten. I

  can’t remember if we spoke German or English—English most likely. She was

  writing a doctoral dissertation on Jack Kerouac.

  Jack K. My main man. Those dreary high school years I read On the Road, then Desolation Angels and Big Sur in college, Mexico City Blues in grad school and, finally, on the actual airplane to actual Heidelberg, I’d read Tristessa:

  “All of us trembling in our mortality boots, born to die, BORN TO DIE I

  could write it on the wall and on Walls all over America.”

  I asked Karla if she had weed. “Well, sure, I mean I will soon,” and she gave me her address. Some kind of sex-angle in there too. “We’ll talk about the beatniks.”

  I phoned a few times, and she’d never scored yet. At some point I rode my

  bike over to her apartment anyway. Going to visit a strange witchy girl alone

  was something I’d never done since marriage. Ringing Karla’s bell felt like

  reaching in through a waterfall, like passing through an interface.

  She had a scuzzy pad, two rooms on either side of a public hall. Coffee in

  her kitchen and cross the hall to look at books in her bedroom. Dope coming

  next week maybe.

  RUDY RUCKER

  Well, there we were, her on the bed with four foreheads and ten holes, me

  cross-legged on the floor looking at this and that. Heartbeat, a book by Carolyn Cassady, who married Neal and had Jack for a lover. Xeroxes of

  letters between Jack and Neal, traces of the long disintegration, both losing

  their raps, word by word, drink by pill, blank years winding down to boredom,

  blindness, O. D. death. A long sliding board I’m on too, oh man, oh man, sun

  in a meat-bag with nine holes.

  Karla could see I was real depressed and in no way about to get on that bed

  with her, hole to hole, hole to hole. To cheer me up she brought out something

  else: a tape-cassette and a cassette-player. “This is Jack.”

  “Him doing a reading?”

  “No, no. It’s really him. This is a very special machine. You know how Neal

  was involved with the Edgar Cayce people?”

  “Yeah, I guess so. I don’t know.” The tape-player did look funny. Instead of the speaker there was a sort of cone-shaped hole. And there were no controls,

  no fast-forward or reverse, just an on-off switch. I leaned to look at the little tape-cassette. There was a tape in there, but a very fine and silvery sort of

  tape. For some reason the case was etched all over in patterns like circuit

  diagrams.

  “. . . right after death,” Karla was saying in her low, hypnotic voice. “Jack’s complete software is in here as well as his genetic code. There’s only been a

  few of these made . . . it’s more than just science, it’s magic.” She clicked the tape into the player. “Go on, Alvin, turn Jack on. He’ll enjoy meeting you.”

  I felt dizzy and confused. How long had I been sitting here? How long had

  she been talking? I reached for the switch, then hesitated. This scene had

  gotten so unreal so fast.
Maybe she’d drugged the coffee?

  “Don’t be afraid. Turn him on.” Karla’s voice seemed to come from a long

  way away. I clicked the switch.

  The tape whined on its spools. I could smell something burning. A little

  puff of smoke floated up from the tape-player’s cone, and then there was

  more smoke, lots of it. The thick plume writhed and folded back on itself,

  forming layer after layer of intricate haze.

  The ghostly figure thickened and drew substance from the player’s cone.

  At some point it was finished. Jack Kerouac was there standing over me with

  a puzzled frown.

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  Somehow Karla’s coven had caught the Kerouac of 1958, a tough, greasy-

  faced mind-assassin still years away from his eventual bloat and blood-

  stomach death.

  “I was afraid he’d look like a corpse,” I murmured to Karla.

  “Well, I feel like a corpse—say a dead horse—what happened?” said

  Kerouac. He walked over to the window and looked out. “Whooeee, this

  ain’t even Cleveland or the golden tongues of flame. Got any hoocha?” He

  turned and glared at me with eyes that were dark vortices. Everything about

  him was right except the eyes.

  “Do you have any brandy?” I asked Karla.

  “No, but I could begin undressing.”

  Kerouac and I exchanged a glance of mutual understanding. “Look,” I

  suggested, “Jack and I will go out for a bottle and be right back.”

  “Oh all right,” Karla sighed. “But you have to carry the player with you.

  And hang onto it!”

  The soul-player had a carrying strap. As I slung it over my shoulder, Kerouac

  staggered a bit. “Easy, Jackson,” he cautioned.

  “My name’s Alvin, actually,” I said.

  “Al von Actually,” muttered Kerouac. “Let’s rip this joint.”

  We clattered down the stairs, his feet as loud as mine. Jack seemed a little

  surprised at the street-scene. I think it was his first time in Germany. I wasn’t too well-dressed, and with Jack’s rumpled hair and filthy plaid shirt, we made

  a really scurvy pair of Americans. The passers-by, handsome and nicely

  dressed, gave us wide berth.

  “We can get some brandy down here,” I said, jerking my head. “At the