by Rudy Rucker
Happy for the light banter, Mark blew her a raspberry. “If you suspect I’m secretly gay after all these years, I’m obviously falling down on my duties. Consider our session just now a preview. We’ll see about a main event tonight.” This was good. This was solid ground.
They followed a narrow, sandy trail affording well-framed views of the exquisite Norwegian countryside. After ten minutes walking, during which Mark refused to reveal anything, they came to a stone bench on a sloping meadow with a pleasing prospect upon the fjord. The waters were deep, even here at the fjord’s tip, and the facing granite cliff plunged straight into the depths.
Something made Mark inspect the bench for any odd lichen patterns analogous to the quasi-organic blobs in the God Bøk. Satisfied that no alien patterns lurked, he sat himself and Laura down, then launched into his confession about the cached Yotsa 7 and what it had shown him back in the hotel room.
Laura pondered Mark’s story intently, then said, “We have to ask first whether we completely trust the Yotsa 7. After all, it was still in the beta stage, never totally debugged.”
“You’re not mad at me for holding back the one unit?”
“Of course not! We worked hard to create our brainchild, only to have it stolen by those brutal G-men jerks who only want to kill us. I wish I’d kept one too!”
“Well, I’d stake a lot on the integrity and accuracy of the software—and of the sensing and display mechanisms too. Lo was a genius. If Yotsa shows us a vision of Ola about to be ravished or eaten by some seaweed man—that’s gotta mean something. Especially since the vision is wrapped around a pattern in your God Bøk. It has some heavy-duty resonance with the reality of the situation here. In our shoes, we can’t afford to overlook anything.”
“Maybe we need to ask Ola outright what she knows about the God Bøk. That is, after you show me that scene through the Yotsa.”
“My god, of course! Just ditch any cringing and pussy-footing.” Mark leaned over to kiss Laura. “That’s one reason I’ve always loved you, you’re so direct.”
“‘Only go straight,’” Laura said, quoting a Korean Zen Master whom she’d studied in her college days.
And, as always, Mark countered with a Marx-Brothers-style corny joke, one that bitterness had prevented him from making recently: “I’d like to get something straight between us.”
Smiling and holding hands, they made their way back to the hotel, this time taking a long way round the fields and pine groves. They got back with a half hour to spare before supper. They were planning to go upstairs to Room 3 to see what else the God Bøk might have to show them, but they were intercepted by Ola, as trim and tidy as before.
“I invite you now for drinks and snacks, yes?”
“Okay, that’s fine,” said Laura. “I’m starved.”
Relaxing into the flow of events, the couple let the petite, clear-skinned Ola lead them into a parlor of shiny chintz armchairs and shelves of antique brick-a-brack. A decanter of wine sat on a little table with five of the smallest glasses that Mark had ever seen. Rare, or extremely potent, or both? Ola doled out a driblet for herself, two for Mark and Laura, and two for a frail and elderly Norwegian couple who spoke no English. No further glasses of wine were to be offered. And a little dish holding precisely four round crackers served as the snack portion of this collation.
Ola gave a little speech, saying everything in both languages, which meant the orientation took considerably longer than expected, especially because the old Norwegian couple kept interrupting Ola with what seemed to be corrections and second thoughts. But Ola treated the old pair kindly, even lovingly, going so far as to give the old woman a reassuring pat on the hand.
In any case, the information on offer was interesting, and it seemed to bear intriguing connections with Mark’s vision. The Hotel Fjaerland was an ancient structure, rife with exotic legends, and human habitation on this site stretched back even further. But—despite what Mark and Laura had decided on the bench—he didn’t feel ready to question Ola about the accuracy of his Yotsa 7 revelation. His brief sexual fascination with her was dying out. Despite her gentleness with the old Norwegian couple, the young woman seemed increasingly odd and alien, a Sound-of-Music archetype filtered through a Tales From The Crypt comic.
When Ola had finally concluded her info-dump, the four guests were allowed into the dining-room, where the hostess served out cauliflower soup, smoked fish, new potatoes, and lingonberry pie. Mark managed to buy a full bottle of wine before Ola disappeared into her own private recesses of the hotel.
“Now we can talk,” said Laura. “This soup is really nasty, isn’t it?”
“Cauliflower should be banned,” agreed Mark. “Where do they get off calling it a vegetable? That was some weird stuff that Ola told us, huh?”
“Her spiel was better in Norwegian,” said Laura. “What I could understand of it. Ola and those old people have a weird local accent.”
“I caught one phrase,” said Mark. “The ålefisk mann. The eel man. That’s a hella close fit with what I thought I saw through the Yotsa.”
“It sounded like she was telling that old couple they’d be happy and safe if they fed themselves to the ålefisk man,” said Laura. “I must heard it wrong. I gather she has some serious history with those two geezers. I think maybe they’re related to her. “
Mark glanced over at the tremulous oldsters, barely picking at their food. “I wonder what they’d think about about Ola getting it on with the ålefisk man?”
“I was expecting you to say something to her about that, Mr. Straight Shooter.”
“Hey—we missed lunch. I was in a rush to get in here for the chow. This fish isn’t bad. If it is fish.” Mark shoved aside his potatoes and started in on his lingonberry pie. “Seafood and pie in Norway, baby, the land of the midnight sun. And, look, there’s a big golden ingot of that smoked fish on the sideboard. And another whole pie. We can have as much as we like. Unless that old Norwegian couple stops us. And unless Ola comes back. I was so hungry I spaced out on some of her rap. Why was she talking about the ålefisk man in the first place?”
“I think it’s local color thing. Like the sea serpent in Loch Ness? The ålefisk man is said to live beneath the waters of the Fjaerland fjord. He brings joy and wealth to his true believers.”
“You know what I’m thinking now?” said Mark, refilling their glasses. “Maybe my vision was dredged out of the local tourist web-sites. The Yotsa always looks online.”
“And maybe you added the naked Ola by yourself,” said Laura. “Desperate horn-dog that you are.”
“Desperate for you,” said Mark politely. “More smoked fish and lingonberry pie, my sweet?”
Ola was still nowhere to be seen. The Norwegian couple left the dining-room precipitously, as if to take advantage of some elderly early-bird special on sleep. Mark heard them tottering down the stairs into the hotel basement—perhaps they’d gotten a cut-rate room below?
Left on their own, Mark and Laura wandered outside into the unending daylight. They collapsed onto a bench, recovering from their heavy meal, hoping for more love-making, but for now just watching how the sun idled across the mountain peaks, never quite going down.
“Hello!” came a clear voice from just behind them. Ola. She was standing in a dark stone arch set into the foundation wall of the hotel. For a moment, the shadows of the arch lent her skin a squamous sheen. She’d let down her brown hair, and her wavy tresses reached nearly to her waist—just as in Mark’s Yotsa vision of her. But she wasn’t nude, she was wearing a flowing cream-colored gown with a Pre-Raphaelite look.
Stepping forward, Ola lost the alien, depraved look, and became once more all simple virtue and innocence. She pouted and wagged her finger at Mark. “A friend told me you were spying on him and me. Maybe we are a little flattered.”
“You, uh, what do you mean?” said Mark, temporizing. Ola’s eyes, blue and deep as the waters of the fjord, held him with a magnetic force.
“I know about
your special lenses,” said Ola, lowering her voice and drawing closer. “That type of crystal vibrates so sympathetically with our regions. And the fancy handle! So much thinking squeezed into so tight a space.” Her words held sexy subtexts that had Mark tingling from groin to gut.
Ola patted a lumpy fold in her dress. “I fetched your aid from your room.”
“You can’t just go rooting through our luggage!” protested Laura.
“Indulge me, Laura, and we three will join in joy very soon,” said Ola with an arch smile. “With a fourth partner, my special friend, who governs all that happens here.”
Ola drew out the Yotsa 7 and shook the lenses from the handle. “Very elegant. I would like our clever Mark to look at something. I saw my dear friend at naptime today, you know, and he says he is posting an invitation to you.”
“Posting it where?” challenged Laura.
Ola raised a forefinger to her lips, like a silent-movie ingénue signaling for secrecy. Mutely she handed Mark the Yotsa and pointed towards the surfboard-sized slab of blotchy stone that rose from the garden’s pink star-flowers.
Ola seemed to emanate a disorienting psychic power. Distractedly Mark focused on an embossed silver ring that the woman’s pointing finger wore. For a moment he thought it was the Worm Ouroboros, the mythic world-snake who bites his own tail. But then the fine details of the delicately crafted ornament seemed to swell up and fill Mark’s vision, and he could see that the creature was no land-dwelling serpent, but rather an aquatic being, an eel-like branching form.
“The ålefisk man?” murmured Laura, her thoughts in synch with Mark’s.
“My secret friend,” said Ola simply. “My lover. I call him Elver. Now go and look at the stone. It’s a kind of billboard for him. Elver thinks, and the patterns here bloom. I can read them, and with your magic glasses, you can too. Look at it, Mark and Laura. See and rejoice.”
Heads together like children peering through a crack, Mark and Laura shared the Yotsa goggles, each of them using one lens, studying the lichen-like patches on the rugged stone. The stele loomed as info-dense as any Egyptian or Mayan relic.
“It’s like a webpage almost,” said Laura. “A jumble of scenes. Look there, at the bottom. The eel man eating a cow. The grass in the pasture is covered in slime, and the poor animal is bellowing.”
“See the villagers chasing the eel man?” said Mark. “And they built fires to block him off from the fjord. Look there, they’ve caught him.”
“And they’re cutting off his tendrils and smoking them,” added Laura. “Tentacles as thick as logs.”
“You were eating that type of meat for supper tonight,” interjected Ola. “The ålefisk man is generous to his friends.”
“Eating the god,” mused Laura. “A mythic archetype.”
“The villagers didn’t fully kill him, though,” put in Mark. “A stub of the eel man is wriggling back into the fjord. And he’s growing all the time. He branches like a hydra.”
“Yes, yes, but I want you to look at his message near the top,” urged Ola. “This is your invitation.”
“Oh—oh my,” said Laura.
Seen through the Yotsa lenses, the rust-red blotch unfolded to show Mark, Laura, and Ola disporting themselves in the over-large bed of Room 3 upstairs. Someone else was in the bed with them, barely visible beneath the sheets—a playful, squirming figure, lively as an oil-lamp’s flame, wet bed linens pasted to his uncanny lineaments.
The Yotsa 7 trembled in Mark’s hand. Beside him, Ola was softly singing to herself in Norwegian. An intoxicating sweet musk was drifting from the folds of her gown. As if mesmerized, Mark and Laura let Ola take their hands and lead them upstairs to Room 3.
Far from being cold, Ola was warm and responsive beneath the comforter. She’d insisted on leaving the room’s windows wide open, and quite soon, the expected humanoid, anguilliform creature slithered up the porch’s columns, across the slanting roof and into the embraces of three lovers. Elver the ålefisk man. The love-making was unspeakably delicious, indescribably foul.
Hours later Mark awoke to the sound of Laura bumping around the room. Of the Yotsa 7, no trace. Slippery eel and human exudates, drying, had encrusted his skin. With the constant daylight, he found it hard to judge the time. Mid-morning, maybe. Memories of last night crashed onto him like a collapsing brick wall. Oh no. Had they really done all that?
“I don’t know about you, but I’m getting the hell out of here,” said Laura, hoisting her suitcase onto the bed. She already had her slacks and blouse on. She trotted into the bathroom and returned with her toiletries. And then she dropped them all on the floor and burst into wails.
“It’s okay, Laura,” said Mark, getting out of bed naked. He felt sticky all over. Tainted. “I’m coming with you, don’t worry. God. I hope that thing didn’t—”
“Didn’t lay eggs in us!” said Laura, her voice rising to a subdued shriek. “Oh, Mark, what if we suddenly feel the baby eels wriggling inside our flesh?”
“Did you take a shower yet?”
“Of course. And I used the icky bidet. You shower now, too, Mark. I’ll pack for both of us, okay?”
“Yes. I wonder when the next bus or ferry leaves? I don’t suppose we can ask—”
“Ask Ola?” said Laura. “How could we let that woman bring us down so low? Do you think she’s beautiful, Mark? Do you love her more than me?”
“Of course not. We must have been drunk. Or drugged? Maybe that eel man thing wasn’t—”
“Maybe it wasn’t real,” said Laura, completing his thought. “That’s what I keep hoping. Oh, hurry up and get ready before something horrible happens.”
Of course just then their door swung open. There was Ola, neat and lush as a Scandinavian buffet, bearing a tray of breakfast foods in her capable hands. She swept in, leaving the door wide open.
“No fears of privacy now,” she said, talking in a steady stream lest Mark and Laura interrupt her. “The older couple have—ascended. We have the hotel all to ourselves today. Us three and my dear Elver in his watery caves down below. There’s a tunnel that leads from here to a subterranean part of the fjord, you know. Elver and I thought that perhaps—”
“Did you steal our Yotsa 7?” demanded Mark.
“Elver has it,” said Ola with a happy smile. “He formulates some wonderful new ideas. But why are you two behaving so—”
“Stay away from us!” cried Laura. “I’ll call the police if you come one step closer.”
“I don’t think you will,” said Ola calmly. “I know that your government has marked you two for destruction.” She held up her hand for silence. “My Elver—he knows so many things. But there are things we are learning from you. Help us with our plan for your wonderful tool—and your secrets are safe.” Ola formed one of her eerily perfect smiles. “If you like, you’re welcome to stay on in Fjaerland for quite some time. My parents have left our family farmhouse empty. You could live there if you liked. And perhaps now and then we four could—”
“You disgust me,” spat Laura.
“That ålefisk man,” put in Mark, overcome with fear. “He didn’t implant anything in us, did he? No larvae?”
Ola gave a tinkling laugh. “What a thing to worry about! Elver has no children. He is only one, and he is immortal. One ålefisk man in the world and no ålefisk woman. Elver is lonely. He wishes that humans accepted him and loved him like those silly trolls you see in gift shops. Elver is a far nobler symbol of our Norsk heritage. Those trolls—pfui! They rot gullible brains with shopping-mall cuteness. Elver is deeper. Elver wants that many more people eat of his inexhaustible flesh, and that we know freedom from our carking cares. I believe, Mark, that you and your wife are very good at public relations?”
“You couldn’t prove that by the mess we engineered for ourselves,” said Mark.
“Mark, don’t even answer her!” Laura commanded. But her husband noted that she had ceased to bustle with her packing, as if intrigued.
; Mark caught Laura’s gaze and sought to transmit his innermost thoughts to her, using a wisp of entanglement that had been generated by their sharing of the Yotsa 7 when viewing the stele.
Laura, please listen to me. We have nothing to lose by joining Ola’s cause. And maybe a lot to gain. The Yotsa 7 is too weird for humans to control. We need a mythic counterweight. And we need a friend against the feds. Let’s ride the bucking, fucking Eel Train to glory. It’s a win-win for us and Elver both! Let’s trust ourselves, and trust Ola, and trust this creature older than mankind. What do we have to lose?
Their locked glances persisted only a micro-second, but managed to channel a flood of information and feeling. And then they broke the connection.
Calm now, Laura turned to Ola. “What are you imagining that we can do for you?”
Ola grinned. “You do not realize the true potential of your invention. It is not just a receiver, but also a transmitter! This, my Elver has deduced. But it is best if I let him explain in his own way.”
Instinctively, Mark shot a look at the open bedroom window, anticipating the second appearance of the eel man. Ola understood his expectations, and corrected them.
“Elver finds sunlight burdensome, and makes his forays into the light but rarely, such as when he initiates newcomers like yourself. To meet with him again, we must go below.”
Laura’s voice betrayed some nervousness. “Below?”
“Beneath the basement of the Hotel Fjaerland is a natural cavern, connecting via a passage to an underground pool of the fjord. Down to Elver’s domain we will march ourselves, and meet him again in joy.”
Mark imagined Ola imparted a lascivious tinge to these words, but he tried to ignore it. Had the three of them really enjoyed sex with a humanoid eel? But surely it didn’t have to come to that again. Mark told himself that he only wanted to find out strange and devious ålefisk man could somehow unkink their problems with the feds.
The hotel basement was pleasantly domestic, containing as it did racks of wine, skis and snowshoes, casks of pickled herring, jars of preserved berries, dangling, log-shaped hunks of smoked meat, and a workbench with little figurines of eel-men standing on two legs with their long tails curled behind them. Ola led them to a a trapdoor and down a ladder to the underlying secret cavern.
