by Rudy Rucker
"Where'd you get that thing?" demanded Bing.
"I bought it from a Turk," Joe lied. "At the fair. It's too bad you're so drunk and crazy you thought you saw Mom in it."
"Look here . . . " began Joe's father. But then he let his anger go. "Ah, forget it. I wanna see the news. Come watch with me; I might be on."
A major American terrorist was apprehended by German authorities today, said the Army news announcer. Professor Alwin Bitter, a theoretical physicist visiting the University of Heidelberg, was arrested at his apartment early this morning. Bitter did not resist. He has been implicated in connection with the nuclear bombing of a museum in Rome this Saturday. He was known to his fellow terrorists as the Anarchist Archimedes. This afternoon, the German security police handed him over to US custody. Bitter is now awaiting questioning in the Patrick Henry . . .
"Look, Joe," cried Bing. "That's me in the background there!" But Joe was gone. Joe was in the apartment next door.
"Come on, Vernice, hand it over."
"Ah don't know whut you're after, Joey. Pushin' into a girl's room this-a-way." She strutted over to her dresser and gave her colorless hair a few licks with a hairbrush. "Supposin' ah diyud have your little picture-ball . . . what would you give me for it?"
"I'll break your neck, you stupid twerp!"
Vernice studied him briefly, and then began to shout. "Mah-meee! Joey's in here pickin, on me!"
"Don't you be fightin' with Vernice, Joe. Ron Junior's not here," called Cora Blevins from the kitchen. Ron Senior, her husband, was the MP who shared brig duty with Bing Bone. This week Ron Senior had night-shift and Bing had day.
"I won't hurt her, ma'am," shouted Joe. Vernice sat down on her desk, ready for protracted negotiations.
"You shouldn't ought to be lookin' at dirty pictures, Joey," she remarked primly. "Where'd you git that thing anyway? Downtown to the Sex Shop?"
Joe felt like tearing out his hair. Make that Vernice's hair. Here he'd found some kind of window into another universe, and this brat thought it was a machine for showing dirty pictures. Just because the women were naked. The women. Naked. He'd seen everything when Babs stood over the ball.
"Give it to me, Vernice, and I'll take you to Grease tonight. Just you and me. I'll take you, and afterwards I'll buy you a hotdog at the stand where all your friends can see. You can tell them I'm your boyfriend."
"Really?" Vernice's voice rose to an excited squeak. "Willya kiss me goodnight?"
"Give me that ball and don't push your luck or I'll break . . . "
"Here!" She took it out from under her pillow. "Take your dumb dirty pictures. I found 'em on mah bed. Were you in here lookin' at them with Ron Junior?"
"Just keep quiet about it, Vernice. Please. I'll meet you at the movie theater at 7:30."
"No. Y'all meet me here. Ah want Becky James to see us walkin' over theyure together."
"All right. On the steps downstairs. 7:15. Don't tell your mother; she'll think I've lost my marbles."
"Baah-Baaaah, Joey-Joe."
* * *
Vernice watched Joe rush off with his little picture-ball of machines and naked women. Boy-stuff. She hadn't told him that she'd found a whole bunch of the little balls on her bed. One was just for her. The others had drifted off.
She eased her bedroom door closed and got her ball back out of her desk drawer. A rough-featured man stared out at her adoringly. He said his name was Kenny Babs. He looked a little like Joe, but he had a mysterious European accent.
"You're my vhoman, Wernice," said Kenny. "Let me zhow you our love."
The little scene inside the ball clouded, then cleared. Vernice could recognize herself, all grown up and wearing a bride's dress. It was so pretty. The two of them were at a romantic candle-lit restaurant. Kenny came around the table and kissed her.
She held the ball up to her mouth, trying to feel his image. Firm, good-smelling lips pressed against her. Her head swam. It was just like she'd always dreamed it would be.
* * *
Joe couldn't stop himself any longer. He locked himself in the bathroom and let down his pants.
"Yes," mouthed Babs, smiling and licking her lips. "Giff me your zeed, dollink." She cupped her hands under her breasts and pointed the stiff nipples out at Joe. Then slowly, slowly, she slid the ball down between her legs.
Oooooh. Joe rubbed the warm beauty of the little ball against the tip of his cock. He'd thought Babs looked too innocent for this, but it seemed like she knew the score. How could his sperm ever travel through the solidity of this hyperspace window, though?
Babs held the ball out in front of her body now, breasts swaying, tongue licking, hips churning. Her fingers were pressed to the ball's surface. Pressed to the surface and . . . through. The ball grew projections, became Babs's hand with the red fingernails, caressing Joe so skillfully, so knowingly, so nastily.
Even as the blood rose to his head, Joe wondered how this was possible. It was all too good to be true. Babs had to have been lying to him all along. This peep-show hand-job SF sphere was no window in the dimensions. This was an alien blob, a creature of some kind, possibly dangerous; he should . . .
Babs's long forefinger reached down to tickle Joe's balls. Connected thought became impossible. Oh Babs, oh Babs . . .
* * *
The glow of satisfaction at seeing himself on TV wholly eclipsed Bing's rage at his dead wife. When the news was over he went to the kitchen and popped open another Stroh's. Or tried to. The pull-ring tore off and he had to look for a church key. Can do, Bing thought expansively, no problem for a TV personality such as myself. Just then he noticed something stuck to his thumb.
A bright little speck of crystal, probably from that ball Joe'd had. Just then the kid came running back into the apartment.
"Hey Joe! You missed me on TV."
"Sorry, Dad. Tell me in a minute. I've got . . . I've got to go to the john."
Bing shrugged and focused back on his thumb. Was it a glass splinter stuck in there or what? Suddenly the bright bit expanded like a balloon. Bing found himself holding a copy of his dead wife Arlene's head.
He tried to drop it, but it was stuck to his thumb, stuck like some horrible giant wart. Bing hesitated between rage and horror. But then the head began to talk.
"I'm zo glad to be free of you, you crummy little gyp. And you can't do a zing about it."
"Shut up, Arlene." He gave the head a slap with his free left hand.
"You zink I feel zat? You can't hurt me."
Panting a little, Bing gave the head a harder blow, this time with his fist. Another. Another. How many times he'd dreamed of this, dreamed of a chance to get back at Arlene! Real or not, this was a gift from God! The head felt good and solid . . . he could feel his knuckles crunching bone. His whole body began to tingle with excitement.
"You little vhorm," taunted the head. "You're no man at all."
Bing fumbled open the kitchen drawer and found a paring knife. "You're gonna get it, Arlene. Now you're really gonna get what's coming to you." Just then he heard the toilet flush. Hide!
"Joe, I'm gonna take a nap," Bing called. And then he took Arlene into his bedroom and locked the door.
* * *
Next door, Cora Blevins was standing over her stove, watching some potatoes boil. She took another sip of wine. The heavy steam and heat reminded her of summer in Killeville, Virginia. A dizzy spell hit Cora just then . . . she was seven months pregnant . . . and without really meaning to, she sat down on the floor. The burbling of the boiling potatoes was like a hot river around her. She closed her eyes and remembered Sawyer's Island.
Sawyer's Island in the muddy James, summer camp for the Christian Children's Morality Crusade. There was a big meeting-house and little cabins laid out on a grid. Loudspeakers. Cora had her first vision of God there . . . a sinful vision not found in the Good Book. She'd been alone in her cabin, touching herself, and the buzzing growing roar of some approaching train had seemed like the Lord's own voi
ce. Hot, hot. God, it was hot.
Her eyes snapped back open. Some . . . presence was here. There, o there, floating in front of her, was a white eye. God's eye. God knew her secrets; God always watched.
Cora rolled down her SuppHose and opened her legs. The roaring in her ears grew louder.
Chapter Thirteen: Thoughtland
The Germans are nuts on the subject of terrorism. They had our apartment staked out, and busted me as soon as we got home: around noon on Easter Monday. This was no big surprise to us; Cortland had warned us to expect it. He'd already hired a lawyer for me in Heidelberg, and the lawyer got the Germans to turn me over to the US Army. I had my own 23 cubic meter cell in the Army lockup. It was just big enough to lie down in.
And lie I did. I was bone-tired from the big Easter, and from the long train-ride back. We'd all agreed on the strategy Sunday morning: enjoy Easter, get out of Italy and only then let the pig catch up with me. For the moment, thanks to my trip into the higher dimensions, I was still off the public radar.
Cortland, Sybil's father, got the hotel to send up breakfast for all of us: prosciutto, melon, rolls, omelets, hot coffee and pitchers of foamy hot milk.
The kids each had a giant chocolate Easter egg with a toy inside. Tom got the highest-bouncing Superball I've ever seen, Ida got a fuzzy little round mouse that rolled around when you wound up his tail, and Sorrel got a nested set of spherical doll's heads . . . each one wearing a funnier expression than the last.
Then we went to see the Pope in St. Peter's Square. The radio said the fallout was all washed away, and there was the biggest crowd ever. It was weird, the way all the streets were full of people, all walking in the same direction. It made you feel like an iron filing . . . or a pilgrim. We saw the Pope, all right. You want to know what he looks like? Find a white drawing-pencil and hold it out at arm's length. See the tiny lead tip? That's the Pope on Easter.
There were vendors selling special, perfectly round balloons . . . real shiny. Mylar or something. When the Pope came out, everyone let his or her balloon go . . . everyone except Ida. I said a prayer for Giulia, and one for me and my family. It felt good there in St. Peter's Square. The sun was really hot.
When the Pope got through, the kids were sort of tired, so Cortland hired an open horse-drawn carriage for fifty dollars or something. Lotte and Cortland wanted to go back to the hotel, and we dropped them off near it. Sybil and I decided to stay away with the kids . . . in case there were cops or reporters nosing around. By now the chase might be on again.
We five bought some sandwiches at a stand, and had a sort of picnic in the Roman Forum. It's like a meadow with ruins and broken stone. A big place. Lots of Italians were doing the same thing as us. There were plenty of excited children, all dressed up and playing with the neat round toys from their chocolate Easter eggs.
We passed most of the day at the Forum, had a late supper in a cheap restaurant, and caught the nine-o'clock night-train north. Sybil had managed to reserve us five sleeping couches under her maiden name. Good old Cortland met us on the platform of the Rome train-station with our suitcases and one of his spare passports. The picture even looked vaguely like me, not that it mattered. The night-train crosses the Italian-Swiss border at 3:00 A.M.
When we got to Heidelberg the Polizei were waiting for me. Bullen, the Germans call their police. "Bulls."
So Monday night I was lying there in my Army cell, my mind running a mile a minute. I was tired, but I couldn't sleep. There was music outside. I wanted to see where it was coming from.
By standing on tiptoe on my cot I could see out of a high, mesh-covered window. Now I could tell what the music was. Grease. They were showing Grease as a special Easter Monday treat for the folks on the American Army base. It was the last big song, "We'll Always Be Together," with the title phrase repeated a zillion times amid a sea of shang-langs and doo-whop-a-whops.
My mouth twisted in contempt. The fifties are supposed to be some golden age when the pig had everything his way. That's what TV and the government wants us to believe: there was a time when no one made trouble. What about Kerouac, you assholes? What about Neal Cassady?
I was the only one in the clink, except for the night-shift guard. The day-guard had been a lifer alky called Bing. He'd sold me a pack of Old Golds. I got one out and lit it, then went back to staring out the window.
The crowd was drifting out of the theater, gliding groovily on the beat of the title song. Grease is the word: it's got rules, it's got meaning. I sort of wished I had another A-bomb handy. It's being in jail that makes you feel that way.
Just then I noticed something really odd. Almost every single person coming out of the theater was carrying a shiny ball. Free Christmas-tree ornaments? On Easter Monday?
Without even thinking it through, I knew that those balls had something to do with Babs. And —oh, oh—so did the balloons at St. Peter's. And all those spherical toys. Sybil and the kids were home with three of them! Holy shit.
Two kids stopped under my window. I strained my hardened criminal ear against the mesh, trying to overhear.
"You shouldn't have done it, Vernice," said the boy. A dark-skinned kid, maybe sixteen. He held his shiny ball clutched against his body. Made me think of Lafcadio, the loving way he held it.
"Oh yeah?" sassed back the girl. Thirteen and with short dishwater hair. She looked like a sharecropper's daughter. "Yew promised me a real date to the movies an' then you dint even watch. You were jest starin' at naked wimmen in yore little crystal ball. Well, ah got one at home, ah'll have you know. Mama does, too."
"Everyone has one now," groaned the boy. "When you threw mine at the screen, about two hundred copies blew off. I could have been the only one to know about them if it weren't for you, you stupid noisy brat." He made as if to shove the girl with his free hand.
She danced out of his way and slapped his ball out of his other hand. "Yah, Joey, keep lookin' at dirty pictures and you'll go blaaahnd. And ah know whaah!"
The little ball fell slowly in the night air. As it fell, other shining balls appeared in its wake. It was a little like soap-bubbles coming off a waving bubble-wand. A sudden updraft caught one of the bubbles and whisked it against my window. The glass shivered briefly, and then the ball was right in my cell. I grabbed it eagerly and sat down on my bed. Outside the two quarreling voices receded.
At first all I saw in the ball was Travolta's bestial, moronic, sensitive-lizard smile. Then Olivia, the tacky Cybis china doll that costs more than a car. Music tinkled up at me. "Summer Lovin'." Good, solidly blocked chords, I had to admit. But . . .
"Come on, Babs, I know it's you."
"Tell me more, tell me more, was it love at first sight?" Girls' voices. Babs was obliquely talking to me.
"You know I love you."
"Tell me more, tell me more, did she give you a treat?" Boys' voices.
"Did Sybil? Don't ask me about Sybil, Babs. Why don't you give me a nice blow-job and then we can talk things over." Invitingly, I unzipped my fly. Goin' trollin'.
The little sphere grew larger and pinker. The dark nipples and pubic hair came fading in like photographed features in a safe-lit bath of chemicals. That musky dusky sex sphere odor floated up, and I was instantly hard. But she didn't go for the knob-job. Instead she planted her luscious quim on my sturdy staff and rode the cattle to St. Louie. My zipper teeth were chewing hell out of my cock-skin, but for the moment this didn't seem to matter much. We kissed and came.
"What's the story, Babs? Are all those other spheres you, too?"
"Sure zing, dollink." For the first time, her red waxy lips talked to me. I hadn't been sure they could do anything but suck. "I'm more zan four-dimensional, you know. Not just a simple hyperzphere. My real home is Hilbert Space."
"Infinite-dimensional space? Could you take me there?"
"Vhell, I vhas about to, last time. After I got zat stupid knot loose, I rushed to Hilbert Space to check it vhas OK. First I laid you down in four-dee spaceti
me. I zought you'd vhait for me. But vhen I came back, vhas nozzing zere."
"How was I supposed to know you'd be back? I couldn't stay there anyway. My children pulled me back."
"Tchildren? Don't you love me more zan zem?"
"Will they keep me from going to Hilbert Space?"
"No, no, dollink. Vhe can go out zrough za fifth dimension, or za sixth. Zen is no problem vhiz za timevhorms. Are you ready?" She began to grow again, getting bigger and bigger like at the Borghese museum.
"First answer my question. Why are you splitting apart like this? Lots of copies of you in Rome, and lots of copies at the movie theater."
"Yeah, I'm everyvhere, svheetie. All zings to all men . . . and vimmens, too!"
"But what's your motive?"
"I vhant you all to come togezzer. I vhant to get your group-mind loose. Come on, svheetie, get naked."
Without thinking about it too much, I went ahead and stripped. The giant cunt-lips slid over me headfirst. I didn't resist.
Babs must have plugged me right into her nervous system this time. When she swallowed me up, things got bright and brighter. I was seeing hundreds, thousands, of images at once. I was seeing what Babs was seeing out of each of her earthly cross sections.
Dreamy girls, panting boys, excited women, grunting men; moistened lips, pumping hands, spreading legs, pushy cocks. Babs was having a good time.
But not many of Babs's partners were women. And not everyone was glad to see her. There were some twisted faces out there, some people screaming in fear and anger. Fists and knives flailed in, but Babs never budged.
The aggression on those faces gave me pause for thought. What was Babs up to? A full-scale invasion of Earth? I didn't feel right, wedged deep down inside her vagina like this. I thought of the wasps who lay eggs in paralyzed prey. Was I to be Earth's first casualty in the Attack of the Giant Ass From Hilbert Space?
"Hey Babs!" I tried to shout. "Let me out!" But my face was smothered in the slick folds of her wet flesh. Good God! Why had I stood still for this? Yet, all the while, I had a soggy, stubborn hard-on.
