by Rudy Rucker
Zoe slams the whale’s door and skips up the sidewalk to her home with a song in her heart. The rhythm track is a metal riff from a punky girl group, a sound like crunchy surf. Behind the riff, an unseen female vocalist, possibly Zoe, is yelling incomprehensible words of joy. And above it all, a lone, serene trumpeter plays a soaring line of melody. The trumpeter is Zoe too.
The deed is done, the die is cast, her future has begun.
2: Magic Ladder
ZOE
Inside the house, Mom is sitting at the kitchen table with her latest client, who looks to be a go-getting junior. A shrimpy boy with braces on his teeth. Papers all across the table, and Mom has reading glasses perched on her head. She gives Zoe a bright, infectious smile, like, “Isn’t this fun?” Playing a role for the boy. Conning him.
Zoe feels oddly envious of the kid. “I’m gonna look at the West Valley schedule for this fall,” she announces. “I’ll register for a music class. And maybe cosmetology?” Throwing Mom a bone—and then mocking her.
The boy snaps his head around, staring at Zoe. He doesn’t go to Los Perros High, but he’s definitely taking in the fact that Zoe is a loner with a trumpet and no college plans.
“Heed my mother’s counsel,” Zoe tells the boy. She turns up her palms in a not entirely faked gesture of despair. “You may win where I so sadly failed.”
“My daughter is—a pathfinder,” says Mom in an even tone. “We wouldn’t have her any other way. Right, Zoe?”
Acceptance and love. And Zoe’s a little bitch. Red haze of shame. In silence, Zoe plucks a yogurt and an orange from the fridge. Retreats to her room, flops on her bed, and feeds. The walls in this house are hella thin. They’re in this cheesy dump because it’s one of Mom’s house-flipping deals. It’ll go on sale as soon as the market lurches higher again. And then Mom will move them into, like, a crumbling condo by the freeway. Mom’s plan is that, as of September, Zoe will be gone.
Be that as it may, Zoe has made this room her own. She likes to keep her clothes in mounds, sorted by the fashion concept they exemplify, each concept a two-word phrase in Zoe’s mind, like: Eff You, Fash Splash, or Goth Coma. She’s accumulated a few musical instruments other than her trumpet—a cheap electric guitar she likes using for feedback, a tuba she got at a thrift store for laughs, the boring flute Mom made her play in middle school, a shimmering Tibetan gong, and this fetid African rattle that her father gave her.
Fetid in a good way. It’s a big hollow gourd, stained a shiny dark brown, with a string net around it, plus one hundred and twenty little cowrie shells strung onto the net. The tops of the cowries are carved off so that you can see inside them—and so they make a louder noise.
Thinking about her stuff reminds Zoe about the pearl that Maisie gave her today. If it is a pearl. She digs it out of her jeans pocket. A smooth sphere, way larger than a normal pearl, but smaller than a marble. Incredibly valuable? A fake? It has an iridescent pale surface just like pearls do. Feels a little heavier than you might expect. Zoe’s never seen anything quite like it. It’s not drilled with a hole like a bead. If she were to use it in a piece, she’d need to fashion a setting to hold it, which isn’t really a skill that she has. Lovely to look at, though. Odd of Maisie to give it to her. She sets it down among her normal beads.
All the while she hears the endless drone of Mom’s voice indoctrinating the shrimp. Mom is advocating a seven-stage plan of attack. Many, many counseling sessions will be required. Soon after the divorce, when Mom became a realtor, she learned how to con people. Her girlish innocence long gone.
Conning people is not in Zoe’s skill set. She hopes it never will be. But suppose, just suppose, that she were to hook up with Villy and maybe even marry him. And then he’d divorce her, and then she’d have to get all sly and hard like Mom. Years ago, Mom hadn’t been all that different from Zoe. She liked painting and camping, and she even danced ballet. But then she handed her life over to a man. And she had a baby. And—
Wheenk, wheenk, wheenk. By way of escaping the squeaky gerbil wheel of her mind, Zoe gives her African rattle a sizzling shake. She has a special wiggly way of rattling it. With an effort of will, she manages to restart that happy I-kissed-Villy song in her head. So refreshing to think about the kiss. With more to come. But no rush. If they do this crazy trip, they’ll have weeks and months together, just the two of them. Zoe hopes they can keep being relaxed with each other. Keep having fun. But then she’s back on the gerbil wheel. What if she gives her whole heart to Villy, and then he leaves her like Dad left Mom? Leaves her for a skungy, plastic Sunny Weaver. Wheenk, wheenk, wheenk.
Zoe gets out her trumpet, plugs in her practice mute, and begins to play, losing herself in the tune. Finding her path. The muted horn’s sound is tiny and clear. Zoe is playing the smoky, understated melody line from Miles Davis’s classic cut with that perfect title, “So What.” Most kids don’t know about him. His hoarse, gone bleat, with each note a fuzzy blotch, like an iridescent oil spot on rain-wet pavement. So what? So everything.
Under her solo, Zoe still has some pulsing, punk-metal sludge going in the primeval stem of her reptile brain. Not exactly the tootling background the Los Perros Jazz Howlers will play behind her tonight. Such a painfully groovy name for a band. But the school’s mascot is a coyote, so there you have it. Someday she’ll play in a real band.
Back in December, Mom made a video of the Howlers and emailed it off to the music department at UC Berkeley, in hopes that Zoe could waltz in as a performer, despite her inappropriate essay and her middling grades. Zoe was achingly embarrassed by this, and she yelled at Mom, but secretly she’d hoped the ploy would work. It didn’t. And none of the backup schools had panned out—that is, neither of the two other places that Zoe had actually managed to apply to. None of them were into the Zoe Snapp worldview.
So what. Zoe has a plan now. She’s going on the road with Villy.
Still into her muted trumpet solo, Zoe rises to her feet and sways like a snake charmer. She’s veered away from Miles’s line, and she’s on her own. Well, not entirely on her own. She’s folding in the kinky riff that sistah Maisie was teaching her after practice today. An odd little stutter-stop. Like a glitch, or like a hip-hop sample. The skips make Zoe’s solo more magical. Like a holy hymn.
Yeah. Zoe’s gonna frikkin destroy the crowd tonight. They’ll finally grasp how hip she is. Even Tawna Garvey will get it. Zoe sashays over to her desk and leans over her supply of beads, still playing. She’s especially focusing on the awesome silvery pearl that Maisie gave her.
“Rise,” she thinks at the pearl, as if she’s a snake charmer.
And, now, for once in Zoe’s life, a power fantasy works. Maisie’s iridescent ball quivers and lifts into the air, slowly rotating. Its surface gleams. Almost like it’s winking at Zoe. No way. Her heart is hammering in triple time, but she maintains her trumpet’s tone and stretches her breath. Stutter-stop, stutter-stop. Coaxing the little ball higher. Not letting herself think. She leans back, horn high, supporting the mysterious pearl with her thin, wavering tune. The pearl’s by the ceiling. And along the way it’s grown to the size of a ping-pong ball.
Something flickers in Zoe’s mind. Like an unseen new friend is saying, “Oh, there you are. Here I come.” And then she’s fully out of breath. She lowers her tarnished trumpet.
The lustrous swollen pearl hangs there, slowly turning. A tiny globe with north and south poles. And now all at once it’s transparent. With things inside.
Something pokes out from the south pole. A pair of horrible insect feelers? No, no, they’re sticks, and there’s—rungs between them. It’s like a tiny ladder that tapers to a point at its top. Well—not so tiny, no, the bottom part of the ladder is growing. The ladder is sliding out like a ramp.
The bottom end hits the floor with a thud. The ladder’s rungs are spaced normally at the bottom, and they’re closer and closer together towards the top. It’s as if Zoe’s seeing a much longer ladder in perspective. The
top end is a point, and that’s where it touches the transparent orb of the pearl.
And now—oh wow—someone is climbing down the ladder. A little yellow alien, very small on the highest rungs—humanoid, skinny, moving with a womanly sway. The alien lady waves to Zoe. Alien for real.
Zoe forgets about holding onto her trumpet. It clatters to the floor.
“Everything okay?” calls Mom through the wall.
“Don’t mind me,” sings Zoe. She doesn’t want the magic to end.
Watching the alien descend the ladder, Zoe thinks of a circus acrobat shinnying down a rope. A moment later, the odd yellow figure is standing next to her, just her height. Somehow the woman seems like she’s in her twenties. A bit older than Zoe. She smells of cinnamon and paint thinner, which is a little hard to take.
“I’m Yampa,” says the alien woman. “Greet me.” Her legs are very short, so she has a low waist. Her torso is a long column with a T-joint at the waist and bulbous shoulder joints where her arms come out. She’s leathery and scarecrow-thin. Her voice is squawky.
Yampa holds out her hand as if to shake. Her hand has eight or nine fingers, all different kinds of them there, like the tools of a soft Swiss knife. Zoe braces herself and takes hold. The hand is sticky in spots, but not in a totally disgusting way. Drily sticky, like a lizard’s toes.
“I’m Zoe Snapp,” says Zoe. “And this is my room.”
“Welcome to me and thanks to you,” says Yampa. “You’re scared?” The strange woman’s face is in shades of orange and yellow, her large eyes are pale lavender, and her lips are red. Her lower jaw jiggles loosely. “I think you think I stink,” she says. And then she laughs.
Nice to hear a laugh, if it is a laugh, but Yampa’s smell is indeed bothering Zoe, who goes ahead and opens her window wide. There’s no screen. She draws in a lungful of fresh air.
Yampa uses the moment to take a picture of Zoe’s room. That is, she holds her hands up on either side of her face and makes a click sound.
“You and your room an eternal diorama dream,” says Yampa. “A design to decorate Lady Filippa’s drapes.”
“Did I summon you with my horn?” asks Zoe, wanting to feel some control.
“Your unny tunnel twined to me,” says Yampa. “Steered by your ooky squonk. Mediated by Maisie. She told me where to wait. This is ballyworld, yes?”
“Not sure what you mean,” says Zoe. And—had the alien just now mentioned Zoe’s half-sister Maisie?
“The onward landscape of your lawn and town and prairie and sea—it doesn’t flow forever, yes?” says Yampa, gesturing towards Zoe’s window. “It bends back, no? Bally.”
“Well, yeah,” says Zoe, kind of understanding but not really. “We’re on a planet. Earth. What planet are you from?”
“What basin, you mean. What basin in mappyworld, you mean. Mappyworld is a cosmic candy sampler box. Or an endless egg carton. With a flat world-skin within each basin of the box. Mappy. Not bally. My guy and I are on a spree. Meandered a million miles to find Zoe Snapp.”
“Guy? Drove?”
Yampa turns and stares at the high reaches of the pointed ladder. She calls out a name. “Pinchley! Pinchley!”
At this point, the oddness catches up with Zoe. She feels a sidewise-sweeping wave of unreality, as if the floor were the pitched deck of a ship. Catching her balance, she leans on Yampa. The alien woman’s body is firm. Springy. She’s stronger than she looks.
“Don’t yell again,” Zoe cautions Yampa. “We don’t want Mom in here.” Which reminds her to click the feeble lock-button on her door.
Meanwhile a second figure has started down the pointed ladder. A yellow-orange male, shaped more or less like Yampa, but with a bigger jaw, and with stubble on his chin. He too seems like he’s in his twenties. An alien slacker.
Halfway down the ladder, Pinchley hops free and tumbles downward, doing a flip along the way. As he falls, he grows. His feet thud onto the floor. He’s an inch taller than Yampa, and he wears a tool belt made of shiny dark leather.
“Showy and loud,” says Yampa, her odd face bending in a smile. “Pinchley is my love oaf. I wish he were tidy for trim Zoe.” She puts her hands up by her head and clicks again. “A someday souvenir,” she says.
“Zoe!” Mom’s voice again. “What’s all that noise? Nelson’s done with his lesson. Did you see I laid out some good clothes on your bed? We can—”
Mom is interrupted by the doorbell. Shrimp Nelson’s mother. Volleys of maternal chatter ensue, fantasias on Nelson’s prospects at the UCs or back East or why not try Stanford. San Jose State is a solid safety school.
Zoe smiles at Yampa and Pinchley. She feels miles above Mom’s petty concerns. She’s with the coolest two kids ever. “So you guys are visiting me from, like, I mean—how far does that ladder go?”
“Just high enough,” says Pinchley. Juust haaah enouuugh. He has a country accent, like a friendly, good-time hillbilly. Not scary or mean at all.
“Your honkin made your pearl stretch out like a tunnel,” continues Pinchley. “One end by you, and one by us. Your sis Maisie told us where to stand, you understand, and we was ready with our ladder. You ready to climb up and peek through?”
“I’m supposed to climb a ladder to the gate of an unny tunnel to an alien world?” says Zoe. “I don’t think so.”
“It’d be fun,” says Pinchley with that drawl of his. Fuuun.
“Have Zoe leave later,” says Yampa. “Better to bag the boyfriend and his ballyworld car. Then tease Zoe’s tunnel bigger, and va-vooom we four thread through.”
“My boyfriend?” says Zoe. “That’s Villy. He does have a cool station wagon.” She hardly knows what she’s saying. “We’d like to do a big road trip.”
“Now you talkin,” says Pinchley. “You’re gettin the plan. You stay with Zoe here, Yampa. I’ll go meet beau Villy. We’ll talk cars.”
And now, oh god, Mom’s rattling the locked bedroom door. She wants in.
“Just a second,” says Zoe though the door.
Pinchley somersaults out of Zoe’s open window and drops onto all fours. In this position he looks slightly like a dog—a weird dog whose front legs are longer than his hind legs. A dog who’s wearing a tool belt. A dog who’s not a dog. He’s golden in the summer evening sun and right now he’s staring right at the sun, seemingly fascinated by it.
“Woof woof,” says Pinchley, kidding around, and he trots off, still on all fours, heading in the general direction of Villy’s house.
“He can smell your smeel trail,” says Yampa. “The link of love. I’ll be scarce.”
Before Zoe can say anything else, Yampa folds up like an easel, telescoping her legs and folding her arms. She rolls under Zoe’s bed, still giving off an intoxicating smell of spice and turpentine.
The doorknob rattles again. “Zoe!”
Meanwhile the ladder is still in place, stretching from the floor to the swollen pearl by Zoe’s ceiling—and the pearl is the gate to an unny tunnel to mappyworld. Or something like that.
Zoe grabs hold of the ladder and shoves it upward. As smoothly as if on rails, it slides into the still-hovering pearl, shrinking as it goes. And then—poof—it’s all inside. As if knowing its work is done, the lustrous pearl contracts to its old size and drops from the air. It’s still kind of transparent. Zoe catches it in her hand and shoves it into her jeans pocket. And then she opens the door for Mom.
“Why’s your trumpet on the floor?” is Mom’s big question. “Why can’t you ever polish that thing?”
“Tarnish is the tang of my tune,” says Zoe.
3: Villy’s Family
VILLY
Driving home from Zoe’s after dropping her off, Villy thinks about the kiss. He taps his fingers on his lips, trying to renew the sensation. He’s kissed other girls, of course. He’s a senior and not a complete borg. He kissed Tawna Garvey last month, for instance, at a bonfire party on the beach. And last week Tawna said hi in a very friendly way when he saw her in th
e weight room. Not that he then had sex with her, like he’d tried to tell Zoe just now—and why had he even said that?
Villy’s house is pretty decent, partway up a foothill and with a view of San Jose. Villy doesn’t see his father Pete or his younger brother Scud, but he assumes they’re both home, as Pop’s curvy electric kit-car is in the drive and the house’s front door is open.
Probably Pop is working on his computer in his home office, which is a separate little cottage in the backyard, a room decorated with seashells and African masks. Awesome stuff. Pop is a contract programmer, an ace, and he likes toys. This month he’s upgrading the ad management tools sold by a marketing company called InYoFace. Making online ads ever more invasive, ever more conscious of who you are.
Villy’s mother Marie was a high school English teacher, but she died of cancer last year—died at home the way she wanted to. Ever since, Villy imagines there’s a low, dark cloud over his house—and that Pop, Villy, and Scud are three lost boys. They’re walking on thin, clear ice with the dark currents of death beneath. If Villy yells too hard, the ice might crack.
Pop and Scud seem to feel the same way. Mostly they’re being nice to each other. Although, yeah, Scud’s something of a pain in the butt. Not really the kid’s fault. Mom’s death has hit Scud the hardest of all. He’s a tenth-grader, and sixteen years old, not that you’d know it. Unbelievably immature.
Villy thinks back to his own tenth grade. It’s only two years behind him, but it’s like remembering a long-gone fever-dream. All the kids at their worst—pubing out, zitty, voices cracking, utterly without self-control, hating everyone. Something changed in Villy after his mother died. He had this realization that everyone’s the same. We live, and we flail around, and we die. Every single one of us. So why bother hating people? Let things slide.
