Million Mile Road Trip

by Rudy Rucker

  Scud can’t stop wondering what exactly would happen if he went into Eekra’s hut with her. She’s not a really a close match for his fevered, fantastical notions of hookers. But maybe? Or maybe she just dances for a while and you give her a tip? Or maybe she clonks you on the head and takes all your money? Or she sells you to the saucers? Well, maybe not that. She’d talked about fighting the saucers. Oh, and what about Villy?

  Filkar, who’s still nearby, monitoring Scud’s thoughts, repeats his opinion that Villy will recover.

  “Fine,” says Scud, choosing to believe the Flatsie. “So how do I get into Saucer Hall?”

  “Hark,” says the gingerbread man. In the blink of an eye, he vanishes.

  Using his real eyes and his teep slug, Scud studies his surroundings. No sign of Filkar, who should be right here. No sign of the gingerbread man’s body, and no sign of his mind. But wait. Upon closer examination Scud sees that, yes, there is something. A dim scribble where the Flatsie had been. Reaching out with his hands, Scud can feel Filkar’s body, a flat sheet of flesh.

  “I wear the cloud of unknowing,” says the invisible Filkar, still able to send his teep into Scud’s head. The Flatsie flips back into visibility, and he shows Scud how to cover himself with the cloud. It’s like finger painting. You look at yourself from the outside—and then you smear your image around.

  Scud does that and looks down at his hand—and, yes, it’s all but invisible, not only to his teep slug, but to his real eyes as well.

  “This is impossible,” he says. He feels uneasy. “Is it safe?”

  “Your flesh and fire are shadows of your soul,” says Filkar, not quite addressing the point. “Life’s teeming hordes are images in the air.”

  “I’m a pattern in the cosmic smeel?” suggests Scud.

  “Thou sayest it, my liege. Drawing on the supernal power of your teep slug, you addled your warp and woof—and in this wise you’ve conjured a cloud of unknowing. ’Twill engulf you and your raiment until you relax your hold.”

  “You still haven’t told me if it’s safe,” says Scud. “I mean—I look like a mound of black velvet spaghetti.”

  “Waver not, milord. Go where your heart listeth.” Filkar gestures towards Saucer Hall. “And, may I say it, a supererogatory gift of a second caraway seed would be well received.”

  “When I get back,” says Scud. “Maybe.”

  Wearing his cloud and feeling tiny, he climbs the steps of Saucer Hall, then darts through the vast entryway. He’s like an insect invading someone’s home. An invisible ant. The saucers sail past overhead, some big and some small, some faceted and some smooth, some like disks and some like pretzels, most of them in fancy colors, and each of them with a single bright, observant eye. As before, some of the eyes have red pupils, but others have black. A whole menagerie.

  Scud gets the feeling that the saucers with the red eyes are the bad ones. He likes the black-eyed ones who have flexible rims that undulate like hula skirts. In some odd way, Scud finds them sexy. Some have their mouths on the edge of their rims, instead of on their underside, and those edge mouths are sexy too.

  In short, the hall teems with exotic and alluring saucerian life—dozens or even hundreds of distinct forms. But if Meatball is to be believed, a goodly number of them are parasitic leeches—the red-eyed ones.

  The music echoes and throbs. Perhaps it sounds different to each listener, but to Scud it’s a funky, polyrhythmic gospel song with a throaty voice chorusing a single phrase over and over.

  “I’ll take you there. I’ll take you there. I’ll take you there.”

  Entranced by the chant, Scud visualizes the place the voice is singing of—a land of play and sex and power. Quite suddenly he forms the notion that the keeper of that heavenly land lies within an orb of clear white light that hovers at the far end of Saucer Hall. He sees a dark image within the orb, a sacred icon perhaps, a figure with odd projections near its head. Scud makes his way towards the glowing orb, utterly entranced. In his rapture he drops his cloud of unknowing—oh shit! He’s standing there, fully visible.

  “Ssst!”

  It’s that same saucer he noticed before. The one with the green dome and yellow rim and a lively cartoon eye with a dark pupil. Her name was Nunu? She homes in on him and hovers beside his head. He could wrap his arms around her if he wanted to. She’s speaking to him with a pair of red lips set into her wobbly, lumpy rim.

  “Careful, or bad ones drink your smeel,” whispers Nunu. She speaks in a strange way, as if words were ideograms or postcards—with no need of articles, tenses, or inflections. “You go invisible some more, quick. Ride my back, no shy. I carry you off. I am long time want love a human boy.”

  Nunu has a set of long dark eyelashes around her single eye. Scud can’t help but trust her. Nunu is here to save him, yes. With a quick motion of his mind, he restores his cloud of unknowing.

  Now Nunu floats down low and Scud flops onto her, like a man mounting a child’s swim raft. Nunu vibrates with something like a giggle. As they glide out of Saucer Hall, Scud feels a pang of sorrow to be leaving the music behind. And that half-seen icon within the glowing white ball—who or what was it?

  Moments later they’re with Filkar and his wife beside the tree. Scud drops his cloud of unknowing, then slides off Nunu to stand on his own two feet. He scatters a generous pinch of caraway seeds onto Nunu, the Flatsie, and his wife. He’s like a wildly tipping tourist on a binge. The aliens are glad.

  “You can know where your friends?” asks Nunu. “I take you there.” Perhaps a hint of irony in her use of this phrase. She’s a perky one. Scud’s fairly sure she’s reading his mind. That means she knows Scud is insanely wondering if there’s any way that Nunu might become his girlfriend. She has such a pleasant voice. And his chances with real girls are so very slim. And she’s not flinching away.

  “I’ll walk from here,” he says, not wanting to seem weak. “But I’ll be glad if you follow.”

  “Okay,” says Nunu. “I am curious you. Sexy boy. Bye bye, Filkar.”

  “Fare thee well,” says Filkar. “Be prudent, Scud.”

  This world is a maze. Scud will be glad to rejoin his team. With a teep slug to brag about, and with Nunu the saucer in tow!

  And Scud is noticing an extra bonus: whenever one of those obnoxious, horsefly-like mini saucers tries to bite him, Nunu zaps it with a quick spark. It’s good to have a saucer girlfriend.

  10: Three Zoes

  ZOE

  Let’s backtrack and see what happened to Zoe.

  The way it went down was that Meatball zapped Villy, Villy collapsed, Scud took off running, and Zoe tootled her magic tune. Her saucer pearl turned into an unny tunnel gate. She walked through it. And then—

  Trumpet in hand, Zoe stands on Los Perros Boulevard with her saucer pearl gate behind her. She’s tunneled back to the same place and time on Earth as when she left—except now she isn’t inside the purple whale. She’s on a spot where the whale was. The car and its occupants are inside their own unny tunnel, inside an older version of the saucer pearl, and they’re traveling from Earth to mappyworld. Zoe can see into that old tunnel through its own transparent gate. Seeing through the old pearl’s gate is like looking at a scene inside a crystal ball.

  And yep, Zoe can see her earlier self in the front seat of the whale—that is, she sees the back of that person’s head—a girl frantically playing her horn. The whale dwindles deeper towards the center of the old gate and out of sight, and then the old pearl goes opaque and disappears, leaving our later Zoe by herself on the asphalt street, there in the Los Perros spring night, with her current version of the saucer pearl still floating behind her. Looking up in the sky, she sees clouds, stars, and the moon. A sky like it’s supposed to be.

  All this goes by in a flash, but now there’s the pressing matter of a careening white SUV. The SUV’s headlights blaze, its tires squeal, its horn blares. It’s bearing down on our Zoe with a gleaming splotch of spilled smeel on its hood
, and the smeel’s dissolving into smoke. And yep, that’s Mom’s face behind the windshield, Mom staring aghast at her problem daughter, version two—that is, the slightly more experienced Zoe Snapp who’s just now materialized in the street holding her trumpet.

  Zoe should dart off to the side of the road—but she’s having a deer-frozen-in-the-headlights moment, even though her mind is racing. She shouldn’t have bailed on Villy. He might even be alive. She shouldn’t be here at all. Never mind running away from Mom in her SUV—instead she’ll tunnel right back to mappyworld.

  So okay, now where the heck is the—ah, yes. Her current saucer pearl is hanging in the air just behind her, and it’s still a transparent gate, but it’s getting small. Still feeling like the world is in slow motion, Zoe raises her horn like a gone goofball jazz cat coming out of a nod. Time for her chorus. She faces her pearl, hits her first note, and yeah baby, the funky pearl swells and gleams—it’s a gate she can fit into again. Still playing, Zoe steps into the gate and she’s safe in the unny tunnel. Looking back, she sees a warped panorama of Los Perros and the skidding SUV.

  Zoe pauses to fully assess the situation. Her old self, Zoe #1, is in a different unny tunnel with the old version of the whale. Zoe herself is Zoe #2, and she’s in her own unny tunnel, heading for mappyworld again. Fine.

  But wait. To make things even more gnarly and effed up, a Zoe #3 enters the Los Perros panorama with her own trumpet in hand. It’s an extra Zoe, with a guy right behind her. They’re popping out of a third unny tunnel gate, their legs a blur. Running flat-out as fast as they can. They speed across the street in time to dodge the killer SUV. Evidently Zoe #3 is a future Zoe who thought ahead when she tunneled home.

  Who’s the boy with Zoe #3? Believe it or not, our current Zoe—that is, Zoe #2—is so boggled by the multilevel madness that she doesn’t make a visual ID of the boy. He’s sprinting fast, it’s dark, and Zoe #2 is putting most of her energy into the bluesy horn solo that’s keeping her unny tunnel open for her.

  And now Zoe #2 is like: Eff this. I’m outta here. Sayonara, SUV.

  She returns to the tunnel and goes back to mappyworld. On the way she gets another glimpse of that Mayan-type Goob-goob, the goddess of mappyworld. This time Goob-goob looks like a vine-covered pyramid as much as she looks like a woman. Seedy, imposing, beyond the mundane—and, for whatever reason, keenly interested in Zoe’s activities.

  Then Zoe’s back in mappyworld, back to the same place and time in the night market. She lowers her horn. Her tunnel’s gate collapses back down to a pearl. Zoe plays the lock-the-gate riff and pockets the now opalescent pearl.

  Zonked Villy is still on the ground with that frikkin Freeth balloon overhead. Meanwhile, the Freeth is bitching at Zoe. Maybe she didn’t even notice that Zoe just now flashed out of their shared reality for a sliver of second.

  “Not my fault!” Meatball is saying, her tone aggrieved and self-justifying. Like she was right to knock Villy flat. “He borrowed trouble.”

  “Stupid stinky gas bag,” hollers Zoe. She kneels beside Villy, ready to do some mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. She hadn’t thought of that before. Villy’s dear, noble face so pale. Zoe takes a deep breath and presses her mouth to his.

  “Huh?” mumbles Villy at the first touch of Zoe’s lips. He, groans, sits up, rubs his face.

  “Oh, Villy,” says Zoe, hugging him. “My lean flame. Poor darling.”

  “What happened?”

  “The balloon gave you a shock,” Zoe tells him. “Like a giant electric spark. She grew a special bump for doing it.”

  “Dark energy,” says Meatball, drifting closer. “Emanating from a zapper node. Villy was brutalizing me. I take care of myself—goes without saying. And I take care of my friends.”

  “You’re no friend to us,” says Zoe. “You just want a caraway seed. Well, guess what, fatso, Scud ran off with them.”

  “Scud’s gone?” says Villy, trying to sort things out.

  “We both thought you were dead,” says Zoe. “Your brother ran away. And I was trying to revive you.”

  “You hopped,” says Meatball. “Can’t fool me. I twigged. For a split second you were gone.”

  “Bullshit,” goes Zoe.

  “Dead sly, aren’t you?” says Meatball. “I respect that.”

  “I strive to surprise,” says Zoe.

  “Hopped where?” asks Villy. “Sly about what?”

  “Never mind. I’ll explain later.” Zoe glances up at the Freeth. “Happy now?”

  “I’m happy we’ve had a gloves-off go-round,” says Meatball. “With more to come, I shouldn’t wonder. Never mind the caraway seeds. I’m chuffed to join your travel party. All the way to Szep City. And why stop there? Mayhap I’ll roll onward—to soddy, ancestral Freeth Farm.”

  “Maybe this Freeth is okay,” says woozy Villy, once again rallying at the thought of the Szep City run. He gets to his feet. “I’ll admit I was squeezing you awfully hard, Meatball. I wasn’t thinking of you as being like a person with feelings. But, yeah, it’s better if we’re friends. We can use help.” He holds up his hand, like for a high five, and Meatball slaps a rubbery bit of her body against it.

  Zoe pats Meatball and hugs Villy, and then the fully recovered Villy starts dancing around and singing, kicking his legs and shaking out his arms, glad to be alive. Zoe bops along, dancing with her man. She tilts up her horn and toots a few happy notes.

  It’s crazy in mappyworld, but it’s fun.

  But there’s one new thing troubling Zoe. Was that Villy with Zoe #3—or was it someone else?

  11: Leaving Town

  VILLY

  Villy’s a little worried about Scud, but not that worried. Hey, Scud left Villy for dead, okay? Let the guy blunder his way back to them on his own. The ceaseless flow of strange people and alien creatures is getting to Villy. And, even though he’s dancing, he’s fairly wiped from that zap.

  “Want to go back and wait in the car?” Zoe asks him.

  “Yeah. Sorry to be a lightweight.”

  “You’re the baddest of them all,” says Zoe. “Don’t worry. If you can stand just a few more minutes, I have this atavistic desire to do a big shopping for our trip.”

  “I’ll treat,” says Meatball, who’s listening in. “I’m gravid with money, dearies. Like a fish full of roe.”

  “Let’s buy the same stuff that we saw the other couple buy,” suggests Villy.

  “Yeah,” agrees Zoe. “One of those long-lasting food mints.”

  “You’ll want five,” advises Meatball. “Three for you humans, one for the two Szep to share, and one for me. They come in seven fantabulous flavors. Raw sucrose, kippered herring, crankcase oil, sea cucumber, roast beet, viggy vloor, and tom turkey.”

  “Vloor and turkey,” says Zoe.

  “I’d advise against the vloor,” says Meatball. “Vloor—well—viggy vloor eats you, in a certain sense. And that’s fine for a Freeth, but for a wound-up little dolly like you…”

  “Okay, fine, let’s just get sucrose and two tom turkeys,” says Villy, but Zoe glares at him. She’s against sugar. “Roast beet instead of sucrose,” says Villy. “And I want one of those vision balls that sits on a rickety cube made of sticks and vines and berries.”

  “A waste of time,” says Meatball. “You’ve got me—and a Freeth always knows her whereabouts.”

  Although the Freeth won’t buy a vision ball, she’s by no means stingy. She sheds a series of red pyramids as they move from counter to counter. They get silky blankets, fresh fruit, and a potted daffodil that’s a lamp. Their arms are full, and even Meatball is carrying a few things. They make their way back to the cars.

  “Presents for me?” says Irav the thieving Szep, sliding down off the high hood of the purple whale.

  “You’ll be leaving now,” says Meatball, setting down a blanket and a bunch of bananas. Her features take on a foreboding look. “Ta-ta.”

  “I saw them first,” says Irav, drawing a conical snail from his tool be
lt. The shell is intricately patterned with chevrons. Two gemlike eyes, mounted on flexible stalks, project from the shell’s pointed end. There’s a tubular little snout as well.

  “A whaler snail!” says Meatball. “Not much good against me, Irav. En garde!” The Freeth emits a fierce yelp. Her war cry. Energy shimmers across her surface as she forms a zapper cone and sends a spark as thick as an arm. The bolt plunges into Irav’s chest—and sputters in place for at least thirty seconds.

  Villy feels a sympathetic twitch. That’s got to hurt. But Irav takes the attack in stride. He’s wincing, yes, but at the same time he’s laughing at Meatball, snide sleazebag that he is. And now he deploys his whaler snail.

  It spits a tiny dart from its snout. A dart like a free-flying harpoon, which sinks into Meatball’s flank. Immediately a small region of the Freeth’s flesh turns sickly green. Undaunted, the hearty Meatball pinches off the damaged region and drops it to the ground.

  It strikes Villy that there’s something stagy about this duel. It’s almost as if Meatball and Irav are pro wrestlers performing a prearranged routine. Villy decides to step in and make his own move against Irav. The guy is within reach, and he seems a little dazed.

  With a whiplike motion Villy snatches the whaler snail from Irav’s grasp. For what it’s worth, Zoe bugles a fierce honk from her horn. Villy aims the tip of the shell at Irav. The beady stalk eyes gleam and the snout flexes, as if drawing a bead on Irav’s chest. But Villy’s not sure how to make the snail shoot.

  A shrill yell interrupts them. “Villy! Hey, Villy! You’re okay!”

  It’s brother Scud, trotting across the parking lot with—is that a flying saucer tagging after him? Villy’s too busy to look. He’ll do the reunited-brothers thing in a minute. For now, he just hopes the whaler snail doesn’t turn against him. He moves it out from his body, like he’d hold a Roman candle. And now his finger finds a raised bump on the shell’s side. A trigger?