by Rudy Rucker
“Word is there’s feisty folks running Borderslam Inn,” the Szep tells Scud. “Zeke and Lucille? They get all kinds of trash rolling down from Borderslam Pass. Best not rile them. Be a gentleman and use the indoor facilities. And buy food in there. We’re gonna wait out here.” Pinchley gives the kids of those little red pyramids that they use for money here. “Me and Yampa made out real good with that cocoa sale last night.”
“I can’t stand saucers,” says the bleary Yampa, squinting at Nunu like she’s never seen her before. “Whence, whither, wherefore?” She’s completely forgotten about last night.
“Nunu’s my good friend,” repeats Scud. “And she’s not after my smeel.” With that he takes off alone, trotting into the Borderslam Inn.
“That saucer is Scud’s good friend because he made out with her for hours,” Zoe tells Yampa. “In the back of our car.” It feels good to gossip.
“You don’t talk that,” intones Nunu, bumping against Zoe with her leathery rim. Zoe again notices that the saucer girl’s mouth is set into her rim. Her plump lips are as red as if she wore lipstick. “Scud and I like married now,” adds Nunu.
Zoe is dumbstruck. Like, whoa. Does Nunu actually mean that—
“You can always count on my little brother,” says Villy with a sigh. Obviously, he too saw Scud kissing Nunu in back. And clearly he’s upset. He makes a show of checking that his two surfboards are still holding tight on the roof rack. Then he stares out at the island, the flat sea, and at the impossibly high peaks ahead.
Zoe can’t see any mountain passes up there at all. Is their road trip doomed? Another thing: she sees glints of light in the sky. Two heavy-duty flying saucers, hovering very high. Zoe wonders if they know about Scud and Nunu. And then right away she knows that the answer is yes. She feels the cool, inhuman touch of the high saucerian minds. They know about Scud, Nunu, Zoe—and about Maisie too.
Zoe gets a flashback image of Maisie in her dream. The girl’s skin sticking out like a stiff little skirt around her waist. Like the rim of a flying saucer.
“I better go into Borderslam and wash up,” says Zoe, all gaiety gone.
13: Borderslam Inn
SCUD
Inside the inn, Scud sees a bar, some shelves of goods, a communal dining table, and a grill. A tall, lanky man is at the grill. A sweet-faced woman with long dark hair tends bar. A long-haired mountain man with a prominent Adam’s apple sits at the common table eating fried meat. Unlike the city slickers in Van Cott, these folks are wearing ordinary jeans.
To enhance the scene, an alien creature stands at the bar. He resembles seven or eight soap bubbles stuck together like the segments of a centipede. Colored gas swirls inside the bubbles. A cartoony, black-outlined eye floats inside the blue-gas-filled top sphere. Almost as an afterthought, the second sphere sports a pair of thin, flexible arms. The alien is nursing a mug of—green liquid soap? He’s not actually drinking it—he’s dribbling the stuff onto his bubbles. Never mind.
Scud turns to the cook at the grill. The man has his name embroidered on his heavy shirt: Zeke. “Got ice cream?” asks Scud.
“Nope,” says Zeke. “Try toast.”
“French toast with syrup?”
“You got it, friend. Coffee with that?”
“Sure,” says Scud, feeling manly. Maybe he’s just a sophomore in high school, but he’s on an adventure in the far North. Actually, he’s almost a junior now. And last night, he made out with Nunu for ages, deeply kissing her mouth. Not quite the same as losing his virginity, but it’s a start. Up till now he’s never gotten more than a dry peck on the cheek. Nunu had felt really good on his lap.
Scud doesn’t like the way Zoe was laughing at him just now. Nosy little goth. Scud’s still wearing his new teep slug on his wrist, and a quick check on Zoe reveals that she thinks he actually had sex with Nunu—which would have been a little over the top. But kissing the cute saucer for a long time? Why not? But maybe not something he’ll brag about to his friends.
In the bathroom, Scud feels compelled to examine his face and his neck—he’s slightly worried that Nunu might have done something weird to him. Like bitten him, or inscribed some insane saucerian tattoo. But no, he looks the same as ever. If anything, he looks more grown-up than before. Rough and tough, a man of the world. Like a secret agent in an intergalactic SF novel. He cocks his head, giving the mirror a cool stare. He’s the man.
When Scud comes out of the bathroom, there’s Zoe and Villy. They’re giving him odd looks and thinking bad things—like he’s a disgusting pervert. Zoe’s vibes are particularly edgy. She scoots past Scud and goes straight for the bathroom. Villy corners Scud by the bar.
“You and the flying saucer?” says Villy. “It’s true?”
“I, uh, I mean, who says? Zoe? She’s completely—”
“Nunu says,” hisses Villy. “Do you have any idea what you’re in for? Nunu’s says you’re married now. If you can wrap your tiny mind around that.”
“Listen to me,” says Scud, feeling flustered. “I did not have sex with Nunu. No way. I kissed her for a while. That’s it. End of story. And if Nunu thinks kissing makes us married, she’s wrong.”
“Vedding?” puts in the alien bubble creature. “You should zelebrate! Tchampagne, Lucille!”
“No, no, no champagne,” says Scud. “I’m having coffee.”
“Coffee for me too,” Villy calls to Zeke the cook. “And scrambled eggs.”
“No eggs,” says Zeke.
“Steak?”
“You got it.”
“No tchampagne for you?” the alien asks Villy. “I see you’re vondering vhat I am, and vhy I talk to you. I am a Bubbler. My name is Gunnar.” He doesn’t have a visible mouth. He talks by vibrating his head-level bubble like a loudspeaker.
“Thanks for offering champagne, Gunnar. I’m Villy. I’m already wasted. From being up all night. Hoping to drive through Borderslam Pass today.”
“Open bottle anyvay, Lucille. Scood vill pay. And give a towel. Bubbler man vashes vith bubbly—vhy not! Vhere you go, Villy?”
“A million miles,” puts in Scud, trying to recover some of the swaggering bravado he’d been feeling before Zoe and Villy came in. “All the way to Szep City.”
“Zaucer trouble there,” says the Bubbler.
“We’ll help out,” says confident Scud. “My brother’s driving a souped-up car. I might drive it too.”
“I’d trust Zoe to drive before you,” says Villy. “You still haven’t managed to get your driver’s license, Scud, which is kind of unbelievable. And obviously your judgment is not exactly—”
“Don’t pick on me!” yells Scud. He can’t take the contempt that’s bubbling out of his big brother’s mind. “I’m a man. Not a nerdy, clumsy little brother.”
“With a sex thing for flying saucers,” Villy smoothly adds.
“Zaucers very bad,” says Gunnar the Bubbler. “Ve glad they don’t come into our Bubble Badlands.” He’s splashing champagne onto his spheres and toweling himself at the same time. Like washing windows. Each of his bubbles encloses a pastel gas: pink, lemon, lime, lilac. “Noble elements,” Gunnar says. “Xenon, argon, neon, krypton. My mind is gassy vhirls and svirls.”
“Getting back to the saucers, I see Scud’s girlfriend floating outside there,” says Lucille behind the bar. “Plus a Freeth and two Szep. Motley crew. They can come in if they want. Everyone’s welcome at Borderslam Inn. A car full of really strange critters came by an hour ago. Three or four of them, sort of deformed? They didn’t stop. Heading for the pass. Were they running from you?”
Scud would like to discuss this info, but Villy won’t let him start. “Our other friends will wait outside,” is all Villy says.
Zoe emerges from the bathroom looking refreshed. Villy heads in there for his turn.
“We’re eating?” Zoe brightly asks Scud. Like she’s a social worker talking to an institutionalized sex offender.
“Thanks a lot for spreading rumors about Nunu
and me,” says Scud. “How does it feel to be so mean and catty?”
“Let’s not even start,” says Zoe. “We all know that you’re an idiot, but let’s you and I pretend we’re friends. For Villy’s sake.”
“What about for my sake?” says Scud. “I have feelings too. And don’t forget that I can read your mind. Which makes it even worse.”
“Me, I’m having a big time watching you three,” says the mountain guy with the plate of meat. “Name’s Hungerford. I bring down pieces of starstone from the peaks. And I stock the Borderlands larder with fresh game. You should try one of these steaks, little lady. You’re Zoe?”
She nods.
“It’s mini Thudd meat,” says Zeke the cook. He lays a forefinger over his smiling lips. “Don’t tell a soul. Specialty of the house.”
“We only eat mini Thudds after they’re dead,” says Hungerford, chuckling. “Wouldn’t be humane otherwise. What with them having some rudimentary intelligence. Fortunately, a lot of them mini Thudds die on their way down from Borderslam Pass.”
“Hungerford kills and butchers them,” says Zeke with an evil grin.
Thanks to his teep slug, Scud can tell that the two of them are just teasing the greenhorns.
“I think I’ll have whatever my friend Scud ordered,” Zoe is saying in a small voice.
“French toast,” says Zeke with a shrug. “But I have to tell you I’m using ant-jelly instead of egg-batter. And why not eat a little smoked Szep meat on the side? Gamy, oily, and ropy—with an unforgettable tang. Makes great bacon. Wish you’d get one of your Szep friends in here with us, so Hungerford can freshen up my supply.” Hungerford cackles.
Zoe seems to wilt. And now Scud takes pity on her.
“Stop scaring Zoe,” he yells at Zeke and Hungerford. In his head he’s casting himself as a scrappy newcomer—like in an old-time Klondike gold-rush film. He longs to impress Zoe—just this once. Truth be told, he admires her. “Admit that you’re lying!” adds Scud.
“Listen at the lad,” says Hungerford. “He’s got grit.”
“The boy’s right,” says kind Lucille from across the room. “Don’t pay Zeke and Hungerford any mind, Zoe. These two clowns get bored and they think they’re funny. We don’t eat Szep, we don’t eat Thudd, and we use real eggs.”
“Come on and set down with me,” Hungerford says to Scud and Zoe. “You done passed your initiation into Borderslam Inn chapter of the Order of Exalted Sourdough Tale-Trappers.”
“Can you show me one of those starstones you were talking about?” Scud asks Hungerford, taking a seat. “What are they? I have some ballyworld fossils in our car. Millions of years old. Maybe we can do a trade?”
“Ballyworld?” exclaims Lucille, coming out from behind the bar and pulling up a chair. “This is a gala day. Which one of you found the way over?”
“Me,” says Zoe with quiet pride.
“But I might learn how,” says Scud.
“What’s up?” says Villy, emerging from the bathroom. “I thought I heard Scud yelling. As usual.”
“Everyone’s being nice to me now,” Scud tells his big brother. “I’m a greenhorn hero, old buckaroo.”
“Whatever,” says Villy, as Zeke sets down three plates. “Is that my steak?”
“Thudd meat,” says Zoe, giving Scud a wink, and the two of them crack up. Exalted Sourdough Tale-Trappers that they are.
They have a friendly breakfast while the bearded Hungerford makes some remarks about Borderslam Pass. There are special rocks on the mountains along the basin borders. Especially in the passes. These are the starstones. A starstone has light-years of space scrunched up inside it. And that’s how widely separated planets can be right next to each other in mappyworld. All that extra junk is bunched up inside the starstones on the ridges.
Villy steers the conversation to the topic of where the hell they’re going to end up when they cross Borderslam Pass. Turns out there’s two different basins on the other side of the pass. That is, three basins meet here, making a corner like a Y. The first basin is the Earth-like Van Cott basin they’re in right now. The second basin is New Eden, a home base for the flying saucers. And the third basin holds a primeval jungle called Thuddland. In Thuddland, according to Hungerford, the full-size Thudds can bulk up to forty feet tall. Kind-faced Lucille confirms Hungerford’s claim that the big Thudds eat anything they consider meat, including people and Szep. But the most direct route to Szep City is, nevertheless, through Thuddland.
Piling on the wonders, lean Zeke says that the New Eden and Thuddland basins match ballyworld planets that are, respectively, fifteen and twenty light-years from Earth. Looking to fill out the picture, Scud goes over to the bubble creature Gunnar and tries sounding him out for more info.
“Crabs in next basin,” declares the zonked Bubbler. “Big, smart crabs. Not Thudds.” But then he pauses, with his single eye staring down into his mug of green liquid soap. “Oh, vait, Crab Crater is near Flatsie Pass by vhere I live, not here by Borderslam Pass.”
“Where do you live?” asks Scud.
“In basin called Bubble Badlands, other side of Surf World basin. I going home there soon. I came all the vay here to Borderslam to get a starstone for my vife Monika. I vas scared to collect them myself, zo I traded Hungerford a bubblegun for one. But my vill vas veak. Yesterday I ate the new starstone on my own, and had a crazy good time, and now I got nuttin. Dot’s vhy you paying for this tchampagne, Scood.”
Meanwhile, Villy has four cups of coffee, amping himself up. And then they’re outside with Nunu, Meatball, Pinchley, and Yampa. It’s cold as hell, but none of the four aliens seems to mind. They’re sitting in the sun on the inn’s ramshackle porch. Yampa is showing them her pictures. The images appear in midair, solid-looking and fully 3D. Like spliced-in volumes of space. There’s a shot from the Szep’s party last night, with Yampa throwing her blouse across the room. Yampa says she might put this photo on Lady Filippa’s pillowcase.
Scud’s busy worrying about the trip. He edges around Yampa’s holographic, animated super-picture and goes to Pinchley. “You know about Borderslam Pass, right?”
“Wal, I told you that Yampa and me came to the Earth basin by a different way. But we did hear things, hanging around the market. And we’ve crossed a buttload of passes before.” Pinchley points at the steep slope across the windy strait. “See that faint zigzag line? That’s gonna be our road. Or a piss-poor excuse for one. A mini Thudd last night told me the road peters out at the bottom end of a rockslide up top. We’ll have to gun the whale up that slide and then weave through a field with big, chunky starstones. You know about them?”
“I’m trying to get a starstone from one of the guys inside,” says rock hound Scud.
“Good,” says Pinchley. “Here’s the deal. The ridges between the basins are squeezed-up space. And the parts with stars in them bulge into starstones. Hundreds and thousands of stars in a rock the size of your leg. Giant nebulas. Light-year volumes of space.”
“Are the starstones alive?” wonders Scud.
“Not exactly running around doing push-ups,” says Pinchley. “Not alive like that. But you get a feeling they’re—payin’ attention. Don’t you think, Yampa?”
“Old gold souls,” says Yampa, who’s studying her picture of Zoe’s room. “Clots and knots of smeel.”
“How about the next basin over?” asks Scud. “It’s really giant Thudds?”
“Thudds bigger than houses,” says Pinchley. “Trees like skyscrapers. We gonna be tiny vermin, son. We gonna move fast. Did the innkeepers say if Irav has been by?”
“A car drove by, yeah,” says Scud. “With the four pieces of Irav. Do you remember that we cut him up, and that all the pieces are alive?
“Seems like if you chopped up a Szep, the pieces would be dead,” says Pinchley, really doubting him.
“Therefore, Irav wasn’t a Szep,” says Scud. He’s been thinking this over.
A long pause. Scud can’t guess what Pinchley’s
thinking. Scud’s teep slug isn’t all that good at probing the hidden recesses of alien minds. It’s like staring at walls of moving hieroglyphs.
“Did Nunu seem surprised?” asks Pinchley presently. “About the pieces coming back to life?”
Scud shakes his head. “Nunu—she never says much. We could ask her now.”
“Waste of time,” says Pinchley. “I just wonder if Nunu and this Irav thing are working together. Maybe that fight with Irav was an act.”
“And how would Meatball fit in?” says Scud.
“Hard to be sure where she’s at,” says Pinchley. “Freeth have been known to work for the saucers. I’m not sure we should have Meatball and Nunu along. Could be they’re out for sabotage.”
Now here comes skinny Hungerford, running out of the Borderslam Inn. He’s holding out a chunk of starstone—impossibly beautiful. Transparent, polished and rounded, with brilliant specks of light at its dark center—a vision of vast, empty space. The primeval cosmos. Thanks to his teep slug, Scud can hear the starstone in his head. It’s sending out a low, slow sound, like an organ note that never stops. An endless Om.
“Hang on,” Scud tells Hungerford. “I’ll get my fossils.” And then he’s in the back of the whale rooting around. He extracts his specimens from his pack.
“Come kiss me more,” Nunu whispers to Scud. Once again, she’s glued herself to the underside of the car’s roof. “We make real sure we like married.”
Zoe is watching them from her perch in the front seat, secretly full of laughter, and Meatball’s watching too. Scud feels wildly uneasy. Worse than that, he feels ashamed.
“I don’t want to make out with you again,” he tells Nunu. “It’s not right. It’s not what a human is supposed to do. I mean, you’re nice, but—”
