by Rudy Rucker
“It’s not my fault I’m autistic,” said Chu, making his voice very small.
“Don’t pick on him,” said Ond. “It’s not easy being Chu.”
“Sorry,” said Thuy. “I’m all keyed up.” She studied a group of giants calmly inching down the sidewalk their way. The San Francisco Highbraners were so used to seeing Ond and Chu around town that the Lobrane gnomes didn’t attract all that much notice here.
“I do too worry about other people anyway,” said Chu. “I worry about Bixie and about Nektar. I worry about Ond. Will Nektar ever want him back?”
“We’ll sort it out when we get home,” said Ond. “It’s okay, Chu, I’ll find someone.”
“The night we came here, Ond messaged ‘I love you’ to Jil,” confided Chu. “Do you think Jil loves Ond back, Thuy?”
“I’ve never heard Jil talk about Ond,” said Thuy. “But we do know that she’s breaking up with her husband. Could be that Ond has a chance.”
“Craigor tried to make babies with Nektar,” said Chu, who was bursting with all the information he’d gleaned from his merge with Thuy. “But now they don’t like each other. Sex and love don’t make sense.”
“You’re learning,” said Thuy.
“While you were asleep I looked under your clothes and my weenie got stiff,” Chu now told Thuy.
“That’s more than enough, Chu,” said Ond.
“Why not say everything, since we can read each others’ minds?”
“We have that issue with the orphidnet, too,” mused Thuy. “It’s all a matter of what you call attention to. Being polite means not emphasizing certain things.”
“You mean like—”
“I mean shut up.” Thuy flashed a grin at Chu so he wouldn’t take this to heart. Good for him if he thought she was sexy.
They’d come to the end of the interesting part of this street. “You want to turn around and walk back?” Ond asked Thuy.
“Sure,” said Thuy. “Sooner or later she’s bound to notice us.” They were waiting for Gladax to pop up and capture Thuy. Part of the plan. But Gladax was being slow on the uptake, which gave Thuy time to examine the stores.
The clothes on display were funkier than at home, each item unique, and everything very colorful. Things weren’t so industrialized here in the Hibrane. With no digital computers, the vibe was much more kicked back.
The leathers and wools were individually tweaked by craftspeople called coaxers. Fashion coaxers got into telepathic synch with animals’ bodies so as to influence the colors and textures of the creatures’ skin or hair. They coaxed fiber plants as well: cotton, sisal, flax. Some of the coaxed fabrics harbored special psychic properties. For instance, you could buy underwear that emanated shame-and-outrage vibes, positioning you as forbidden fruit.
Down the block, some well-dressed Hibraners were enjoying a late lunch in a cozy restaurant. Each plateful of food was teep-tagged with the history of how the ingredients had been produced, plus images of the chef’s preparation process, plus eating advice: “I’m crisp and lemony”; “Pry up this trout cheek to get a nice nugget of meat”; “Dip me in that green sauce.”
Next door was a bar, but Thuy found it hard to teep inside, as the drinkers’ vibes were screened off by the aggressive mental stylings of a so-called distractor. The distractor was visible in the doorway, a black swami with a shaved head and his muscular arms crossed. He wore a calfskin coaxed to resemble a leopard pelt. He was a living hub of links, assessing people’s interests and instantly routing them to minds and scenes likely to divert their focus of attention. It took a real effort to teep past him.
But Thuy managed, and teeped a flashy woman sitting inside the bar with a man. The woman was a paid escort named Balla. Balla’s vibes were delicious; she’d honed the skill of offering her short-term partners an emotional sense of intimacy and shared history—magically divorced from empathy and commitment. Seeing Balla slowly brush back a lock of hair, Thuy had the brief impression that she knew this woman—though of course the illusion was as thin as the skin of a balloon.
And then the distractor spun Thuy’s attention across the street into an art gallery. Roundish sculptures like river-tumbled stones were teep-tagged to project exalted emotional states: wonder, transcendence, sensual pleasure, bliss—the vibes polished by years in the currents of the meditative artist’s mind.
A bit further down the street, the Metotem Metabooks location housed something like a bookshop—but with no paper and no printed words. Although the telepathic Hibraners sometimes used the shorthand of language, they seemed never to trouble themselves with writing out words in phonetic form. Why transcribe grunts when you can read minds? Hibrane authors were more like cartoonists or directors, assembling blocks of mental states, creating networks of glyphs. Their works were embedded as teep-tags within handicraft items: tie-dyed scarves, bead necklaces, carved bits of wood.
Picking up on Thuy’s thoughts, the owner, who actually looked a bit like a giant Darlene, stepped slowly from the store. “You’re fresh from the Lobrane?” she boomed, then switched to teeping. “I’m Durga. And you’re a metanovelist? Would you like to record something for me to sell?”
“Go ahead, Thuy,” urged Ond. “Chu and I come here all the time. Show Wheenk to Durga. It’s beautiful; you should be proud. And if you share, it’ll enhance understanding between the two branes.”
“Do we get a snack today?” Chu asked Durga.
Durga found some doll-sized teacups that were just right for them, although her spice cookies were the size of garbagecan lids. She broke one in pieces for them. Chu took a seat in one of the big soft chairs, studying a little metal pig that contained an animal adventure tale expressed from the point of view of a piglet. Ond and Thuy sat next to him on the big chair, Ond fondling a felt decoupage wallet that encoded a rambling, anecdotal survey of Hibrane science.
Thuy’s mind was alert. Nibbling her cookie and sipping her tea, she checked out the vibes of the far-flung islands where the tea and spices had grown. And then she took a few minutes to arrange her mental representation of Wheenk along the seemingly endless spike of memory that the curious topology of Hibrane space had given her. When she was done, she teeped the images and emotions to Durga, who was sitting in a chair nearby. Right away Durga routed copies of Wheenk onto, of all things, five little cactuses in handmade pots.
“Once I sell these off, I’ll make more,” said Durga. “I’ll give you half the profits—if you’re still here to collect.” She gave Thuy an empathetic smile. With amazing mental rapidity, Durga had already absorbed much of Wheenk. “I hope things work out for you and Jayjay.”
Of course that set off a fresh round of self-flagellation in Thuy’s head, along the lines of, “Why was I so cold to Jayjay for so long!” To distract herself from her tedious internal wheenking, Thuy teeped around the enormous room, skimming across the masses of data in the items on display. “Can I read one of these?”
“Sure. You pick. Relax and enjoy.”
Thuy was just settling in with a dried gardenia that contained a romance adventure when—as they’d been expecting—Gladax appeared, old and strict. For once Gladax wasn’t dressed like a street person—instead she was swathed in the virtual robes of her mayoral office. She shimmered with the diverse faces of the Hibrane San Francisco citizenry, thousands of gold-framed images cascading from her shoulders like sheets of water. A further tessellation of faces rose up behind her head like a peacock’s fan. But, as before, she was carrying a net.
Ond grabbed Thuy’s arm, as if restraining her. “I was about to bring her to you,” Ond told Gladax in an ingratiating tone.
Thuy could see that Chu was literally biting his tongue to keep from contradicting his father. It pained the literal-minded boy to hear an untruth.
“Stand back,” said Gladax, swaying her net. Her hands were like slow butterflies against the glittering mosaic of faces. The rubbery net floated down; Thuy let herself be trapped. Gladax cinched the bonds aro
und Thuy; Ond lent a hand.
Thuy struggled, but not for real—that would come later. Already she could feel why the net was elastic. For a dense, powerful gnome, the flexible meshes posed more of a problem than brittle ropes and chains.
Gladax forced some images into Thuy’s mind: views of a long, sunny room with straw mats on the floor. A gold harp sat upright at the room’s end. Chinese scroll landscapes hung upon the walls. This was the exercise room in Gladax’s mansion: their teleportation target. And now, pop, they were there. Teleportation was very easy with lazy eight.
Gladax’s tai chi room occupied the eastern side of the first floor of the house. Tightly bound and lying on her side, Thuy was facing a long window with a view of the garden. Winter and spring flowers were in bloom: oversized poinsettias, cyclamens, irises, tulips, freesias, snowdrops, and jonquils—bright against the gray background of the lowering sky. All the petals were in shades of red. The coaxer-tweaked blossoms seemed to have a certain level of intelligence: there was a considered elegance to the way they bobbed in the breeze; more than that, they were faintly messaging a tune.
The rubber net lurched, slamming Thuy’s knee into her chin. She saw stars. Grunting with effort, Gladax was hauling the net into the air, using a rope through a pulley in the ceiling. Annoyed at being so roughly handled, Thuy made her first really serious effort to tear out of the net. But to no avail. The elastic meshes absorbed her kicks, only to snap back the harder.
The net rose higher, bringing Thuy’s face even with Gladax’s. Gladax had set aside her mayoral trappings; she was back to looking like a sloppy old woman in dark green sweatpants and a souvenir T-shirt.
“I’ll have to addle that jump-code away from you,” Gladax told Thuy. She secured the net. And now she extruded a slender rod of light from the tip of her forefinger; the glowing probe was six or seven inches in length. “If you cooperate, this won’t have to hurt you. I have a very delicate touch.”
“All I want is to stop Luty’s nants,” cried Thuy. “You want that too. Don’t stick that thing in my head. Let me—let me take your harp back to the Lobrane and I’ll leave right away.”
Gladax snorted impatiently. “Upstart gnome. That harp’s been in my family for over twenty generations. From the Dutch side. You wouldn’t know how to use it. You’d ruin it, likely as not. Or let the subbies steal it from you while you’re jumping branes.”
Thuy could telepathically sense Ond and Chu in the street outside Gladax’s mansion. They were supposed to save her by tunneling up through the floor. But right now they were arguing rather than digging in. Uneasily Thuy recalled how poorly the father and son had done in their practice video games.
Gladax leaned closer, narrowing her finger ray to the thinness of a knitting needle. She pursed her lips in concentration, humming to herself. As the net rotated, Thuy went into a frenzy of kicking and stopped only when her knee collided with her chin again. Big dogs were barking somewhere nearby. Thuy saw the garden, a door, the wispy paintings, and, at the other end of the room, the gold-leafed harp, small by Hibrane standards, but nearly as tall as Thuy. Its strings were as linear flaws in space, like transparent tubes warping the view of the wall. The soundbox had colors on it.
Gladax hopped over to the antique harp. “I’m going to isolate you now,” she said. “I wouldn’t want you to be messaging anything to your little friends.”
Maybe Thuy should teleport herself out of here before—
ZONGGG
—it was too late. Gladax had struck the harp. The sweet, icky chord hung in the air. There was no way to be at ease with the harp’s vibration, which showed no sign of damping down. Everything on the psychic plane was wavy, messy, screwed up. Telepathy was impossible. Thuy no longer heard the songs of the flowers or the quarreling of Chu and Ond. But, thank God, she heard the calm voice of Azaroth, low and slow. He’d just walked into the tai chi room, talking aloud.
“It’s about your garden, Aunt Gladax,” said Azaroth. “Sorry to interrupt. I got a message from the plant-coaxer. He’s too shy to teep you himself. Some of the flowers want to change color.”
“What!” exclaimed Gladax, taking the bait. “I told those flowers they have to stay red right through to the end of the Cuttlemas holidays.”
“You’d better come outside and explain it to the flowers yourself,” rumbled Azaroth. “This little Lobraner—Thuy, isn’t it? Should I watch her for you?”
“I don’t trust you alone with her,” said Gladax. “I know you two are friends. You come out to the garden with me, nephew. My harp will keep Thuy isolated. My harp likes to sing.” Gladax inched open the door to the garden and inhaled a deep breath of fresh air. “I need to settle my nerves. That chord is so dreadful. It curdles the auras.”
“Do you really have to addle Thuy?” asked Azaroth.
“I have to erase her knowledge of the jump-code, and thanks to her I’ll have to addle Ond and even Chu again. I suppose you know those two gnomes were planning to tunnel into my house. I just sicced my new dogs on them. I’m not such an old fool as you and those jitsy Lobraners think—you and your silly animal disguises. And, no, I’m not letting the clumsy gnomes take my precious harp.”
A long uneasy silence. “I never underestimate you, Aunt Gladax,” said Azaroth finally, his face a polite mask.
“It’ll be easier for me to addle Thuy if she cooperates,” said Gladax. “I really don’t want to hurt the girl. Can’t you have a word with her?”
“No use,” said Azaroth, barely glancing at Thuy. “You’ve seen how she is.”
“Feisty,” muttered Gladax. “Too smart for her own good.” She shook her head. “Let’s do the easy thing first. Let’s talk to the damned flowers.” Moving like molasses, Azaroth and Gladax made their way outdoors.
Alone in the tai chi room, Thuy began stretching her bonds in earnest. Rather than struggling at random, she pulsed her kicks and shoves to match the rubber’s resonant rate. With each pulse she extended her legs and arms a little further. And then she broke the rhythm with a double pulse, catching the material on its way in. This was enough. A band snapped.
Gladax was berating her gardener and her flowers, while Azaroth, watching Thuy from the corner of his eye, did his best to block Gladax’s line of sight. Wriggling like an eel, Thuy got free of the broken net and thudded heavily to the straw mat. Fortunately she landed well. Sticking close to the floor, she wormed down the length of the room to the harp, a gilded triangle resting on one corner. This instrument was strung with thirty-four furiously vibrating strings that seemed somehow higher-dimensional.
The harp’s front edge was a fluted wooden column with a scrolled capital, the rear edge was a tapering hollow-bodied wooden soundbox, and the crosspiece on top was an elegant S-curve. The flat inner side of the soundbox bore a masterful oil painting of a teeming garden of Eden. Two lovers were listening to the music of a winged, pale blue demon playing his own little harp. The lovers looked familiar. Like Jayjay and Thuy? Impossible. From what Gladax had said about inheriting the harp from her ancestors, the instrument must have been five or six hundred years old.
Thuy took the harp in both hands; although shoulder-high, it felt light. She tiptoed towards the door connecting the tai chi room to the rest of the house.
The harp’s sound rose in pitch and—just like a fairy-tale harp—she cried out to Gladax in a woman’s voice. “Mistress! Save me!”
Thuy laid her hand across the harp strings. The space-warping tubes tingled against her, but when she pushed forcefully enough they fell still. And now her telepathy was working again. For just a moment she could sense the strange otherworldly mind of the harp. The harp was an intelligent being from another order of reality. Gazing into her mind was like standing at the lip of a high, windy cliff. Thuy grew dizzy; she tottered on her feet. But then a veil dropped and the harp was once again a manageable triangle of wood.
Out in the garden Azaroth had clamped his aunt in a bear-hug. He was talking to her; he was pleading
for her to let Thuy be. Good Azaroth.
According to Ond’s overly elaborate plan, at this point he and Chu were supposed to appear through a tunnel they’d dug through the floor. But there hadn’t been any dogs in the boys’ video game simulation of the house. Teeping the street, Thuy saw them backed up against the house’s front steps by two huge mastiffs.
Lugging the now silent harp, Thuy made her way through winding hallways to Gladax’s front door. The heavy door was locked, so Thuy kicked a big hole in the stucco wall next to the door.
As she emerged, one of the dogs came up the steps. Thuy set down the harp, sprang at the beast and thumped him on the side of his head. The monster shook off the blow; he had a skull like a boulder. But Thuy kept up her attack, raining blows. Yes, the dogs were big, but they were slow. And when Thuy began punching their soft noses, the brutes turned tail, and ran up the street.
“Come on!” Thuy yelled to Ond and Chu, standing there at the bottom of the steps. “Help me carry the harp. We’re heading home!”
The three of them trotted two blocks down the hill, Ond holding one end of the painted harp. The dogs were loudly barking—but they weren’t going to attack again. At the bend of the street they found a vest-pocket park with a bench and a bed of chrysanthemums. Catching their breath on the bench, the three had a view west over the pastel buildings of the city toward the ocean, the bay, and the Hibrane version of the Golden Gate Bridge. The waters lay sullen and gray below the wintry afternoon sky. But the city looked peaceful and human-scale. It was nice to think there were no digital computers here.
“We have to focus on my Knot now,” said Chu.
“Yes,” said Thuy. She’d been here—how long? Only an hour by the slow Hibrane clocks—but six hours of her body’s time, six hours of Lobrane time. Was Jayjay okay? Surely the Big Pig hadn’t released the nants yet, had she?
