by Rudy Rucker
To drown out the lullaby, I began braying out the first song that came to mind, some random classic of punk rock. Coached by Weena’s teep, I held out my hands and willed my jiva to send tendrils from my fingertips. The tendrils appeared, glowing a faint red.
I sank my tendrils into the yuel and my resident jiva began siphoning off his energy. The doomed Rickben sent a pseudopod my way, but I dodged him. And then, aha, I’d drained him down to a lump, to a slug, to a last left-over noodle lying across Ginnie’s foot.
Ginnie picked up the blue noodle and—ate it.
“What are you thinking!” I scolded. “It might be poisonous.”
“Hell, you ate the rest of it,” said Ginnie. “Yuels are full of—what’s that word Weena used? Kessence. With the condition I’m in, I’m never hungry for regular food.”
Ginnie was interrupted by Weena’s cheers from the second floor. “Jim conquers the father yuel—the vile Rickben! You’re a wonderful assistant, Jim! Glory shall be thine!” She was still holding the axe, its steel head drenched in gore. The two free-floating jivas were sweeping their tendrils across the lawn, sniffing out any last any yuel fragments that remained.
“Heavy,” said Ira. “So who’s going through that tunnel in the cellar now?”
“Jim and I!” intoned Weena from on high. “I’ll take Jim to the Duke to prepare his great mission. This is urgent, the yuels are more aggressive than we’d foreseen. I find it interesting that the Graf would smuggle the yuel Rickben within his body’s mass. The Graf was liquidated, yes, but the yuel escaped the Graf ’s body and entered Header’s skull, undoubtedly to eat his brain. And Header slimed out a yuel-bud when Jim arrived. A Rickben Junior.”
“Header,” echoed Ginnie softly. “You’re saying he was a zombie when I met him at the surf break. A dead body controlled by an alien yuel in his head. I guess that’s why—”
“Quick now, it’s time for Flimsy!” interrupted Weena, cutting off the conversation. She ran down through the house and joined us in the yard, all the while wiping blood off her hands and arms with one of Header’s T-shirts.
“I’m not going anywhere with Weena,” said Ira. “I don’t trust her at all.”
“Nobody’s asking your opinion,” said Weena tartly. “I only want Jim.”
“I’d like it better if Ginnie would come,” I said. I turned to the dark, punky waif. “Would you be up for it?”
“Well...maybe,” said Ginnie, giving me a weak smile. Her short hair framed her pert face like feathers. “I’ve pretty well run all the changes I can on Earth. And I’m really upset about—” She gestured at Header’s maimed corpse.
“Would you youngsters drag those remains onto the steps?” ordered Weena, ignoring our conversation. “The house and the porch and the steps are dimensionally obscured, but whatever we leave on the ground will be visible in the empty lot that the commoners see. No need to stir up trouble before you return with your delivery, Jim. Step lively and move that thing!”
Ira alone took hold of the corpse’s legs and ineffectually tugged. Ginnie turned away and stared at the glowing haze. I blocked out Weena and stood beside Ginnie, putting my arm around her. How soft and insubstantial she felt.
With theatrical sighs and grumbles, Weena helped Ira schlep the corpse halfway up the steps to the deck, and tied it in place with the belt of the bathrobe.
“That’s sufficient,” she said impatiently. “And why are you canoodling, Jim? Open the goddamn fucking magic door!” She broke off and forced a smile. “I regret that I’m beginning to speak as coarsely as you.”
“What about Ginnie?”
“Very well then, it’s fine if Ginnie comes. You see how I cosset you, Jim? Ginnie, you should swallow one of those two jivas. She’ll help you on the trip.”
One of the two jivas got small and drifted over to Ginnie’s face. She resembled a rosy grape with a curly tail.
“Tell me again what she’s going to do to me?” said Ginnie.
“The jivas tune you towards optimal fitness,” said Weena. “And you’ll have telepathy. And you’ll be able to make zickzack objects from of empty space. Oh wait, Ginnie, you’d do well to take a dose of my tonic first. Jim had already taken some last week.”
Weena dug out her depleted stash of sprinkles and offered it. The jewel-like capsules were crawling over each other like ants in a colony. Weena drizzled a little kessence onto them, squeezing the aethereal substance from her fingertips.
“They’re pretty,” said Ginnie, leaning over the little bag.
“Like wonderful candy, my dear,” urged Weena. “They’ll put new voices into your head and make you jiva-ready. Go go go.”
“My dose of sprinkles put me in the hospital,” I told Ginnie. “Just so you know.”
“I insist that was only a coincidence,” cried Weena, flying into a passion. “You weakling. You whiner. You sensualist.”
“At least I’m not a hundred and thirty,” I yelled. “Killer. Schemer. Bitch.”
“And wasn’t it the sprinkles that put Header in a coma tonight?” interrupted Ginnie before we could continue.
“Oh, no, no, no,” said Weena, calming herself by main force. “I rather suspect Header’s slumber was from the opiates he sniffed.” She gave me a cold look. “And, Jim, before you start accusing me of being a killer, do keep in mind that it wasn’t really Header whom I axed. A yuel was controlling his body. Let’s not muddle our discussion by flinging unwarranted epithets. Do eat the sprinkles now, Ginnie, dear.”
“What the hey,” said Ginnie, dipping into Weena’s stash and taking a pinch of the plump, writhing sprinkles. “Something to pick me up. I’m so bummed from all this blood.”
Having tasted the sprinkles, Ginnie leaned towards the little pink jiva and opened her mouth. The cherry-sized jiva floated in. Absorbing the new sensations, Ginnie gave a slow shudder and smiled.
“So don’t offer me anything, Weena,” said Ira venomously.
The single remaining jiva was hovering high overhead. She was a green turnip the size of a cow, with a vivid yellow zigzag stripe around her waist and a purple cap on top.
“That jiva’s not for you,” said Weena. “She’s going to stay here and maintain a presence.” She smiled up at the floating jiva. “Right, Sukie? You can go ahead and lay some eggs here when you’re ready.”
“So fine,” said Ira shortly. “Skeeves and I will keep an eye on things here. I’m not ready to leave anyway.”
Now that Ginnie had a jiva, I could feel a teep contact with her. Our invisibly fine jiva tendrils were woven together. Ginnie and I began swapping emotions and thoughts—although not without a certain reserve. There was some kind of mystery about Ginnie, something crashingly obvious that I couldn’t quite get. Seeing more information, I turned my attention back to Weena.
“What about that guy who hatched out the jivas?” I asked her, looking for another piece to the puzzle. “Dick Simly. Did it kill him?”
“You’re try my patience with your inquisition,” said Weena. “Who cares about every petty detail!”
“I care,” I said. I was liking her less all the time. “If you keep it up, I might not be going to Flimsy with you at all.”
“It’s possible that Dick Simly is as hale and randy as before,” said Weena, trying again for a cajoling tone. “But why worry ourselves? He was your enemy.” She threw her blood-smeared arms around my waist and tried to kiss me. “Really, the best thing about all this is that I’ve met you, dear Jim.”
I twisted away from her.
“Think what you like about me,” said Weena in a long-suffering tone. “But I promise you’ll be welcomed by the Duke and Duchess of Human Flimsy! They’ll commission you to make a wonderful improvement to your world. And, don’t forget, you’ll have the opportunity to find your dead wife Val. Perhaps Ginnie can be your mistress over there as well. Who knows? We’re very liberal about these matters in Flimsy.”
Clearly Weena was untrustworthy. But I was eager for more adve
nture. And certainly the journey was worth any price if I might bring back Val.
I went and put my hand on the cellar door.
As before, the door reacted to my touch. This time I’d meant to side-step it when it fell outwards. But I stumbled and, once again, I was pinned beneath the round panel.
12: The Tunnel
Working in harmony, Ginnie and Weena helped me out from under the door, with Droog digging at the sandy soil as well. Ira stood off to one side, sullenly watching.
“If you can’t learn to open that door without getting crushed, you should just let me do it,” Ginnie remarked to me. “You can open it too?” I said. Now that I knew about the border snail, I realized the door was a disk of mollusk shell. “Sure,” said Ginnie. “Remember? I let the Graf come through. Snaily likes me. She even lets me find her house.”
A direct ray from the rising sun filtered in through the space-maze and landed squarely on the hole of the cellar entrance—as if this were Stonehenge at the summer solstice. Weena emitted a throbbing chirp.
A greenish-brown mass pushed forth from the cellar door, a slimy surface of puckers and bumps, gradually taking on detailed form. A pointy tip protruded, then two flexible tentacles, and a pair of stalks with glistening black balls on the ends—
“See, Jim!” said Ginnie. “It’s Snaily! With feelers and eyes. She grew us this house.”
The snail swelled up her bulk and made a chittering creak in response—not with her mouth, but by shaking the Whipped Vic above her, lifting the place ever so slightly off the ground.
“Here we go, Jim,” said Weena, once again assuming her kind and cozy mode. “This house is a snail shell, yes. There’s plenty of these border snails, I think, but they’re hard to find. Snaily sought me out because I knew of the weak spot in the wall that you made.”
“With my special tip,” said Ira, perking up. “But I still don’t understand how anyone can walk through the snail.”
“We go into her mouth,” said Weena in the artificially bright tone one uses with a querulous child. “And her other end is in Flimsy. The land of the flims.”
“That’s not a real tunnel,” I protested, not liking the way things were playing out.
“It’s a tunnel through the border snail’s body,” said Weena. “In through mouth, gullet, stomach, and then out through her other gullet and mouth. She has two heads, you see, one in each world. She doesn’t eat with her heads, she eats directly with her stomach—which she positions among the teeming sprinkles of the living water.”
“What’s the living water?” demanded Ira. “I never heard anything about that.”
“The living water forms a shell around the Flimsy world,” said Weena. “It’s a womb, a hull, a rind. The surface of what you call an electron. Just now, this surface happens to intersect the center of Snaily’s gut. She likes it that way.”
I didn’t have the heart to start an argument about Weena’s odd image of an electron. Whether or not her notions made quantum-mechanical sense, they seemed in some way to match the bizarre levels of reality that I’d blundered into.
The giant snail raised her flattened tip, revealing a floppy, toothless mouth the size of a car door. The house groaned again, and Header’s corpse shifted on the steps.
“I’m not sure I can handle this,” said Ginnie.
“It’ll be quite comfortable,” said Weena. “I’m going to prop Snaily’s mouth open with my tendrils. But there’s something that Jim and I have to do in the basement first. I’ll go get that part ready. I’ll call you in a minute, Jim.” She squeezed past the flank of the snail and into the dank basement—where I’d seen Skeeves’s golden sarcophagus before.
“I’m glad I’m not going yet,” said Ira. “It might be a one-way trip. And, like I said, I’m not ready to leave Skeeves, romantic fool that I am. Imagine me on the waves, guys. A ruffle of ripples, a flash of sun, a yesteryear memory.”
“Oh, Ira,” said Ginnie. “It’s all too sad.”
“Why do you say it could be a one-way trip?” I asked, wondering if there were some big snag that I hadn’t heard about yet.
“You still haven’t figured it out?” said Ira, his voice faint and mocking. “Surfing accidents? Woman’s body in a car?”
Even now, I didn’t want to understand what he was getting at. I turned away from Ira and took Ginnie’s hand. Weena was still out of sight, clattering around in the basement.
Ginnie raised our joined hands, studying the pair like a cryptic glyph. “What do you really think is going to happen between us, Jim? You don’t know anything about me at all.”
But—thanks to our telepathic link—I did. Peering into Ginnie’s memories, I saw her as an awkward lonely girl from a broken home in Sacramento, her father gone to Alaska, and her mother working as an administrative assistant at a megachurch. Ginnie got into the skater scene in high school, then spent a year as a student at Sacramento State, graffiti-bombing the government buildings and running the soundboard for a punk club.
Ginnie had a drummer boyfriend named Goon, not that Goon used actual drums—he had input gloves that amplified the taps and rustles of his fingertips. Ginnie left school and her kind-of job to go to San Francisco with Goon. On the strength of her avant-garde chops, she landed a job as the sound tech at a Mission dance club.
Goon found work at a surf shop on Ocean Beach, and he’d get Ginnie free rental gear on weekdays. She began exploring the slopes of the ragged Pacific waves. It was all good for awhile, but then Goon moved in with a woman lawyer whose flat tire he’d changed near the beach. Ginnie couldn’t cover her rent alone. Looking for a mellower vibe, she hitchhiked down to Cruz...
At this point my access to Ginnie’s memories broke off.
“So it all leads up to this,” I said sententiously. “The fact that you’ve been able to find the Whipped Vic every night—that means something. And that Weena singled me out to help her—that’s significant, too. It’s destiny, Ginnie. We’ll be big celebs. Especially if I resurrect my dead wife.” I smiled, wanting Ginnie as well as Val.
“It’s pretty weird to imagine running off with you,” said Ginnie, letting go of my hand. “I mean—you’ve been living with that skanky Weena? And your wife died last year?”
“I can’t hide my past,” I said. “And I can’t hide that I see you as, as—” I hesitated, fighting back the phrase that had popped into my head.
“A punky furburger?” exclaimed Ginnie, reading my mind. “That’s what you think of me? Of all the rudeness.”
“I’m sorry, that’s how my thoughts run, I play with words. But of course I’m not absolutely assuming that you and I will, uh—” Again my thoughts were getting out of control.
“Not assuming, but hoping?” said Ginnie, her voice shooting up high on the final word. She broke into a laugh. “Not that I’m sure it’s even possible anymore. At least the jiva buffed you up. It’s hard to believe I actually swallowed one of those things, too. Do I look different?”
“Like a gritty saint,” I said, faintly perceiving a halo of jiva tendrils around Ginnie’s head. “Our Lady of the Soundboard.”
“There you go,” she said. “That’s the way to talk to a girl.”
“Very touching,” said Ira, watching us. “You move fast, Ginnie.”
“Why are you men so interesting in monitoring women’s sex lives?” said Ginnie sharply. “You’re like bellowing elk. Lower than that. Like computer viruses. And, Ira, you aren’t even interested in me that way. You’re gay for Skeeves, for God’s sake.”
“So?” yelled Ira, his face dark with anger. “I think it’s time we told your moon calf that we’re dead. Duh, Jim! Don’t you notice anything but the twitches of your dick?”
It took me a full minute to find my voice. The woman’s body in the Graf ’s car—that had been Ginnie. And Ira—
“Skeeves drowned me,” he said. “He says a voice in his head made him do it. And, dig this, the voice was Weena. You didn’t know that either, did you, Ji
m? Weena’s been orchestrating this whole freakshow.”
“Why—why would Weena and Skeeves kill you?” I stuttered.
“They didn’t want me walking around alive and knowing the secret of the tunnel. If I’m just a ghost, then most people can’t see me or hear me. I will say that Skeeves wasn’t a complete jerk about the hit. He brought along a big hunk of kessence from the border snail. And my sprinkle went straight from my flesh and into the kessence. And now I’m a wavy, groovy boy.” Ira wriggled his arms.
“It’s not like Skeeves had to listen to some crazy voice in his head,” put in Ginnie. “That’s no defense at all. You shouldn’t give him a free pass, Ira. Hearing voices is one thing. Killing people is something else. As far as I’m concerned, Skeeves and Weena both bear the guilt for killing you. And someday we’ll make them pay.”
I felt numb, unsteady on my feet. I was hanging around with ghosts?
“Am I dead too?” I asked. “Has everything since the hospital been a dream?”
“You’re still alive,” said Ira, giving me a rough poke. “All meat and full of shit.”
“You’re alive, but you’re very unusual,” added Ginnie in a kinder tone. “You found your way to this house on the border. And you’re able to see Ira and me. Mostly it’s just stoners and crazy people who notice us.”
“The people at the party last night?” I asked.
“A mix,” said Ira. “Some live, some dead. As for the rest of it—well, we’re as confused as you. Playing it by ear. Nothing left to lose.”
Weena reappeared just now, smiling out at us from around the bulge of the snail. “I’m ready for you now, Jim. Come here in the basement and lie down.”
“You’re going to kill me!” I cried. “Just like you killed Ira and Header.”
