by Rudy Rucker
The garbage-can-sized amber jiva behind this place’s counter bobbed up even with us. She had a cute teal band of trim around her waist, and a shiny gold ball on top. Her tail was like an extension cord, winding off into the store’s dark recesses. She wore a name tag that said, “May I Help You?”
“I want that one,” announced Durkle, pointing to a triple-decker club sandwich. “How do I pay?”
“Sandwich dream food,” said the clerk jiva. Extruding a tendril as delicate as a cucumber vine, she reached across the counter towards Durkle and—
“Get back!” I cried, shoving the boy to one side and getting Mijjy to dart out her own tendril to engage with the clerk’s.
The clerk was disappointed not to invade Durkle’s fresh young body. But she was willing to deal with me, as long as we had a tendril hookup. It was the same kind of deal as in the Ball story. She wanted me to think of a sandwich that she didn’t have in stock. She was working to enlarge the universality of her store, which was meant to become a repository of every variation upon the Sandwich form. You had to add a new exemplar in order to access one of the existing ones.
I explained all this to Durkle.
“Mutton plant on bread-flower petals?” he suggested. “Does she know about that?”
“Yesterday bread,” said the jiva. With an insolent toss of her topknot, she pointed a tendril to just such a sandwich, resting on a shelf in the next glass case.
“I bet you don’t have red caviar on pumpernickel rounds with minced onion,” I said to the clerk. But yes she did, that item was already tucked into a shelf on the wall behind us.
“Roast pigpop on toasted waffle cactus!” cried Durkle. “She won’t know about that. My family made it up.”
“Surprise food,” said the yellow jiva clerk. She hung there motionless, waiting for more information. I passed her the image via Mijjy. Thanks to our picnic on the bluff, I knew very well what this kind of sandwich looked like.
The jiva clerk created an archival pigpop sandwich for her display case, and crafted a club sandwich for Durkle. He snagged the offering with his long, flexible arm.
“It’s all just zickzack,” I told him. “Folded up scraps of space. Can’t you get that through your head? You really shouldn’t eat that thing. With no kessence in it, it’s not going to nourish you at all.”
“It’s delicious,” said the boy, biting in. “Those jivas can wrinkle up the zickzack so it tastes as good as kessence. Thanks.”
The amber beet-shape bowed.
“I just hope that sandwich doesn’t hatch inside you,” I muttered to Durkle. “Like those eggs inside the Dad-fruits.”
17: Deeper
We drifted out to the hallway, with the boy stubbornly munching away. Almost right away I bumped into the hipster in the purple suit.
“Can you hear me?” I asked him aloud. I was hoping to learn a bit more about this place.
He looked me over, still clutching his disco ball. After a moment he nodded and showed his teeth in a smile. “It’s a goof to see a fat ghost in here,” he said. “Bursting with flavor-rich kessence! Give me a taste.” He held out his hand.
I shook the ghost’s hand, and as soon as we touched I felt him drawing off energy—although not enough to really affect me.
“Wiggy!” said the ghost, savoring the dab of energy that he’d extracted. “I’m guessing that you just died and came here from Earth. You must be a hell of a fighter to be so fat so soon. Why don’t you and the kid fall by my pad?” He twirled his disco ball invitingly.
“Where is it?” I asked.
“On the bottom level, looming into the Dark Gulf. Ask any hipster about Bart’s pad. Lots of the shades know me. I’ve been on this scene for fifty years.”
“Maybe you could explain something to me,” I said. “What are these stores all about? Why are the jivas accumulating all these examples of every possible form?”
“Jivas are the brain-cells of the Flimsy mind,” said Bart. “They drone away at digging dirt and cataloguing facts. To fully understand, like, ‘Cactus,’ a jiva wants to see one of each. Every jive-ass cactus that there is.”
“And they’re willing to give you things just for telling them that kind of stuff?”
“Nothing’s ever free from a jiva,” said Bart. “You’ll be digging that bye and bye. Me, I avoid the hoo-haw, hanging in my pad down on level three. Fall by, man. It’s cool, don’t worry. We won’t cannibalize you. But, uh, could give me one more taste?”
“Okay. If you answer another question.”
“Always ready to help a greenhorn,” said Bart, drawing off another smidgen of my kessence.
“Have you met a lot of famous dead people here?” I asked him, thinking of some of the old-time SF writers I admired. “Like Robert Sheckley or Philip K. Dick? Or Philip José Farmer?”
“Never heard of them,” said Bart shaking his head. “It takes a while to dig how big this place is. Like—the first time I went to L.A., I was sure I’d be jamming guitar with Tawny Krush, or eating Lureen Morales’s snatch. But all I saw was crowds of goobs. It’s the same here but more so. Here comes everybody. I gotta split now. Come see me.”
Bart strutted down the hall, jazzed on the energy he’d leeched. And then he ducked into a staircase and was gone.
At this point my jiva, Mijjy, called for my attention. She’d been busy stretching tendrils to explore this sloppy maze of tacked-together rooms.
“Queen bed,” she now told me, which meant very little to me. But by studying her teep imagery, I quickly learned that she’d found the lair where the Earthmost Jiva herself spent her nights.
“But—isn’t her burrow by the Duke’s castle?” I objected. “And that’s supposed to be fifty miles from the monster pit.”
Mijjy pulsed me a sound like a laugh. “Journey hop,” she teeped. “Burrow hall corner.”
Guided by Mijjy, Durkle and I continued on our way. The shops and side-corridors shifted in odd perspectives. We were passing stores of increasingly high-end categories—a Gem, a Violin, and an Orchid. The walls were encrusted with ornament, sporting bronze wreaths and panels of colored marble.
The hallway ended at a sloping lip that marked the edge of a vast, nest-like depression in the mall. And the living water overhead was arched in a static dome, its upper surface patterned with the agitated sprinkles.
The great round chamber was perhaps a mile across. A tassled crimson cushion covered half the floor, an absurdly large thing, mounded with what I initially took to be golden braid. But now, as the glowing tangles upon the cushion shifted, I realized they were the branchings of a monumental jiva tail, a thick tube that led up through the domed ceiling like a kelp stalk—presumably connecting to the Earthmost Jiva above.
Even as I grasped this, a vibration pulsed through the chamber. Everything got shorter, then taller, then shorter again. A wash of musical tones cascaded over us, and the space flickered with veils of color, shading ever higher into the bright. Amid a rising blare, the great jiva lowered herself into view. She passed through the living water ceiling as readily as an arm through a soap-film.
The Earthmost Jiva’s enormous bristly bottom turned my vision dark with light. But rather than going blind, I went past white, past black, and into a new mode of sight. Call it a higher octave. I could still see the mall and the ghosts and the jiva—but everything had an ultramarine tinge to it, and seemed a bit translucent. Maybe it would be like this to see with X-rays.
“And, yea, when dusk falleth upon the world of flim, Her Serenity doth renew herself in the caverns of the underworld,” intoned Durkle. “The Book of Jiva.” Evidently he was quoting a scripture that he’d been forced to memorize.
Twenty times the length of a whale, the Earthmost Jiva was a brilliant pale shade that I may as well call yellow, with a marginally darker stripe around her middle and a reddish-tinged hump upon her top. She settled onto the vast crimson cushion, resting on the heaped tangles of her tail. She looked like a golden beet in a c
atcher’s mitt. I noticed that one thick branch of her tail led down past the cushion and through the floor to the levels below.
Mijjy called out to the Earthmost Jiva, petitioning for attention, but for now the mammoth creature had other concerns. She was using her web of roots to feed—by leeching kessence from the local ghosts.
It worked like this. The Earthmost Jiva coiled and shortened some of the branches leading off her tail, drawing in hundreds of jiva clerks. Each of the shopkeepers in this district was but a nodule upon the Earthmost Jiva’s tendrils. And the clerks themselves had secondary vines leading to their customers—who included most of the ghosts in this zone of the underworld, perhaps ten thousand of them.
A phrase beloved by spammers popped into my head: “We reserve the right to contact individuals with whom we have an existing business relationship.” If you acquired things from the shops down here, the shopkeepers reserved the right to drag you into contact with the hungry bristles of the Earthmost Jiva.
I felt a tug as the clerk from the Sandwich store went lurching past. I realized that I was connected to her via an invisibly fine tendril that remained from our transaction. I might have been dragged down into the accumulating dogpile around the Earthmost Jiva, but fortunately I was strong enough to break my connection to the clerk.
Soon the Earthmost Jiva’s nest was mounded with tendrils, jiva clerks and ghosts. The solar beet was draining kessence from the wretched spirits that she’d captured. They grew thinner and fainter as I watched. One by one they collapsed down to sprinkles. Many of the sprinkles were eaten as well, although a few rose like fretful gnats to the domed ceiling, returning to the living water estuary of the Dark Gulf. It was fortunate for the local ecosystem that new ghosts were continually arriving from Earth.
Among the Earthmost Jiva’s captives was the peach-colored figure whom I’d noticed before. Taking pity on this womanly ghost, I had Mijjy send out a sharpened tendril that severed the Earthmost Jiva’s links to her. Once freed, the pinkish-yellow specter flitted away, darting into one of the corridors.
I felt a curious attraction towards this ghost woman, and I might have gone after her—but at the same time she frightened me. Could she possibly be Val? But why then hadn’t she greeted me? Did she still blame me for her death? I was jolted out of my reverie by the Earthmost Jiva.
“Greeting Jim Oster.” The voice was huge and husky, like an echo in a cathedral. “Mission statement?”
“Hello,” I said, groping for words. “Why I’m here? I fell through the monster pit. This kid Durkle and me. It’s an honor to meet you, Earthmost Jiva. You’re very large.”
“Growth eternity,” rasped the voice, filling the mile-wide chamber. “Apocalypse plan Earth. Jim Weena mailman.”
One of her tendrils lazily unfurled, unrolling towards me like the supple tentacle of a giant squid. Frozen in awe, Mijjy made no move to defend me. The glowing root wound around my waist, drawing me closer to the luminous beet, lifting me off the floor, hefting me.
“Don’t—don’t eat me,” I stammered.
“Appetizer morsel,” said the hoarse voice, as if considering the prospect. X-ray colors boiled in my brain. “Kessence lump treat.”
“Earth mailman,” teeped Mijjy from within me, as if to remind the greedy big jiva of my projected role. “Mijjy servant greeting joy.”
“Hunger distraction,” said the Earthmost Jiva. “Jim Oster meeting Duke urgency memory. Instructions Jim Oster. Jiva decrees. Hatred spies. Privacy jiva.” As if still not fully decided, she wagged me from side to side.
“Teleportation castle directions,” said Mijjy unctuously. “Confusion blindness layer water.”
“Hold on!” I objected. “I want to go back to the monster pit first. I left my friend Ginnie there.”
“Ghost girl,” said the Earthmost Jiva, sweetening her tone operatically. “Jim Ginnie conjugation.”
“I suppose I’ve thought of that,” I replied. “Not that anything’s likely to come of it. Mainly I want to be sure she’s okay.”
In silence the immense glowing figure used her tendrils to eat a few hundred more ghosts. And then with a negligent gesture she tossed me back to where Durkle stood. She wasn’t going to bother helping me.
“Rabble boredom,” boomed the Earthmost Jiva. “Castle tomorrow. Jim duty.” Her appetite sated, and our audience over, she shook out her tendrils and settled onto her side. The shopkeeper nodules bustled to their stores. The great beet’s light grew dim. She slumbered.
“What if she oversleeps?” I asked Durkle.
“It happens,” he said with a shrug. “Our days start whenever the Earthmost Jiva gets up. Not that she’s ever really and truly unconscious.”
“We need to find a way out of here,” I said.
“Did Mijjy say if she can jump us to the monster pit?” asked Durkle.
“You can’t pick up on our teep at all?” I asked him.
“If someone’s hip enough, I can do a kind of yuel teep with them,” said Durkle. “It’s like a dream-channel. But, no, I can’t pick up the thoughts of jivas.”
“My stupid jiva can’t see past the living water,” I reported. “She said ‘confusion blindness.’ So, no, she can’t jump us out of here. I guess you can’t do it either?”
“I have the same problem,” said Durkle. “I can’t see the way. That’s cool. I want to see the rest of the stuff down here. Why don’t we try going down some stairs? We’ll head down to a lower level and see if we can get out from there.” Without waiting for an answer, he took off down the hall, elbowing past the ghosts.
“Just a minute,” I said catching up with him. “All this time you’ve been calling this underworld—but is there a part that’s even more like hell? What if going downstairs makes things much, much, much worse?”
“I hear there’s three layers to the underworld,” said Durkle. “And under that is the Dark Gulf. You know. It’s where the new arrivals show up. We’ll go down two more levels, yeah.”
“How is that going to help us?” I protested, trotting along beside him. “You’re talking about down. We want up.”
“We’ll get to the Dark Gulf,” said Durkle, not slowing down. “The Gulf ’s living water flows under Flimsy, up the walls into the sky, and it rains down at Flimsy’s center. We’ll ride the current into the sky and hop down when we see the monster pit.”
“What’s wrong with climbing inside the ceiling right here?” I said, coming to a stop and pointing up. “Flam said that it that connects to the Dark Gulf. We can climb into the ceiling’s layer, and glide out from there.”
“Don’t be so uptight,” said Durkle. “I’m curious about the lower levels, okay?”
As it happened, we’d come to a halt by another grotty flight of downward stairs. They were steep and narrow, like a companionway on a ship. By now a flock of ragged ghosts had gathered around us again. They were plucking at us and making creepy sounds.
“Don’t worry about them,” said Durkle, confidently. “We’re thick and juicy with kessence. It would take a really big mob of these guys to seriously leech us down. Come on now, Jim. Follow me down the stairs.”
The dimly glowing steps led even further down than I’d expected, perhaps two hundred feet. I was relieved when we reached open space again—but it was just another mall-like hallway. This second level had a solid, blank ceiling.
The stores on this level were in weirdly specialized categories. The nearby signs were for Fingernail Clipping, Shoelace, Hex Nut, and Burnt Match. Not quite believing the last one, Durkle and I peered inside the store and we saw, yes, shelf upon shelf of blackened matchsticks, some of paper and some of wood. The jiva shopkeeper beckoned to us with her tendrils, but we didn’t go in.
A chattering mob of ghosts had tagged along after us. And now they were joined by some lower-level ghosts who seemed even hungrier. I swung my fists at the jabbering shades, but always they were moving closer, continually reaching out to pluck at me. I was beginning to feel faint.
“This is fucked,” I told Durkle. “I say we go back up.”
But by now the spirits had formed a solid cordon between us and the stairs we’d come down. And more of the hungry shades were appearing all the time—like hyenas closing in for a kill. We were trapped.
I saw a flash of pinkish yellow near the far side of the crowd. It was that hooded ghost whom I’d saved from the Earthmost Jiva. She was pointing past me, as if telling me to look at something behind me—
“Another staircase back there!” exclaimed Durkle, seeing the ghost’s gesture as well.
The boy and I turned away from the mob and rushed to the low, mean door behind us. It was half the size of the stairwell door we’d entered before. The peach-colored ghost caught up with us and darted in ahead of us.
At this point I was too panicked to wonder about the helpful ghost’s identity or to ponder her motives. The mob was pressing around us again. I squeezed through the little door and—
“These stairs lead further down,” I cried in despair. “Not up.”
“Perfect!” said Durkle, right behind me. “Remember my plan.”
This staircase was even longer than the one before, and with several twists in it. Soon the peach-colored ghost was nowhere to be seen. As Durkle and I clattered down, I gathered my wits a bit. I thought to have Mijjy shoot a sheaf of tendrils towards the ghosts who were still following us.
Sure enough, the sting of my jiva’s feelers halted our pursuers. Pausing our own descent, I urged on Mijjy’s attack. Soon she’d fully routed the mob, entirely driving them from the stairwell.
“All right!” I exclaimed to Durkle. “I should have thought of this before. I don’t suppose you’d want to go back to the top level and try the ceiling now?”
“Boring,” said Durkle.
“What the hell,” I said. We went on down the stairs, waiting to see what we’d find below. Rather than leading out to the bottom level’s floor, our staircase stopped abruptly at a hole in the bottom level’s ceiling. Durkle and I paused there, sticking out our heads and peering around.
