Jim and the Flims

by Rudy Rucker

  Durkle had managed to free one of his wrists, and he’d snaked out a hand to catch hold of that short sword the plant had made as bait—this desirable item had remained on offer to the very end. It was indeed a real and solid blade. The boy slashed at the plant’s roots, freeing our hands and ankles.

  And then he crawled a few feet away from the plant and tugged me after him. Slowly the cap’s frenzied alarm waves within my head died down—and the mist cleared away. I could think again. Belatedly joining the battle, Mijjy set the remains of the offer cap on fire.

  “Got any more good deals for us?” I asked Durkle.

  “This is an epic sword,” protested the boy. The weapon was perhaps two feet long, with an embossed grip and an elegant handguard. “Those plant-things craft their kessence one particle at a time. This thing is flawless.” Durkle sighted down the blade at me. “I rule.”

  “It’s like nanotech telekinesis,” I mused.

  “You boys and your toys,” said Ginnie. “Let’s check out the Duke’s castle.”

  Rather than starting up with a fresh cruiser couch, Ginnie and I decided that the three of us should teleport to a spot near the castle. This time Mijjy was able to help me figure it out.

  Mijjy wove a basket of tendrils around me, and stretched more tendrils towards our target, a field near the Duke’s castle. I could see via the tendrils, as if via cameras. I picked a comfortable-looking spot, and Mijjy prepared a second nest of tendrils there. Supposedly I’d land in it. In a certain sense Mijjy and I were sewing together two little balls of space. Ginnie and her jiva were making similar preparations.

  “And you, Durkle?” I asked. “Do you want me to carry you?”

  “I can teleport fine,” insisted Durkle. “I merge into the one mind of Flimsy. Like a yuel does.”

  Meanwhile, Mijjy showed me a kind of head-trick whereby I viewed our target location as being the same spot as where we were standing. It was a little like crossing my eyes—but it didn’t involved my eyes. It was more like flipping the two halves of my brain.

  “Anticipation relocation dimension, Jim,” Mijjy said.

  “Go,” I said.

  It worked. Ginnie and I landed in a rolling meadow, thick with dark green grass and star-shaped flowers, everything lit by the Earthmost Jiva. Beyond the field rose—a giant geranium.

  “The castle,” said Durkle, who’d just appeared at our side as well.

  “A plant?”

  “Everything in Flimsy is organically grown kessence,” said Durkle. “Even my sword.” He was besotted with his little prize, country boy that he was.

  The geranium was taller than the mightiest redwood tree, with thick bent branches, storms of pink flowers, and parking-lot-sized leaves ten meters thick. The stems and the dusty green leaves had windows and entryways. The plant had a big bulge on the lowest part of the stem, like a gall. Four or five flims were busy on the ground near there, digging in kessence, and squirting on that same silvery fertilizer that Monin had used.

  Higher up in the plant, some people were gazing down at us, and others were buzzing from leaf to leaf. The leaves and flowers swayed in the breeze; the brightly garbed nobles jiggled like gnats. A shimmering tracery of tendrils kept the flying courtiers aloft. The tendrils were bumpy pale lines that emanated from the living castle itself.

  “I like this,” said Ginnie. “I could live in that castle for awhile. It’s is the best thing I’ve seen in Flimsy.”

  “So let’s go ahead and—” I began.

  Foomp! Foomp! Foomp! Three large blue baboons appeared, seemingly from thin air, each nearly the size of a person, dropping to the ground in front of us.

  “Yuels!” exclaimed Durkle, uneasily raising his sword.

  “Let’s bail,” said Ginnie. Still more yuels were teleporting in, thick and fast.

  “Let me talk to the yuels for a minute,” I said, wanting to slow down the pace. I was tired of being stampeded from one crisis to the next. “You yourself said the yuels aren’t so bad, Durkle. They gave you your body.”

  In a minute the flow of yuels had petered out. Sixty of them were mounded in front of us. They weren’t acting at all aggressive.

  “I want to be friends,” I called. “I’m a visitor from Earth.”

  “Recruit,” said one yuel. “Inform,” said another. That sounded harmless enough, and at this point the yuels were still just lying there in a heap.

  “They’re melting,” remarked Ginnie.

  Indeed the yuel’s bodies were beginning to droop and flow. In a minute, their hundred-and-twenty eyes were like raisins in a great mound of blue dough.

  “Tell me what’s really going on,” I asked the slowly shifting form.

  “Kidnap,” teeped the yuel-mound conversationally. It was kneading itself into the shape of a fat creature with four sturdy legs. “Swap.”

  A head the size of car appeared along one end of the blue monster. A trumpet-like trunk grew from the head end, along with a fierce pair of tusks. The yuels were taking on the shape of a good-sized elephant.

  “It’s a group yuel,” exclaimed Durkle. “I’ve heard of that. The yuels band together into these big elephants for fighting and for self-defense.”

  The eyes migrated to the head and pooled into two great orbs. A crack formed along the sides of the head and opened into a slackly grinning mouth. The trunk raised and—

  “Time to hop!” yelled Ginnie.

  But our jivas weren’t responding. I could feel Mijjy inside me, waiting and watching. We’d been set up. The jivas wanted this scenario to proceed. Like some surreal street-musician, the elephant rose on his rear legs, put his two front legs together and crooned a song.

  “Weep no more, my Ginnie, oh, weep no more, today. We will sing this song for our Yuelsville home, for our Yuelsville home far away.”

  I stretched my arms forward, wanting to send out jiva tendrils—but still nothing happened. Deep within me, the recalcitrant Mijjy giggled.

  Ginnie took off running, but in moments the blue elephant had dropped to his feet, darted forward, and grabbed her with his trunk. As if in a circus, the yuel elephant lifted Ginnie into the air, and seated her upon one of his thick tusks.

  And now with the dainty grace of an opera singer, the elephant pivoted and galumphed across the meadow. As the monster ran, he broke into a herd of individual yuels that disappeared in puffs of light—they were teleporting away.

  In the thick of the pack was Ginnie, perched atop a single yuel as if riding bareback. And then, with a final flash, she and her yuel were gone.

  20: The Castle

  Moments later, Weena came flying down from the castle, riding on a little carpet of ethereal geranium tendrils, wriggly and pale yellow.

  “Are you too shy to enter ?” inquired Weena in a friendly tone. Her astral body was perky and trim. “Is that why you’re waiting out here, Jim? Fear not, everyone awaits your entrance. Where’s Ginnie?”

  “She’s gone,” I said curtly. “Kidnapped by the yuels.”

  “Just as well,” said Weena, sounding pleased. “She was a little too low-class for you.”

  “Did you send those yuels?” I blurted out. “To get rid of her? Our jivas wouldn’t save us. Did you set that up too?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Weena airily.

  Almost certainly she was lying. But I couldn’t do much about it. Maybe later I’d see that Weena got what was coming to her. But for now—given that she could teep me—I had to be careful about my conscious thoughts.

  “Can I come inside the castle too?” piped up Durkle.

  “No,” said Weena firmly. “I don’t trust people without jivas. Go ahead and be a low-class flim in a yuel-built body—but don’t expect equal rights. Would you go home now please?”

  “You’re a bitch,” said Durkle. He paused for a moment, thinking. “So, okay, maybe I’ll hop back to the monster pit. I’ll ride it one more time. And visit Yuelsville. And then the Funger Gardens amusement park.
”

  I wondered if Durkle might mess around with those offer cap plants again—or have a try at conjugating with Swoozie. But those would be his own decisions. He was a big boy.

  “Be careful,” was all I told him. There was no way to have a real conversation with Weena standing over us. “I hope to see you soon.”

  “I’ll be fine,” said Durkle, slashing at the air with his little sword. “Here’s a tip. The yuels might help you if things don’t work out with the jivas.”

  As he’d mentioned before, Durkle had his own way of teleporting. He didn’t send out tendrils or anything like that. Instead he began to glow. He became a pure shape of light that contracted to a point and vanished.

  “What a pest,” said Weena shaking her head. And now she held out her arms for a hug. “Aren’t you at all pleased to see me?”

  I hung back, trying to control my speech and my thoughts. I was in some sense Weena’s captive here. Even if I no longer believed that Weena would help me reunite with Val, I depended on her good will for my own survival.

  “It’s—I don’t really feel the same about you anymore, Weena,” I said carefully. “Not after seeing you kill Header with the axe.”

  “I already told you that it wasn’t Header whom I axed,” said Weena dismissively. “He’d become a dangerous zombie, a yuel inside a corpse. Really it was the Graf who killed Header, not me.”

  “And—and you know I’m upset about my wife,” I added, wanting again to hear what she’d say.

  “I swear to you, Jim, I played no part in that tragedy.” Weena studied me, doing her best to reach deeper into my mind. “I have a theory about why you’ve been snubbing me,” she said after bit. “For a few hours there, I appeared old and unattractive. And so you set your sights on that bohemian little surfer girl. That’s how men are. And, Jim, I know that you conjugated with Ginnie last night. But I can conjugate with you too. I’m skilled at the techniques.” She advanced on me and wrapped her arms around my waist. “Have you forgotten our merry dalliances in your cottage by the sea?”

  “But you’re always lying to me,” I exclaimed, struggling to keep a lid on my feelings. “You’re a heartless killer.” Weena held me tighter, pressing her zickzack chest and belly against mine.

  “We’re a good fit,” she said in a honeyed tone.

  I regained control of my mind and feigned acquiescence. “Whatever you say.”

  “That’s my boy. You can trust me.”

  I stepped onto Weena’s carpet of geranium tendrils, and the wriggly little rug swept us into the air. We were gliding among the plant’s enormous leaves. The leaves rocked in the gentle breeze, giving off faint bass notes like enormous drum skins. The air was filled with the pleasantly the acrid smell of geranium. Other flims were floating around on tendrils. Some seemed to be guards, others were elegantly clad nobles of the realm. Most of the flims smiled at Weena and bowed ingratiatingly, but one fellow shook his fist.

  “Petty miser,” said Weena, giving him the finger, a gesture she’d learned in Santa Cruz. “He maintains that my dear Charles has overspent. But his great work is worth any price. You’ll understand, Jim. I know that you’re a bit of a scientist yourself.” Already she was taking my loyalty for granted again. Good.

  We reached a leaf near the top of the geranium and floated in through a large hole. The leaf was all but hollow within, the size of a banquet hall, glowing with green-tinged light. The tendrils lowered us to the cushiony floor.

  I’d expected to find a medieval scene in this so-called castle—oak tables, suits of armor, tapestries, blazing hearths—but it wasn’t like that. Perhaps fifty flims were wandering around or lounging on turgid hassocks and couches that bulged from the floor. They were all ghosts with jivas, all of them in sumptuous clothes. The materials were shiny and richly hued, with intricate embossed patterns, a bit like brocade, or perhaps like animated bas-reliefs. The patterns were subtly changing as I watched.

  “The nobles’ clothes are all kessence,” Weena murmured to me. “Much more elegant that mere zickzack.”

  Large plant nodules grew from the floor. These bulb-like shapes were displaying elaborate designs on their surfaces. Fairly often someone would issue a command, and a bulb would form a puckered slit, then spit out a kessence copy of the image that had been on display—a bit like an offer cap might do, but without any menacing intent. The Duke was a wealthy and generous host.

  In the space of a minute, I saw several gifts appear. A guy started buzzing around the room on a soft motorcycle that seemed to be alive. Laughing shrilly and more loudly than seemed necessary, three women began bathing themselves in handfuls of jewels, pouring the vibrant gems over each other. Two couples started a badminton game, batting a blooming birdie back and forth. And a fat ghost set to work eating a newly made and golden-brown turkey. The nobles were living high on the hog.

  Discarded items lay around the edges of the room—probably these were recent outputs of the special bulbs. Lesser ghosts—the Duke’s guards—shuffled around, carrying the abandoned goodies to a slit in the plant where the leaf met its stem, feeding the kessence back into the great geranium.

  “Recycling?” I asked Weena.

  “Yes,” she said. “It’s a token gesture. The effort of making things uses considerable kessence, which is lost for good. The castle is horribly in debt. Wizard Charles’s great experiment has proved costlier than any of us imagined.”

  A pair of things like lizards scampered across the floor in front of us. With a quick, graceful motion, Weena scooped them up. One of the creatures had two heads and six legs, the other was slightly different. Their colorful skins were bumpy all over, like broccoli, and somewhat translucent, with other colors lurking below.

  “These lizards are pure kessence, and are designed by Charles himself,” said Weena, popping one into her mouth. “Quite wonderful. Taste.”

  She handed me the remaining lizard. His outer layers were a milky blue, with orange channels beneath the surface. The channels were edged by curly swirls, and bore veins of deep purple in their centers. The veins demarcated the shape of his skeleton. As I considered eating the little beast, his three heads stared at me with beady eyes. And when I lifted the lizard toward my mouth, he hit me with a telepathic scream.

  “Don’t you hear that?” I asked Weena, nearly dropping the lizard. He was furiously twisting in my grip.

  “Well, of course there’s a human ghost within,” said Weena, carelessly. “Ghosts give our lizards pep. You eat the lizard, and the resident soul shrinks to a sprinkle. It’s no great affair.” She picked at her teeth and flicked a sparkling fragment out into the air—the ghost from the creature she’d just eaten.

  “I—I’m not hungry.”

  Weena shrugged, then took back my lizard and bit into it. A crescendo of teeped anguish rolled over us—and came to an abrupt stop.

  “I’ll present you to the Duke now,” said Weena, striding forward. “Come.”

  The Duke was sitting with his Duchess and some other nobles. He was a small man with a big jiva inside him. He wore a flowing purple robe embossed with tiny green dragon’s heads that were animated so as to toss their snouts from side to side. His chest was swelled out, and his little legs dangled. The skin of his face was beef-pink, and a smeary white mustache perched above his droll, round mouth. I stepped forward and bowed.

  “Welcome to the castle, Jim,” said the Duke. “It’s damn rare to see astral travelers make it in this far—aside from Weena and the Wizard. You came at a real good time.” I’d been expecting a well-kippered British accent, but the Duke sounded like a random guy from a blue-collar bar back home.

  “I’ve told Jim but few details, my Duke,” said Weena. “He knows only that he made the tunnel, that he opened the door, and that when he revisits Earth he’ll be delivering a package.”

  “Yes, and I’m wondering what that would—” I began.

  “We’re taxing Earth to pay my debts,” said the Duke with a wheezing chuckle.
“That’s all there is to it. A pretty little birdie put the idea in my head.” He smiled at the Duchess.

  “Tax them how?” I asked.

  “You’re gonna carry ten thousand jiva eggs over there,” said the Duke. “There’ll be some bleeding-heart protesters, sure, but I’m betting that the regular folks are gonna be happy with their jivas. You don’t have to sweat no details. The eggs’ll know what to do.”

  “It’s not like those debts are our fault,” said the Duchess in a low tone. She had the same coarse style of speech as her husband. “Don’t jump to conclusions. The debts are from our so-called Wizard, Charles Howard. Him and his Atum’s Lotus scam. The Duke and I keep thinking the guy’s shot his wad—and then Weena begs us for more time. These two con artists have been stringing us along for—shit, this is crazy—about a century. All we ever wanted was a simple tunnel back to Earth where our kessence and zickzack bodies can pass through. We’re not interested in Charles’ crazy bullshit about a ladder to God. Okay, it’s been exciting to watch the Atum’s Lotus grow, but by now...”

  She trailed off and shook her head. Despite her diction, the Duchess looked very much the part of a grande dame. Her body was outstandingly graceful. Wavy brunette hair framed her handsomely angular face, and she wore a teal and purple suit with subtly moving sequins on its surface.

  “Charles Howard’s put us on the map, hon,” the Duke told her. “Everyone who matters wants to visit here to see our Atum’s Lotus.”

  “I thought Charles Howard was an archaeologist?” I put it, hoping to figure out what they were talking about.

  “My Charles has broadened his interests,” said Weena. “He’s always had an interest in Darwin’s theory of evolution. He sees archaeology as a psychic zoology, if you will. Now—as the Duchess says, Charles and I were originally commissioned to build a tunnel back to Earth. The Duke and his associates wanted to be able to revisit Earth without being obliterated by Flimsy’s central light. They wanted to be able to bring their kessence bodies and their personalities and their jivas through. And of course Charles and I wanted to go back as well.”