by Rucker, Rudy
Wait, went the voice in Alan’s head. Strunk needs you. With a special effort of will, Alan muted the skug’s signals.
Right down the block he found the lit-up O Portao—which looked to offer a rather pricey feed. Alan approached and peered in through the open cafe-bar. The maitre d’ was eager to seat him in the dining room, but Alan saw no sign of Vassar. That layabout wouldn’t eat here without a pigeon to pay his check.
And, oh Lord, there were Katje and her mother on the other side of the dining-room, tucking into a platter of—was that scabbard-fish? If Alan entered, the women might recognize the stolen dress. Alan himself had very little intuition about clothes—back in Manchester he’d sometimes gone to work in his pyjama shirt. But he knew he was atypical in this respect.
Leaving the O Portao, he dawdled along the quay, wondering where he might find Vassar. Perhaps it was best to leave it to chance. He’d wait and be found—just like a woman might do. Here was a pleasant, well-lit café. Alan took a seat outdoors by the sea wall, ordered fish and chips, and sat there peacefully listening to the wireless.
They were playing the Voice of America channel—a revue of swoony, romantic pop songs. A lament called “Till Then” flowed into a crooning dance tune named “Earth Angel.” Alan felt very sensitive to the music. The plangent notes went right through him. As he sipped a glass of guava nectar, he began swaying his breasts, intrigued by their complex oscillations beneath the silky fabric of his dress.
“Hey there, Katje!” came a voice from behind him. “Want to dance?”
Alan turned and his heart leapt up. It was Vassar Lafia, drawn like a bee to the blossom, his golden-brown eyes alight. “Hello,” said Alan, managing some sangfroid. “I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure.”
“I’m Vassar. From the Phos ship. How wild, you look almost like a friend of mine. Her cosmic double, you might say. What’s your name?”
“Abby. I—I live on Madeira.”
“Are you a working girl?”
“Are you always so rude?”
“Do you want a date?” pressed Vassar.
“Let’s dance. As you suggested.” Alan reached up and took Lafia’s hand. It was warm and strong. Gently they moved across the floor to the melding voices of a female trio singing “Mr. Sandman.”
Alan’s dance steps were a bit uncertain, but Vassar didn’t mind.
“You’re a tasty armful,” he said, smiling down. “I’d like to get to know you better. I wish we had some time to maneuver in.”
“I wonder if you could find us a warm spot to be private,” said Alan, his pulse beating in his throat. “A place where we could lie down.”
Vassar held him out at arm’s length and grinned. “You’re my kind of woman, Abby! Follow me. I’ll sniff out a nook. I’m the thief of Baghdad, baby.”
Vassar found a Mercedes parked in a dark alleyway, and somehow he got it unlocked. He was clever with his hands. They made love on the leather back seat, Vassar on top. It was spectacular. At the climax, Alan’s skug wanted him to melt and to envelop Vassar’s body entirely, but Alan held back from that. He didn’t want to spoil this precious moment.
“You think you’ll ever come to the States?” said Vassar, smiling down at him. “I’m gonna hate to say goodbye to a firecracker like you.”
“Are you inviting me onto the ship?” said Alan, running the tip of his finger down the bridge of Vassar’s fine nose.
“Well, I know you’ve got your own life here,” said Vassar, backing off a bit. “Family, friends, the whole bag.”
After a bit, they slipped apart and sat side by side on the car’s leather seat, caressing each other. “What do you do here all day long?” asked Vassar.
“I raise orchids for export, and cultivate new hybrids,” said Alan, saying whatever popped into his head. “It’s quite a science, really, learning how things grow and how they take form.” Gently he played with Vassar’s penis, making it stiff again. “You’ve a lovely orchid yourself.” He sighed and bent his head to the dear man’s lap.
Neither of them wanted the night to be over. For hours they alternated love-making with conversation.
Vassar told Alan stories about his adventures in North Africa and the Mideast. He’d hitchhiked in hurricanes, broken out of jails, parachuted from planes. Or so he said. Spinning his tales in the dark, Vassar came across as touchingly insecure. He took at face value Abby’s claims to be something of a scientist, and he offered praise. He bragged that he had a highly educated friend named William Burroughs aboard the Phos.
“He talks a lot like you, Abby. You two would hit it off.”
Finally they said goodbye. Once Alan was sure that Vassar was back on the Phos, he crept aboard too.
At dawn the fully laden ship steamed into the Atlantic proper. Alan was too excited to sleep very much. He took on the shape of Burroughs again, and made his way to the mess-room for a late breakfast.
Who should he find there but Vassar Lafia, tired and triumphant.
“Did you have a jolly time in Funchal?” asked Alan.
“Wild sex, Bill. I met this girl in a café, name of Abby.” Vassar turned his head, gazing out at the receding mound of of the island. “I need to see her again. Need it bad.”
“Maybe you will,” said Alan coyly. “I’m sure she wants more of you as well.”
“I wish,” said Vassar, not picking up on Alan’s tone. “What a woman. I didn’t have to chase her across hill and dale—none of that bashful doe routine. She knew what she wanted. And she’s smart—she breeds new kinds of plants. I think she said orchids…”
“Mister Sandman, bring me a dream,” murmured Alan.
“What’s that?” Vassar shot him a sharp look. “Were you spying on us last night?”
“How would I?” said Alan. “But allow me a query. Did you find Abby’s genitalia realistic?”
“What a question!” exclaimed Vassar with a burst of laughter. “You’re a rare bird, Bill.”
The passage across the sea lasted a week. The unsavory Ned Strunk continued making inarticulate overtures, vaguely sexual, but Alan resolutely fended him off. The man was, in principle, reasonably good-looking. But his odd demeanor made him as unappetizing as a hamper of dirty laundry. Alan almost wondered if the fellow were mentally ill.
He took to spending most of each day in his room, implementing a new radio circuit design. Sparks, who was short of funds, had sold Alan the radio shack’s stock of spare parts in an under-the-counter deal.
Alan wanted to continue improving his symbiosis with his skug. He created another feedback transmitter, tuning its input to the faint electromagnetic signals from his brain, and beaming its output into his solar plexus. Using the device was, if you will, an advanced form of meditation. Or, looked at differently, a method of tuning the parameters of an intelligent network.
It was well to be working alone in his room as much as possible. This way he could avoid not only Strunk, but Vassar as well. After his night of love as Abby, Alan was finding it increasingly difficult to keep up appearances with Vassar. And he was concerned that Strunk might be some kind of agent.
Pondering his possible methods of defense, Alan had decided that the easiest way to handle an aggressor would be to convert them into a skug. Skugging Pratt had essentially destroyed the man. Now that he’d improved the skug’s innate biocomputations, becoming a skugger was something much less violent. But even so, skugging a person definitely had the effect of bringing them onto one’s team. Certainly this had been the case with Burroughs, and both Driss and Kiki had seemed the more pleasant for having become skuggers.
The question was, how difficult did it have to be to make someone a skugger? Thus far, Alan had been depending on increasingly heavy treatments. A thumb-sized skug for Pratt, a kilogram-sized skug for Alan, and, for the hapless Burroughs, a skug that was Alan’s entire body.
Focusing in on his inner skug’s processes, Alan was currently amplifying the virulence of his condition’s communicabilit
y. Although he didn’t care to start running tests in the confined environment of this ship, he was fairly sure that he was capable of making attackers into skuggers by inoculating them with microscopic scraps of his flesh.
In the daytime, Alan worked with his equations and his inner tweaks, now and then creeping out to the bathroom. And at night, he’d take on the form of Abby and strut back and forth, practicing at being a woman. And then he’d lie in bed and imagine Vassar embracing him again.
On the fourth night after Madeira, Alan snapped. Casting off all restraint, he left his room as Abby. Stalking down the ship’s passageways, he smiled, thinking of himself as a hungry vampire on the prowl.
He found his prey in the passenger lounge, stretched out on a leather couch flipping through an illustrated catalog of propeller screws.
“Unreal!” exclaimed Vassar, sitting bolt upright. “How did you get here, Abby?”
“I stowed away,” said Alan. “I wanted to see you again.”
The gangly Ned Strunk was staring at them from across the room, clearly eager to join the conversation.
“We better get you under wraps,” said Vassar. “How’d you like to see my cabin?”
“Very much indeed.”
They made love till dawn. Amid the passion, it crossed Alan’s mind several times that he was perfectly free to convert Vassar into a skugger. But he chose not to—at least not yet. It was somehow more flattering and erotic to have Vassar coming to him as an ordinary man. In the morning, Alan crept back to his windowless cell. He stayed in bed most of the day, keeping his womanly form. He couldn’t face having Vassar address him as Alan again. He didn’t want to hear the carelessly vulgar remarks that Vassar was likely to make about Abby.
Alan had a steward bring him lunch and dinner in his room, telling him he wasn’t feeling well. It was December 31, and late that night the crew celebrated New Years Eve on the open sea, with the besotted Captain Eugenios firing off a series of red and green Very flares, normally used for signaling ship to ship. Alan prowled across the decks and found Vassar, his face glazed with unnatural hues.
Another night of love ensued.
“Where on board are you stowed, anyway?” asked Vassar as they lay in his bunk chatting.
“Don’t be angry when I tell you,” said Alan.
“I’ll never be mad at you, Abby. You’re my girl.”
“Well—I’m staying with that friend of yours. William Burroughs.”
“Him? That slimeball!”
“Oh, he’s no ladies man. You’ve nothing to fear. I went to him because I didn’t want to bother you. I don’t like to be forward. But—after our night in Funchal—I had to see you again. I’m lost, Vassar. I hardly know who I am.” Alan was taking an increasing pleasure in wild, emotional talk. He’d been too buttoned-up for too long.
Vassar made love to him two more times, and the second time, Alan lost all restraint and allowed his penis to grow out from his flesh just above his vagina, enjoying the rubbing of Vassar’s belly against it. If Vassar noticed this, he didn’t say anything.
After the sex, Vassar drained his brandy bottle. Feeling giddy, Alan altered his body chemistry to feel as intoxicated as his friend. And then, in the wee hours of January 1, 1955, he reeled across the deck towards his room, enjoying the intricate fringes that he was seeing around the ship’s lights.
Suddenly there was a problem. The unwholesome Ned Strunk was leaning on the ship’s railing, blocking the door to Alan’s companionway, stubborn as a limpet.
“Get away,” slurred Alan, still in his Abby form. “You’ve no business with me.”
“Look here, it’s time to lay my cards on the table,” said Strunk, quite unexpectedly. “I know about you being Alan Turing and all. And I know you’re William Burroughs too. And you’re Abby. You’re a shapeshifter. And I’m telling you I need some help. Come on, Alan. I’m not as dumb as you think. Stop being such a tight-ass.”
“What are you talking about?” cried Alan, all but losing control. “You’re mad!”
“I need your help, see?” said Strunk. “This creepy hand came crawling after me in Gibraltar and it slimed onto me. I’m an American sailor, a nuclear tech. I jumped ship and I stole this monkey-suit I’m wearing off a laundry line. The hand screwed me up, man, I don’t know what’s going on. That’s why I seem like a moron. All I know is that voice in my head keeps saying you can fix me. So heal me, Professor Turing.”
Frightened and disoriented, Alan didn’t even pause to analyze the disturbing farrago. The man was nosing into his affairs? He was asking for trouble. Should Alan turn him into a skugger? Maybe not. Maybe it would be better to put Strunk entirely out of the picture.
Oh do help him, urged a voice in Alan’s head. His inner skug. Fortunately Alan’s latest tweaks to his system made it even easier to silence the wheedling tones.
With a savage, lashing motion of his arm, Alan lassoed Strunk around his neck and began choking him, pushing him back against the bulwark. The man’s struggles were feeble—he was unwell. Hard luck on him. Alan had no thought of mercy, no thought of trying to make Strunk an ally. To devil with these parasites and persecutors. When Alan felt sure that Strunk was quite dead, he levered him over the railing and into the sea.
“What is?” called a tiddly crewman, making his way from his watch towards the forecastle.
“Nothing,” said Alan, feigning a womanly moan, and leaning over the bulwark. “I’m a bit seasick.”
The crewman stumped off, and now Alan moaned again, but this time for real. He was seeing something awful in the sea—a pale shape like a glowing dolphin, speeding along beside the ship.
Alan watched in silence, numbed by the onrush of events. In an abrupt motion, the glowing shape dove out of sight beneath the hull.
Chapter 6: Homecoming
Alan spent most of New Years Day hiding in his room. As his head cleared and his passions calmed, he reasoned things out a bit, reviewing his memories of the incident last night.
Though he’d been too intoxicated and panicky to analyze Strunk’s words at the time, their meaning now came clear. The crawling hand that Alan had seen leaving the ferry—that had been real, it had been a small skug from who knew where. The man Alan had seen prostrate in the Gibraltar alley—that had been Ned Strunk in the process of being taken over by the skuggy hand. Evidently Strunk’s personality had survived the assimilation, although perhaps imperfectly.
Strunk was a random American sailor, a deserter. And now he, like Alan, was a skugger—even though he didn’t fully realize it. His inner skug was telling him to upgrade his altered body. He’d come to Alan as a victim of a plague that Alan had unleashed. For his part, Alan had strangled him and cast him into the sea. Shabby, said a voice in Alan’s head. Very shabby indeed.
To make things worse, Alan’s cold-blooded attack hadn’t even accomplished its purpose. Judging from what had been visible over the ship’s railing last night, Strunk had survived. And now he was hiding—like a subroutine awaiting a function call. Or, rather, like a bloody heart beneath a madman’s cabin floor.
Alan rolled back and forth in his bed, moaning. His latest experiment with autonomous intoxication had left him with a terrible headache. He could hardly wait to go ashore and leave this botch behind. They were scheduled to reach the port of Miami before nightfall. Fumbling through his murky, second-hand Burroughs memories, Alan confirmed that the Burroughs parents ran a shop in Palm Beach, Florida. And he found the parents’ home address as well. Quickly he jotted it down, lest he lose the memory.
Late that afternoon, Vassar came and knocked on Alan’s door, whispering Abby’s name. Alan stayed quiet, but somehow Vassar sensed he was in there.
“I want a replay,” hissed Vassar. “I want a thousand and one nights with you, Abby. In the magic garden of love.”
“Oh, Vassar,” murmured Alan, nearly overcome. But he steeled his will and resisted opening the door. It wouldn’t do to recommence the soap opera. He needed be working
on his scientific investigations, not playing the trollop. This said, it was highly painful to hear his beloved’s footfalls clatter away from his door.
Eventually the ship slowed, and voices called, each to each. A harbor pilot was coming aboard. Jolted to action, Alan took on the form of William Burroughs. He disassembled his jackleg radio system and stuffed the pieces into his pillowcase along with his soiled blue Katje dress.
The engines thrummed, the ship backed and filled. Soon the Phos had found her berth. Alan heard announcements from the wharf, and the soft thuds of hawsers being tossed down.
Seized by a sudden fear that he might never see Vassar again at all, he grabbed his pillowcase of vacuum tubes and ran up the companionway, taking a place on the deck near the gangplank, his Burroughs passport ready to hand.
On the deck, Alan had a dizzy sensation of being watched by an invisible, hovering eye. He was in rather poor condition today. He did his best to push the delusions from out of his mind.
Before long, Vassar appeared, his proud head smoothly turning as he scanned the motley crowd.
“Looking for someone?” called Alan.
“Abby from Madeira,” said Vassar, coming close.
“Yes. A dear woman. She’s mad for you.”
“I’m wanting to say goodbye to her. And to set up a meet. Why didn’t you tell me she was hiding in your room, Bill? I’ve hardly seen you on this trip.”
“Abby and I weren’t sure how you react. I’m not good at dissembling.”
“So where is she?” said Vassar giving Alan a hard, calculating look. Could Vassar suspect that Alan and Abby were one and the same?
“She seeks to slip off the ship unseen,” said Alan quickly. “She doesn’t have any papers. But I’m quite sure she’d relish seeing you again.”
“How would we work that, Bill?” Slowly Vassar ran his tongue along his lower lip.
“Abby can meet you at my parents’ gift shop in Palm Beach. It’s named Cobblestone Gardens. What day is it today?”
“January first,” said Vassar. “Saturday. Happy new year, mad hermit.”
