Turing & Burroughs: A Beatnik SF Novel

by Rucker, Rudy

  “She’s from Jamaica,” Ned told the man. “My island girl.”

  Back outside, they sat on a park bench for awhile. Alan slowly tore his Burroughs passport into bits—shedding an identity yet again. The strolling Black couples and families smiled upon them. The park had a peaceful Sunday feel, with spots of light filtering through the palms.

  Sitting so close together, Alan and Ned were able to synch their thoughts, although Alan wasn’t yet sharing the full plan that he and his skug had formulated. It involved heading West—perhaps they should steal a car? Now that they were skuggers, society’s rules meant less than ever before.

  “But have I told you I’m meeting Vassar tomorrow?” Alan asked Ned, speaking aloud. “I don’t want to depart before then.”

  “I’ve picked up some inklings of that,” said Ned. “You call it teep? I wonder—am I supposed to be jealous?”

  “How so?” said Alan.

  “You’re a woman, more or less. Vassar and I have both fucked you—more or less.” Ned burst out laughing. “I can’t believe this crazy trip.” A little boy ran past carrying a ball.

  “It’s all quite mad,” agreed Alan. “Really I should be working up a theory of analog computation. Putting my fortuitous advances onto firm scientific ground. But instead I’m playing the fugitive and nursing a schoolgirl crush.”

  “Oh, calm down,” said Ned, leaning back so the sun hit him in the face. “Let’s stay here all afternoon.”

  So that’s what they did, enjoying the passing scene, not talking much, each of them thinking their own thoughts. Alan got himself a pencil and a pad of paper from a newsstand, and jotted down some electromagnetic field equations and chemical reaction rules. Thanks to his skugs he could program organisms like computations. His mind felt keener than ever before.

  Night fell early. With the personable Ned in the lead, they found their way to a Black supper club called the Sunset Lounge. Alan ate his fill of fried chicken—a dish he’d never had before, although Ned seemed intimately familiar with it. After a dessert of pecan pie, the lights dimmed and a jazz band began to play. Sheer enchantment.

  Alan and Ned danced a bit, and Ned ordered a second round of desserts. The sweets struck the two skuggers with the force of intoxicants. Relaxing into joy, Alan gazed at the hot-lit bandstand and the lavender haze of smoke that curled and wreathed above it. Not for the first time, he got the sense that being a skugger allowed him to absorb the world’s information at a faster rate. As if his perceptual bandwidth had been upped by, say, fifty percent.

  The Sunset Lounge felt immense. The bar, the polished glasses, the long mirror, the waitresses poised like blackbirds to fly to their customers, the tables, booths, dancers, musicians—everything was exactly where it belonged. The room was an inalterable pattern of spacetime, and this moment was eternal. As the band swung and bopped, Alan began hearing tiny musical details, miniature sounds—the trumpeter’s blue comments, the saxophone’s half-notes astride the main line, the whisking of the bassman’s fingers along his strings, the beats between the figures of the drum. The music was a shared sea in which they swam; a computation that chased its own tail.

  Alan’s thoughts grew ever more abstract until, without meaning to, he drifted into a reprise of a vision he’d had this morning. About an invisible eye that was watching him. The eye was a cupped disk at the center of a daisy whose petals were human flesh. The eye was angry.

  Alan twitched spasmodically and fell over backwards in his chair, making a great clatter. Fortunately his doughy form took the fall without harm. And now Ned was helping him to his feet. People were laughing, not unkindly. The music played on.

  “Something is spying on us,” Alan told Ned, raising his voice to be heard. “A dreadful threat! Come away!”

  “Who?” said Ned after Alan had dragged him outside. “What?”

  “A type of eye,” said Alan. “Far away. Tracking us, I reckon. I saw it this morning, too.”

  “How’s any eye gonna see us?” protested Ned. “It’s dark, man. You’re batshit. Let’s go back inside the club. I want a third piece of that pecan pie.”

  “The eye is rather like a radio antenna dish,” said Alan, who could still sense the thing. “Open your mind, you besotted layabout. Snap to.”

  Ned leaned against the club’s outer wall and gave the search a moment’s concentration. And then he saw the eye too.

  “Damn, Abby. That thing’s made of skuggers all in a circle, with their heads wadded into a glob. Watching us for true. And now it knows about our new disguises.” Defiantly Ned shook his fist at the empty air.

  “I’ll wager it’s in Tangier,” said Alan. “And that William Burroughs is involved. This morning the eye seemed disturbed—when Mrs. Burroughs dropped her bombshell about cutting off Bill’s payments.”

  “Your pal William Burroughs is watching us?”

  “My question is how the eye can work with such accuracy from Tangier,” said Alan. “We’re hidden by the curve of the globe. I need to understand the mechanism so as to—“

  “I bet they’re using the fourth dimension!” volunteered Ned. “I read about it in Astounding Science Fiction. Ordinary matter poses no obstacle in the fourth dimension.”

  “Utter bosh,” sniffed Alan. “It’s too absurd to have a rustic American preach crank science to me.”

  “Snothead,” shot back Ned, undaunted. “The four-dimensional rays are carrying telepathy.”

  “He piles Pelion upon Ossa,” said Alan primly.

  “Which means the fuck what, professor?” said Ned.

  “You’re multiplying your improbabilities,” snapped Alan.

  In the distance a police siren wailed, slowly approaching.

  “We’ve got a problem to solve, and you’re busy crapping on me?” cried Ned. “That eye sent the cops to the Burroughs house, right? And now they’re coming here! Let’s haul ass!”

  “Maybe it is some kind of telepathy,” allowed Alan as they trotted along. “Admittedly you and I have had adumbrations of mutual mind-reading. And therefore—what?”

  “We need to set up telepathy blocks,” said Ned. “I’ve read SF stories about telepathy blocks. It’s like you imagine a wall around your head. Something like a walnut shell.”

  “Or like a filigreed tapestry of pure mathematics,” suggested Alan.

  “Or a lead reactor shield.”

  “Or hebephrenic repetitions,” said Alan. “And by this I mean chants.”

  “And now I’m thinking of a box made of wire mesh,” added Ned.

  “A Faraday cage,” said Alan. “Quite reasonable. I’m sorry I was rude before, Ned. Let’s imagine all of our blocking elements at once.”

  The ungainly recipe seemed to work—the nutshell, the screed of math, the lead wall, the gibbering mantra, and the imaginary Faraday cage. The spying eye or dish was no longer perceptible in any zone of their minds.

  Two blocks behind them, the police car drew to a halt before the Sunset Lounge. Alan allowed himself a backwards glance. One cop was running around to the club’s rear door, while the other pushed in through the front. They had their pistols drawn.

  Ned led them down a side street.

  “We need to find a safe bolt-hole for the night,” said Alan. “Rather soon.”

  “I see a rooming house,” said Ned, pointing. “You think that’s safe?”

  “I say we bury ourselves in the sand,” said Alan. “Right nearby. I’m teeping that West Palm has a little beach on the bay.”

  “We’ll worm into the ground like giant slugs,” said Ned. “Yeah. The perfect end for the perfect date.”

  “Ever the ironist,” said Alan, as they stepped onto the dark and empty strand. “Very well then. We’ll leave nothing above the sand but our eyestalks and our breathing tubes. Be sure to make your skin extra thick and cold-proof, dear Ned.”

  The two of them melted into six-foot long slugs, their eyestalks glittering with pinpoint reflections of Palm Beach’s lights. It was an odd mom
ent. This might be how it felt to be an alien invader. No great change. Alan had felt himself an alien for his whole life.

  Once they were buried side by side, Ned wormed a tendril through the sand to press against Alan’s mid-section.

  “How about if we merge a little?” suggested Ned. “To get us through the night.”

  “Lovely,” said Alan, softening the barrier of his skin. “Snug as bugs.”

  And so the two friends slept as one.

  Chapter 8: Dispatches from Interzone

  [The William Burroughs letters in this chapter are to Allen Ginsberg and to Jack Kerouac. The letters date from December 25, 1954 to January 3, 1955. The first three are typed, and the fourth is hand-written.]

  To Allen Ginsberg, Letter B

  Tanger, December 25, 1954

  Dear Allen,

  No sooner have I seal up my Startling Holiday Letter when a fresh wig fall off Santa’s sleigh. And never mind any pawky spoon-counting official take on what is reality. Fuck that sound. My beat is Interzone, where any dream is subject to shlup into fact.

  So, awright, Turing’s out the door, I close my first epistle, and five minutes later I hear a lurker on my threshold. I assume it’s absentminded Prof T, who’s doubtless forgot an electromagnetic enema bag. I fling my door wide.

  Of course it’s a cop, his soul-sucking venality like a map of London on his waxy young phiz. Jonathan Hopper, pleased to meet, no time to natter just yet, he sniff around my trap, help himself to cognac, flop into my rocker. His demeanor a mix of Teddy boy and degenerate hipster. Flat affect, dull eyes. His every sentence like a parody of itself.

  He say, “Our man’s flown, what? Brilliant. My telepathy is a bit out of synch, I’ll warrant. You know the score, Bill. There’s a latency in orgone ESP. By the way, our agents just nabbed Turing’s boy Driss. The Embassy is dead set on rounding up all the skuggers.” He flash me an arch look.

  I stand over him, in a quandary whether to pull my shiv or bare my crank. Hopper roll back his eyes, looking into himself. His face grows soft, his head pulsates. He’s a skugger too, one understands.

  “Chief Soames will be savage with me for letting Turing slip,” he says, laying a soft hand on mine. “What can I give the old man? Trust me, Bill. We two want Turing on the loose.” I feel a telepathic rush of sympathy.

  “Turing’s headed for the ferry now,” I say. “He’ll ship out for the States tomorrow.”

  “Avaunt!” say Hopper in a low, ironic tone. He stride to the open window and snap his arm like a whip. His hand—ah, Interzone—his hand flies off the end of his forearm like a pound of meat. Hand land in street, and scurries downhill towards harbor, very mincing and twinkly on its fingertips, a cunning little thing.

  I am agog. I flash on a half-remembered film about a bum pianist who buy a dead goon’s huge mitts for grafting them on. The night before the big operation, the hands crawl into the pianist’s bed and strangle him. Close-up of his icon face, ecstatic in asphyxiation.

  “I’ve instructed my hand to enlist a companion for Alan along the way,” says Hopper, bringing me back into his narrative. “My little Twinklefingers will find just the right sort. Soames will be mollified if he hears I’ve put a tail on our man.” Hopper’s grin is several inches too wide and very wet. A tiny baby-sized hand wriggles pink on the stump of his arm. “Do make a happy face, Bill. I’ve half a mind to invite you to consult for Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Cushy work indeed. But, I say, you look all in.”

  And then Hopper make with an oversized box of British bonbons—licorice drops, raspberry creams, ginger fondant, tamarind nougat, clove tapioca, and more. In my new state, sugar is a stim I highly crave. We jabber head to head, mixing words and teep, pastel sheets of saliva on our chins.

  Backstory. A couple of days ago, Hopper is patrol the piss-fume alleys in search of missing agent Pratt, the first subject whom Turing have turn into a skugger. Pratt was on a zombie stomp, making skuggers in the Casbah, but then some of the fellahs burn him in the street.

  Meanwhile Hopper have manage to eye-witness some conversions and his boss Chief Soames is rounding up all the skuggers he can. And then Hopper himself get slimed by one of the captives.

  “Imagine the violence of my inner dialectic,” Hopper tells me, very intense as he use a puddled finger to mop up the last crumbs of our indescribably toothsome English candy. “As a government agent, I want to exploit Turing like a slave. But as a skugger, I want him to spread his condition to your homeland. So how do I resolve my conflict? I make a bid for fuller communication.”

  Hopper teeps me an image of his hand Twinklefingers aboard the surging ferry to Gibraltar, lurking beneath Turing’s seat—he hopes. We can’t teep as far as the ferry direct.

  Our conversation trails off, and I type this dispatch. Hopper watch me, blank, heavy into his insect-like sugar rush, reflexively grinding his teeth. Sexy muscles in his tough-customer jaws. Thrillingly banal.

  We’re due to conjugate, I ween. He need my skugger enzymes special to tone him up.

  Shlup,

  Bill

  ***

  To Jack Kerouac

  Tangiers, December 26, 1954

  Dear Jack,

  Biggest news is I’ve turned shapeshifter. I can mold my flesh like a cuttlefish do. And I’m a telepath, in my own small way. The teep signals are vibrations in the aether, sounds you feel but don’t hear. They’ve always been around, but I didn’t notice them before.

  As a boy, I thought I saw with my mouth. I remember distinctly my brother telling me no, with the eyes, and I closed my eyes and found out it was true and my theory was wrong—or perhaps a bit previous. Teeping is like seeing with my mouth. I tongue my fellow skuggers’ thoughts so toothsome. My range isn’t only about a half mile, and you’re not infested yet, so not to worry, I can’t see you humping your pack. Hump it towards Interzone, baby. This scene is like, snap, wow.

  And, oh yeah, I’ve kicked junk for sweets. Candied fruit fixes me special. Insect kicks.

  I am become this weird mutant on account of my contact with Turing, who turned into a giant slug along the lines of the Venusian Happy Cloak so perspicaciously described in that transcendent ur-text for our modern times—I speak of Henry Kuttner’s 1947 science-fiction novel Fury, which I am by way of finding in the hospital commons room the last time I kick.

  “More than one technician had been wrecked by pleasure addiction; such men were usually capable—when they were sober. But it was a woman Blaze found, finally, and she was capable only when alive. She lived when she was wearing the Happy Cloak. She wouldn´t live long; Happy Cloak addicts lasted about two years, on the average. The thing was a biological adaptation of an organism found in the Venusian seas. It had been illegally developed after its potentialities were first realized. In its native state it got its prey by touching it. After the initial neuro-contact had been established, the prey was quite satisfied to be ingested. A Happy Cloak was a beautiful garment, a living white like the nacre of a pearl, shivering softly with rippling lights, stirring with a terrible, ecstatic movement of its own as the lethal symbiosis was established. It was beautiful as the woman technician wore it, as she moved about the bright, quiet room in a tranced concentration upon the task that would pay her enough to insure her death within two years. She was very capable. She knew endocrinology. When she had finished…the woman, swimming in anticipated ecstasy, managed to touch a summoning signal-button. Then she lay down quietly on the floor, the shining pearly Happy Cloak caressing her. Her tranced eyes looked up, flat and empty as mirrors.”

  So Turing have create what he call a skug, very like a Venusian Happy Cloak, and it crawl on him and make him a skugger. Then Turing crawl on me and I’m a skugger too, half Bill Burroughs, half alien jellyfish, happy with my lot.

  Wild new career opportunities opening up. I am visited by a British secret agent man, Jonathan Hopper, and he a skugger too. We conjugated last night—but I don’t wanna drag this in the gutter. Today, with o
ur inner skugs urging us on, Hopper offers me a British passport and a bale of kale if I help him marshal a cadre of sixty-four street-skuggers into a living teep antenna to be housed in the basement of the British Embassy.

  The skugs want to get our teep signals functioning for distances far in excess of ten feet. The official reason for our projected skugger hive-mind antenna will be to track the doings of Professor Turing four thousand miles away. One supposes that an ahem non-linear amplification is called for.

  Last night Turing went to Gibraltar to catch a ship bound for the Land of the Free. Turing and I have this creepy plan that the Prof visit my parents in Palm Beach, having shapeshifted to look exactly like yours truly, and also he carrying my passport. So, Jack, if you meet me, it not me you meet.

  A tangled tale, getting loopier by the hour. Hopper shares—or feigns to share—my feelings about the primacy of orgone energy. The orgasm is, I maintain, a flashbulb split-second reveal of the hieroglyphs on our shithouse wall. I do in fact have certain ideas about how to achieve the exponential orgone amplification requisite for the intercontinental detection of teep. It’s gratifying to think that this Hopper’s outfit actually wants my help. It’s like my diffuse but wide-ranging researches are not in vain.

  I just hope no local Holy Man get hold of our skugger antenna to blanket the Earth with non-stop Malignant Telepathic Broadcast. If that come down, tell the voices in your head you’re a friend of Bill’s.

  I’m off now for a festive high tea at the British Embassy—where I’m to meet Hopper’s boss. We’ll feast on clotted cream and gooseberry fool. I’m all a-quiver.

  As ever,

  Bill

  ***