by Rucker, Rudy
“How typical,” said Laura, shaking her head. “I won’t ask you if Bill’s at the drug hospital in Lexington. I don’t like to be a desperate old hen.” She paused, studying them. “Won’t you four come in for a minute? I’ve got a pot of coffee in the back of the store. And endless left-over Christmas cookies. And many, many, many chairs.”
Vassar and Ned were impatient by now. For her part, Susan was holding a microphone, apparently sampling bits of the dignified old lady’s conversation onto her tape mix.
“I’m sorry, we’re rather preoccupied,” Alan told Laura Burroughs. “Ned and I are about to start a road trip. We’d only meant to use your shop as a meeting point with Vassar and Susan. A local landmark. I do appreciate your kindness, Mrs. Burroughs, and I’m sorry about that scene at your house. If I see Bill before you do, I’ll let him know you’re ready to forgive him.”
“No use being angry with your crowd,” said Laura with a sigh. “You live like seagulls. Swoop and gobble.” Shaking her head a little sadly, she went back into her shop.
“There’s something about this set-up that I’m not getting,” said Vassar, glancing back and forth between Ned and Alan. “Like why was that woman talking about mutants? And what went down at her house? And why does this Ned know so much about me?”
“I’ll explain it later,” said Alan.
“After we all get to be real good friends,” said Ned, still enjoying Vassar’s discomfiture.
“Questions all around,” said Susan. “Like why do I keep thinking Abby is a man? No takers? How about this one. Why is the bed of my truck full of boxes and bags?”
“So why?” said Ned, wanting to charm her. He mimed puzzlement with his hands out to either side.
“Why don’t you go on and tell them, Vassar,” said Susan, her voice a little cold.
“I, uh, screwed up,” mumbled Vassar. “Ran my mouth. And we gotta bail.” He leaned closer to Alan and hooked his thumb towards Ned. “Can I talk in front of this guy?”
“I’m wanted by the law myself,” said Ned. “So come off the mystery man routine, Vassar. I suppose you’re fretting about the hash you smuggled?”
“He’s a secret agent!” exclaimed Vassar.
“Don’t be daft,” said Alan. “You told me about your hashish the moment I got aboard the ship. You told everyone who’d listen. I suppose I mentioned it to Ned while filling him in on your background. You’ve had some problem on this front? The customs inspectors seemed quite lax.”
“My husband got in double trouble,” said Susan. “The cops want to arrest him and the dealers want to stomp him. And this is all about a tiny little chunk of hash—maybe a few ounces. But Vassar had to go and start bragging to the boys at the neighborhood bar like he had a boatload, and the cops and dealers found out. So we’re leaving town. Life gives you dancing lessons—do you know that expression?”
“I told you I’m sorry, Susan,” said Vassar. “I don’t know why you won’t—”
“Oh, don’t worry, even if my teaching gig might have been the only good job I’ll ever get in my life. It’s not like people are lining up to hire electronic composers. You clumsy idiot. I just hope we make it all the way to the west coast.”
“We’ll be lucky to make Louisiana in this bomb,” said Vassar, patting the wobbly black fender of the pickup. “It’s a 1936,” he told Ned. “We haven’t really been keeping it up.”
“We?” cried Susan. “You. The car stuff is your job. But you’ve been off on your quest to the ancient world. Seeking the beyond. Plowing the fertile crescents!”
“I sure wish we had a car like your Pontiac,” said Vassar, lowering his voice to talk under Susan’s. “Did you two borrow it from the Burroughs family?”
“It’s mine,” said Ned. “We got it from the cops this morning. They even gave us papers. And dig the four-dimensional number on the license plate. 61296.”
Although the last remark was obviously meant to impress Alan, he almost didn’t feel like analyzing it. But it wouldn’t do to let such a thing pass. One had to keep up appearances before the upstarts—ah, yes,1296 was six to the fourth power.
Ned was still talking to Vassar. “We’re the top-dog con-artists. You’ve got no inkling of the wild moves that Abby and me been pulling.”
“So what if we join forces?” put in Susan, favoring Ned with a low-lidded smile. “We’ll make it a party of four. Right, Vassar? I bet we could jam our stuff into Ned’s car. The trunk’s the size of an igloo.”
Vassar didn’t look enthused, but Ned did. Clearly he had a crush on Susan.
“What do you think?” Ned asked Alan. “The more the merrier? We can all be friends. Westward ho.”
“I like the idea, yes,” said Alan. “Safety in numbers. I just wonder if we’ll be pursued.”
Alan opened up ever so small a chink in his teep block and felt around for the emanations of Landers and—oh, good heavens. Something dire was happening at the home of Captain Jackson, some kind of ambush. Novell was dead, and Landers was enslaved. And, damnation, now Landers had noticed Alan’s teep! Landers was prying at Alan’s mind, trying to winkle out his plans. Alan clenched his face, squeezing shut the hole in his teep block.
“Let’s get rolling now!” ordered Ned, seeing Alan’s distress. “Hump your crap into our trunk, Vassar. Susan, you can snag your that tape player and settle into the front seat with me. You can teach me all about, what was it called?”
“Acousmatics,” chirped Susan.
“Dancing numbers,” said Ned, moving with great speed and fluidity—opening the trunk for Vassar, reassuring Alan, courting Susan. “I had a job running a nuclear reactor in the Navy. I’m the Atomic Man.”
“And we just ditch my truck here?” said Vassar, still doubtful.
“I’ll give Mrs. Burroughs the key,” said Alan, regaining his equilibrium. He wanted a last word with the woman in any case. His teep block was in place, and a good number of the local police were skuggers by now. All was not lost. Moving hurriedly, he plucked the key from the truck’s ignition.
Laura Burroughs approached with alacrity when Alan stepped into the shop.
“Yes?”
“We’re all going to ride in the car,” Alan told her. “And Susan would like to leave her truck in your safe-keeping, if you don’t mind. This is the key. Your son Bill is free to use the truck when he arrives.”
“Well, that’s very thoughtful,” said Laura.
“And—and tell Bill that Alan hopes to see him soon,” Alan said, momentarily forgetting his worries about the forces who’d captured Landers.
It was as if Laura Burroughs had her own kind of teep. She saw right into his soul. “Alan is another name for you, isn’t it, dear?” She jotted her home number on the back of a Cobblestone Gardens business card and handed it to him. “Stay in touch.”
“I’m glad you understand,” said Alan. “Perhaps I’ll give you a call in a few days. I do miss Bill.”
Outside the three others were in the Pontiac, with Ned gunning the engine and honking.
“Happy trails,” said Laura Burroughs.
Chapter 10: Four-Way Jam
The center of Florida was rolling countryside, with many streams. Palms and magnolias gave way to pines and scrubby trees that Susan called live oaks. Brambles and honeysuckle filled in the spaces. In one spot an ambitious vine had strangled a whole copse of woods.
“Kudzu,” said Vassar, riding next to Alan in the back seat. “The vine that ate Dixie. The dumb-ass road engineers brought it in from Japan.”
“I’m an invasive species myself,” said Alan. They were too far from Palm Beach for him to pick up any fresh teep from Landers or from the West Palm Beach police. Unless you set up a group antenna like Burroughs had done, the skugger teep only reached about half a mile. Going over his mental records of Landers’s distress call, Alan began forming a better idea of what had occurred. Something of a disaster. He and Ned would want to recruit Susan and Vassar onto their team rather soon.
Susan gave Alan a long, thoughtful look. “I don’t know what it is about this girl. By the way, Abby, do you have any money? A little dowry as it were?”
“I received about a hundred dollars from Mr. Burroughs,” said Alan.
“Did you and Bill fuck?” asked Vassar. “Is that what his mother was saying?”
“Actually that was me and Abby in Bill’s bedroom,” said Ned. “Swinging from the chandelier. Ma and Pa Burroughs were glad to see us leave.”
“But where was Bill?” demanded Vassar, growing impatient.
“Tangier,” said Ned breezily. “Get it through your head.” He studied Susan. “And of course you and hubby are stone broke?”
“Another reason we’re skipping town,” said Susan. She pushed her fine, dark hair out of her face and bent over to change the reel of her tape machine. Apparently she had many hours’ worth in the stack of flat boxes by her feet.
“We’ve got Abby’s money,” said Ned. “And we’ll prospect for more. And when it comes to motels—“ Ned let the juicy word hang in the air for a minute. “How about if we share one room?”
None of the others wanted to touch that question. Sulkily, Vassar took out a little pipe and smoked a bit of hash. Alan was beginning to have second thoughts about his infatuation with this scattered man. Ned was younger and more attractive. Although, yes, there was a definite Romantic poet quality in Vassar’s disarray. But on this front, Vassar didn’t hold a candle to the mad writer, Bill Burroughs.
It was early afternoon, and with the winter sun overhead, the asphalt road began to shimmer in the heat. The tropical air beat against their faces. Alan dropped his teep block and had a telepathic conversation with Ned, fully discussing what he knew of Norvell and Landers. The feds had ambushed them—blowing off Norvell’s head with a flamethrower, and sealing Landers in something like a giant glass jar. Landers was devoted to locating skuggers via teep. The best thing they could do was to hurry away from Palm Beach—and to be prepared to skug any pursuers who appeared.
The chirps and drones of Susan’s tape-machine blended with the thrum of the car’s big engine and the song of the tires on the road. Susan announced the topic or, no, the official title, of each of her compositions, her voice flat. “Shopping For A Dress. A Pack Of Stray Dogs. What It’s Like To Be Dead. Mom’s Pearl Earrings. His Penis Bends.”
In a way, the titles fit. Alan was amazed at Susan’s skill at crafting these off-kilter compositions from ambient noise. Information everywhere. The more interesting Susan became, the shabbier her mate Vassar began to seem.
As they progressed northward through the state, the wild scrub gave way to big cleared pastures with cattle. The cows stood knee-deep in the dry winter weeds, munching the seedy stalks. White egrets stalked and flapped at their sides, spearing the insects that the cattle stirred up. Vassar continued smoking hash, but none of the others joined him.
“Those birds look like little old men with no arms, don’t they,” observed Susan. “Is anyone else hungry? We never had lunch. I don’t like missing meals.”
A diner with a gas pump hove into view on the right. “Let’s stop here,” said Ned. “Food and gas.”
“Have you ever had a cheeseburger?” Vassar asked, escorting Alan from the car, his hand on Alan’s narrow waist. “A cosmic mouth-trip.”
“I’ve had them, yes,” said Alan, recalling his time at Princeton University. “I’m due for another, I’m sure.”
The place featured fresh-squeezed Florida orange juice, and was empty save for the owner. The four travelers sat on stools at a counter, and the stubbled host slapped heavy china plates with burgers onto the worn wood. And then he went outside to gas up their car.
“Here’s to new beginnings,” said Susan, raising her glass of juice. Her mouth was a bright and cheerful against her soft white skin. “But, Ned, you never told us what you and Abby are running from?”
“The feds,” said Ned, after a brief teep-check with Alan. It was time to start releasing info. “This morning it was just the Palm Beach cops on our tail. Abby and I took care of them, but one of the cops’ wives phoned the FBI. And then, just as we were leaving town—how would you put it Abby?”
“The feds burned off this guy Norvell’s head, and they sealed his partner Landers inside a glass jar,” said Alan. “I’m worried they’ll use him like a hunting dog. I suppose you might call him a skugsniffer. We’ll want to maintain a brisk pace to remain out of range.”
Vassar was doubtful. “Oh sure,” he said. “The feds did that to two cops? And you know this—how?”
“I saw it in my mind’s eye,” said Alan, archly tossing his head. “Ned and I are telepathic, you see.”
“Trying to freak me out, huh?” said Vassar, not believing him. “Maybe we can, uh, find a magic carpet to get away from the evil genie in the bottle.”
“Telepathic?” said Susan, liking the sound of the word. “What am I thinking about, Ned?” She batted her eyes.
“I hope it’s hanky-panky. But I can only see direct into the minds of people like Alan and me. People in this one special group. We’re called—should I tell her, Abby?”
“In for a penny, in for a pound,” said Alan.
“Tally ho,” said Ned, gently mocking Alan’s Britishness. “What it is, Susan, we’re skuggers.”
“I hope you’re not out to recruit us,” said Susan. “You have no idea how many evangelical Christians dropped by my office at the college after the local paper mentioned me. Scary, scary, a professor who’s a Jewish woman. Reform her! I made a habit of taping their pinhead spiels, and I mixed them together into a piece called Godwaters. It’s on one of the reels I’ve got here. But what are skuggers?”
“We’re agents of change,” said Ned, keeping it vague. “The march of progress.”
“Mutation is the only way to go,” said Vassar.
“Meanwhile this burger isn’t doing the job,” said Ned, looking at his empty plate. “Slide that box of candy-bars down here, Abby.”
The owner came back in, leaving the door open. “We’re in for a blow,” he remarked, pointing to the west. “Clouds in a heap over the gulf. Like the walls of heaven fell down. See how they got gold rims?”
“Love it,” said Susan, nodding her head to the unheard rhythms of the sun-gilded storm clouds. A window-shade flapped in the rising wind.
Alan’s cheeseburger had gone down easily enough. His skug-enhanced body could digest anything at all. He felt greasy and cheerful, and a little relieved to have started the process of telling Vassar and Abby the truth. Who knew, perhaps those federal police wouldn’t be able to track them after all.
Reflexively, Alan teeped around in the half-mile-wide radius that his mind could reach—but of course no other skuggers were in the vicinity. The short range of skugger teep was a bonus, if the feds were going to use the enslaved Landers to search for them. At least, with the skugs growing in awareness, there seemed to be little probability of anyone assembling a group-mind skugger antenna—like the one Burroughs had been using in Tangier.
Alan handed over one of his remaining twenty-dollar bills to pay for the lunch and the gas, taking his change in the form of sixteen candy bars. As a skugger, sweets meant more to him than they ever had before.
Back in the car, Ned and Alan each downed several candy bars. Vassar had one as well and, surfeited, dropped off to sleep. Susan rooted in her pile of tapes.
“Here it is,” she said maneuvering the spool of tape onto her machine. “Godwaters. It’s ninety minutes long.”
A series of odd voices began jabbering about salvation and rebirth. Susan had looped and overlapped the words to produce a stuttering rhythm track that she’d overlaid with irregular squeals.
“Swine?” asked Alan.
“Seagulls,” said Susan. “Pigs would be too obviou
s. And this way there’s a shift in context, you see. The words are the surf.”
Ned guided the maroon-and-cream Pontiac northward, temporarily ahead of the storm. By the time Susan’s tape ended, the squall had overtaken them—violent Florida rain enlivened by stroboscopic lightning bolts and stumbling, drunken thunder. The steady-riding car was throwing up peacock-sheets of spray to either side. Alan felt exhilarated, happier than in years, on the loose in wildness of the American landscape.
“So beautiful,” said Ned stopping at a puddled intersection.
“Highway signs, yes,” said Susan. “You’ll be turning left on Route 8. That’ll take us west into the panhandle.”
“Eight’s a nice number,” said Ned.
They progressed westward along the Gulf coast, with the rain tapering off. Eventually Vassar awoke and they pulled over for a rest at the side of road. To their right was a cypress swamp. To their left a crooked moon sailed through the tattered storm clouds, casting radiance into the lagoon.
Alan savored the otherworldly scene—the tall bare trees with arched knees, the water obsidian black, the faint pale birds nested amid the veils of Spanish moss.
“Looks iffy,” said Ned, who wasn’t as reckless as he sometimes made himself out to be.
“I’ve heard people say that swamp water is good for you,” said Vassar, crouching to splash off his face.
“Gator!” said Susan softly. “Look right there.”
A bumpy dark form was lying just beneath the surface, half a body-length away from Vassar, the creature’s nostrils and eyes like gleaming knots on a silver log. He was utterly immobile, watching for his chance.
“Like a cop,” said Vassar, taking a step back. He stretched and looked around. “My turn to drive? How far do you wanna go?”
Ned and Alan shared a pulse of teep. The great fear was that the feds had loaded Landers into a truck and were driving the skugsniffer after them—assuming they’d guessed which way to go. Alan wasn’t quite sure how much information Landers had managed to glean from their final contact. In any case, it seemed wise to continue driving for many hours.
