by Rucker, Rudy
“Let’s go for New Orleans,” suggested Ned. “We’ll take turns at the wheel and roll into the Big Easy at dawn. Find a room and have some fun. I’ve been there, you know. On shore-leave from the Navy.”
“Vassar and I know some deep grooves there,” said Susan. “We used to go the Vieux Carré for the music. Keep driving, yeah. It jolts me out of depression to stay awake all night.”
“You’re depressed?” said Vassar as if surprised. “Even though we’re on an exciting adventure?”
“You nearly got arrested in Miami, Vassar. Tony El Tigre came by the apartment to shake us down. I gave up my nice job. And now we’re in a car with your latest conquest, who seems more like a tranny than like a real girl—I’m sorry, Abby, but that’s what I think. Yes, gang, Susan is depressed.”
After this outburst, Susan ended up companionably dozing in the back seat with Alan. The two others sat in front, piloting their oversized an American car through the primeval night. Alan found it strange how easily Susan had seen through his imitation game. A woman’s intuition. Not that Vassar seemed to believe her.
Ned and Vassar took turns in the driver’s seat, chatting and telling stories. They turned off Susan’s tape machine and put on the radio, pulling in pop, hillbilly music, and, as the night wore on, jazz and the accordion arabesques of Cajun bands.
The sounds threaded through Alan’s dreams. He saw chimerical ghosts like seahorses and flounders and cephalopods, with some of them bearing human faces on long necks. The ghosts peeped in from the periphery of his vision, slyly peering at him, always whisking out of sight when he gave them his full attention. Was his lamented flame Christopher Morcom among them?
But now images of the dead police captain appeared. First the captain was floating in a blackwater swamp being chewed by alligators, and then, oh horrible, the captain was rushing after Alan in vengeance, riding in a black hearse with a siren. Meanwhile the flickering ghost-things were chortling in the darkness behind Alan’s head. Alan felt a sick conviction that these visions were real. But what did they mean?
It was a relief to awaken. Susan was leaning on his shoulder.
“You two look cute,” said Vassar, smiling at them from the front seat. Ned was in the process of parking the car. They were in a city.
“Our bad boys,” muttered Susan, rubbing sleep from her eyes. “We’ll teach them respect, won’t we, Abby? Let’s make them our sex slaves.”
“Perhaps,” said Alan, embarrassed and a little aroused.
It was a wet dawn, still dark, the air filled with mist. They were in the French Quarter, among two-story buildings, very human in scale, with ironwork balconies supported by slender columns. A few of the town’s legendary bon-vivants were passing by, only now making their way home.
A lean man with a cyst the size of a golf ball on the side of his face was singing the pop song that Alan had heard in Madeira. “Earth Angel.” He moved his hands as if were swimming the breast stroke—dancing his way home. A gray-haired man in jeans and a billed cap was loading an eight-foot wooden cross into the back of his pickup truck, his night’s preaching done. The cross bore the insignia, “Repent,” along its cross-bar, the letters red and smeared. At the end of the block, a silky-voiced pitchman was cozening people into an upstairs after-hours bar.
“That’s Zachary, isn’t it?” said Susan. “This is the building where we stayed, remember Vassar? We had this wonderful room on the ground floor facing the garden in back. A little paradise. Hey, Zachary! Brother Squonk!”
“Square and root,” said Zachary, a dark-skinned, well-knit man with tight curls. “It’s Susan Green and Vassar Lafia. What you got for me, Vassar?”
“Smoke off the boat,” said Vassar. “Straight from Sultan. Can we get the room by the garden?”
“The looove suite,” said Zachary. “Vacant as of an hour ago. The night’s dark suck and push is done. It’s a spang new day. Feed my head and go to bed.”
“Enjoy,” said Vassar, passing Zachary a lump of hash. “Can we, uh, score some sandwiches from upstairs, too? Muffalettas? Is the kitchen open?”
“I’ll order two for you,” said Zachary, examining Vassar’s offering.
“And a six-pack of Regal Lager?” continued Vassar.
“Ned and I don’t drink alcohol,” put in Alan.
“Me either,” added Susan. “Most of the time.”
“Ginger ale for the others, and Regal Lager for me,” amended Vassar. “I’m on a spree.”
“We’ll see,” said Zachary, pocketing his hash. “Still playing with the acousmatics, Susan? Feed my ears. What’s the latest?”
“Bulldozer At The Dump,” said Susan in her flat, title-reciting tone. “Wrong Supermarket. What It’s Like To Be Dead. Orgasm Anyway. Godwaters. I brought them all.”
“This afternoon we’ll jam. Your tape, my sax, and Nebuchadnezzar with his monstrous bass. Maybe Long John on the drums. Welcome to the Chateau La Pompe, y’all.”
Their room was sizable and well-used, with overflowing ashtrays, empty bottles, and an enormous unmade bed. A door opened onto dim garden, faintly green in the burgeoning dawn. Feeling awkward, Alan found a trash can and tidied up. Ned got clean sheets from the cupboard and remade the bed. The food and drinks arrived. The little company recharged their energy.
“Let’s bounce!” said Vassar now, bundling Susan and Alan onto the sheets.
“You too, Ned,” said Susan, wriggling out of her shirt and pants. “Kiss me down low, sailor-boy. I know you want to. Be my slave.”
“Susan, I don’t know if—” began Vassar, his voice suddenly thin and righteous, even though he himself was jiggling Alan’s large, bare breasts.
“In for a penny, in for a pound,” said Susan. “Like Abby says.”
So now they got into it, side by side. Vassar began hungrily pushing into Alan with short, quick thrusts, just like they’d done aboard the Phos. Alan reveled in the sense of being so easily penetrated. And Vassar had good staying power. Meanwhile Susan straddled Ned, rocked her crotch against his face for awhile, had an orgasm and switched to riding his cock.
Vassar kept looking over at Susan. He was aroused and somehow wistful. Alan rocked his womanly hips, wanting Vassar’s full attention. Ned began to moan, a series of rising notes. Falling into rough synch, the four of them rushed the summit in unison. Ka-boom.
In the charged silence that followed, Susan slid off Ned and began kissing Alan on the mouth, thrusting in her tongue. He rather enjoyed this. Susan’s antic creativity almost made up for her being a woman.
Meanwhile the overheated Ned, empowered by his skug, grew stiff again. He mounted Susan and plunged into her again.
“That’s my wife,” protested Vassar at this point. “Not some hired party girl.”
“Oh hush, Vassar,” said Susan, her voice tight and fast. “I’m into this now. Ned’s the man.” She let out a ragged laugh. “Let’s yodel like we’re in the Alps!”
“I said it’s enough!” snarled Vassar. He sat up and shoved Ned so hard that the taller man rolled off the bed and onto the floor.
“Time to zap you,” said Ned, weary and annoyed. He swarmed across the bed, with his limbs like the bluntly flexing arms of a starfish. He elongated a finger and drilled it into Vassar’s forehead—skugging the man on the spot.
Where Vassar had been all knotted aggression a moment before, now he was languidly draped in a posture of noble ease. Ned withdrew his finger; the hole in Vassar’s brow healed over, and the drops of spilled blood sank into his skin.
Susan, shocked silent by Ned’s assault, now found the breath for a scream. Ned abruptly skugged her as well, hooking his thumb into her temple.
Perhaps Alan could have intervened and stopped Ned. But he didn’t care to. He was too fascinated by watching the situation unfold. And by now he was fully behind the skugs’ cause.
A moment later, Susan had healed over, too. The four of them were in teep contact—that is, their skug-sensitized brains were exchanging subt
le phase-modulated electromagnetic waves. Alan focused on Vassar, his rough-cut dreamboat.
Vassar was in his own world, staring at his hands, bending his fingers in odd ways, unsystematically exploring the qualities of his altered form. His inner mind was more oddly organized than Alan had realized before. The man’s flashes of wit emanated not from chains of reason, but from surreal juxtapositions. A pair of images would collide and stick—and that would be the next thing that Vassar said, heedless of any precise meaning. And then somehow a meaning would emerge. He had a great ability to turn off his inner filters. What Vassar thought, Vassar said. And, Alan could now perceive even more clearly than before, Vassar was somewhat unsure of himself. He knew full well that, on the world’s terms, he was an ineffectual wastrel. Far from glorying in this, he nursed an abiding sense of regret.
“Astral radio rates you!” Vassar suddenly exclaimed, as if reacting to Alan’s not entirely laudatory thoughts. Instinctively Vassar now veiled the deeper parts of his mind. “This is wild,” he added, playing the rogue once more. “I like how you’re staring at my dick, Abby.”
“We’ll grow comfortable with each other’s inner ways,” said Alan. It would only be a matter of minutes till Vassar saw down into the sexual secrets in Alan’s mind. For now, Alan turned his attention to Susan, who was gazing at Ned, with a sea of stories in her eyes.
Susan’s mind reminded Alan of when, as a boy, he’d creep into his mother’s closet with its clutter of veils and feminine armatures, a place of mysteries. In Susan’s head, sinuous melodies and sprung rhythms mingled with remembered voices and ambient noises—the slam of a door, a cough, the burbling of a percolator. Everything was in flux and under revision, as in some tootling cartoon landscape where every object joins in a communal jig. Susan was nothing like so blithe as he’d thought. Her psyche housed countless icons of how she had at various times imagined herself to appear from the outside. Her every utterance was a bravura performance to be pondered and stored. Her seeming opinions were to some extent in quote-marks, embroidered on samplers in mock-serious knotty-pine frames. Her actual opinions were harder to discern.
“It’s okay, isn’t it?” Ned was saying to Alan aloud. “That I skugged them?”
“We’re four strange bedfellows,” said Alan. “But, yes, we need a team if we’re to spread the skugs worldwide.”
“Complete global mastery, huh?” said Vassar. “Am I on board? Oh sure. Can I be, uh, the Duke of Jersey City?”
“And I’m the Duchess of Queens,” added Susan. “Royal mutants on the prowl.” Saying this, she twisted the last word into a musical tone, and warbled the sound up and down, her voice velvety. She stretched her arms like boneless tentacles, wrapping the four of them in a group hug. “All friends now? Even though you guys have destroyed our lives?”
“I hope this doesn’t wear off,” said Vassar. “I can stop even pretending to look for a job.”
“We’ll change the world forever,” said Alan.
“Whoah,” said Vassar, still sorting out the fresh scraps of data he was finding in Ned’s and Alan’s brains. “You’re that same loser Ned who was on the ship? And, hold it—the Abby thing was a drag act? I’ve been boning a man?”
“And I’m not even William Burroughs,” said Alan. “I’m Professor Alan Turing from Manchester.”
“You might as well wear your real faces, boys,” said Susan. “Let us see how you look.”
Yes. Alan was dead sick of his imitation games. With a sudden flicker of his will, he was once again wearing his original Alan Turing form—for the first time since Christmas morning in Tangier. And Ned was back to looking like he had on the ship.
“Alan, not Abby,” said Susan, softly “Quite handsome. The timid Prince Charming awakes from his spell. And, Ned, you look even better this way.”
“How do you feel, Vassar?” asked Alan. “I—I don’t suppose you’ll love me now?”
“I’ll still run with you, big guy. I’ve got no problem with queers. But—”
“You’ll find the right man, Alan,” said Susan. “Vassar isn’t the right man for anyone. He’s a stopgap measure. Even for me.” Still naked, she cocked a roguish eye at her husband. “And now that I can teep his complete record of mortal and venial sins—”
“I like seeing your brain’s insides, too,” interrupted Vassar. “It’s like I’ve made it into my teenage girlfriend’s lacy bedroom with the picture of a horse on the wall. We’ll get all snuggly and lovey-dovey, what do you say? A new leaf.”
“I can be cozy if you can treat me right,” said Susan. “I’ve always gotten a thrill from you, Vassar. You know that.” She turned to Ned, who was rubbing against her leg. “Back off, cad. I don’t even know you.”
“My dear wife,” said Vassar. He yawned and sagged. “Curl up with me, Susan, and we’ll zonk some Zs. I feel like I just had brain surgery. Or something.”
“I’m perky,” said Susan. “Jazzed.”
“Oh, I’m for a snooze, too,” said Ned. “Let’s merge in a mound. This’ll be good for you, Vassar and Susan. Alan can pass you a wetware upgrade to take off the rough edges.”
Alan hung back, feeling himself on the outside once again. He feared that none of these three people would ever want to make love to him in a human way.
“Oh, stop feeling sorry for yourself and merge with us, Alan,” exclaimed Ned, sensing his friend’s thoughts. “This won’t be mere sex,” Ned added for Vassar’s sake. “It’ll be skugger conjugation. Very intense, very good for you. Alan is improving his metabolism all the time, and he’ll share what he’s got. The man’s a genius, a mad scientist, the bullgoose wetware programmer in chief.”
So, urged on by Ned and by Alan, the four of them piled up. Guided by Alan’s teep, their tissues began to melt and flow, with tendrils from each body digging into the flesh of the skuggy flesh of the others. Alan was thinking of a topological paradox in which four endlessly ramifying solids share a single border.
But quickly the merge switched from the theoretical to the experiential. In some ways it was like sex, without being focused on the genitalia. They seeped, they shared, they shuddered, they slept as one. But Alan and Ned held back on the Los Alamos plan.
They woke in the early afternoon. Vassar gave Alan his extra shirt and pants. Led by Susan, they went upstairs into the on-rolling daily party in the Chateau La Pompe bar and grill. Zachary was improvising bebop bleats on his sax, with his jam-partners Nebuchadnezzar playing a lustrous wooden bass, and Long John on a red set of drums.
“Still no beer for you others?” Vassar asked as they paused by the bar. A golden-skinned woman named Bea was in charge.
“No need,” said Alan. “You haven’t half unpacked all the new wetware I’ve given you. Poke around in your mitochondria.”
“So, aha, I see that I can get myself high,” said Vassar, staring off into space. “Makes life easier. You tweedle the bonk of the wiggle-doo.”
“Putting it quite non-technically,” said Alan.
“But we still need food,” said Ned. “What kind of eats they got?”
“Crawfish?” said Vassar, leaning across the bar towards Bea, smiling and nodding. “You got? A giant pan of them, dear hostess. Enough for all of us. And I’ll have a Regal Lager anyway.”
“Feed our ears, Susan,” called Zachary. “Jack us to the next level.” While Long John played a stuttering tattoo, Nebuchadnezzar plucked suspenseful chords in a rising sequence that hinted at some dramatic conclusion.
“I’ll be right back,” said Susan. “I’ll run and get my tapes and the machine from the car. Can you bring us a big pan of candied yams, too, Bea? Remember those, Vassar?”
Susan returned and gotten one of her tapes going—a giggly mix called Orgasm Anyway. And then Bea appeared with a rectangular pan of golden yam halves broiled with brown sugar, and a great round platter bearing a mound of boiled crawfish, dark dusky red, most of them about three inches long. Vassar showed Alan and Ned how to eat the tails of the cra
wfish.
Meanwhile the musicians played deedle-honk filigrees over the background of Bulldozer at the Dump. The tape contained sirens and the roaring of a lawn-mower.
“Highly agreeable,” said Alan, his mouth full. “But what’s wrong, Susan? I get a sense that—”
“I think some people have staked out our car. One of them tried to follow me. A thin redneck with a burr haircut. I cut through some alleys to shake him, which was a bitch, carrying my heavy tape machine.”
“If we see the guy again, we can skug him,” said Ned, his mouth full of orange yam. “And anyone else who’s on our case. We rule.”
“We’re making it new,” said Vassar. “You know how in all the SF movies, the fat cops and tight-ass scientists are working to control the giant ants or the twonky robots or the invisible aliens from space? We’re turning the story around. We’re the bizarre mutants, yeah—but we’re the heroes.”
“Should we feel sorry for the cops and scientists?” asked Susan.
“They get to be skuggers, too,” said Ned. “So I like our new story better. It’s time to break the system. The fat cats have been trampling the little guys for too long.”
“And we’re the rebel outsiders,” said Susan. “Physical mutants. I always liked playing that role, but—” Her chin quivered ever so slightly. She was scared.
“Revel in your enhanced powers,” said Alan, sympathetic to Susan’s mix of feelings. “We’ve whole new worlds to explore.”
“I hope we don’t have to feel sorry for these crawfish,” said Vassar, trying for a joke. “We’re converting them, too.”
“Converting the people and the crawfish and the yams,” said Susan, perhaps a little too brightly. “It’s all the same, huh? The flow of life.”
“I’ve eaten sixty-seven of them now,” said Alan, who’d been keeping track.
“He has a prime number in his stomach,” said Ned.
“And now I need more sweets,” said Vassar, finishing the last of the yams. “I’m realizing that from now on, sweets are what really get me high. Speaking as a shapeshifting mutant. Beer is piss.”
