Turing & Burroughs: A Beatnik SF Novel

by Rucker, Rudy

  Hands trembling, Alan hung up. The wretched, empty town felt like a stage set.

  And now, sudden as a shout, a helicopter clattered in through the steady rain, hovering directly above them, a chopper with a full bubble canopy and a tail made of struts. From the passenger seat, a man was aiming a machine-gun at them, a heavy weapon with Swiss-cheese holes in the barrel’s cladding. The first downward salvo, destroyed the Buick’s engine.

  All around them, as in a terrible dream, the streets came alive with flashing police cars. Nestled among them like a queen among drones was the dreadful shape of the long white ambulance—bearing Landers the skugsniffer within.

  One man was in charge of the milling chaos—a tall Texan in boots and a ten-gallon hat, standing high in the back of a pickup truck, pointing, gesturing, and talking into a jury-rigged phone. With sudden conviction, Alan knew this was Dick Hosty, the man he’d just talked to. As if in confirmation, the behatted man pointed straight at Alan, wiggling his thumb like the hammer of a pistol.

  The cops and agents opened fire. There were no skuggers among them—only the sullen, resentful Landers, sealed in his bottle in the rear of Hosty’s ambulance.

  The phone booth’s sides collapsed in shards; the Buick’s windshield and side-windows were punctured and cobwebbed.

  In the car, the single-minded Susan, she bent over her stash of acousmatic tapes, rapidly pressing them against her belly one by one, burying them in her skugger flesh.

  Backing up to the car, Alan held his hands high in a gesture of surrender. The unrelenting rain was running down his neck and into his shirt. Ned climbed out of the car, and then Vassar, with his arm around Susan. Vassar was bleeding from his shoulder.

  “You can still heal yourself,” Alan called to Vassar, “Just focus, and you can grow the wound together.” Alan called to him.

  Vassar stationed himself in front of Susan, wanting to protect her. And dear Ned did the same for Alan.

  “We’re at the end of the road,” Ned told Alan, his voice calm. “Remember me if you make it outta here, man. We had a good run.”

  “Maybe—maybe we can skug these bobbies,” said Alan. “Dear Ned.”

  Two armored agents were striding towards them from Hosty’s pickup, each of them wearing a backpack and carrying a gun-like metal wand. Flamethrowers! In teeped synchronization, Alan and Ned grew tendrils from their hands and ran them along the ground and into the legs of the advancing executioners.

  But it was fruitless. The two cops had been vaccinated. From a skugger’s point of view, their flesh was as infertile as glazing putty. There was no way to instill a symbiotic skug.

  Hollering in fury, the agents pressed the triggers on their short-barreled wands and—here came the end—the nozzles blossomed with long tongues of flame. Crouching and moving closer, the killers played the cascade of burning liquid across Ned and across Vassar, moving the flames faster than the men could run away. Alan and Susan would be next.

  Hosty’s riflemen were firing with brutal precision. They knocked out Vassar’s and Ned’s legs from beneath them. Another shot drilled a hole in Alan’s thigh. Vassar and Ned were screaming, their telepathic signals were horrible in the last degree.

  Alan lurched over to Susan and manhandled her into the slight amount of shelter that lay the far side of the Buick. The helicopter remained directly above them, but for the moment they were shielded from the rifles and the flames.

  Alan could teep the dying emanations of Vassar’s and Ned’s minds. The sensations were unfathomable, moving beyond pain and into a curious ecstasy. All the circuits blown, the networks curling inwards, the sense receptors gone.

  “Save Vassar, you bastard!” said Susan, weeping and shaking Alan by the shoulders. “Can’t you feel it too? Go out there and save him.”

  But there was no use. Alan lay down flat in the gravel beside the Buick, working on his leg. Peering through under the car, he could see Vassar and Ned very clearly. They were charred stick figures now, their limbs waving in a ghastly, insect-like parody of human life, their teep signals coming from a purer and calmer place. The flamethrowers took a pause, their first task done.

  “So horrible,” said Alan, his voice catching. “I loved them.”

  “Vassar was a gentleman all along. In his own way. I should have told him that.” Susan had flattened herself by Alan’s side. Suddenly her voice rose an octave. “Oh god, Alan, look now—look, look, look—I can see Vassar’s soul!”

  Faint patterns of lines were visible above their beloved companions’ charred skulls. Alan couldn’t see them straight on, he had to look a little to one side, picking them up in his peripheral vision. Above Ned was an intricate polyhedron with faintly glowing edges, as if modeled from pastel neon tubes. Dear Ned and his love of math.

  And above Vassar was a plump glowing shape like a thickened plate—hard to make out what it was. The forms drifted upwards, just barely visible, mysterious and promising. Souls? Who could say. By now they’d moved beyond the range of view allowed by Alan’s position—lying on his stomach, peering though the narrow space beneath a car.

  “Kill the other two skuggers!” Hosty was yelling, his hoarse, vindictive voice clear against the splash and hiss of the rain. “Do it now!”

  Alan made his arm very thin and long, like a spider’s leg. He grew his arm steadily upwards through the buffeting air-currents of the helicopter’s prop wash, focusing all his attention upon the task. Meanwhile, on the ground, the men with the flamethrowers were circling around the side of the Buick.

  High in the air, Alan’s hand reached into the open door of the hovering chopper. He sank his branching fingers into the bodies of the pilot and his gunman. Blessedly these two hadn’t been vaccinated. Sighing with relief, Alan skugged them.

  “Hold all fire,” bellowed the pilot through the helicopter’s loudspeaker. “Hold fire, Agent Hosty!” Dropping rapidly from the air, the clattering copter thudded down in the lee of the Buick—right beside Alan and Susan.

  The cops and FBI agents hadn’t yet grasped what was happening. The skugging process was very new to everyone—and Alan’s upward-reaching arm had been so thin as to be invisible in the heavy rain. The men with the flamethrowers drew back, faces stolid, awaiting further orders, imagining things were proceeding according to some official plan. For the moment, even Agent Hosty had fallen still.

  With a crisp salute, the gunman from the helicopter disembarked, bearing his heavy machine-gun, which was trailed by a belt of bullets leading back to an ammo box on the copter’s floor. Silently the barrel swayed left and right, as if defying anyone to challenge them.

  Moving sullenly, as if in custody, Alan and Susan shuffled aboard the copter, Alan got the passenger seat, and Susan squeezing in between Alan and the pilot. The engine sound rose to a frantic roar. The skugged gunman from the chopper handed Alan the machine-gun and stepped away.

  Alan broke into a wild grin as the chopper lifted off. He nudged the pilot, pointing his chin at the ambulance. “I want to shoot that!” he cried.

  “You want to watch the kick on that Browning,” admonished the pilot. He was a hatchet-faced, olive-skinned man with a black crewcut. “Try to dance with the thing. My name’s Naranjo. It means juicy orange.”

  As the chopper leaned and circled, the policemen around the ambulance became uneasy. Dick Hosty began yelling orders again. One of his guards took aim at the chopper with his rifle. Leaning from the copter’s door, Alan fired a fusillade towards Hosty and his men, sending the bullies scrambling for shelter.

  And now Alan had the ambulance in the machine-gun’s sights. His mind was running at high speed, watching for snipers, correcting for the helicopter’s motion, planning the bullets’ downward trajectory. With his arms poised like springs, he pressed the trigger.

  The Browning bucked and jabbered like a live animal. The raindrops sizzled on the cooler-jacket around its barrel. Alan poured round after round into the bland, eggshell-white roof of the ambulance. Hosty’s
men were firing upwards. Fractures webbed the chopper’s bubble-shaped windshield. Susan was making herself as small as possible, her eyes wide with fear. And now, oh no, a sudden blot of red appeared on her chest.

  Alan exhorted Susan to heal herself—and kept on strafing the cops. Naranjo threw the helicopter into a tighter gyre. Alan poured still more fire into the rear of the evil ambulance—and finally the thing split apart. Its gas tank exploded, and a crooked ball of fire engulfed the foul cargo in the rear.

  As the chopper slewed away, Alan had a final glimpse of the misshapen Landers twitching in the flames. Another victim in the war against the skugs. As innocent, in his own way, as poor Ned and Vassar. Alan sighed.

  And now his attention returned to the helicopter’s cabin. Rain was dripping in through the bullet holes in the canopy. Susan was bent forward, intent on healing the gunshot wound in her chest. Down below, Hosty was trying to follow them in a Jeep—but soon the chopper was alone above the cattle range, with a trackless wasteland of rocks coming up.

  “Are you coping?” Alan asked Susan. “Can I help?”

  “I’m patching my heart,” said Susan with a tight little sob. “Knitting it up. So crazy weird. Anyone else would be dead. And I’ve still got all those tapes down in my belly.”

  “Nobody’s really explained to me what’s going on,” said the pilot. “What exactly did you do to me back there, Turing? With that long-arm finger-poke of yours?”

  “I made you a skugger,” said Alan. “Gave you a symbiote. Like Susan and me. We have telepathy and we can shapeshift. That’s why Susan can heal her wound. We’re lucky.”

  “Lucky?” exclaimed Susan, her face a stark mask of grief. “You’re killing us all! Ruining our lives. Poor Vassar! You thought he was just a toy to pick up and use. He was a man. He was my man. I want your horrible skug out of my body!”

  “I’m with you on that,” said Naranjo. “I don’t like somebody reaching into me and changing me.” He glared at Alan. “And now I have to help you whether I want to or not. So where you want to go?”

  “There,” said Alan, pointing northwest. “I’d like to make it to the northern part of New Mexico.”

  “You’re talking about a five hour flight in my whirlybird,” said Naranjo. “And they’ll be sending planes after us. Fighter jets with radar.”

  “Oh god,” said Susan.

  “You’re scared of the jets?” said Naranjo, his thin mouth twitching in a slight smile. “Relax. You already survived the flamethrowers and the bullet through your heart.”

  “I have no interest in being all bluff and macho,” said Susan. “And what do you know about grief, Naranjo?”

  “Long story,” said Naranjo shortly. He patted Susan’s shoulder. “Didn’t mean to harsh on you. You’re right to be scared.”

  “I wish—” said Susan, her voice going thin and breaking. “I wish I’d hung onto my tape recorder. It would soothe me to be making some of this into art. Like I’d like to record the rackety thudding of this helicopter.”

  “Oh, it’s a classical symphony in here all right,” said Naranjo with a slight smile.

  “You can remember the sounds,” Alan told Susan. “Our minds are as good as any tape recorders now. And, if you try, I bet you can sing any sound that you can think. Maybe even by vibrating your skin.”

  “What do I care about your ridiculous opinions,” said Susan. “You’re a heartless robot.”

  “Right again,” said Naranjo. “He wants us all to be mutant machines like him.”

  “We’re on the same team,” insisted Alan.

  “In your opinion,” said Naranjo. “Here’s some good news. With this weather, if we fly low, the jets aren’t gonna find us.”

  “It’ll all turn lovely in the end,” Alan said in his sunniest tone. “Maybe Ned and Vassar aren’t really dead, Susan. Those shapes we saw above their bodies? Those could have been aethereal information patterns.”

  “Ghosts?” asked Naranjo, taking an interest. “I know some dead people I’d like to talk with.”

  “We saw their ghosts, yes,” said Susan, happy with the thought. “Even though I can tell that Alan thinks we imagined it, and now he thinks he’s talking down to me, even though I’m a professor too. Did you forget that, Alan?”

  “Look here, it’s not certain we saw those patterns,” said Alan, truly wanting to comfort Susan, but remaining stubborn about bending what he considered to be the truth. “Everyone occasionally sees odd little shapes from the corners of their eyes, no? And ever since I became a skugger, these effects have been enhanced. My mind’s clicking at a faster rate. I dream about pale monsters, undersea ghosts, wraiths of the air—”

  “I saw Vassar’s soul, goddamit. Just frikkin’ admit it, Alan. I saw Vassar’s soul and that makes me glad. Do you mind?”

  “All right, I suppose it’s possible. Perhaps the fact the we’re skuggers makes us more perceptive. And perhaps the fact that Ned and Vassar were themselves skuggers makes what you call their souls be robust, active, and easier to see.”

  “So we don’t have a thing to worry about,” said Naranjo sardonically. “We’ve got glowing magic souls. Even if an Air Force fighter blasts us out of the sky. Oh hell, man, I should have stayed home in bed. But even that’s no fun now that my wife left me.”

  Flying low, hugging the mountain ranges and the arroyos, Naranjo took them across Texas and into the southeastern corner New Mexico. The foul weather was moving with them, which was a plus, in terms of stealth.

  The rain was turning to sleet. Fortunately the chopper had a primitive heater. And Alan found some rags to stop up the bullet holes in the canopy. A couple of hours went by. The engine seemed to be laboring harder than before.

  “Ice on the blades,” said Naranjo. “And we’re low on fuel. I know of a crop-duster airport up ahead. We’ll land there and tank up.”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t stop yet,” said Susan. “With the jets hunting for us and all.”

  “Got to stop,” said Naranjo. “A full tank only carries my whirlybird about four hundred miles. Especially flying flat-out like we’ve been doing.”

  “What about the guys working at this airport?” said Susan. “What do we tell them?”

  “We skug them,” said Alan.

  “Always the same answer,” said Naranjo. “Recruit them to your psycho cause. We’re crazed guerilla missionaries for a cult. So tell me how the skugging bit works, okay? Incase I want to ruin someone like you ruined me.”

  As it happened, only one man was on duty at the little airfield, a pimply youngster in mechanics overalls, and he was on the point of locking the hanger. The sleet had given way to snow. An inch of the stuff lay on the ground. Pilot Naranjo shook the mechanic’s hand and skugged him on the spot.

  The youth’s name was Earl. Earl, Naranjo, Alan and Susan ate all the candy bars that the airfield had behind the counter in its little store.

  “Skuggers aren’t exactly geared for running a store,” remarked Naranjo, as he took half the bills from the till.

  “Anarchy,” said Earl, pocketing the rest of the cash. “Anarchy is cool.”

  Before leaving, Alan advised Earl about how to deal with the enemies of the skuggers. “It’s vitally important not to be taken alive,” Alan told the mechanic. “The authorities want to seal you in a jar and torment you into being a spy. But for a shapeshifter, there’s generally a way to break free. Or—experience the illusion of death and ascend to the astral plane. Don’t be limited by the old modalities.”

  And then the chopper was back on its way, beating northward into the veils of snow. The snow-filtered light was a warm shade, almost pale yellow.

  “You said astral plane back there?” said Naranjo, giving Alan a quizzical glance. “Is that for real?”

  “I wanted to express myself in a manner congenial to Earl’s predilections,” said Alan. “I teeped that he’s devotee of fantasy tales. And the notion of an astral plane has an illustrious history. For instance—”

>   “Save it for the monograph, Professor Turing,” said Susan. “Open your eyes and see how lovely this is. Beauty’s all there is between us and death.” The visibility was low enough that they couldn’t see the ground or the clouds. They were centered in an unchanging snow globe of tumbling flakes.

  “My own little world,” said Naranjo as they continued to clatter along. “I like it like this. One time I was into a scene like this, and my chopper iced up and crashed.”

  “You weren’t hurt?” said Susan.

  “Landed in a tree,” said Naranjo. “I’m lucky. That’s a key requirement for being a pilot. And then I bought a new helicopter.”

  “But I still think we might ram into something here,” said Susan, staring at the hypnotic dance of the flakes.

  “Maybe it doesn’t matter,” said Naranjo in a level tone. He paused for a beat, then cracked his hard face in one of his slight smiles. “But I have instruments in the dash, Susan. And a map. And I pretty well know where we are. We’re coming into the Pueblo lands.”

  “Are there mesas?” fretted Susan. “With sudden vertical walls?”

  “This land is like my back yard,” said Naranjo calmly. “My mother’s people live here. Mom met Dad when he was stringing wires for the telephone company. Mom’s brothers were cutting down the wires for the metal. Finally Dad worked something out with them. He gave them a giant spool of wire off the back of his truck. Family stories.”

  The storm was temporarily breaking up, with the veils of snow parting to show a brilliant blue sky above, sun twinkling on the crystals.

  “My destination is Los Alamos,” said Alan a bit officiously. “I can tell you that now.”

  “I already know,” said the pilot. “You haven’t been hiding it real well. Could be those cops saw it too.”

  “I’m overwrought,” said Alan. “Are we close?”

  “Couple of miles,” said Naranjo, steering his chopper towards a field on the crest of a bluff. “But we’re gonna land right here. No sense pushing our luck with the cloud-cover gone. And it might be smart to hang back from Los Alamos for a day. They saw us leaving Gormly in this general direction.”