by Rudy Rucker
“I’m sure there’s an explanation,” I said, trying to stay calm. “She’s running an errand.” But when I tried teeping Loulou, I found she’d blocked me off. And I couldn’t contact my roadspider either. Apparently Loulou had disabled Xiz’s tracking unit by using low-level nurb maintenance commands.
“You’re better off with moi,” said Reba, picking up on my discomfiture. She was standing right up against me, the smell of whiskey on her breath. “I don’t know why I’ve never done a threesome with you and Carlo. Or maybe we did? Hard to remember.”
“Qwet teep’s in town,” said Carlo, wearing a loose, weary grin. “Big fun.”
Reba said something else about Loulou, and I yelled at her for awhile, and she agreed to back off on the snide remarks. Obviously she was jealous. Be that as it may, I was starting to wonder if Reba and Jane were to some extent correct about Loulou. For sure Loulou had acted weird in Jane’s apartment. And I’d picked up that sharp disappointment vibe when Loulou realized how little money I had. And she’d more or less stolen my roadspider. Maybe she’d been gaming me all along.
Chalk up a fresh heartbreak for tortured artist Zad Plant?
I gave Carlo and Reba some breakfast, and we talked a little more, sitting around my store’s counter, enhancing our words with teeped emotions.
Like I mentioned earlier, the brain’s natural rate is to switch between the cosmic and the robotic modes at a rate of ten or even twenty times a second. Like rapid sonar pings. But now I was slowing the rate way down.
Going slow was a way of harnessing my teep so that I could have a heavy but non-oblivious conversation. I’d spend a second or two in the cosmic state, dipping deep into people’s minds and picking up intense tastes of their emotions. And then I’d snap back into robotic mode and lay down some facts. I was tasting the cosmic logic, and waking up every second or two to note down my impressions.
Putting it a bit differently, I was drifting into oblivion, bobbing up to the light, drifting down, and bobbing up again, over and over, creating an offbeat synthesis of the two reality modes.
Reba didn’t understand about tuning her vibrations. She’d sit there staring at Carlo and me in a cosmic merge, and then she wouldn’t remember anything that had happened for the last ten minutes. Not that Reba’s humid, overheated teep was actively unpleasant. She was, after all, an old friend. Even if, psychically speaking, she had a tendency to stand closer to me than I was standing to her.
“Let’s see Gaven’s qwetter,” I said to Carlo. He laid it on the table—it was like an old-time electrical engineer’s Christmas stocking, in the shape of a water gun.
“Junko tells me that, thanks to Gaven’s input, this qwetter has a hundred times as many parts as it needs,” Carlo said. “Not to mention that fact that it’s even using old-school tech at all. Being a nerd doesn’t automatically make you smart.”
“Gaven did have that big score with the housetrees,” I said.
“Yeah, but he bought/borrowed/stole the designs from little guys. He’s biz. A raptor. Knows how to siphon into the cash stream.”
“And every single bit of the qwet stuff is Junko’s, right? With Loulou pitching in.”
“Junko’s saying she’ll have much simpler qwetter design by tomorrow. And it’s going to be nurb instead of bunch of antique parts. She wants to let the qwetter’s new genes be open source too. She’s a zealot, an ultrageek. Doesn’t even care about getting rich.”
“Hell,” I said, “Loulou showed me how to qwet people with sex, and how to qwet nurbs with spit. This shit’s contagious.”
“Loofy times,” said Carlo.
“Slygro’s got nothing to sell,” I said.
“We don’t see it that way,” said Reba, momentarily snapping out of her trance. “I was already talking to Jane about a business plan today. It’s like Gaven says. Slygro can troubleshoot people’s qwet teep installations. Offer online seminars. Sell aftermarket add-ons. Do tech support. And make sales on our own. Jane said I should call her back when I’m sober. Did I tell you I just zapped Ned the jeweler with this qwetter? Customer numero uno.” Reba rummaged in her hair with both hands. “What a night! I’m Kentucky fried.”
“Grab a nap?” I suggested. “You can use my bed.”
Despite Loulou’s defection, I was feeling high and relaxed. The air shimmered in synch with my slowed-down cosmic/robotic vibration. I was seeing rainbow fringes, motion trails, op-art moirés. My two friends seemed like mythological archetypes. If people learned to handle qwet teep properly, their lives could become incredibly great.
“It’s better if I take Reba back to her apartment,” said Carlo, bristling with possessiveness vibes. Even if Slygro tanked, Reba was rich.
“Fine.” I turned to Reba. “Where was Jane when you talked to her this morning?” I made my voice as casual as I could. “At Gaven’s?”
Reba chuckled and wagged her finger at me. “Zad’s jealous. He’s in looove.”
“Jane did sleep at Gaven’s,” said Carlo. “But Reba says it was, like, a platonic thing.”
“They had milk and cookies at midnight,” said Reba, breaking into snorts of laughter. “Oh Lord take me now. Twin beds. Matching pink and blue jammies. Two toothbrushes. Sinister note: Gaven has a ball in his room, like a wrinkled baseball. He calls it his dirtbubble. It’s a little like Jane’s oddball, only it’s brown and muddy-looking and it smells like, I don’t know, like formaldehyde. Somehow it seems mean. Gaven keeps it on a cat’s bed like a pet and he talks to it. Under a night-table between the twin beds. I bet he uses the dirtbubble for sex.”
“And you know all this how?” I demanded.
“We girls like to talk in the morning and share the details of our nights with you big bad men,” said Reba. “Jane’s so mad that you did Loulou. She’s talking about all her old boyfriends again.”
“I don’t see where Jane gets off,” I spluttered. “After—”
And right then of course my wristphone chimed. And it was Jane. This time she had her visuals on. The squidskin of my wristphone was percolating signals directly into my nervous system, so it was as if I was seeing Jane through my own eyes—without needing to look down at the phone’s display. Jane was standing in her apartment, serious and cute. Standing right where I’d been an hour ago.
“Where is it?” she demanded. She was of course talking about the oddball.
“It’s mine,” I essayed. I was imagining it was still in my bedroom here.
“I found it in the woods behind my parents’ place last year,” said Jane. “And it lives on a carved shelf in my apartment. And I want it back here today.”
“You gave it to me for Christmas last year.”
“That was more like a loan, not a gift. You can’t just take it away. The oddball is precious to me, Zad. And now Gaven Graber wants to buy it!”
“How did Gaven find out about it?”
“Well that’s the strangest thing. Gaven has this thing he calls his dirtbubble, and it looks like the oddball a little bit. I can hardly believe this, but Gaven says his dirtbubble talks to him, and that it told him about my oddball? Maybe it wants a friend? This is all so crazy. Gaven likes that dirtbubble so much that he keeps it in his bedroom. Even though it smells bad.”
“Reba mentioned that to me, actually.”
“Oh, she’s such a long-toothed gossip. Anyway, Gaven thinks he can use the dirtbubble and the oddball for a special project that he and Whit want to do. Something really big, but he won’t tell me what. Not yet. Gaven said that if I’d give him the oddball, or even just lend it to him, he’d give me all the secrets of qwet teep. I said not now. But those secrets must be worth a lot! I’m tempted.”
“Gaven is trying to cheat you,” I said. “We were talking about this at the picnic. Doesn’t anyone ever listen to me? Those secrets are public domain.”
“Oh, what does that even mean? I despise tech-biz lingo. Jane Says is supposed to be simple. Promo and buzz. I’m the Aphrodite of access. The Juno of
jive. Gaven and I will make a mint off qwet teep!”
“You’re the best,” I said, smiling. My Jane. It was nice to see her on the little squidskin display, bright and loud with her yellow hair.
“Don’t you try and jolly your way out, Zad. Adulterer. Where’s our oddball? Show it to me.”
And now, duh, the full realization dawned. I walked into my bedroom, but I barely needed to look.
“Loulou stole it,” I had to report. “And she took my roadspider too.”
“She’s going straight to Gaven!” cried Jane. “I bet he’ll do something to ruin our oddball. He’ll crush it, or slice it up, or sell it to someone in China! You run out to his farm—or I’ll never ever take you back!”
“I hadn’t known that was a possibility,” I said, my heart rising.
“I hadn’t known I’d care who you sleep with.” Jane’s face had an odd expression. Maybe wistful.
“I’m going to Gaven’s right now.”
I ended the call, and right away Reba had to put in her two cents worth. “You don’t know for sure that Loulou went to Gaven’s. She might have gone to meet Joey Moon. Did I tell you that Joey broke out of his clinic two hours ago? One of their staff called Slygro to tell us. Sounded like a country girl with her first city job.”
“Why not call Xiz and ask her where she is,” Carlo suggested to me.
As I may have mentioned, if you owned a nurb, you had a built-in encrypted wireless connection to it, like a remote link. You could always check on its whereabouts. But thanks to Loulou’s tinkering with Xiz’s maintenance codes, calling my roadspider wasn’t a current option.
“I’m leaving for Gaven’s,” I repeated.
Right then Ned White, the jeweler from down the street, came bopping into my store, all excited about the qwet teep treatment that Reba had sold him.
“I keep forgetting what I’m doing,” said Ned, beaming at us. “You’re all sunny inside, you three. New day.”
“I have to go,” I told him. “Emergency. Talk to Carlo and Reba if you like. And, Skungy, you watch my store again.”
“I want to hunt for Joey Moon,” said the rat in a hoarse whisper. “My living idol.”
I was nearing a condition of frenzy. Loulou would be at Gaven’s by now. With our valuable oddball in her hands. What did any of this mean?
“Just come along with me then, Skungy, I don’t care. Clear out of here, you other three. I’m locking the place up.”
“We’ll talk later,” Carlo told me, ushering Reba out the front door. She was in cosmic mode, and wobbly in the knees.
Ned White dogged my steps back through my bedroom, and into the alley. He was holding a handful of nurb earrings, and he wanted an answer to the same question that I’d asked Loulou about my vat of paint.
“How do I make these things qwet so I can try and mod their shape?”
“Use oomph,” I said, parroting Loulou. “Drool on them or put them in your mouth or piss on them. Actualize. As for the actual modding—Loulou says the cosmos will help you. Whatever that means.” Turning away from Ned, I called out to my slugfoot nurb, who was still sunning himself on my Lincoln’s roof. “Time to go! Get under the car!”
But the big nurb wouldn’t move until I’d fed him a bucket of chow. I felt like my head was about to explode. While I fed the slug, Ned White continued pestering me with questions. He had some wistful notion that he might have a chance with Loulou, now that he was a qwet teeper too.
“You don’t want her!” I hollered. But maybe I still did.
And then I was on my way, riding my presidential assassination replica vehicle down River Road with Skungy on the dashboard, just like the day before.
Things were quiet on Gaven’s farm. Early Saturday afternoon and nobody working. Looked like even Junko had taken the day off. And I saw no sign of my roadspider Xiz.
The excited Skungy skittered up Gaven’s porch steps a few seconds ahead of me. His shrill alarm squeak filled my ears as I entered the front hall.
There lay Gaven, his face contorted, his body quite still. His skin was paler than pale, with a cast of blue. He had no teep aura at all. I touched the back of his hand. Although it was a little warm, his utter lack of a reaction convinced me he was dead. Another possible clue: Gaven’s hair was slightly damp. Sweat? A painting lay face-down on the floor at his side.
“Loulou?” I called. “Are you here?”
No answer. Everything was still, everything silent—like an enchanted castle. All of the nurbs were in a trance. Powered down by Loulou, no doubt. I teeped out the wake-up codes I’d learned from her.
The house and its furnishings came back online. And I heard a shrill buzzing. Flies on the corpse? Oh, wait, those were Gaven’s gnat cameras, circling him, landing and taking off, darting at me. One of the first things the gnats did was to call the cops. I knew because they told me via my wristphone.
“Wait here for the authorities,” the gnats shrilled through my wristphone, their voices in my head.
Great, just great. I was the only one at the crime scene. It looked bad. And if I fled, it’d look worse.
I wondered who else the gnat cams might be telling about Gaven’s death. Perhaps Carlo. Probably Junko Shimano. Probably not Loulou or Joey Moon. But I was guessing that one or both of them had been here just a few minutes ago.
I had a few minutes to look around on my own before the cops came. I paced to and fro, with little Skungy’s whiskers twitching in my aid. We found no signs of Loulou nor of Jane’s oddball. No weapons and no blood. The only thing out of place was that canvas on the floor. Even if it meant tampering with evidence, I flipped it over with the toe of my shoe.
How to describe breath-stopping horror? Putting it as simply as possible, the canvas held a squidskin portrait of Gaven. But the image had been tweaked and enhanced to represent a highly repellent version of the man. Had the sight of this terrible likeness jolted Gaven into his final collapse?
The image’s nostrils were flared as if smelling something bad. The front teeth were bucked out over the lower lip, miming an expression of imbecility. One side of the mouth was pulled down in a sour frown, the other side was drawn back in a dopey grin. The forehead was furrowed in bestial stupidity, and the eyes were crinkled in a baleful glare.
“A squidskin portrait by Joey Moon,” said Skungy, who was of course an expert on the man who’d given him his personality. “Not that I’m saying Joey was here to make it. My Joey ain’t no kind of killer.”
Trying not to look at the repellent image itself, I studied the construction of the picture. It was indeed a squidskin, with tiny eyes along the edge. Evidently it had functioned like an interactive distorting mirror, drawing you into a feedback loop. Gazing at the squidskin, you’d be reacting to what you saw. And the image would continue reflecting and exaggerating your expressions until you and the image had reached a sufficiently extreme state. And then freeze on that. Like a predatory paparazzo with a flash.
A simple, loofy idea for an artwork. Now I understood why Joey had been so secretive about his gimmick. It really would be easy to rip off the idea.
Depending on the programming of a canvas’s squidskin, it might jolly you into a laughing fit, precipitate a crying jag, lead you to a peak of personal pride—or march you towards a brutal baring of your most-feared monster within. And steal away your very breath. I was guessing that’s what had happened to Gaven. Judging from the temperature of his skin, it hadn’t been so long ago.
But who’d shown Gaven the lethal squidskin? Joey Moon himself? Loulou? Was Whit Heyburn somehow involved? Or—
“Oh shit, there goes my job.” It was Artie the tall security guard, drag-assing into the house. “I let the poor guy down.” He leaned down, peering closely at Gaven. “We need to call the cops.”
“His gnats already did that,” I said. “You were supposed to be on duty?”
“I have a house on the property,” said Artie. “An old cabin down the hill. I think you lived on this farm
yourself about ten years ago? Right after we graduated from high school. You were up in the grown home that Joey and Loulou use.”
“Yeah, yeah. Let’s stick to the point. You didn’t notice when your boss died?”
“His house should have sent me an alarm,” said Artie. “But—”
“The house didn’t warn you because it was asleep. My friend Loulou, she knows some special nurb maintenance codes. She says the code to them and they go offline.”
“Qwet teep is slowing me down,” said Artie. “You saw Joey zap me with the qwetter last night, right? Qwet teep is why I stayed in bed so long. You’re qwet too. I can tell. It’s spreading like the measles. I was up all night making love to my wife. We didn’t fall asleep till after the sun came up.”
“I had a night like that myself,” I said.
“Right on,” said Artie, briefly cheered. And then his mood darkened again. “I feel lower than squid-shit about Gaven. I should of been checking on him. Whether or not his house was calling me. I screwed up.”
“Tough to guard a guy like that,” I said, hoping to draw Artie out. “Not likable. I’d say he’s been dead less than an hour.”
“That’s a sick painting on the floor next to him. It’s the inner Gaven? I see you brought your rat again.”
“He doesn’t matter.” Naturally Skungy wanted to argue about this, but I shut him up.
Artie and I walked out on the porch and stood there companionably. Artie was my age. Just another guy trying to get by. Gently we merged the edges of our teep. I was still doing my new trick of alternating between cosmic/robotic modes only about every few seconds. Staying sociable, but enjoying my high. Artie fell into the same rhythm.
Moving as one, we walked down the porch steps and away from the nurbs. Gaven’s gnats stayed inside, hovering over his body.
“You’re not the one who killed Gaven, are you?” asked Artie in a low tone.
“No, man. Of course not. I came to the farm looking for Loulou Sass. You didn’t see any sign of her?”
Artie was silent. He wanted to say something, but I could teep that he was scared of being blamed. But then he went ahead and spit it out.
