The Big Aha

by Rudy Rucker

  Setting out after Jane, I paused for a moment at the near edge of the myoor, trying to map my pursuit path. So many mouths to dodge. And goddamn Kenny had taken my car.

  “Ratview!” chirped Skungy.

  He’d flattened himself atop my head, with ears cupped, whiskers outstretched, nose twitching, and eyes upon the prize. He was still wearing his tiny wristphone, and he offered me a link. I gladly took it, and the rat’s sensory inputs overlaid themselves upon mine. Via ratview, I was alert to every crevice and declivity in the myoor’s hide, sensitive to every tendril of stink, in tune with smacks of the myoor’s lips. I set off in pursuit of Jane, weaving past the hungry mouths, graceful as an ice-skater, gaining ground on the short-legged gnomes.

  But I lost sight of them when they slid down the far slope of the myoor. Two Mr. Normals were standing there, fully fixated on the myoor. I asked them which way Jane and the gnomes had gone, and they pointed towards the mazy lanes amid the moonlit horse barns. Fearing an ambush, I persuaded the two Mr. Normals to accompany me. Before long we’d lost our way amid the silver moonlight and the flat shadows of the barns.

  I turned to teep. Jane’s unseen presence was a warm presence in my mind. I followed the psychic glow to a barn near the edge of the Churchill Downs property, and bade the two Mr. Normals to wait outside. I was worried the kidnappers might turn vicious if I pushed them too hard.

  A pair of horses were in the barn’s stables, shifting in their sleep, at ease, streaked by moonbeams, surrounded by the dusty smell of hay. A pale mauve light glowed from a hatch in the ceiling. The hayloft. I climbed a wooden ladder toward the light, and I found Jane there—with Whit, Gaven, and the gnomes. The light was from Jane’s oddball, hovering near the hayloft’s peaked roof.

  “Zaddie boy made good time,” said Staark. He was standing behind Jane, one arm around her waist, and with his scimitar poised against her throat. They’d been waiting for me.

  “We make our deal and nobody gets hurt,” said Blixxen, standing between Staark and me. He had a blade as well. He made a cautioning gesture with his free hand. “Sit down, Zad. Don’t yell for those lightbulb men. Or Jane gets hurt.”

  Whit and Gaven were lolling against the wall, hairless and with flaking skin. They smelled of the myoor’s preserving fluids, and were still in their party clothes, very rumpled by now. They seemed to have their infuriating self-confidence intact.

  “We win again,” said Whit. “Eat shit, Zad.”

  “Put down the blade,” I told Staark, speaking to him across Blixxen’s head. “We can talk. If you hurt Jane, you aren’t getting out of here alive. My Mr. Normals will crisp your ass to cinders.”

  Slowly Staark lowered his blade from Jane’s throat. But he kept a tight grip on her waist. Downstairs a horse nickered. One of the Mr. Normals sent a squidskin signal, asking if I needed help. I signaled back that Jane was a hostage, and that they should wait.

  “The gnomes came here through my oddball,” Jane told me, talking fast. He voice went up high and broke on the last word.

  “Here’s the story,” said little Blixxen. “We’re gonna show the dark gub how to use the oddball’s tunnel like a guide rope, see? On account of he’s having so much trouble making it to your brane. Our great god—he’s not the brightest gub that ever lived. Staark and I came down here to make sure one of you guys tethers this end of the oddball for us, Zad. Meanwhile we want to go back to Fairyland and tell the dark gub that his path is set.”

  “Fine. Go back to Fairyland.”

  Blixxen glanced up at the bobbing oddball. “Problem is, we’re not used to this crazy clam-pearl of Jane’s. We don’t know how to get inside and crawl to Fairyland. And the oddball doesn’t much like us.”

  “Gaven and I are going to Fairyland as well,” said Whit, his voice as languid as if he were discussing a tropical vacation. “We’ve worn out our welcome in Louisville.”

  “If all you want is for the oddball to open for you, that’s easy,” said Jane. She made a gesture, and the oddball dropped down, already widening her mouth.

  “We forgot to tell you two something,” rasped Staark. “Jane gets inside the oddball first.” He dropped his scimitar and lifted Jane with his powerful hands. She landed a kick on the side of his head, but it didn’t seem to matter to him. He only squeezed tighter and held her higher. “Whit and Gaven want Jane in Fairyland. For entertainment.”

  By now I’d signaled for the two Mr. Normals to come in, and I could hear them in the stable. But the oddball’s mouth had opened all the way. She was settling onto Jane.

  “Easy, Zad!” cried Blixxen, his sword raised high in the air, still in a position to slice Jane across the belly. “Don’t be a fool!”

  The Mr. Normals were coming up the ladder. Whit sprang across the room and threw a heavy wooden hatchcover across the hole in the floor, holding it in place with his feet. The hatch door danced and smoked with impact of the Mr. Normals’ sparks, but for the moment it was holding.

  The glowing lavender oddball was holding Jane sideways, like a dog worrying a doll. Jane’s head was free, and a leg and an arm. She managed to clamp onto the oddball in such a way that the thing couldn’t quite swallow her. And meanwhile Jane’s lips were moving, as if she were mentally rehearsing some plan.

  Buying time, I kicked out at Blixxen, knocking his sword from his hand. But now Staark had hold of his sword again and—damn him, he really was going to cut into Jane. And now, as her last-ditch gambit, Jane sang out a measured, choppy squeal—she was imitating the voice of the spotted gub.

  The barn’s peaked roof split open and the gub’s snout was in our midst. The terrified horses whinnied; their hooves pounded against the stable walls. The now-flaming hatchcover flew across the hayloft and landed where Whit and Gaven sat by the wall. One of the Mr. Normals’ heads poked through the hatch. Gaven and Whit were fruitlessly stamping on the flaming hay. In another moment this would be an inferno.

  But now the tip of the spotted gub’s snout vibrated and—wow. The air was clear and the fire was gone. And—huh?—Staark was gone as well. And then Whit, and then Blixxen. The gub wasn’t smashing them to bits—no, he was erasing them. Rubbing them out of the picture. Like mistakes in a pencil drawing.

  Gaven was rushing around the hayloft in a wild panic. He ended up flinging himself into the mouth of the oddball. This would be his third time getting swallowed. The gub made a questioning squeal and Jane shrugged.

  “Oh, let him go,” she said.

  The oddball flexed and pulsed. No more Gaven. The spotted gub waited for a minute, giving the man time to slide on through to Fairyland. And then the gub zapped the oddball with a spark of dark energy. The troublesome tunnel shriveled and disappeared from our world.

  With a debonair wave of his snout, the spotted gub withdrew from the hayloft, squealing an intricate “See you later.” And flew back to the track to resume his mating rituals with the green gub.

  The Mr. Normals went back outside, dimming their bulbs. Jane climbed down the ladder to the stables to calm the horses and to refresh their hay and water. Skungy went along with her, perhaps to cadge some oats.

  Jane returned to the loft alone, and we two flopped down on a shiny mound of straw, catching our breath. The moon was low; a pleasant shaft of its light was angling in through the pierced roof. The smell of smoke was gone. Jane and I were together, and alone.

  We began hugging and merging our minds. I loved her curves, her responsive touch. We were like a voice and its echo, a yin and its yang, a pair of puzzle pieces finding their fit.

  “It’s finally time?” I asked.

  “Time to make it real.”

  * * *

  14: Big Aha

  “We weren’t using protection at all,” remarked Jane. “This could be it.” We lay comfortably naked on the hayloft straw, passion spent.

  “I know you know I know.”

  “I’m glad,” said Jane. “I hope we do have a baby soon. I could keep working, but maybe less. We’
d have a nanny nurb. Maybe with my personality in her. Can you pull out of your doldrums now?”

  “Bumble my way to a happy ending,” I said. “So what if the Department of Genomics trashed my store and locked the doors. I bet they’d let me start again now.”

  “Once they realize we’re heroes,” said Jane.

  “I hope. With the store, I was thinking I might get a bigger space and restock. Maybe partner with Craig Gurky and share his warehouse. He owns that place outright. We could sell Mr. Normals. Customized flying jellyfish houses. Copies of Gustav and Bonk. Personal nurb doubles—like SubZad. And I’m thinking about a line of nurb wigs that look like a little bit like gubs. Zad Plant’s Cosmic Pig Wigs! Wigs will be big this fall.”

  Jane looked down at her bare breasts and playfully cradled a hand against them, the curled hand like a baby’s head. “Nyoo-nyoo,” she cooed. “Drink your milk.” She shot a glance at me, happy and shy. “All you have to do now is get rid of the gubs and the myoor—right, Superartist?”

  “I’m on it,” I said. We kissed a little more and then we dressed.

  Down in the stable, I asked Skungy if he wanted to come back to the grandstand with us.

  “Naw,” said the tweaked rat. “I’m digging it with these two horses. Basically a horse is a rat, you wave? An equine rodent.” Skungy was perched on the back of one of the thoroughbreds. The horse didn’t seem to mind.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about at all,” said Jane. “You’re not even a genuine rat yourself.”

  “A gene-tweaked rat with quantum wetware,” said Skungy, drawing himself up to his full height. Maybe six inches now. He’d really been eating a lot. “A higher rat.”

  “Are you teeping with the horses?” I asked him.

  “I fed them that Joey Moon twistor pattern,” said Skungy, proud of himself. “Squeaked it into their ears. We’ve had us a meeting of the minds. Once their trainer Geegee comes back from wherever she’s hid, I’ll propose a deal. I’ll be her assistant. The owners might even let me be a jockey by and by.” He bobbed up and down as if mounted on a galloping steed.

  “So this is goodbye?” I said. “We’ll stay in touch, right?”

  “I’m not going nowhere,” said Skungy. “Everything’s gonna be fine.”

  The myoor was still out there, fifty feet high, a grisly, forbidding lump. The sky above the myoor was a damp luminous gray. But the eastern horizon was edged in pale yellow. Birds flew back and forth, perching on the barn gables, calling each to each. A gentle breeze was flowing towards the river.

  Instead of doing another mad panic dash across the myoor, Jane and I rode piggyback on the two Mr. Normals who’d helped us at the barn. The big, lightbulb-headed nurbs crackled out admonitory sparks whenever the myoor tried clamping onto their feet.

  There were still a fair number of hardy partiers in the grandstand. The green gub and the spotted gub were hovering in one particular spot halfway up, absorbed in a conversation with—my Mom and Dad. Loulou and Craig Gurky were still at their side.

  “Your father is volunteering to become a gub egg,” Mom told me as soon as Jane and I were within earshot. “I think he’s out of his mind. But the spotted gub has been pushing for your father, and the green gub likes him too. Apparently the spotted gub was planning this all along. He sent down the oddball last year to get things started.”

  “If you want to hatch baby gods, you need artists,” said Dad. “Right, Zad?”

  “Joey would agree with that,” said Loulou softly.

  The green gub let out a liquid squeal that I couldn’t decipher, but Mom understood.

  “You’re asking me to be a gub egg too?” said Mom, looking flattered and a little alarmed.

  I cranked my mind up to a sufficient level of alertness to decipher the gub’s skirling answer. “God and goddess,” she said. “Sally and Lennox. The spotted gub’s pick. Sally, you’ll create a universe as wry as your crooked pots. Lennox, you’ll someday spark my grandchild-gubs. They’ll be as iconoclastic fantastic as your landscapes, an eye in every bower. Jump into my myoor. I’ll exalt you.”

  “But—jump into the myoor?” protested Mom.

  “Myoor is me,” reiterated the green gub. “You know this. My womb. Sweeter than she seems. You’ll gubify. You’ll drink the knowers’ knowns. Your friends will run free, you’ll stay we, and my mate will spark you. You’ll ripen. In three months, you hatch as glory gubs, a he and she. Sally-gub spawns a cosmos of her own and sets her own myoor within. Lennox-gub seeks to fertilizes gub eggs where and when he can. Luck of the raw. Life’s great and subtle wheel.”

  Hearing that last phrase, Jane nudged me. She’d said it yesterday herself. No wonder. The green gub had made our world. Everything we thought or knew was part of her patterns.

  The sun had risen, a yottawatt disk laden with a day’s heat. Mom and Dad were gilded by the low light, transfigured, their soft gray hair alive in the airs of dawn.

  “We’ll do it?” Dad said to Mom.

  “It’s death,” said Mom.

  “With afterlife guaranteed,” said Dad. “Otherwise—what? We decline, decay, lights out.”

  “But this is death today,” said Mom. “I’d like to wait and see some human grandchildren.”

  “You can come back here for visits,” slipped in the green gub. “I’ll show you a shortcut through the Nth dimension. Come be a goddess now. You were meant for it, Sally.”

  “I always thought so, too,” said Mom, a smile playing across her face. “What the heck.”

  With a great wallowing motion, the myoor mounted the terraces of the grandstand, scattering the qrude partiers and the Mr. Normals. Loulou screamed and ran several rows higher into the grandstand.

  A huge gout of the myoor came to a rest before Mom and Dad. The surface was indented with two shallow tubs like—open graves. Weeping, cheeks wet, Mom kissed Dad goodbye, then me and Jane. Dad embraced us as well. And now, in slow solemnity, my parents laid themselves down in their ill-smelling flesh tombs. The myoor closed over them, leaving a pair of translucent patches in her hide.

  Dimly I saw my parents fold their hands on their chests, settling into hieratic poses. And then they were quite still, slight smiles upon their dear, pale, frozen faces.

  The myoor withdrew her pseudopod, bearing Mom and Dad to a more central location. Jane, Craig, Loulou and I followed along, watching, as if in the wake of a hearse. Already Mom and Dad were changing, melting, becoming gub eggs.

  Flying above the infield, the green gub and the spotted gub wove the figures of a wild dance, humping against each other, entwining their doughy bodies, puffing out their rear ends, shuddering with passion.

  Having reached an orgasmic high point, the spotted gub flopped onto the myoor, making a thunderous slap. With the heedless brutality of overweening lust, he thrust his pointed snout one-two into the spots where my sedated parents had lain.

  “Hot stuff,” said Loulou, who was standing at the grandstand railing beside Jane and me. “Gub sex.”

  Craig Gurky giggled.

  “Show some empathy, you two,” snapped Jane. “Those eggs were poor Zad’s parents.”

  Suddenly a frantic squeal tore the air.

  It was the dark gub, tumbling into our space at a strange angle. He seemed quite unable to right himself. In Fairyland he’d been a flat silhouette, but here on Earth he was a jagged black line. Although he was too late to woo the green gub, he may have hoped to abort the ripening of her eggs.

  Fully in control, the spotted gub blasted the dark gub with a bolt of negative energy. A sizzle ran up and down the creature’s flailing zig-zag, chewing away at the two untethered ends. The dark gub dwindled to a single point. And now, with a chagrined wheenk, this final remnant returned to the unseen plenum of N-dimensional space.

  Refulgent with joy, the spotted gub and the green gub hovered above the myoor, gloating over the fertilized eggs. The myoor’s surface was pistoning up and down in lumpy waves. A firework-like cascade of twi
nkling eye-candy burst forth, blanketing the leviathan with visions: animations, photos, holograms, sounds, and knots of emotion—all linked together by a lacy network of curves.

  “Those must be the thoughts of the other people she swallowed,” murmured Jane. “The myoor’s copying the info into the baby gubs. You’ll drink the knowers’ knowns.”

  Yes, swirled and twirled as if by twin tornadoes, the flocks of thoughts funneled into the fertilized embryos that been my parents, enriching the nascent gubs with a few thousand people’s memories and experiences. This would give the new gubs a running start towards godly minds. After birth, they’d build from there.

  “Do the also-rans escape the myoor now?” asked Loulou. “I want my Joey back.”

  As if in response, the myoor began expelling the captives from her flesh—all of them save for my parents. Pop-pop-pop, hundreds and then thousands of human figures appeared upon the myoor’s surface—wan, befuddled, bald. They sprawled and shuddered, they crawled to the edges of the myoor, they pulled themselves into the grandstand, they stood wobbling on their legs.

  Joey, Carlo, Reba, Junko, and Weezie—they were back and fully alive. Right here beside us.

  Loulou, Jane, Craig and I embraced them, and we sat in a happy group amid the grandstand’s box seats. All around us other reunions were in swing. The grandstand filled with a joyful human buzz.

  Our little group talked and teeped and messaged, catching each other up on what had been happening for the last day and half. At first Jane and I did most of the talking. And then we slowed down and our group got into a more typically meandering mode.

  “A rough trip,” mused Joey, sitting with his arm around Loulou. He paused to breathe in a deep draught of the morning air. “I thought I was living in a comic book being read by a bug-eyed monster. A comic about teenagers in high school. That part lasted for a billion years. And then I saw your parents, Zad. They were Egyptian priests, high in the sky, asking me to confess my sins. So I did. I was beaming out thoughts like a lighthouse. And then I was getting born—back here. With a boner.” Joey ran his hands over his bare scalp. “Whit and Gaven are really gone?”