Transreal Trilogy: Secret of Life, White Light, Saucer Wisdom

by Rudy Rucker

  “Right.”

  The dark forms disappeared, the house door opened, and there was Conrad’s father in his bathrobe.

  “Shouldn’t wait up for me,” muttered Conrad. “Lea’ me alone, you old bastard.”

  There was yelling. His parents put him to bed, he threw up again, lights and more yelling, his mother screaming, “Pig! Pig!”

  Finally he was alone. The bed and room began to spin. Conrad fumbled for a way to stop it. There had to be some head-trick, some change of perspective to make the torture stop—there. He felt himself grow lighter and less real. Dropping off to sleep, he had the feeling he was floating one inch above his bed. And then—he was in the throes of an old, recurrent dream.

  The structure is circular, high in the middle. It could be a circus big top. Conrad is off to one side, watching the thin, bright shapes that move above the center. They are flames, these beings; they are rods of light. The whole enclosed space is filled with moving lights, and they have reached some wonderful, awful conclusion about Conrad’s future…

  Chapter 2: Tuesday, January 1, 1963

  Conrad’s best friend, Hank Larsen, had gone to a different New Year’s Eve dance. New Year’s Day, Conrad walked over to Hank’s house to compare notes.

  “No driving,” warned Conrad’s mother. “After last night, you can just stay in the neighborhood.”

  “OK, Mom.” Conrad’s dog Nina followed him over to Hank’s house. Hank was in his room, reading a science-fiction book and listening to one of his radios. Hank’s big hobby was electronics—over the years he’d assembled four or five different types of radio transmitters and receivers. He even had a ham license from the FCC.

  “The Magnificent Paunch,” intoned Hank by way of greeting. Friends for years now, the two had a large number of code phrases, many of uncertain meaning.

  “High guineas, Si,” responded Conrad. “I don’t feel too peak.”

  “Got y’self all drunked up, did you, Zeke? Got a touch of that riiind fever?”

  “It was great,” said Conrad, breaking into normal speech. “Ardmore and I stole wine from the church and got really plastered. I was talking about time and death and some guys drove me home.”

  “I bet you got caught bigger’n shit.”

  “Yeah. They were both waiting up. I don’t remember too clearly. I think maybe my old man slugged me. I was cursing and everything.”

  “What’d they say today?”

  “Well, nothing, really. But what about you? What happened on your big date with Lehman? Did you finger her again?”

  Hank closed his book and stood up. He was tall and blond, and his girlfriend Laura Lehman was crazy about him. Instead of answering Conrad’s question directly, Hank nodded his head warningly toward the hall. “Let’s roll out.”

  “OK. Let’s walk over to Skelton’s pasture. Nina’s here too.”

  “Bo-way.”

  It was a cool, gray day. The frozen grass crunched underfoot. Hank’s family lived in a subdivision which petered out in a series of large cow pastures. The land all belonged to an old Kentucky gentleman named Cornelius Skelton. In the mid-fifties, Skelton had gotten into the papers for claiming he’d seen a UFO land in his fields. Skelton said it had butchered one of his hogs, and he had a mineral crystal that the saucer was supposed to have left. He wasn’t fanatical about it, or anything—he just insisted that he’d seen a UFO. He was a pleasant, courtly man, and most people ascribed this one eccentricity to his grief over the premature death of his wife.

  Conrad had been wandering the pastures ever since the Bungers moved to Louisville in 1956. It was his favorite place. Today, Hank and Conrad were walking along a small stream that ran through the pasture bottoms. You could see bubbles moving beneath the clear patches in the ice.

  “Did you fuck her?” Conrad asked finally.

  Hank seemed reluctant to discuss it—like a rich man embarrassed to describe his treasures to a hungry beggar.

  “Did you do it in your car?” demanded Conrad.

  “No, uh, her mother was out. We used Laura’s room.”

  “Jesus. Did she take off all her clothes?”

  “You planning to beat off on this, Paunch?”

  “Come on, Hank, I have to know. What does it feel like? Do they like it, too?”

  “I felt tingly all over,” said Hank slowly. “It was like pins and needles in all of my skin, and I was dizzy. The first time was real fast, but the next one took longer. She was crying some of the time, but squeezing me real tight. I would have done it a third time, but I only had two rubbers. Just when I was leaving, her old lady came home. ‘Was it nice at the dance, children?’”

  “God.”

  They walked on in silence for a while, following the stream. Nina ran ahead, sniffing for rabbits. At the crests of the hills on either side you could see houses, new split-levels like the one Hank lived in. A crow flapped slowly to the top of a leafless black locust tree and perched there, cawing. Conrad couldn’t get over the fact that his best friend Hank had actually managed to get laid.

  “You really did it, Hank! That’s wonderful. Congratulations.” They paused to shake hands solemnly. “You know what I was thinking last month—” Conrad continued, “about the only way I’m likely to ever get any pussy? I was thinking that when we have World War Three, there’ll be a whole lot of dead women around, you know, good-looking dead women with their clothes all ripped, and—”

  “Oh, come on, Conrad. You won’t be a dry stick forever.” Hank poked Conrad and sang an altered bar from My Fair Lady: “With a little bit of luck, we’ll all fu-huh-uck!”

  “Yeah, I guess so, sooner or later. Today’s the first day of 1963. I can remember when I was about ten, reading an article in Popular Science about all the neat inventions we were supposed to have in 1963. Personal helicopters, self-driving cars. Time keeps passing, Hank, and before we know it, we’ll be dead. That’s what I was telling everyone last night. We’re all really going to die.”

  “So what, as long as you have some fun first.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “You’re just worried you’ll die a virrgin.” Hank had a special, nasal voice he used for unkind cuts like this. “The Sacred Virrrgin Mary.”

  “Sure, religion’s bullshit,” said Conrad, steering back to his chosen topic. “Heaven and hell are just science fiction. But can there really be nothing after death? I mean a corpse is the same matter as the living person was. Where does the life go to? Where did it come from?”

  “Ghosts,” said Hank. “The soul.” In the distance, Nina was barking.

  “That’s right,” said Conrad, “I know I have a soul. I’m alive, I can feel it. But where does it go?”

  They were near the end of the pastures now, and Nina was running back toward them. The two boys squatted to wait for her, squatted and watched the bubbles beneath the ice, ice patterned in ridges and blobs, clear here and frosty there. Toward one bank, the ice domed up. A lone, large bubble wobbled there, braced against the flow. Smaller bubbles kept arriving to merge into that big bubble, and it, in turn, kept growing and sending out tendrils, silver pseudopods that pinched off into new bubbles that were swept further downstream.

  Nina came panting up, pink tongue exposed. Her breath steamed in the cold air. “Good dog,” said Hank, patting her. “Hey, Conrad, let’s go back. Lehman’s mother’s giving an open house today. Maybe your parents will let you come.”

  “Wait,” said Conrad, struck by a sudden inspiration. “The life-force. Each of us has a tiny piece of the life-force, and when we die it goes away.”

  “Hubba-hubba, Zeke, I done lost my life-force up Laura’s crack.”

  “No, listen, I know where the life-force goes, Hank. I’ve got it figured out. There’s a big pool of life-force—out there.” Conrad gestured vaguely. “It’s like that big bubble under the ice, yo
u see. And each of us is a little bubble that can merge back in.”

  “Like a soul going to heaven.” They were walking now, headed back toward the houses.

  “And the big thing is that once a little bubble joins the big one, the little bubble is gone. The soul goes to heaven, and then it’s absorbed into God. The drop of life-force slides into the big pool. Isn’t that neat, Hank? Your life-force is preserved, but your personality disappears! I’ve invented a new philosophy!”

  Still riding high from his big first fuck, Hank felt no need to burst his friend’s bubble. “It’d be cool to major in philosophy next year. Find out all the answers and then become a Bowery bum.”

  “God, yeah.” Conrad felt elated. “Do you think we’ll be able to get beer over at Lehman’s?”

  “Sure. Her old lady don’t give a shit. She’ll be plowed anyway.”

  On the way back, Conrad began jumping back and forth over the frozen stream. With his big new idea in mind, he felt light as a feather. The floating feeling from bed last night came back. He’d never jumped so far so easily before.

  “Look, Hank, I can fly!” As Conrad said it, the feeling disappeared. He landed heavily on the stream bank, and one foot crashed through the ice.

  “You’ll fly better once we get into Lehman’s brew.”

  But Hank’s mother waylaid them before they could make off with the Larsen family car. She was a pleasantly plump redhead with a gentle voice. Conrad had an unsettling feeling that she knew exactly what both he and Hank had done last night.

  “Conrad, your mother called. Your father would like for you to come home right away. And, Hank, why don’t you leave the poor Lehmans alone for one day? Weren’t you supposed to rotate the Valiant’s tires this afternoon?”

  “Oh, Ma.”

  “Goodbye, Conrad. And Happy New Year!”

  Hank and Conrad exchanged shrugs. Hank was led into his house, and Conrad started back home. His father was waiting in their gravel driveway.

  Mr. Caldwell Bunger, Sr., had moved his family to Louisville when Conrad turned ten. He’d gotten two acres of land cheap from Cornelius Skelton, and he’d built a white split-level, a comfortable house set well back from the road. He’d never gotten around to putting blacktop on the long driveway.

  Approaching his father, Conrad’s mind wandered. Gravel driveway. When Hank and Conrad were twelve, they’d had a special game with the gravel. They’d get a shovelful of it, douse it with gasoline, light it, and then throw the burning sand and rocks up into the air. It looked like people made of fire, sort of, and—

  “Feel pretty silly?” Conrad’s father was a solid-looking man with bifocals, and with gold in his teeth. He was wearing his clerical collar.

  “I’m sorry about last night,” mumbled Conrad. He’d managed to avoid his father so far today.

  “You’re making a name for yourself, boy. People remember these things. What am I going to tell Holman Barkley when I see him downtown? I’m sorry my son threw up on your daughter?”

  “I didn’t—” Conrad broke off in horror as the memory swept back. He had thrown up on Linda. On her legs. She’d phoned up her father for help. Ardmore and two other guys had driven Conrad home and—

  “Have you apologized to your mother?”

  “Uh, sure, yeah.”

  “Conrad, what’s the matter with you? Up until just a few months ago we were so proud of you. And now your grades are slipping; every time you get a chance you go out and get your snoot full; you say you’re sick of church—what’s the problem, Conrad? What is it?” His father seemed genuinely baffled.

  “Well, Pop, I’m worried about death. If humans have to die anyway, then everything’s meaningless, isn’t it?”

  “So that’s it now,” sighed Mr. Bunger. “I’ll tell you one thing, boy, if you’re worried about death, you shouldn’t be drinking and driving. Otherwise your life will be over before you know what hit you.”

  “Some other guys drove me back last night. And it doesn’t really matter how long I live anyway. Sooner or later it comes to the same thing: nothing.”

  “What if I’d felt that way?” said Mr. Bunger, his voice rising. “Look at this house, look at you and your brother. If I’d chickened out young, you wouldn’t be here!”

  “So I’m supposed to get a job and buy a house and have kids and be just like you? I don’t see the point of it, Pop. What’s the difference, really, if there’s one more or one less nice middle-class family?” Conrad meant all this, though at the same time he was conscious of adopting a pose. The main thing was to get the better of his father—his father who was always so right and so patient. “I hope the Russians bomb us tomorrow and blow all this bullshit away.”

  That did it. “I ought to paste you one!” shouted Mr. Bunger. “Go inside and do that homework you’ve been putting off all vacation. Take, that’s all you know, take, take, take, and if it’s not enough, tear everything down. I’ll give you the meaning of life—you’re not using Mom’s car again till you pull your grades back up. School starts again tomorrow, thank god.”

  “You’re just scared to face death,” sneered Conrad. “That’s the only reason you can believe all that religion crap.”

  He took off running before his father could react. He made it to his room and slammed the door. The old people are scared, thought Conrad fiercely, but I’m not. I’m not scared to look for the real answers. That’s what I’m here for—to figure out the secret of life.

  Chapter 3: Monday, January 7, 1963

  Although the Bungers were Episcopalian, Conrad attended a big Roman Catholic boys high school called St. X. The idea was that St. X had the best science program in Louisville; and Conrad was supposed to become a scientist. He was one of three non-Catholics among the two thousand students at St. X. During Conrad’s four years there, the other boys often tried to “baptize” him. This involved dragging him into a bathroom and slugging him and throwing water or piss on him. By the time Conrad was a senior, he’d formed a real dislike for the Roman Catholic religion. It was even stupider than Protestantism. Purgatory? Limbo? Papal Infallibility? The Virgin Mary’s Immaculate Conception and Bodily Assumption? These were all bad enough, but for some reason, the doctrine that bothered Conrad the most was Transubstantiation.

  According to the hearty priest who taught the religion class, when the bread and wine are blessed at Mass, they turn into literal, actual flesh and blood. Some of the other boys told Conrad it had to be true, since they’d heard of a kid who’d stolen a consecrated Communion wafer and stuck pins in it—and the wafer had bled.

  “Can you taste the blood when you chew it?” Conrad demanded.

  “You’re not allowed to chew.”

  Even more bizarre than the religion classes were the monthly sex lectures that the seniors got. Normally the boys were split into ten different tracks, but for the sex lectures, all four hundred seniors would be herded into the gym together. They’d sit up in the bleachers, and a priest named Father Stook would hold forth like some crazed dictator. Father Stook’s chief interests were rubbers and jacking off.

  “I’ve had mothers come to me, boys, come to me in tears because they found one of those things in their son’s wallet. Don’t break your mother’s heart! The use of contraceptives is but one step better than the mortal sin of self-abuse. Self-abuse destroys the mind! I knew one poor man, boys, a deranged syphilitic. I was at his bedside when he passed away. And do you know what that pitiful wretch was doing as he died? Do you know? He was reaching down to abuse himself! What a way to meet your Maker, boys. In the very act of committing the vilest perversion! Now, I know that some of you may have heard that certain acts between men and women are perversions. Not so. As long as the penis ejaculates inside the vagina, no sin against God has been committed. What you and your wife do before ejaculation is strictly your own affair, as long as the seed is planted in the womb. Oh, I’ve
heard it’s a marvelous thing. I’ve read that when the woman reaches a certain state of arousal, there are contractions within the walls of her vagina. A kind of suction is created. One member of my parish told me, ‘Father Stook, if the good Lord made anything better, He kept it for Himself.’ There is no inherent evil in sex, boys; sex is God’s gift to man. Perversion arises only when the seed is turned aside. Now, I tell my mothers to be on the lookout for contraceptives in their sons’ rooms. And I’ve heard that some of you fellows are too smart for that. Oh, I know all the tricks. Yes, there was one boy who kept his prophylactics taped to the inside of his car’s rear hubcap. I said Mass at his funeral last February. For one snowy night, he was out there in the street, with a tire iron in his hand, and his pants around his ankles, and—”

  On the first Monday after Christmas vacation, Conrad had to hand in a theme for English class. The assignment had been to write a fantastic story of some type. Conrad had chosen to write a science-fiction story satirizing the Roman Catholic Church.

  The idea in the story was that an alien energy-creature comes to Earth and takes on human form, so as better to understand mankind’s peculiar ways of thought. He has superpowers, of course, and starts out by practicing his power of flight in a deserted pasture. As chance would have it, a group of nuns shows up for a cookout, just as the alien is hovering ten feet above the ground. Most of the nuns think the alien must be a new Messiah, the Second Coming of Christ. But one of the nuns claims the alien is the Antichrist, and before anyone can stop her, she chokes him to death with her rosary. The other nuns decide to cover up their sister’s crime by barbecuing the body. It tastes wonderful! “Truly,” says one chomping nun, “this is the flesh of God.”

  The English teacher was a spiritual, literary man named Brother Marion. He glanced up from Conrad’s story with such a look of sorrow that all Conrad could think to do was to kick the boy sitting next to him, an effeminate school friend named Pete Jeans. Jeans howled, and Brother Marion reached into the pocket of his black robe.