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

by Rudy Rucker

  “No beer for me, thanks. I’m confused enough as it is. Does Hank know?”

  “Yeah. But you’re the only one who knows I can change my face. Please don’t tell anyone, OK?”

  “Can you change back to Conrad for a minute? I don’t like you to be Charles Bulber. You look like a real straight-arrow.”

  “My powers only work in life-or-death situations. Like at the graveyard just now when the cops almost caught me.”

  “That fire-stick you were fighting with was one of your…race?”

  “Flame-people, Dee. Yeah, that was one of them. They were trying to get me to come back. They think I’ve fucked the mission badly enough already. But I dig it here. I like being human.”

  They pulled into a Gulf station, and while the attendant filled the tank, Dee put her arms around Conrad and gave him a big kiss.

  “That’s nice of you,” she said after a time.

  “What is?”

  “To dig being human,” said Dee. “I don’t think Jesus ever said that.”

  “What are you talking about?” said Conrad. They pulled out of the gas station and headed for town.

  “I mean, the way the story goes, Jesus was an extraterrestrial-type being who put on a human body, right?”

  “I’m not Jesus.”

  “I know you’re not. But you are in a somewhat similar situation.”

  “I never understood why Jesus had to get crucified. Couldn’t he just say, ‘Fuck this cross shit,’ and fly off, or change his face? Why should he let the pigs kill him?”

  “He had to die so he could rise from the dead. I think the idea was to let the pigs take their best shot at him—and then still come back.”

  “Oh, look, I don’t want to start thinking this way. It’s too sick. I’m just a hippie.” Conrad finished the first beer and started on the one he’d opened for Dee.

  The news about his being an extraterrestrial seemed to have changed Dee’s attitude toward him considerably. Before this, they’d been good friends, but now she was looking at him with…veneration. As if he knew where it was at.

  “You’re not just a hippie,” said Dee quietly. “Listen.” She put on the car radio. News, excited news.

  “…tentatively identified as Conrad Bunger, aged twenty, formerly a resident of Louisville. Bunger’s family have refused comment until…”

  “Who told them my name?” demanded Conrad.

  “I think it might have been Sue,” Dee said. “I told her not to, but she—”

  Conrad groaned and twiddled up and down the dial.

  “…indicate a genuine UFO incident. Positive radar contact was made by air traffic controllers at Standiford Field…”

  “…Fort Knox jets scrambled, but the vehicle evaded them easily…”

  “…photographs seem to show one man—now identified as Conrad Bunger, aged twenty—with two alien beings having the appearance of rods of light. An analysis of the images reveals…”

  “…Cornelius Skelton, who states that Conrad Bunger spoke to him in person, giving assurances that…”

  “…here with Cornelius Skelton, who says he saw Conrad Bunger shortly after the Zachary Taylor cemetery incident. Mr. Skelton?” The old man’s voice came on—the reporters must have gotten there right after Dee and Conrad left. “That is correct. Ah spoke briefly with…the alien. There is every reason to believe that this being’s purpose here is of a peaceful and scientific nature. Ah feel—”

  Conrad clicked the radio back off.

  “God. We’re going to have to be very cool at the train station, Dee. There’s going to be cops all over the place. You don’t think Skelton gave them your license number, do you?”

  “What would be so terrible if the police did catch you, Conrad? You haven’t done anything wrong. Maybe you should go public.” She gave him another admiring glance.

  “Look, if the police get me, I’ll be on live TV. And any time I’m on live TV, the flame-people will know where to look for me. They want to cancel my mission, Dee. They want to get me out of here. They’ll chop up my body, and take my flame back to the flying wing.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Conrad. Maybe it’s nice in the…flying wing. What does that mean, anyway, flying wing?”

  “That’s what our saucer looks like. Sure, maybe it is nice there. But I’m scared, all right? I’m scared of a big change, number one, and number two, I have a bad feeling the flame-people might be really mad at me. What if they court-martial me, or something? My instinct is to stretch out this Earth-gig as long as possible. Make the most of it, you know?” They were driving down Broadway now. Conrad glanced back to make sure no cops were following them.

  “The flame-people can’t find you unless you’re on TV, or holding that crystal?”

  “Right. It’s like a person can’t see what’s going on in an anthill. You can’t keep track of just one ant. Jesus—would you look at that?”

  There was a police barricade in front of the train station. You had to pass a checkpoint to get inside. Flashing red lights and excited yokel faces.

  “Just drop me here, Dee. Thanks for everything. I’ll miss you.”

  “But—” She looked at him all wide-eyed, like he was a guru or a rock star. This afternoon it had been Dee-and-Conrad, but now it was Human-and-Alien. It felt bad.

  “Don’t look at me that way, Dee. I’m still just Conrad. Give me a kiss now.”

  Dee’s face relaxed into her old smile. “We’re all aliens, one way or another, aren’t we, Conrad?”

  It was hard to stop kissing, but—like everything else, like everything—at some point it was over. Last smile, door-slam, putt-putt, goodbye.

  Getting past the cops was easy with the Charles Bulber IDs. The next train north was due in forty minutes. Conrad wandered into the train station’s large newsstand and bought himself the Schaum’s Outline Series on General Physics.

  Part IV

  I got up and went out. Once at the gate, I turned back. Then the garden smiled at me. I leaned against the gate and watched for a long time. The smile of the trees, of the laurel, meant something; that was the real secret of existence.

  —Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

  Chapter 24: Saturday, August 13, 1966

  Charles Bulber

  23 Crum Ledge

  Swarthmore, PA 19084

  August 13, 1966

  Dear Audrey,

  I guess you’ve read about me in Time magazine—yeah, this is Conrad here—DON’T TELL ANYONE! BURN THIS! I mean it, Audrey, if they catch me, it’s my ass. God I miss you. You’ll be back in the U.S. on Sept. 2. You see, I remember. It might not be too cool for me to come up to Columbia, but you can come down here and stay with me at Mr. Bulber’s house, it’s so hard waiting for you, sweet darling.

  I hope you don’t think I’m icky for being sort of an extraterrestrial. I can hardly wait to run my pincers and feelers all over your ripe young… No, wait, it’s not like that; it’s the story we were goofing on at the Gold Rail with Hank Larsen last winter—it’s really true. My body is real Earthly meat, but there is a kind of stick of flame in my spine, which is what came from the flying saucer. The flame-people, remember? I mean, it’s obvious, really—that’s why I had those special powers all along. (Remember the time I shrank for you up in NYC and Katha Kahane starts pounding on the door? Yubba!)

  Well, I’ve got a new power now, which is that I can change my face. That’s how I escaped in Louisville, I turned into Mr. Bulber. My physics teacher, the one who hated me so much, Professor Charles V. Bulber, Ph.D.? Do you like older men? With pincers and feelers and a squid-bunch of tentacles under each arm? Genitals of the Universe, Part IX. No, really, I have to stop this or you won’t come see me, and if you don’t come see me, dear Audrey, I will pine away.

  I think it’s your lips I miss the most, or maybe the way you giggle. And your shiny bro
wn eyes, and the way you stick your neck out to crane. My new Bulber-body isn’t too bad-looking—I’m thirty-two, I have dark hair, I have all my teeth, I’m single, I—

  “All right, Conrad,” I can hear you saying. “What have you done with the real Mr. Bulber?”

  Mr. Bulber is in France, Audrey, he’s on sabbatical. His replacement here at the college was going to house-sit for him, but I, the pseudo-Bulber, showed up and told the guy to get fucked, I’d decided not to stay in France, I just wanted to spend the year lying around my house drinking and taking drugs. The replacement flipped, and the Chairman came by to see me—I played it cool and just said I was working on some new ideas and they should leave me alone. It’s my sabbatical, right? I can do what I want.

  Meanwhile, I forward all Mr. Bulber’s mail to him in Montpelier, the way the house sitter was supposed to, and I’ve been getting money by selling Bulber-things off. Sooner or later my cover here’ll blow, but for now it’s a wiggy scene. Except for one thing: no Audrey. Audrey, Audrey, Audrey. You smell good, you know? All over.

  What I’m really thinking, Audrey, is that you should just move in here with me. Mr. Bulber’s house overlooks the Crum, it’s nice and comfortable, he has a stereo—shitty classical records, but I’m getting some new ones—and I’m planning to sell his car next month. It’s a 1965 XKE—the poor guy’s big self-indulgence, I guess—I already checked at the dealer’s and they say it’s worth $6,000 as is! It was up on blocks in his garage, but I’ve got it running—dig it, I’m going to meet you at JFK in an XKE if you’ll give me the flight number. Then you move in with me, we sell the car, and we live off the money all fall. Talk about a good provider!

  I’m really serious about this, Audrey—I’d hoped to marry you next June—and still want to, if things work out. But I’ve got a bad feeling that my days here on Earth are numbered. No one means as much to me as you do, baby, and I want to spend all the time I have left with you.

  “Why are you so morbid, Conrad? Why do you say your days are numbered?”

  Another voice heard from. A high voice, a sweet voice. The problem is this: The flame-people think I’ve fucked up. The idea was supposed to be that I come down here and find out about people and, yes, find out about The Secret of Life, and then someday I’d go back to the flying saucer and report. The whole thing was supposed to be hush-hush. But—as you must know by now—this guy Mr. Skelton got a film of me shrinking, and the flame-people picked up the TV broadcast of it, and I happened to be holding a kind of homing crystal, and the flamers sent a scout ship down to pick me up, etc., etc.

  Right now things are cool because I got rid of the crystal and changed my face. (Third Chinese brother, dig, first flying, then shrinking, then changing. It’s all built-in, no matter what the flamers think of me.) But sooner or later the PIG is going to catch up with me, and put me on live TV, and my fiery brethren are going to UFO down here and snatch my ass—unless they figure out a way to locate me even before the PIG does, in which case I get snatched even sooner. I look at the sky a lot, as you can imagine.

  God. I could write you all night. I’m working on a nice bottle of Moselle from the Bulber wine cellar (quite the bon vivant, aren’t we, Charles?), and looking out over the Crum—I have WIBG on, they’re playing a lot of Motown tonight. Ah, Audrey, isn’t life strange? I need someone to rap with.

  The last person I’ve been able to speak openly with was last week, August 6, a girl called Dee Decca, my old high-school girlfriend. (It’s not the same with her as with you at all, so don’t worry.) Actually, I couldn’t really talk to Dee too well, once she realized I was an alien—she was too impressed. But I know you won’t be like that, Audrey, you’ve seen me shrink, you’ve seen me fly—I just hope you don’t think I’m too ugly now. Maybe you remember what Mr. Bulber looks like. I’ve stopped slicking down my/his hair, anyway. All the Swarthmore faculty and staff I run into think, “Charlie Bulber’s gone crazy. He’s acting like one of those hipniks.”

  The perfection of this con is that all of Bulber’s mail passes through my hands. I mean, it’s me (in the role of house sitter) who’s supposed to forward things to him; and he’s sending his mail back through me in bundles to save money. The only fuck-up will be if at some point he writes directly to somebody here. Even if that happens, I can say, “Well, I wrote you before I came back to America, I didn’t like it over in France.” And probably, for the first few months, anyway, he isn’t going to feel that much like writing anyone over here. I hope.

  My real flash of genius in this whole thing was to remember that Bulber is in fact on sabbatical this year. Some of the assholes in my Mechanics and Wave Motion course gave him a going-away party last spring. Ginger-ale-and-ice-cream punch, Tom Lehrer records, a French-English dictionary—you get the picture. The whole sordid scene of degenerative douchedom. Kids these days.

  It’s going to be weird if any of those students try to talk to me. Classes here start Sept. 7. At least I don’t have to teach any courses. I bought a Schaum’s Outline Series on Physics to brush up with, just in case. You’re probably wondering why I’m hanging around Swarthmore, anyway. I mean, really, it would be safer to head out to California or something. But, I don’t know, I want to see my old buddies some more—Ace, and Platter, and Tuskman, and Chuckie—I want to see them, and do some unbelievable prank on the college administration before I split.

  But most of all, I’m looking forward to some peaceful weeks here at Château Bulber with my darling darling Audrey Hayes. A.H. Ah. Do you fuck? Do you still know how? You can put a bag over my solemn potato-head if you must. Or a pair of your soiled lacy underwear. Or…

  All right, all right, I’ll stop. What else. Let me just get another bottle of wine and reread this and…

  “Baby Love” on the radio. The wonderful inevitability of the chord progressions—you remember how at the end of Nausea, he hears a jazz song and it makes everything right? The secret of life. It’s when you’re just plugged-in, you know, it just happens. I miss you, Baby Love.

  Do you think your parents will be very angry when you drop out of Columbia grad school and move in with “Professor Bulber”? Don’t answer that, don’t even think about it. Just do it. Write me your arrival time; I’ll be there to whisk you away to a life of vice and criminal flight.

  It’s only ten o’clock—I guess I can fill up one last sheet of paper. Do you mind reading this? Do you think I’m too weird? That article in Time was unbelievable, the quotes they got from all the authority figures who knew me when I was little in Louisville. Brother Hershey (assistant principal at St. X) was the worst. I mean, usually, when there’s a mass-murderer—like that guy Charles Whitman in Texas—all his old teachers say, “Oh, he was such a nice boy, very quiet, never made any trouble.” And here’s Brother Hershey saying, “I remember Conrad Bunger very well. Bright, but troubled. He wanted to be smarter than he really was. By the end of senior year, we were just waiting for him to graduate and leave.” And everybody felt that way about me, it turns out. The head preacher at St. John’s—I never realized he knew it was me that used to steal the wine. And Dr. Sinclair, and then that phony shithead Dean Potts putting in his two cents’ worth—ah, never mind. In a way, I’m proud of it—you know how I always try to seem tough and cool. But in another way, it really hurts, to see them all turn on me like that just because I’m from a flying saucer.

  I really don’t know what to do next, Audrey. Tell me when you’re coming, and I’ll pick you up, and you’ll come down here for a weekend at least. I do want to do some kind of trip on the straights’ heads here, but after that we can split to wherever you like. I’m pretty sure I can change my face again if I have to—it’s like the other powers, it just works when it’s life-or-death. Some of the newspaper articles I’ve seen make me kind of nervous. All this xenophobia bullshit, you know. Like given the right circumstances, I could get myself torn apart limb from limb. And if it’s not on live TV,
the flame-people wouldn’t know to come save me. All this is assuming the saucer is still around—maybe they gave up and left for another solar system.

  God, I’m depressed all of a sudden. I’ve got this image of a bunch of stupid Nazi pigs tearing me to bits, and my little flame sinking into the ground and just dying out, and me being dead dead dead forever…

  Help me, Rhonda!

  Look, burn this letter after you read it, I mean it. And send me (“Charles Bulber”) the flight info at 23 Crum Ledge, Swarthmore PA 19084. Hurry, Audrey, I miss you and I need you.

  Here’s a kiss: X.

  And a fuck: F.

  I love you,

  Conrad

  Chapter 25: Friday, September 9, 1966

  After Audrey left, Conrad got a couple of bottles of wine and walked down to the Mary Lyons dorms. It was Friday, five in the afternoon. Ace would be drinking in his room—the room he’d planned to share with Conrad. God willing, there’d be grass as well—Conrad hadn’t had a chance to get high since back in Louisville with Dee.

  It was a nice walk, not too far, the mellow September sun sliding down, and a tang of cool winter in the air. Conrad had the wine in a paper bag; he was wearing jeans and a Swarthmore T-shirt in a mock-Bulberesque attempt to look like “one of the guys.” He figured to run a real number on Ace’s head.

  As long as Audrey had been here—a week, a week of bliss—Conrad had lain low. Audrey didn’t want people to see her shacking up with someone over thirty—there were still plenty of people around Swarthmore who would have recognized her. So mainly they’d gone into Philly, or hung around Bulber’s pad talking and making love. It had felt like being married, having their own little house; every morning they made scrambled eggs together; every night they drank German white wine and fucked. Daytimes they might go to the Philly zoo, or the art museum—it had been paradise.