by Rudy Rucker
“You’re on the right track,” said Paul, grudgingly. “But it’s not quite that simple.” He opened my glove compartment and began refolding and arranging my maps. “I’m too upset about changing my schedule to talk math.”
We drove in silence for a while. Paul stacked all the maps in order of size and closed the glove compartment. “I really really shouldn’t be leaving my new job,” he repeated. “Everything was all set. I had office hours today.” We were passing through the ever-gray beach town of Corona. “Look, Bela, let’s get this over with. Drop me in one of these motels here. I won’t hang myself. I’ll just get back to my research.”
“About the motels,” I said. “I’m thinking that if Veeter is really serious about finding us, he might ask Joe Doakes to sic the Secret Service on us. The SS handles federal threats to computer security, you know. They could pick up on your credit card when you register.”
“I’ll give a fake name, and pay cash. Pull over at the Joe Crouch Motel next to the Monogrub burger place.”
“They’ll ask for your license,” I said, not slowing down. "And, dog, I love you too much to strand you in Corona. Especially if you’re feeling down. As many times as I’ve been through Corona, I’ve never seen it sunny. And I just remembered that I’ve got a second cousin who does the books for a cheap place in Chinatown. I can get you in with no questions asked.”
“Chinatown!” said Paul. “Fine. But I’ve totally, absolutely, unequivocally got to be back at Stanford by Thursday afternoon. I’m having dinner with the chairman and Cal Kweskin at the Faculty Club. If you make me miss another appointment, I’ll turn into a hysterical vegetable.”
“I’ll check back with you late Wednesday night after the Washer Drop concert,” I said soothingly. “And then I’ll drive you straight home. We’re doing a benefit for Cammy Wednesday night. Would you want to come?”
“No! I want to duck Cammy’s funeral, her memorial, her whatever. No more reporters, no more confusion, no more pictures of me. I’m ashamed to show my face after Cammy’s vlog. I hate to think what they’re saying about me in Kentucky.” He sighed and straightened the folds of his pants and shirt. “What’s the name of this Chinatown place you want to stash me in?”
“Tang Fat Hotel. It’s really a rooming house, not a hotel. Old people live there. And immigrants might stay there after they come off the container ships. Maybe some Chinese hookers work it, too. For sure nobody’s gonna ID you.”
“Sounds louche,” said Paul, cheering up. He had a country boy’s fascination with the seamy side of San Francisco. “Coolies, opium smugglers, marrying maidens with tangy fat. I’ll be off the grid. Peace and quiet to write up my new results. Let the Cammy thing blow over. I’ll try a few more experiments with the Gobrane. Maybe I’ll even get Haut to come by. What the hell. I know he’ll want to dip into the futures markets, even if we don’t get around to tearing a hole in spacetime. And, come on, Bela, why can’t you send Alma to keep me company?”
“She’s back with me for good, Paul. You were a temporary aberration.”
“If I’d given up speed earlier and if I hadn’t slept with Cammy, I’d still have Alma,” said Paul. “I’m a better prospect. You keep talking about changing the past. If we can bring back Cammy, maybe we can save my relationship with Alma, too.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I do.”
“Forget it.”
“Fuck you.”
“Kiss my ass.”
Although this exchange was only half-serious, we didn’t talk much more for the rest of the drive. I sank into my own thoughts—about Cammy, about Alma, and Paul’s axioms for the Gobrane. Those notes he’d shown me were amazing. The math thoughts always came better when I was around him. It was like intelligence-enhancing Buddha rays were continually beaming out from the guy.
It was foggy in the city. I pulled into Stockton Street and stopped by the Tang Fat Hotel, a weathered three-story wood rooming house with a faded sign. Each room had Victorian bay windows. Most of the windows were filled with clothes on hangers, maybe drying or airing out. The whole first floor was occupied by the Wang Kee Bargain Market, with a low awning above its bins of gnarly roots and stalks. Next door was the Mee Mee Bakery. The sidewalk was crowded with lean-faced men and stumpy dark-clothed women carrying bags.
Paul and I got out of the car. The Tang Fat Hotel’s front stoop was tiled in red and white; behind its plate-glass door was a plain stairway leading to the upper floors. A horse-faced guy was sitting by the stoop on a plastic chair, chain-smoking generic nonfilter cigarettes. I asked him in Chinese about getting a room. He pretended he didn’t hear me.
I told him about my cousin Jackie Wang, who did the accounting for the Tang Fat Hotel, Jackie the son of Mabel and Wing Wang, Mabel being the sister of my mother’s father’s first cousin Shirley Wong. Upon hearing of my relationship to Jackie, the horse-faced man acknowledged me. His name was Wu. He offered me a cigarette, but I was off cigs again. I told Wu that my friend Paul wanted to stay there for three nights. Wu said he had a single bed on the third floor.
“Three night two hundred dollar,” he told Paul in English. Paul handed him a couple of hundred-dollar bills, and Wu unlocked the front door, passing Paul the key.
“See you Wednesday around midnight,” I told Paul and got the two bags from the car: Paul’s duffel and the Gobrane.
“Here,” said Paul, taking his lined pad out of his duffel and tearing off the written pages. “You study what I wrote about the Gobrane and the mind model. I know it by heart. I’m gonna write it out in a nicer form as soon as I get to my room.”
“Thanks, dog.”
Wu coughed and hawked a lunger onto the sidewalk. A cop car turned the corner, alert to the traffic jam behind my squinty whale. I hopped into the whale and drove off.
I got back to Humelocke about five o’clock. Gyula and his companions were parked in their white limo by the same fire hydrant where Gary Ziff had been. And they already had a ticket on their windshield. But they didn’t care.
Gyula beckoned me over, a condescending smile on his lips. He’d given me one break, but now it was time to reel me in. I noticed a paracomputer rig just like ours on the seat next to him. A shimmering teapot and a laptop. I wondered if they’d been using Paul’s mind model to predict my actions. Veeter would have had the resources to devolve a proper codec, which meant the system would be working better. But it didn’t seem as if they’d picked up on my Tang Fat Hotel detour. They’d come straight to Ratvale.
Owen the Shanghai muscleman was scrunched down so he could glare out the window at me. He was a really big guy. His neck was as wide as his head; his eyes were gun-turret slits. Now he extricated himself from the car and stood beside it, twitching the kinks out of his shoulders, never taking his eyes off me. The bridge of his nose was very flat. He wore a skin-tight sleeveless red tank-top with a Chinese character for good fortune on it. Around his neck was a heavy gold chain with tight, flat interlocking links like an attack dog’s collar. Dangling from the necklace was a gold medallion bearing an X-eyed smiley face.
The passengers from the back seat got out as well. Two lawyers: A thin, snooty one and a short fat one with a full black beard. “I’m August Cochon,” said the taller one. “And you would be Bela Kis?”
“Yeah,” I said, reluctantly shaking his hand.
“Pleased to meet you,” said Cochon. He had a slight droop to his lower lip. “And this is my colleague Herman Svaart. We represent Rumpelstiltskin, Inc. We need to speak with you regarding a consulting contract issued on Saturday, May 29, of this year.”
“Uh-huh.”
“The company wishes to cancel the contract. We’ll be happy to pay a ten percent termination fee as soon as we take possession of the equipment that Rumpelstiltskin lent to your friend Paul Bridge.”
“You should ask him about that.”
“He’s neither at his home nor at his office. And I see that he’s not with you
. Would you know where we can find Mr. Bridge?”
“No,” I said.
Over in the limo, dark Gyula’s expression was studiously bland, and perhaps a bit mocking. Was there any chance that Veeter actually knew that I’d dropped Paul in Chinatown? But Cochon looked convincingly frustrated. As if I’d outmaneu- vered them. Big Owen twisted his neck impatiently, like a bird eager to peck.
“Don’t you want the cancellation fee?” said Cochon, pulling in the corners of his mouth. “Note that, in accordance with clause twenty-seven of our contract, if we deem your behavior to be obstructive or dilatory, the cancellation fee is voided, regardless of whether we receive our equipment.”
I hadn’t noticed that clause. “I’ll see what I can do,” I said finally. “Are we done here?”
“We’re prepared to institute a lawsuit against you,” said Svaart. “If you defy us, you can expect to be served papers quite soon.” His beard wagged up and down as he talked.
“Let me talk sense to the guy,” said Gyula, getting out of the limo. He took hold of my upper arm and none too gently dragged me off to one side. “You guys playing the market?” he asked in a low tone.
“This isn’t really about money,” I said.
Gyula snorted derisively. “Of course not, Professor. Look, I gave you a break. So now you help me pay off my mortgage, hear? Three hundred grand.”
“I gotta go.”
“Don’t fuck with me, Bela.” He jerked his head towards the big guy by the car. “You don’t want me to put Owen on you.”
“Give him me,” called the thug, recognizing the import of Gyula’s gesture. “I am respect.” He had a loud, high-pitched voice.
I made it into my apartment. My band-mates weren’t there yet. Maybe they were partying after school.
I was angry at Veeter for canceling my contract, and very glad I’d stashed Paul and the magic teapot at Tang Fat. I got out some fresh paper of my own and began rewriting Paul’s notes. As I worked, I understood them better and better; I began tightening up the ideas, mixing words, pictures, and equations as was my wont. It would be great to find a simple open-source method for paracomputation, and to devalue Veeter’s patents and techniques.
I was interrupted at seven by a knock on the door. Time flies when you’re doing math.
Merry on my doorstep were Naz, K-Jen, Thuggee, and— Jutta Schreck. The four of them were smoking a conical yellow hash joint. Jutta had a pale face, high cheekbones, platform-soled black boots, strawberry blonde hair, and ripe curves. Her makeup gave her a stern, ultra-metal look—shiny silver lipstick and eye-covering chromed contacts. But she was laughing, a barking sound that came out tjachz, tjachz.
“Bela,” she said, handing me the fat fuming roach. “We get down to it, hound. We rock it for Cammy Vendt.”
Jutta lived up to her reputation, and then some. She played like nothing else mattered, as if music were a language that she’d been speaking for a thousand years. She was fast and sensitive, she read our unspoken vibes. She was the musician that Cammy might have grown into, with craft and cunning layered upon still-burning passion.
The rehearsal was emotional. At times it felt as if Cammy were right there, a ghostly wave-pattern in the overlaid moirés of sound. K-Jen had written a long song about the murder, “Leaf-Blower Man,” and it took four run-throughs till I could play that one without breaking down.
All the while, the music was thinking for me. Even while I was screaming the choruses and bending my staircases of notes, I was getting ideas about the Gobrane, about devolution, about paracomputation, and about Paul’s mind model.
The rehearsal over, Jutta left me with a lit reefer in my hand. I sat down alone and worked for another couple of hours, and by two in the morning I had the impression that I knew both how to make pirate copies of the Gobrane, and how to carry out those knuckle-walking devolution techniques. I decided to post my results on the Web so everyone could see them. The sooner I could devalue that prick Veeter’s intellectual property, the better. I typed up my explanations and scanned in my figures and equations.
Made sly by the pot, rather than posting the info to my own home page—which was vulnerable to being taken offline by the Heritagists—I posted it via Pollinator, a nimble spambot maintained by an ex-Humelocke math student friend named Onar Anders, who’d moved to Tonga. Assuming Onar approved of you—and he liked me fairly well—his Pollinator would send out a hundred thousand anonymous helper-bots to post your information worldwide into guestbooks, comment threads, and the home pages of free trial accounts opened on the spot.
Pollinator signaled my successful post with an animation of an exploding dandelion head. I’d gotten over. I’d given away my information. And if I was right, then before long everyone would have an open-source paracomputer. That would teach Veeter to short me on my contract.
When I woke late the next morning, Tuesday, I immediately thought of some major holes in the midnight logic that I’d posted worldwide. Oh well, it was a start. I very much wanted to ask Paul about how to fix my ideas, but with Veeter on our case I didn’t want to risk blowing Paul’s cover by calling him. Come to think of it, if Paul was online, he’d probably notice my posts on his own. He’d love reading them, and he’d love finding the holes. Visualizing Paul’s reactions made me smile.
I phoned Alma to see how she was doing. Her cell phone was turned off so I used the Ziff landline. Her father Gary answered.
“Hi,” I said. “This is Bela Kis. Can I talk to Alma?”
“Rock and roll,” said Gary. “I saw some of your concert. Washer Dump?”
“Washer Drop,” I said.
“I wrote a song,” volunteered Gary. “Want to buy a song? It’s called ‘Tequila Memories.’ I could sing it for you now.”
“Maybe when I come see Alma,” I said. “Can you put her on?”
“Hey Pete,” called Alma’s father. “Where’s Alma?”
“Stinking up the shitter,” said Pete’s voice in the background. “Whoops, here she comes.”
I heard a clatter and some hissed whispers, and then Alma was on.
“Bela?”
“Hi. I miss you.”
“I can’t wait to get out of here. Stop it, Pete!” More rattling and the slam of a door. “I wasn’t in the bathroom like he said. I was feeding the fish and cleaning the filters in Mom’s aquariums. She’s hardly home at all these days. She started some new antidepressants and she’s like a jumping bean now. What’s up with you? Are you over your guilt trip?”
“Getting better. I’m going to Cammy’s funeral today and that benefit concert is gonna happen tomorrow night. It’s good to be doing stuff. You still up for seeing me early Thursday morning?”
“With your surfboard,” said Alma. “Sweet. I can’t wait for Big Sur. I’ve got my board and suit here, you know. I’ve been practicing with Pete.”
“One thing,”I told her. “I just saw two of Veeter’s lawyers. The contract is history. And they were threatening to serve papers on me. I’m wondering what that even means.”
“God dammit. Veeter wants to cancel your consulting contract? It’s as bad as you said.”
“Easy come, easy go. Don’t forget, I’ve got the rock-star thing happening too.”
“But why does that pig want to sue you? You should be suing him! Did you and Paul do something skeevy?”
“Well I—I better not go into details on the phone. So do you know about serving papers?”
“I do. When you go corporate, I can be your CEO. Listen up. When someone wants to sue you, they run to the court in tears, and they hand in some papers saying, waaah, Bela did this and that to me, and I want the courts to do such and such to Bela to make it fair. Now, the court isn’t going to consider the case until they’re sure that Bela knows what the crybabies are saying about him. So some reliable individual has to, like, physically put a copy of the complaint papers into your hand and testify in court that you got them.”
“So I can stall
by avoiding the papers.”
“Yeah, but that’s not a long-term solution.”
“If I stall long enough, maybe things will change,” I said. More noise in the background at Alma’s end: Gary Ziff yodel- ing “Tequila Memories.”
“Don’t stall about picking me up on Thursday morning,” said Alma.
“Would six a.m. be okay? I might come straight there from the concert.”
“I’m sleeping on a fold-out bed in the garage, actually. Pete’s hogging my old room. So just creep into the garage and kiss me awake. I’ll be glad to see my Prince Charming.”
“I love you, Alma.”
“I’m glad.”
I spent another couple of hours working on my open-source paracomputation project, and got nowhere. The harder I looked, the more errors I found.
And then I went to Cammy’s funeral at a graveyard in South San Francisco. Quite a few people turned up, many of them strangers to me. The dirt hole in the ground was a model of the Cammy-sized hole in the world. I was having trouble accepting her death as real. Near the end of the service, I noticed Cochon and Svaart edging toward me through the crowd. I did a slow- motion evasion, sidling through the mourners, but when I reached the edge of the party, I had to break into the open. Cochon and Svaart kept on coming; it ended with me running full tilt across the gently rolling green hills of the graveyard, tears in my eyes, the white stones like numbers.
I slept on Naz’s couch Tuesday night to avoid the lawyers, and all day Wednesday I hung out at Naz’s family’s store. I didn’t think much about math that day, I was thinking about the coming concert instead. Thuggee used my Bel Paese to ferry equipment to Rubber Rick’s Globo Club in the Mission district of San Francisco. And, last of all, I told him to load the squinty whale with my two surfboards and my two wetsuits and bathing suits and park the car behind the club. Two of everything just in case I needed spares. I, myself, took DART and the bus to the concert.