by Rudy Rucker
Rubber Rick’s club was an old warehouse, big enough for several hundred people. An enormous bar ran all along the left- hand wall. The floor was shellacked concrete, with a scattering of green plastic garden-furniture tables and chairs. A low stage stood at the far end, with black-painted plywood partitioning off a backstage area.
As show time drew near, I was back there with Naz, K-Jen, and Thuggee, taking turns checking out the crowd through a black-gauze-covered porthole. Rubber Rick was at our side. “Where’s Jutta?” said Naz for maybe the seventh time.
“I talked to Siggy fifteen minutes ago, man,” said Rubber Rick. He waggled his tongue. “Siggy’s her himbo-slash-bodyguard.” Rubber was an older guy, in his forties, with an odd, zigzag comb-over and a close-cropped devil beard. He claimed he got a lot of sex. “Siggy says, opanować się," continued Rubber. “Means ‘be cool’ in Polish. Jutta likes to get lifted before she comes on. You gotta know that.” He was wearing a cell phone headset.
“In other words she’s shooting up,” said K-Jen in tart, California-girl tones. “How headbanger. I hope she remembers our songs. Do you have the playlist, Bela?”
“Here,” I said showing it to her. “And somewhere in there we goose the energy with the AntiCrystal cover we practiced.”
“ 'Crying Chainsaw Clown’,” said Naz. “That song is god.”
“What about the second set?” said Thuggee.
“There might not be a second set,” I said. “If there is, we play everything again faster and louder.”
“Are those Cammy’s parents drinking at the bar?” said K-Jen, peering through the black gauze. “The mother looks trashed. Aren’t they from, like, Iowa?”
"A kind word for everyone,” I said. “Ohio. They buried their daughter yesterday. You should say hi to them. Are you ner- vous? ”
“Poor things. Yeah, I’m half-thinking there’s a second creep out there waiting to get me.”
“Maximum force tonight,” said Thuggee. “Look.” He held up a black aluminum baseball bat. “I will be showing this to the crowd.”
“Thuggee wanted to bring a machete,” said Naz. “But I said he’d end up cutting off his foot or my hand when the music got good to him.”
“We’ll have Jutta’s guy Siggy onstage too,” I told K-Jen. “Don’t worry. Everyone here tonight loves us.”
“The human part of me is scared,” mused K-Jen, “but the career part is bummed that I’m not the new vlogger on Buzz. Didn’t Leni say I could go next after Cammy?”
“Maybe, but, you know, they’re rethinking it all. They picked an engineer for now, I looked at him on the Web today. He’s an employee of Veeter’s down in Watsonville. Henry Nunez? Chief technologist at a company called Membrain Products. I guess Veeter figures the exposure could help the Membrain stock. They’re thinking about an exponential growth rate, like distributing a million vlog rings in the next couple of months, if you can believe that. For the ultimate reality show.”
“Why show a million people when they could have shown me?" said K-Jen, actually serious. She was absorbing the rock- diva thing really fast.
“At least Rubber Rick is webcasting our show,” I said. “You’ll get your fame soon. Washer Drop is riding a spike, too.”
On the inside, I was thinking my own thoughts about Henry
Nunez. I’d watched Alma, Lulu, and Leni talking to Nunez in his vlog. Nunez seemed like a genuinely nice guy, friendly and intelligent. Alma had been flirting with him in her generalized cast-bread-upon-the-waters fashion, and Nunez had casually asked her out to dinner. To my relief she’d turned him down. But she’d left the door open for a follow-up invitation. Alma would know that Nunez could soon be a high-tech billionaire. And the guy definitely wanted a girlfriend. On the vlog, after Alma had turned Nunez down, Lulu had pushed in and she'd had dinner with Nunez—computer science lug Lulu with her plaid schoolgirl skirt, big red lips, and messy bangs—and Leni had gotten really mad about it. I hadn’t gotten around to checking how Lulu’s date with Nunez and fight with Leni had worked out. Things were happening too fast.
“Jutta’s here,” said Rubber Rick, breaking my reverie. He hurried to the front of the club.
Right after he left, two people pushed backstage. A straight- looking man and woman, dressed in nearly identical black outfits: jeans, turtlenecks, and leather jackets. I’d seen them yesterday; they’d been at Cammy’s funeral. At the time, I’d thought they might be cops.
“Bela Kis?” said the woman in that certain tone. She was short and intense, with dark lips.
“Don’t tell me you’re going to arrest me,” I said. “Is this about Veeter’s paracomputer?”
“National Security Agency,” said the guy, showing a badge. He had a wobbly halo of curly hair; he was a bit older. “I’m agent Kenny Jones and this is agent Mary Smith. We’re from the government and we’re here to help you.” He chuckled at the old line, showing his teeth in a smile.
“Please don’t bust him,” said Naz. “We’re about to play a gig.”
“We know that,” said Mary Smith. She had oval black-framed glasses and she wore her dark hair in a ragged shag. “You guys rock. Can you three clear out and let us talk secret stuff with Bela?”
“We can perform an equipment check,” said Thuggee. “Unless you want them to be gone, Bela?” He hefted his bat, looking like he’d enjoy using it.
“Think of us as backup security,” said Kenny Jones, flashing that winning grin again. His irregular teeth gave him an honest look. “No worries.”
K-Jen was still peering through the porthole into the club. “Rubber Rick’s leading Jutta into his office. He’s drooling on her hoochie-mamma dominatrix-wear. God, he’s cheesy. I don’t even want to think about why he has that name.”
“Do think about it,” suggested Naz. “Write a song about him.”
“Hipster Love Monkey,” suggested K-Jen, breaking into song.
Peel my rubber banana,
I'll groom your mangy tail.
Laughing and joking, my band-mates made their way across the still-dark stage and, prompted by K-Jen, continued over to the bar to introduce themselves to the Vendts, K-Jen acting very sympathetic. She was kinder than she liked to let on.
“What do you guys really want?” I asked the agents, turning my attention back to them.
“Agent Jones and I handle the wack reports for the NSA,” said Mary Smith, squinting up at me and adjusting her glasses. “Unexplained phenomena. No stone left unturned. Mostly it’s bullshit, but you’re a special case. You made our month.” She opened her purse and took out a subcompact laptop.
“You talked about aliens a few times on your vlog,” said Kenny Jones. “And that popped up in our media filters. No big deal, but then the murder and the Congressman Veeter connection jumped you up the priority scale. So yesterday we took a look at your files.”
“Jackpot,” said Mary Smith. “Remember when you said, ‘I saw flying alien cone shells reflected in my guitar’? It’s a go-flag when we hear something that unique. The nut jobs always imagine the same familiar things. I went into your vlog and adjusted the viewpoint so that we were staring into your chrome guitar from the same angle as you, zoomed it up a little, and yeah."
She clicked an icon on her laptop’s screen to start a slow- motion view of my chrome guitar at the San Jose show. The image was dim, warped, grainy At first it was hard to read, but then it popped into focus for me: the dark night sky, the oval faces of the crowd, and hovering above them were the two big cone shells covered with the down-pointing orange and white triangles in patterns like rivulets, their alien stalk eyes staring out the screen at me.
“So they’re real,” I said, letting out a long breath. I looked at the two agents, seeing them as people instead of as cops. “Any idea why the aliens are only visible in mirrors?”
“I imagine they’re projecting virtual images of themselves,” said Kenny. “And the images are maybe out of phase with our reality? But a mirror-reflectio
n swings them into synch. I might as well confess that I’m a mathematician too.” He patted my knee and gave me a damp smile, licking his upper lip. “We have more in common than you think.” A federal agent was cruising me?
“We have another video,” said Mary. “But we’re not sure if—”
“Not sure if you can handle it,” chimed in Kenny. “It’s of Cammy Vendt.”
“Show me,” I said grimly. “I want to know.”
“We went into the vlogs that Ms. Vendt’s ring posted after her death,” said Mary. “Watching for reflections.” She glanced over at me. I nodded again.
The little screen popped up the very image that was most deeply engraved on my mind: inert Cammy with her blood trails woven across the road like the trunks of heavenly trees. The viewpoint zoomed in on her sunglasses lying beside her. I saw a tiny pale flicker in the one unshattered lens. The zoom increased; the pixels got blocky. I saw cone shells again, two of them, the same ones as before, I recognized the branching patterns of triangles on their shells. They were hovering over Cammy’s nearly severed neck. Drinking the blood?
I felt a pain in my fingers; I was squeezing one hand with the other very hard. My breath was coming fast and shallow. Kenny patted my shoulder.
The cone shell snails were clearer than in the other video. Each of them had a striped breathing tube like a clam’s siphon. Below the siphons were stalk eyes mounted on either side of a mouth snout. A slender red tentacle extended from each mouth like an unbelievably long tongue: thick at the base, thin at the tip. These tendrils were, horribly, reaching into Cammy’s neck, pushing into her brain through her slashed-open spinal cord.
“That’s enough,” I said, my stomach heaving.
“I think they were carrying out some kind of anatomical investigation,” said Kenny, closing the display.
“Or maybe they were stealing her soul,” I said bleakly. “This is all my fault, you know. The alien cone shells came from Haut to me. And Cammy wouldn’t have died if I hadn’t left her at Paul’s. I should have loved her while I had the chance.”
I heard loud thumping from the stage. Naz adjusting his drums. I ran my hands over my face, trying to shake off the new images, trying to bring back my focus. The agents stood there watching me.
“Go away,” I said.
“Here’s a laser pointer,” said Mary handing me an object like a pen. “If you see aliens at any time tonight, beam this at them. Kenny and I would really really like to talk with them.”
Kenny hefted his briefcase. “I’ve got an electric-net-gun in here. Rangers use them for mountain lions. We figure there’s a chance that we might be able to trap the cone images and rotate them into solidity.”
There was something very odd about these two. "You’re not from the NSA at all, are you?”
“Trust us,” said Kenny with that bogus toothy smile again. I heard Jutta’s growly voice out on the stage, arguing with K-Jen about who should stand where.
“Thanks,” I said, shoving the pointer into my pants pocket. “But I can’t think about your problems now, guys. Whoever you are, whatever you want. I’m on.”
“If—if the aliens help you off Earth,” said Mary Smith, taking my sleeve and staring into my eyes. “Take us with you.”
I pushed past her onto the stage, hungry for the music.
I’d like to say the show was a triumph, but there were problems. Thuggee had forgotten about setting up monitor speakers, so we couldn’t hear ourselves very well. With no monitors, the sound seemed to disappear into the club like water in sand. I couldn’t even tell if I was on-key. After limping through the first song, I stopped the show for a few minutes so we could set up extra speakers pointing back at the band.
And then we tried “Leaf Blower Man.” What with having just revisited Cammy’s murder vlog, I had trouble on this song too. My voice was cracking so much that I couldn’t do the choruses. My fingers were shaky; I screwed up the chords.
All along, Jutta’s beat had been leaden and a bit off, but it wasn’t till the next number that I realized just how loaded she was. It was like she’d sent a radio-controlled robot to stand in for her, dressed in thigh-high boots and a leather bathing suit. I went over to her and pumped the neck of my guitar, urging her to pick up the pace. She ignored me, rocking to her own rhythm, frozen-faced, her chrome eyes reflecting the room. At least I wasn't seeing any cone shells in the reflections. The “agents” Kenny and Mary were stationed right in front of the stage.
To get some energy, I led the band into our AntiCrystal cover, and that finally woke Jutta. She bared her sharp teeth in a smile, left the smile in place, and growled the words of “Crying Chainsaw Clown,” playing a funeral dirge that accelerated into a rocket launch. The song was very East European, very metal, deeply good. Jutta plowed on past the ending and we stretched out, getting into a groove for the first time tonight, the music meshing like the wheels and levers of a locomotive. We wrapped up the number with multiple repetitions of its psychotic chorus.
Crying chainsaw clown—her head is on the ground.
Crying chainsaw clown—my head is on the ground.
Crying chainsaw clown—your head is on the ground.
Crying chainsaw clown! Crying chainsaw clown! Crying chainsaw clown!
The cartoony, English-as-a-second-language lyrics seemed uncannily powerful to me tonight, and for the first time ever I was able to break my voice into the heavy-metal falsetto register, screaming my heart out like AntiCrystal’s Waclaw Smorynski.
Some kook started to climb on stage right around then, but when he saw the way Thuggee and Siggy came for him, he hopped back to the floor no doubt. Siggy was a smoothmuscled athlete, wonderfully tan. He looked like a leather shark with legs. And Thuggee was truly ready to bust a head.
We played a lighter number, and then I made an announcement.
“We’re here tonight to honor the memory of Cammy Vendt. All the profits from this show will go into a special Cammy Fund at the Fugue Music Network, to help out other struggling musicians. And if you can donate a little extra money, Rubber Rick’s got a bunch of buckets set up along the bar. I only knew Cammy for a little while, but she was—she was a bright spirit. She was smart and together and beautiful and she rocked. We’re gonna close this set with one of the songs that Cammy loved to play. But first I’d like to tell you that Cammy’s parents are in the house. Let’s show them how we feel about their girl.”
The clapping and cheering went on for quite a while, and segued into a chant of Cammy’s name. Her parents were standing by the bar, smiling and crying, Klaus’s arm around Dagmar’s shoulders. As the chanting died down, Naz whacked his drum, I struck a chord, and we were into “Oil Pig.” It was good. Jutta was on it, channeling Cammy, fresh and bouncy instead of decadent and monumental.
And then the set was over and Rubber Rick brought up the lights. Thuggee was hugging K-Jen, holding up her hand, and Naz stepped forward, grabbing K-Jen’s other hand. The crowd was clapping. I wanted to go talk with Cammy’s parents, but right then I noticed Cochon and Svaart pushing towards the stage, Cochon holding the dreaded papers. On a sudden inspiration, I aimed my laser pointer at them so that the red dot played across Cochon’s bald dome.
Whumpl A sparking metal net settled over Cochon and Svaart, making them jump and shout. Kenny Jones was in a firing stance, his legs well separated and his arms cradling a heavy tube-gun. Apparently it held another round, for he was turning his head my way, wanting for me to signal another target. . . .
But by then I was gone—out the back door, in my squinty whale, driving to Chinatown.
I left my surf wagon in the beat old Vallejo Street Parking Garage at the border between Chinatown and the mostly Italian North Beach. Just a block from the Tang Fat Hotel.
It was nearly one in the morning by now. You could have fired a cannon down Stockton Street, it looked that deserted. Up ahead was another pedestrian, a tall, ungainly woman bundled up in a cheap black
cloth coat and carrying a couple of shopping bags. Her head was swathed in a dark kerchief with gold Chinese characters on it.
As it happened, she too was headed for the Tang Fat Hotel. This was a stroke of good luck: I could follow her in without having to try and rouse the super. I stepped up my pace so as to reach the tiled steps of the rooming house right on the woman’s heels. Not turning to look at me, she bent over the doorknob, awkwardly scrabbling her key into the lock. Some of her hair showed under her kerchief: black and coarse.
“I have a friend staying here,” I said in my halting Chinese. Although the tall woman didn’t answer, she allowed me to push into the hallway after her. It was lit by the dimmest imaginable bulb in the ceiling fixture, maybe three watts. I headed up the stairs after the woman. I hadn’t yet glimpsed her face. I noticed a nice smell of warm food trailing from her tattered shopping bags. I realized that I was quite hungry.
I must have been following the woman too closely, for halfway up the stairs she paused and swung her leg backwards as if trying to kick me in the face. “Excuse me,” I said in Chinese. She cast a quick glance down at me, her face shrouded, a sparkle of light catching one of her eyes. And then she made a muffled sound that sounded like a giggle. God forbid that she was expecting me to make romantic advances! She turned away and continued stomping up the stairs.
We reached the third floor landing together. The kerchiefed women went to the far end of the hall, paused by a doorway, looked back at me, and crooked her finger. She was very definitely laughing.
“What’s wrong with you?” I demanded in Mandarin.
“No speak Chinese,” said the woman, pushing back her kerchief.
“Roland!” I exclaimed, recognizing my thesis adviser.
He grinned. This was the first time I’d seen him since the Summit Psychiatric Center, and the stay seemed to have done him some good. He actually seemed to be in a good mood.