by Rudy Rucker
Alma patted my leg. “I’d like that too, Bela. Maybe now you understand how I felt about you mooning over Cammy.”
In my opinion the situations weren’t at all comparable, but for once I had the sense to hold my tongue. “You and me, Alma,” is all I said. “I want the relationship to be about you and me.” I had to be extra nice, because I was about to ask her to do something hard.
“I think I love you, Bela,” said Alma, looking very cute with her pigtails sticking out. “I would never ever go back to Paul again.”
“I’m glad,” I said.
The sun sparkled on the bay, with the Monterey peninsula showing on the southern side. We had about another hour’s drive till Miller Beach.
“What did Paul and that—that Rowena thing mean about a parallel world?” Alma asked. “You’re going to jump through a tunnel of some kind? And the idea is to try and undo Cammy’s murder?”
“I feel like we’ve gotta try,” I said. “Rowena’s from some kind of higher universe that she calls La Hampa.”
“Odd name,” said Alma. “La Hampa in Spanish means the underworld. Did you know that? Underworld like gangland.” “Whatever. But it’s not gonna be sinister at all. Paul and I glimpsed La Hampa; it has blue seas and green islands.”
"And when you’re done there do you come back here to me?”
“Well, that’s the catch,” I said. “That’s what we have to talk about. If someone could change the past of their world, and still be in their same world, it wouldn’t work. The world wouldn’t be able to settle down. For instance if I reached back in time to keep my parents from meeting, then I wouldn’t have been born, so I wouldn’t be around to reach back and keep them from meeting, so I’d be born the same as before and end up wanting to reach back in time to keep them from meeting— like that.”
“You don’t want to come back here from La Hampa?”
“I’m telling you I can’t. It’s a standard argument from the philosophy of science. Arbitrary reverse causation in a single, logically consistent world is a priori impossible. If Paul and I go through the tunnel and do something over there to change Earth’s past, then when we come back it has to be that we’re actually coming back to a different Earth. The new Earth will be in a parallel universe, or maybe it’ll be a nearly identical planet that’s somewhere else in this universe, but a long way away. The new Earth will be like this Earth without actually being the exact same Earth. That’s what Rowena meant when she said, ‘You come back new world.’ ”
“Why does she talk so weird?” said Alma, temporarily evading the issue. “I can’t stand it."
“That’s, you know, the Asian way,” I said. "For some reason she’s talking Asian style. We string together ideograms and don’t worry about grammar. Like a series of pictures. Maybe Rowena learn talk eat Owen brain.”
“The rhetoric of glyphs,” said Alma with a distracted giggle. But then her face turned serious. “You’re telling me that if you and Paul go through the tunnel and I stay here, then I’ll never see either of you again. It’ll be like you both died on me today.” She took my hand, holding onto me.
“That’s it,” I said. “And that’s why I want you to come with us.”
“I knew it. All this just for Cammy?”
“It’s not only about Cammy so please don’t be jealous. I also want to do it because it’s such an amazing adventure. And, listen, if you won’t come along, then I won’t go. I just decided that. But, hey, I really do want to see La Hampa.”
“What about the alien cone shells?” protested Alma. “If we go over there, won’t they kill us?”
“I think they really do mean to be our friends,” I said. “Rowena only ate Owen to protect Paul and me. And she didn’t actually hurt your father. And supposedly it wasn’t her fault that Sandoval killed—killed Cammy.”
“Oh I don’t know,” said Alma, suddenly angry “I thought we were just going surfing. Why do you have to make everything so weird? Why do you have to pressure me?”
She fell into a sulk then, staring silently at the landscape as we powered past Monterey, and waving off my attempts to resume our conversation. I gave up and drove in silence. The Bel Paese’s big engine purred, eating up the miles; Paul breathed softly in his sleep.
Alma finally spoke again when we began swinging along the high cliffs of Big Sur.
“That car’s been right behind us for the last few miles,” she said, peering through the rear window.
“I know,” I answered. It was a red Crevasse coupe with a couple of guys in the front seat, the passenger taller than the driver. They’d been following us ever since we’d crossed the road from Watsonville. “I figure those are Veeter’s boys. From the Membrain plant that’s down this way.”
“What?” asked Paul, waking up and looking back. “What would they want?” He sounded cranky and querulous.
“By now Gyula will have told Veeter that he lost the para- computer,” I reasoned. “And Veeter will figure that you and I have it. And he’ll want it back. Because he doesn’t want us to make another hypertunnel. We might make his top-secret product look unsafe.”
“And I guess they used my mind-simulation program to predict you’d drive to Big Sur,” said Paul, wanting to brag for Alma again.
“That Mickey Mouse hack doesn’t work for shit.” I said shortly. “You know that. Veeter’s in the government now. He tapped our phones. We talked about Sur on the phone, didn’t we, Alma?”
“Yeah,” she said, still turned around in her seat. “And, duh, Pete vlogged us.” The red Crevasse was holding a steady two hundred feet distance behind us. “That’s Henry Nunez driving. He’s nice, and he’s bound to get rich. I met him the other day when Leni gave him the vlog ring for Buzz. And he asked me out. Did you watch that? I said no, and he took out Lulu Cliff instead, and she gave him a blowjob in his car after dinner, right on the vlog, and now she thinks he might ask her to marry him, but of course he won’t, the first-date blowjob strategy never bags the guy for more than two weeks. And meanwhile Leni got so jealous that she fired Lulu. Poor Lulu’s lost her job with Buzz, just as vlogging is really starting to take off. The skinny tall guy riding beside Henry is a total thug gang-banger, by the way, I met him too. Tito Cruz. I think even Henry doesn’t like him. I hate security guards.” She touched her X-eyed smiley face medallion. “Peace, Owen.”
“I wonder how rough they plan to get,” I said. “Did you hear that Vice President Ramirez wants to kill me, Alma?"
“Like he’d care about you,” said Alma, really doubting me. Paul rolled down the side window and stared up at the sky. “I see Rowena,” he said. “Way up high.”
“She’s going to attract attention,” said Alma.
“Once Bela, Rowena, and I go through that tunnel, nothing here matters,” said Paul in a flat tone. “We’re not coming back.”
“Bela told me that.” said Alma. “And you’d leave me without a qualm?”
“You bet,” said Paul. “The Alma on the next Earth will like me better. And the quantum-mechanical no-cloning theorem implies we can’t have more than one of each of us per Earth. So if you came, you’d only be in the way.”
“Hmmpf," said Alma, annoyed.
There wasn’t much traffic on the road just now, and the red Crevasse came at us. It sped up as if to pass us, then locked speeds. I looked over. Nunez was a short guy with a ponytail and a round, pleasant face. He was intently focused on his driving. I was in such a high-adrenaline state that I was noticing tiny things, like that Nunez wasn’t wearing his vlog ring.
Meanwhile rangy Tito was brandishing a single-barrel, large- bore shotgun and gesturing with his free hand for us to pull over. His Adam’s apple worked up and down as he waved the gun. Nunez glanced over with a concerned expression, perhaps telling Tito to be careful. Tito ignored him and leveled the shotgun at—
“Shit,” I said, mashing the accelerator. The squinty whale’s V-8 engine was ready for the attack. We sprang forward, leaving
the Crevasse well behind. I drew the pistol out of my pocket and handed it to Alma. “Show them this if they pull up again.”
“Maybe I should waste Paul for them instead,” said Alma, tapping the gun against her medallion and aiming it at Paul’s head. “Viva la vida loca."
“Don’t fuck around, Alma,” snapped Paul.
“You wanted me to fuck around last night,” she said, delicately licking the tip of the barrel. “Horn-dog. Do you understand now that you and I are over?”
For once Paul had no comeback. Watching Alma from the comer of my eye, I loved her more than ever.
The road was straight and I was going a hundred. The Crevasse was well behind us. But my suspension and alignment weren’t the best, which meant that the view through my windshield was a blur. We came up on a pair of camper vans like they were standing still. I fishtailed around them in one smooth motion, getting back into our lane inches ahead of an oncoming line of cars.
“Sweet,” said Alma, looking back. “I have an idea. There’s this gravel road that loops inland just before the Kerouac Bridge. The bridge is only about a mile ahead. It’s the Coast Road that you’ll want; it branches off to the left; it cuts into a tall embankment. We’ve got such a big lead now that you can whip into the Coast Road and Veeter’s guys won’t even see. They’ll drive past. And then we take the Coast Road down about ten miles to where it rejoins Route One, and while we’re doing that, they give up and go home.”
“They’ll go wait for us at Miller Beach,” objected Paul. “Slow down. We’re gonna crash.”
“We never said Miller Beach on the phone or to Pete,” said Alma. “They’ll check some other places first. Get ready to turn left, Bela.” I was up to a hundred and ten.
I slowed down, but not all that much. The main road was a little sandy, and the Coast Road was gravel, so I figured I could do a controlled drift for my turn. I’d slide sideways into the pocket. The trick would be to start the turn early.
I think I would have made it if it hadn’t been for the two bicyclists. They came wobbling out of the Coast Road about a quarter second after I entered my drift, some two hundred feet north of the intersection. If I kept going, the car’s side would swat the cyclists like gnats. So I tried to pull out by giving the car more power and twisting the wheel to the right.
Error. The squinty whale squirmed like a live beast, wholly out of control. And then my massive, overpowered station wagon shot through the guard rail to the right of the bridge, out into achingly beautiful steep-walled gorge where Kerouac Creek meets the Pacific.
Time went very slow. I looked at Alma, at Paul, and at Alma again.
“Bela,” she said. “Bela.” I took her hand.
We were in free flight, right at the high point of our arc. Slowly my whale began tipping forward, following the weight of her big engine. The aquamarine and ink-blue water was so exquisitely shaded, the traceries of white foam so delicate. In silence I accepted this final gift from Gaia.
But then something thudded against the car’s roof with a resonant splat. The squinty whale shuddered, swayed, and began to rise, slowly and then faster. I myself felt grow lighter—I was bobbling on the seat.
“Rowena!” shouted Paul. Alma and I began to cheer.
Yes. Rowena the flying alien cone shell snail had fastened her great foot onto us! Her eyestalks bent down to peer in through the windshield. We waved and cheered some more. Our arms flew about like crazy rags; Alma’s medallion danced in the air. Rowena had an antigravity thing happening for us.
Her red-and-white-striped mouth tube curved around to poke into my window. “Which way Miller Beach?” she said.
We leveled out at maybe a thousand feet and followed the Big Sur coast south, cruising along as silently as if we were riding a balloon. The three of us were floating off our seats and giddy from our narrow escape with death. We had all the windows open to savor the delicious, thin, salty air.
“I don’t want this anymore,” said Alma, handing me my pistol like it was a turd or a dead rat. “We’re in a new video now.”
“Right on,” I said, hurling the weapon out my window. “Shed the lead. Not our style.”
“Good,” said Paul. “You were freaking me out with that thing, Alma.”
“Don’t dis me again,” said Alma lightly. “And I’ll be your friend. I’m on this trip all the way.”
“You are?” I asked, laughing elatedly. “We can go through the hypertunnel?”
“I almost died five minutes ago,” said Alma. “So this is extra time. Like found money. Why not do something wild? It beats looking for a nonexistent job.”
“You do understand that you won’t be able to come back to this same world?” I asked.
“I guess. Not that I necessarily think you and Paul know what you’re talking about. But—” She smiled softly, letting her eyes rove over my face. “I don’t want to cage you, Bela. And I don’t want to take the chance having you permanently disappear. And, Paul, I’d miss you too. I’m coming to La Hampa, boys.”
“Isn’t she great?” I said, turning to grin at Paul. The most he could muster was a shrug.
“Hand me the paracomputer from the glove compartment,” he mumbled. “I’ll get it ready.”
In ten minutes Miller Beach was in sight, a long strip of white at the base of steep, rocky hills still slightly green from the winter’s rains. Island-sized rocks hunkered in the surf offshore; a lagoon spread to the left.
“Right here,” I called, pointing downward and rapping on the windshield. Rowena saw my signal; she’d kept one of her eyestalks bent down our way.
The beach rushed up at us like a zoom into a satellite map. The sand was dotted with people when we started down, what with it being noon in June. The sight of my mollusk-draped car falling from the sky sent them screaming and running away. After that kind of entrance there wasn’t much point in trying to be low-profile. I had Rowena plop us down right at the edge of the water: two mathematicians, a rhetorician, and three surfboards in a dirty white squinty whale with a primered fender and a yellow hood.
Fifty feet into the ocean was an enormous hump of rock with a square natural bridge in it. The Miller door. You could see right through it to the open sea beyond. The waves were breaking outside, with the surge periodically rushing through the square hole, sending low circular point-source wave fronts towards the shore. The surf was mild enough that even during the surges, some breathing room remained at the top of the hole.
We stepped onto the sand.
“A magic gate to another world,” said Alma, staring at the square natural bridge. “Are we really doing this?”
“I ready,” said Rowena, peeling her snail-foot off the roof of my car.
“Me too,” I said, getting the boards and wet suits and bathing suits out of the back: red trunks for me, flowered ones for Paul. I gave Paul the full-body wet suit and kept the shortie. “Here, Paul, see if you can get this on. Just leave your clothes on the beach. The zipper goes in back. Is the paracomputer set?”
“Yeah,” said Paul, handing me a largish Ziploc bag. The Go- brane teapot was in there, also a battery wrapped in black electrical tape with two wires sticking out. Paul had picked up the extra stuff at that Corona gas station on our way down to Cruz.
“We can get a spark by touching the wires,” saii Paul as he pulled on my flowered trunks and began puzzling over his wet suit. “I figure the whole system is more or less waterproof, but we might as well keep it in the bag till the last minute. There’s one problem, though.”
“You’re not ditching me!” said Alma, wriggling into her pink and green wetsuit.
“We’ve established that,” said Paul impatiently. “Can I talk? My problem is that I have no idea how to surf.”
“Just stay between us,” said Alma, tucking her gold necklace inside her wetsuit. “I’ll tell you what to do.”
“You’re good at that,” sneered Paul.
“Bitter horn-dog.”
�
��Come on, Paul,” I put in. “Keep it together. Be a mathe- naut.” Even though I wasn’t coming back to this world, out of long habit, I took my car key and tucked it into a zipper pocket of my wet suit.
Some of the people who’d run away were edging closer now. Rowena hovered alertly above us, the tipmost end of her red proboscis protruding from her mouth.
“Are you shooting a movie?” called a teenage boy with zits and a blonde pompadour.
“Gynormous surfin’ sci-fi flick,” responded Alma, playing with the rhetoric. “Please stay clear so we can get this next shot, sir.”
"Awesome,” said the kid. He craned upwards. “Where’d the helicopter go?”
“Wasn’t any helicopter,” said a darkly tanned woman behind him. “That cone thing was carryin’ the car.”
“There was too a helicopter just a minute ago, Mom,” shrilled a little girl in a red bathing suit. She had a voice like a dentist’s drill.
“Stand back!” I shouted. The three of us had our wet suits on and our boards under our arms. I had the paracomputer in my hand. No need to answer more questions. We trotted down to the water, Rowena floating through the air above us.
“So here’s the plan,” I told Paul and Alma. “We paddle out to that square hole in the rock; I set this gizmo on a ledge; Paul sparks it in the right spot for Haut’s Paradox; we paddle out further while the Gobrane bulges and makes a ball of light inside the arch. We turn around and surf into the light—which will be the mouth of the hypertunnel to La Hampa. Doesn't totally matter if we catch a wave, by the way. Paddling would be fine.”
As usual, the frigid Big Sur waters gave me an ice cream headache all over my body. We were halfway to the rock when, damn, a helicopter did appear, a sleek black job with no markings, roaring out from behind a cliff to the left. I could make out a single pilot in the cockpit. Two additional figures were peering out through an open door in the helicopter’s side.