by Rudy Rucker
Given that Rowena and Jewelle’s ancestors were from a water planet, they were experts on flow. Prompted by a question from Paul, Jewelle explained how a detour into sevendimensional vortices led to an elegant proof of the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture concerning cubic curves. And Rowena allowed that, thanks to hierophantics, she could solve the intractable Navier-Stokes equations for fluid flow—at least in what she called the “docile” worlds.
Unger told us that, being blind, he had little interest in space or number. For him the world was a system of electromagnetic fields, so he was perforce prone to viewing reality as an endless undivided whole. Unger believed in his mind’s direct perceptions of impalpable form. According to Unger, infinite sets were as real as the objects that we nonnudibranchs saw with our crass eyes. And words, for Unger, were potentially infinite sets of etymological links and conversational associations, which made rhetoric a kind of linguistic theory of infinity.
Alma was vehemently bored by the math talk, and she started a side conversation about rhetoric with Unger. As they talked, Unger began turning some of the Nataraja sea cucumbers into a kind of stinging shrimp that he called grork. Eating grork seemed to get him drunk or high. And then, at Unger’s urging, Alma told a little Nataraja sea cuke to turn itself into a fat, blazing marijuana joint.
While the children chattered around their tornado and Alma grew raucous, Paul and I kept our heads. We didn’t want to miss a word. I, for one, felt like Aladdin in the treasure cave.
Osckar and Tanya explained that their ancestors were from a world near the core of their beloved Galaxy Z, a spot where solar systems were continually being torn apart by catastrophic close encounters. The all-but-indestructible roaches were forced to emigrate to new worlds every generation or so, which meant that, for them, most concepts were utterly relative, and they preferred to focus upon the relations between axiom systems and the theorems that might be logically deduced.
In La Hampa, Osckar and Tanya had added the mysterious hierophantic technique to their arsenal of logical inference methods. In the grandiose style of mathematicians everywhere, they were overweeningly proud of their new technique. They said they were the best mathematicians in both La Hampa and in the entire multiverse—with the possible exceptions of Jewelle and Rowena.
The roaches claimed that, at least in the docile realities, hi- erophantics could collapse the natives’ long, groping proofs and computations into a few ultraefficient steps apiece. As it happened, some of the alternate Earths were docile, and some were not—according to Osckar and Rowena, our Earth of origin was in fact docile, and that’s why we were predictable.
“But I still don’t get what hierophantics is,” I complained.
Weary of centrifugal bumble-puppy, the children had gathered around the fire; they were roasting snack foods on sticks.
Osckar threw a few more branches into the flames. “You don’t feel smarter yet?” he asked me.
“Talking to a filthy cockroach should make anyone smart?” said Alma, heavily lurching past us from where she’d been camped out with Unger. She looked zonked and irritable.
“You learn hierophantics from eating Nataraja sea cucumbers,” said Tanya. “I’m tellin’ ya, it’s the food of the gods!” Alma didn’t do well with drugs or alcohol. I was glad she only rarely overindulged.
“Sick cucumber eggs,” she muttered as she disappeared into the shadows. One of the little lizards staggered around the fire, imitating Alma’s gait. The little cone shells piped appreciatively, their little black eyes dancing in the firelight.
I took another sip of my red wine, pondering the flavors. Was I thinking better than before? I glanced at my watch. It said nine o’clock.
“You feel anything?” I asked Paul.
“I’m grouping my ideas better, yeah,” he said. “I’ve got this fresh concept about how to solve the paracomputational codec problem.”
“Tell us about the codec problem again,” said Mulvane, picking his teeth with the tip of his tail. “I like that one.”
So we talked about codec for a little while, but then Alma came back and started heckling us. Unger had fallen asleep, flattened out on the patio with his babies bouncing on his back as if he were a trampoline. Hop on Pop!
“Rowena said you had a bet with her about predicting the things Cammy did?” Alma said to Osckar.
“Yeah,” said the cockroach. “And I won. I’m the brains around here, can’t you tell? I knew the score just by lookin’ at the Earth you came from. The shapes of your clouds give it away. Docile. You’re from a low-complexity zone of the computational multiverse. A place where it just so happens that all the big searches collapse. And that means you rubes are a snap to predict. Of course now you’re in La Hampa, and eating Nataraja, and you’re wising up.”
Alma wasn’t really listening. She had prepared a special punch line she was waiting to deliver. “Cammy wasn't a good choice for your test,” she said heavily. “She was easy to predict. She was always a slut.” The firelight glittered off her gold necklace.
I drew in a deep breath and exhaled. It occurred to me that there was no reason I absolutely had to stay with Alma once we got back home. Life with Cammy might actually be better. But for now I needed to stay calm and patient. I owed Alma that much. I was the one who’d talked her into this trip.
“It’s about time for us to get some sleep,” I remarked to Tanya. “Is there a place for us?”
“Make hut,” said Rowena to the Nataraja at large.
A square of the patio rose up, rapidly forming a pleasant wood cabin with a thatched roof, big screened windows and a little porch. The room held a single giant bed lit by a small glowing orb on a table at the bedside.
“I want my own bed,” said Alma, peering into the room. “A single. I don’t want Paul horn-dogging me and Bela protecting me. I want space.” Obligingly the super-king bed divided into three singles with night tables between them. The baby cockroaches ran up onto our house walls and began racing each other around it, their bodies never touching the ground. The baby cone shells paced them, flying in an endless circular caucus race.
This world was starting to give me the creeps. The trees writhed slowly against the dimly glowing sky. Luminous shapes moved about in the warm sea waters. The nine other water planets coasted their zodiacal routes. The gentlest of breezes toyed with my hair, as if taking my measure. Everything here besides us and the aliens was the living body of the Nataraja. I felt a little rush of claustrophobia. And my stomach didn’t feel so good either. I’d ended up eating yet another Nataraja sea cuke for dessert—I’d had it turn into fresh pineapple chunks on coconut ice cream. I could feel the weight of the three alien sea cucumbers within me.
Alma delivered a parting shot from the hut’s threshold. “Math sucks. You’re all losers.” She shuffled into the room and collapsed on the leftmost bed. One of the young lizards punctuated the moment with a belch.
“Why did you contact us in the first place?” Paul asked the aliens, studiously ignoring Alma’s remarks.
“To schmooze with you,” said Osckar. “To have some fun with math. And mainly to get ourselves a new sun. They burn out, you know, they turn into water vapor and dust. Ours is almost dead. Like an old lightbulb.”
“The jellyfish for your world is big and ripe,” said Tanya. “She’s just about ready to turn into a sun. That’s what they do.
But she can’t make the transition until the people of your world begin finding their way over to La Hampa. The hypertunneling brings a special energy. A feedback loop. It probably would have happened on its own, but we’re pushy. We figured we’d try and help things along by talking to you. That’s why Rowena got in touch with that crazy professor of yours; that’s why Rowena nudged that bum into setting the fire; and that’s why Osckar and me reached out to Bela.”
“I was so scared when I saw you two in the mirror in my room,” I said.
“Whaddaya, whaddaya. You and Rola
nd Haut looked like the hot prospects for getting the hypertunnel in gear,” said Osckar. "Of course Roland was a bust.“
“What about Roland Haut?” asked Paul. "You mentioned him right when we got here. He fell through the first hypertunnel we made, right? Bela said he saw him on the level below here and he shot at Rowena?”
“He scared,” said Rowena. “He living alone on island in Subgum level.” It occurred to me that the house I’d seen on the island on the inner sea was just like the house Nataraja had grown for us here.
“Haut completely freaked out when we tried to talk to him,” said Osckar. “Fuhgeddaboutit. He popped out of the natural bridge half a day before you guys, and Jewelle nabbed him and brought him up here and we tried to give him a luau, but the guy is, whaddaya, xenophobic. Especially when it comes to giant cone shells. We couldn’t talk to him at all. He darted into Vulma and Mulvane’s tunnel and dropped through the bottom of the island to the level under ours. Subgum. Pretty dark down there. It’s up to you to calm him down or, like Tanya told you first thing, humans are banned.”
“Rowena says Haut got the Nataraja to make him a ray gun,” said Tanya. “Makes it hard to pay a social call. If he’s gonna act like a cornered rat, maybe just leave him to squeak alone in the dark. The Subgum level’s sun is almost burned out, you know, and there’s no jellyfish down there that’s even close to turning ripe.”
I felt a twinge of pity for Roland, frightened in the gathering gloom.
“I just hope he doesn’t think of asking the Nataraja to rig him so he can fly up here,” Osckar was saying. “If he shows, you boys talk sense to him. He’s supposed to be this hot mathematician; so of course we’d be glad to chat with him. But if the guy can’t deal, you wanna send him the hell home. I don’t want him squatting here soaking up hierophantics and plotting against us. If Haut hurts one of us, it’s the bum’s rush for all of you.”
“Drone, drone, drone,” said Mulvane, yawning hugely, toothily. “Bed time.” He and Vulma made their way up towards the tunnel in the hillside, herding two of the young lizards and carrying the littlest, who’d already fallen asleep. And the cone shells slid down into the water, dragging the comatose Unger with them.
“Tomorrow you can meet your special Nataraja jellyfish,” said Tanya the cockroach. She and Osckar were crouched down, letting the baby roaches fasten themselves to their backs. “Jellyfish Lake is right past where our house is. You go up the hill and then down into a crater.”
“Show it to them now, Tanya,” suggested Osckar. “I’m sorry I was sounding so bossy, boys. You can walk up with us and take a look before bed. It’s quite a sight.”
I glanced into our cabin; Alma was fast asleep. “I’ll come if Paul will,” I said, not wanting to leave him alone with my girl.
“I feel pukeful,” said Paul.
I, too, felt very conscious of the mass and volume of the alien sea cucumbers in my stomach. But I was intrigued by Tanya’s earlier remark that I’d learn hierophantics by eating the sea cucumbers. I was determined to digest them if I could.
“Come on, the walk will do us good,” I told Paul. “It’s not far.”
It was a lovely tropical night. The sun was like a pale moon, casting gentle, dancing highlights upon the floating water planets of our small, domed sky. For the first time I could really sense the fact that this sky curved all the way around under us. We were inside an enormous bubble inside a water-planet inside a higher sky—the Paradisio sky.
Although the rocks underfoot were a bit rough and jagged, there was a clean path to the ridge. The baby roaches chirped to each other from their parents’ backs. We followed Osckar and Tanya up to their low red-glowing house with the slit windows. Osckar and the little ones went inside, and Tanya walked us to the top.
Standing at the summit with six-limbed Tanya at our side, Paul and I gazed down into our island’s center. The jungle plants were rustling, as if feeling the air. A few bats could be seen flapping raggedly above the tree line. And in the valley glowed a pale green lake, really just a pond. The glow was from thousands, no millions, of small moving forms within the water.
“Jellyfish Lake,” said Tanya. “I’ll tell them you’re here.”
“I’m not sure that—” I began, but before I could finish my sentence, the big roach alien had puffed up her body and sent out a chirp so shrill that Paul and I had to clap our hands over our ears.
A glowing circle of activity traveled through Jellyfish Lake; a brighter light flared in its depths. Slowly a great bell-shaped organism wallowed up from the water to hover a few feet above the lake’s surface. Its luminous tendrils were as a waterfall of light. It pointed a tendril towards us. It knew we were here.
"Come to me, Bela." I heard the words in my mind, not my ears. A quick glance at Paul showed that he heard nothing. The big jellyfish was talking to me, only to me. “I am a gate for but one pilgrim," said the sweet, liquid voice in my head. A woman’s voice. “Thou art my seeker,” she said.
I felt an immediate and very deep conviction that the jellyfish was indeed God. I had to fight an urge to gallop down the hill and leap into the luminous, teeming water. Whoah there, Bela, she’s getting to you. A part of me was very afraid.
“Let’s go to bed,” I said, stiffly turning myself around.
“That’s one big-mama jellyfish,” said Paul, still staring at the lake.
“She wants Bela,” said Tanya, acutely studying us with her dark-adapted compound eyes.
“She’ll have to wait till morning,” I said, fending off the touch of the jellyfish’s powerful mind. “When Alma’s awake.”
“Never mind about Alma,” put in Paul. “Talk to the jellyfish now. You don’t have to worry about Alma’s wishes. Not after she calls us losers.”
“Show us the way back down,” I told Tanya.
We followed the big cockroach, her domed back silvered by the moony, mottled sun. Out towards the mouth of the lagoon, the sea’s gentle waves were breaking in phosphorescent ripples. But all this beauty was as nothing beside my mind’s images of the shining jellyfish, the Lady in the Lake, the one true Gate.
Tanya chirped farewell, waved her antennae, and crawled into her home. As Paul and I neared our cabin, we heard a heavy noise in the jungle; something or someone was blundering around. “I hope just that’s one of the lizard people,” said Paul. He raised his voice to call out a hello. But he got no answer.
“Could be a wild pig,” I suggested. "A Nataraja pig.”
We walked faster, stumbling over roots and skidding on the leaves and rocks. In between thoughts of the jellyfish, I wondered if Ma back home had noticed yet that I was gone for good. Poor old Ma. I was glad when we reached our hut, flimsy though it was. Alma was still asleep. I took the bed between her and Paul.
“The way I feel, I’m wondering if I should stick my fingers down my throat and throw up,” said Paul. “Get it over with. Do you feel gnarly?”
“A little,” I said distractedly. Every time I blinked I saw the luminous, pulsing shape above the lake. “Wasn’t that jellyfish awesome? She was talking to me in my head, did I tell you? Her voice was so beautiful.”
“She didn’t talk to me,” said Paul. "You must be the one who gets to make the wishes about our new world. That Ritalin I took in Palo Alto is where I went wrong. Tell the jellyfish no stimulants for Paul. Do you think she can change that?”
“She can do anything,” I said. “She’s God.”
Paul grimaced. “Just because she controls the seed for our universe? A programmer is God for the creatures in a video game, Bela, but in real life, a programmer’s a geek. If you want to talk about God, maybe you should be talking about the Nataraja.”
“I don’t want to talk at all,” I said, the jellyfish light pulsing behind my eyes, and the sea cucumbers heavy in my gut. “I want to sleep. Give me a glass of water, Nataraja.” A glass of water appeared on the table by my bed and I drank it down.
My head clear
ed a bit. I gazed at Alma in the next bed over. She was vehemently slumbering. Alma never did anything by halves. The unpleasant things she’d said tonight didn’t matter. I reached out and touched her smooth cheek with one finger. Paul drank some water too, then shook his head.
“I’m too wired to sleep,” he announced. “I want to figure out how our time relates to hampatime and to the many universes. I think it’s significant that yesterday’s hypertunnel from the Tang Fat Hotel came out here at the Nanonesia level too. And that my watch lost two minutes. Also I noticed something about the angle of the jellyfish’s cable that—” He groped around in the air. “Can I have paper and something to write with, Nataraja?”
A lined pad and a number two pencil appeared on our table. Paul propped himself up with his pillows and began inscribing precise lines of symbols—for all the world as if we were back in our apartment in Humelocke. It was a comforting sight.
“Just don’t bother Alma;” I said, and pulled a pillow over my head.
6
The Gobubbles
I had terrible, mathematically warped dreams, filled with loops, regresses, and higher-dimensional flips. Near dawn I dreamed I was awake and sitting up, and that our hut turned into its own mirror image, with Paul’s and Alma’s beds changing place. In my dream the room flipped again and again, spinning as if upon a hyperdimensional lathe. My rectangular bed was at the still core, and the Nataraja jellyfish hovered at the foot of the bed, gazing at me through limp eye slits, her mouth a ragged rent. I paddled at the air to escape her; my bed was a surfboard tracing a downward gyre upon the funneled wall of a giant maelstrom. The jellyfish bobbed at the base like a bright bubble of foam. I descended ever faster. When I hit the jellyfish, she’d turned to glass; I crashed through the skylight of a 1940s factory. Urgent, oily machines picked me off the floor and transformed me into a thousand pasteboard Tarot cards. I was the Hierophant in every deck; the decks were in the rear jeans pockets of school-girls and Ferris wheel attendants across all the hill towns of Ohio and Kentucky, the Wheels skeletal against orange sunset skies, their hubs lit with pulsing glows. My stomach cramped and an alien worm shot through the thin paper wall of my body. My blood covered the Tarot cards, the wheels, the jellyfish. And when I reached for Alma, I found Paul’s stiff tool rising from her dark furrow—