The Secret of Life

by Rudy Rucker

  “I just hope they don’t terminate my mission, is all. I like being on Earth.”

  They paused to catch their breath.

  “Let me see that crystal, Paunch.”

  Conrad handed it over. “I’d remembered it as being bigger than this. I saw it plenty of times when I was little. Pop was friends with Mr. Skelton, you know. He’s a pretty nice guy.”

  Hank held the crystal up to the light, slowly turning it back and forth. It was clear, with slanting faces, each a parallelogram. It was the size and shape of a big ice cube. At certain angles, it split the incident images in two. Looking through it made you feel like you were seeing double.

  “This iscool ,” said Hank after a while. “You know that crystal-set receiver I built back in fifty-eight? That could only pick up NBC?”

  “Yeah. It had that part called acat whisker .” Suddenly Conrad realized what Hank was getting at. “You mean?” “A receiving set.Based on this specially tuned crystal.”

  “Oh, my God. Can you rig it now?”

  “I’m too fucking wrecked. Let’s call it a night. I’ll get you the spare mattress from the basement.”

  While Hank got the mattress, Conrad fondled the crystal, wondering what kinds of signals they might pick up. Saucer transmissions? Messages from the future? A how-to course on antigravity?

  Mrs. Larsen woke them up around noon.

  “Conrad! Your brother’s been phoning for you. I thought he was joking, but then I peeked in. It’s so nice to have you here. We had no idea you were planning a trip!”

  “Uh ... hi, Mrs. Larsen. It’s good to see you. Is Caldwell on the phone right now?”

  “I told him I’d wake you and have you call back. Here’s a towel and a washrag. Did Hank make you sleep without sheets?” “Doesn’t matter.” Conrad was in his clothes, under a light blanket. His head hurt and he felt greasy all over. “OK if I take a shower?”

  “Of course! Do you still like scrambled eggs?”

  “Sounds wonderful.”

  When Conrad came back from the shower, Hank was already up and dressed, laying out equipment on his desk. “Should havesome kind of Rube Goldberg assemblage runnin’ here before too long.” The phone out in the hall was ringing.

  “Conrad! It’s for you.” Conrad went out and took the phone from Mrs. Larsen. “Hello, Caldwell.”

  “Conrad Bunger!” The voice was high and husky. For a horrible instant, Conrad thought it was Skelton ... or one of the flame-people. “This is Dee! Dee Decca. Sue’s big sister saw you at Tacy Leggett’s last night, so I thought I’d try—” “Dee!” Conrad was hysterical with relief. “Dee baby! Three years! I loved all your letters ... don’t know why we let it slide like that ... you’re in Louisville, too? Hank already told me, come to think of it, and I was gonna call you today. You as smart as ever? Have you seen God?” “All the time. I’m a California girl now, Conrad, modern-style. I’ve got somestuff to share with you, and so much to tell. Remember the Bo Diddley concert? And existentialism?”

  “Oh, Dee. Do I remember. Look, you’re at Sue Pohlboggen’s? Can I come over? Is Sue willing to speak to me?” Muffled voices and giggling. “She says, ‘At a distance.’ Do you have a car?”

  “Uh ... yeah. Got an MG convertible, Dee.”

  “Cosmic! Why don’t you come get me, and we can take a little drive in the country.”

  “Sure,” said Conrad, not missing a beat. Caldwell could take care of himself, and Hank’d be busy putting the receiver together.Meanwhile I’ll be out getting stoned with my high-school girlfriend! “I can hardly wait.”

  “See you in half an hour.”

  “Beautiful.” Over breakfast, Conrad filled Hank in. Hank took it in stride.

  “This space-radio I’m building’ll take all day anyway. Get a piece off Dee for me, Conrad. We’ll look for you around suppertime.” Caldwell was less gracious when he finally got Conrad on the phone.

  “What do you mean,you need my car today ?”

  “I’ve got a date with Dee Decca. Why can’t you use Tacy Leggett’s car? Lether drive you around.”

  “That’s just it, Conrad. Things didn’t work out so well last night. I need to clear out of here. As a matter of fact, since goddamn Mrs. Larsen wouldn’t wake you up, I already called Tuck Playfair to come get me.”

  “Old Tuck’s still in Louisville?”

  “Yeah, he’s coming to get me any minute. But look, I need that car.” “You can do without it till tonight, can’t you, Caldwell?”

  “Oh, Christ, all right. I think I hear Tuck outside right now. Look, let’s meet at the Larsens’ for supper.

  Say six o’clock?” “Yeah, I’ll tell Mrs. Larsen. And we gotta be sure to watch the local news at seven.”

  Caldwell groaned. “What did you and Hank do, Conrad?”

  “What didyou do to poor Tacy Leggett?”

  “You screw up my new car and you’re dead.”

  “Six o’clock.”

  Dee looked pretty much the same. White skin, two dark moles, a cute face with double-curved lips. She wore jeans and a purple T-shirt.

  “Your hair’s longer, Dee.”

  “So’s yours. Isn’t it great? The fifties are dead forever.” She hugged him, and they patted each other’s backs.

  “Hello,Conrad .” It was Sue Pohlboggen, curly, blonde, and sassy as ever.

  “Sue. How is your ass?”

  “I’llnever tell.” She let out one of her suggestive giggles. “Dee’s been dying to see you.”

  “Well, here I am. You ready for our drive, Dee?”

  “Let me get my stuff.” She darted into the house and was back in a second. She held a lit cigarette and a small, paperback book. “You have to read this, Conrad, it’s wonderful.”

  “The Doors of Perception,”read Conrad. “By Aldous Huxley. Isn’t he the guy who wrote 1984?”

  “Brave New World,”corrected Dee. “He died the day JFK got shot. He was tripping on LSD.”

  “That killed him?”

  “No, no. He was dying anyway. His wife gave him an injection, to help him die. I love your car!”

  “So do I,” chimed in Sue. “Is it really yours?”

  “I’llnever tell,” said Conrad, raising his voice an octave. This was neat, to be here flirting with his old girlfriends. “Uh, I don’t guess you want to come along, do you, Sue?”

  Sue giggled again. “Oh, it’s just a two-seater. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”

  Chapter 20:

  Saturday, August 6, 1966 “Shall I roll another joint, Conrad?” They were idling down a two-lane country road. It was a hot, sunny Saturday afternoon.

  “Uh ...yeah. I’m just starting to feel it. Time slowing down, you know? The song on the radio, I can’t even tell what it is anymore, it’s been on so long. I don’tbelieve those guitars!”

  “Eight Miles High. It’s great to be with you, Conrad. Do you remember how we used to talk about death and God together? We thought we were misfits, but we were just ahead of our time. Things are really far-out in California. Whole crowds of people getting stoned and communicating ... we’re not alone anymore.”

  Dee bent down out of the wind to roll the joint. She kept her marijuana in a little plastic pill bottle. Not that little a bottle, really—they’d already smoked two of the thin, yellow cigarettes, and it looked like there was still plenty ofstuff left.

  There were fenced-in pastures on either side of the high-crowned asphalt road. Trees grew by the fences. Watching the trees go past was ... too much. Like green spaceships. Flying saucers.What if there’s a saucer hovering right behind the car , thought Conrad, his stomach tightening.Full of cops and aliens.

  “How do you feel, Conrad?”

  “Uh ... I ... I ... it’s hard to decide if this is pleasant or not.”

  “Yeah. I like that about being high. Not having things be pleasant or not. Just, you know,there . Bein it.

  Like a movie. Don’t you feel like we’re in a movie, Conrad?”

  �
��I feel good, Dee. Thanks for doing this. I’ve never had enough grass to get stoned before. Just ... you know, six guys sharing one joint. Locking the door, and everybody saying, ‘How am I supposed to feel?’ ” Conrad burst into shrill laughter. “I alreadyknew from taking peyote last winter, and I didn’t even want to feel like that again. But this is different. This is fun. This is a really good high.”

  “The Doors of Perceptionis about peyote. Mescaline, actually. I’ve never had a major psychedelic.

  What’s it like? Did you see God?”

  The MG hummed down a hill toward a shady stream. Cool ... dark ... safe. “You want to stop here and go wading, Dee? I’ll tell you about peyote in a second, but right now this requires ...” Conrad braked and pulled onto the road’s soft shoulder. Turned off the engine.

  The angry whine of insects. Cow shit all over. Cops coming soon, no doubt, state troopers who would search their car and find Dee’s pill bottle and recognize Conrad from Skelton’s picture ...

  Conrad restarted the car and pulled back onto the road. “I don’t think I want to stop, after all. I’m feeling a little paranoid. What are you majoring in, Dee?”

  “Philosophy and religion. It’s all one department at San Jose. We’ve been studying a lot of the Eastern stuff. Lao-tzu, D. T. Suzuki. There’s so many wonderful things to read.”

  “The secret of life,” said Conrad. “Have you found out what it is?”

  “I feel like I know it when I’m high. It’s what we always said.All is One. ” She reached out and laid her hand on Conrad’s neck. “All part of the same thing. That’s Taoism, really, and mysticism, too. You know?”

  Her little white hand was part of Conrad’s neck now, and the hot summer air was blowing right through them as they drove along. The car, alive in its own way, bore them past the plants and animals, beneath the big bright sky, with the flame-people somewhere high overhead. All is One, all the universe is together, no matter what. Conrad decided to stop worrying. Ifhe was a flame-person, how bad could the other ones be?

  Dee withdrew her hand and lit the new joint. Passed it to Conrad. He sucked at it. The harsh, hot, grassy smoke, and the yellow paper tasting like banana.

  “The secret of life,” said Conrad again. “It is, really, such a simple thing.All is One. I dig you absolutely, Dee. But ... still. There’s so many big fat books about it—don’t those books say something? And there’s still all the hard questions: Why does anything exist? What is time? What is matter made of?”

  Stoned and merged as he was, these questions sounded a little ridiculous to Conrad, but he pressed on nonetheless. After all, if his only mission on Earth was to find out the secret of life, then there was no point in finishing the job too quickly. “All is One ...it’s great, but there’s more, isn’t there?”

  “There’s different levels of knowing it. Two people mightsay the same thing, but mean something different. You end up back where you started, and it looks like a circle, but really it’s a helix. I mean, if ...”

  The new joint was hitting Conrad hard. Dee’s well-chosen words scattered past him like a school of fish.

  The road ahead looked utterly unfamiliar, and the car’s controls felt strange. Here came another stream, wider and deeper than the last one.

  “Let’s go wading,” said Conrad, pulling off the road again.

  “I thought you were too paranoid to stop.”

  “Not anymore. Now I’m too stoned to drive.”

  “Times like this I remember my favorite Zen saying,” said Dee.“Once you’re born, the worst has already happened.” She slipped off her shoes and hopped out of the car. “Let’s hit the curl, ho-dad!”

  “Cowabunga!”

  The afternoon passed in a happy blur of sound and color. Dee and Conrad waded, mostly, splashing around and watching the patterns of drops and ripples. There were water striders to chase, and some crawdad-holes to poke in. They made out a little, too. It was just the kind of unproductive, noncommercial afternoon that was beginning to make dope-smokers so unpopular with corporate America. And the cops never even showed up. “Do you do this a lot?” asked Conrad, as they motored back toward town. “Out in California?” The dope had pretty well worn off.

  “The countryside’s nicer here. The grass there issharp . You can’t sit in it. But there’s the ocean, of course, and mountains in the east. There’s one boy I go hiking with a lot.” “Your boyfriend? Is he nice?” “Yes, he’s very nice. I’m glad to be settled on one guy. Sophomore year, I really went wild. I was fucking all kinds of guys.”

  “I wish I’d been there.”

  “We could have been fucking in high school, Conrad, if we’d just known how. When you get down to it, sex isn’t really that big a deal.”

  “Oh, God, Dee, don’t torture me.” He leaned over and kissed her. “I know how to fuck now.”

  “Yeah, only not by the side of the road. But who knows about tomorrow. Do you have a regular girlfriend?”

  “She’s called Audrey Hayes. I think I’ll marry her after graduation. She’s in Switzerland now, her parents live there. I miss her, but I’m glad she’s not here today.” Conrad took Dee’s hand and gave it a squeeze.

  He felt drained and happy. “This has really been a wonderful day.”

  “You’re all set to get married?”

  “Yeah, basically. I mean, that’s the next thing after college, isn’t it?”

  “Aren’t you worried you’ll end up like all our parents? Married, and with a job and children—just slogging along?” “Yeah, I worry about getting old. But not all old people are robots. Look at artists and writers. Look at scientists. I don’t see why I have to end up like our parents.”

  “I guess. And, when you think about it, who really knows what our parents are like.”

  “Who knows what anyone’s like,” Conrad sighed. “Being human is so weird.”

  “What are you doing tonight?”

  “I’m having dinner at the Larsens’. And then ... I don’t know.” Conrad remembered the seven o’clock news. He’d be on it for sure, the size of a thumb. And the radio Hank had been working on all day. What if they started picking up saucer transmissions? “I’ve got to do something with Hank tonight.”

  “Well, stop by if you go cruising. Bring us some beer. Sue’s always been hot for Hank, you know. She says that’s the main reason she went out with you.” They kissed some more in front of Sue’s house, and then Conrad headed over to the Larsens’. With the Bunger boys as well as her own four children to feed, Mrs. Larsen had opted for a buffet-style presentation. A meat loaf and a great bowl of potato salad sat on her kitchen table with the plates and flatware. Caldwell was on the back porch, already eating.

  “Say, bro.” Caldwell looked as tired and happy as Conrad felt. “Food’s in there.”

  “I see it. Where’s everybody else?”

  “They’ll trickle in. The parents already got their food. They’re downstairs watching TV. Give me the keys before I forget.” “OK.” As he filled his plate, Conrad realized how hungry he was. He took double portions and sat down next to his brother.

  “How was your day with Dee?” asked Caldwell.

  “It was good. We smoked some grass and went wading. How about you? What was the problem with Tacy Leggett?” “Oh, there was no problem withher . We got in her bed and pumped away for a while ... but then we fell asleep.”

  “And her mother found you?”

  “Her father. He didn’t say anything, but when I came out of her room, he was sitting in the living room drinking a Bloody Mary and cleaning his shotgun.”

  “Jesus.”

  “He made me sit down with him and talk about duck hunting. It got old real fast.”

  “So Tuck picked you up.”

  “Yeah. We went out to Harmony Landing and played golf. Saw some old friends. I’ve got a date with Sherry Kessler for tonight.” “A girl a day,” marveled Conrad. He ate in silence for a minute, then remembered about Skelton again.

  “
What time is it? I gotta watch the local news.”

  “Ten to seven. Hank wants to see the news, too. He’s in his room building a radio. What are you two guys up to, anyway?”

  “I’ll tell you later. It’s kind of complex.” Conrad was still a little apprehensive about telling Caldwell that he wasn’t—strictly speaking—his real brother.

  “They got stoned and wentwading ,” clucked Caldwell. “These hippies don’t have enough sense to get laid.”

  “How about the radio?” Conrad demanded. “Does it work?”

  Hank’s face took on a strange expression. “Why don’t we go back to my room, and I’ll show you what’s happened. Just let me fill up my plate here ...”

  The crystal sat on a square of pegboard, surrounded by bright little doodads: striped-sausage resistors, plastic-disc capacitors, buglike transistors, and wires of every color. The largest component was a many-finned variable capacitor from an old truck radio. Conrad remembered the day Hank had gotten that capacitor. The truck had been an abandoned hulk in a nearby quarry—Hank and Conrad often went there on weekends to look for the girlie magazines that the quarrymen sometimes left.

  “Why aren’t any wires connected to the crystal?” asked Conrad. “Why don’t you even have it fastened down?”

  “That’s just it,” said Hank, his voice a tense, exasperated whisper. “Look at my thumb, fucker.” He held out his thumb for inspection. There was a charred blister on it. “And the other hand, too.” Hank’s left palm was crossed by a deep, scabbed scratch. “Every time I try to do anything with that bastard-ass crystal, I get hurt.”

  “The crystal attacks you?”

  “No!”Hank caught himself and forced his voice back to a whisper. “I burned my thumb with the soldering gun; and I scratched my palm with the screwdriver. But it’s the crystal’s fault. You don’t believe me? Go ahead and try for yourself. It’sweird . See that masking tape? Try and tape the crystal down onto the pegboard. I dare you.”

  Conrad picked up the roll of tape and stared uncertainly at the crystal. “If I try, I’ll get spastic and hurt myself.”