Million Mile Road Trip

by Rudy Rucker

  “Don’t you dare,” says Irav. “Give me back my snail right now.”

  Villy presses the bump and—yes—the whaler snail fires a dart into Irav’s body, catching him in his slender belly. For a moment Irav seems wounded—he totters to one side. He rips his shirt open. The flesh of his belly is green. But then, dammit, Irav does what Meatball did. With a certain peculiar motion of his body, the alien manages to shed a pound or two of his body mass—and thereby heals himself.

  Not wanting to have the poisonous whaler snail in his pocket, Villy lets Scud take it and study it.

  “Fight, huh?” says Scud, looking up from the shell. “I bet Nunu can help! She’s not a vampire saucer, so don’t worry. She’s my new friend.”

  The saucer is hovering above them. Villy takes her measure. She’s a cute little number, with red lips in her rim, like a movie-star mouth. Clearly, she wants to aid Scud and his friends. A downside is Villy’s sense that Nunu can see into his mind.

  The saucer tilts back and beams a wiggly green ray from her underside. It’s another style of zapper ray, less intense than Meatball’s, but with a broader swath. Nunu plays the ray across Irav’s body. He flinches and edges away, not liking the sensation. Using her ray, Nunu tries to herd the alien away from Villy’s car. In reaction, Irav runs forward and leaps up at Nunu. The saucer easily eludes his grasp, but it seems her ray isn’t strong enough to knock Irav out.

  “He’s strong,” murmurs Scud.

  “I’m afraid he’ll kidnap one of us,” says Villy.

  “Imagine Meatball and I make combo ray,” suggests Nunu.

  Villy doesn’t know what Nunu means, but Nunu teeps an image. In his mind’s eye, Villy sees Meatball and Nunu beaming rays at each other—with Meatball’s thick yellow spark running down the center of Nunu’s diffuse green beam.

  “I’m game,” says Meatball, who’s picked up the image as well. She looks very wrinkly. Like she’s slightly deflated by her intense but fruitless zap against Irav. “I can work with a saucer if I must. Draw closer, Nunu.”

  Irav is uneasy over the new development. “You come with me,” he yells to Zoe. “Pronto.” A last-ditch effort at bullying. “If Zoe comes, I’ll let the rest of you go free.”

  By way of answer, Zoe lifts her horn and plays a peppy little tune, a repeating staircase of notes—like a nursery rhyme or a rope-jumping ditty. Meatball and Nunu face off in midair, six feet apart. Blobby Meatball is patronizing, Nunu eager. Each of them sends a ray towards the other, with neither of them putting too much force into it. The yellow spark and the wiggly green ray merge.

  Just as Nunu predicted, there’s a synergy to the combined beams. The combo ray makes a high, singing sound, like a buzz saw, like a vibrating wire, like a dark-energy garrote.

  “To hell with you freaks,” says Irav, making as if to walk away. “I don’t need this jive.”

  At this moment Nunu and Meatball drop to waist level and dart forward, Meatball to the left of Irav, Nunu to the right. It almost seems like Irav could have ducked under the beam—but he doesn’t.

  Dzeent!

  The upper half of the Szep comes loose and thuds to the ground. They’ve literally cut him in two. Or, no, into three parts—for at the last minute Irav moved his right arm towards the beam, and his right hand was cut off at the wrist. Is he dead? No such luck. Irav’s legs are still balanced, still upright. His upper half is rolling around, righting itself. And his hand is walking on its fingers like a nimble spider. Irav isn’t bleeding. Perhaps he’s somehow sealed off the cut surfaces of his body? Or maybe he has no blood at all.

  “Quite unexpected,” says Meatball. “By no means a usual thing for a Szep. One wonders if Irav is an imposter. Some other kind of being—who happens to have disguised himself as a Szep.”

  Theatrically yelling, Irav worms his upper half over to his legs. He wraps his arms around the legs and clambers up, balancing his torso sideways on top of the legs. The hand is scuttling around on its own—but it’s hard to keep track of it, what with Irav hollering so loud. The alien’s intensity is scary.

  Staggering a little, weaving to balance the load, the legs make their way to Pinchley and Yampa’s car, which is parked only a few yards away. It’s a dirty, beat-up jalopy, mostly yellow, and with those red initials on it: P&Y for Pinchley and Yampa. The beater stands high, with spoked wheels even bigger than the ones on the purple whale. It’s open on the top, although it bears a solid-looking roll-bar. Luxurious ant leather on the seats. Several racks of water bottles and some quilts in a wad. Still balancing the torso, Irav’s legs stand beside the Szep’s car, as if wondering how to open the door and get into the seats.

  Zoe doubles the speed of her tune and raises its pitch, goading Meatball and Nunu towards another attack. The saucer nods. The mouth on her rim smiles, as if she’s enjoying the deadly game. She and Meatball rise above the stalled Irav—and angle through his torso like the blade of a guillotine.

  Dzeent!

  Irav’s legs manage to sidestep the guillotine, but his upper half is cut in two. One chunk has his head, a shoulder, and his right arm—which lacks its hand. Another piece has his chest, belly, and left arm. The legs are running around in circles. And that stray right hand is running all over the place on its twinkling fingers. No way Irav is dead.

  “I sorry!” cries Nunu. “We goof.”

  Working together, the pair of legs and the pieces of torso somehow wallow into the front seat of Pinchley and Yampa’s car. They get the beater started and—

  “Catch that hand!” screams Scud. “It stole my caraways!”

  Yes, the creepy hand crawled up Scud’s leg and picked his pocket, and now it’s up high on a thumb and two fingers, holding the jar of caraway seeds against its palm with two of the other fingers. To make things worse, Irav’s little whaler snail is riding on the back of the rogue hand. Like Captain Ahab on his ship. The frikkin hand bagged the snail too.

  Villy charges after it—but there’s no catching the hand. It skitters to Pinchley and Yampa’s top-down convertible and—with a single, startling leap—it springs to safety inside.

  The stolen space-jalopy peels out, slewing wildly across the sandy lot. Propped behind the steering wheel, Irav’s head and half torso cackles, exults, and shrieks insults in what Meatball says is the Szep tongue.

  Meatball and Nunu fly after the car, but yet again, the four-part Irav proves cannier than expected. Irav’s free-agent hand undoes his tool belt. Creatures like gauzy butterfly nets flit out of the fleeing car—and wrap themselves around the Freeth and the saucer.

  Arcane energies sizzle along the enveloping meshes. It’s all that Meatball and Nunu can do to fight their way free. Loath to pursue the wily pieces of Irav any further, they settle to the dust of the parking lot, as if licking their wounds.

  “Unheard of,” says Meatball. “A very curious affair.”

  This is when Pinchley and Yampa show up. Yampa has lost her borrowed clothes in the course of the evening, but Pinchley’s still wearing his tool belt. He’s still got his cocoa tin, and at this point it’s only a about half full. Even now, the two wasted Szep are still dipping at it.

  They don’t seem very upset about their stolen car. And the kids don’t immediately tell them about the lost caraway seeds. The Szep refuse to believe the story about the separate pieces of Irav staying alive. They seem to think the kids are telling them a recondite parable or joke.

  “When Pinchley squats, he splits in two,” says Yampa, making a rude sound with her mouth. “If we conjecture kac is conscious.”

  “All hail the followers of the One True Rump,” adds Pinchley. He bows so deeply that he falls onto the ground, but somehow he manages not to spill the precious cocoa.

  “Mighty Truban titans we,” says Yampa, helping Pinchley to his feet. Obviously these two are loaded from their cocoa party. They lean together, propping each other up like a pair of seedy clowns.

  Pinchley screws his face into a parody of deep thought. “Now tel
l me this,” he says to Villy. “Does a turd have smeel?”

  “You’re not listening to us,” says Villy. “This Szep gangster called Irav—he split into four.”

  “We thought we killing Irav but not happen,” puts in Nunu, abashed.

  “I should tell you that the Iravs stole all the caraway seeds,” Villy now confesses to Pinchley and Yampa.

  “What the hell?” shouts Pinchley, his mind suddenly in focus. He’s apoplectic, turning red. “Robbed by a piece of crap?”

  “The caraways are crucial for Lady Filippa,” wails Yampa. “You were stupid to squander the seeds.”

  Pinchley points a finger at Zoe and roars, “Get more caraways! Go to Los Perros and get more!”

  “I won’t,” says Zoe. “I hopped back to Earth today, and then back here. I’m not sure I’d be able to go back and forth again. I don’t want to get stuck on Earth with no road trip.”

  This is the first Villy’s heard of Zoe’s hop, but he’s staunchly on her side. “If you want the caraway seeds, Pinchley, why don’t we just catch up with the pieces of Irav and, uh—”

  “And kill them,” says Meatball.

  Yampa squints at Meatball and Nunu as if only now noticing them. “You’re extra,” she peevishly says. “Extraneous. Why a fat Freeth? Why a silly saucer?”

  “These two floaters—they want to come with us,” Villy says. “You think that’s okay? I guess they can help with the chase.” He talks slowly and clearly, hoping the stoned aliens will understand him.

  “I expect I can stand a Freeth.” says Pinchley after a moment’s pause. “If she’s not some kind of double agent. But a saucer? Don’t you get the part about half the saucers being enemies?”

  “Nunu’s eye is black,” says Scud, as if this decides it. “Not red.”

  “You never know,” says Yampa. She grabs hold of Nunu’s rim and bends it, exaggeratedly lowering her head to peer at the saucer’s underside. “No teeth beneath,” she reports. “Not set up for siphoning smeel. She’s safe. But—” Yampa pauses, staring at Scud and at Nunu—and reaches a conclusion. “Scuddy’s sweet on her!”

  Villy starts laughing. The situation is so Scud. At age sixteen the guy finally gets a girlfriend—and she’s a flying saucer. Scud will definitely have to stop razzing Villy about Zoe now.

  “I’m worried we won’t all fit in the purple whale,” puts in Zoe, reminding Villy that they’d been hoping for a caravan of two cars—with Zoe and Villy alone together. “Is there some way to get a second car?” asks Zoe, directing the question at Pinchley.

  “Done told you,” says bleary Pinchley. “No real cars in Van Cott at all. Only thing they driving here is beetles, beetles, beetles. Can’t road-trip no million miles in no beetle. Thing’s gonna pupate, or some shit like that.”

  “It’s larvae and caterpillars that pupate,” corrects Scud. “Not full-grown beetles.”

  “Our pet professor,” Yampa says to Scud, with a little bow. “Egg, larva, pupa, adult. Lady Filippa’s folk fashion that same flow.”

  “What-frikkin-ever,” blusters Pinchley. “So maybe a car-beetle spawns a ribbon of eggs and keels over dead and the eggs hatch out larvae that eat the flesh of the passengers, which would serve you right if you’re stupid enough to road-trip in a beetle.”

  “Jabber jack,” says Yampa, hit by another wave of intoxication. She lurches over to the purple whale, bungee-bounces wildly up, collapses into the back seat, and falls asleep.

  “Just great,” says Villy, eyeing the sprawled-out Szep. “That leaves us the front seat and that little tiny space in the way-back.”

  “The pig’s nest,” says Scud. That was what he and Villy called the cargo area of Dad’s station wagon when they were kids. “Are we supposed to put four of us in the pig’s nest?”

  Villy looks at Nunu and Meatball. “Were you two actually planning to ride inside the car? Can’t you can’t just fly along above us?”

  “I can hover and bob and fly up to a thousand miles,” says Meatball. “But never so as far as Szep City. Let Nunu fly above the car. If she comes at all.”

  “My father and uncle very big,” says Nunu. “Lifted by fat saucer pearls. Small saucer like me, small pearl, not fly high. I want hitch ride with you, yes. I go in pig nest with Scud.” She bats her eye.

  Scud grins at this, then asks one of his endless questions. “If you have a pearl inside you, Nunu, does that mean you can tunnel over to ballyworld?”

  “If I tunnel through the pearl inside my body—I turn inside out.”

  “Whoa,” goes Scud, deeply intrigued. “I love hearing about topology.”

  “We discuss all cozy in pig nest.”

  “That shy and coy crap doesn’t cut it for me,” says Meatball. “I don’t trust Nunu.”

  Nunu giggles, as if embarrassed by such a rudeness.

  “You don’t know how hard I can zap,” Meatball tells Nunu. “I’ll turn you into a heap of ash if you leech on our Scud.”

  “I not bad one saucer,” pipes Nunu. “If I maybe kiss Scud, I get tiny taste of his smeel and that plenty for me. No need excite.” Earnestly she rocks her rim up and down, as if nodding her head.

  “Your call,” Villy says to Scud, who smiles and nods his head in sync with Nunu. Villy can tell that as far as Scud’s concerned, the main point is that Nunu wants to kiss him.

  Pinchley accepts the decision. “Looks like I gotta upgrade the dang whale,” he slurs. “Make her bigger inside. A land yacht. I can do it. I’m the man.” He fumbles at his ant-leather tool belt. He first manages to close his powdered chocolate tin and stash it in his belt. Then, digging deeper, he produces a dark green crustacean. Its shell is mottled, with shades of red and blue and green.

  “A lobster?” says Villy. “But—he has a handle in back instead of a tail? And his claws are—fuzzy?”

  “A stretch-crawdad,” says Pinchley. “He grabs onto raw empty space and I pull on him. Like doming up a pie crust. Lend in your weight, Villy. Like we’re a tug-o’-war team. We want a long, steady pull.”

  The two of them haul themselves up to the car. Pinchley tosses his stretch-crawdad inside. The critter clamps his furry claws onto the empty space within the purple whale and hangs there in midair, quizzically twitching his antennae. With his foot on the door sill and his hand around the bungee, Pinchley grabs the handle on the lobster’s rear. Villy puts his arms around Pinchley’s waist, and they pull. It’s hard getting started—like extracting a nail from a board. But then, all at once, the space in the car loosens—and they’re stretching it like chewing gum. They jump free of the car and pull even further.

  “We done,” says Pinchley after a few seconds of this. He feeds some dried meat to his stretch-lobster and returns the little beast to his tool belt.

  Seen from the outside, the whale looks the same as before. But when Villy goes back up and looks in through the open door, it’s like a distorted spherical fishtank in there. Like looking through a weird lens. The car is much, much bigger inside.

  Yes, relative to the car’s interior, the back seat looks tiny, and so does Yampa, asleep on it. The seats and the passenger didn’t change size. It’s like they’re fixed-size coins taped to the surface of a balloon that swells. The bloat of the car’s interior space means there’s big aisles along the sides of the seats, and there’s tons of room between the front seat and the back.

  As for the pig’s nest—it’s the size of a bedroom. And the car roof is so high they’ll be able to walk around inside without bonking their heads. Meatball and Nunu hurriedly push into the pig’s nest and bobble against the padded ceiling like party balloons.

  Villy swings into the front seat and he’s at the wheel once more.

  “Will the car handle the same?” he asks Pinchley.

  “No problem,” says the Szep, taking a blanket and making himself comfortable on the wide strip of floor behind the front seat. “Wake me if we catch those four Iravs who stole my car.”

  “Which direction should I go?”
asks Villy.

  Pinchley makes a weary gesture with his hand. “Call it north. Yampa and me didn’t come in that way, but word is, you can turn left at Alaska and drive across some water. Then you hit this basin’s ridge. There’s a pass—Borderslam Pass—and people can get through.” Pinchley yawns so wide that the top of his thin yellow head tilts backwards like it might fall off. “Details later.”

  “How much later?” persists Villy.

  “Couple of hours till you hit that Borderslam strait. Put the hammer down, soon as we out of town. Get her up to five hundred miles per—or why not a thousand. I double damn guarantee you can trust our shocks and tires. This amplified whale don’t really need a road at all. A road’s just an opinion about which way to go.”

  Villy honks the horn—that same feeble toot—and they roll out of the night market’s lot. He’s exceedingly proud of his amplified and enlarged whale. And he’s got hot Zoe Snapp in the front seat beside him.

  Zoe is bouncy and excited, Yampa’s out cold, and Pinchley’s drifting off as well. Scud is in the rear with Nunu and Meatball. The Freeth is in a talkative mood, issuing snide, funny put-downs of Nunu. For her part, Nunu’s still acting meek and demure.

  One thing Villy finds a little disturbing is that Nunu is telepathic. He can sense her thoughts brushing against his mind, continually checking that everything’s cool. Oh well.

  Scud wads up some quilts to make a comfortable lounge seat in the pig’s nest. Nunu settles onto him like a blanket, letting her rim droop across his body and smooching her red lips against his cheek. Scud’s never looked happier. He knows that big brother Villy is watching, but he doesn’t care.

  Villy begins making his way through the maze of Van Cott. Zoe offers driving suggestions. Villy knows by now that she likes telling him what to do. It’s more or less her default way of talking to people. Not that most people listen to her.