Million Mile Road Trip

by Rudy Rucker

  “Okay dokey,” flutes the saucer. “I sure last night was enough!”

  Enough for what? Scud doesn’t care to contemplate that, nor does he try teeping into Nunu’s cryptic mind for clues.

  He hurries out of the car, eager to complete his trade with Hungerford. A fitting activity for an Exalted Sourdough Tale-Trapper. Hungerford is very taken by an ossified brachiopod shell that Scud found at the base of a crumbly ocean cliff near Los Perros.

  “Done deal!” says Scud, and hands the fossil to the mountain man. He gets a pretty starstone in return. And then he hauls himself back into the car, sitting between Pinchley and Yampa on the rear seat. He’s so aware of what everyone’s thinking that he’s embarrassed to go back into the pig’s nest with Nunu.

  “Good luck with the pass,” calls Hungerford as the whale pulls off.

  “Why did he say that?” Scud asks the others as they roll on.

  “The big starstones can get a little pissy,” says Pinchley. “If they don’t like your looks, they don’t let you through. But first we gotta cross the water and climb that steep-ass hill. Meanwhile watching out for any chopped-up Iravs.”

  “Question,” says Zoe, as they approach the cold sea passage between them and the mountain. “There’s no bridge here. Won’t we sink?”

  “Don’t overthink,” says Pinchley. “All Villy’s gotta do is drive fast.”

  Villy floors the accelerator. The dark-energy smeel engine makes a rising whine as they rocket forward. The whale skips across the channel—pap pap pap—like an artfully thrown flat rock. They reach the skinny island in the center and tear-ass across that, scattering a great flock of screaming birds. Then they zoom off the other side of the island—and bog down in sandy shallows.

  Eventually the shallows end, and they’re in deep, frigid water. The whale has slowed its pace. They’re floundering along, buoyed by the car’s enormous tires, with seawater sloshing in through the windows.

  “Screw this,” says Villy and cranks the engine speed to a chattering scream. The spinning tires throw up a monster rooster tail. The whale rises up and hydroplanes the remaining half mile to the far shore. And then they start the climb.

  Right before that second hydroplane run, when it’s looking like they might drown in the icy sea, Scud slithers into the way-back to be with Nunu. She plops down onto him, pressing him flat on his back against the floor. He feels safe, and happy, and turned on. And maybe a little bit trapped. Nunu does come on strong. She twitches her disk, wrapping herself ever tighter around him. With Scud pinned in place, she bats her single eye, puckers up her red lips, and begins kissing him again.

  Scud and Nunu canoodle for over half an hour. They’ve survived the passage across the straits, and they’re steadily slewing up the twisty gravel road that runs up the flank of the mountain. In fact, they’re almost at the top. Regular life seems likely to continue as before. Nunu begins suggestively squirming against Scud’s crotch, and now he feels he should tell her to stop.

  “No,” he whispers to Nunu. “It’s wrong.”

  “You not enjoy last night?” says Nunu. “We make something good.” She rolls her big dark eye towards the car’s ceiling, then adjusts the angle of Scud’s body so that he can see what she’s looking at. He can’t quite figure out what it is, but then the car jiggles, and, oof, the back of his head bonks against the floor, and with the bonk comes an understanding of what Nunu was doing this morning on the car’s ceiling.

  She was laying eggs.

  Yes. It’s a clutch of pale white capsules up there, nestled together like the cells of a honeycomb, three or four dozen of them, shiny and smooth, moist-looking, with faint dark patterns beneath their translucent skins and—oh my god—please tell me they’re not twitching.

  “Our children,” whispers Nunu, and she plasters another warm, sticky kiss onto Scud’s mouth. By now he very badly wants to get away, but her tightly wrapped saucer disk encases him like a cloak. Or a straitjacket. And now her long kiss intoxicates him once again. Their bodies jiggle with the whale’s wild motions.

  “Don’t tell the others about the eggs,” Scud hisses to Nunu.

  “You not proud our kids?” murmurs the saucer. Flirting. Pretending to be annoyed.

  “Please don’t tell.”

  The saucer giggles.

  14: Nunu’s Father

  VILLY

  Do you see what Scud and Nunu are doing back there?” Zoe asks Villy. “They’re making out again. So skeevy.”

  “Scud’s always been different,” says Villy. “And he took Mom’s death really hard. Let him be. Help me drive. Sing out if you notice I’m heading for a boulder. There’s hardly a road at all anymore.”

  “You really should slow down,” says Zoe, even though she doesn’t like to nag. “You’re going two hundred miles an hour. We’re practically at the top.”

  Villy doesn’t slow down. He’s loving this drive. It’s like a video game, but better, because it’s real-world-and-no-kidding dangerous, which adds spice. And thanks to the quantum shocks, the fat whale handles like a sports car. Villy’s using controlled drifts to scutter around the switchbacks. He speeds like a madman on the straightaways, with the whale beating up clouds of dust that twinkle in the mappyworld light.

  The green bowl of the Van Cott basin stretches out behind them, perhaps five thousand miles across. It’s like they’re in an airplane, or a spaceship.

  “Go, man,” says Pinchley from the back seat. “Keep gunnin’ it. All the passes are like this. It’s hard to switch basins. Sometimes, at the top, the big starstones decide not to let you through.”

  “In Borderland Pass, the starstones stop dumb Thuddland dinos from hunting the humans of Van Cott,” puts in Yampa. “A good deed indeed.”

  “Don’t spook the kids, honeybun,” says Pinchley. “One crisis at a time. The rockslide is first.”

  Even though Villy knows he shouldn’t take his eyes off the sketchy road, he glances back at the two Szep. Pinchley calls Yampa honeybun? They’re leaning against each other, cozy, with their arms around each other’s shoulders and their legs propped against the front seat. They’re giving off a spicy, contented smell.

  Once again Meatball has draped a tendril into the front seat. It has a mouth and an eye. Behind them all, in the pig’s nest, the green and yellow Nunu has Scud wrapped up like a burrito, with his head sticking out. They aren’t kissing just now. The saucer happens to yawn—and Villy notices the tips of some retractable fangs set into Nunu’s upper jaw. Like on a rattlesnake. Nunu’s got her red-lipped mouth right next to Scud’s neck, and it just might be that—

  “Hey!” Villy yells. “Meatball! Stop Nunu from biting Scud!”

  Meatball fastens onto Nunu, as if meaning to peel the alien away from the youth. Villy has his full attention on them, although meanwhile the purple whale is speeding blindly forward and—

  Zoe screams. Huge thumps against the bottom of the car. The steering wheel twists like a live thing. There’s an odd subliminal pop—and the enhanced space inside the car fills with Truban inertia gel. It’s like an immersive quantum airbag, holding everyone in place. The bright landscape tilts and keeps tilting. An outcrop knocks against the windshield, which spiderwebs into crazed cracks. Rocks hammer the car’s sides and roof. The whale rolls over, once, then twice, improbably tumbling uphill. And then they’re upright, in a skid. With a terminal crunch, the purple whale slams into a hunk of solid stone.

  The space within the car relaxes. All the windows are cracked, but none has shattered. The whale’s puny horn is stuck, endlessly bleating. Villy’s okay, and Zoe too. She’s hugging her trumpet like it’s her only hope in the world.

  “What if we get stuck here?” she asks Villy. “Maybe we should go home before it’s too late.”

  Villy can’t quite come up with an answer. The others are crawling around the car like hornets in a fallen nest.

  Meatball has finished prying Nunu loose from Scud, and the saucer has glued herself back onto t
he pig’s nest ceiling. Scud is fine—maybe Nunu wasn’t really planning to bite him. The leathery, weathered Szep work to open one of the rear doors. The front doors are totally jammed shut. The whale is lodged between two fifteen-foot boulders, as if stuck in a gate—wedged, tilted, and with hood askew. Foggy fumes pour from the engine. Dark energy.

  “This’ll be an interesting repair,” says Pinchley as the left rear door partly opens. “Let’s have a look-see.”

  The two skinny Szep squeeze out. Meatball ushers Scud out of the car’s back hatch. Villy and Zoe exit via the hatch as well. As for Nunu, she stays plastered on the ceiling of the pig’s nest, which suits Villy fine. Even if she’s not a vampire, he’s seen more than enough of her. He slams the hatch, leaving the saucer on her own.

  It’s windy up here, and seriously cold. Zoe stands off to one side, still holding her trumpet. Two of the car’s tires are flat, and the body is gouged. One of the surfboards is cracked in half—the red one, Villy’s fave. He takes the pieces down, with an eye to patching them back together, and takes down his blue one as well, just to be handling it.

  The light up here is dim, like an all-day twilight. Maybe there are fewer glowons at this altitude. The car is less than twenty yards from the level crest of Borderslam Pass—the slope rises up just a little more and then you see the sky.

  Lots of big pointy boulders around here, almost like Easter Island monuments. Starstones. Stern, slanted, unspeakably ancient. And with an intriguing vibe.

  Villy goes over to Zoe and puts his arm around her. “Are you okay?”

  “What if I lose my power to turn my saucer pearl into an unny tunnel?” says Zoe. “Maybe if we drive and drive and drive, the connection will be too far. We’ll be out of range. I think I want to go home, Villy. Let me see if we can hop right now.”

  “Please, Zoe, we gotta see what’s on the other side of Borderslam Pass. And you and me—we’ve hardly started. Give us a chance.” He goes to kiss her, but she twists away. Even so, her body’s a little less tense. She stands at his side, silently watching the scene unfold.

  Grease-monkey Pinchley’s already busy with the car. To start with, he opened the hood all the way and disconnected that lamenting horn.

  “Can we drive it again?” calls Villy.

  “You screwed the pooch, son,” says Pinchley. And then he smiles—that is, he lets his lower jaw hang loose and he wobbles it back and forth. “Damn good thing I’ve got my tool belt. We’ll have this junker on the road in half an hour.”

  “I’d vote to banish that little saucer,” says Meatball. “She says she’s not a smeel leech, but she could switch allegiance anytime. That’s how saucers are. Born parasites. Let’s give this little snip her walking papers. And if she won’t clear out, I’ll use a zap to fry her proper.”

  “I’m fine with that,” says Villy. He turns to Scud. Poor kid. “What do you say?”

  Scud is downcast, almost in tears, his voice very low. “Thanks for wanting to help me, Villy and Meatball. But I—I like having Nunu kiss me. I don’t—I still don’t think she’s evil. She’s nice to me. Nobody’s ever nice to me. Especially not girls. I don’t know what I do wrong. I wish so much that you’d stop thinking I’m a loser.” Scud pauses and takes a trembling breath. “And there’s something else. About what Nunu’s doing on the ceiling. She, she—”

  Before Scud finishes, here come two more flying saucers, hefty guys, the size of a big car and a very big truck. One of them has a green dome and a yellow rim like Nunu, the other one is done up in shades of dark purple. Rich, painterly hues. The saucers make a low, intricate hum, a drone with subtle curlicues within. They hover above the wrecked car. The tendrils of their telepathy comb through the crannies of Villy’s mind.

  “Don’t make me kill you,” Meatball yells at the saucers, trying to sound tough. Her surface sizzles with dark energy. But maybe that’s not enough. Next to these guys, Meatball is like a dog barking at alligators.

  “I want my daughter,” booms the green saucer. “They call me Pa Saucer.” He has no visible mouth. His deep voice emanates from the resonant vibrations of his disk. He’s twenty feet across and he must weigh over a ton. And he’s the smaller of the two. At least his single eye is black, which is supposed to be good.

  “Your daughter?” squeaks Scud. Pa Saucer is quite intimidating.

  “Nunu,” bellows the saucer.

  Villy hears a chirping—it’s Nunu closed up inside the whale, saying something in response, but he can’t make out the words. And he doesn’t dare step over to open the hatch. This scene could turn grim if he makes the wrong move.

  The other saucer, the big purplish one—he goes and hovers right over the whale. He teeps that his name is Boldog. His single eye is red, which is bad. Villy almost expects Boldog to carry the station wagon away, like a raptor with a lamb.

  But no. The bruise-colored saucer stabilizes himself, bracing his thick, muscular rim against the steady wind. And then he sends down a beam. It’s not a cute, wiggly, green beam like little Nunu’s—no, man, this four-ton dump-truck-sized saucer has a beam that’s a brighter-than-white industrial laser that Villy can barely stand to see.

  With quick, efficient motions, the beam cuts a circle in the battered whale’s roof, about where the surfboards had been. As if on cue, Nunu rises through the hole, still upside down, bearing the freed disk of roof above her like a platter. And then she flips herself upright, using her rim like a suction cup to hold the piece of roof against her bottom.

  “Greeting, dear father and esteem Uncle Boldog,” goes Nunu, very demure.

  “We return to Saucer Hall,” thunders Pa Saucer. “Where you belong, Nunu.”

  “I love her!” Scud for some reason feels impelled to yell. As so many times before, Villy longs to choke his brother into silence. And then, suddenly remembering that Scud is teeping his thoughts, he feels horribly guilty. Why shouldn’t poor desperate Scud find a scrap of love?

  Pa Saucer’s green shade darkens, and the lumbering Boldog tilts back, as if lining up the sights of his X-ray laser beam.

  “I lay eggs!” bursts out Nunu. “They seed by him kiss! I no go back Saucer Hall. I go New Eden for hatch eggs. Mother Meemaw will love to see. Is allowed, dear father and esteem uncle?”

  The three saucers touch down, and Nunu exposes the section of car roof so her father and uncle can ooh and aah. They’re not angry—they’re excited. Gloating, even. A fine hatch.

  Villy moves closer to get a look, and Zoe hops atop a rock. Scud’s on a rock too. He’s clutching the polished bit of starstone he got from Hungerford. Like that’s going to help anything. Take it easy on the kid, Villy.

  In silence Villy, Zoe, and Scud study the dingy, flexible eggs. They wobble from side to side on the round bit of roofing.

  “Scud saucer caviar,” says Zoe, wanting to make a joke. Nobody laughs. The kids are scared. It’s hella alien here, on this cold shadowy mountain, with the starstone monoliths on the top of the ridge, the frikkin enormous heavy saucers—and Nunu’s eggs. Several dozen of them.

  “What do you think happens when they hatch?” Scud asks Villy. “Will the babies follow me around?”

  “I wish we could rub out the eggs right now,” says Villy. “They’re disgusting.”

  “Don’t say that,” protests Scud. “I mean—in a way, they’re cute. They’re mine.”

  Zoe unleashes a shrill, nervous laugh.

  “Keep your voices down,” calls Pinchley. “Don’t rile them big saucers. We act right or they kill us. What it is.”

  Villy rises to the occasion. He clears his throat and faces Nunu’s father. “Handsome eggs,” he goes. “I suppose this makes us relatives.”

  Pa Saucer offers no response.

  “You and me,” continues Villy, taking a step towards the huge, bulbous dad. “Kinfolk.” He makes a sweeping gesture that includes the eggs, Zoe, Scud, Nunu, and the monstrous elder saucers. “All one clan.”

  “You like to come visit New Eden?” as
ks Pa Saucer, as if suddenly warming to the humans. He speaks better English than Nunu. “We can give you a ride. Some other Earthlings live there in a village called Berky. Just over the ridge from Van Cott. Your crew can settle in with Nunu and me if you like. We’re good saucers. I’m divorced, but my ex-wife Meemaw lives nearby. Nunu’s mother. Near Berky. We’re working for freedom. Not like my pinhead brother-in-law Boldog here.”

  “Freedom is bad,” rumbles Boldog. “An insult to our great master Groon.”

  “Groon is garbage,” says Pa Saucer, his voice very clear. “He uses saucers like slaves!”

  “Oh yes, you come to Berky us!” cries Nunu, fluttering close to Scud’s face. “It nice for humans there. Very dangerous if you chase after Iravs.”

  Villy looks at Scud. Almost imperceptibly Scud shakes his head. And Zoe’s very strongly against the invitation.

  “No way!” she yells. “Leave us alone!” She raises her trumpet to her lips. Once again, she’s on the point of hopping to Los Perros.

  Nunu’s Uncle Boldog tilts back, clearly longing to zap Zoe into a white-hot gas of plasma. But if Zoe hops fast, she’ll be able to duck him. And she’ll tell everyone on Earth about the saucers. She’s already got her trumpet in action, boop-de-beeeping the start of her magic spell, tootling a sketchy rhythm.

  The hop could work. After all, Zoe’s already gone through the unny tunnel three times—first when she brought them here, and second when she did her panic-hop from the night market to Los Perros, and third when she came right back to Van Cott. Maybe all she needs to do is lean on the notes a little harder—and her pearl will pop out of her pocket and open its gates and she’ll be gone. Villy senses that Pa Saucer and Boldog are thinking this too—and they don’t like it. They don’t want Zoe to hop home and warn everyone about them.

  “We’ll go now,” intones Nunu’s father, drawing back from the standoff. His serious voice rolls across the stony wastes. “It’s not for us to interrupt their mission, Boldog. It is well if they succeed.”

  Nunu fastens onto her scrap of car roof once more, with the eggs safe beneath her rim. She puckers her cartoony red lips at Scud, as if blowing a hopeful kiss.