by Rudy Rucker
Oh lord, what have they been doing here? To make the rapidly unfolding scenario worse, the crab is teeping to them. Broadcasting his complex emotions and his despair. Villy, with his teep slug, seems to feel it even more strongly than Zoe. Not caring to witness the climax of this scene, Madclaw floats into the air and flaps towards the bonfire, flexing his little body like a manta ray.
The two narwhals attack the crab, stabbing him with their horns and twisting off his legs and his pincers and his claws. The crab’s screams are truly horrible. Villy and Zoe are sharing in the psychic experiences of a sensitive, highly evolved being who’s being torn apart by ruthless predators.
Villy peels off his teep slug and casts it far from his body. The crab’s pathetic cries go on for a bit longer, but then, finally, the noble creature is dead and mostly consumed. The sated narwhals splash into the sea. A wave sweeps the crab offal away.
Not that the rowdies by the bonfire notice or care. They’re singing a drinking song, with the Flatsies’ voices like a youth choir, and Scud yodeling in his cracking voice, and Yampa and Pinchley doing multilevel alien laughs. Some of the Flatsies are staggering around with this giant, like, Alpine horn made of a long shell, and they’re letting Scud blow into it. Fwooonk.
“Man,” says Villy, solemnly eyeing a leftover scrap of the crab’s shell. “That’s what we were eating, Zoe? And you knew? And that’s why you made the Einstein joke?”
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t understand how it really is. I’m always trying so hard to be tough and cool. I want to be a better person, Villy, I do.”
“It’s—I don’t know,” says Villy. “I’m not blaming you. All the rules are so different here.”
“At least in Los Perros there weren’t all these things trying to kill me,” says Zoe. “Flying saucers, dinosaurs, Iravs, giant squid…”
“If the giant crabs had a chance, they might kill and eat us too,” says Villy.
“Not this last one,” says Zoe. “He was a gentle philosopher. Nobler than us. More evolved. I mean—just compare him to Scud and to the Szep and the Flatsies. So drunk and stupid.”
The Flatsies are in a pyramid with Madclaw on top, his body fluttering like a flame. The celebrants are chanting oof oof oof, chanting in a steady rhythm like someone having sex. Meanwhile Pinchley and Yampa have hoisted the giant tuj bladder onto their shoulders, and they’re squirting a stream of the foamy liquid across the crowd. The Szep are juggling their tin of cocoa powder too. Scud is hooting like a great ape.
“Might be the first time Scud’s ever been drunk,” says Villy. “Remember sixteen?” He shakes his head. “Let’s bail.”
But they don’t stand up quite yet. It takes few minutes to shake off the mental echoes of the crab’s screams, a few minutes for their jangled minds to settle down. Slowly, hesitantly, Zoe touches Villy’s cheek. He gives her a melting look. Kisses her. Yes. Tonight.
“In the car?” murmurs Zoe. The car would be private for a little while anyway. But in terms of a lovers’ bower it’s not the best. It’s grubby, and Zoe threw up on the floor, and Scud might burst in and say something—and then Zoe would really and truly have to kill the boy and feed his body to the narwhals.
What other options do they have?
“Prithee lodge in my manor,” says Madclaw, gliding over to them all unctuous and polite. His motions are a little wobbly from the tuj. Evidently, he’s been monitoring their thoughts.
“He means his hut!” exclaims Villy. “We can borrow it.”
“Crab shells and narwhal skin,” says Zoe. “Lovely. Especially after those screams.”
“Is there a bed?” Villy asks Madclaw. “And—excuse me if this is rude—but can we have your place all to ourselves?”
“I offer a bedtick sack of dried ferns,” says Madclaw. “With a comforter to match. Freely my lodging is fit for a covert tryst. I’ll dance till sleep with my tribe and with your boon companions. It is well.”
“Sweet,” says Zoe. She smiles at the floating Madclaw. “How do you use a saucer pearl to fly, anyway?”
“One ponders a certain spell,” says Madclaw. “Well known in this land. Upsy downsy inside out.”
“Easy as pie,” says Villy. “But let’s focus on the hut. Whither, dude?”
“Follow me, gentlefolk.”
Scud leers at them as they pass the Flatsie party. The boy is leading a snake-dance conga line, with the Szep beating on the emptied tuj-sack like it’s a bass drum. A few of the Flatsies lie motionless on their backs, overcome by drink.
Madclaw’s hut is a few hundred feet along the beach. He ushers Zoe and Villy in, briefly opening the slit in his belly to let his saucer pearl light the room. And then the young lovers are alone.
Villy collapses onto the rustling sack of dried ferns, and Zoe lies next to him, on her side with her arms around him and her cheek on his chest. It’s dark in here, with the hubbub of the party blending into the steady crashing of the waves. The bed smells okay—salty and earthy with a touch of cinnamon.
“I love this trip,” says Villy, running his hand over Zoe’s hair. “I never thought I’d have a ride like today.”
“Today was amazing for me too,” says Zoe. “Surfing the car. Who knew I could do that? And I didn’t even tell you about the giant squid.”
“Tomorrow,” says Villy. “I’m too tired to talk.”
“But there’s something I have to say,” goes Zoe. “We’ve made it through three basins, okay? And this morning you promised that would be enough. Like I said before, crossing two hundred more of these worlds—it’s not realistic. For sure we’d die.”
“But—driving a million miles,” says Villy yet again. “I’m obsessing on that.”
“I’m obsessing on you,” says Zoe. “Maybe a little too much.”
Villy turns on his side so they’re face to face. He kisses her for a while. “Let’s make love,” he says. “Go to the next level.”
“I want that too,” says Zoe. “But can we please talk about tomorrow?”
Villy inhales and exhales a deep breath. Sighs. Yawns. Releases his grasp on Zoe.
“Too tired to talk?” she says, a bit of acid in her voice.
“I surfed a mile-high wave,” says Villy.
“I know. It was magnificent. But until I know that we’re going home tomorrow, I don’t feel comfortable enough to—”
“Hell with it,” says Villy. “Too much. I’m going to sleep.” He rolls onto his other side, curls up, and he’s gone. Deep, steady breathing with a hint of a snore.
No wham bam. No thank you ma’am. Villy’s a selfish baby. Zoe would hop back to Los Perros on her own right now if she could. Maybe she shouldn’t have pushed Villy so hard? But, look, a person ought to be willing to make some plans if they expect to stick one of their personal body parts inside of you. Way inside. Sigh. It would have been fun. Truth be told, this would have been Zoe’s first time. And she ruined it by nagging him. So typical of her. But can’t he see they have to go home? Etcetera.
She twists and turns for hours, uncomfortable in the cruddy alien bed, now and then giving Villy a really hard poke, but he never wakes up. No hope of sleep for her. Too many things in her head. Nunu laying eggs, the Thudd dino chasing them, the wall waves, the hideous scene with the giant crab. And that vampire saucer in the ocean. It had been waiting there to blast them.
There’s definitely a correlation between the saucers’ behavior and Zoe’s distance from Van Cott. The further she goes, the more aggressive they get. Wanting to think this out, she forms the image of a map in her mind, can’t quite get it straight, and then, what the hell, goes outside, intending to draw a diagram on the beach.
It’s not totally dark. There’s a light dusting of glowons, like new-fallen snow. The ocean is faintly luminous. Down the beach the embers of the Flatsies’ bonfire gleam.
The revelers are sprawled on the ground asleep—Scud, the two Szep, the horde of Flatsies—all of them passed out from the tuj. On an impuls
e, Zoe postpones her map-drawing and slinks close to the sleepers. There’s Madclaw in the middle, lying atop a female Flatsie. Zoe picks her way over to Madclaw and flips him like a piece of French toast, thereby exposing the slit of his kangaroo pouch. She slips in her hand and finds the hefty saucer pearl, meaning to steal it. No dice. Madclaw may be asleep, but he’s reflexively clenching the slit of his pouch so tightly that Zoe feels her hand going numb. No way he’s letting her pull out that big pearl. It’s all Zoe can do to extract her hand intact. Damn. With a sleepy grumble, Madclaw flips onto his stomach and slumbers on.
The waves crunch and burble. Perhaps they can see Zoe, perhaps they’re discussing what she does. Anything’s possible here. It strikes her that if she were to play her special tune, then the big saucer pearl in Madclaw’s pouch might well open into an unny tunnel, right where it is. Maybe she could push Madclaw through the tunnel and make her way through it too. But somehow, just now, she’s not quite ready to try that route. Come to think of it, an unny tunnel from Madclaw’s ocean-harvested saucer pearl might not lead to Earth at all. Might lead somewhere like Alpha Centauri.
Zoe glances up the beach towards the hut she’s sharing with the tyrannical, cold, vain, and thoroughly worthless Villy Antwerpen. Sigh. She finds a clean damp spot on the sand by the water and hunkers down. Using the gentle light of the glowons, she draws a cluster of five hexagons. Like a scrap of honeycomb.
Zoe’s Map of the Local Basins
Each hexagon stands for one of the basins they’re traveling through. They started in Van Cott, the basin with the mappyworld version of Earth. Next to Van Cott is New Eden—the saucers’ local base. And then comes Thuddland, the Valley of the Ants, and Surf World. Zoe numbers four dots to stand for the four nights they’ve spent here.
She has three hypotheses.
•It’s easy for her to tunnel to Earth from downtown Van Cott. If she had a little more strength, or if her saucer pearl was bigger, it just might be possible to tunnel from a basin that touches Van Cott. But tunneling is flat-out impossible from basins further than that.
•The local saucers tend only to be in the New Eden basin or one of the basins that touch it.
•The saucers want to kill Zoe, but only when they’re sure she has no possible option of dodging their death rays and hopping home.
And this leads to a conclusion.
•The saucers are most likely to zap Zoe while she’s in a basin that doesn’t touch Van Cott, and which does touch New Eden.
And, as it happens, Surf World is that kind of basin. Meatball was very keen on them visiting Surf World, traitor that she is. From the saucers’ point of view, Surf World is a free-fire zone. Yes, Zoe managed to kill that big saucer lurking in the ocean. But another will be coming soon.
Peering upwards, Zoe sees something that confirms her fears. It’s a flashing yellow beacon, some two thousand feet overhead. It’s frikkin Meatball. Signaling for a saucer attack, the bitch. The next bad-guy saucer might take a couple of hours to fly here, but, yeah, he’ll be coming soon. Maybe before dawn.
Somehow Zoe feels very calm. Logic is a beautiful thing. She’s done with floundering and emoting. She sees two options—other than the dubious possibility of trying to tunnel through Madclaw’s pearl to who knows where.
•Villy’s choice: Keep heading towards Szep City. They should be relatively safe from the saucers along the way. Szep City itself will be iffy, but with any luck, they can pick up that anti-saucer wand there.
•Zoe’s choice: Go back to Los Perros as soon as possible. They can circle back along the ridges to Thuddland, then push through the jungle to Van Cott, then use Zoe’s pearl to tunnel home.
Either way, Zoe needs to get them off this beach and up to the Flatsie Pass ridge before the next saucer comes. She just hopes they’ll be safe up there. Only one way to know: do it. Once more it’s time to run.
Zoe smiles to herself. She’s going to make a big scene, an epic scene. She’ll rouse those three zonked idiots by the burned-out fire, get stupid Villy, and drive the purple whale up the cliff. She’ll be calm and in charge. Villy, Scud, Yampa, and Pinchley will be whining and bewildered. But eventually they’ll be grateful. Hooray for Zoe Snapp. The way it should be. Yeah.
Zoe goes over to the car. It’s a comfortable silhouette, with the two surfboards back in place. And guess who’s standing there waiting? Maisie, in a thin T-shirt and gauzy pants, with her meaty, skin-covered rim sticking out all around. She still has her little purse, plus two large folded sheets of—seaweed?
“Hey there,” says Maisie. “I was expecting you.”
“I need to leave Surf World,” says Zoe.
“Right. A big saucer is on the way. One reason I flew here from New Eden was to warn you.”
“You can fly?”
“I fly like a flying saucer,” says Maisie, and she gives Zoe a significant look. But Zoe isn’t sure what the look is supposed to mean.
“So many secrets,” says Zoe. “Tell me about the saucer coming after us.”
“It’s Nunu’s Uncle Boldog,” says Maisie, setting down the seaweed. “The stupid dark-purple one. He plans to kill all of you. That’s, like, the one and only thought in his tiny mind. Pa Saucer tried to stop him, but Boldog—you can’t argue with him.”
“Will we be safe if we make it up the cliff to the ridge?” asks Zoe. This is something she’s not sure about.
“Smart question. Sad answer: no. Yes, the New Eden saucers aren’t that likely to go on past the Surf World basin. It’s a lot of work for them to fly over the basin edges. And Groon doesn’t want them to get too far away from his music. We can’t easily hear it, but Groon pipes his song into New Eden via a jet stream. Maybe you saw the stream from Borderslam Pass? It’s full of saucers being rushed back and forth. Along with that horrible song. Groon’s local slaves like to stay in New Eden or in a basin touching New Eden—so that they can keep hearing their master’s voice.”
“Wait, wait—what kind of music is it?” asks Zoe.
Maisie giggles. “Bagpipe, of course. The one instrument that’s more squealy and horrible than anything else you ever hear in your entire life. Such a nasty sound that you never want to stop throwing up.”
“Nothing makes sense,” says Zoe.
“Why should it?” goes merry Maisie. She seems happy to be confiding with Zoe. “Anyway, Groon’s slave saucers won’t follow you into the next basin after this. But they’ll still zap rays at you if they see you on the ridge. You have to keep back from the edge once you’re up there.”
“What are the basins on the other side of Flatsie Pass?” asks Zoe.
“Those would be Crab Crater and the Bubble Badlands. Various probs with each of those. Better to drive along the ridge between those two basins. It’s bumpy and twisty, but if you go just a little way the saucers can’t see you from Surf World.”
“I’ve been thinking I might follow the basin ridge around Surf World and back to Thuddland and then drive back through Thuddland to Van Cott,” says Zoe. “So I can hop home.”
“Don’t do that,” says Maisie.
“I need some convincing,” says Zoe. She clambers into the car. She needs to go pick up Scud and the two Szep. “Come on, Maisie. Ride with me and tell me more. Like—just for a random start—why are you lugging those two giant sheets of seaweed?”
“These are Neptune’s tablecloths,” says Maisie, still standing outside. “They’re predators who live in the Surf World sea. Basically, they’re big disks that bend around things and then pinch in their outer edge to make a pouch.”
“Know about them,” says Zoe.
“I just now dove down near the bottom and bagged these two,” says Maisie. “They can stretch to a kilometer across. The outer edge acts like the drawstring on a sack, right.”
“Who cares? Get to the point.”
“We’re going to use this pair of Neptune’s tablecloths to trap Groon,” says Maisie, very intense. “This happens during the cosmic beatdo
wn in Los Perros. And I’ll tell you the rest later.”
“I never get the full picture here,” gripes Zoe. “Everyone’s always in a rush—I’m like Alice following the White Rabbit. Why do you know so much when you’re a year younger than me?” Angrily Zoe thumps her hand against the outside of the door. “Get in the car, damn it.”
“Only for a minute,” says Maisie, taking a seat beside Zoe. “Action item: the giant saucer Boldog is on his way. He’s ready to fry us all, including me. My situation with the saucers, by the way—it’s kind of complicated. I mean, fine, I’m half saucer myself, but—”
“Wait, wait, wait,” goes Zoe. Things are clicking into place. “Your mother is a flying saucer? That’s what you’re saying?” At some level Zoe already suspected this, but it’s the first time she’s let the idea into her conscious mind. “You’re saying my dad had sex with a flying saucer? And that’s how you came into the world?”
“A saucer can get pregnant from a kiss,” says Maisie. “Like with Nunu and Scud. But actually our father and Meemaw really have done the full-on hump-o-rama. Lots of times. In fact, they still do.”
“Oooo,” says Zoe, breaking into shocked laughter. “Meemaw? What a name.” She still hasn’t started the car. “Is Meemaw hot? I mean—hot for a flying saucer?”
“Don’t mock,” says Maisie. “Meemaw is a good mother. She’s not a slave of Groon. She has a strong, independent personality. She’s divorced. And she just so happens to be a flying saucer. She’s Dad’s real love. His marriage to Sunny Weaver was for show. And yes, yes, yes—I’m half flying saucer. My parents are Meemaw the saucer and our common father Kirkland Snapp. Can we get past that?”
“Sorry.”
“Meemaw is Nunu’s mother too, by the way,” says Maisie. “Meemaw and her ex-husband Pa Saucer are Nunu’s parents.”